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Callow   Listen
adjective
Callow  adj.  
1.
Destitute of feathers; naked; unfledged. "An in the leafy summit, spied a nest, Which, o'er the callow young, a sparrow pressed."
2.
Immature; boyish; "green"; as, a callow youth. "I perceive by this, thou art but a callow maid."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Callow" Quotes from Famous Books



... combining the fat completely with water, by the intervention of vegetable mucilage, as in melting butter, by means of flour, the butter and water are united into a homogeneous fluid.'"—From Practical Economy, by a Physician. Callow, 1801. ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... lake, we spoke of the fact that man possessed the advantage of being able to change his dress, and thus to alter his appearance? While yet a child, masquerading was my greatest delight. The soul wings its flight in callow infancy. A bal costume is indeed one of the noblest fruits of culture. The love of coquetry which is innate with all of us ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... deathless Waters: hardly the light lives on the face of the deep— Hardly, but here for awhile. All over the grey soft shallow Hover the colours and clouds of the twilight, void of a star. As a bird unfledged is the broad-winged night, whose winglets are callow Yet, but soon with their plumes will she cover her brood from afar, Cover the brood of her worlds that cumber the skies with their blossom Thick as the darkness of leaf-shadowed spring is encumbered with flowers. World upon world is enwound ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... below his required standard. She was tall and stately—Junoesque some people called her—but in her conversation she was decidedly flippant. She was interested in all the small things of life, but for the great ones she had no inclination. She preferred a dance with a callow youth to a chat with a man of learning. She worshipped artificial in-door life, but had no sympathy with nature. The country she abominated, and her ideas of rest consisted solely in a change of locality, which was why she went to Newport every summer, there to indulge in further ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs

... bent o'er him, and he lay beneath, Hush'd as the babe upon its mother's breast, Droop'd as the willow when no winds can breathe, Lull'd like the depth of ocean when at rest, Fair as the crowning rose of the whole wreath, Soft as the callow cygnet in its nest; In short, he was a very pretty fellow, Although his woes ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... justified as a means of noble ends. Youth has an instinct which is wholesome for viewing moral situations as wholes. Callow casualists are fond of declaring that it would be a duty to state that their mother was out when she was in, if it would save her life, although they perhaps would not lie to save their own. A ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... our callow eaglet was sent (in the spring or early summer of 1824), belonged emphatically to the old school of schools. It bore the goodly name of Wellington House Academy, and was situated in Mornington Place, near the Hampstead Road. A certain Mr. Jones held chief rule there; and as more than fifty ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials

... you back in your callow beginnings, when you were just a tree—a tall, green tree. You were green! Only green things grow. Did you get the meaning of that, children? I hope you ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette

... after hazarding his neck to reach the woodpecker's hole, at the triumphant moment when he thinks the nestlings his own, and strips his arm, launching it down into the cavity, and grasping what he conceives to be the callow young, starts with horror at the sight of a hideous snake, and almost drops from his giddy pinnacle, retreating down the tree with terror and precipitation. Several adventures of this kind have come to my knowledge; and one of them was attended with serious ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... man, and the telegraph operators, and the commission men who get one-eighth of a cent a bushel either way the market goes. Some of these commission men get the speculation bug and go broke, and yet there are callow youths and business men and clerks and other outsiders who believe they are smart enough to speculate on the Board of Trade. That belief ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter

... your own heart, and you offered the world a magnifying glass to study its wounds. You wrote your own story. You told the tale of your own suffering. Of course it was strong, of course it rang with all the truth of genius. So you loved that child, Arnold! You, a man of the world, not a callow schoolboy. You loved ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... for the deference became apparent. The gaping children in the main entrance were thrust aside, and a woman of magnificent proportions pushed in between the two humble men. The old man mumbled something about his daughter-in-law, while his callow son looked, if possible, more sheepish than at first. The Intelligence officer for his part could hardly keep his countenance. The lady had donned her best. Her ample form was swathed in the rustling folds ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer

... formalism is even dangerous to his originality, because they try to melt him along with all the other students and pour him into their one mold. It is distressing to think of all the sums now devoted to inducing callow, overdriven sophomores to compose forced essays and doggerel, by luring them on with the glitter of cash prizes. One shudders to think of all the fellowship money which is now being used to finance ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler

... with a laugh. "She's a lady I've a high opinion of; in fact, I'm a little afraid of her. Though I'm nearly as old as she is, she makes me feel callow. It's a sensation that's new ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss

... house, when a bird of about the size of a robin, flew down from a tree beneath which we were passing, and after circling several times around Olla's head, alighted on her finger, which she held out for it to perch upon. It was a young wood-pigeon, which she had found in the grove, when a callow half-fledged thing, the old bird having been captured or killed by some juvenile depredators. Taking pity on its orphan state, Olla had adopted and made a pet of it: it was now perfectly tame, and would come readily at her call of 'Lai-evi', (little captive), ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... Chirping, in the cold and rain, Their impatient sweet complaining, Sing out from their hearts again; Bid them set themselves to mating, Cooing love in softest words, Crowd their nests, all cold and empty, Full of little callow birds. ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous

... in the Callow—a spinney of silver birches and larches that topped a round hill. A purple mist hinted of buds in the tree-tops, and a fainter purple haunted the vistas between the ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb

... no longer callow; comely, yet with a strong male comeliness; he had a pleasantly modulated voice, yet one that they had heard swell into a compelling note of command; he had the most joyous, careless laugh in all the world—such a laugh as ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini

... In his callow youth, Buonamico Cristofani, Florentine, surnamed Buffalmacco by reason of his merry humour, served his apprenticeship in the workshop of Andrea Tafi, painter and worker-in-mosaic. Now the said Tafi ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France

... whip is intended to supply the place of a man's right leg and spur; it should therefore, however ornamental and thin, be stiff and real. Messrs. Callow, of Park Lane, make some very pretty ones, pink, green and amber, from the skin of the hippopotamus, light but severe. A loop to hang it from the wrist may be made ornamental in colours and gold, and is useful, for a lady may require all the power of her little hand to grasp the ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey

... upon ranks of the enemy, and crushing or scattering them from the path of his swift and victorious despair, the Emperor at last is at home,—where are the great dignitaries and the lieutenant-generals of the empire? Where is Maria Louisa, the Empress Eagle, with her little callow king of Rome? Is she going to defend her nest and her eaglet? Not she. Empress-queen, lieutenant-general, and court dignitaries, are off on the wings of all the winds—profligati sunt, they are away with ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... with its vivid details, is just that Jehovah brought Israel out of its fixed abode in Goshen, and trained it for mature national life by its varied desert experiences. As one of the prophets puts the same idea, 'I taught Ephraim to go,' where the figure of the parent bird training its callow fledglings for flight is exchanged for that of the nurse teaching a child to walk. While, then, the text primarily refers to the experience of the infant nation in the forty years' wanderings, it carries large ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... it came to pass that the pick of the men were posted, because, as fast as a callow youth gets worth marrying, somebody promptly marries him. The Fast Young Married Crowd was a closed corporation and played exclusively within itself; the female of the species had to compete only with females of equal tonnage. The only sylph-like temptation that a husband could encounter was a dissolute ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam

... at what seemed the callow enthusiasm of a youthful lawyer; but the coroner who knew his district well, looked very thoughtfully down at the table before which he sat, and failed to raise his head until the young man had vanished from the room and his place had been taken by another of very different appearance ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green

... March weather White waves break tether, And whirled together At either hand, Like weeds uplifted, The tree-trunks rifted In spars are drifted, Like foam or sand, Past swamp and sallow And reed-beds callow, Through pool and shallow, To wind and lee, Till, no more tongue-tied, Full flood and young tide Roar down the rapids ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... with doubts oppress'd The beauteous queen relieved his labouring breast: "Hear me (she cried), to whom the gods have given To read this sign, and mystic sense of heaven, As thus the plumy sovereign of the air Left on the mountain's brow his callow care, And wander'd through the wide ethereal way To pour his wrath on yon luxurious prey; So shall thy godlike father, toss'd in vain Through all the dangers of the boundless main, Arrive (or if perchance already come) From slaughter'd gluttons ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... The callow pair saw something more of each other during the morning; for Pocket hotly resented being distrusted, and showed it by making up to the young girl under the doctor's nose. He talked to her about books in ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung

... whatever there was to arrange; and, after some charmingly spoken words of farewell from the gentle lady, we took our departure. Again the mummified negro hobbled before us, to open the gate,—followed by all his callow rabble of chickens. As we resumed our places in the carriage we could still hear the chippering of the creatures, pursuing after ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn

... minutes. Her mind was on the place he had touched her. She had never before experienced such a reaction. Never before had a man's hand, even on her bare flesh, produced such thrill and excitement. Desperately, her common sense struggled with this new thing. She dismissed with annoyance the callow, schoolgirl thought that this was the way love finally came—in the door, unannounced, to take over a woman's heart and ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman

... invalids who live in the neighbourhood of Gideon, might not be losers by the change, cars were provided, at the expense of the church, to convey them to the meeting for the breaking of bread at Bethesda; and a Chapel was rented in Callow-hill Street, near Gideon, in which, on the Lord's day and Thursday evenings the Word was ministered, It was very kind of the Lord to order it so that this chapel was at once to be had! Two years and a half afterwards, in October, 1842, we rented a still more suitable ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself. Second Part • George Mueller

... of twenty-two, convalescing in country lodgings after an illness that seemed to have taken the marrow out of my bones. Hilaire was in Japan, and I—a callow fledgling from the nest—was very sick and sorry for myself. There were some people living in rather a large house at the other end of the village who took notice of me. They were the only ones, and I have thought since that my acquaintance with them really did for ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton

... call the willing winds; Then ply their oars, and cut their liquid way In larger compass on the roomy sea. As, when the dove her rocky hold forsakes, Rous'd in a fright, her sounding wings she shakes; The cavern rings with clatt'ring; out she flies, And leaves her callow care, and cleaves the skies: At first she flutters; but at length she springs To smoother flight, and shoots upon her wings: So Mnestheus in the Dolphin cuts the sea; And, flying with a force, that force assists his way. Sergesthus ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil

... Martin's thoughtfulness had provided. It seemed unbelievable, but there was no use pretending she was mistaken—Uncle Martin, Aunt Rose's husband, was falling in love with her. She felt a little heady with the excitement of it. He was so different from the callow youths and dapper fellows who had heretofore worshipped at her shrine. There was something so imposing, so important about him. She was conscious that a man so much older might not appeal to many girls of her age, but it so happened that he did appeal to her. She ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius

... to Lucille, or rather the singleness of your devotion to Lucille," she remarked, "is positively the most gauche thing about you. It is—absolutely callow!" ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... and flushed into summer. Bolton had gone over the grass on the slope before the house, and it was growing thick again, dark green above the yellow of its stubble, and the young generation of robins was foraging in it for the callow grasshoppers. Some boughs of the maples were beginning to lose the elastic upward lift of their prime, and to hang looser and limper with the burden of their foliage. The elms drooped lower toward the grass, and swept the straggling tops left ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... boat with the politician, was now Vice-Chancellor of the University; and the greater luminary had come to shine upon the lesser, by way of heightening the dignity of both. For the man who has outsoared his fellows likes to remind himself by contrast of his callow days, before the hungry and fighting impulses had driven him down—a young eaglet—upon the sheepfolds of law and politics; while to the majority of mankind, even to-day, hero-worship, when it is not too exacting, ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Christ was there with Callow, That Christ was standing there with me, That Christ had taught me what to be, That I should plow and as I plowed My Saviour Christ would sing aloud, And as I drove the clods apart Christ would be plowing in my heart, Through rest-harrow and bitter roots, ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger

... Street. Every one is mad. Servants, lawyers, hod carriers, merchants, old maids, widows, mechanics, sly wives, thieving clerks, and the "demi-monde," all throng to the portals of the "Big Board." It is a money-mania. Beauty, old age, callow boyhood, fading manhood, all chase the bubble values ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... reference in this connection being a statement that "Mr. D. D. Home frequently urged us to hold his hands and feet." But it none the less created a tremendous sensation, public attention being focused on the fact that an awkward, callow, country lad had successfully sustained the scrutiny of men of learning, intelligence, and high repute. No longer, it would seem, could there be doubt of the validity of his claims, and greater demands ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce

... starlings, four or five hundred strong. The memory of man knows not the first settlement of this amicable community, which remained until during temporary absence the blacks were suborned to climb the tree to secure the eggs of the eagle. They also helped themselves to a few of the callow starlings. The sea eagles and cockatoos discarded the tree forthwith, and the starlings in a couple of years. And why? Because, in my opinion at least, the eagles had policed the tree, killing offhand any green ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... we can keep Patty's Place for another year," said Stella. "I was afraid they'd come back. And then our jolly little nest here would be broken up—and we poor callow nestlings thrown out on the ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... the same; and the erring ones, predestined to sin by their own unrestrained passions, wait only for the overmastering circumstances to yield and fall. When any of these solemn warnings are held up to the yet callow sinner, what does he propose to do? To stop and repent? No,—to be a little more careful and not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... thought it grievous thing To weep their own sweet leaves away, Untaught as yet how soon the Spring Upon their nestled heads should lay Her callow wing— ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore

... unanimous in laying their adoration at Carol's feet. But Carol saw the elasticity, the buoyancy, of loves like these, and she couldn't really count them. She felt that she was ripe for a bit of solid experience now, and there was nothing callow about Jim—he was solid enough. And now, although she could see that his feelings stirred, she felt nothing but excitement and curiosity. A proposal, a real one! It ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston

... tricks and that species of entertainment which is known as parlour magic. He found the three other members of the little house-party—to wit: Mrs. Somerby-Miles, Lieutenant Forshay, and Mr. Robert Murdock—respectively, a silly, flirtatious, little gadfly of a widow; a callow, love-struck, lap-dog, young army officer, with a budding moustache and a full-blown idea of his own importance; and a dour Scotchman of middle age, with a passion for chess, a glowering scorn of frivolities, and a deep and abiding ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew

... again. "We must find some callow youths to amuse her. A girl of twenty can't appreciate a ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed

... woman first in a sensual and afterward transferring her into an educational mould with a view to obtaining an instrument to thunder out a given theme could not be else than abhorrent to one whose art, however callow, was at least objective. In the Doll's House Ibsen had renounced all objectivity. It does not seem to me that further apologies are necessary for my predecessor's remark to Dr. Aveling after the reading that he ...
— Muslin • George Moore

... meanin',' resooms Cherokee, 'let me onbosom myse'f as to what happens a party back in Posey County, Injeanny. I'm plumb callow at the time, bein' only about the size an' valyoo of a pa'r of fives. but I'm plenty impressed by them events I'm about to recount, an' the mem'ry is fresh enough for yesterday. But to come flutterin' from my perch. Thar's a sport who makes his home- camp in that hamlet which ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis

... him, without thinking or caring what the result to him might be. She was bent on as much enjoyment as possible without exposing herself to awkward consequences; common scandal told him that he was not the first callow youth that she had entangled with her provoking glances and her witty tongue. The epithet by which his brother officers qualified her was expressive, though impolite. James repeated these things a hundred times: he said that Mrs. Wallace was not fit to wipe Mary's boots; he ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham

... the club and arrived at the theater rather late. The audience was brilliant; indeed, though I had been an ardent first-nighter for a year or two in my callow youth, I think I have never seen such a representation of fashion and genius in ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout

... contrast to the color of his hair, which, apparently not in full keeping with his years, was lightly sprinkled with gray. Yet his carriage was assuredly not that of middle age, and indeed, the total of his personality, neither young nor old, neither callow nor acerb, neither lightly unreserved nor too gravely severe, offered certain problems not capable of instant solution. A hurried observer might have guessed his age within ten years but might have been wrong upon either side, and might have had an equal ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough

... passion's reckless boldness By craven afterthoughts of cynic coldness; Purge from low taint "the blood of all the HOWARDS" By borrowings from the code of cads and cowards! Noblesse oblige? Better crass imbecility Of callow youth—with pluck—than ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various

... savage into which he throws whatever he kills with his little poisoned arrows or fishes out of the river. Probably my only quarrel with them would be about the little fledgelings: it angers me to see them beating the bushes in spring in search of small nesties and the callow young that are in them. After all, the gipsies could retort that my friends the jays and magpies are at the same business in ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson

... towards him whilst murmurs arise, "What an uncultured man! To talk 'shop' like a regular musician!" The fact being that the man had read everything, but was setting a trap for the vanity of these egregious persons. The newspapers, the managers and the artists before the public are to blame for this callow, shallow attempt at culture. We read that Rosenthal is a second Heine in conversation. That he spills epigrams at his meals and dribbles proverbs at the piano. He has committed all of Heine to memory and in the greenroom reads ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... world not to believe Luther's tales about the city of Rome. Luther, they say, came to Rome as a callow rustic comes to a metropolis. To the wily Italians he was German Innocence Abroad; they hoaxed him by telling him absurd tales about the Popes, the priests, the wonders of the city, etc., and the credulous ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... subsequent Christian apologetics adopted. As a nickname the term "agnostic'' was soon misused to cover any and every variation of scepticism, and just as popular preachers confused it with atheism (q.v.) in their denunciations, so the callow freethinker—following Tennyson's path of "honest doubt''—classed himself with the agnostics, even while he combined an instinctively Christian theism with a facile rejection of the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... Cacophonous, cadaverous, cadence, callow, calumny, capillary, captious, cardinal, carnal, carnivorous, castigate, cataclysm, catastrophe, category, causality, cavernous, celebrity, celibacy, censorious, ceramics, cerebration, certitude, cessation, charlatan, chimerical, chronology, circuitous, circumlocution, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... "This callow talk, my son," said the Abbot quietly, "wearies me much. Lay thee down and sleep thy sulks off, if thou art able." Upon this, he turned away to the closet where hung the brass keys, and opened the door a-crack. He saw the hide of the crocodile leaning ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister

... my cheeks the callow down had crept, With wondering awe I viewed the Trojan train, And gazed at Priam. But Anchises stepped The tallest. Boyish ardour made me fain To greet the hero, and his hand to strain. I ventured, and to Pheneus brought my guest. A Lycian case of arrows, bridles twain, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... in the country the lad becomes maudlin—a callow lover of nature—and makes feeble attempts at verse. Returning to the city he melts and unbosoms—the tender shaft of the unknowable Eros has penetrated to his heart—Nature's subtle spell is on him, to disappear and reappear. Then follow discussions, more or less didactic, leading to the ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... in the past, and what have we To do with fool gyratings of this callow youth? In Kansas we do low within the grave Deep bury ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)

... on which he was lying stood over against a window in which there were strong iron bars. For a long time he lay there wondering where he could be and how he came to be in this unfamiliar place. There was a racking pain in his head, a weakness in his limbs that alarmed him. Once, in his callow days, he had been intoxicated. He recalled feeling pretty much the same as he felt now, the day after that ribald supper party at Maxim's. Moreover, he had a vague recollection of iron bars but ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon

... dance. Babbitt hated her, for the moment. He saw her as middle-aged. He studied the wrinkles in the softness of her throat, the slack flesh beneath her chin. The taut muscles of her youth were loose and drooping. Between dances she sat in the largest chair, waving her cigarette, summoning her callow admirers to come and talk to her. ("She thinks she's a blooming queen!" growled Babbitt.) She chanted to Miss Sonntag, "Isn't my little studio sweet?" ("Studio, rats! It's a plain old-maid-and-chow-dog flat! Oh, God, I wish I was home! I wonder if I can't make ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... at all so much as part and parcel of his own fiber, women were just women. He treated them all alike, and with a gallant nonchalance that astounded his two neighbors, Lady Blanche Trevoy and the Hon. Violet Materlin, accustomed as they were to find youths of his age stupidly callow or at best, in their innocence, mildly exciting. Leighton, seated at H lne's ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain

... For some of you this has been a very long day. For all of you it has been a very trying day. You were all informed previously as to what we had in mind. However, since you are young and callow, and were thoroughly convinced of your own omniscience and omnipotence, it is natural enough that you derived little or no benefit from that information. You are now facing ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith

... years before. The girl had come out of school to take upon her slim young shoulders the management of her father's house. Moreover, in that aged town where, aside from a few score new professors and their callow young assistants, everybody's grandparents had played dolls and tin soldiers together, Dr. Keltridge's absent-minded fashion of failing to provide his daughter with a feminine chaperon had caused no comment whatsoever. Everybody that one met out at ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... it—she had a desperate time. I gather he was pretty high in favour with the old Court. Then when the Bolsheviks started he went over to them, like plenty of other grandees, and now he's one of their chief brains—none of your callow revolutionaries, but a man of the world, a kind of genius, she says, who can hold his own anywhere. She believes him to be in this country, and only waiting the right moment to turn up. Oh, it sounds ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan

... all the mysteries of generation, this most defies the ambitious modern scientific investigator. In the second—the ancient Egyptians (we are told) invented incubator-stoves for hatching eggs; what would be thought of Egyptians who should neglect to fill the beaks of the callow fledglings? Yet this is precisely what France is doing. She does her utmost to produce artists by the artificial heat of competitive examination; but, the sculptor, painter, engraver, or musician once turned out by this mechanical ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... Promontorie sleeps or swimmes, And seems a moving Land, and at his Gilles Draws in, and at his Trunck spouts out a Sea. Mean while the tepid Caves, and Fens and shoares Thir Brood as numerous hatch, from the Egg that soon Bursting with kindly rupture forth disclos'd Thir callow young, but featherd soon and fledge 420 They summ'd thir Penns, and soaring th' air sublime With clang despis'd the ground, under a cloud In prospect; there the Eagle and the Stork On Cliffs and Cedar tops thir Eyries build: Part loosly wing ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... her hand was eagerly sought by such of the young men as could obtain the right to ask it. Mrs. Muir's remark that she would become a belle in spite of herself proved true; but while she affected no exclusive or distant airs, the most callow and forward youth felt at once the restraint of her fine reserve. Her sensitive nature enabled her, in a place of public resort, to know instinctively whom to keep at a distance, and who, like Dr. Sommers, not only invited but justified a ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe

... was to squat there without fear or trembling. So perfect is this instinct, that once, when I had laid them on the leaves again, and one accidentally fell on its side, it was found with the rest in exactly the same position ten minutes afterward. They are not callow like the young of most birds, but more perfectly developed and precocious even than chickens. The remarkably adult yet innocent expression of their open and serene eyes is very memorable. All intelligence seems reflected in them. They suggest not merely the purity of infancy, but a wisdom ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... heart-sickening to call to recollection. I have been called out of my bed, and waked for the purpose, in the coldest winter nights—and this not once, but night after night—in my shirt, to receive the discipline of a leathern thong, with eleven other sufferers, because it pleased my callow overseer, when there has been any talking heard after we were gone to bed, to make the six last beds in the dormitory, where the youngest children of us slept, answerable for an offence they neither ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... 'Velvet Coat' among the slums, he did no good to himself. He had not the Dickens aptitude for depicting the ways of life of his adopted friends. When with refined judgment he wanted a figure for a novel, he went back to the Bar he scorned in his callow days and then drew in ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... assertion in his callow days, before he had learned the value of a good digestion. To a young and fervid youth, love's young dream is, no doubt, very charming, lovers, as a rule, having a small appetite; but to a man who has seen the world, ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume

... they without adventure. Sometimes he would be caught in the wake of a stickleback, and would reach the bottom spinning, or on his back. He was lucky to reach it at all. Sometimes a sunbeam's dazzling radiance would check him in mid-career, and his callow eyes would take an hour to recover. It was a month before his eyelids developed. Sometimes he would collide with others of his own kind, equally unskilled in steering, and sometimes a vague quiver in the water caused him instinctively to ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English

... lap of smooth lawn; the musical rain of a fountain in the green depths below; the hamlet and neighboring villas so lost to sight that the very birds might well doubt where to pierce the leafy canopy to find home, wife and callow nestlings; beyond, and round all, the half ring of quiet-colored, placid sea—the emerald sea, rough with white caps; the blue sea, sparkling in sunshine; the moonlit sea, silver-gleaming, but melancholy, and terrible ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various

... in a way, Philip's inspiration ever since the days when they quarreled and made up on the banks of the Deer field. And a fortunate thing for him it was that in his callow years there was a woman in whom he could confide. Her sympathy was everything, even if her advice was not always followed. In the years of student life and preparation they had not often met, but they were constant and painstaking correspondents. It was to her that he gave the running ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... lusty voice but mellow— Callow pedant! I began To instruct the little fellow In the mysteries known to man; Sung the noble cithern's praise, And the flute of dear old Pan, And ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field

... pure. While yet a youngster in a jacket, I can remember falling desperately in love with a young lady several years my senior,—after the fashion of youngsters in jackets. Could I have fibbed in these days? Could I have betrayed a comrade? Could I have stolen eggs or callow young from the nest? Could I have stood quietly by and seen the weak or the maimed bullied? Nay, verily! In these absurd days she lighted up the whole world for me. To sit in the same room with her was like the happiness of perpetual ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... the gracious mother's wiles And dear delusive smiles! No callow fledgling of her singing brood But tastes that witching food, And hearing overhead the eagle's wing, And how the thrushes sing, Vents his exiguous chirp, and from his nest Flaps forth—we know the rest. I own the weakness of the tuneful kind,— Are not all harpers blind? I sang ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... for honor among any of the people that have to do with the big gilded dive of the dollarocracy. They are there to gamble, and to prostitute themselves. The fact that they look like gentlemen and have the manners and the language of gentlemen ought to deceive nobody but the callow chaps of the sort that believes the swell gambler is "an honest fellow" and a "perfect gentleman otherwise," because he wears a dress suit in the evening and is a judge of books and pictures. Lawyers are the doorkeepers and the messengers of ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips

... tongue. As the English quit Rome, the swallows arrive, and may be seen in great muster flitting up and down the streets, looking at the affiches of vacancies before fixing on a lodging. Unlike us, these callow tourists—though many of them on their first visit to Rome—are no sooner within the walls, than they find, without assistance, their way to the Forum, and proceed to build and twitter in that very Temple ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... and respected at the time, but destined to become involved in scandal. The most pressing need, both he and Nan had determined, was a house of their own; the hotel was at once uncomfortable and expensive. Accordingly a callow, chipper, self-confident, blond little clerk was assigned to show them about. He had arrived from the East only six months ago; but this was six months earlier than the Keiths, so he put on all the airs of an old-timer. In a two-seated calash, furnished ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... bedrooms," said Spike, almost blushing. He felt like a boy reading his first attempts at original poetry to an established critic. What would this master cracksman, this polished wielder of the oxy-acetylene blow-pipe, this expert in toxicology, microscopy and physics think of his callow outpourings! ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse

... that name was here. I had English, one or two—Bardsley, and Jackson, and Smith; he was a gentleman, but he was not young. He was fifty years, Mr Smith—a good servant. Also there was Monsieur Callow." ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed

... you the Stages Kings; He sayes, nay, on a Play-Book, swears it too, Your pox uppo'nt damn it, what's here to do? Your nods, your winks, nay, your least signs of Wit, Are truer Reason than e're Poet writ, And he observes do much more sway the Pit. For sitting there h' has seen the lesser gang Of Callow Criticks down their heads to bang; Lending long Ears to all that you should say, So understand, yet never hear the Play: Then in the Tavern swear their time they've lost, And Curse the Poet put e'm to that cost. And if one would their just ...
— The Fatal Jealousie (1673) • Henry Nevil Payne

... Thus far my callow meditations. My course of reasoning was perhaps faulty, but then there are, at twenty-one, many processes more interesting and desirable than the perfecting of a mathematical demonstration. And so, for a little, my blood rejoiced with ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... energies went to the instruction of others, leaving none for his own purposes. He would take callow youths to his chambers and ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome

... to confess how, in the fire of his callow youth and fine flower of his lustie springal days, he had been stung with murderous frenzie at view of a certaine picture of Apelles, the which in those times was showed in a temple. And the said picture did present ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France

... much as possible; though I must confess, hitherto, with no great prospect or hopes of success. As for what you mention of entering into Holy Orders, it is indeed a great work; and I am pleased to find you think it so, as well as that you do not admire a callow clergyman any more ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the old gentleman's lap, and to hear him talk about old times. Marvellous tales he told them, too; for his career of nine and a half centuries had been well stocked with incident, as one would naturally suppose. Howbeit, the admiration which these callow youths had for Methuselah was not shared by a large majority of the people then on earth. On the contrary, we blush to admit it, Methuselah was held in very trifling esteem by his frivolous fellow-citizens, who habitually referred to him as an "old ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field

... each other somewhat distantly; and with feelings which it would be hard to describe, Ben recognized the tall, rather callow youth as the Rutherford who stoned him several years before, when he was floating down the river on a log, and to whom Ben in turn had given a ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis

... its vagaries astonished no one so much as its owner, but he joined in the singing. "Let all the people praise Thee" was a command not to be lightly set aside for worldly considerations of harmony and fitness, and so Laban sang, his callow and ill-adjusted soul divided between fears that the people would hear him and that ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham

... older and older? Look at all dumb brutes, the lower animals of this our earth; is it not thus by nature's law with them? The lioness will perish to preserve that very whelp, whom she will rend a year or two hence, meeting the young lion in the forest; the hen, so careful of her callow brood, will peck at them, and buffet them away, directly they are fully fledged; the cow forgets how much she once loved yonder well-grown heifer; and the terrier-bitch fights for a bit of gristle with her own two-year-old, whom she used to nurse so tenderly, and famished her own bowels to ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... directions at once! Here were pickets far out-lying, and a double line of skirmishers deployed in extended order, and a mounted reserve, and men standing to horse—a command of near a hundred, a pudding of pompous, incompetent, callow bosh, with Augustus by his howitzer, scientifically raising and lowering it to bear on the lone white tepee that shone in the plain. Four races were assembled to look on—the mess Chinaman, two black ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister

... so amiable. In fact he seemed hard put to it to keep from unrestrained merriment, and Tom, who found the affair more alarming as it progressed, would have preferred avoiding him altogether. He knew that Henry was calling him callow, a lightweight, charges well-nigh proved by his present undertaking, and to save himself from rout he had to remember that Henry was a heavy Grave man and that his own participation was only a question of common courtesy to a lady, anyway. ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis

... by gifts, yet still he gave; And all his gifts, though small, yet spoke his love. He picked the earliest strawberries in woods, The clustered filberds, and the purple grapes; He taught a prating stare to speak my name; And, when he found a nest of nightingales, Or callow linnets, he would show them me, And let me take ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... only by frankly putting away the unreasonable reverence. We must exorcise a superstition to save a faith. We must part with the unreal Bible if we would hold the real Bible. Iconoclasm is not pleasant to any but the callow youth. It may be none the less needful; and then the sober man must not shrink from ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton

... beaks for the choicest little grubs to be dropped into them. It is utterly absurd (and I am afraid the members of parliament in question are quite aware they are talking nonsense) to argue from the contented squawks of a brood of these callow creatures, that full grown swallows and larks have no need of wings, and are always happiest when their pinions ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... fed, Chirping warbler, bear'st away, Thou the busy buzzing bee, To thy callow brood a prey? Warbler, thou a warbler seize? Winged, one with lovely wings? Guest thyself, by Summer brought, Yellow guest whom Summer brings? Wilt not quickly let it drop? 'Tis not fair, indeed 'tis wrong, That the ceaseless warbler should Die ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... may deplore this exaggerated tyranny, by reason of its evil effect upon his moral nature, we cannot but feel glad that it existed, to afford a piquant contrast to the life awaiting him. Had he passed through the callow dissipations of Eton and Oxford, like other young men of his age, he would assuredly have lacked much of that splendid, pent vigour with which he rushed headlong into London life. He was so young and so handsome and so strong, that can we wonder if all the women fell at his feet? ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... away my tallest Pines— My dark tall Pines, that plumed the craggy ledge— High o'er the blue gorge, and all between The snowy peak and snow-white cataract Fostered the callow eaglet; from beneath Whose thick mysterious boughs in the dark morn The panther's roar came muffled while I ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... that I've heard something of the sort before," was Gilder's caustic comment. But his smile was still wholly sympathetic. He took a curious vicarious delight in the escapades of his son, probably because he himself had committed no follies in his callow days. "Why didn't you cable me?" he asked, puzzled at such restraint on the ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana

... and were at once pounced on by Leopold Lincoln Bunn, the local reporter, a callow youth aflame with the chance for a big story of more than ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White

... this Red Light o'casion, for jest prior to Dave alarmin' us by becomin' melodious, furtive—melody bein' wholly onnacheral to Dave, that a-way—thar's a callow pin-feather party comes caperin' in an' takin' Old Man Enright one side, asks can he yootilise Wolfville as a strategic p'int in a elopement he's goin' to ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis

... callow Blackstones soar too high, Quit common-sense, and reckless fly, Soon, Icarus-like, they headlong fall, And down come ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various

... discovered that the feminine nature alters little with environment. It was true, her new companions had broken with all the previous conceptions of decorum, but they had used their newly found liberty to enslave themselves still further with the idea of man-conquest. Officers—callow, heroic, squint-eyed, supercilious, superb, of any and every Allied country—officers were the quarry, and they the hunters. To love or not to love? Their talks, their thoughts, their lives concerned little else. ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... out, though he did not lose his backwardness. The life of the great university began to be real to him. Almost the whole sophomore class, in squads of twos and threes and sixes, visited Dale's rooms during that week. No Soph wanted to miss a sight of a captive bowl-man. Ken felt so callow and fresh in their presence that he scarcely responded to their jokes. Worry Arthur's nickname of "Kid" vied with another the coach conferred on Ken, and that was "Peg." It was significant slang expressing the little baseball man's baseball notion ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey

... a lady who reared these little birds from the nest; they would suck honey from her lips, and fly in and out of her chamber. Only think of seeing these callow fledglings! It is as if the winged thought could be domesticated, could learn to make its nest with us and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... that men hold dear. Heavens! to think of being held in such bondage! I could stand it with more patience if I were in prison sharing the hard lines of the fellows. But to be here; to be hand in glove with these boasting, audacious coxcombs, and forced to listen to their callow banter of us and our army, it makes me feel like a sneak and a traitor, and I'm glad ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... drilling, training, and pipe-claying the human mind all these things are necessary. I suppose, that, in our callow days, it is proper that we should be birched and wear fetters upon our little, bandy, sausage-like legs. But let me, now that I have come to man's estate, flout my old pedagogues, and, playing truant at my will, dawdle or labor, walk, skip, or run, go to my middle in quagmires, or climb ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... that, the glory of Covent Garden Ball had departed. It may be so. Yet the floor, with its strange conglomeration of music-hall artists, callow university men, shady horse-dealers, and raucous military infants, had an atmosphere of more than meretricious gaiety. The close of an old year and the birth of a new one touch ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse

... the breast some primrose-coloured down. Miss Fosbrook had to part with some favourite cockney notions of the beauty of infant birds, and on the other hand to gain a vivid idea of what is meant by "callow young." ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge

... decided well and wisely. Though the post of duty to which the callow lieutenantling will be ordered must, of course, be Fort Jumping Off Point, at the extreme end of the habitable globe. Well, my dear, I must bid you good night, for, see, it is on the stroke of eleven o'clock, and I am rather tired from my journey, for, you must know, we rushed ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... overpowered by her tears and lamentations, and the clamors of her callow brood. The corporal was sent up to the Alhambra under a guard, in his gallows garb, like a hooded friar; but with head erect and a face of iron. The Escribano was demanded in exchange, according to the cartel. The once bustling and self-sufficient man ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... more studied; and the artist takes a delight in adorning the scenes of violence, which he is forced to depict, with quiet touches of a gentle character—rustics fishing or irrigating their grounds, fish disporting themselves, birds flying from tree to tree, or watching the callow young which look up to them from ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... may evince interest grave; that Indian Prince Will alternate swell and wince as they struggle; The young Scottish Knight BALFOUR (who looks callow more than dour) Hopes the Silver Knight may score, By ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various

... with the callow young, which were now cherished in the aprons and bosoms of the maid-servants, and the little ladies of the family. I was pleased with this touch of nature; this feminine sympathy in the sufferings of the offspring, and the maternal anxiety of ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... always surrounded by a full squadron of little abbes, just as a general is by a covey of young officers. This is what that charming Saint Francois de Sales calls somewhere "les pretres blancs-becs," callow priests. Every career has its aspirants, who form a train for those who have attained eminence in it. There is no power which has not its dependents. There is no fortune which has not its court. The seekers of the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... and retainers, and the thought that the prosaic dollars of his countrymen would be substituted for the potent presence of the heir, tickled, it is to be feared, the saturnine humor of the consul. He had taken an invincible dislike to the callow representative of the McHulish, who he felt had in some extraordinary way imposed upon Custer's credulity. But then he had apparently imposed equally upon the practical Sir James. The thought of this sham ideal of feudal and ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... Aphrodite's kisses or Anacreon's drunken song. By such arts did Cleopatra win the master spirit of the world and make the mailed warrior her doting slave, indifferent alike to honor and to duty, content but to live and love. What wonder that the callow shepherd lad, unskilled in woman's wile, believed that his mistress loved him?— that his heart went out to the handsome coquette in a wild, passionate throb in which all Heaven's angels sang ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... me thirteen years ago, when I had just succeeded in stirring up a little Nevadian literary puddle myself, whose spume-flakes were beginning to blow thinly Californiaward. I started an inspection tramp through the southern mines of California. I was callow and conceited, and I resolved to try the virtue ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... amused at the ebullitions of jealousy that rolled so ominously into the young hearts of the chums. "Black as thunderclouds were their faces," he said, "as they saw these sweet young ladies, whom they in their callow affections would already wholly monopolise, kissed by a dozen different ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young

... write novels," retorted Marchmont, "that are neither indecent nor political, and expect 'em to succeed. Callow youth! Well, I must be off to the office. I've some copy up my sleeve, and if it's a go it'll give your book the biggest boom a novel ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells

... hath no advantage—it shall not soothe his slumber That a lock of his brown hair his father aye shall keep; For the last, he nothing grudgeth, it shall nought his quiet cumber, That in a golden mesh of HIS callow eaglets sleep. ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow

... marriage ceremony so often that she could say it backwards, never forgetting to cross her fingers before saying, "Until death do us part." The Proprietor drew the Stranger's attention to the group before the cage, a mischievous smile on his face as he looked over the half dozen of callow youths who are always in the ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe

... Mant's "Months" in our pocket. The good Bishop—who must have been an indefatigable bird-nester in his boyhood—though we answer for him that he never stole but one egg out of four, and left undisturbed the callow young—treats of those beauteous and wondrous structures in a style that might make Professor Rennie jealous, who has written like a Vitruvius on the architecture of birds. He expatiates with uncontrolled delight on the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... not be expected to tolerate a tyro from the backwoods. Stephanie was too well brought up to allow herself to be often openly rude; her taunts were generally ingeniously veiled, but they were none the less aggravating for that. The Cuckoo might be callow in some respects, but in others she was very much up-to-date. Though she would look obtuse, and pretend not to understand, as a matter of fact not a gibe was lost upon her, and she kept an exact account ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil

... routine of the office (he had no assistant but the callow Hopkins) was more exacting than laborious, but it kept him confined seven hours in the twenty-four. Still, there was time in the lengthened days as the year advanced for walking, rowing, and riding or driving about the picturesque country which surrounds Homeville. ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott

... their health somewhere along the Upper Congo. My Aunt Georgiana had been a music teacher at the Boston Conservatory, somewhere back in the latter sixties. One summer, while visiting in the little village among the Green Mountains where her ancestors had dwelt for generations, she had kindled the callow fancy of my uncle, Howard Carpenter, then an idle, shiftless boy of twenty-one. When she returned to her duties in Boston, Howard followed her, and the upshot of this infatuation was that she eloped with him, eluding ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather

... nests of pack-rats, tucked under shelves of Nature's making; past stratified millions of crumbling seashells that tell to geologists the tale of the salt-water ocean that once on a time, when the world was young and callow, filled this hole brim full; and presently, when you have begun to piece together the tattered fringes of your nerves, you realize that the canyon is even more wonderful when viewed from within than it is when ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb

... critical public could maintain that Smollett was on the same level as the other two. Ethically he is gross, though his grossness is accompanied by a full-blooded humour which is more mirth-compelling than the more polished wit of his rivals. I can remember in callow boyhood—puris omnia pura—reading "Peregrine Pickle," and laughing until I cried over the Banquet in the Fashion of the Ancients. I read it again in my manhood with the same effect, though with a greater appreciation of its ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... not. The callow youth knows his power. Anybody else in favor of the Peppers?" aloud, and looking ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney

... William Meanwell, Edward Callow, Esqrs., standing in a Row, fell all four at the same time, by an Ogle of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... loutish outlander, who boasted before the duke that he would fight me. He is a big callow fellow, and it would be a shame to ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major

... projected himself toward the hummock of Arctic ice. A flash later he had regretted the hazard. He perceived that he had misjudged the height of the hummock. Had the gaff been a foot longer he would have cleared the chasm. It occurred to him that he would break his back and merit the fate of his callow mistake. Then his toes caught the edge of the flat-topped hummock. His boots were of soft seal leather. He gripped the ice. And now he hung suspended and inert. The slender gaff bent under the prolonged strain of his weight and shook in response to a shiver of his arms. Courage ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... high stakes. Soon promoted to the berth of mate, he was granted cargo space for his own adventures in merchandise and a share of the profits. In these days the youth of twenty-one is likely to be a college undergraduate, rated too callow and unfit to be intrusted with the smallest business responsibilities and tolerantly regarded as unable to take care of himself. It provokes both a smile and a glow of pride, therefore, to recall those seasoned ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine

... strength and the nature and the inmost depths of the Russian genius, can by a single magic incantation divert our ideals to the higher life? Were there such a man, with what tears, with what affection, would not the grateful sons of Russia repay him! Yet age succeeds to age, and our callow youth still lies wrapped in shameful sloth, or strives and struggles to no purpose. God has not yet given us the man able ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... and felt warm tears over-brimming her eyes. She loved him for his extraordinary callow youth—which had carried the chaste chivalry of sixteen to the age of twice sixteen; she loved his little occasional tender gleams of womanliness. . . . And he was so easy to mystify and tease. She felt the warmth and the taut muscles ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna

... the "Unmentionables." He was callow, even for a subaltern. He was callow all over—like a canary that had not finished fledging itself. The worst of it was he had three times as much money as was good for him; Pluffles' Papa being a rich man and Pluffles being the only son. Pluffles' Mamma adored him. She was only a little ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... impression fostered by a sensational press that the average person of wealth devotes himself to the gaieties and dissipations of a pleasure-loving society, the truth is that after the self-centred years of callow youth are over most men and women take life seriously and only the few are idlers. If the investigator should go through the wealthy sections of the cities and suburbs, and record his observations, he would find that the men spend their days feeling the pulse of ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... complete economic dependence upon a polygamous sex who abuse the trust. Now Ann believes firmly in the holiness of maternity, but she flatly refuses to take upon herself the responsibility of an unwelcome tie. In this, as in everything, I cordially endorse her views. Ann is past the callow age. She has refused a number of men who were conspicuously her inferiors, though Dad has stormed a bit. Now you are the one man whom I consider her physical and mental equal, the one man to whom I may talk in this manner without fear of bigoted misunderstanding, ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple

... man as force? In my estimation those firemen and the chief who so splendidly controlled them are as far superior to the dancing youth, we meet at parties and hops, as meat is better than foam." Put that into your pipe, you callow striplings, who aim to be lady-killers! It is not your tennis suits, nor your small feet, nor your ability to dance and lead the german that makes a woman's heart kindle at your approach. It is your response to an emergency, your muscle in a tilt against odds, your ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden

... only allowed himself one look at the dazzling face and eyes framed in fur cap and boa. Afterwards he stood making a study of the ground, and answering her remarks in his usual stumbling fashion. What was it had gone out of her voice—simply the soft callow sounds of first youth? And what a personage she had grown in these twelve months—how formidably, consciously brilliant in look ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... vigour and freshness, which should have been stored up for the purposes of the hard struggle for existence in practical life, have been washed out of them by precocious mental debauchery—by book gluttony and lesson bibbing. Their faculties are worn out by the strain put upon their callow brains, and they are demoralised by worthless childish triumphs before the real work of life begins. I have no compassion for sloth, but youth has more need for intellectual rest than age; and the cheerfulness, the tenacity of purpose, the power of work which make many a successful ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... a cool and dainty vision. Well, to return. As Mrs. Crawley shook up her chintz cushions, she looked across at the Candle—a long look that took in the elaborate golden hair, the much too smart blouse, the abbreviated skirt showing the high-heeled slippers, the crowd of callow youths—and then, smiling slightly to herself, settled down in her chair. I grew hot all over for the Candle. I don't suppose I need trouble myself. I expect she is used to having women look at her like that, and doesn't mind. Does she really like silly boys so ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas

... of course you have," cried the old soldier, sarcastically, "and a nice step it is! What's it led to? Your having to take a lot more steps back again. I know; but you didn't, being such a young callow bit of a fellow. Soon as you do anything wrong you have to do a lot more bad things to cover it up. Lucky for you I catched you; so now then, ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn

... whatever be the consequence in the way of offending well-to-do supporters whose dream it has been that son of theirs shall "wag his head in a pu'pit," whatever be the disappointment caused to the uninspired ambitions of callow youth or the conceit of later years. The pulpit is not for sale! The honour of standing there is not to be dispensed as a reward or allowed as a compliment. Wealth has no rights and poverty no disabilities ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson

... "O callow innocence!" exclaimed the other. "Is it possible you do not know, or do not suspect, the intrigue in which you move? I find it in my heart to pity you! We are both women after all—poor girl, poor girl!—and who is born a woman is born a fool. And though I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... callow schoolboys of sixteen fought side by side with the fine flower and the lusty prime of Boer manhood, and many had their wives and children with them under the Transvaal colours, and not a few had brought their mothers. When an officer had any order to give his men, he prefaced ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... a frank, pleasant smile, "I have heard great reports of thy skill and prowess in France, both from Mackworth and from others. It will pleasure me greatly to have thee in my household; more especially," he added, "as it will get thee, callow as thou art, out of my Lord Fox's clutches. Our faction cannot do without the Earl of Mackworth's cunning wits, Sir Myles; ne'theless I would not like to put all my fate and fortune into his hands without bond. I hope that thou dost not rest thy ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle

... at once confess frankly that, with the usual susceptibility of callow youth, I promptly became captivated by the charms of our lovely hostess; and I may as well complete my confession by stating that, with the equally usual overweening conceit of callow youth, I quite expected ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... How did that callow, yellow thing Regret that April morn— Alas! how bitterly he rued The day that he ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field

... pity, Miss de Bassompierre; take it up in both hands, as you might a little callow gosling squattering out of bounds without leave; put it back in the warm nest of a heart whence it issued, and receive in your ear this whisper. If my Polly ever came to know by experience the uncertain nature of this world's goods, I should like her to act as Lucy acts: to work for herself, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... and[5] contend and fight with Cuchulain, [6]to drive him off from them on the ford[6] [7]at the early morning-hour[7] [8]on the morrow,[8] for that the men of Erin had failed her [9]to go and do battle with him.[9] "Ill would it befit me," quoth Fergus, "to fight with a callow young lad without any beard, and mine own disciple, [10]the fosterling of Ulster,[10] [11]the foster-child that sat on Conchobar's knee, the lad from Craeb Ruad ('Red Branch')."[11] Howbeit Medb [W.2861.] murmured sore that Fergus foreswore her combat ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown

... and more so when, on inquiry from a bystander, I understood that the performance was taken from Mr TERRISS'S Adelphi Theatre, which I had heard was conspicuous for excellence in fierce combats, blood-curdling duels, and scenes in court. And I narrated to him how I too, when a callow and unfledged hobbardyhoy, had engaged in theatrical entertainments, and played such parts in native dramas as heroic giant-killers and tiger slayers, in which I was an "au fait" and "facile princeps," also in select scenes from SHAKSPEARE'S play of Macbeth in ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey

... gave freely what he had, and the gift was beautiful. Those who have looked in his poetry for something else than poetry, or for poetry of some other kind, have not been slow to assert that he was a lady's poet; one who satisfied callow youths and school-girls by uttering commonplaces in graceful and musical shape, but who offered no strong meat for men. Miss Fuller called his poetry thin and the poet himself a "dandy Pindar." This is not true of his poetry, {486} or of the best ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... the readiness with which the American newspaper tumbles to these frauds. The yellow press especially luxuriates in them; woodcuts the callow bedizened bride, the jaded game-worn groom; dilates upon the big money interchanged; glows over the tin-plate stars and imaginary garters and pinchbeck crowns; and keeping the pictorial paraphernalia ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... of a clerical housekeeper for her laddie. Margaret Meiklewham—a woman of a severe countenance, and filled with the spirit of the Disruption—who had governed the minister of Pitscowrie till his decease, and had been the terror of callow young probationers, offered herself, and ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren

... serves the jade right for being so callow. How long she's been hanging upon the fellow! Such a promenading! To fair and dance parading! Everywhere as first she must shine, He was treating her always with tarts and wine; She began to think herself something fine, And ...
— Faust • Goethe



Words linked to "Callow" :   inexperient, inexperienced, fledgling, unfledged



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