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More "Amateur" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of whom proclaim its marked superiority to all parts of the Swiss Alps except the amazing neighborhood of Mont Blanc. With the multiplication of trails and the building of shelters for the comfort of the inexperienced, the veriest amateur of city business life will find in these mountains of perpetual sunshine a satisfaction which is only for ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... assets now he discovered that he had probably as excellent a conception of gridiron strategy and tactics as any man in America; that as a boxer he occupied a position in the forefront of amateur ranks; and he was quite positive that out-side of the major leagues there was not a better ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... war cannot possibly be well managed by anyone who is not a master of the art. Now and then there has been success by an amateur—a person who, without being a soldier by profession, has made himself one; such a person, for example, as Cromwell. Apart from rare instances of that sort, the only plan for a Government which does not include among its members a soldier, professional or amateur, ...
— Lessons of the War • Spenser Wilkinson
... palmist and soothsayer had returned to Bond Street full of hate and respect for Midland justice, which fears not and has a fist like a navvy's. The attention of the Five Towns had thus been naturally drawn to fortune-telling in general. And it was deemed that in securing a local celebrity (quite an amateur, and therefore, it was uncertainly hoped, on the windy side of the law) for the diversion of his Christmas party Stephen Cheswardine had done a stylish ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... a voice, and music was the one talent she had cared to cultivate; she had had good lessons during her second winter abroad, and was an acquisition to the amateur company. Besides, what she cared for more, it was a real pleasure and rest to the curate to come in and listen to her or sing with her. She had learnt what kind of things offended good taste, ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... First-class chess remained in the hands of the veterans Burn, Blackburne, Mason and Bird. The old amateurs passed away, their place being taken by a new generation of powerful amateurs, so well equipped that Great Britain could hold its own in an amateur contest against the combined forces of Germany, Austria, Holland and Russia. The terms master and amateur are not used in any invidious sense, but simply as designating, in the former case, first-class players, and in the latter, those just ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... late Marquis of Anglesey, a young lord generally regarded as crazy by an ungrateful England. Perhaps it was a little crazy in him to spend so much money in the comparatively commonplace adventure of taking an amateur dramatic company through the English provinces, he himself, I believe, playing but minor roles; but lovers of Gautier's Le Capitaine Fracasse will see in that but a charmingly boyish desire to translate ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... up twice in Mr. Green's balloon as a simple amateur. He took it into his head to go up a third time. He wished to attempt a descent in a parachute of his own construction, which he believed was vastly superior to the ordinary one. He altered the ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... dress, except at the rarest intervals; and then there is only one, not two; and he shows up but once on the voyage—the night before the ship makes port—the night when they have the "concert" and do the amateur wailings and recitations. He is the tenor, as a rule . . . . There has been a deal of cricket-playing on board; it seems a queer game for a ship, but they enclose the promenade deck with nettings and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... barked tree which the Dunbar Expedition had called the lance tree because of its slender, straightly outthrust limbs. Its wood was as hard as hickory and as springy as cedar. Prentiss found two amateur archers who were sure they could make efficient bows and arrows out of the lance tree limbs. He gave them the ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... consider the question of grouping the battery cells from the same point of view. How does the need for rapid working, and the question of time constant, affect the best mode of grouping the battery cells? The amateur's rule, which tells you to so arrange your battery that its internal resistance should be equal to the external resistance, gives you a result wholly wrong for rapid working. The supposed best arrangement will not give ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... out from lips, at no time too retentive, I was told, that at the end of one week more I should be suffered to take my way; that week being devoted to a round of especial entertainments in honour of my brother's election; the whole to be wound up by that most preposterous of all delights, an amateur play. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... verily, that is what he was. He was welcomed at every mess, and he had the entree of every house in Quebec. He could drink harder than any man in the regiment, and dance down a whole regiment of drawing-room knights. He could sing better than any amateur I ever heard; and was the best judge of a meerschaum-pipe I ever saw. Lucky? Yes, he was—and especially so, and more than all else—on account of the joyousness of his soul. There was a contagious and a godlike hilarity in his broad, open brow, his ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... minister of state who was his guide should answer—"O great Caesar, I really do not know. I believe there are some somewhere at the back of that ugly building which we call the National Gallery; and I think there have been some meetings lately in the East End, and an amateur concert at the Albert Hall, for restoring, by private subscriptions, some baths and wash-houses in Bethnal Green, which had fallen to decay. And there may be two or three more about the metropolis; for parish vestries have powers by Act of Parliament ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... of general curiosity. If few or none could appreciate the technical merit of his productions, yet there were points in regard to which the opinion of the crowd was as valuable as the refined judgment of the amateur. He watched the effect that each picture produced on such untutored beholders, and derived profit from their remarks, while they would as soon have thought of instructing Nature herself, as him who seemed to rival ...
— The Prophetic Pictures (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... stir about invasion and amateur rifle-clubs, other matters do get talked about—as, for instance, the astronomer-royal's communication to the Society of Antiquaries on the place of Caesar's landing at his invasion of Britain. The learned functionary settles it to his own satisfaction by tide-calculations: he has also been ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... time of the Tralee election, when I stood as a Conservative, a small clique of mob orators and amateur politicians tried to make political capital out of the history of the Harenc estate, and a priest, Father M. O'Connor, rode the jaded topic to death. The unkindest cut of all to him was the direct contradiction by the tenants themselves of every assertion ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... to the understanding that it shall be made clear in all advertising matter that the audience will witness an amateur performance; and that the names of the authors of plays shall be included in all announcements ...
— I'll Leave It To You - A Light Comedy In Three Acts • Noel Coward
... centuries amateur dramatic productions called masques were presented. Sometimes even nobles and members of the royal family took part. These plays were accompanied by music, dancing, and spectacular effects. The ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... children. When he took up his residence as laird, most of his friends, naturally, were Spanish visitors whom he amused by building a bull-fighting ring not far from the house, importing bulls from Spain and holding amateur bull-fights on Sunday afternoons. This was a sad blow indeed to the sedate Presbyterians in the neighbourhood. His life, however, was short, and, as he left no children, the properties passed to my father, ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... one mighty stubborn boy! And I don't think my darling Aunt Betty would hesitate to pay one extra day's help. I've heard her say that she disliked amateur labor. She likes professional skill," returned ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... at such times awaiting their turn at the bar of justice affords ample opportunity for study to the professional or the amateur criminalist. ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... at once. He had been looking a little glum since his last speech. "Yes," he answered, "I can. Well, I'm not a professional, you understand, but for an amateur I am supposed to have as much technique and a good deal ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... have been appointed to control the food supplies in Petrograd. English Government officials regard this arrangement as the work of an amateur. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... silent auditors another drawer which contained a sheet of card-board on which was a fairly good pastel of an Arab in a burnouse. It had the weak and false drawing which would result in the attempt of an amateur to copy an engraving in color. "This came in broad daylight while I held the clean card-board ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... 'My better angel!' he said, 'I will be content to toil as the knights of old, hopelessly, save that if you hear of me no longer as the idle amateur, but as exerting myself for something serviceable, you will know it is ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Cavalry, Father," I said, and we edged our way up the line of horses two abreast and found the Deputy Commissioner, his helmet smashed on his head, surrounded by a knot of men who had come down from the Club as amateur constables and ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... distinguished-looking, with an iron-grey mustache, and the manners of a diplomat. He was not only a banker, he was also a man of culture; he had run away to sea in his youth, and he had travelled in every country of the world. He was also a bit of an author, in an amateur way, and if there was any book which he had not dipped into, it was not a book of which one would be apt to hear in Society. He could talk upon any subject, and a hostess who could secure Stanley Ryder for one of her dinner-parties ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... "No, I'm a lily-pure amateur," Rand told him. "Or was until I took this job. I have a collection of my own, and I'm supposed to be something of an authority. My business is operating a private ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... twisted kind of smile, 'boys, I'm lookin' for a job. I'm not much of a talker, an' I'm only a amateur at music, and my game of billiards is ragged. But there's one thing I can do, fellows, from abc up to xyz, and that's write. I can write, boys, in a way to make your pet little political scribe sound like a high school paper. I don't promise to stick. As soon ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... an amateur radar operator out of me, because it was easy to do, and gave Sid more time for actual rocket valving. My belt cut me hard as ...
— The Trouble with Telstar • John Berryman
... was formed in the '70s by a number of newspaper writers and men working in the arts or interested in them. It had grown to a membership of 750. It still kept for its nucleus painters, writers, musicians and actors, amateur and professional. They were a gay group of men, and hospitality was their avocation. Yet the thing which set this club off from all others in the world ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... examined herself full face, in profile, in three-quarters view, and behind, attentively and conscientiously, like an amateur judging a work of art, who cries at length, "Yes, it is all good, it is all perfect, there is nothing amiss." One could have believed that she saw herself again for the first time after ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... here to-night to arrange the scene. Don't tell us you didn't know it. Bob Yardsley's coming, and Barlow. Yardsley's a great man for amateur dramatics; he bosses things so pleasantly that you don't know you're being ordered about like a slave. I believe he could persuade a man to hammer nails into his piano-case if he wanted it done, he's so insinuatingly lovely ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... was the reply. 'His mother was resolved he should be an amateur, and I give his master ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... less lamentable now, being one that takes care to redress itself, and perhaps any amateur purchaser of fish may find rogues enough now for his interest. But the rector's daughter pined for neither society nor scandal: she had plenty of interest in her life, and in pleasing other people, whenever she could do it ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... set to work. But beyond the fact that the whole contrivance was the work of an amateur hand, he found nothing strange about it, except the fact ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... know as much about Anarchism in ten minutes as they do here in ten years. Tell them that I have spent my life in the study of explosives. I will have to make-up a little, but you know that I am a very good amateur actor, and I don't think there will be any trouble about that. At the last you must tell them that you have an appointment and will leave me to amuse them for ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... is unfair, for it was only the repetition under new governmental conditions of the old traditional colonial method of carrying on war as a local matter. The French and Indian War, the Revolution, and the War of 1812, repeated in different generations the same tale of amateur warfare, of the occasional success and usual worthlessness of the militia, the same administrative inefficiency, and the same financial breakdown. Without authority and obedience, there can be carried on no real war; and authority ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... to his decision about the money for the funeral director quickly. He told her he was going to look for work and went to George Blake at his Spring street gymnasium. Blake, an instructor in boxing, had seen him spar in amateur bouts and had taken him in tow. He boxed because he liked it; never with a thought of ever fighting for money. Only a month before he had refused an offer of a bout at Jack ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... command the needful guinea) that they can recapture this pleasure through a volume of twenty-four representative drawings collected under the apt title of Personalities (SECKER). Not for me to attempt detailed consideration, even if it were not the duty of every amateur to fall a victim at first hand to Mr. KAPP'S amazing art. But one can hardly pass without tribute such things as the head of the Japanese poet on page 1 ("Seer of Visions"), a really wonderful example of much meaning in few lines, or the WYNDHAM ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... flower—herald of death. The fatal climax could be delayed if gardeners, in transplanting, would at least take the trouble to set them in their old accustomed exposure so far as the cardinal points are concerned. But your professional gardener knows everything; it is useless for an amateur to offer him advice; worse than useless, of course, to ask him for it. Indeed, the flowers, even the wild ones, might almost reconcile one to a life on the Riviera. Almost.... I recall a comely plant, for instance, seven feet high at the end of June, though now slumbering ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... not proper fields for the cultivation and display of Miss Gordon's amateur kid glove charity. I hope, at least, it was a species of exaggerated high-flown sentimentality, rather than mere feminine curiosity that tempted you to precincts revolting to the delicacy and refinement with which my ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... rapidly cut away the shirt, exposing the warrior's chest and back. As he drew back the blood-soaked cloth, he gave a sigh of relief. The bullet had passed clear through the body close to the lungs,—a serious wound, but one which perhaps with proper care need not prove fatal. The amateur surgeon had no antiseptic except common salt, but with that and water he quickly cleansed and sterilized the wounds and tearing up one of his own clean shirts, he first scraped a strip with an old case knife ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... deck with nothin' left higher than a six spot. I ain't what you would call inventionative; but I could 'a' done a blame sight better'n that if I'd taken the time to think, instead o' simply blurtin' out the truth like some fool amateur. ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... Cholera Morbus, can be warranted utterly to deny the existence of contagion, but he may at the least be permitted to say, that if contagion do exist at all, it must be the weakest in its powers of diffusion, and the safest to approach of any that has ever yet been known amongst diseases. Amateur physicians from the Continent, and from every part of the United Kingdoms, eager and keen for Cholera, and more numerous than the patients themselves, beset and surrounded the sick in Sunderland with all the fearless ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... his rank like a prince, and gathered involuntarily round him as showy a circle as ever figured in St James's, or even in the glittering saloons of the Tuileries. Hunting parties, balls, suppers, and amateur theatrical performances, not merely varied the time, but made it fly. Hope had its share too, as well as possession. Paris was before us; and on the road to the capital lay but the one fortress which was about to be destroyed with our fire, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... reputation for honesty and caution in advancing opinions. By all the lessons that history teaches, Peary's word should have had precedence over Cook's, for Peary was a specialist, while Cook was only an amateur. And yet the general public discounted entirely those lessons, and trusted rather the novice, with what results it is now unnecessary to review,—and in nine cases out of ten, the ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... here, Florence, said the amateur, rings and a sunrise, not out of the clouds either. Look, too, at the oval forms like eggs. At home we can't get such cups. Here we are in the higher waves. We are determined to read something to inspire others, as you read to us, ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... adolescence. He was tired of worshipping or tyrannizing over the bistred or umbered beauties of mingled blood among whom he had been living. Even that piquant exhibition which the Rio de Mendoza presents to the amateur of breathing sculpture failed to interest him. He was thinking of a far-off village on the other side of the equator, and of the wild girl with whom he used to play and quarrel, a creature of a different race from these ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... necessary. She could pick a lock too, when needed, with great neatness and dispatch. I rather think she could repair one also. I have still in my possession a small box of her making, which, for execution and durability, I will match against the performance of any rival amateur of the opposite sex. In spite, however, of such freaks, and as if to make amends for them, Miss Jess possessed one of the softest and most impressionable hearts which ever fell to the lot of a mature maiden of forty-five. She had suffered from no less than six different attachments ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... exit for the water, and some hardwood pegs drove into holes in the wall, and that was all. To go out of that furnished apartment into a Harlem hall bedroom would make you feel like getting back home from an amateur violoncello solo at an East Side ...
— Options • O. Henry
... himself as he went down the road, and then dismissed the matter from his mind, for the consideration of the Upham baby and the probable nature of its ailment, upon which, however, he did not allow himself to dwell too long. Early in his amateur practice Jake Noyes had inculcated one precept in his mind, ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the colored graduate of West Point, was entertained in style at Tully's, King Street, Tuesday night. The hosts were a colored organization called tile Amateur Literary and Fraternal Association, which determined that the lieutenant who will leave this city to-day to join his regiment, the Tenth Cavalry, now in Texas, should not do so without some evidence of their appreciation of him personally, and of the fact that he had reflected ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... passed, and whose food is consumed, in the clubs of the adjacent thoroughfare of cooperative palaces, Pall Mall. The furniture was battered and dingy; the sofa on which Logan sprawled had a certain historic interest: it was covered with cloth of horsehair, now seldom found by the amateur. A bookcase with glass doors held a crowd of books to which the amateur would at once have flown. They were in 'boards' of faded blue, and the paper labels bore alluring names: they were all First Editions of the most desirable kind. The bottles in the liqueur case were antique; a coat of arms, not ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... answer to this inquiry, accompanied with such woodcut illustrations as would be necessary to render the description complete, and such as an artificer could work by, would confer a boon on many amateur photographers, as well as your ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... carefully placed aside after its cleansing, and the pair of amateur opticians locked up the place ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... proceeds the author of "The Amateur Detective," —"to tell you the whole truth, I have been playing the detective with you by order of Mr. DIBBLE, and hope you will excuse my practice ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... Lang had celebrated the day by giving a little afternoon tea on the broad piazza, overlooking the grounds. It had been a pretty sight, with the dainty gowns of the girls, and the active figures of the few boys who had been favored with invitations to share in the games on the lawn. The ever-present amateur photographer had thought so too, apparently, and from his position in the street, he had already aimed his detective camera at them, when Alan discovered him and gave the alarm, only just in time to prevent his ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... fishermen, and wild-fowl shooters of Barnegat and Little Egg Harbor bays, until the New Jersey Southern Railroad and its connecting branches penetrated to the eastern shores of New Jersey, when educated amateur sportsmen from the cities quickly recognized in the little gunning-punt all they had long desired to combine in ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... of the Young Amateur Entertainer that—whether he possesses or not the smallest acquaintance with any language beyond his own—he is always prepared to impersonate a foreigner of any given nationality at a moment's notice; and Mr. Punch is confident that the most backward of his Pupils will be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, August 13, 1887 • Various
... clear cold night when Geoffrey Thurston met Captain Franklin, who held certain sporting rights in the vicinity, at the place agreed upon. The captain had brought with him several amateur assistants and stablehands besides two stalwart keepers. Greeting ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... was the Maighdean-mhara. He would let no one else on the island touch Sheila's boat. Duncan, it is true, was permitted to keep her masts and sails and seats sound and white, but as for the decorative painting of the small craft—including a little bit of amateur gilding—that was the exclusive right of Mr. Mackenzie himself. For of course, the old man said; to himself, Sheila was coming back to Borva one these days, and she would be proud to find her own boat bright and sound. If she and her husband ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... down beside Bickley, and in clearing away the deep dust from what seemed to be the bottom of the step, which was perhaps four feet in height, by accident thrust my amateur spade somewhat strongly against its base where it rested upon ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... of the work may be, I feel certain that the numerous and excellent illustrations which the Publisher has obtained for this book cannot fail to render it attractive, and, let us also hope, contribute something towards bringing Cactuses into favour with horticulturists, professional as well as amateur. ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... seemingly we are trying to discredit astronomers because astronomers oppose us—that's not my impression. We shall be in the Brahmin caste of the hell of the Baptists. Almost all our data, in some regiments of this procession, are observations by astronomers, few of them mere amateur astronomers. It is the System that opposes us. It is the System that is suppressing astronomers. I think we pity them in their captivity. Ours is not malice—in a positive sense. It's chivalry—somewhat. Unhappy astronomers looking out from high towers in which ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... that Edwin Abbey did not get along very well at school —instead of getting his lessons he drew pictures, and thirty years ago such conduct was proof of total depravity. Like the amateur blacksmith who started to make a horseshoe and finally contented himself with a fizzle, the Abbeys gave up theology and law, and decided that if Edwin became a good printer it would be enough. And then, how often printers became writers—then editors ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... unattractive, aigri, and, en somme, rather absurd. Marya Dmitrievna made her appearance escorted by Gedeonovsky, then Marfa Timofyevna and Lisa came in; and after them the other members of the household; and then the musical amateur, Madame Byelenitsin, arrived, a little thinnish lady, with a languid, pretty, almost childish little face, wearing a rusting dress, a striped fan, and heavy gold bracelets. Her husband was with her, ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... the North has its place in our subsequent story. The system that preceded it need not be dwelt upon here, because, full of instruction as a technical study of it (such as has been made by Colonel Henderson) must be, no brief survey by an amateur could be useful. It is necessary, however, to understand the position in which Lincoln's Administration was placed, without much experience In America, or perhaps elsewhere in the world, to guide it. It must not be contended, ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... exquisite profile, hollow cheeks and haggard but lovely brown eyes. She was talking to several people who were gathered about her, and never smiled. It was impossible to imagine that she could ever smile. Her name was Lady Mildred Burnington, and she was an admirable amateur violinist, married to Admiral Sir Hilary Burnington, one of the Sea Lords. Max Elliot was in the distance, talking eagerly in the midst of a group of musicians. A tall singer, a woman from the Paris Opera Comique, stood by him with her right hand on his arm, as if she ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... did not, however, appear to be without hope. Certainly, had he chosen to risk an assault with some trifling loss, the place might have been in his possession; but boats were not at hand in sufficient numbers, and besides, such a proceeding might not have been popular with amateur soldiers. He asked me if I had brought any letters to him; I frankly owned I had not. "Ah!" he said, "you came from curiosity, that you might talk in the gay circles of London, of having seen the Vladika of Montenegro." I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... a great amateur of knighthoods. On days of great festivities his face is, as it were, illuminated with the lustre of his stars; and the crosses on his coat conceal almost its original colour. Every petty Prince of Germany has dubbed him a chevalier; but Emperors and Kings have ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... a little musical party in New York, where several accomplished amateur singers were present, and with them the eminent professional, Miss Adelaide Phillipps. The amateurs were first called on. Each chose some difficult operatic passage, and sang her best. When it came to the great opera-singer's ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... her lips, and smiled ironically; she had Katharine at her mercy; she could, if she liked, discharge upon her head wagon-loads of revolting proof of the state of things ignored by the casual, the amateur, the looker-on, the cynical observer of life at a distance. And yet she hesitated. As usual, when she found herself in talk with Katharine, she began to feel rapid alternations of opinion about her, arrows of sensation striking strangely through the envelope ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... no amateur; but I tell you once more, that there is too much blue. And now do as you like; and if you do not think you have enough, you ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... and Japanese painters, and perhaps Leonardo, had known how to get that startling little ego into each painted flower, and bird, and beast—the ego, yet the sense of species, the universality of life as well. They were the fellows! 'I've made nothing that will live!' thought Jolyon; 'I've been an amateur—a mere lover, not a creator. Still, I shall leave Jon behind me when I go.' What luck that the boy had not been caught by that ghastly war! He might so easily have been killed, like poor Jolly twenty years ago out in ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... along for the next ten minutes or so, before the first difficulty that presented itself to the amateur mahout appeared in front; for after they had pursued the regular elephant-path beyond the clearing for some little time, there in front was a dividing of the road, and upon reaching this the elephant stopped as if in doubt, and began slowly swinging his head, ending ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... a Shooting Star at Oxford,' Berkeley answered simply, 'so that I know something—like a despised amateur—about stage necessities; and I've written one or two little pieces before for private acting. Besides, Watkiss has helped me with all the technical arrangements of ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... the intention of the publishers to make this series of little volumes, of which Making a Rock Garden is one, a complete library of authoritative and well illustrated handbooks dealing with the activities of the home-maker and amateur gardener. Text, pictures and diagrams will, in each respective book, aim to make perfectly clear the possibility of having, and the means of having, some of the more important features of a modern country or suburban home. Among the titles already issued or planned for early publication are the following: ...
— Making A Rock Garden • Henry Sherman Adams
... great changes, ominous of still further transitions, in the theatrical and literary world. Liston, the famous comedian who had delighted a former generation, was dead, and amateur actors, led by authors in the persons of Charles Dickens, Douglas Jerrold, &c. &c., had come to the front, and were winning much applause, as well as solid benefits for individuals and institutions connected with literature requiring ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... its usual midnight throng; there was the hubbub of loud voices and the ebb and flow of laughter. From midway of the gambling-hall rose the noisy exhortations of some amateur gamester who was breathing upon his dice and pleading earnestly, feelingly, with "Little Joe"; from the theater issued the strains of a sentimental ballad. As Rouletta and her companion edged their way toward the lunch-counter in the next room they were intercepted by the Snowbird, whose nightly ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... but disappointing writers. It soon became evident enough that the devil was not to be raised by their prescriptions, that the philosopher's stone was beyond the reach of the amateur. Iamblichus is particularly obscure and tedious. To any young beginner I would recommend Petrus de Abano, as the most adequate and gruesome of the school, for "real deevilry and pleesure," while in the wilderness of Plotinus there are many beautiful ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... admitted to the bar in 1837. At that date there was no lawyer nearer to New Salem than those in Springfield, which was twenty miles off. Consequently he had a little amateur practise from his neighbors. He was sometimes appealed to for the purpose of drawing up agreements and other papers. He had no office, and if he chanced to be out of doors would call for writing-materials, ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... the amateur stage as well as on the professional, and ladies of social position, accustomed to see their beauty lauded in the newspapers, saw no reason why Mrs. Stewart should be thrust to the front of half of the pictures. ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... and pictures, and was early taught to draw. When, after some study of law, he visited Paris, his father advised him to take up the study of art as an accomplishment, and he entered one of the studios, merely as an amateur, at the same time gaining admittance, through his family connections, to the inner artistic circles of the capital. For some years he studied art, not to become a painter, but because he wished to understand ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... opinion would ever induce the Catholic hierarchy to undertake to turn out students who would make a respectable figure among the scientific graduates of other universities, or even hold their own among the common run of amateur readers of Huxley and Darwin and Tyndall. There is no excuse for any misunderstanding as regards the policy of the church on this point. She has never given the slightest encouragement or sanction to the idea which so many Protestant divines have of late years embraced, that theology ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... would take, though I thank you for the offer," he said. "I do not doubt that golf is an honourable profession—in fact I know it is—but for reasons which will not interest you I prefer to maintain my amateur standing. It will be a pleasure to play with you, sir, and to help your game if I can, but I ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... tender. We were inclined to think rather highly of our own courage in defying her; and sometimes our vanity was increased by our moniteurs. After an exciting misadventure they often gave expression to their relief at finding an amateur pilot still whole, by praising his "presence of mind" in ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... The mount satisfied him, and when, as they approached nearer, discrepancies in shape between the island and the map were pointed out to him he easily explained them by speaking of the difficulties of cartography to an amateur. ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... of plain-clothes work is to learn to know a man by his face rather than by his clothing—and at the outset one will be astonished to find how much he has hitherto been depending on the latter. It must be the same with criminals, too, unless your criminal is an amateur or a fool, in which event you will "land" him without the trouble of disguising. A detective furthermore should not be a handsome man or a man of striking appearance in any way; the ideal plain-clothes man is the little insignificant ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... hours of recreation; and that the government of the Tsar left him to support himself by instructing in chemistry in the College of Medicine and Surgery in Moscow, and kept him always something of an amateur. Borodin the composer is after all only the composer ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... and nieces—that's the very point! I am helping to bring them up," said Morris Townsend. "I am a kind of amateur tutor; I give ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... a terra incognita to naturalists, geologists, and every branch of ists and ologists. The material is as superabundant as native labourers and operatives are deficient. All these interesting branches of inquiry, healthful and agreeable, as being out-of-door pursuits, and bringing the amateur in close contact with nature, offer to embryo authors, who are ambitious to book something new, a more worthy subject than the decies repetita descriptions of bull-fights and the natural history of ollas and ventas. ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... | |yards to spare. Pennsylvania, the third team | |entered, finished in that position. | | | |Yale sent an army of star timber-toppers down for | |the fifty-yard high hurdle event. John V. Farwell, | |captain of the Eli's track team, equaled the | |American amateur indoor record by covering the | |distance in seven seconds. | | | |Richards, of Cornell, won individual honors in the | |sixteen-pound shot-put with a throw of 42 feet, | |8-3/10 inches, while Cornell's team average was 40 | |feet, 2-3/10 inches. | ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... a schoolmate and friend, Willie T., between whom and myself there sprung up a mutual feeling of high regard. We were chums in the sense that we were almost constantly together, both at school and at home, and among the partnerships we formed was one of having amateur shadowgraph and panoramic shows in the basement of Willie's home. This much to show the mental and social relationship that existed between us. Some time during this association (I cannot recall the exact night now) I had a strange dream, in which my ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... several skilled amateur jugglers among the merry company, who would give performances a la Bosko and Philadelphia; and others would delight the audience with the wonderful scenes of a ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... begged to have my sister's piano forte brought up into his bed room; and when he grew fatigued with giving me his kind admonitions, he was much pleased and refreshed by my sister's playing and singing. He was always passionately fond of music, and was a tolerable amateur himself, and it appeared to give him as much pleasure as ever to hear her play and sing "Angels ever bright and fair," &c. &c. Sacred music was mostly his choice upon this occasion, yet he would sometimes request a lively and cheerful ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... specializing in flamboyant cravats. He would have been Bean's model if Bean had been less a coward. Bulger was nearly all that Bean wished to be. He condescended to his tasks with an air of elegant and detached leisure that raised them to the dignity of sports. He had quite the air of a wealthy amateur with a passion ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... was settled that it could be no other than Jimmy Barrows. Jimmy was a great friend of their cousin Tom; but while Tom was only an amateur artist, Jimmy was studying to ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... creaks and one abominable squeak, which made conversation impossible. The scenery was all grey rock and little scrubby trees; the road was magnificent and wound and twisted about the mountain side like a whip lash. Driving down these curves was no amateur's game, and we saw immediately that our chauffeur knew his job. We came over a ridge, and in the far distance, gleaming like the sun itself, a corner of the Lake of Scutari showed between ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... there be any mistake about it," he concluded. "I'm not going to have any amateur life-savers burning holes in my body in the hope of being recommended by the Coroner's Jury. If I've got to die, I'll just go mad in the ordinary way, thank you. I wonder who I shall bite ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... opera were among the topics on which they conversed. I was found to be an amateur; and Lady Bray was one of the dilettanti, had concerts at her own house, and a box at the opera: to both of which she said I should at all times ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... friend in Madame Helbig, the wife of Herr Helbig, the German archaeologist in Rome. She is born a Russian princess, and is certainly one of the best amateur musicians, if not the best, I have ever met. She is of immense proportions, being very tall and very stout. One might easily mistake her for a priest, as she is always dressed in a long black garment which is ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... doubtless, dear L., convict me, by my own sentiments, of being an "amateur barbarian." You must, however, remember that I visited Africa fresh from Aden, with its dull routine of meaningless parades and tiresome courts martial, where society is broken by ridiculous distinctions of staff-men and regimental-men, Madras-men and Bombay-men, ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... anxiously watching this amateur gymnast, approached him with lively interest, and learned that he had taken flight after an ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... article in dispute, and seeing that Irene was recovering under the heroic treatment of her amateur nurses, he seated himself in tantalizing silence upon the saw-horse, as if to enjoy the scene he had created. But his enjoyment was short lived. Tabitha, now thoroughly aroused, and forgetful of her dignity, swooped down ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... for possession of the bell; but superior might conquered, and Budge marched up and down the hall, ringing with the enthusiasm and duration peculiar to the amateur. ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... architecture, ceremony, began to make their appeal felt; and he then first recognised the beauty of literary style. But even so, he did not fling himself creatively into any of these things at first, even as an amateur; it was still the perception of effects that ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... heard all that," Knight hastened to explain. "I've been too busy till lately to know at first hand what goes on in the 'smart' or the artistic set. My world doesn't take much interest in crystal-gazers and palmists, amateur or professional, even when they happen to be handsome women, like the Countess. But I ran against her again on board the Monarchic about a month ago, crossing to this side, and we picked up threads of old acquaintance. She was staying at the Savoy ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... What if the dust did swirl up in blinding sheets from the south? Before them lay the Roman battle, horse and foot—such an army as the city had never sent forth. What if its masses were somewhat cramped? its front narrow? its general an amateur? They were to fight at last, and how should a mongrel horde of barbarians, but half their number, stand firm against the impetus of such a shock. A moment's hush; then measured voices rose in calm cadence—the voices of the tribunes ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... particular was the photograph. If it were at all a likeness, the woman who gazed frankly out upon the onlooker from the card-mount must have been a striking creature indeed. It was an amateur production, for the detectives were baffled in that no professional photographer's signature or studio was appended. Across a corner of the mount, in delicate feminine tracery, was written: "Semper idem; semper fidelis." And she looked ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... are prepared and cooked like other green vegetables. Dry beans may be either boiled, stewed, or baked, but whatever the method employed, it must be very slow and prolonged. Beans to be baked should first be parboiled until tender. We mention this as a precautionary measure lest some amateur cook, misled by the term "bake," should repeat the experiment of the little English maid whom we employed as cook while living in London, a few years ago. In ordering our dinner, we had quite overlooked the fact that baked beans are almost wholly an American ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... "The best time to get them is late at night, when the broadcasting and amateur stations are not sending. I've often sat and listened with Brandon Harvey to the big station at Nauen, Germany, or to the ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... of the preceding. She was on intimate terms with Madame Deberle, and took part in the amateur theatricals arranged by that lady. Une ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... As an encouragement to amateur observers who may be disposed to find out for themselves whether or not changes now take place in the moon, the following sentence from the introduction to Professor Pickering's chapter on Plato in the Harvard Observatory Annals, volume xxxii, ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... presentation of the status of pictorial photography as illustrated by the product of many of its best workers. As such it is commended to the consideration of photographers both professional and amateur, of artists and art lovers, and of ...
— Pictorial Photography in America 1920 • Pictorial Photographers of America
... spot from which they came,—cautiously, however, for the downs, as had been repeatedly hinted to me, had no good name; and the attraction of the music, without rivalling that of the sirens in melody, might have been followed by similarly inconvenient consequences to an incautious amateur. ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... use repining or repenting. Here was I, Hugo Gottfried, the son of the Red Axe, at the inner port of a treasonable society. It was certainly a curious position; but even thus early I had begun to consider myself a sort of amateur of strange situations, and I admit that I found a certain stimulus in the thought that in an hour I might have ceased to be heir to the office of Hereditary Justicer of the ducal province of ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... coffin-case, which I expected momentarily to upset as I stood within, and be smothered in a cloud of ill-smelling chemicals. However, with care I finally emerged without accident, and sufficiently compensated the artist, who seemed not over-favorable to amateur competition, although he chatted freely enough about his business. It generally took him ten days, he said, to "finish" a town of five or six hundred inhabitants, like Derby. He traveled on steamers with his tenting outfit, but next season ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... not know where David was but she felt reasonably sure she could find out his address in the morning. There was a small boy living next door who was capable of ferreting out almost anything for money. Kate had employed him more than once as an amateur detective in cases of minor importance. So, with a bit of silver and her letter she made her way to his familiar haunts and explained most carefully that the letter was to be delivered to no one but the man to whom it was addressed, naming several stopping places where he might be likely to ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... the discreditable habit of emptying all the dregs of the Sergeants' beer mugs into his own inside. However, he was granted military obsequies, which were so successfully performed that an account of them found its way into one of the daily papers. This so delighted the amateur undertakers that Daisy's brother was at once exhumed and re-buried with further pomp and circumstance. Daisy meanwhile, feeling himself of less consequence than the departed hero, began to mope; so to save life and reason ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... the invention which was decisive was the film which Eastman in Rochester produced. With it came the great mechanical improvement, the use of the two rollers. One roller holds the long strip of film which is slowly wound over the second, the device familiar to every amateur photographer today. With film photography was gained the possibility not only of securing a much larger number of pictures than Marey or Anschuetz made with their circular arrangements, but of having these pictures pass before the eye illumined by quickly succeeding flashlights for any length ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... free to tell you that a young journalist possessing (characteristically) "fantastic humour and exuberant gaiety," a famous amateur detective to boot, outwits all the official police, robs the law of its prey and finds a long-lost mother ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various
... master any one of these implements at first, and it is only by repeated study and perseverance, joined to a natural taste, that a man can excel in the handling of either. Now Crawley, from being only a brilliant amateur, had grown to be a consummate master of billiards. Like a great General, his genius used to rise with the danger, and when the luck had been unfavourable to him for a whole game, and the bets were consequently against him, he would, with consummate ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... much to found it, remained unconverted. In this, as in all his life-work, he showed himself to be a most remarkable man. Davy said of him, a generation later, that no other person ever discovered so many new and curious substances as he; yet to the last he was only an amateur in science, his profession, as we know, being the ministry. There is hardly another case in history of a man not a specialist in science accomplishing so much in original research as did this chemist, physiologist, electrician; the mathematician, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... interest, while I was aching to tooth every detail of the great fight. And when they talked on military affairs, as Letchford and others did sometimes, it was difficult to keep from sending them all to the devil, for their amateur cocksureness would have riled Job. One had got to batten down the recollection of our fellows out there who were sweating blood to keep these fools snug. Yet I found it impossible to be angry with them for long, they were so babyishly innocent. Indeed, I ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... morning to the office of Charlton Moore and let me examine that note which Mr. Lawton presumably gave two years ago. Afterward, I have four little amateur detectives of mine to interview—then I think we'll be able to proceed straight to ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... imprisonment have decreased in recent years more than twenty-six per cent.; and if there was a corresponding movement on the part of Chairmen of Quarter Sessions, the average decrease in the length of sentences would amount to fifty per cent. But it is a notorious fact that amateur judges are, with few exceptions, more inclined to pronounce heavy ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... did Luciana hear that the Count was an amateur of music, than at once she must get up something of a concert. She herself would sing and accompany herself on the guitar. It was done. The instrument she did not play without skill; her voice was agreeable: as for the words one understood ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... by two; there is often then a failure of wind, and they have to get out to sea by heavy rowing or by the drift of the tide. Then there is silence for some hours, and when the world awakes the cove is nearly deserted. At seven o'clock begins the life of the shop. Amateur fishermen appear,—boarders from New York or visiting sons from Brockton. Later still, little parties come down,—a knot of young fellows and laughing girls with bright-colored wraps, bound on a sailing-party to Katameset, with a matron, and with some well-salted man ...
— By The Sea - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... Joe," who lived at Bass Cove, where he shot wild ducks, took some to town for sale, and attracted the attention of a portly gentleman fond of shooting. This gentleman went duck shooting with Joe, and their adventures were more amusing to the boy than to the amateur sportsman. ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... Manual, adapted to the Professional Man and the Amateur; being a Dictionary of Painters ... together with an alphabetical arrangement of the Scholars, Imitators, and Copyists of the various masters, and a Classification of Subjects. By James R. Hobbes. ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... sharp bow, and gliding in wavelets along the smooth sides only a few inches from my ear, and sounding with articulate distinctness through the tight mahogany skin; and then there was the muttering chatter of the amateur fisherman, who was sure to be at his ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... "An amateur's opinion, of course, Cal," he laughed, "which is strictly entre nous. But, win or lose, this man O'Mara will be a valuable man to have around after ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... acquaintances, his real friends were not many. We find for instance few traces of intimate friendship with other painters, excepting his pupils, although his fellow-artists were very numerous. The landscape-painter Roghman and the rich marine painter-amateur Van de Cappelle, perhaps also Asselyn, are about the only ones who seem to have been in close relation with the master. Of his pupils the most promising ones, Bol and Flinck, rapidly estranged from their master both socially and artistically,—others like Maes, ...
— Rembrandt's Amsterdam • Frits Lugt
... at that time, and for many years after, than a youth with whom she had been acquainted in Cambridge before he left the University, and the unfolding of whose powers she had watched with the warmest sympathy. He was an amateur, and, but for the exactions not to be resisted of an American, that is to say, of a commercial, career,—his acceptance of which she never ceased to regard as an apostasy,—himself a high artist. He was her companion, and, though much younger, her guide in ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the correct answers had been greater than they actually were according to my exact records. For all these reasons I had the very best right to disregard the reports of all those who relied on their amateur art of experimenting and ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... reflected as giving a softness and harmony not genuine; but as it was the practice of Giorgione and Correggio, "in order to learn the effect of the colours, of the masses, and of the work as a whole," he recommends it to the painter. He expects, however, from the amateur an impartiality almost impossible to attain, when it is expected to reach such a point that "all schools, all masters, all manners, and all classes of pictures will be a matter of indifference to him." We fear that an amateur ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... Polybius was not followed, except perhaps by Caelius Antipater in the Gracchan age.[166] History was affected for the worse by the rhetorical art, as indeed poetry was destined also to be; Sallust, though we owe much to him, was in fact an amateur, who thought more of style and expression than of truth and fact. Caesar, who did not profess to be a historian, but only to provide the materials for history,[167] stands alone in making facts more important than words, and rarely troubles his reader with speeches or other rhetorical ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... of private theatres are dirty boys, low copying-clerks, in attorneys' offices, capacious-headed youths from city counting-houses, Jews whose business, as lenders of fancy dresses, is a sure passport to the amateur stage, shop-boys who now and then mistake their masters' money for their own; and a choice miscellany of idle vagabonds. The proprietor of a private theatre may be an ex-scene-painter, a low coffee-house-keeper, a disappointed eighth-rate actor, a retired smuggler, or uncertificated bankrupt. ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... of Dee. But the worst was he did not stop at clothes; he loathed ill-blacked shoes. Woe to all foot-leather that did not shine; his own skin furnished a perilous standard of comparison. He was eternally blacking boots en amateur. Fullalove got in a rage at this, and insisted on his letting his fellow-creatures' leather alone. Vespasian pleaded hard, especially for leave to black Colonel Kenealy. "The cunnell," said he pathetically, "is such a tarnation fine gentleman spoilt for want of a lilly bit of ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... Historical Mysteries. The Strenuous Life. Memories Grave and Gay. Life of Danton. A Pocketful of Sixpences. The Romance of a Proconsul (Sir George Grey). A Book about Roses. Random Reminiscences. The London Police Courts. The Amateur Poacher. The Bancrofts. At the Works. Mexico as I Saw It. Eighteenth Century Vignettes. The Great Andes of the Equator. The Early History of C. J. Fox. Through the Heart of Patagonia. Browning as a Religious Teacher. ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... sporting with a man of genius, who had thought both too much of her and too little; too much for pomp's sake, and too little in prudence. Among his new acquaintances were the young Marino, afterwards the corrupter of Italian poetry, and the Prince of Venosa, an amateur composer of music. The dying poet wrote madrigals for him so much to his satisfaction, that, being about to marry into the house of Este, he wished to reconcile him with the Duke of Ferrara; and Tasso, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... on the doorstep licking his paw and howling. He was instantly surrounded by four amateur doctors all anxious to relieve his pain. Jock ran for water to wash his leg, the flesh of which had been cruelly torn open by the bullet. Jean ransacked the kist for bandages, and Alan held up the injured paw and tried ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... have no knowledge or experience of the ways and methods of bad men. There seemed to be no side of his character sufficiently in sympathy with wickedness to enable him to understand and portray it. His amateur attempts at scoundrelism quite irritated me. It sounds conceited to say so, but I am convinced I could have given a much more truthful picture of the ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... was full of mild amateur strategists, headed by the Dean himself. Great as had been, and was still, his admiration for Germany, Dr. Haworth was of course an Englishman first; and every day, when opening his morning paper, he expected to learn that there had been another Trafalgar. He felt certain that the ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... fences, and mending them if necessary. She could pick a lock too, when needed, with great neatness and dispatch. I rather think she could repair one also. I have still in my possession a small box of her making, which, for execution and durability, I will match against the performance of any rival amateur of the opposite sex. In spite, however, of such freaks, and as if to make amends for them, Miss Jess possessed one of the softest and most impressionable hearts which ever fell to the lot of a mature ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... the late Marquis of Anglesey, a young lord generally regarded as crazy by an ungrateful England. Perhaps it was a little crazy in him to spend so much money in the comparatively commonplace adventure of taking an amateur dramatic company through the English provinces, he himself, I believe, playing but minor roles; but lovers of Gautier's Le Capitaine Fracasse will see in that but a charmingly boyish desire to translate a beloved dream into a reality—though his creditors probably did not take that view. ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... Grand Military Meeting at Sandown Park, two young millionaires figured as amateur jockeys. We understand now the meaning of the expression "putting money on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... lips, and smiled ironically; she had Katharine at her mercy; she could, if she liked, discharge upon her head wagon-loads of revolting proof of the state of things ignored by the casual, the amateur, the looker-on, the cynical observer of life at a distance. And yet she hesitated. As usual, when she found herself in talk with Katharine, she began to feel rapid alternations of opinion about her, arrows of sensation striking strangely through the envelope of ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... had never seen him so interested in an amateur. Usually his manner was remarkable for its detachment and severe assurance; but it seemed that this case excited even him. Lady Laura was filled ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... the caretaker in the window across the park," continued Rodney, "and I realized how interested you were, it occurred to me that we'd engage that studio and put Miss Mayo into it. Miss Mayo lives in Richmond, Virginia, and she had been making a big hit in amateur theatricals. She wanted to get on the legitimate stage, as Shaw told you; so Mrs. Ordway suggested that Epstein and ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... the backwood settlements, where clearings are apart from each other, the black bear is still occasionally met with; and the chase of this animal is one of the most favourite pastimes of the backwoods' hunter, whether amateur or professional. Generally there is little peril in the pursuit—unless when the bear is wounded and enraged, and the hunter chooses to ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... over it, and Leopold caught Miss Mowbray napping. That brings us to the moment of my coming to you. For the afternoon, I fancy the Baroness was getting up a riding party; and this evening unless they're too tired, she'll perhaps get up an amateur concert at which Miss Mowbray will sing. The girl ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... only heard all that," Knight hastened to explain. "I've been too busy till lately to know at first hand what goes on in the 'smart' or the artistic set. My world doesn't take much interest in crystal-gazers and palmists, amateur or professional, even when they happen to be handsome women, like the Countess. But I ran against her again on board the Monarchic about a month ago, crossing to this side, and we picked up threads of old acquaintance. She was ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... importance and dignity, forming an inner aristocratic circle who conversed of London and the Court, and whose august society it was the dear ambition of the lesser lights to ape, if they could not join it. Democratic manners were at a discount in these little hotbeds of amateur cockneyism; the gloomy severities of the old-fashioned religion were put aside; there was an increasing gap between the higher and the lower orders of the population. This appearance was no doubt superficial; and the beau-monde is never so numerous as its conspicuousness ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... had studied the case, formed her own theories, thought about it all often and often, had even written one or two letters to the Press on the subject—suggesting, arguing, hinting at possibilities and probabilities, adducing proofs which other amateur detectives were equally ready to refute. The attitude of that timid man in the corner, therefore, was peculiarly exasperating, and she retorted with sarcasm destined to completely annihilate her ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... relations of the Actors. A few professional Critics are to be seen. They are addressed with much politeness by the Amateurs in front of the House, and "played to" with feverish anxiety by the Amateurs on the Stage. The Orchestra is composed of excellent Amateur Musicians. The Curtain has ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, January 18, 1890 • Various
... Mordacks with an admirably high opinion of himself, enlivened by a sprightly good-will toward the world, whenever it wagged well with him. He had plenty of business of his own, and yet could take an amateur delight in the concerns of everybody; he was always at liberty to give good advice, and never under duty to take it; he had vigor of mind, of memory, of character, and of digestion; and whenever he stole a holiday from self-denial, and launched out after some favorite thing, there was the cash ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... ashore to demand, on the strength of former services to the late King Ptolemaeus Auletes, a safe asylum, and assistance to make fresh head against the Caesarians. There was a hurried convening of the council of Pothinus—a select company of eunuchs, amateur generals, intriguing rhetoricians. The conference was long; access to its debates closely guarded. The issue could not be evaded; on the decision depended the reestablishment of the Pompeians in a new and firm stronghold, or their abandonment to further wanderings ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... introduce himself as an ardent amateur statesman, a student of good government from New Hampshire to New Zealand and from Plato to Lincoln Steffens, who had—er—come to Hunston hoping to see something of the fight for reform. The candidate, ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... little; the majority of the whites are merchants with some four mails in the month, shopkeepers with some ten or twenty customers a day, and gossip is the common resource of all. The town hums to the day's news, and the bars are crowded with amateur politicians. Some are office-seekers, and earwig king and consul, and compass the fall of officials, with an eye to salary. Some are humorists, delighted with the pleasure of faction for itself. "I never saw so good a place as this Apia," said one of these; "you can be in a new conspiracy ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is one time when even the amateur may write a musical comedy—when he has a great idea. But I do not mean the average musical comedy idea—I mean such an idea as that which made "The Naked Truth" so successful. And in the hope that you may possess such an idea, I offer a ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... handwriting was that of her father, and it seemed as though something stayed her. But she broke the string at last and there tumbled into her lap some photographs of herself, taken at different ages, a number of them—in fact, most of them—amateur attempts, some snapped by her mother and some by her father, as Viola knew from seeing them. She recalled some very well—especially one taken on the back of a little Shetland pony. On the reverse of this picture Mr. Carwell had ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... tramp. Had he been a poor man he might have been a more successful artist. But he had a small fortune of his own and, lacking the spur of necessity, or of disquieting ambition, he remained little more than a clever amateur. Once in a while he painted a picture which showed what he could do; but for the rest, he was satisfied to wander over the world, light-hearted and content. We knew that the Story Girl was thought ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... for gardeners to invest their labors and achievements with a mystery and secrecy which might well have discouraged any amateur from trespassing upon such difficult ground. "Trade secrets" in either flower or vegetable growing were acquired by the apprentice only through practice and observation, and in turn jealously guarded by him until passed on to some younger brother in the profession. Every ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... to a fashionable musician, whose pavanes and sonatas were composed with that lack of matter and excess of erudition which delight the amateur and irritate the artist, and he walked down the rooms looking for seats where they could talk undisturbed for a few minutes. He was nervous lest Georgina should find him sitting with this girl in an intimate corner, but he did not expect her for another half-hour, ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... "By George, it's an amateur!" cried Cribb, in amazement. "But you don't surely ask Tom Spring to train for three weeks to meet ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... rather short, isn't it? Imagine it's rather easy for a straight driver. What's your record? Seventy-one amateur? Rather high, isn't it? Do you get many cracks around here? Caddies seem scarce. Did either of you gentlemen ever reflect how surprising it is that better scores aren't made at this game? Now, take seventy-one; that's only one under fours, and I venture to say at least six of your holes are ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... Elephant Power The Oracle The Cast-iron Canvasser The Merino Sheep The Bullock White-when-he's-wanted The Downfall of Mulligan's The Amateur Gardener Thirsty Island Dan Fitzgerald Explains The Cat Sitting in Judgment The Dog The Dog—as a Sportsman Concerning a Steeplechase Rider Victor Second Concerning a Dog-fight ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... painted the face of one of the ancients." He laid before his silent auditors another drawer which contained a sheet of card-board on which was a fairly good pastel of an Arab in a burnouse. It had the weak and false drawing which would result in the attempt of an amateur to copy an engraving in color. "This came in broad daylight while I held the clean card-board on ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... this little book, has been to give information and hints which will prove useful to the amateur. Some of the plans and apparatus suggested would not be suitable for fish culture on a large scale, but my object has been to confine myself entirely to operations on a small scale. I have to thank the Editor of Land and Water for permission to publish in book form what first appeared as ...
— Amateur Fish Culture • Charles Edward Walker
... that says a garden is a standing source of pleasure? Amend this, I say, by asserting that a garden is a standing source of discomfort and vexation ... A hopeless restlessness, according to my observation, takes possession of every amateur gardener. Discontent abides in his soul. There is, indeed, so much to be done, changed, rearranged, watched, nursed, that the amateur gardener is really entitled to praise and generous congratulations when one of his thousand schemes comes to fruition. We ought in pity to rejoice ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... quite impossible that a similar awaking may await the grown man who imagines himself to have mastered something of the real philosophies of life. The cadaverous peeler with the abnormal appetite fades out of recollection, and my next hero is a blacksmith, who, in a countryside once rich in amateur pugilists, had earned a local distinction for himself before he made a settlement for life at the "Farriers' Arms," in Queen Street. His name was Robert Pearce, and he dawns on me as second hero because of a physical strength which ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... home-maker to be governed by the results of my experience or that of others who have worked toward the same end. We may differ in methods, but the outcome is, in most instances, the same. I have written from the standpoint of the amateur, for other amateurs who would make the improvement of the home-grounds a pleasure and a means of relaxation rather than a source of profit in a financial sense, believing that what I have to say will commend itself to the non-professional gardener ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... day the boxing lessons became a regular thing. The claim Lennox had made for himself had scarcely done him justice. He was one of the best amateur boxers in the West. In Yeager he had a pupil quick to learn. The extra was a perfect specimen physically, narrow of flank, broad of shoulder, with the well-packed muscles of one always trained to the minute. Fifteen years in the ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... only by the oystermen, fishermen, and wild-fowl shooters of Barnegat and Little Egg Harbor bays, until the New Jersey Southern Railroad and its connecting branches penetrated to the eastern shores of New Jersey, when educated amateur sportsmen from the cities quickly recognized in the little gunning-punt all they had long desired to ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... that stately presence, he was disquieted by no jealousy of the many conferences enjoyed by Mr Carker, and felt a secret satisfaction in having duties to discharge, which rarely exposed him to be singled out for such distinction. He was a great musical amateur in his way—after business; and had a paternal affection for his violoncello, which was once in every week transported from Islington, his place of abode, to a certain club-room hard by the Bank, where quartettes of the most tormenting and excruciating nature were executed every Wednesday ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... It seems from Boswell's words, as the editor of the Letters of Boswell (p. 91) points out, that in this case he was 'only a friend and amateur, and not a duly appointed advocate.' He certainly was not retained in an earlier stage of the cause, for on July 22, 1767, he wrote:—'Though I am not a counsel in that cause, yet I am much interested in ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... readily imparted his most valuable acquisitions to those who were most likely to increase them, this plant soon became conspicuous in the collections of the principal Nurserymen near town, and in the course of a few years will, no doubt, decorate the window of every amateur. ...
— The Botanical Magazine Vol. 8 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... kept on abstract scientific lines. I made all my acquaintances think me madder than usual by the pertinacity with which I attended debating societies and haunted all sorts of hole-and-corner debates and public meetings and made speeches at them. I was President of the Local Government Board at an amateur Parliament where a Fabian ministry had to put its proposals into black and white in the shape of Parliamentary Bills. Every Sunday I lectured on some subject which I wanted to teach to myself; and it was not until I had come to ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... has a pair of grey eyes that can't possibly always look sensible. I think they must mellow occasionally into fun and jollity and wholesome nonsense. Well, I'm off to the shore. I want to get that photograph of the Cove this evening, if possible. I've set my heart on taking first prize at the Amateur Photographers' Exhibition this fall, and if I can only get that Cove with all its beautiful lights and shadows, it will be the ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... small general store purchased for him by his father. The son has been taught photography by Mr. Jensen, and has an excellent camera obtained from Paris. He is quite an enthusiast. In his shop a crowd is always gathered round the counter looking at the work of this Chinese amateur. There are a variety of stores for sale on the shelves, and I was interested to notice the cheerful promiscuity with which bottles of cyanide of potassium and perchloride of mercury were scattered among bottles of carbonate of soda, of alum, of Moet and ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... unoccupied, and the grounds—of which there were about seventy acres—were at first very much overgrown, especially with laurels, which, when neglected, grow in that country in almost disgusting luxuriance. My father therefore occupied himself a good deal with amateur forestry, and became, considering that he first turned his attention to the subject at the age of forty-six, a rather expert woodsman. A good deal of tree-felling was necessary, both in the interest of the trees and for ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... dull society sinners, Who chatter and bleat and bore, Are sent to hear sermons From mystical Germans Who preach from ten to four: The amateur tenor, whose vocal villainies All desire to shirk, Shall, during off-hours, Exhibit his powers To Madame Tussaud's waxwork: The lady who dyes a chemical yellow, Or stains her grey hair puce, Or pinches her figger, Is blacked like a nigger With permanent walnut juice: The idiot who, in railway ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... not avoid the remembrance of what very poor things the amateur rowing clubs on the Thames were in the early days of his noviciate; not to mention the difference in the build of the boats. He could not get on in the beginning without being a pupil under an anomalous creature called a "fireman waterman," ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... I'm a nobody. I'm worse; I'm an amateur! You ought to hear what Duane has to say ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... peculiarities. Phil Briant had many; but his most striking peculiarity, and that which led him frequently into extremely awkward positions, was a firm belief that his special calling—in an amateur point of view—was the redressing of wrongs—not wrongs of a particular class, or wrongs of an excessively glaring and offensive nature, but all wrongs whatsoever. It mattered not to Phil whether the wrong had to be righted by force of argument or force of arms. He considered himself an ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... and from all parts of the world. Yet he all the time occupied a position in a Government office—the Home Office, I think it was—and often walked from Whitehall to Lavender Sweep when his day's work was done. He was an enthusiastic amateur actor, his favorite part being Adam in "As You Like It," perhaps because tradition says this was a part that Shakespeare played; at any rate, he was very good in it. Gilbert and Sullivan, in very far-off days, used to be concerned in these amateur theatricals. ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... distinguished foreigners, who were spending the winter in San Francisco. She could not drive, nor yacht, nor run to fires on account of the weather, but she unloosed her energies upon indoor society, and started a cotillion club, and an amateur opera company. She gave a fancy dress ball, to which all her guests were obliged to come in the costumes of Old California, and laughed for a week at the ridiculous figure which most of them cut. She also gave many dinners and breakfasts, kettle-drums and theatre parties, and, altogether, managed ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Brutal and selfish though he might be, his bitterest enemies had never accused him of lack of physical courage. Indeed, he had been—in the rollicking days of old that were gone—celebrated for the display of very opposite qualities. He was an amateur at manly sports. He rejoiced in his muscular strength, and, in many a tavern brawl and midnight riot of his own provoking, had proved the fallacy of the proverb which teaches that a bully is always a coward. He had the tenacity of a bulldog—once ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... unjaded strength. It happens, too, though in a deeper and more subtle way, to the man who marries for love, if the love be true and fit for foul weather. Mr. Bagehot used to say that a bachelor was "an amateur at life," and wit and wisdom are married in the jest. A man who lives only for himself has not begun to live—has yet to learn his use, and his real pleasure, too, in the world. It is not necessary he should marry to find himself ...
— When a Man Comes to Himself • Woodrow Wilson
... cases of that sort," Heneage admitted. "That is the advantage of being an amateur, like myself. My discoveries, if I make any, are my own. I am not bound to ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ponies, not even waiting to saddle, and several hours were spent in copying brands. These included characters, figures, and letters, and to read them with skill was largely a matter of practice. Any novice ought to copy brands, but in this instance the amateur's list would be compared with that of an experienced trail foreman, a neutral judge from ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... avowed spiritists, but they both lent their best efforts to make the tests complete and convincing. After trying sittings here and there, we finally settled upon a series of afternoon sessions in Fowler's own house. This was the twenty-sixth sitting of the series, and Cameron's Amateur Psychical Society was practically a memory. I was now going ahead pretty much on my own lines, but with an eye to catching Miller and the Camerons at a successful seance ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... chorus, a recital, an elocutionary reading, a debate on some question, or a scene from a play. Presuming that the house is under the care of an honest, well-meaning person, there could be little fear of impropriety of any kind as resulting from such amusements. The amateur spirit guarantees plenty of such volunteer effort. Let it simply be understood, as in ordinary society, that each should do his best to promote the hilarity of the evening. If a single room succeeded, let two be tried—one for conversation alone, or for such games as cards and draughts (under ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... exhibited in New York to a society of amateur photographers a new method of taking instantaneous photographs by means of a brilliant light made by sprinkling ten or fifteen grains of magnesium powder on about six grains of gun-cotton. When this is flashed in a dark apartment it gives light enough to take a good photograph. It will do the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... Brandon. "The best time to get them is late at night, when the broadcasting and amateur stations are not sending. I've often sat and listened with Brandon Harvey to the big station at Nauen, Germany, or to the Eiffel Tower ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... strong, and wind-proof, or nearly so. Some aviators use what is called rubberized silk, others prefer balloon cloth. Ordinary muslin of good quality, treated with a coat of light varnish after it is in place, will answer all the purposes of the amateur. ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... sign death certificates, for which both sorts seem to have about equal occasion. Unqualified practitioners now make large incomes as hygienists, and are resorted to as frequently by cultivated amateur scientists who understand quite well what they are doing as by ignorant people who are simply dupes. Bone-setters make fortunes under the very noses of our greatest surgeons from educated and wealthy patients; and ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... sir, if you understand that, I wish you joy. But I must be excused for holding that my proposition, three times six are eighteen, is more intelligible than yours. A worthy friend of mine, who is a sort of amateur in philosophy, criticism, politics, and a wee bit of many things more, says: "Men never begin to study antiquities till they are ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... of it all, keenly; and he would illustrate the series with Turneresque vignettes, drawn with the finest crowquill pen, to imitate the delicate engravings. By this he learnt more drawing in two or three years than most amateur students do in seven. For the first year he had the "Watchtower of Andernach" and the "Jungfrau from Interlaken" to show, with others of similar style, and thenceforward alternated between Turner and Prout, until he settled into something ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... I thought of the streets by night. In all probability, no one had seen him come up to the chambers; but I was damped directly there; for those who carried the man down would be able to tell whence he came, and hundreds would be glad to play the amateur detective and hunt ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... unpractised apprehension of an older child trudges after the nimbleness of a conjurer. It is the greatest failure to take these little gobe-mouches to a good conjurer. His successes leave them cold, for they had not yet understood what it was the good man meant to surprise them withal. The amateur it is who really astonishes them. They cannot come up even with your amateur beginner, performing at close quarters; whereas the master of his craft on a platform runs quite away at the outset from the lagging senses of his ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... a most satisfactory and workmanlike manner. Their leading citizens, ipso facto their generals (amateur soldiers always cabbage-hoers at heart) afford him a good deal of amusement; as if you should send out the mayor of Jonesville, Arkansaw, against a Foch or a Hindenburg. One of them, a fool of a fellow, blunders into a booby-trap and loses ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... any particular point might, by agreement, be put to the vote and then everything depended upon "our wooden oracle," the first balloting-box ever seen in England. Formal methods of procedure and the intensely practical nature of the subjects discussed, combined to give a real importance to this Amateur Parliament. ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... facts throw light on the kind of dice used some 100 and 150 years ago. In an old cribbage card-box, curiously ornamented, supposed to have been made by an amateur in the reign of Queen Anne, and now in my possession, I found a die with one end fashioned to a point, evidently for the purpose of spinning—similar to the modern teetotum. With the same lot at ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... the children gave amusing amateur theatricals, gotten up by Lorraine and Ted. The acting was upon Laura Roosevelt's tennis court. All the children were most cunning, especially Quentin as Cupid, in the scantiest of pink muslin tights and bodice. Ted and Lorraine, who were respectively George Washington and Cleopatra, ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... I have been a trifle flowery, but I also have a criticism to make. Why do these skeptical and scientifically disposed critics continue to waste your valuable time picking scientific flaws in various stories? Some of the amateur experts' opinions really serve as a comic sequel after a night of interesting reading. If they would only stop to realize that some of their most indisputable data is merely hypothesis, the ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... age of good ready made clothes and it is also an age of clever amateur dressmaking. With excellent patterns which may be easily handled there is no reason why the woman who can sew should not make her own clothes, and have smart clothes at a reasonable price—that is, provided she has the time to give ...
— Armour's Monthly Cook Book, Volume 2, No. 12, October 1913 - A Monthly Magazine of Household Interest • Various
... a long, green curtain along a wire which ran from one side of the room to the other, until the platform was hidden from the room's eager gaze. A scurry of gray calico came from the coat closet which served as the green room for the amateur actors. A boy, muffled mysteriously in a long cloak, followed. Miss Brown gave a last look to see that the stage was properly arranged, and the curtain was pulled ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... present disposition of the Etruscan antiquities in the upper rooms of the casino, where these, the most precious witnesses of that rather inarticulate civilization, must in any arrangement exhaust the most instructed interest. Just when the amateur archaeologist, however, is sinking under his learning, the custodian opens a window and lets him look out on a beautiful hill beyond certain gardens, where a bird is singing angelically. I suppose it is the same bird which sings all ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... above all, acting. Sir Claude was really rather magnificent in other than American eyes. There was something of the Renascence Prince about his omnivorous culture and restless publicity—, he was not only a great amateur, but an ardent one. There was in him none of that antiquarian frivolity that we convey by ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... elsewhere, but TUBBY WADLOW is cooking bacon at the fire. He is simultaneously laying breakfast for one on the table. At both proceedings he is a puzzled and incompetent amateur. Presently the left door opens, ...
— Hobson's Choice • Harold Brighouse
... usual at the moment because he had not bothered to connect most of his apparatus after returning from the South Pacific. The induction heater that he used for midnight snacks was in a closet. His automatic window opener was not in use, nor was his amateur ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... many of whom proclaim its marked superiority to all parts of the Swiss Alps except the amazing neighborhood of Mont Blanc. With the multiplication of trails and the building of shelters for the comfort of the inexperienced, the veriest amateur of city business life will find in these mountains of perpetual sunshine a satisfaction which is only for the seasoned ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... Winterton heard, from Charlie's story, of the blacksmith's trouble, they put their heads together, with the result that Dan Webster's daughter spent a happy time in a seaside home, and came back very grateful, and quite restored to health. The amateur detectives had done ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... joyous yachts arrived, not at the Boodah only, but at others of the twelve which, one by one, were launched and towed to position; and a round of events transacted themselves in the fortresses: Marie Antoinette balls, classic concerts, theatrical functions by troupe or amateur, costume-balls, children's-balls, banquets of the gods, grave receptions. By now there ran right across the Boodah's roof, in the form of a cross, two double colonnades of Doric pillars, at the four ends being Roman arches: and here, some summer afternoon, the passing ship would see ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... Here I feel that I can speak only personally; tell only of my own personal impressions and preferences. Comparing together Boiardo and Ariosto, I am, of course, aware of the infinite advantages of the latter. Ariosto is a man of far more varied genius; he is an artist, while Boiardo is an amateur; he is learned in arranging and ornamenting; he knows how to alternate various styles, how to begin and how to end. Moreover, he is a scholarly person of a more scholarly time: he is familiar with the classics, and, what is more important, he is familiar with the language in which he ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... could not afford to buy them for practice. (2) The ordinary conditions in both the wholesale and the custom trade are thus made a fundamental part of the instruction. Reality of this kind helps the supervisors to judge the product from its trade value (amateur work will thus be rejected), and the teaching from the kind of workers turned out. Through the business relation the students quickly feel the necessity of good finish, rapid work, and responsibility to deliver on time. (3) The orders bring in a money return and thus aid the school ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman
... I can remember a long time ago. You, gentle Reader, just entering upon the prime of life, that age by thoughtless youth called middle, I cannot, of course, expect to follow me—when there was in great demand a certain periodical ycleped The Amateur. Its aim was noble. It sought to teach the beautiful lesson of independence, to inculcate the fine doctrine of self-help. One chapter explained to a man how he might make flower-pots out of Australian meat cans; another how he ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... about twelve small tables. The ever-refreshing cup of tea and the good old English slab cake were in plenty, and we asked for nothing better.... It was quite exciting to sit and have tea at a table. Afterwards there was a concert. The artists were A.S.C. men, and, although very markedly amateur, we enjoyed the evening, which was decidedly a change from our usual evening of cards. Unfortunately we marched away next day and so were unable to get full advantage from that depot. It was one of the Y.M.'s smaller ventures and lacked many of the usual articles of ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams
... labor—and to labor the severest and most persistent. To one who comes to it but half-heartedly, illy prepared, shirking its requirements, I can predict certain failure; but to the earnest, serious, conscientious worker, I would say a word of hope. The promotion from the rank of amateur to the dignity of authorship may be long in coming, but it will come at last. Fame, like all else that this world has to give, depends largely upon downright hard work; and he who has the courage to strive in the face of disappointments will achieve ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... desiring to learn the secret. He would not divulge it, and when, after the voyage to the island and the excitement of knocking the wreck to pieces were over—when the secret came out, it was neither pleasant nor probable. That a mild British amateur of water-colour drawing should have taken part in a massacre of men, shot painfully with cheap revolvers, was an example of "the possible improbable," and much more of a tax on belief than the transformation ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sleeve, he was an habitue of the Austrian embassy and of the best salons in Paris, and made for himself a conspicuous place in the innermost circle of the court of Compiegne and the Tuileries. He had written a number of light plays for the amateur stage of Parisian society, and his dramatic efforts had been interpreted by players whose high-sounding names might be found on ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... throws into relief command of the body as does skating. Watch a group of competitors for honours at any gathering of amateur women skaters and note how few have command of themselves—know absolutely what they want to do, and then are able to do it. One skater, in the language of the ice, can do the actual work, but has no form. It may be she lacks temperament, has no abandon, no rhythm; is stiff, ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... the journal for our enjoyment in his comely house in Navy Gardens, no fewer than two of his cousins were tramping the fens, kit under arm, to make music to the country girls. But he himself, though he could play so many instruments and pass judgment in so many fields of art, remained an amateur. It is not given to any one so keenly to enjoy, without some greater power to understand. That he did not like Shakespeare as an artist for the stage may be a fault, but it is not without either parallel ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... the plainest of plain prose, I am not a theorist on these subjects, nor do I dabble in small fruits as a rich and fanciful amateur, to whom it is a matter of indifference whether his strawberries cost five cents or a dollar a quart. As a farmer, milk must be less expensive than champagne. I could not afford a fruit farm at all if it did not more than pay its ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... never been able to sympathize with the outcry against prize-fighters. The only objection I have to the prize ring is the crookedness that has attended its commercial development. Outside of this I regard boxing, whether professional or amateur, as a first-class sport, and I do not regard it as brutalizing. Of course matches can be conducted under conditions that make them brutalizing. But this is true of football games and of most other rough and vigorous sports. Most certainly ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... rights to peaceful enjoyment. On a par with this is the incivility of a person who undertakes to accompany a soloist with his (or her) own little pipe, to the annoyance of those who prefer to listen to professional rather than amateur efforts. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... young amateur came of age. He was still threatened with consumption, and his family determined to send him abroad. Nobody felt very sanguine about his returning. As he was helped on board, the captain eyed him dubiously and said in an undertone, "There's a chap who will go overboard before we get across." ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... late Henry George, was formed in the '70s by a number of newspaper writers and men working in the arts or interested in them. It had grown to a membership of 750. It still kept for its nucleus painters, writers, musicians and actors, amateur and professional. They were a gay group of men, and hospitality was their avocation. Yet the thing which set this club off from all others in the world was the ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... to him. But he knew it as an amateur, and under an official gaze it grouped itself afresh. The school, a bland Gothic building, now showed as a fortress of learning, whose outworks were the boarding-houses. Those straggling roads were full of the houses of the parents of the day-boys. These shops were in bounds, ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... writer[273] remarks that the same amateur, as is well known, seldom long maintains the superiority of his birds; and this, he adds, undoubtedly is due to all his stock "being of the same blood;" hence it is indispensable that he should occasionally procure a bird of another strain. But this is not necessary with those who keep a stock ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... that even at this time his taste for natural history, and especially for collecting shells and minerals, was well developed. In the summer of 1818 he entered Dr. Butler's great school in Shrewsbury, well known to the amateur makers of Latin verse by the volume entitled "Sabrinae Corolla." He expressed the opinion in later life that nothing could have been worse for the development of his mind than this school, as it was strictly classical, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... breadth" was introduced, and they were ordered to learn the violin, Richard rebelled, flew into a towering rage and broke his instrument on his master's head. Edward, however, threw his whole soul into the work and became one of the finest amateur violinists of his day. Edward, indeed, was the Greek of the family, standing for music and song as well as for muscle. He had the finely chiselled profile and the straight nose that characterises the faces on Attic coins. Richard, though without the Roman features, was more of ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... of astronomers towards the end of 1758 became intense; and the honour of first catching sight of the traveller fell to an amateur in Saxony, George Palitsch, on Christmas Day, 1758. It reached perihelion ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... to create for yourself a bookish atmosphere. The merely physical side of books is important—more important than it may seem to the inexperienced. Theoretically (save for works of reference), a student has need for but one book at a time. Theoretically, an amateur of literature might develop his taste by expending sixpence a week, or a penny a day, in one sixpenny edition of a classic after another sixpenny edition of a classic, and he might store his library in a hat-box or a biscuit-tin. But in practice he would have ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... of Travel, Exploration, Amateur Photography, Hunting, and Fishing, with special chapters on hunting the Grizzly Bear, the Buffalo, Elk, Antelope, Rocky Mountain Goat and Deer; also on Trouting in the Rocky Mountains; on a Montana Roundup; Life among the Cowboys, etc. 12mo. ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields
... repining or repenting. Here was I, Hugo Gottfried, the son of the Red Axe, at the inner port of a treasonable society. It was certainly a curious position; but even thus early I had begun to consider myself a sort of amateur of strange situations, and I admit that I found a certain stimulus in the thought that in an hour I might have ceased to be heir to the office of Hereditary Justicer of the ducal province of ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... nieces—that's the very point! I am helping to bring them up," said Morris Townsend. "I am a kind of amateur tutor; I ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... vegetables. Dry beans may be either boiled, stewed, or baked, but whatever the method employed, it must be very slow and prolonged. Beans to be baked should first be parboiled until tender. We mention this as a precautionary measure lest some amateur cook, misled by the term "bake," should repeat the experiment of the little English maid whom we employed as cook while living in London, a few years ago. In ordering our dinner, we had quite overlooked the fact that baked beans ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... friendly miller—like the host of the hotel at St. Enimie, a municipal councillor. No better specimen of the French peasant gradually developing into the gentleman could be found. The freedom from coarseness or vulgarity in these amateur punters of the Tarn is indeed quite remarkable. Isolated from great social centres and influences of the outer world as they have hitherto been, there is yet no trace either of subservience, craftiness, ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... and cider by the glassful, and was still said to be of an amorous disposition, in spite of his age. He liked to walk about his fields with his hands behind his back, digging his wooden shoes into the fat soil, looking at the sprouting corn or the flowering colza with the eye of an amateur at his ease, who likes to see it, but does not trouble himself about it too much any longer, and they used to say of him: "There is a Mr. Merry-man, who does not get up in ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... castle: all these elegant Persian rugs, and those four "old masters," and the bronzes and the teakwood carvings—you can see for yourself. Lucy wasn't quite satisfied with the room at first. She missed the fish-net draperies and cozy corners and the usual clap-trap of amateur studios. But she's educated up to it now, and it's a daily joy to me. On the other hand my broiled steaks and feather-weight waffles and first-class coffee are a joy to poor Henry, who can't even boil an egg properly, and who hasn't ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... been made of the fact that even from the lowest Court of Law in Holland the amateur judge is rigidly excluded. No one who has not acquired the diploma of Doctor of Laws from one of the Dutch Universities is allowed to assume any responsible duty associated with the administration of justice. The same severe requirement ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... amateur electronics and radio] A book of small code segments that the reader can use to do various {magic} things in programs. One current example is the "{{PostScript}} Language Tutorial and Cookbook" by Adobe Systems, ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... to remain here we had to say good-bye; but for the whole twenty minutes of my stay we walked up and down the platform talking eagerly of the case. I had become much interested, so deeply, indeed, that had I had leisure I certainly should have turned amateur detective ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... either in this hotel or another that I met the Naval officer among whose duties is the granting or refusing of permits to amateur photographers in districts where "Dora" does not wish for enemy cameras. Among the requirements of the form which has to be filled up is one asking the applicant, in the interests of identification, to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 17, 1917 • Various
... he said to me afterwards, ruefully looking at the place where his boot-heel had been. "You've got to take your good where you find it. I don't care whether he's a rich amateur or skin-and-grief in a garret as long as he's got the stuff in him. Nobody else could have fetched me up from the East End this afternoon.... So long; see you in a ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... the earl, slowly, a faint blush stealing into his cheeks, "an 'amateur' is a lover. If that is right, perhaps you had better put me down as ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith
... the editor. "Surely the young lady does not expect to be paid for anything so very amateur—no, she cannot expect to be paid in money—in another way she is paid, and largely; she obtains a reputation, and what immature talent she has is brought to the fore! I am afraid, Miss Mainwaring, I ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... a bookseller gifted with mature sapience will very rarely, or never, be such an amateur in expensive methods of bamboozling, as to prefer having recourse to the title-page expedient, if he could flatter himself that his purpose would be likely to be effected simply by doctoring the date; and thus a question springs up, akin to the former one, How ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various
... time and energy during my residence in San Francisco. I have done some things because I was obliged to and many others because I wished to. When one is fitted and trained for some one thing he is apt to devote himself steadily and profitably to it, but when he is an amateur and not a master he is sure to be handicapped. After about a year in the Indian department a change in administration left me without a job. For about a year I was a bookkeeper for a stock-broker. Then for another year I was a money-broker, selling currency, silver, and revenue stamps. When ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... to be a singer doesn't mean to sing after dinner or to go squawking anyhow in a workhouse, but it means to get up on a platform before critical people, and if you don't do your very best be damned by them. If I marry Michael I must go on singing as a professional singer, and not become an amateur—the Viscountess Comber, who sings so charmingly. I refuse to sing charmingly; I will either sing properly or not at all. And I couldn't not sing. I shall have to continue being ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... the flames must come last. And here, just at the moment when the work of devastation was almost accomplished, came the Malsham fire-engine rattling along gaily through the dewy morning, and the Malsham amateur fire-brigade, a very juvenile corps as yet, eager to cover itself with laurels, but more careful in the adjustment of its costume than was quite consistent with the desperate nature of its duty. Here came the brigade, in time to do something at any rate, and the ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... you young cut-up," Cappy began as the trio settled in the smoking room and the waiter brought the coffee and cigars, "I see you're getting to be quite an amateur sailor. Your Dad tells me you won your last race with that schooner yacht of yours in rather ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... exhortation from the pulpit on the following Sabbath, in which he carefully distinguished such services by an ordained minister, although held in a barn, from unlicensed Plymouthistic gatherings held in corn rooms—this at Milton's amateur efforts—and advised his people in each district to avail themselves of "my friend Mr. Carmichael's excellent ministrations," which Papal Bull, being distributed to the furthest corner of the parish before nightfall, greatly ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... was attacked by the craze for amateur photography. It became chronic afterwards, and I and my camera have never since been parted. We have had some odd adventures together, and one of the most novel of our experiences was that in which we played the part of chief witness ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... literary stamp and coinage, and consigns the old circulation to its shelves and cabinets as neglected curiosities. Cleveland could not become the fashion with the public as an author, though the coteries cried him up and the reviewers adored him—and the ladies of quality and the amateur dilettanti bought and bound his volumes of careful poetry and cadenced prose. But Cleveland had high birth and a handsome competence—his manners were delightful, his conversation fluent—and his disposition was as amiable as his mind was cultured. ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... foppery of high-flown sentiment which, as is not uncommon with Johnson, passes into something which would be cynical if it were not half-humorous. In this case it implies also the contempt of the professional for the amateur. Johnson despised gentlemen who dabbled in his craft, as a man whose life is devoted to music or painting despises the ladies and gentlemen who treat those arts as fashionable accomplishments. An author was, according to him, a man who turned out books as a bricklayer ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... in a low voice; "the portrait must reveal the inmost spirit; mine must show how warmly Philip loves art and his artists. Take the palette, I beg. It is for you, the great Master, not for me, the overworked, bungling amateur, to correct ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that a nurseryman, park superintendent, or amateur gardener has just flowered a batch of seedlings of, say, Helenium, and that he spots one as being of a new type and worthy of propagation. In due course he shows the plant at a fortnightly show, under a number, and an Award of Merit is given to it. He must now find a cultivar-name ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... grandchild, bald under its cap. Each was highly entertained with the other. Grandpapa was sandy with grandboy's gingerbread-crumbs. The intervening ages were well represented by wiry men and shrill women. The house, also, without being tavern or shop, was an amateur bazaar of vivers and goods. Anything one was likely to want could be had there,—even a melodeon and those inevitable Patent-Office Reports. Here we descended, lunched, and providently bought a general assortment, namely, a large plain cake, five pounds of cheese, a ball of twine, and two ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... a fashionable musician, whose pavanes and sonatas were composed with that lack of matter and excess of erudition which delight the amateur and irritate the artist, and he walked down the rooms looking for seats where they could talk undisturbed for a few minutes. He was nervous lest Georgina should find him sitting with this girl in an intimate corner, but he did not expect her for another half-hour, and could not resist the temptation. ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... time of war, but none the less revolting. There is nothing of glamour in the Secret Service, nothing of romance, little even of excitement. It is a cold-blooded exercise of wits against wits, of spies against spies. The amateur plays a fish upon a line and gives him a fair run for his life, but the professional fisherman—to whom a salmon is a people's food—nets him coldly and expeditiously as he comes in from ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... blabbing. He was in or near Paris, for he corresponded constantly with Mademoiselle Luci. The young lady assures him that some new philosophical books which he had ordered are worthless trash. 'L'Histoire des Passions' and 'Le Spectacle de l'Homme' are amateur rubbish; ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... liberally to the Red Cross. You will volunteer to nurse in the hospitals. With your sad story of ill treatment by us, with your high birth, and your knowledge of nursing, which you acquired, of course, only as an amateur, you should not find it difficult to join the Ladies of France, or the American Ambulance. What you learn from the wounded English and French officers and the French doctors you will send ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... I am concerned, there is not, just now, any other thing of consequence on earth." Then he struck the table with his fist. "And it's all the fault of that cur—Allan Morris! Every bit of it! There is not a space writer or amateur detective on a single paper in the city that hasn't his nose to the ground at this minute, hunting the trail. They are all at it. I stopped at the Vale's on my way here, but they told me she was not at home. From the top step to the curb, ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... apparently nothing inside, for instance, or one of those carefully closed yellow flimsy envelopes, or a soiled volume in paper covers with a promising title. Now and then it happened that one of the faded, yellow dancing girls would get sold to an amateur, as though she had been alive ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... is. The men of whom this class is composed—the men whose temperamental deficiency now finds its fullest expression in socialism, as it did formerly in theories of ultra-democratic individualism, are like amateur architects, and amateur sanitary engineers, who, thinking in pictures, and having no knowledge of structure, condemn existing houses and existing systems of drainage, and would replace them with palaces which no builder could build, with arches which would collapse from the weight of their own materials, ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... the profession of letters in France. It has emphasized that tendency to take the art of writing seriously—to regard it as a fit object for the most conscientious craftsmanship and deliberate care—which is so characteristic of French writers. The amateur is very rare in French literature—as rare as he is common in our own. How many of the greatest English writers have denied that they were men of letters!—Scott, Byron, Gray, Sir Thomas Browne, perhaps even Shakespeare himself. ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... that he was himself not entirely dissatisfied with his work, and whenever his friend ventured on the diffident criticism of an amateur, Simon demonstrated at great length that each fault, as he pointed it out, was in truth a singular merit and ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... to edit a weekly paper; but his power lay in other directions, and with the exception of Household Words, his journalistic ventures were not a marked success. Again the actor came to the surface, and after managing a company of amateur actors successfully, Dickens began to give dramatic readings from his own works. As he was already the most popular writer in the English language, these readings were very successful. Crowds thronged to hear him, and ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... he looked upon this wreck of a man with grief and dismay, mingled with a certain inquisitiveness as to what dreary chain of circumstances had dragged him down to such a doleful pass. Villiers felt together with compassion all the relish of the amateur in mysteries, and congratulated himself on his leisurely ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... comely house in Navy Gardens, no fewer than two of his cousins were tramping the fens, kit under arm, to make music to the country girls. But he himself, though he could play so many instruments and pass judgment in so many fields of art, remained an amateur. It is not given to any one so keenly to enjoy, without some greater power to understand. That he did not like Shakespeare as an artist for the stage may be a fault, but it is not without either parallel or excuse. He certainly ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... meets, anyway, and we've got to let the professional pursuit die out. This letter of Northwick's will set a lot of detectives after him, and if they can't find him, or can't work him after they've found him, they'll get tired, and give him up for a bad job. Then will be the time for the gifted amateur to step in and show what a free and untrammelled press can do to punish vice and ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... has published is open to doubt.] the pearl of Gaelic literature, the completest expression of the Cymric genius. This magnificent work, executed in twelve years with the luxury that the wealthy English amateur knows how to use in his publications, will one day attest how full of life the consciousness of the Celtic races remained in the present century. Only indeed the sincerest patriotism could inspire a woman to undertake and achieve so vast a literary monument. ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... finished, Mr. Jefferson was looking forward with keen delight to all that the observant, cultured young nobleman might have to tell him of the progress in the Parisian world of sciences, art, and music (for Mr. Jefferson was an amateur of music), and of those adventures which had attended his triumphal return to America. 'Twas at General Washington's invitation that Monsieur de Lafayette was re-visiting, after only three years' absence, the greatful states where he had ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... game," replied Sarah Judd, with a shrug. "You don't know me, Nan, but I know you; and I know your record, too. You're as slick as they make 'em, and the one who calls herself Agatha Lord is just an infantile amateur beside you. But go ahead, Nan; don't let me ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... 20,000; and remember that their mobility made one man of them equal to at least two of our reduced 11,000—could, if not have taken Ladysmith, at least have put us to great loss and discomfort. But the Boers have the great defect of all amateur soldiers: they love their ease, and do not mean to be killed. Now, without toil and hazard they could ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... of manure to the acre and don't go near the patch till picking time next year. He gets a nice early crop, and if berries are a little small it pays better than any other way. Try it! I have known some fields carried to fourth crop, and amateur beds kept up for ten years. It takes lots of work to keep an old bed in good condition. J.M. Smith, of Green Bay, Wis., almost always took one crop and plowed under. If the first crop was injured ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... these early flowers secure the perpetuation of their species is an interesting study for amateur botanists. In the case of the trillium the fruit is a three-lobed reddish berry, but one has to search for it as diligently as Diogenes did for an honest man before he finds it. The plant seldom sets seed in this vicinity, but seems to depend rather ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... opinion, that the timing of mid, or half stroke, is the most elegant, most difficult, and to conceal, yet fully make use of this "break," constitutes the criterion as to whether the swimmer, be he amateur or professional, is ...
— Original Letters and Biographic Epitomes • J. Atwood.Slater
... and his Council, to perspire In our fire!" And for answer to the argument, in vain We explain That an amateur Saint Lawrence cannot fry: "All must fry!" That the Merchant risks the perils of the Plain ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... curiously, some of them resentfully, at the newcomers. They had all the professional's antipathy and jealousy of amateur performers. As the Arrangement Committee bustled off after telling our friends to make themselves perfectly at home, Pepita Le Roy came up to them. She was a handsome woman, in a foreign way, with large, dark eyes and an abundance of raven black hair. ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... not however insensible to the charms of our music. Warrup, a native youth who lived with me for several months as a servant, once accompanied me to an amateur theatre at Perth, and when the actors came forward and sang God save the Queen he burst into tears. He certainly could not have comprehended the words of the song, and therefore must have been ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... adjectives at her feet, and a number of distinguished foreigners, who were spending the winter in San Francisco. She could not drive, nor yacht, nor run to fires on account of the weather, but she unloosed her energies upon indoor society, and started a cotillion club, and an amateur opera company. She gave a fancy dress ball, to which all her guests were obliged to come in the costumes of Old California, and laughed for a week at the ridiculous figure which most of them cut. She also ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... allowance. At this time there was an outbreak of small riots in Philadelphia, caused by roughs attacking the Quakers. The "shadbellies," as they were derisively called, did not fight back, which made the sport all the more alluring to the cowardly rioters. Young Van de Grift, who was an excellent amateur boxer, joined in these frays with enthusiasm in defense of the Quakers. It was not only his fine American spirit of fair play that urged him into these fights, but he felt a deep gratitude to the Quakers all his life on account of his sister Matilda. Strangely enough, Grandfather ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... occupation of Amateur Adviser. He has much well-intentioned advice to offer to all and sundry: "To the War Office. It is hoped that something is being done regarding," etc. Or: "Japan, our Ally, could easily lend us ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 2nd, 1914 • Various
... penitent amateur. "Look what I've done, Yed. I'll have to rub in some of that stuff of yours and sew on a bandage. The files will kill the poor thing if we leave the cut ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... they knew that they were being observed. The gilt case containing the icon glittered, illuminated on all sides by tall candles ornamented with golden spirals. The candelabra was filled with tapers, and from the choir sounded most merry tunes sung by amateur choristers, with bellowing bass and shrill boys' voices ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... description of my wife's person, as would inevitably summon to the next exhibition of her misery, as by special invitation and advertisement, the whole world of this vast metropolis—the idle, the curious, the brutal, the hardened amateur in spectacles of wo, and the benign philanthropist who frequents such scenes with the purpose of carrying alleviation to their afflictions. All alike, whatever might be their motives or the spirit of their actions, would rush (as to some grand festival of curiosity and sentimental luxury) to this ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... Mr. Critz's generosity. The seal of secrecy had been put on Pie-Wagon Pete's lips before Mr. Gubb offered him the opportunity to accept or decline; and when Mr. Gubb stopped for his evening meal, Pie-Wagon Pete—now off duty—was waiting for him. The story of Mr. Critz and his amateur con' business had amused Pie-Wagon Pete. He could hardly believe such utter innocence existed. Perhaps he did not believe it existed, for he had come from the city, and he had had shady companions before he landed in Riverbank. He was a sharp-eyed, red-headed fellow, ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... and strategy we were Bismarcks and Rodneys, wielding nations and navies; and, indeed, I have no doubt that our fancy took extravagant flights sometimes. In plain fact we were merely two young gentlemen in a seven-ton pleasure boat, with a taste for amateur hydrography and police duty combined. Not that Davies ever doubted. Once set on the road he gripped his purpose with child-like faith and tenacity. ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... work, shall I say, tends to bring them to quietness of soul? I hesitate to say it, because, though work upon the ground with spade or hoe has such a soothing influence upon the amateur, there is a difference between doing it for pleasure during a spare hour and doing it as a duty after a twelve hours' day, and without any prospect of holiday as long as one lives. Nevertheless it is plain to be seen that, ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... to cut an ace out of a deck with nothin' left higher than a six spot. I ain't what you would call inventionative; but I could 'a' done a blame sight better'n that if I'd taken the time to think, instead o' simply blurtin' out the truth like some fool amateur. ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... She belonged to the aristocracy, and she was one of those amateur painters that wander about the Continent by ...
— The Great Adventure • Arnold Bennett
... plunged all commercial England into woe. The war had hardly proceeded two years when it was formally declared in the House of Commons that the losses to American privateers amounted to seven hundred and thirty-three ships, of a value of over $11,000,000. Mr. Maclay estimates from this that "our amateur man-of-war's men averaged more than four prizes each," while some took twenty and one ship twenty-eight in a single cruise. Nearly eleven hundred prisoners were taken with the captured ships. While there are no complete figures ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... lot) over $400 income for the newspaper. Proof money had been coming in for several weeks. Every mail brought long heavy envelopes from the Land Office, containing proof applications made there. From among the homesteaders we hired amateur typesetters to help out, and anybody who happened to be handy turned the press; on occasion we resorted to old Indian warriors, and once to a ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... six feet high, gallantly formed to keep the rounds at Smithfield, or maintain the ring at a wrestling match; and although he might have been overmatched, perhaps, among the regular professors of the Fancy, yet, as a yokel or rustic, or a chance customer, he was able to give a bellyful to any amateur of the pugilistic art. Doncaster races saw him in his glory, betting his guinea, and generally successfully; nor was there a main fought in Yorkshire, the feeders being persons of celebrity, at which he was not to be seen if business permitted. But though a SPRACK lad, and fond ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... of reasons. I'm not bidden. Mrs. Stanley and I were on a committee together, once upon a time. We squabbled over some amateur theatricals, and she has cut my acquaintance ever since. I always did say that there is nothing like amateur theatricals for bringing out all the worst vices of humanity. If a Shakespearian revival ever reaches the heavenly ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... no less an air of holiday-taking and meant no less hard labour. For most men work is bounded by the four walls of the office or the factory, or the shop, or the school, and rigidly regulated by hours, and they consequently suspect the amateur or the dawdler in the artist or writer who works where and when and as he pleases. Journalism has led me into pleasant places but never by the path of idleness. Rare has been the month of May that has not found me in Paris, not for the sunshine and gaiety that draw the tourist ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... remarkable genius for dramatic impersonation: first of all, as Aaron Gurnock in Wilkie Collins's "Lighthouse," and afterwards as Richard War dour in the same author's "Frozen Deep." Already he had achieved success, some years earlier, as an amateur performer in characters not essentially his own, as, for example, in the representation of the senile blandness of Justice Shallow, or of the gasconading humours of Captain Bobadil. Just, as afterwards, in furtherance of the interests of the Guild of Literature and Art, he impersonated ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... meant to commence his day's sport, Julian let his little steed graze, which, accustomed to the situation, followed him like a dog; and now and then, when tired of picking herbage in the valley through which the stream winded, came near her master's side, and, as if she had been a curious amateur of the sport, gazed on the trouts as Julian brought them struggling to the shore. But Fairy's master showed, on that day, little of the patience of a real angler, and took no heed to old Isaac Walton's recommendation, to fish the streams inch by inch. He chose, indeed, with an angler's ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... pictorial art. This is believed to be the first attempt in America to give a comprehensive presentation of the status of pictorial photography as illustrated by the product of many of its best workers. As such it is commended to the consideration of photographers both professional and amateur, of artists and art lovers, and ...
— Pictorial Photography in America 1920 • Pictorial Photographers of America
... tone of various ships, but, as a rule, "aft" seldom condescends to mix much with "forrard." Yet there are generally many interchanges of courtesy, as between upper, middle, and lower classes; and different messes will sometimes banquet one another. The "cuddy" will, perhaps, get up amateur theatricals or charades, to which spectacle the whole vessel will be invited; while the "steerage" will return the compliment with a concert, more or less ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... out as a prima donna in his theatre. For the fame and success of this theatre Zustiniani cared more than for anything else in the world—not that he was eager for money, but because he was an enthusiast for music—a man of taste, an amateur, whose great business in life was to gratify his taste. He liked to be talked about and to have his theatre and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... through the mad-house of bibliography. The tract was knocked down for $400 to a bookseller from Hartford, Connecticut, presumably for some local collection. The incident would have passed from memory had it not been for one of those accidents to which even the amateur bibliographer ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... snatching the spear from Carey, evidently considering that the position required skilled instead of amateur manipulation; and, as his fellows turned their paddles into choppers and struck heavily at the shark's back, Jackum drove his spear ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... that we owe a large proportion of our knowledge of planetary detail to the work of enthusiastic amateur observers. In this Society, indeed, nearly all the best observational work was done by the non-professional class; and when, as the result of their systematic and painstaking work, they noted on their planetary drawings some lines or markings which had not previously been recorded, ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... there are also many demands for information on grape-growing by those who grow fruits for pleasure, especially by those who are escaping from cities to suburban homes, for the grape is a favorite fruit of the amateur. And so, though Pleasure and Profit are a hard team to drive together, this manual is written for ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... room," the woman directed from the foot of a stairway; "where no amateur John Condons will tell us how to play our cards. I got some good ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... ago I was conversing with my friend B., who is an enthusiastic believer in mesmerism, and has repute as an amateur practitioner. My contention was that his favorite science (?) had contributed absolutely nothing to the world's good to cause its recognition by either scientists or philosophers. 'Can you give me,' said I, 'one ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... the even life of the young adventurers left behind. This was the tenor of the message, but there was something about it that worried Frank. Lathrop, he knew, was an expert wireless operator, but the sending that he performed that morning was so jerky and irregular that the rankest amateur ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... events, such as reading aloud in the parlors after dinner, going down to Cuyler's for an ice, or canoeing in Paradise at sunset took on a new interest. Seniors who had felt themselves superior to the material joys of fudge-parties and scorned the crudities of amateur plays and "girl-dances," eagerly accepted invitations to either ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... cabman has already been spoken to, and a shilling fare has been sketched out for the eventful morning, which is so arranged as to terminate at the toll-house, from which Mr. Smith can only be absent for about an hour, during which time the toll will be taken by an amateur of celebrity. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... offered; and he began to be weary of a society which offered little stimulus to his mind. His was the temperament of the artist, and America at that time had little to evoke or to satisfy the artistic feeling. There were few pictures and no galleries; there was no music, except the amateur torture of strings which led the country dance, or the martial inflammation of fife and drum, or the sentimental dawdling here and there over the ancient harpsichord, with the songs of love, and the broad or pathetic staves and ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... delayed if gardeners, in transplanting, would at least take the trouble to set them in their old accustomed exposure so far as the cardinal points are concerned. But your professional gardener knows everything; it is useless for an amateur to offer him advice; worse than useless, of course, to ask him for it. Indeed, the flowers, even the wild ones, might almost reconcile one to a life on the Riviera. Almost.... I recall a comely plant, for instance, seven feet high at the end of June, though now slumbering underground, in the Chemin ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... The amateur bandsman came to a stop, and another took his place; but the spell fortunately was broken, and she could pull herself together and return to ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... examining and preparing insects, who believed himself to have given a new tabanus to the catalogue of native diptera, the idea that he was playing with science, and might be trusted anywhere as a harmless amateur, from whom no expert could possibly fear any anticipation of his unpublished discoveries, went beyond anything set down in that book of his which contained so much of the ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... temper (Mrs. Stammer was the jade's name) and my wife's moody despondency, made my house and home not over-pleasant: hence I was driven a good deal abroad, where, as play was the fashion at every club, tavern, and assembly, I, of course, was obliged to resume my old habit, and to commence as an amateur those games at which I was once unrivalled in Europe. But whether a man's temper changes with prosperity, or his skill leaves him when, deprived of a confederate, and pursuing the game no longer professionally, he joins in it, like the rest of the world, for pastime, I know not; but certain ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Mecca for pilgrims from America and from all parts of the world. Yet he all the time occupied a position in a Government office—the Home Office, I think it was—and often walked from Whitehall to Lavender Sweep when his day's work was done. He was an enthusiastic amateur actor, his favorite part being Adam in "As You Like It," perhaps because tradition says this was a part that Shakespeare played; at any rate, he was very good in it. Gilbert and Sullivan, in very far-off ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... tests complete and convincing. After trying sittings here and there, we finally settled upon a series of afternoon sessions in Fowler's own house. This was the twenty-sixth sitting of the series, and Cameron's Amateur Psychical Society was practically a memory. I was now going ahead pretty much on my own lines, but with an eye to catching Miller and the Camerons at a successful seance before ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... discovered that it was getting well on towards eleven o'clock, and I sought out Hawley for the purpose of thanking him for a delightful evening and of taking my leave. I met him in the hall talking to Euripides on the subject of the amateur stage in the United States. What they said I did not stop to hear, but offering my hand to Hawley informed him ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... can instruct an unskilled amateur, can take his ill-guarded wicket, and make him "give chances" all over the field, without bursting into yells of unseemly laughter. But the little caddie cannot restrain his joy when the tyro at golf, after missing ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... other. They were all fond of Phil, and accordingly fraternized at once with his new friend, adopting him into their circle with the ease of manner and freedom of sentiment which seemed the characteristic of their class; and they took to him all the more kindly because, amateur though he was, he shared ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... unimportant work. Fassola says that some of the frescoes, as well as of the statues, which, he says, are of wood, were by Gaudenzio. The other statues are given both by Fassola and Torrotti to D'Enrico, and the paintings to Gianoli, a wealthy Valsesian amateur who lived at Campertogno. Bordiga gives the statues to Ferro, already mentioned as a pupil of D'Enrico, but whoever did them, they are about as bad as they can be—too bad, I should say, for Giacomo Ferro, and I am not sure that they are not of wood even now. No traces of ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... But I knew that he was making a mighty effort to restrain comment on the bungling amateur detective work of the son of ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... provided by thoughtful parents for a child's evening party. In some parts of the essay De Quincey sinks far lower. I do not believe that in any English author of reputation there is a more feeble piece of forced fun, than in the description of the fight of the amateur in murder with the baker at Munich. One knows by a process of reasoning that the man is joking; but one feels inclined to blush, through sympathy with a very clear man so exposing himself. A blemish of the same kind makes itself ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... to France and England was getting ready to depart, an amateur diplomatist appeared in Brussels, and made a feeble effort to effect a reconciliation between the republic ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Prevalence of Venereal Diseases in New Zealand: Infected Individuals, neglect to undergo or continue Treatment; Chiropractors; Herbalists: Overseas Introduction; Promiscuous Sexual Intercourse; Professional Prostitution; Police Evidence; "Amateur" Prostitution; Social Distribution; Extra-marital Sexual Intercourse, Result of; Parental Control; Sex Education; Housing and Living Conditions; Hostels, Advantages of; Moral Imbeciles, Danger from; Delayed Marriages; ...
— Venereal Diseases in New Zealand (1922) • Committee Of The Board Of Health
... following her one day," he explained, "so I told her I was smitten by her beauty. I got away with it, too. Rather clever, for an amateur, eh?" ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... written in books and magazines now before the public, that what I am about to offer, though pretending nothing new, yet I hope may be looked upon as containing something useful as well as instructive, both to the practical and the amateur mechanic. I shall therefore, in as small a compass as possible, trace the steam-engine from its first and early stages up to its present perfect state as our grand motive power. The first mention made of the vapour of water, as formed by ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... of envy! Have an orchestra polished to the last touch of execution, discoursing the divinest work of some highest priest of music. Sentinel the scene with marbles that would have doubled the fame of a Praxiteles. Now, with your stage set, invite to its sumptuous midst some amateur of all the arts whose senses were born for the beautiful. Do what you will to endow your artist with contentment in perfection. Fill his pockets with gold, give him wine of his fancy, have the woman he loves by ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... the ideal; and these two men made a compact between them, that once every month Thyrsis would write and tell of his success or failure. And this amateur confessional was a mighty motive to the lad—he knew that he could never tell a lie, and the thought of telling the truth was like a sword hanging over him. There were hours of trial, when he stood so close to the edge of the precipice that this ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... bill of exchange, thanks to a certain great lady, they say. Yes, general; but no matter, I knew the rest. He had once been concealed there; he might well enough be concealed there a second time. That is what I said to my friend in the police. He proposed for me to lend a hand, as an amateur, and conduct him to the farm. I had nothing to do—it was a nice party ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... I found that my amateur lashing together with the strong current that was running made the whole plan quite impossible, so, after being nearly thrown into the river several times, and one of the floats coming adrift and washing ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... George S. Hillard—a brilliant amateur sort of writer, orator and editor—came to visit Hawthorne one of the last Sundays while he remained in the Old Manse, and the two went together to spend the forenoon in Walden woods, calling on Emerson by the way to inquire what the best road might be. Emerson ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... frigid half-smile came and went on Bruce Carmyle's dark face. "My cousin has many excellent qualities, no doubt—he used to play football well, and I understand that he is a capable amateur pugilist—but I should not have supposed him entertaining. We find ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... possible of a race fast dying out, and the origin of which is so obscure. I cannot affect to think that these little legends will do much to remove that obscurity, but undoubtedly a scientific and patient study of the folk-lore throughout Australia would greatly assist thereto. I, alas! am but an amateur, moved to my work by interest in the subject, and in the blacks, of whom I have had ...
— Australian Legendary Tales - Folklore of the Noongahburrahs as told to the Piccaninnies • K. Langloh Parker
... out herbs!" sang the gaoler in amateur recitative. "Mistress Maude hath no shepherd's pouch! Mistress Maude is loth to ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... voice, as has been said, was a very beautiful one, a clear, fine soprano, with a timbre rare in quality, and naturally thrilling. She had not been taught well enough to be a public success perhaps, but was much more accomplished than the average amateur. ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... Eugene L. Brown. He was possessed of very promising histrionic ability, had frequently taken a leading part in amateur theatricals at Dover and elsewhere in New Hampshire, and was the author of a drama which was highly spoken of by the press of Dover. ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... the Committee to encounter the responsibility they have incurred, the public have at least to thank them for ascertaining and establishing one point, which might otherwise have admitted of controversy. When it is considered that many amateur writers have been discouraged from becoming competitors, and that few, if any, of the professional authors can afford to write for nothing, and, of course, have not been candidates for the honorary prize at Drury Lane, we may confidently pronounce that, as far as regards NUMBER, the ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... him in all his whims. He was patiently waiting for his school-days to end, to live independently in the Latin Quarter, to study law, without being hurried, since his mother wished him to do so, and he did not wish to displease her. But he wished also to amuse himself with painting, at least as an amateur; for he was passionately fond of it. All this was said by the handsome, aristocratic young man with a happy smile, which expanded his sensual lips and nostrils; and Amedee admired him without one envious thought; feeling, with the generous warmth of youth, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... those four "old masters," and the bronzes and the teakwood carvings—you can see for yourself. Lucy wasn't quite satisfied with the room at first. She missed the fish-net draperies and cozy corners and the usual clap-trap of amateur studios. But she's educated up to it now, and it's a daily joy to me. On the other hand my broiled steaks and feather-weight waffles and first-class coffee are a joy to poor Henry, who can't even boil an egg properly, and who hasn't ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... swarm with trout, and the woods abound in game. This attracts sportsmen from other places; and the Julia Burton, the little steamer that plies up and down the river, frequently brings large parties of amateur hunters and fishermen, who sometimes spend months enjoying ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... house of Yates, the actor, and finding that he was a friend of Lord Clare, soon became sociable with him. Mutual tastes quickened the intimacy, especially as they found means of serving each other. Goldsmith wrote an epilogue for the tragedy of Zobeide; and Cradock, who was an amateur musician, arranged the music for the Threnodia Augustalis, a lament on the death of the Princess Dowager of Wales, the political mistress and patron of Lord Clare, which Goldsmith had thrown off hastily ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... work. There are thrilling moments, doubtless, for the spectator, the amateur, and the aesthete; but there is one thrill that is known only to the soldier who fights for his own flag, to the ascetic who starves himself for his own illumination, to the lover who makes finally his own choice. And it is this transfiguring self-discipline that makes ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... I met him coming down the steps of the Arts Club. He looked weary. He was just off to a private view at the New Gallery. In the afternoon he had to attend an amateur performance of "The Cenci," given by the Shelley Society. Then followed three literary and artistic At Homes, a dinner with an Indian nabob who couldn't speak a word of English, "Tristam and Isolde" at Covent Garden Theatre, and a ball at Lord Salisbury's to wind ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... of the Empire, as absolutely, as he had moulded the fate of Ireland. To Castlereagh and the Wellesley family, the Union was in truth, an era of honour and advancement. The sons of the spendthrift amateur, Lord Mornington, were reserved to rule India, and lead the armies of Europe; while the son of Flood's colleague in the Reform convention of 1783, was destined to give law to Christendom, at the ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... form. "Don't forget us, my dear fellow; now's your time." Or perhaps, brusquely, with a friendly scolding, "Well, so you don't mean to be one of us." When it's a man in society who is to be caught a translator of Ariosto or a writer of amateur plays, there is a gentler and more insinuating way of playing off the trick. And if our fashionable writer protests that he is not a gun of sufficient calibre, the Recruiting-Academidan brings out the regular phrase, that "the Academie is a club." Lord bless us, how useful that phrase has been! ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... easy identification of the tree. No detail that will help the student has been omitted and the small size of the volume, about the length and width of the hand, makes it convenient to carry. An ideal volume for expert naturalist or amateur for field work or even ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... considerable skill (for an amateur) as a painter in water colors. But I can only produce a work of art, when irresistible impulse urges me to express my thoughts in form and color. The same obstacle to regular exertion stands in my way, if I am using my pen. I can only write when the fit takes me—sometimes at night ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... may have his plot of ground, in the cultivation and adornment of which he may realize the pleasure which accompanies the calling of amateur farmer, horticulturist, or florist, in which he is in constant communication with nature and her beauty. 'In it there is no ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... 1972, while Mahon-modified machines were still strictly classified, and the world had heard only rumors about them. The first broadcast was picked up by a television ham in Osceola, Florida, who fumingly reported artificial interference on the amateur TV bands. He heard and taped it for ten minutes—so he said—before it blew out his receiver. When he replaced the broken element, the broadcast ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... "Despujol is no amateur," the Chief of Police agreed. "We've wanted him for the last five years for the assassination of the banker, Monteros, in the train between Cordova and Malaga, and yet he always evades us, even though he is one of the most audacious thieves ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... red face, all the redder for his huge white moustache and well-filled white uniform. He began by fuming and blustering as if about to order me to summary execution. He spoke so fast, it was not easy to follow him. Probably my amateur German was as puzzling to him. The PASSIERSCHEIN, which I produced, was not in my favour; unfortunately I had forgotten my Foreign Office passport. What further added to his suspicion was his inability to comprehend why I had ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... of the traps ordinarily sold are defective. They should be selected with care, and the springs always tested [Page 138] before purchase. Besides the temper of the spring, there are also other necessary qualities in a steel trap, which we subjoin in order that the amateur may know how to judge and select his ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... her more at that time, and for many years after, than a youth with whom she had been acquainted in Cambridge before he left the University, and the unfolding of whose powers she had watched with the warmest sympathy. He was an amateur, and, but for the exactions not to be resisted of an American, that is to say, of a commercial, career,—his acceptance of which she never ceased to regard as an apostasy,—himself a high artist. He was her companion, and, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... skiff which I had taught myself to sail. I sat at his feet as at the feet of a god, while he discoursed of strange lands and peoples, deeds of violence, and hair-raising gales at sea. Then, one day, I took him for a sail. With all the trepidation of the veriest little amateur, I hoisted sail and got under way. Here was a man, looking on critically, I was sure, who knew more in one second about boats and the water than I could ever know. After an interval, in which I exceeded myself, he took the tiller ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... at a blow. The old man smiled, "It has no sheath, 'Twas a little careless to have it beneath My cloak, for a jostle to my arm Would have resulted in serious harm. But it was so fine, I could not wait, So I brought it with me despite its state." "An amateur of arms," I thought, "Bringing home a prize which he has bought." "You care for this sort of thing, Dear Sir?" "Not in the way which you infer. I need them in business, that is all." And he pointed ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... though the sun should scorch the spectators, are drawn in, when Hermogenes appears."-Martial, xii. 29, 15. M. Tigellius Hermogenes, whom Horace and others have satirised. One editor calls him "a noted thief," another: "He was a literary amateur of no ability, who expressed his critical opinions with too great a freedom to please the ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... sixteenth and seventeenth centuries amateur dramatic productions called masques were presented. Sometimes even nobles and members of the royal family took part. These plays were accompanied by music, dancing, and spectacular effects. The literary character of the masque developed into the compositions of Ben Jonson, and culminated in ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... cross of Savoy. As I have previously assured you, no woman is Republican. The demonstration was a mistake. Public characters should not let their personal preferences betrumpeted: a diplomatic truism:—but I must add, least of all a cantatrice for a king. The famous Greek amateur—the prop of failing finances—is after her to arrest her for breach of engagement. You wished to discover an independent mind in a woman, my Carlo; did you not? One would suppose her your wife—or widow. She looked a superb thing ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... detain the stranger in town. He accordingly posted it at a rapid rate to Ballytrain, accompanied by Dandy and his dulcimer, who, except during the evenings among the servants in the hotel, had very little opportunity of creating a sensation, as he thought he would have done as an amateur musician ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... frugality and self-denial by the Continental Congress put an end temporarily to plays in the colonies outside the British lines and put Washington into a greater play, "not, as he once wished, as a performer, but as a character." There were amateur performances at Valley Forge, but they aroused the hostility of the puritanical, and Congress forbade them. Washington seems, however, to have disregarded ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... vous ne le voyiez pat, dit Smiley, possible que vous vous entendiez en grenouilles, possible que vous ne vous y entendez point, possible qua vous avez de l'experience, et possible que vous ne soyez qu'un amateur. De toute maniere, je parie quarante dollars qu'elle battra en sautant n'importe quelle ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... does, Monsieur Keroulan. We have so many Europeans over there now that our standard has fallen off from the days of Emerson and Whitman. And didn't America give Europe Poe?" She knew that this boast had the ring of the amateur, but it pleased her to see how ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... letters or any art. His uncle Adolph, of whom some Bayreuth gentlemen make much, would not be remembered had he not been Wagner's uncle. Only by patient research has it been discovered that one or more of his forebears could so much as play the organ. His father was an amateur theatrical enthusiast, and he too would have been utterly forgotten had he not been Wagner's father. His stepfather—though this seems hardly to the point—was an actor and portrait-painter; and his one claim to remembrance is ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... and the grounds—of which there were about seventy acres—were at first very much overgrown, especially with laurels, which, when neglected, grow in that country in almost disgusting luxuriance. My father therefore occupied himself a good deal with amateur forestry, and became, considering that he first turned his attention to the subject at the age of forty-six, a rather expert woodsman. A good deal of tree-felling was necessary, both in the interest of the trees and for the improvement of the views from the house and its immediate ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... money picturesquely was provided by the late Marquis of Anglesey, a young lord generally regarded as crazy by an ungrateful England. Perhaps it was a little crazy in him to spend so much money in the comparatively commonplace adventure of taking an amateur dramatic company through the English provinces, he himself, I believe, playing but minor roles; but lovers of Gautier's Le Capitaine Fracasse will see in that but a charmingly boyish desire to translate a beloved dream into a reality—though ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... deal of money; but they have usually to work pretty hard for it. Of course, the most successful men are working miners, men who understand the business; for gold-mining is a business, like any other. The amateur men, who come in search of lucky finds and sudden fortunes, rarely do any good. Nearly all the young fellows, sons of gentlemen, who could do no good at home and came out here during the "rushes," are still in no better position than they were at starting. A few of ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... mismanagement and extravagance, and partly from misfortunes altogether unavoidable (though he chose to attribute his reverses wholly to the latter cause), he found himself suddenly plunged from competence into utter destitution. He had hitherto practised painting as an amateur, but now he was forced to embrace it as the only means afforded him of supporting his family, which at that time consisted of a wife and two children. He was not without some share of talent; but unhappily for those who depended ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... this precaution, I myself flew the biplane over to Westchester on the morrow, and explained the controls to Monsieur Power in an extended passenger flight. He was, it appeared, an amateur of the balloon, and accustomed to great heights. When I handed the machine over to him, with the engine throttled down so that he might try rolling practice on the ground, he waited until he was out of our reach, whipped the motor ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... he said enigmatically. "It will show the stuff that's in you, besides, and it will be a better claim upon the Intelligencer people than all the lines from all the senators and magnates in the world. The thing for you is to do Amateur Night at ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... residence at the capital. Thereafter she had taken Kent up on his own account, and by now he was deep in her debt. For one thing, she had set the fashion in the matter of legislative receptions—her detractors, knowing nothing whatever about it, hinted that she had been an amateur social lobbyist in Washington, playing the game for the pure zest of it—and at these functions Kent had learned many things pertinent to his purpose as watch-dog for the railroad company and legal adviser to his chief—things not named openly on the floor of the ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... fishing—boats, although we could scarcely see them, but being unwilling to lose ground by lying to, we fired a gun every half hour, to give the small craft notice of our vicinity, that they might keep their bells agoing. Every three or four minutes, the marine drum—boy, or some amateur performer,—for most sailors would give a glass of grog any day to be allowed to beat a drum for five minutes on endi—beat a short roll, and often as we drove along, under a reefed foresail, and close reefed topsails, we could hear the answering tinkle before we saw ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... commerce to make any video installations worthwhile," he explained, "and the only information transmission is by amateur radio operators. But nobody seems to miss it. It's got enough vacation facilities ...
— The Mighty Dead • William Campbell Gault
... walls and a pale green carpet, and very little in it except, let in as a panel, a delicate low-toned portrait of the mistress of the house, vaguely appearing through vaporous curtains, holding pale flowers, and painted with a rather mysterious effect by that talented young amateur, her cousin, Harry de Freyne. It had been his sole success in art, and had been exhibited at the Grafton Galleries under the name of The Gilded Lily. No one had ever known or was ever likely to know whether the title referred to the decorative, if botanically ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... are more than mere laymen in philosophy. We are worthy of the name of amateur athletes, and are vexed by too much inconsistency and vacillation in our creed. We cannot preserve a good intellectual conscience so long as we keep mixing incompatibles from opposite sides of ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... bearing, and winning in deportment. He came as an adventurer to the court of George the Second, for he possessed nothing but an earldom, a handsome person, and great assurance; he lived in affluence in the royal household of Frederick, because he played Lothario well not only in the amateur theatre, but in the drawing-room of the princess, and soon ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... feminine element. The principal roles were all represented; and if occasionally a re-enforcement was required, they could almost always pick up some provincial actress, or even an amateur, at a pinch. The actors were five in number: The pedant, already described, who rejoiced in the name of Blazitis; Leander; Herode, the tragic tyrant; Matamore, the bully; and ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... was close at hand, his father engaged for him a private tutor at home. The household of the Spread Eagle not only enjoyed civic prosperity, but some share of that liberal cultivation, which, if not imbibed in the home, neither school nor college ever confers. The scrivener was not only an amateur in music, but a composer, whose tunes, songs, and airs found their way into the best collections of music. Both schoolmaster and tutor were men of mark. The high master of St. Paul's at that time was Alexander Gill, an M.A. of Corpus Christi College, ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... the yard, following Mr. Keeler's suggestions, obeying his grandfather's orders, tormenting Issy, doing his daily stint because he had to, not because he liked it. For amusement he read a good deal, went to the usual number of sociables and entertainments, and once took part in amateur theatricals, a play given by the church society in the town hall. There was where he shone. As the dashing young hero he was resplendent. Gertie Kendrick gazed upon him from the third settee center with shining ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... from the capital, was one of the most dashing and brilliant figures in the ultra-aristocratic society of Berlin. No entertainment was regarded as complete without her presence, and in every social enterprise, no matter whether it was a flower corso, a charity fair, a hunt, a picnic, or amateur theatricals, she was always to the fore, besides being the leader in every new fashion, and in every new extravagance. Although eccentric—she was the first member of her sex to show herself astride on horseback in the ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... suffered in the fact that for the first sixty years of his life the writer had cultivated the art but casually and sporadically. He retained, in spite of all the labour which he expended, a certain stiffness, an air of the amateur, of which he himself ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... the leap from the stairs and grabbed on to the chair that hung from the ceiling nearby. When you only weigh fifteen pounds, you can make Tarzan look like an amateur. ...
— Hanging by a Thread • Gordon Randall Garrett
... score of amateur dragsmen were out; some throwing their drags from the bridge; some circulating in boats, and even in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... first ever presented in a theatre in Ireland—was also given during the third season. It was The Twisting of the Rope, by Dr. Douglas Hyde, and was played at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, on October 21, 1901, by a Gaelic Amateur Dramatic Society coached by W.G. Fay. The author filled the principal ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... old Arab that the effort thus made by the amateur saltimbanque had shaken the dirk from his grasp,—else, in another instant, the camel would ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... cried Mabel. 'Tommy, you horrid boy, you're hurting Mr. Ashburn.' And the hearth-brush was certainly coming down with considerable vigour on the small of the amateur elephant's back. ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... cutting the timber for the new house, which was to stand in the shade of a row of cottonwood trees overlooking the broad, shallow bed of the Little Missouri. They were both mighty men with the axe. Roosevelt worked with them for a few days. He himself was no amateur, but he could not compete with ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... had gone about the wrecking of the lab had gone about it in a workmanlike way. Whoever had done the job was no amateur. The vandal had known his way about in a laboratory, that was obvious. Leads had been cut carefully; equipment had been shoved aside without care as to what happened to it, but with great care that the shover should not be damaged by the shoving; the invader ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... in Egypt. It was there that a system was evolved, backed up by the ruler, of religious fraud so colossal that modern deception looks like the bungling efforts of an amateur. The government, the army, the taxing power of the State, were sworn to protect gigantic safes in which was hoarded—nothing. That is to say, nothing but the pretense upon which cupidity and self-hypnotized credulity ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... will do," cried John, casting his eye back, and perceiving they had lost sight of the gig, and nearly so of Colonel Egerton and Jane, "why you carry it off like a jockey, captain; better than any amateur I have ever seen, unless indeed it ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... in the happy position now of making a speech for the man who is going to be elected. (Laughter and applause.) It is a great thing for an amateur, when his first nomination has failed, to come in and second the man who has succeeded. New York is here with no bitter feeling and with no disappointment. We recognize that the waves have submerged us, but we have bobbed up serenely. (Loud laughter.) It was a cannon from New York ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... many years great favourites with gardeners, both amateur and professional. About two hundred years ago the mania for these plants amounted almost to a national calamity in Holland, and scores of acres are now entirely devoted to their culture. For our own part, we scarcely consider the ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... voice: those of a clarionet, the notes of a goose: and, all the world knows that a well-played violin (especially in the practice of gliding) yields sounds so inseparable from the strains of a cat, as not to be distinguished by the mere amateur of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various
... moment at the play by the amateur and the woman. It is not a satisfactory play as a whole, it is not very interesting in all its developments, some of the best opportunities are shirked, some of the characters (all the characters who are men) are poor. But, in the first place, it is well written. Those people ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... her chums had made themselves. There were capital pictures of the school, the cricket eleven, the hockey team, the quadrangle in the snow, the gardening assistants, and the tennis champions. They were received with much applause, Miss Norton in particular congratulating the amateur photographers ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
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