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Second hand   /sˈɛkənd hænd/   Listen
Second hand

adverb
1.
From a source of previously owned goods.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Second hand" Quotes from Famous Books



... beg, by all that binds a friend, Let me go with you, when you next attend; For though you've every detail at command, There's something must be lost at second hand. Then the man's look, his manner—these may seem Mere things of course, perhaps, in your esteem, So privileged as you are: for me, I feel An inborn thirst, a more than common zeal, Up to the distant river-head to mount, And quaff these precious ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace

... the month of September, 1916, there appeared in the Cornhill Magazine a story entitled "The Lost Naval Papers." I had told this story at second hand, for the incidents had not occurred within my personal experience. One of the principals—to whom I had allotted the temporary name of Richard Cary—was an intimate friend, but I had never met the Scotland ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone

... at his watch again. The minute hand was moving with the speed at which the second hand ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West

... doubly true when we have only the testimony of contemporaries as to the effect which the oration produced. The fiery utterances of Adams, Otis, and Quincy were either not reported at all or very imperfectly reported, so that posterity can judge of them only at second hand. Patrick Henry has fared better, many of his orations being preserved in substance, if not in the letter, in Wirt's biography. Of these the most famous was the defiant speech in the Convention of ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... curiosity as to the interrupted narrative, even in despite of the evident frivolity of the narrator. The arrangement of the party in the coach compelled me to hear it at second hand, and I found it less frivolous than I had anticipated: it was an amour between the King and a peasant's daughter, in which the King conducted himself in a manner as little excusable in a monarch, as in a more humble individual. The amour ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney

... studying matter whose meaning is only symbolic. Since the mass of pupils are never going to become scientific specialists, it is much more important that they should get some insight into what scientific method means than that they should copy at long range and second hand the results which scientific men have reached. Students will not go so far, perhaps, in the "ground covered," but they will be sure and intelligent as far as they do go. And it is safe to say that the few who go on to be scientific experts ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... them off easily," and with a word of encouragement to the negroes, I returned to my post. As I neared the door, I saw two figures in white working over the guns. It was Dorothy and her mother, helping the negroes reload. I sent them back to the stair with affected sternness, but I got a second hand-clasp from Dorothy ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... a canoe, and swimming, and before the month of June was over Nugget was fairly proficient in all three. He purchased a second hand canoe which Ned picked out for him, and without the knowledge of his companions he wrote to his father in New ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon

... come mighty convenient just now. It will buy me a better-looking suit, second hand, and make a different man of me. With it I can get a place and set up ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger

... period—and to leave no room for cavil on the subject, these extracts will be made exclusively from newspapers published in the slave states, and generally in the immediate vicinity of the tragedies described. They will not be made second hand from northern papers, but from the original southern papers, which now lie on ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... on every page you read. It is like the breath of the morning and the song of birds. It tells of reality itself, instead of merely reiterating what dusty-minded professors have written about what other previous professors have thought. Nothing in Bergson is shop-worn or at second hand. ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... good-sized show," he mused. "But all their trappings are second hand. They have bought them up from some show that has discarded them. That's one thing the Sparling outfit never does. All their stuff is new nearly every season. Sully may have some of our old trappings, for all ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... therefore, either has read Suarez and has totally misrepresented him—a hypothesis which, I hope I need hardly say, I do not for a moment entertain: or, he has got his information at second hand, and has himself been deceived. But in that case, it is surely an imprudence on his part, to reproach me with having "read Suarez ad hoc, and evidently without the guidance of anyone familiar with that author." No doubt, in the matter of guidance, Mr. Mivart has the advantage of ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... my daughter—not for letting Mr. Franklin kiss her; Mr. Franklin was welcome to THAT—but for forcing me to tell her foolish story at second hand. However, there was no help for it now but to mention the circumstances. Mr. Franklin's merriment all died away as I went on. He sat knitting his eyebrows, and twisting his beard. When I had done, he repeated after me two of the questions which the chief juggler had ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... from internal embarrassment. When his father spoke to him about his legal studies, he did not exactly laugh at his father's ignorance, but he recapitulated to his father so much of Mr. Monk's wisdom at second hand,—showing plainly that it was his business to study the arts of speech and the technicalities of the House, and not to study law,—that his father had nothing further to say. He had become a man of such dimensions that an ordinary father could hardly dare to inquire into his proceedings; and as ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... spits—nor would the guests have had any objection, during a campaign, to cook the meat in the fashion described by Froissart, between themselves and the saddle. These were the squirearchy; Malcolm's late persecutors did not aspire to the benches around these boards, or only at second hand, and for the most part had no seat but the unclean straw and rushes ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... 'I know your kind offices at second hand, but on the best authority; through Little Dorrit.—I mean,' he explained, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... honest citizen; she prefers legitimate to illegitimate business; she is never an outlaw until her proper sources of supply fail; she will not touch honey as long as honey-yielding flowers can be found; she always prefers to go to the fountain-head, and dislikes to take her sweets at second hand. But in the fall, after the flowers have failed, she can be tempted. The bee-hunter takes advantage of this fact; he betrays her with a little honey. He wants to steal her stores, and he first encourages her to steal his, then follows the thief home ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs

... disagreeable to him; and in the Senate itself he had his high friends and connections who threw a shield over him when his audacity had gone beyond endurance. We know Clodius only from Cicero; and a picture of him from a second hand might have made his position more intelligible, if not more reputable. Even in Rome it is scarcely credible that the Clodius of Cicero could have played such a part, or that the death of such a man should have been regarded as a national calamity. Cicero says that Clodius revived Catiline's ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... and to my great surprise, that he was not qualified to maintain such a discussion, for he was alike ignorant of Italian and German, and had only read the works of the Germans in translations, and but little of Italian poetry, even at second hand. For my part, I confessed, with an equal ingenuousness, that I knew nothing of German, and but little of Italian! that I had spoken only through others, and like him, had hitherto seen by the glimmering ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 528, Saturday, January 7, 1832 • Various

... Cave of Machpelah on March tenth, at noon. It is of interest to note that his account of the Cave agrees fully with that of Conder. It is now quite certain that he was really there in person, and his narrative was not made up at second hand. The visit of Reubeni, as well as Sabbatai Zebi's, gave new vogue to the place. When Sabbatai was there, a little before the year 1666, the Jews were awake and up all night, so as not to lose an instant of the sacred intercourse ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams

... so aroused cannot feed it. He can only give money to an impersonal organization, or to a personification which he calls Mr. Hoover. His money does not reach that child. It goes to a general pool from which a mass of children are fed. And so just as the idea is second hand, so are the effects of the action second hand. The cognition is indirect, the conation is indirect, only the effect is immediate. Of the three parts of the process, the stimulus comes from somewhere out of sight, the response reaches somewhere out of sight, only the emotion exists entirely within ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... Fannie that evening on his return from the station. He only received at second hand her request to call in the morning. She had gone to bed and taken her medicine, and was resting quietly, said the nurse. But when John asked if the patient was asleep, the nurse confessed she hardly thought so. She might have told how, listening kindly at the patient's door, she had heard ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable

... the boy's all right, Mr. Gard, even if Mahr isn't. And after all, there may not be a word of truth in that romance I spun to you. We couldn't land a thing. What made us think there might be something in it was that we got it second hand from an old servant of Mahr's. He told the man that told us; but the old ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford

... the fray is over, a man may appear again with safety.—Oh, the rogues are caught, I see, and the damsels delivered. This was the effect of my valour at the second hand. ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... aisle of the briefing room, and took his customary stance on the platform in front. His face looked stern, and he held his hands clasped behind his back. His royal blue uniform was neat and trim. Over his head, the second hand of the big clock whirled endlessly. In the silence of the briefing room, it seemed to be ticking much ...
— The Judas Valley • Gerald Vance

... Harris's Hermes caught his fancy, and after having pondered for some time on the alternative, whether he should postpone legs in favour of head, or vice versa, he concluded on the former, saying to himself that Hermes would be snatched up by the first person who saw it; but that the second hand silk stockings could be got at any time. The volume was eighteen pence; yet so restricted was our hero's finances, that this little sum deranged his stocking ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various

... explain; Some said, "Old Dutchman come again!" Some took his time,—at least they tried, But what it was could none decide; One said he couldn't understand What happened to his second hand; One said 2.10; that could n't be— More like two twenty-two or three; Old Hiram settled it at last; "The time ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... plantations in communication with the rest of the world by their coasting craft plying to Boston. Dissatisfied companies from Barbadoes seeking a less torrid climate next arrived. Thus the region was settled in the first instance at second hand from older colonies. To these came settlers direct from England, such emigrants as the proprietors could persuade to the undertaking, and such as were impelled by the evil state of England in the last days of the Stuarts, or drawn by the ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... felt the surge of blood in all my vessels. I moved my hand to touch the bulkhead, and found that I could count the number of microseconds it took for the nerve impulses to travel from my fingers to my brain. Time seemed to have slowed down, it took an hour for the second hand on the panel clock to ...
— Last Resort • Stephen Bartholomew

... all that use sorceries, incantations, and spells are not witches, or, as we term them, magicians. I conceive there is a traditional magic not learned immediately from the Devil, but at second hand from his scholars, who, having once the secret betrayed, are able, and do empirically practice without his advice, they both proceeding upon the principles of nature; where actives aptly conjoined to disposed passives will under any master produce their effects. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... tapsters were kept in exercise. Our speech, therefore, was of tithes and creeds, of beeves and grain, of commodities wet and dry, and the solvency of the retail dealers, occasionally varied by the description of a siege, or battle, in Flanders, which, perhaps, the narrator only gave me at second hand. Robbers, a fertile and alarming theme, filled up every vacancy; and the names of the Golden Farmer, the Flying Highwayman, Jack Needham, and other Beggars' Opera heroes, were familiar in our mouths as household words. At such tales, like children closing ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... fifteen years ago, but he had never gone back. Never sought the second hand-clasp that would have been his. Never unfolded to those interested ears his personal experiences with the pioneer column that led the way to do the path-finding in Rhodesia. In the hush of the afternoon, with his head bowed on his ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page

... in the case of Justin. Either the Clementine writer quotes our present Gospels, or else he quotes some other composition later than them, and which implies them. In other words, if he does not bear witness to our Gospels at first hand, he does so at second hand, and by the interposition of a further intermediate stage. It is quite possible that he may have had access to such a tertiary document, and that it may be the same which is the source of his apocryphal quotations: that he did draw from apocryphal sources, ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday

... him, but Disraeli raised his hand as if to deprecate their interference, and they stole back to their places conscious that they were forbidden to interrupt. Then, at last, when the second hand of the clock had passed three times round its course, the most remarkable silence which the House had ever experienced within living memory was broken as the Tory leader slowly began once ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... Barrows, and the Drydens drank in so much of their enthusiasm and inspiration, and to cast off entirely that slavish dependence upon the opinions of others which they must feel, who take their knowledge of what it is either their duty, their interest, or their ambition to learn, at second hand. ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... the northward and English soldiers were hurrying up from the south; trainloads of wounded had been brought in under cover of the night and distributed among the improvised hospitals; but, conceding these things to be true, we knew of them only at second hand. By the evidence of what we ourselves saw we were able to note few shifts in the superficial ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... clerks, because there's only one Jaggers, and people won't have him at second hand. There are only four of us. Would you like to see 'em? You are one of us, ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... and helped me fix up the nursery. Yes, I was expecting in the spring. That's why he was so for keeping things from me. We painted the woodwork white and gave a couple of coats to a little brown crib I had picked up second hand. He was for buying an enameled one on casters—he loved the best. Next night—next night—he—didn't come home—and at eight o'clock the following morning the extras were on the street—about the killing. ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... Mr Bradley's philosophy as a whole shows little sympathy for Buddhism but a wondrous resemblance both in thought and language to the Vedanta. This is the more remarkable because there is no trace in his works of Sanskrit learning or even of Indian influence at second hand. A peculiarly original and independent mind seems to have worked its way to many of the doctrines of the Advaita, without entirely adopting its general conclusions, for I doubt if Sankara would have said "the positive relation ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the Wazir Dandan said to Zau al-Makan, "Thus spake the second hand maid to the King who hath found mercy, Omar bin al-Nu'uman. 'Quoth a man to Mohammed bin Abdillah, Exhort thou me!' 'I exhort thee,' replied he, 'to be a self ruler, an abstainer in this world, and in the next a greedy slave.' ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... of the moment, Carey placed a second hand to the bucket and gave it a quick swing round, discharging its contents in an arc, with the intention of dowsing the savages; but they were too quick for him, bounding back, grinning with delight at their cleverness, but coming forward again, laughing ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn

... some bankrupt Pasha, Marchetto?" I inquired. Everything offered for sale in the bazaar at second hand is said to come from the establishment of a Pasha; the statement ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford

... tradesmen, usurers, apothecaries, cheats, coiners, and adulterers of wares. Now and then, when he is on the merry pin, his second supper is of serving-wenches who, after they have by stealth soaked their faces with their master's good liquor, fill up the vessel with it at second hand, or with other ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... it is the season Of restlessness and strife; Of passion and unreason, And ignorance of life. Since, though his cheeks have roses, No boy can understand That everything he knows is A graft at second hand. ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... Northern literature. These family records never extend over more than one generation, and sometimes they deal with but a few years. They are half-way between romance and history, with the balance oftenest in favor of truth. In this group are found Egils Saga, known at second hand to Warton, the Eyrbyggja Saga, translated by Walter Scott, and the Laxdaela Saga. It is the Laxdaela Saga that gives the story told by Morris in "The Lovers of Gudrun." Among sagas it is famous for its fine ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby

... nothing at second hand," said Erica. "He is a shoe maker, as grand-looking a fellow as you ever saw, fond of reading, and very thoughtful, and with more quiet common sense than almost any I ever met. He had been brought up to believe ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... clay. These would be legitimate models for the potter and we may therefore expect to find them repeated in earthenware. In this way the art has acquired a multitude of new forms, some of which may be natural forms at second hand, that is to say, with modifications imposed upon them by the material in which they were first shaped. But all materials other than clay are exceedingly intractable, and impress their own characters so decidedly upon forms produced in them that ultimate originals, ...
— Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in Ceramic Art. • William Henry Holmes

... fought, but we have in the chronicles something of great value—a true outline of the general situation, and some stirring narratives of the clash and wrestling of armed men, compiled either at first hand from the recollections of those who were actually on the field, or else taken at second hand from others who made notes of what had been told them by those present at the battles. This, then, is what I meant when I said that in early times history was an art. Its method ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... set everyone talking, because it is of a vital interest. It may be of a vital interest, without being at all the kind of book people want to buy; it may be the kind of book that they are content to know at second hand; there are such fatal books; but hearing so much, and reading so much about it, the author cannot help hoping that it has sold much more than the publisher says. The publisher is undoubtedly honest, however, and the author ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... right off, though I must confess that the cards were with me, and that my adversary could have done no more. In the second, I never played better and saved a trick by a finesse, but the Bart voled me once, marked the king, and ran out in the second hand. My faith, we were so excited that he laid his helmet down beside him and I ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle

... among whom were most of his distinguished contemporaries. As a writer he possessed a finished style, clear, measured, and stately, which carried his well-arranged narrative as on a full and steady stream; he was also cool and sagacious but, like Hume, he was apt to take his facts at second hand, and the vast additional material which has been in course of accumulation since his day has rendered the value of his work more and more literary, and less and ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... every moth that flutters round the candle, till his wings be burnt away, and he left the shattered remnant of what he erstwhile was," responded Cale, with a wise shake of the head. "But no man ever yet was found wise enough to take experience at second hand. So if you are bent on seeing the world—which, let me tell you, is an evil thing at best—I will try, for the love I bear to Captain Jack, and indeed to all honest youths, to put you in the way of seeing it with as little hurt to yourself as may be. And so ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green

... special interest and importance and particularly as bearing on the question whether Leonardo himself made the observations recorded at the places mentioned or merely noted the statements from hearsay. In a few instances he himself tells us that he writes at second hand. In some cases again, although the style and expressions used make it seem highly probable that he has derived his information from others— though, as it seems to me, these cases are not very numerous—we find, on the other hand, among ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... at second hand I know various amiable little odds and ends such as are commonly reported by the uncharitable and censorious," Ludovic answered mildly. "Probably more than half of these little treasures are pure fiction, generated by ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... Reeve an bos dear sir I like to git me a par [pair] second hand pance dont a fail or elce I will be dout [without] a pare to go eny where so send me something. Dont a fail an send me a par of youre pance [or] i will hafter go to work for somebody to git some. ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... on my bedclothes and was preparing to start on, when some movement caught my eye and I looked astern to the rail. A sinewy hand, dripping with water, was clutching the rail. A second hand took form in the darkness beside it. I watched, fascinated. What visitant from the gloom of the deep was I to behold? Whatever it was, I knew that it was climbing aboard by the log-line. I saw a head, the hair wet and straight, shape itself, and then the unmistakable ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... Now my dear child, you are worrying yourself over trifles. [His second hand joins the first in holding her hands.] Women do it every day. Because you have changed your mind, or did not know you mind, because you have—to use an unnecessarily harsh ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London

... SECOND HAND BOOKS.—A List of valuable Second-hand Books in Theology, Political Economy, History, and Miscellaneous and Classical Literature, selected from his very Extensive Stock, Gratis, on Receipt of One ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various

... the front, from the Lago di Garda to the Stelvio and the frontier of Switzerland, is not at present the scene of important operations, so I contented myself by ascertaining at second hand how matters stand between the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... 'With a second hand on board to steer while I conned I should have felt less of an ass. As it was, I knew I ought to be facing the music in the offing, and cursed myself for having broken my rule and gone blundering into this confounded short cut. ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... her sex precluded this silent spirit of the Girondists from taking part in these counsels, if, instead of acting second hand through her husband, she could have taken the lead, as her genius, perception, honesty, and courage entitled her to do, who knows that she might not have averted the disasters which befell the party ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... other went on calmly. "But your objection only brings one nearer the goal. How many who care only for applause content themselves to-day, unfortunately, with Nature at second hand! Without returning to her eternally fresh, inexhaustible spring, they draw from the conveniently accessible wells which the great ancients ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... he incontinently dished, and to my huge astonishment they turned out to be three couple of our woodcock, which that indefatigable varlet had picked, and baked under the ashes, according to some strange idea, whether original, or borrowed at second hand from his master, I never was enabled ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)

... desire for it. With most human beings, the imagination is a heavy bird of feeble wing; it flies low, seeing only the things of the earth. When they describe heaven, it has houses of marble and streets of gold. Their pretense to sight of higher things is either sheer pretense or sight at second hand. Susan was of the few whose fancy can soar. She saw the earthy things; she saw the things of the upper regions also. And she saw the lower region from the altitudes of ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... took the share in them that was becoming to faithful gentlemen vowed to the Reform, and I owe my American birthright to the honourable fact that they fought on the losing side. As I myself am endowed with a fair allowance of stubbornness, and with a strong distaste to taking my opinions at second hand, I certainly should have been with my kinsfolk in that fight had I lived in their day; and since my destiny was theirs to determine I am strongly grateful to them for having shaped ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier

... stood at his elbow before the startled lad realized that he was not alone. A vice-like hand seized his arm so that he could not turn his rifle upon this unexpected enemy. Before he could cry out a second hand was pressed firmly over his parted lips. "No speak!" breathed a voice in Enoch Harding's ear. ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster

... escaped them when the awful blast had knocked them into the hole and deprived them of consciousness. Fortunately none of the missing parts was very small and in twenty minutes of close scrutiny every piece was assembled. They did not find the second hand lamp, however. ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood

... work. In the matter of current intelligence the case of the speaker of the small language is still worse. His newspaper will need to be cheaply served, his home intelligence will be cut and restricted, his foreign news belated and second hand. Moreover, to travel even a little distance or to conduct anything but the smallest business enterprise will be exceptionally inconvenient to him. The Englishman who knows no language but his own may travel well-nigh all over the world and everywhere meet some one who can speak his tongue. ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... after monarch of the line. Nor is it surprising that monarchs should take pleasure in the stage, since the theatre is one of the places which brings them and their subjects together in the enjoyment of common emotions, and shows them, if only at second hand, the domestic lives of millions, from personal acquaintance with which their royal ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... was eighteen. In all these years she had not seen Rule Rothsay. She only heard from him through his letters to her Uncle Clarence, reported second hand to herself. She knew that in these five years Rule had risen, step by step, in the office where he had begun his apprenticeship; that he had risen to be foreman, then sub-editor, and now he was part proprietor and one of the ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... see about that. And about the room. And I can get what you want in furniture, at a second hand place, where the articles will ...
— Trading • Susan Warner

... not bright, of course—you would not expect that—but good-hearted and companionable, obedient to their parents and the priest; and as they grew up they became properly stocked with narrowness and prejudices got at second hand from their elders, and adopted without reserve; and without examination also—which goes without saying. Their religion was inherited, their politics the same. John Huss and his sort might find fault with ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain

... sent for you"; and Mr Biggs pulled out a huge silver watch, almost as big as a Norfolk turnip. A Jew had sold him the watch; the boatswain had heard of repeaters, and wished to have one. Moses had only shown him watches with the hour and minute hands; he now produced one with a second hand, telling ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat

... least, the personal religion will prove itself more fundamental than either theology or ecclesiasticism. Churches when once established live at second hand upon tradition, but the founders of every Church owed their power originally to the fact of their direct personal communion with the divine. Not only the superhuman founders, the Christ, the Buddha, Mahomet, but all the originators ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... shrewd old fellow pulled his silver time-piece from his pocket and placed it in the hollow of his hand. Then he fixed his eyes upon its white face and stood motionless, watching the second hand make its little circuit. When the sixty seconds had been counted, he held up his hand with profound gravity ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond

... he saw he had already been standing there at rigid attention a full five minutes. The second hand crept around again. Six minutes! It dragged slowly ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans

... recalls the work of the Alexandrian school. This was, indeed, to be expected, seeing that in both cases there was a mingling of Hebraism and Hellenism. In Spain, however, the Jews acquired Hellenism at second hand, and through the somewhat distorted medium of Arabic translations or scholastic misunderstanding, and hence the harmony is neither complete nor pure. They endeavored to show that the teachings of Aristotle are implicit ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich

... twelve on Brion's watch, then the minute hand. The second hand closed the gap and for a tenth of a second the three hands were one. Then the second hand ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison

... as the Candace. That was the Marquis's name for her: gave it after a trip to Egypt. He bought her second hand, and rechristened her while she was being redecorated. He spared no expense, which he could well afford, seeing that he never paid a penny. I got her at cost price, as you may say. But these plotters are going to claim that they were inveigled on board under false pretences, by ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... Humours; the Mind being often pleased with those Perfections which are new to it, and which it does not find among its own Accomplishments. Besides that a Man in some measure supplies his own Defects, and fancies himself at second hand possessed of those good Qualities and Endowments, which are in the possession of him who in the Eye of the World is looked on ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... what Dr. Coutras related to me in his words, but in my own, for I cannot hope to give at second hand any impression of his vivacious delivery. He had a deep, resonant voice, fitted to his massive frame, and a keen sense of the dramatic. To listen to him was, as the phrase goes, as good as a play; ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham

... he had never hesitated to accept invitations to take part in League conventions. But this was different. He made no answer for a minute. And in the pause his mind was busy with all he knew, and all he had acquired at second hand, about the relations of colored Christians and white, and particularly about what might be thought and said if it should be announced that he was to speak at a Negro Epworth League convention. And then ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt

... is very palpable that Shakespeare did not. The second hand in the play was the reviser of 1592 who introduced the Talbot passages. There cannot be the slightest doubt that this was George Peele, who in 1592, and for some time before and later, was the principal producer and reviser of plays for the Lord Admiral's company. ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson

... great many railroads were built like this, even the regular roads that were used all the year round. But gradually they were all changed, and the rails were made the same on railroads all over the country, and then these people were able to get their cars and the other things they needed second hand. And it's plenty good enough, of course, for all the use anyone wants ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart

... succeeds to her old clothes through the law, is small, not handsome, and a quarrelsome female who thinks she has a mission. The people of this country had rather see Fanny Davenport without any wardrobe to speak of than to see Dickinson with clothes enough to start a second hand store. ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck

... experiment and observation, and was at pains to verify experimentally the observations of others which came within his field. Without verification he would not rely upon them. Indeed, he was so careful to give nothing at second hand that one of his scientific friends gently reproached him for wasting his time in re-investigating matters already worked over by competent observers. "Poor ——," he remarked afterwards, "if that is his own practice, his work will never ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley

... only is the mother injured, instead of being benefited by such a practice, but great injury, sometimes life-long in its consequences, is inflicted upon the babe at her breast who takes the intoxicating poison at second hand, and is influenced in a fourfold degree from its feebleness and ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg

... them. His object was simply to tell the story of the Conquest, as he had seen it. He was to deal with facts, not with words, which he wisely left to those who came into the field after the laborers had quilted it, to garner up what they could at second hand. ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... duodecimo, equals not the years of their unfinished, or just completed minority, imagine that they have got far in advance of the vulgar herd, and are both philosophers and gentlemen if they have learned at second hand, a few scoffs and sneers at the Bible, from Paine, Voltaire, Bolingbroke, or Hume. One would think, could he listen to their impudence, that Bacon, Newton, Locke, and all the great masters of science, ...
— The Christian Foundation, May, 1880

... they approved in chorus. Possibility of pardon and reinstatement, though only heard of at second hand, had brought unity into being. And unity ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... the soil of his own country. So bitterly did they hate one another that they did not speak but wrote their messages, though they could have shaken hands where they sat. Even that was too close quarters, and they ended up by negotiating at second hand through the foreign ambassadors, all at the same table, but each looking straight past the other as if he ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis

... Louis, then a frontier settlement on the Mississippi, where the chief branch of his business had consisted in furnishing Indian traders with goods and equipments. In this way, he had acquired much knowledge of the trade at second hand, and of the various tribes, and the interior country over ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving

... it?" said Elinor. "You asserted all your authority yourself this morning, and only made matters worse. Yet you expect her to obey you at second hand. Besides, she is bound in honor not to desert me now; and I will tell her so, too, if I see any sign of her letting ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... present occasion (which made it necessary that I should acquaint myself with it) I own that my own knowledge of these miscellaneous writings was by no means thorough. It is now pretty complete; but the idea which I previously had of them at first and second hand, though a little improved, has not very materially altered. Though in all this hack-work Fielding displayed, partially and at intervals, the same qualities which he displayed eminently and constantly in the four great books here given, he was not, as ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding

... original steam-packet there were some agreeable fellows, officers, whom I believe I never mentioned to you. They have been long expecting your worship's offspring, and have gained great fame in repeating his third-rate stories at second hand; so in consequence of these messengers I am received with branches of palm. Here the younkers do nothing but play rackets, billiards, and cards, race and smoke. To govern men, you must either excel them ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... said Valentin. "Heaven forbid! I wouldn't for the world have missed knowing her. She is really extraordinary. The way she has already spread her wings is amazing. I don't know when a woman has amused me more. But excuse me," he added in an instant; "she doesn't amuse you, at second hand, and the subject is an impure one. Let us talk of something else." Valentin introduced another topic, but within five minutes Newman observed that, by a bold transition, he had reverted to Mademoiselle Nioche, and was giving ...
— The American • Henry James

... clothes might have been bought at a second hand dealer's for a very moderate sum—for they were rent in various places, and no attempt had been made to patch them—was the first speaker, and he howled in the most approved manner, and even our political friends might have taken a lesson from him. He had ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... It may be the period of fixed habits, of those helpless iterances which imply no intentions or purposes; but it is not the period in which the mind continues in this or that desire and strives for its fulfilment. The same poet who sang at second hand those words ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... of the world for the last quarter of a century to an intelligent and once well-educated man who has known nothing of what has happened in all that time except what he might learn from ignorant natives, who had obtained their knowledge second hand from Spanish tax collectors only a trifle less ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme

... nothing about him!" said he. "I thought he had been killed. All I know I heard at second hand from others. I only know that he fell in with the Rostovs.... What ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... of theology from the stained glass that threw its light upon her as she prayed. And there is scarcely a detail of external effect in the chronicles and romances of the time, but might have been borrowed at second hand from a piece of tapestry. It was a stage in the history of mankind which we may see paralleled to some extent in the first infant school, where the representations of lions and elephants alternate round the wall with moral verses and trite presentments ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Bijoux, nor the slightest notice from Pickering about omitting 4 out of 5 of my things. The best thing is never to hear of such a thing as a bookseller again, or to think there are publishers: second hand Stationers and Old Book Stalls for me. Authorship should be an idea ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... in three cases where attacks were defeated, the subjects were happily married men, and in two, if not in the three (the third case the writer gathered at second hand and fortunately remembered later), they had children. On the third visit of Miss Freer to B—— that lady notes that "the influence is evil and horrible. The worn features at breakfast were ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris

... cannot bind the law-maker; he, and he alone, is above the law. But a judge, a person exercising a judicial capacity, is neither to apply to original justice, nor to a discretionary application of it. He goes to justice and discretion only at second hand, and through the medium of some superiors. He is to work neither upon his opinion of the one nor of the other; but upon a fixed rule, of which he has not the making, but singly and solely the application ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke

... wholesome exercise and pure air of the fore-castle deck. For as in this world, head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it. But wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a merchant ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... soul in patience till twelve o'clock, the hour being yet barely 11:30 a. m., Theydon tackled a page of reviews, since there is always consolation for a writer in learning at second hand what sheer drivel ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy

... scholar and a gentleman, and, what is better than either, like a Christian. Those who accuse him of having written bitterly against the Calvinists cannot, one would imagine, have read his writings, but must have taken at second hand the cruelly unjust representation of them given by his opponents.[789] 'If ever,' wrote Southey, with perfect truth, 'true Christian charity was manifested in polemical writing, it was by Fletcher of Madeley.' ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... like me, obliged to crouch in presence of those vulgar, those incapable minds, that do but consider the bent back as the footstool of pride. Every man is too busy to act in behalf of others; pity me therefore, but advise me not to hope assistance, by petitioning princes at second hand. I know your good wishes, and, for these, I have nothing to return ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck

... Bishop still stands in the Atlantic, and Leopold, now the second hand, explains to the Margate trippers the wonders of the ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason



Words linked to "Second hand" :   mediator, sweep hand, intermediary, intercessor, go-between, sweep-second, secondhand, hand, intermediator



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