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More "Amateur" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and so draw his sting and leave him harmless for the future. Apart from the law he seems a kindly, good-natured person, and I only mention him because you were particular that I should send some description of the people who surround us. He is curiously employed at present, for, being an amateur astronomer, he has an excellent telescope, with which he lies upon the roof of his own house and sweeps the moor all day in the hope of catching a glimpse of the escaped convict. If he would confine his energies to this all would be well, ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... as beautiful a person as ever I saw in my life. There is not one of our reigning girls to be compared with her for a moment and even my Lord Hervey's Molly Lepel would vanish beside her, nor could Paris have any doubt where to bestow the apple. I am an amateur of beauty and can't forget your Ladyship's praise of my commendation of the fair Fatima, saying you never before knew one fine woman do such justice to another. So ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... for the public he writes; he is of no use to artists. I doubt whether any man in any branch of art could be found who would honestly say he had ever learned anything from the art critic, who, after all, is only an amateur. The criticism we value, and that which really helps, is that of our brother artists, often sharp and unsparing, but always salutary and useful. And if useless to the artist, art criticism is harmful to the public, who take their opinion from it at second hand. Were all ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... calcium phosphate, like other beasts. An amateur chemist found out that they were an organically deposited boron carbide, which is harder than any other substance but crystallized carbon—diamond. In fact, diny teeth, being organic, seemed to be an especially hard form of boron ...
— Attention Saint Patrick • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... was Miss Madge Hampton, an amateur of some small private means, and he thought no more about her. Rehearsal in an insignificant part displayed her as capable and willing ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... with ease and grace, her music always gave pleasure. One or two of the other ladies followed her, at the piano—Mary Van Horne, and a friend who had come with her; but their performance was very indifferent. It was rarely that one heard anything approaching to really good amateur music, in this country, fifteen years ago, at the date ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... at table one has to outshine other people, and show the difference between amateur and professional: is that to be done without thought ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... and worms puts me in mind of something I heard yesterday," said Snap. "It's about trick photography. An amateur photographer showed a picture he had of what looked like a fierce snake on a rail fence. By and by he gave the trick away. The snake was nothing but a garden worm wound around some little sticks and toothpicks, and the picture had been snapped at ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill
... The. Mary Roberts Rinehart. After Noon. Susan Ertz. Ah, the Delicate Passion. Elizabeth Hall Yates. Ailsa Page. Robert W. Chambers. Alcatraz. Max Brand. All at Sea. Carolyn Wells. All the Way by Water. Elizabeth Stancy Payne. Altar of Friendship, The. Blanche Upright. Amateur Gentleman. Jeffery Farnol. Amateur Inn, The. Albert Payson Terhune. Anabel at Sea. Samuel Merwin. An Accidental Accomplice. William Johnston. Ancestor Jorico. William J. Locke. And They Lived Happily Ever After. Meredith Nicholson. ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... plumbago is an organic, insoluble substance, not subject to the chemical changes which moisture, the atmosphere, and fluids accidentally spilled, and solvents purposely applied, make in the various kinds of ink which are known to us. The writer discovered this in the course of many amateur print- and book-cleaning experiments, and has since found his experience confirmed by the high authority of M. Bonnardot, in his "Essai sur l'Art de Restaurer les Estampes et les Livres." Paris, 1858.[ee] Of the annotations ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... explain. At the sign of the local Whisky Barrel there is a game of faro now in progress. Two very charming young gentlemen, named Jimmie and Bart, punchers of cattle, whatever that may be, are deciding things for Roger Hapgood and William Conniston, Junior, of New York. Each of the amateur gamblers—and they actually do play very badly, Roger!—has before him a hundred dollars of my money. If they win to-night I get back two hundred dollars plus half their winnings, and you and I take ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... along for the next ten minutes or so, before the first difficulty that presented itself to the amateur mahout appeared in front; for after they had pursued the regular elephant-path beyond the clearing for some little time, there in front was a dividing of the road, and upon reaching this the elephant stopped as if in doubt, and began slowly swinging his head, ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... was. I thought it must be. Well, I never knew you could paint. It's beautiful—for an amateur." She said this firmly and yet endearingly, and met his eyes with her eyes. It was her tactful method of politely causing him to see that she had not accepted last night's yarn very seriously. ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... the only man I ever liked. You took him, and you appear to be in rude health, so there is no chance for me. I must do something, Teddy, something definite. I can't potter round the house, all my days. The mother is housekeeper; I must have something more absorbing than dusting and salads and amateur photography to fill ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... prevailed everywhere, and the world unseen deployed its strongest forces. At Monte Video, for example, falling casually into a circle of spiritualists, he was seated, surrounded by a family of these unconscious and amateur diabolists, before an open window at night time; across the broad mouth of the river a great shaft of soft light from the lamp of the lighthouse opposite shone in mid-air, over the bosom of the water, and as it fell upon their faces he discerned, floating within ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... prince nor the peasant came scathless out of the encounter. Both were well scratched; but neither had received any wound of a serious nature; and the amateur hunter rose once more to his feet, conscious of having made ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... I told him the usual thing!" I admitted. "I told him you were a close personal friend; a sort of amateur millionaire; a person of the highest respectability—everything you ought to be, in fact. He went away perfectly satisfied and determined to have nothing to do with ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the exception of an occasional visitor, were used only by the oystermen, fishermen, and wild-fowl shooters of Barnegat and Little Egg Harbor bays, until the New Jersey Southern Railroad and its connecting branches penetrated to the eastern shores of New Jersey, when educated amateur sportsmen from the cities quickly recognized in the little gunning-punt all they had long desired to combine ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... neatness and dispatch. I rather think she could repair one also. I have still in my possession a small box of her making, which, for execution and durability, I will match against the performance of any rival amateur of the opposite sex. In spite, however, of such freaks, and as if to make amends for them, Miss Jess possessed one of the softest and most impressionable hearts which ever fell to the lot of a mature maiden of forty-five. She had suffered from no less than six different attachments during her life ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... fancy himself an amateur detective at once," she said to her aunt. Whereupon that lady returned grimly she would gladly become a detective for the time being if she thought there was any chance of finding the wretches, ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... G. Piffard exhibited in New York to a society of amateur photographers a new method of taking instantaneous photographs by means of a brilliant light made by sprinkling ten or fifteen grains of magnesium powder on about six grains of gun-cotton. When this is flashed in a dark apartment it gives light enough to take ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... :cookbook: /n./ [from amateur electronics and radio] A book of small code segments that the reader can use to do various {magic} things in programs. One current example is the "{{PostScript}} Language Tutorial and Cookbook" by Adobe Systems, Inc (Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-10179-3), ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... little later, nothing its shrewdest overseer could plan would have the power to vex him. She, waiting, smiled. Makrisi, seated, stretched his legs, put fingertips together with the air of an attendant amateur. This was better than he had hoped. In such a posture they heard a bustle of armored men, and when all turned, saw how a sword protruded ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... 'Don't attempt amateur detective work yourself,' he urged, 'but stay with Ross until proper official inquiries can be made into the case. There is nothing for it but to remain inactive for the present, but gather information quietly where you can. The law out here ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... was an amateur prizefighter. He and his friend Bill have a fight in the opening lines of the tale, and Saul wins. This victory is followed by the usual debauch, which lasts until all the drunken crowd are asleep on the floor of the "Lion." No Russian novelist, nor a Dostoievesky, nor another, ever dared ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... person, as would inevitably summon to the next exhibition of her misery, as by special invitation and advertisement, the whole world of this vast metropolis—the idle, the curious, the brutal, the hardened amateur in spectacles of wo, and the benign philanthropist who frequents such scenes with the purpose of carrying alleviation to their afflictions. All alike, whatever might be their motives or the spirit of their ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... you eat much or not, but you want to be sure to ask your mother for two cups of strong coffee with your dinner," advised Darrin, with all the readiness of the amateur physician. ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... motive for keeping away from him took its rise in dislike of the ordinary modes of life in an English country-house. A man who feels no interest in politics, who cares nothing for field sports, who is impatient of amateur music and incapable of small talk, is a man out of his element in country society. This was my unlucky case. I went to Lord Lepel's house sorely against my will; longing already for the day when it would be time to ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... the soft purring ways of a cat, the tact of a Jesuit, the penetration of a money-lender, the sensibility of a musical amateur, and the morals of a maid-of-honour. He had extraordinary command over himself; he seemed able to do everything, and wishful to win nothing. There never was a young man (as a matter of fact) who wanted so much or asked so little. ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... practised by contemporary painters. Equipped with these aids to study, Squarcione returned to Padua, his native place, where he opened a kind of school for painters. It is clear that he was himself less an artist than an amateur of painting, with a turn for teaching, and a conviction, based upon the humanistic instincts of his age, that the right way of learning was by imitation of the antique. During the course of his career he is said to have taught no less than 137 pupils, training his apprentices by the exhibition ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... perfectly splendid for Winifred! Of course, it is just what is needed, if she is to work at all seriously. One must have one's workshop, otherwise one never ceases to be an amateur.' ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... days for the journey, and they as well as their mounts—the latter of course in relays—were provided on contract by a clever old mafoo (groom) who had the reputation of getting the best ponies for the Tientsin amateur race meetings, and who was in league with ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... The Complete Amateur Boxer; The Complete Association Footballer; The Complete Athletic Trainer; The Complete Billiard Player; The Complete Cook; The Complete Cricketer; The Complete Foxhunter; The Complete Golfer; The Complete Hockey-Player; The Complete Horseman; The Complete Jujitsuan ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... and brokers in the crowd, a politician or two, a popular comedian with his manager, amateur boxers from the athletic clubs, and quiet, close-mouthed sporting men from every city in the country. Their names if printed in the papers would have been as familiar as the ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... a text in the Bible against gambling, and assuredly he cannot find one in favor of teetotalism. On the contrary he will find plenty of texts which recommend the "wine that cheereth the heart of God and man;" and he knows that his master, Jesus Christ, once played the part of an amateur publican at a marriage feast, and turned a large quantity of water into wine in order to keep the spree going when it had ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... the elegant and sweet-smelling fungus that few human appetites can resist when it is placed upon the table in the way that it deserves. Experts can readily form an opinion as to whether a cake of Mushroom spawn is or is not in a fit state for planting, and it will be a safe proceeding for the amateur to buy from a Firm which has a large and constant sale; otherwise, spawn may be purchased which was originally well made and properly impregnated, but has lost its vitality through ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... little cleared space by the window, where Mr. Mardale worked, without brushing some irreplaceable treasure to the floor. Once there he was fettered for the morning. Mr. Mardale with all the undisciplined enthusiasm of an amateur, jumping from this invention to that, beaming over his spectacles. Sir Charles listened with here and there a word of advice, or of sympathy with the labour of creation. But his thoughts were busy elsewhere, he was pondering over his discovery of the morning, over the sight which ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... friends and relations of the Actors. A few professional Critics are to be seen. They are addressed with much politeness by the Amateurs in front of the House, and "played to" with feverish anxiety by the Amateurs on the Stage. The Orchestra is composed of excellent Amateur Musicians. The Curtain has ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, January 18, 1890 • Various
... of the publishers to make this series of little volumes, of which Making a Rock Garden is one, a complete library of authoritative and well illustrated handbooks dealing with the activities of the home-maker and amateur gardener. Text, pictures and diagrams will, in each respective book, aim to make perfectly clear the possibility of having, and the means of having, some of the more important features of a modern country or suburban home. Among the titles already issued or planned for early publication ...
— Making A Rock Garden • Henry Sherman Adams
... The amateur detectives stood in the lower hall in the tall building, between swinging doors, and jostled by hurrying hundreds, while they read the names on ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... taste for collecting objects of art is rapidly developing in America, it may be not without profit to point out some of the pitfalls which attend the amateur in this pursuit, especially in Italy, that exhaustless quarry of "originals" and "old masters"; though it should be remembered that a work of art may be both original and old and very bad too,—its intrinsic worth being a separate question from its age and authenticity. The results ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... these early flowers secure the perpetuation of their species is an interesting study for amateur botanists. In the case of the trillium the fruit is a three-lobed reddish berry, but one has to search for it as diligently as Diogenes did for an honest man before he finds it. The plant seldom sets seed in this vicinity, but seems to depend rather upon its tuber-like rootstocks ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... number of unfriendly comments on the scheme as Watton detailed it. A bit of amateur economics, which would only help the Bill to ruin a few more people than would otherwise ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the Flagg drive master should not be known. She did the talking and Latisan gave the appearance of being an earnest listener. At a matter of fact, he played up strongly his affectation of devoted interest. Ingenuous amateur that he was in the subtleties of love, he was trying out a method which he had heard commended; he was wondering how much an aroused jealousy might accomplish in the case ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... Kent up on his own account, and by now he was deep in her debt. For one thing, she had set the fashion in the matter of legislative receptions—her detractors, knowing nothing whatever about it, hinted that she had been an amateur social lobbyist in Washington, playing the game for the pure zest of it—and at these functions Kent had learned many things pertinent to his purpose as watch-dog for the railroad company and legal adviser to his chief—things ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... good subscription rooms in the city. Every month they give a ball, concert, or amateur performance. Strangers are presented with tickets for these amusements—no thanks to the Spaniards—but from the kindness of the English merchants, who are nearly all members. I went to one of these balls: there were plenty of women—more than could get partners; ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... import. It was a time for action; and maybe the picks and shovels did not rise to the occasion! Fort-making was the rage; the men worked with a will—the women acting as hod-carriers—to make the graves in which they hoped to live as deep as possible. All over the city the navvies—amateur and professional—sweated and panted, so successfully that unless the shells were to levy direct taxation on the people in the forts, well, the pieces might skim their heads but they could not cut them off. The little garden patches were pitilessly disembowelled ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... mountainous districts. You would wonder that they have not been extirpated long ago—being such large creatures, easily discovered and easily tracked; besides, it is always an ambition with the settlers and amateur-hunters to kill them. Moreover, but two cubs are produced at a litter, and that only happens once a-year. The fact is, that during winter, when the snow is on the ground and the bear might be easily ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... other and then at Penloe, hardly knowing what to make of such playing. As he proceeded further in his performance with one hand, though the playing was simple, yet there was a peculiarity about it that can hardly be expressed as he went along with his apparently amateur performance. Then he used his other hand and fingered a few more keys occasionally, and I felt an interest growing in me, and also those around me seemed to share the same feeling. A little later and the fingers of both hands ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... was to be held after the service on the coming Sunday night, at which there was to be a collection for funds to build another mission- house a hundred miles farther North, and she had been practising music she was to sing. Her mother had been an amateur singer of great power, and she was renewing her mother's gift in a voice behind which lay a hidden sorrow. As she cried herself to sleep the words of the song which had moved her kept ringing in her ears and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... respectively. This one can be used one hundred and sixty-eight hours a week, if needed. Lecturers on many subjects can be had for paying their expenses; in some cases they are employed by the Government, and will come without cost. Amateur theatrical companies from the city will be glad to come in return for an appreciative audience and a dance afterward, with a good fill-up on solid farm cooking. Even some of the professionals can be had on ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... effects. It requires but a very limited experience to become aware of the fact, that dwellings of precisely the same cost, and similarly situated, will differ in their rental at least one half, and it is mainly owing to the reason that one is properly designed, and the other perhaps an amateur performance, modeled after the ill-proportioned Greek pediment style, too prevalent to be countenanced for a moment by any one who prides himself on his good taste. There can be no question that a fitly ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward
... struck with the equanimity with which reverses were accepted by the members of our gallant Amateur Army, and intend composing an ode in their honour, to be sung in camp to the accompaniment of bullets, bagpipes, and brass bands! (more alliteration for the Midlothian Maltese Marriage Merchant), the refrain ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 30, 1892 • Various
... enemies had never accused him of lack of physical courage. Indeed, he had been—in the rollicking days of old that were gone—celebrated for the display of very opposite qualities. He was an amateur at manly sports. He rejoiced in his muscular strength, and, in many a tavern brawl and midnight riot of his own provoking, had proved the fallacy of the proverb which teaches that a bully is always a coward. He had the tenacity of a bulldog—once let him get ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... numbers acquired in keeping scores of games less accurate and less permanent in the mind of the child than the same sums and products learned as school exercises? Is the skill acquired in handling tools—sewing costumes, or making scenery for an amateur play—any less effective or less lasting than the skill acquired in sewing yards of stitches or sawing yards of board just for "exercise" in a class? On the contrary, other things being equal, arithmetic and authors and sewing and tinkering can be made both ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... about that Archbishop Werner of Falkenstein, owner of the grim fortress of Stolzenfels and a wealthy and powerful Churchman, was an amateur of the hermetic art, while his Treasurer, who was by no means rich, was also by way of being an alchemist. To indulge his passion for the bizarre science the latter had extracted many a golden ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... amateur, has been invited to become a member of the M.C.C. team, which leaves for Australia on Saturday. A fine all-round cricketer, Jupp is a useful man to any team, but as he usually fields cover-point his inclusion would not necessarily ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... break in the run of his luck was due. Thus far he had played, with a success almost too uniform, his dual role, by day the amiable amateur of art, by night the nameless mystery that prowled unseen and preyed unhindered. Could such success be reasonably expected to attend him always? Should he count De Morbihan's yarn a warning? Black must turn up every so often in a run of red: every gambler knows as much. And what was Michael ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... advertisement setting forth the attractions of a miniature screen designed as a memento of the opera, had it. In a score of ways enterprising tradesmen adapted the scenes and the songs to their wares and in all Polly was the principal feature. Polly became the fashion everywhere. Amateur flautists played her songs, amateur vocalists warbled them. Hardly a week passed without one daily journal or the other burst into verse in ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... as has been said, was an amateur of the antique. When not at work, a great part of his time was passed in the neighbourhood of curiosity shops, and the merchandise they dealt in immediately occurred to him ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... business as calmly and quietly as though nothing abnormal had ever happened. Meanwhile Dick and Grosvenor diligently applied themselves to a systematic exploration of the ruins and the taking of many photographs; they were both highly skilled amateur photographers, and were also endowed with a considerable amount of artistic taste. Moreover, Grosvenor had devoted a considerable amount of time to the perfecting of himself in the science of photography in natural colours, and had provided himself with all the requisite apparatus needed. ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... prostitutes when business is slack, and return to business when the season begins. Sometimes the regular work of the day is supplemented concurrently by prostitution in the street in the evening. It is said, possibly with some truth, that amateur prostitution of this kind is extremely prevalent in England, as it is not checked by the precautions which, in countries where prostitution is regulated, the clandestine prostitute must adopt in order to avoid registration. Certain public lavatories ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... and turned disgustedly. What earthly difference did it make about Jim Cal and Huldah and Iley? Why should Judith suddenly care? And then, being a philosopher and in his own manner an amateur of life, he set to work to analyze her motives, and ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... was likewise an amateur of pinks: the season of flowering had come, and suggestions were made as to whether these two could not visit each other. We introduced the matter, and persisted in it; till at last Von Reineck resolved to go out with us one Sunday afternoon. The greeting of the two old gentlemen was very ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... Coates, "the Amateur of Fashion," known as "Romeo" Coates, sometimes as "Diamond" Coates, sometimes as "Cock-a-doodle-doo" Coates (1772-1848), was the only surviving son of a wealthy West Indian planter. He made his first appearance ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... influence and an authority comparable to that of Cabinet Ministers. Tyrannies, struggles for freedom, minor corruptions, and hot debates have their places here as well as in the wider world of politics, and many an amateur "Home Rule Bill" is defeated or carried according to the circumstances of the case. At Briarcroft Hall there had hitherto existed a pure oligarchy, or government of the few. The Sixth Form had jealously kept the reins in their own hands, and, while granting a few privileges to the Fifth, ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... "Bert and I used to visit there a good deal. That's why they call me Jeems—to distinguish me from Jim. Then Jim got tired of doing nothing—they possess everlasting rocks—you know their lamented dad was a sort of amateur Croesus—and he decided to monkey with mines. Bert and I were here one summer, so Bill and Jim just pulled up stakes and came along too. They have been here ever since. They're both true sports and like the ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... from a careless dignity, when people brought money into the town, but it always relapsed into its own customs with a contented sigh after the jolt of inexplicable requirements and imported ways. This year had been an especially fruitful one. The boarders had given a fancy dress party with amateur vaudeville combined, for the benefit of the old church, and Martha Waterman now, as she toiled up the hill to a meeting of the Circle, held the resultant check in one of her plump freckled hands. Martha was chief mover in all capable deeds, a warm, silent woman who called ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... twelve and his mother found it easy to spoil an only son who was handsome and popular. He suffered the misfortune of a mental brilliancy that learns too readily and of a personal charm that wins its way too easily. He danced well; he was facile at the piano; and he had so pronounced a gift as an amateur actor that a celebrated professional had advised him to go on ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... every side track could be seen two or three dead engines that had been ruined and abandoned by amateur engine-drivers, and now and then at way-stations the smouldering ruins of a freight train, whose blackened skeleton still clung to the warped and twisted track. At every station great crowds of people blocked the platforms, for the Limited had not been able to leave Chicago ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... European finance. Recent Popes had added splendid architectural embellishments, and the tendency to secular display was well represented by Urban VIII., a great gatherer and a great dispenser of wealth, an accomplished amateur in many arts, and surrounded by a tribe of nephews, inordinately enriched by their indulgent uncle. Milton arrived early in October. The most vivid trace of his visit is his presence at a magnificent concert given by Cardinal Barberini, ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... of us are more than mere laymen in philosophy. We are worthy of the name of amateur athletes, and are vexed by too much inconsistency and vacillation in our creed. We cannot preserve a good intellectual conscience so long as we keep mixing incompatibles from opposite sides ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... of rank proposed to visit Germany as volunteers, for the purpose of learning the art of war under the greatest of commanders. This last proof of British attachment and admiration, Frederic politely but firmly declined. His camp was no place for amateur students of military science. The Prussian discipline was rigorous even to cruelty. The officers, while in the field, were expected to practise an abstemiousness and self-denial such as was hardly surpassed by the most rigid monastic orders. However ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and ever? The most striking and apparently most stable theory of the last quarter of a century had been Sir William Grove's theory of the conservation of energy; and yet wherein is there any substantial difference between this recent outcome of modern amateur, and hence most sincere, science—pointing as it does to an imperishable, and as such unchangeable, and as such, again, for ever unknowable underlying substance the modes of which alone change—wherein, except in mere verbal costume, does this differ from the conclusions ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... all that," Knight hastened to explain. "I've been too busy till lately to know at first hand what goes on in the 'smart' or the artistic set. My world doesn't take much interest in crystal-gazers and palmists, amateur or professional, even when they happen to be handsome women, like the Countess. But I ran against her again on board the Monarchic about a month ago, crossing to this side, and we picked up threads of old acquaintance. She was staying ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... are carried off early by acute inflammation of the implicated organs. "Of course, if these die in the beginning, they cannot die at a later period," as a recent medical writer has wisely and wittily pointed out to certain amateur statisticians who would fain reduce the mortality of Munich by leaving out of view the immense percentage ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... my father was preparing for his duties as book- keeper to Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy in Eisenstadt. At that time he often took part, as an amateur, among the violoncellos in the Prince's frequent Court concerts, under the conductorship of the happy great master Josef Haydn. My father often told me about his intercourse with Haydn, and the daily parties he made up with him. In 1848 I visited the dear, affectionate ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... Wellingtonian Defence Association, and almost automatically Paul slipped into his place. With the instinct of the man of affairs he persuaded the Council to change his title. An Honorary Secretary is but a dilettante, an amateur carrying no weight, whereas an Organizing Secretary is a devil of a fellow professedly dynamic. So Paul became Organizing Secretary of the Young England League, and made things hum all the louder. He put fresh life into local Committees and local Secretaries by a paternal interest ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... critical state of ineptitude, my attention was accidentally roused by the sight of a boxing-match. My feelings were so much excited, and the excitation was so delightful, that I was now in danger of becoming an amateur of the pugilistic art. It did not occur to me, that it was beneath the dignity of a British nobleman to learn the vulgar terms of the boxing trade. I soon began to talk very knowingly of first-rate bruisers, game ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... a lusty entr'-acte excursion into Culmbacher and the cheese sandwich, served, as is the appealing custom, in the theatre promenade. And thus fortified against the night, I pass again into the thoroughfares still a-rattle with the musketry of wheels. I perceive that many amateur American Al-Raschids are abroad in the land, pockets echoing the tintinnabulation of manifold marks and eyes abulge at the prospect of midnight diableries. See that fellow yonder! At home, probably a family man, a wearer of mesh underwear, ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... That is the way one should love everything that is worth loving. I am delighted, for we make here a troupe of fanatical melomaniacs, as you will presently perceive. As for myself, I scrape wildly on the violin, as a simple country amateur—'Orpheus in silvis'. Do not imagine, however, Monsieur le Comte, that we let the worship of this sweet art absorb all our faculties—all our time-certainly not. When you take part in our little reunions, which of course you will do, you will find we disdain ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... two weeks on the farm on which I was born, with the family of Mr. Joseph Duncan, where the meals were taken daily in a room the wood-work of which I, as an amateur carpenter, had finished more than forty years ago, while recovering from a long and ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... is all that is to be found. The price of admittance is also very low. The poverty of the people will not admit of the innumerable descriptions of amusements which we find in every little town in England: amateur concerts are sometimes got up, but for want of funds they seldom last long. My subscription to one of these at the town where we resided, was five francs per month, or about a shilling each concert. This may be taken as a specimen of the price ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... A. Conan Doyle Adventures of a Modest Man R. W. Chambers Adventures of Sherlock Holmes A. Conan Doyle After House, The Mary Roberts Rinehart Ailsa Paige Robert W. Chambers Alternative, The George Barr McCutcheon Alton of Somasco Harold Bindloss Amateur Gentleman, The Jeffery Farnol Andrew The Glad Maria Thompson Daviess Ann Boyd Will N. Harben Annals of Ann, The Kate T. Sharber Anna the Adventuress E. Phillips Oppenheim Armchair at the Inn, The F. Hopkinson Smith Ariadne of Allan Water Sidney McCall ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... establishment of M. Richond, styled the Phoenix, No. 17, Boulevard Montmartre, near the Rue Richelieu. They will there find such a splendid assortment of time-pieces, as constitutes a most beautiful sight, equally gratifying to the artist and the amateur, many of the subjects being perfectly classic, and exhibiting the tastes and costumes of different ages; some of these magnificent time-pieces are adorned with figures, either bronze or gilded, representing historical characters, after the designs of the first masters, which ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... it did not keep many of the girls and boys of Central High at home. Snow piled up in the streets did not daunt them at all. But when the amateur actors undertook to rehearse they had to do so by the light ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... correspondence, or who are old friends. There is a Professor Hutton and a Dr. Burge, I believe; but they don't appear once in six months; and there is Mr. Everard Myatt, who is more frequent. He does not profess to be a great man of science, but he is interested in chemistry as an amateur, and is, I fancy, a sort of disciple of Mason's. He has noticed a sad difference in Mason just lately, and he even called on me yesterday, though I hardly knew him by sight, in the hope that I would back up his urgent suggestion that Mason should go off for ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... she had loved in forbidden France, even the apartments which she had inhabited, were executed in a manner that put to shame the best amateur performances I had ever seen. There was a minute attention to fidelity in them, too, which a recollection of her present circumstances could not fail to bring home to the ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... creative force is nothing more or less than suggestion. There is on record, indeed, an instance of mediumship in which the medium, an amateur investigator of the phenomena of spiritism, clearly recognized that his various impersonations were suggested to him by the spectators. This gentleman, Mr. Charles H. Tout, of Vancouver, records that after attending a few seances with ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... kind of transportation he needs. A thousand thanks, Tony. I won't forget—" The rest was cut off as she gave him one of the more polite bum's rushes. I think he would have liked to hang around to see the rest of our little amateur theatrical. ...
— Tinker's Dam • Joseph Tinker
... the coat and springing up. 'Don't tell your tailor who did it! I am for perfection in all things—abas l'amateur! Come in, it is supper-time past. I will go and hurry Madame Pyat. Tu dois avoir une ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... when we encountered him last in "The Border Boys on the Trail"; Walt Phelps, the ranch boy, whose blazing hair outrivaled the glowing sun; and the bony, grotesque form of Professor Wintergreen, preceptor of Latin and the kindred tongues at Stonefell College, and amateur archaeologist. Lest they might feel slighted, let us introduce also, One Spot, Two Spot and Three ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... ), English actor, whose family name was Samson, was born in Reading on the 19th of June 1858, the son of a Scottish manufacturer. He went into business in London after leaving school, but having acted as an amateur he determined to make the stage his profession. His first appearance was at Nottingham in 1879, and after some seasons of provincial experience he made his first London appearance as Caleb Deecie in Two Roses in 1881 with Irving at the Lyceum. He was selected ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... for a line engraving dedicated by Eaton to the Lord Bishop of Winchester. This large view included figures in the foreground in an attempt to give animation to the scene. Unfortunately the engraver, John Fougeron, was little more than an amateur. His execution was feeble and mechanical: Jackson's drawing suffered so badly that its quality cannot be determined. This print was copied on a smaller scale in a steel engraving by J. B. Swaine, published by J. B. Nichols & Son in 1843, ...
— John Baptist Jackson - 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut • Jacob Kainen
... other hand, more thoroughly convinced of German strength, believed that the final campaigns could not come before the summer of 1919, and did not expect to provide a great expeditionary force previous to the spring of that year if indeed it were ever sent. Thus from opposite points of view the amateur and the professional deprecated haste in dispatching an army to France. From the moment the United States entered the war, President Wilson certainly seems to have resolved upon the preparation of an effective fighting force, if we may judge from his insistence upon the selective draft, ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... remarkable man—one to be feared at night when near the Bosphorus; although, if the bitter truth must be told, he avoided impartially both salt water and fresh, whenever possible. My word! "Muley" was no ordinary, amateur Munchhausen! he was full of exact statements which he encrusted with legends that were utterly bare-faced. After hearing one of his flights of fancy, a fat ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... itself upon the raft, the outcome of the wiggler sunned its crumplety wings, till "like gauze they grew," and then all of it, a whole pailful of it, made for the sleepers, to help its more mature relations, which had come in through the open window to the light, to practice amateur phlebotomy upon them. The pedestrians awoke to feel uncomfortable, and rub and scratch their faces, heads, necks, and hands. "It's clean devoured I am, Wilks," cried Coristine. "The plagues of Egypt have visited us," replied the dominie. So, they ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... the nude this summer as much as I possibly can; I am sure that it is the only way to keep oneself up to the standard of draughtsmanship that is so absolutely necessary to any one who wishes to become a craftsman in preference to a glorified amateur. ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... There is hardly a story of his ever giving away a drawing. A lady, in whose house he was residing, playfully asked him to make a sketch of her favourite spaniel. 'My dear madam,' said the painter, astounded and indignant, 'you don't know what you ask!' He once gave three sketches to aid an amateur artist, and most intimate friend and patron, who had brought his painting into an embarrassed condition; the sketches showed him the way out of his difficulty. Undoubtedly this action was very kind; but in the end the miser prevailed over the gentleman. ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... shade of a row of cottonwood trees overlooking the broad, shallow bed of the Little Missouri. They were both mighty men with the axe. Roosevelt worked with them for a few days. He himself was no amateur, but he could not compete with the ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... whirlwind of words; the lesson of silence, which she taught by her behaviour, she had first learnt from her father on the winter trail—in the presence of his stern taciturnity she appeared a garrulous amateur. ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... that year did a man come to town, and then he did not do anything very dreadful. He was not a trapper, he was only an amateur naturalist who wanted to see the beavers at their work, and who thought he was smart enough to catch them at it. His plan was simple enough; he made a breach in the dam one night, and then climbed a tree and waited for them to come and mend it. It was bright moonlight, ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... that the mere dilettante and the amateur ruralist may as well keep their hands off. The prize is not for them. He who would successfully strive for it must be himself what he sings,—part and parcel of the rural life of New England,—one who has grown strong amidst its healthful influences, familiar with all ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... In all probability, no one had seen him come up to the chambers; but I was damped directly there; for those who carried the man down would be able to tell whence he came, and hundreds would be glad to play the amateur detective and ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... sort of appetite that soldier had who continually repeated his phrase in a ravenous tone. Seated beside him on the platform, while the glee-club sung an elegy in honor of the late Monsieur Valbonnans, which was composed for the occasion by an amateur of the town: ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... learned that people in real life actually wore monocles, something, which I, of course, had known to be true but which had seemed nevertheless an unreality, part of a stage play, a "dress-up" game for children and amateur actors. The "English swell" in the performances of the Bayport Dramatic Society always wore a single eyeglass, but he also wore Dundreary whiskers and clothes which would have won him admittance to the Home for Feeble-Minded Youth without the formality of an examination. ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... upon intelligence of a college education. It is possible, nay, it is common, to go through college and come out in any real sense uneducated. But it is not possible to pass through college, even as a professional amateur in athletics or as an inveterate flapper, without rubbing off the insulation here and there, without knowing what thought is stirring, what emotions are poignant, what ideas are dominant among the ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... reflected as giving a softness and harmony not genuine; but as it was the practice of Giorgione and Correggio, "in order to learn the effect of the colours, of the masses, and of the work as a whole," he recommends it to the painter. He expects, however, from the amateur an impartiality almost impossible to attain, when it is expected to reach such a point that "all schools, all masters, all manners, and all classes of pictures will be a matter of indifference to him." We fear that an amateur who could reach this indifference, would be rather a general ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... general and crowded party at Gen. Macomb's, in the evening, with Mrs. Schoolcraft. The General has always appeared to me a perfect amateur in military science, although he has distinguished himself in the field. He is a most polished and easy man in all positions in society, and there is an air and manner by which he constantly reveals his French ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... called "Rodney Stone" to a famous Australian prize-fighter, stretched upon a bed of mortal sickness. The dying gladiator listened with intent interest but keen, professional criticism to the combats of the novel. The reader had got to the point where the young amateur fights the brutal Berks. Berks is winded, but holds his adversary off with a stiff left arm. The amateur's second in the story, an old prize-fighter, shouts some advice to him as to how to deal with the situation. "That's right. By —- he's got him!" yelled the stricken man in the bed. ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... More than that, I kept step with you all the way from Chaudiere's to the levee. You'd be dead easy game for an amateur." ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... with his soft words, raised a white, restraining hand. "Not another word. Mr. Peters did not know who you were that day he so unfortunately ran into you. If he had, he would not have spoken as he did. He supposed you were some amateur motor-boatist, and he was—well, ...
— Tom Swift and his Photo Telephone • Victor Appleton
... should in all probability be obliged to hear it: if I said that I was not, I might have created a dislike in her. So I replied, that I was very fond of music on shore, when it was not interrupted by other noise. "Ah! then I perceive you are a real amateur, Mr Simple," replied ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... bear any inscription, and, according to the belief of the local residents, never have been carved or even shaped in any way. In one or two instances, however, the effort of trimming the edges of the stone is clearly visible, and in rare cases we see the pious but immature attempts of the amateur mason to perpetuate, if only by initials, the memory of the deceased.[10] Some such records still remain, but many have doubtless perished, for the material is only the soft freestone so easily obtainable in the district, and the rains and frosts of no great number of years ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... to the late King Ptolemaeus Auletes, a safe asylum, and assistance to make fresh head against the Caesarians. There was a hurried convening of the council of Pothinus—a select company of eunuchs, amateur generals, intriguing rhetoricians. The conference was long; access to its debates closely guarded. The issue could not be evaded; on the decision depended the reestablishment of the Pompeians in a new and firm stronghold, or their abandonment to further wanderings over the ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... every branch of ists and ologists. The material is as superabundant as native labourers and operatives are deficient. All these interesting branches of inquiry, healthful and agreeable, as being out-of-door pursuits, and bringing the amateur in close contact with nature, offer to embryo authors, who are ambitious to book something new, a more worthy subject than the decies repetita descriptions of bull-fights and the natural history of ollas and ventas. Those who ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... taking these two special examples. I select them, not because they are more glorious than the rest, but partly from personal association (I am myself descended from one of the three heroes of Knightsbridge), and partly from the consciousness that I am an amateur antiquarian, and cannot presume to deal with times and places more remote and more mysterious. It is not for me to settle the question between two such men as Professor Hugg and Sir William Whisky as to whether Notting Hill means Nutting Hill (in allusion to the rich woods which no longer ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... Willing Workers' Guild held a social in the Sunday school. To pay the expenses of the social, the rector delivered a public lecture on "Italy and Her Past," illustrated by a magic lantern. To pay for the magic lantern, the curate and the ladies of the church got up some amateur theatricals. ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... superior to the captain of an Alexandrian corn-ship, and Paul had already made his force of character so felt that it is not wonderful that he took part in the discussion. Naturally the centurion was guided by the professional rather than by the amateur member of the council, and the decision was come to to push on as far and fast ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... appear to have a good ear for music, and execute many of the finest operas with spirit and taste; and the amateur musicians in particular, who train the casino band, have brought the native performers to a very high degree of perfection in most of the pieces performed by them. A good deal more attention, however, appears ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... the Hambleton fortune, and a little later I became counsel for the Crescent Gas and Electric Company, in which he had shrewdly gained a controlling interest. Even toward the colossal game of modern finance his attitude was characteristically that of the dilettante, of the amateur; he played it, as it were, contemptuously, even as he had played poker at Harvard, with a cynical audacity that had a peculiarly disturbing effect upon his companions. He bluffed, he raised the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... this lecture has since told me an equally strange fact. In her native parish there was an amateur choir, which assembled twice a week in the parish church to practise. On the lobby of the gallery wherein the choir assembled, there was a piano, to lead and accompany the voices; as regularly as the piano was ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... been used for the repair of the battlements on the gable of the porch under the centre arch of the west front. These have, of course, been reconstructed in stone. All the criticisms that have been passed by amateur architects upon the front, as a termination to the building, cannot be discussed here. It is clear, however, that the existence of the portico does away with any objection that could be made (as has been done with regard to the west fronts at Lincoln, Wells, and elsewhere), that the front ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... Reid, brother-in-law of Lieutenant Dustin, the crack aviator of the navy, who had been aboard the Pennsylvania, volunteered to carry messages from the President to Philadelphia and to bring back news. Reid himself was one of the best amateur flying men in the country and he did me the honour to ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... screen or curtain to hide the box from the spectators while the performer is getting in or out.—D.B. Adamson, in Amateur Work. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
... nourishment, orderly surroundings, and to be let judiciously alone; those are the conditions which the amateur nurse must further, according to her own judgment and, her knowledge of the friend ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... following amusing note on prices is taken from Renouard's "Catalogue d'un Amateur." "Les premieres editions latines de ce singulier livre, celles des traductions francoises, toutes egalement remplies de figures en bois, ne deplaisent pas aux amateurs, mais jamais ils ne les ont payees un haut prix. La traduction angloise faite en 1509, sur le francois, et avec des figures en ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... ever be more than a very clever amateur? Too pretty, eh?' And the questioner nudged his ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... regular amateur detective, and has all kinds of pluck," Alex went on, and in a few words recounted Jack's clearing up of the cash-box mystery at Hammerton, the part he played in the breaking up of the band of Black-Handers, and his ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... modesty to exhibit the lower part of the thigh when in swimming costume, but it is immodest to exhibit the upper part of the thigh. In swimming competitions, a minimum of clothing must be combined with the demands of modesty. In England, the regulations of the Swimming Clubs affiliated to the Amateur Swimming Association, require that the male swimmer's costume shall extend not less than eight inches from the bifurcation downward, and that the female swimmer's costume shall extend to within not more than three inches from the knee. (A prolonged discussion, we are told, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the partly amateur and partly professional entertainments that took place at the celebrated seat of the distinguished author, Sir Edward ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... my own concerns, and on which the qualities personally proper to me could have had no bearing. Almost the only real incidents, as I see them now, were the visits of a young English friend, a scholar and a literary amateur, between whom and myself there sprung up an affectionate, and, I trust, not transitory regard. He used to come and sit or stand by my fireside, talking vivaciously and eloquently with me about literature and life, his own national characteristics and ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and hot luncheon there. A fifth part of his income was spent in having her wheeled about in a chair, by which it was his duty to walk daily for an allotted number of hours. Dinner would ensue, and the amateur clergy, who abound in Ireland, and of whom Mrs. Haggarty was a great admirer, lauded her everywhere as a model of resignation and virtue, and praised beyond measure the admirable piety with which she bore ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... said Machiavelli regretfully. "The man has raised so much hell on earth that I doubt if there's much we can teach him down here. Really, he's not an amateur at all, but a professional. I don't know whether it wouldn't be more punishment to send him to heaven instead. As a matter of fact, down here he'll feel perfectly ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... his course towards the cabaret itself, looking about in all directions with his eyes capable of piercing walls of consciences. "Humph!" said D'Artagnan, "my tenants are communicating. That, no doubt, now, is some amateur in hanging matters." At the same moment the cries and disturbance in the upper chambers ceased. Silence, under such circumstances, surprises more than a twofold increase of noise. D'Artagnan wished to see what was the cause of ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Friends and fatigue have equally been forgotten, and the evening has seemed so exquisitely long (or perhaps too short)! And do you remember that time when you were persuaded to sing in the chorus of the amateur operatic society, and slaved two hours every other night for three months? Can you deny that when you have something definite to look forward to at eventide, something that is to employ all your energy—the thought of that something gives a glow and ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... quality there, personages of importance and dignity, forming an inner aristocratic circle who conversed of London and the Court, and whose august society it was the dear ambition of the lesser lights to ape, if they could not join it. Democratic manners were at a discount in these little hotbeds of amateur cockneyism; the gloomy severities of the old-fashioned religion were put aside; there was an increasing gap between the higher and the lower orders of the population. This appearance was no doubt superficial; and the beau-monde ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... however, observed no such impartiality. To Saracenic tastes, shown by his building a palace like that of the khalif; to a devotion for poetry, exemplified by branding some of his own stanzas on his image-worshipping enemies; to the composition of music and its singing by himself as an amateur in the choir; to mechanical knowledge, displayed by hydraulic contrivances, musical instruments, organs, automatic singing-birds sitting in golden trees, he added an abomination of monks and a determined iconoclasm. Instead ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... attempts at forming a separate labor party failed as partisan movements. The labor leader proved an inefficient amateur when matched against the shrewd and experienced party manipulator; nor was there a sufficient class homogeneity to keep the labor vote together; and, even if it had so been united, there were not enough ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... they are of the most unexceptionable kind, and likely to offend neither the tastes nor prejudices of the society in which you find yourself. At an evening party given expressly in honour of a distinguished lady of colour, we once heard a thoughtless amateur dash into the broadly comic, but terribly appropriate nigger song of "Sally come up." Before he had got through the first verse, he had perceived his mistake, and was so overwhelmed with shame that he could ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... still sat. Then I saw that Snap was out there sitting with him. I waved from the turret window, and Snap's cheery gesture answered me. His voice carried down through the silver moonlight: "Land us safely, Gregg. These weird amateur navigators!" ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... exhausting portages the trolling hooks had been lost in passing through a bog, while their ammunition was reduced to sixty-five rounds. Too late did the Captain regret the permission given to his brother and Mr. Paine, both of whom were but amateur sportsmen, to fire at any game they might see. They had blazed away recklessly during the entire voyage, so far succeeding in killing but one duck. Evidently they could not be depended upon to replenish the depleted larder. ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... through the booklet. It contained postcards from the front, from home, from a sister and from a sweetheart—photographs from the battlefields of brave soldiers and from home. There was also a small amateur photograph, rather badly made, of a young girl sitting at a typewriter. She had blonde hair and on the back of the photo she had written: "Look at the waves of my hair and note also how very diligent I am" (English ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... Bunny, but so he was!" cried Raffles. "Time was when I was none too pure an amateur. But after this I take leave to consider myself a professor of the professors. And I should like to see one more ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... and I are the two worst amateur detectives that ever tried their hands at the trade. The man in the grey suit has been thirty years in the chemist's service. He was sent to the bank to pay money to his master's account—and he knows no more of the Moonstone ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... dozen other amateur waiters on hand and busy. The landlord wore a leathern apron, and went from room to room, blowing into the hole of a wooden top which he carried in his hand, as if thereby to collect his ideas. A barrel of red and a barrel of white wine stood on trestles in the guests' ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... discoursing the divinest work of some highest priest of music. Sentinel the scene with marbles that would have doubled the fame of a Praxiteles. Now, with your stage set, invite to its sumptuous midst some amateur of all the arts whose senses were born for the beautiful. Do what you will to endow your artist with contentment in perfection. Fill his pockets with gold, give him wine of his fancy, have the woman he loves by his side, so surround him ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... A distinguished amateur horticulturist once said to me, "I do not see why it is I have so much trouble with lettuce. My land is rich, and the lettuce grow well, but do not head. They have a tendency to run up to seed, and soon get tough ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... learn that the amateur gardener whose marrows were awarded the second prize for cooking-apples at a horticultural show is still confined to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various
... outer garments. Down came a twine, to the lower end of which the boy made fast his garments, one after another. His money and valuables went up in the pockets, for the sharp eyes of the mulatto could not have been eluded by any amateur slight-of-hand. ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham
... robbers' den in the denouement, and "a lot more excitement all through than there is in Mr. Gillette's play," as Mary modestly informed her caste. It was necessarily cruder, as it was far more ambitious, than the commoner sort of amateur play; but the audience, whether little freshmen who had seen few similar performances, or upper class girls who had seen a great many and so fully appreciated the novelty of this one, were wildly enthusiastic. Every actress, down to Helen, who made a very stiff and stilted "Buttons," ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... vagrant. There can be little doubt about the choice of most, and none about that of a real artist. Art and Religion are very much alike, and in the East, where they understand these things, there has always been a notion that religion should be an amateur affair. The pungis of India are beggars. Let artists all over the world be beggars too. Art and Religion are not professions: they are not occupations for which men can be paid. The artist and the saint do what they ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... Henderson. A guide to the successful propagation and cultivation of florists' plants. The work is not one for florists and gardeners only; but the amateur's wants are constantly kept in mind, and we have a very complete treatise on the cultivation of flowers under glass, or in the open air, suited to those who grow flowers for pleasure as well as those who ...
— The Peanut Plant - Its Cultivation And Uses • B. W. Jones
... musical comedy presented by that fashionable school for young ladies, but could add nothing of interest to the facts given above, beyond asserting that Mrs. Selim had proved to be an unusually competent and popular director of their amateur theatricals. ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... particularly good. Catfish, chubs, and suckers were landed in numbers sufficient to please the heart of any amateur angler. ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... with annoyance, "what does that matter? That's the amateur all over. Of course I play like that because I can't do it any better. If I could play the notes"—she clenched her little hand, with a curious, almost a fierce energy—"if I had any technique—or was ever likely to have any, what should I want with expression? ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... cut-up," Cappy began as the trio settled in the smoking room and the waiter brought the coffee and cigars, "I see you're getting to be quite an amateur sailor. Your Dad tells me you won your last race with that schooner yacht of yours ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... the old country. I am in good health now; I have been pretty seedy, for I was exhausted by the journey and anxiety below even my point of keeping up; I am still a little weak, but that is all; I begin to ingrease, it seems already. My book is about half drafted: the AMATEUR EMIGRANT, that is. Can you find a better name? I believe it will be more popular than any of my others; the canvas is so much more popular and larger too. Fancy, it is my fourth. That voluminous writer. I was vexed to hear about the last chapter of 'The Lie,' and pleased to hear about the ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of mine read a pugilistic novel called "Rodney Stone" to a famous Australian prize-fighter, stretched upon a bed of mortal sickness. The dying gladiator listened with intent interest but keen, professional criticism to the combats of the novel. The reader had got to the point where the young amateur fights the brutal Berks. Berks is winded, but holds his adversary off with a stiff left arm. The amateur's second in the story, an old prize-fighter, shouts some advice to him as to how to deal with the situation. "That's right. ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... That will be a happy day when a course of training in nursing, though it be but a short one, is considered a necessary part of every woman's education. Miss Nightingale truly says, "There is no such thing as amateur nursing ... Three-fourths of the whole mischief in women's lives arises from their excepting themselves from the rule of training considered needful ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... one well authenticated case—the best authenticated perhaps now known in England—in which a member of a respectable family in Royston turned highwayman—an amateur highwayman one would fain hope and believe—and paid the full penalty of the law, and was made to illustrate the horrible custom of those times by hanging in chains on the public highway! For this we must take ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... say that the mere dilettante and the amateur ruralist may as well keep their hands off. The prize is not for them. He who would successfully strive for it must be himself what he sings,—part and parcel of the rural life of New England,—one who has grown strong amidst its healthful influences, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... little for command, he had not been fond of obeying. He, therefore, sent in his resignation, and half botanizing, half playing the hunter, he made his way toward the north of the Indian Peninsula, and crossed it from Calcutta to Surat—a mere amateur trip ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... But both artist and amateur will revel alike in the beauty of landscape, in the variety of form and colour of the old buildings, and in the costume of the people; and we cannot imagine a more pleasant and complete change from the ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... Scotland Yard," said the latter nervously. He imagined he could detect in Furneaux's glance a mixture of amusement and contempt, amusement at the notion that any amateur should harbor the belief that the two best men in the "Yard" could be egregiously hoodwinked, and contempt of one who so far forgot himself as even to dare attempt such a thing in relation to a police inquiry into ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... Gaston's shack. A path wide enough for a single traveller, and the dark pointed pines guarded it on either side until within ten feet of the house. The house itself sat cosily in the clearing. It was a log house built by amateur hands, but roughly artistic without, ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... Mysteries. The Strenuous Life. Memories Grave and Gay. Life of Danton. A Pocketful of Sixpences. The Romance of a Proconsul (Sir George Grey). A Book about Roses. Random Reminiscences. The London Police Courts. The Amateur Poacher. The Bancrofts. At the Works. Mexico as I Saw It. Eighteenth Century Vignettes. The Great Andes of the Equator. The Early History of C. J. Fox. Through the Heart of Patagonia. Browning as a ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... Freddie feel as if he were being disembowelled by some clumsy amateur. He wished that he had defied the dictates of his better nature and remained in his snug rooms at the Albany, allowing Derek to go through this business by himself. "I-er-we-er-came to meet you, ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... at the Station Hotel, and said that they wanted to buy a small craft of some sort that a small crew could run across the North Sea to the Norwegian fiords—the sort of thing you can manage with three or four, you know. They said they were both amateur yachtsmen, and, of course, I very soon found out that they knew what they were talking about—in fact, between you and me, I should have said that they were as experienced in sea-craft as any man could be!—I soon ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... looked upon this wreck of a man with grief and dismay, mingled with a certain inquisitiveness as to what dreary chain of circumstances had dragged him down to such a doleful pass. Villiers felt together with compassion all the relish of the amateur in mysteries, and congratulated himself on his leisurely ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... Indian-clubs, and of light Indian-clubs. We have iron dumb-bells and wooden dumb-bells. We recollect with considerable satisfaction a veritable bean-bag which did good service in the household until it unfortunately sprung a-leak. In an amateur way we have tried both systems, and felt the better for them. We have a dim remembrance of rowing sundry leagues, and even of dabbling with the rod and line. We always look with friendly eye upon the Harvard Gymnasium, whenever it looms up in actual or mental vision. Never yet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... the occupiers who would, by the accepted rules of the game, have to feed these people from their own food supplies. The fact that the Germans declared from the first that they never would do this and in every test proved that they would not, was hard to drive home to the Admiralty and to many amateur English strategists safely far from the sufferings of ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... has to offer. And so it comes that, taking the population as a whole, there is perhaps less practically known of astronomy in England to-day than there was under the Plantagenets. A very few are astronomers, professional and amateur, and know immeasurably more than our forefathers did of the science. Then there is a large, more or less cultured, public that know something of the science at secondhand through books. But the great majority know nothing of the heavenly ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... pounds. But suspicion of the plausible furniture collector has, I am glad to say, begun to spread, and the palmiest days of the spoliation of the country are probably over. It must not, however, be thought that the peasant is always the under dog, the amateur the upper. A London dealer informs me that the planting of spurious antiques in old cottages has become a recognised form of fraud among less scrupulous members of the trade. An oak chest bearing every superficial mark of age that a clever workman can give it (and the profession of ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... it was warm in the rooms of the City Hall, and Prescott, after awhile, went back to the porch from which General Morgan had made his speech. Many of the enthusiastic throng of spectators still lingered and small boys were sending off amateur fireworks. Going outside, he became once more one of the throng, simply because he had caught another glimpse of a face that interested ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... do, McMurdo," cried Sherlock Holmes, genially. "I don't think you can have forgotten me. Don't you remember the amateur who fought three rounds with you at Alison's rooms on the night of ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... altogether unavoidable (though he chose to attribute his reverses wholly to the latter cause), he found himself suddenly plunged from competence into utter destitution. He had hitherto practised painting as an amateur, but now he was forced to embrace it as the only means afforded him of supporting his family, which at that time consisted of a wife and two children. He was not without some share of talent; but unhappily for those who depended on his exertions, he was ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... from Murillo, the great artist. He painted the face of one of the ancients." He laid before his silent auditors another drawer which contained a sheet of card-board on which was a fairly good pastel of an Arab in a burnouse. It had the weak and false drawing which would result in the attempt of an amateur to copy an engraving in color. "This came in broad daylight while I held the clean card-board on my head," ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... the adjoining mansion (now converted into a farm house,) exhibit a venerable appearance, and being surrounded by groves of magnificent elms, the whole presents one of the prettiest rural scenes in the island; and to the amateur of sketching, it must prove a treat. The Parsonage too will be admired for its appropriate character and pleasant situation.—Passing a few scattered cottages, our road will be on the pebbly beach ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... after we reached Palermo, when, in the first bewilderment of architects in this paradise of art and color, we were working nobly at our sketches in that dream of delight, the Capella Palatina. He was himself an amateur archaeologist, he told us, and passionately devoted to his island; so he felt impelled to speak to any one whom he saw appreciating the almost—and in a way fortunately—unknown beauties of Palermo. In a little ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... change. In the pure air of his country living he was liberated from the unsatisfactory wranglings, the bitter jealousies, and vexatious interference of his London patrons, whose self-sufficiency and spiritual pride were, like those of many amateur theologians at the present day, in inverse ratio to their knowledge and ability. He had the satisfaction of seeing a son grow up to be worthy of his father. To that son we are indebted for the very interesting biography of Thomas Scott, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... covered with pictures of Swayslands, the dear old place in Kent of Herbert's father—where I spent many happy hours of childhood, and where Mr. Burnand used often to come and coach us all in charades and amateur theatricals. There were also many pictures of Penshurst Place, and of the old village church, whose beautiful chime of bells I so well remember, and where I have 'assisted' at more than one pretty wedding. It all brought back many mingled memories ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... another, a coloured drawing made by Morris—who was rather clever at catching likenesses—of her as she appeared singing in the chapel on the night when she had drawn the page-boy, Thomas, from his slumbers; and the third, also a photograph, taken by some local amateur, of her and Morris standing together on the beach and ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... three other boys came forward with much the same tale. He remembered now that during the holidays he had discovered that Dick was maintaining a sort of amateur menagerie in his bedroom, and that he had ordered the whole of the livestock to be got ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... to amateur observers who may be disposed to find out for themselves whether or not changes now take place in the moon, the following sentence from the introduction to Professor Pickering's chapter on Plato in the Harvard Observatory Annals, volume xxxii, will ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... is of course free to join the syndicate," continued the S. M. "But he, too, is an amateur. He may know how to live well in hotels, he doesn't know how ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... use what is called rubberized silk, others prefer balloon cloth. Ordinary muslin of good quality, treated with a coat of light varnish after it is in place, will answer all the purposes of the amateur. ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... drumming his fingers on an arm rest while Colonel Meadows and Dr. Shalt talked, tried to convince him of the invalidity in his reasoning. There was a simple explanation for the voice; either he had forgotten part of his speech or maybe some amateur radio ham had somehow managed to pick up their signal and was playing a joke. He was too intelligent a man to be frightened by such coincidence. They spoke to him reassuringly all during the ride. At the stage door he thanked them, ...
— The Second Voice • Mann Rubin
... wild ducks, took some to town for sale, and attracted the attention of a portly gentleman fond of shooting. This gentleman went duck shooting with Joe, and their adventures were more amusing to the boy than to the amateur sportsman. ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... full of ingenious ideas for a brilliant opening. Among other forms of inexpensive advertisement, he suggested that, for the first day, a band should be engaged to play in the front room over the shop, with the windows open; and he undertook to find amateur bandsmen who would undertake the ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... tripod socket is also provided so that it can be used for hand or tripod work as desired. All complicated adjustments have been dispensed with so that the instrument can be manipulated with ease by the youngest amateur. Full and explicit instructions are sent with each camera. Send 5c stamps for ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [May, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... Goethe's own testimony, had the instantaneous effect of his gaining for life the confidence of both Jacobis. The sight which equally moved all three was the unchanged interior of the mansion of a citizen of Cologne named Jabach, who a century before had been distinguished as an amateur of the fine arts. But what specially impressed them was a picture by Le Brun representing Jabach and his family in all the freshness of life, and the consequent reflection that this picture was the sole memorial that they had ever lived. "This reflection," Georg ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... Naturally a retired and simple man, he had shown no particular sense of being ruined, further than that he left off washing when the shock was announced, and never took to that luxury any more. Having been a very indifferent musical amateur in his better days, when he fell with his brother he resorted for support to playing a clarionet in a small theatre orchestra. It was the theatre in which his niece became a dancer, and he accepted the task of serving as her ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... concerns, and on which the qualities personally proper to me could have had no bearing. Almost the only real incidents, as I see them now, were the visits of a young English friend, a scholar and a literary amateur, between whom and myself there sprung up an affectionate, and, I trust, not transitory regard. He used to come and sit or stand by my fireside, talking vivaciously and eloquently with me about literature and life, his own national characteristics ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... "Of amateur jockeys and gentlemen riders there have been plenty; among the most successful being Lieut.-Col. Vincent, R.A.S.C., Major Walker, R.A., Capt. Sir Robin Paul, Lieut. Dowling. We much missed Lieut. Stanley Wooten, of the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry, who has hitherto been such a popular ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown
... many ways. She had wonderful eyes—large, dark, and full of mute eloquence—and if her mouth was too large, her nose too irregular, and her cheeks too much tanned by rude health, and by exposure to the sun as the village gossips said, I, Henry Kinnish, poetic dreamer, and amateur sculptor, thought she had a symmetry of form and a grace of movement which wrought her whole being into harmony and made her a perfect example of beauty with a plain face; and every one knew that Andrew, the young village blacksmith and rural postman, loved her ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... support or backing easily and readily by the hand, without the assistance of any dissolving or other agent. Thus this invention does away with all sensitive preparations on glass, which latter is both a brittle and relatively heavy material, thus diminishing the bulk and weight of amateur and scientific photographers' luggage when traveling; it produces photographic negatives as fine and as transparent as those on glass, in so much that the film does not contain any grain; and, lastly, it admits of printing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... such as is shown can be purchased ready made up, or it may be made by the amateur by lacing together two pieces of Spanish leather cut to size and punched along the edges so as to allow a lacing of leather thong. It may be filled with hair or elastic felt ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part 2 • H. H. Windsor
... confess I have great difficulty in understanding why such an accomplished flash burglar as Birchill, one of the best men at the game in London at the present time, should want the assistance of an amateur like Hill in ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... scrupulous conscientiousness about detail. On the other hand his sense of colour was somewhat imperfect, and his hand was almost totally untrained, so that while he had all the enthusiasm of the true artist, his work always had the defects of an amateur. ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... lecture has since told me an equally strange fact. In her native parish there was an amateur choir, which assembled twice a week in the parish church to practise. On the lobby of the gallery wherein the choir assembled, there was a piano, to lead and accompany the voices; as regularly as the piano was played, a Robin Red Breast—an old tenant of the churchyard—would perch on ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... for the whole, he preserves a coolness, a patience defying all obstacles, as regards details. Moreover, in order not to do any injury to perfection, he would rather renounce the enjoyment given by the completion. For the simple amateur, it is the difficulty of means that disgusts him and turns him from his aim; his dreams would be to have no more trouble in producing than he had in ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... ninth Earl of Pembroke, an intelligent lover of the arts, and an amateur architect of considerable merit. Walpole says of him, in his account of Sculptors and Architects, The soul of Inigo Jones, who had been patronised by his ancestors, seemed still to hover over its favourite Wilton, and to have assisted the Muses of ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... does the amateur, dwelling at home at ease, comprehend the labours and perils of the author, and, when he smilingly skims the surface of a work of fiction, how little does he consider the hours of toil, consultation of authorities, researches ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... little rat coming here and stealing the detective's badge!" laughed George. "It's a sure thing he'll lead those amateur officers a merry dance while they are in the hills! If I could just get hold of him, I wouldn't mind helping ...
— Boy Scouts on the Great Divide - or, The Ending of the Trail • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... recognized craft in the fishing fleet, and generally Allan sailed with her as faithfully as if his life depended upon the catching of the gray fish. And when the sea-mood was not on him, he had another all-sufficing occupation. For he was a good amateur painter, and he was surrounded by studies almost irresistible to ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... the happy position now of making a speech for the man who is going to be elected. (Laughter and applause.) It is a great thing for an amateur, when his first nomination has failed, to come in and second the man who has succeeded. New York is here with no bitter feeling and with no disappointment. We recognize that the waves have submerged us, but we have bobbed up serenely. (Loud laughter.) It was a cannon from New York that sounded ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... after we came out here, wasn’t so pleasant”—he looked at his hands ruefully—“but this joke of Mr. Glenarm’s making a will and then going to Egypt to see what would happen,—that was too good to miss. And when the heir arrived I found new opportunities of practising amateur theatricals; and Pickering’s efforts to enlist me in his scheme for finding the money and making me rich gave me still greater opportunities. There were times when I was strongly tempted to blurt the whole thing; ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... David was but she felt reasonably sure she could find out his address in the morning. There was a small boy living next door who was capable of ferreting out almost anything for money. Kate had employed him more than once as an amateur detective in cases of minor importance. So, with a bit of silver and her letter she made her way to his familiar haunts and explained most carefully that the letter was to be delivered to no one but the man to whom it was addressed, ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... supremely attractive. Emotions of tenderness, of sadness, also came to many. Nostalgia was not yet shaken off. This strained condition of nerves, combined with the trail hardships, produced the physical irritation which is inevitable in all amateur pioneer work. Confusions, discordances, arising over the most trifling circumstances, grew into petulance, incivility, wrangling and intrigue, as happened in so many other earlier caravans. In the Babel-like excitement of the morning catch-up, amid the ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... Father Lockhart's solitary original tune, harmonized by Mr. A.H. Prendergast, and set to Father Faber's Hymn to St. Joseph, "There are many saints above," is another example of tender sentiment by an amateur that outweighs any technical defect as to ...
— Cardinal Newman as a Musician • Edward Bellasis
... stokers and guards. The result was at times amusing, and at times alarming. Our locomotives were so unskilfully handled that they at once degenerated into the merest donkey engines, and played upon us donkey tricks. One of these amateur drivers early in the journey discovered that he had forgotten to take on board an adequate supply of coal, and so ran his engine back to get it, while we patiently awaited his return. Soon after we made our second start it was discovered ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... honest artisan who was madly in love with her. But in spite of their endeavours, they failed to make both ends meet. Hence they gladly accepted the offer of an elderly and well-to-do townsman to send the lad to school and keep him with him. It was the generous freak of an eccentric amateur of painting, who had been struck by the little figures that the urchin had often daubed. And thus for seven years Claude had remained in the South, at first boarding at the college, and afterwards living with his protector. The latter, however, was found dead in his bed one morning. He ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... China; as he readily imparted his most valuable acquisitions to those who were most likely to increase them, this plant soon became conspicuous in the collections of the principal Nurserymen near town, and in the course of a few years will, no doubt, decorate the window of every amateur. ...
— The Botanical Magazine Vol. 8 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... remarkable successes in the past, but we can have no confidence that these successes will be repeated unless there are much better reasons for believing in its methods and initial assumptions than any which the scientific man who is an amateur 'empiricist' in his philosophy can offer us. We may note, in particular, that this empiricism, which has been expounded most carefully by Pearson and Mach, coincides with Hegelian Absolutism in leading to ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... the best water colors we could find in Abbott's art store, we converted my bachelor quarters in the Sherman House into an amateur studio, where we daily labored for an hour or so in producing most remarkable counterfeits of the masterpieces in Mr. Walters's gallery as seen through Mr. Larned's text. We were innocent of the first principles of drawing and knew absolutely nothing about ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... being examined every one, save the pastor and the women, was sent from the hall to aid in extinguishing the fire, which had been nearly subdued. MacFearsome was somewhat expert as an amateur doctor, and so was the Reverend William Tucker. Their united opinion was that the hunter's case was a very grave one. They did all that could be done to stop the bleeding and sustain the strength of the wounded man, whose consciousness ...
— The Thorogood Family • R.M. Ballantyne
... Celt were, undeniably, intellectual. Chess has already been mentioned more than once in this work as a constant occupation of princes and chieftains. Indeed, they appear to have sat down to a game with all the zest of a modern amateur. A few specimens of chessmen have been discovered: a king, elaborately carved, is figured in the Introduction to the Book of Rights. It belonged to Dr. Petrie, and was found, with some others, in a bog in the county Meath. The chessmen of ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... you some brandy," said Max, bethinking himself of a certain silver flask in his suitcase, a prize as it happened, won as an amateur ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... pirates. Fleets of merchantmen, despite the fact that they were accompanied usually by a vessel of war, often were assailed by corsairs, defeated, robbed, and sold as prizes to the Mohammedans. The black flag of piracy flew over whole fleets in the Baltic and in the Mediterranean. The amateur pirate, if less formidable, was no less common, for many a vessel carrying brass cannon, ostensibly for protection, found it convenient to use them to attack foreign craft and more frequently "took" a cargo than ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... one assumed, all criminals must seem strange types to the amateur observer. Come to think of it, she had no standard to measure this man by, and knew no law that prescribed for his kind either dress clothing with an inverness and a mask of polished imperturbability, or else a pea-jacket, a pug-nose, a cauliflower ear, with bow legs and a rolling ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... practiced with this weapon a good deal in the last two or three hours and acquired considerable proficiency for so short a period of experience. Moreover, she was skilled in amateur archery and could pull a bow with a strong right arm. This experience, together with a general systematic athletic training at school, rendered her particularly well adapted ...
— Campfire Girls at Twin Lakes - The Quest of a Summer Vacation • Stella M. Francis
... was softened down to a picture of domestic comfort. The tapestries and curtains hung in careless folds, the beds admitted of sleep, and the pictures were delicate copies by the pencil of some youthful amateur, whose leisure had been exercised in ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... lead to an easy identification of the tree. No detail that will help the student has been omitted and the small size of the volume, about the length and width of the hand, makes it convenient to carry. An ideal volume for expert naturalist or amateur for field work or even ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... Here was no amateur in the business of Grievance Committees. His manner was that of a self-respecting man dealing with a fellow-man on terms of perfect equality. There was a complete absence of Wigglesworth's noisy bluster, as also of Gilby's violent profanity. He obviously knew his ground and was ready to hold ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... uses to which the fabric is to be converted, it is no part of our purpose to deal, further than to warn the public not to lend an ear to the all too prurient purity of the amateur moralist; but considering the character of the work now carried on in Soho, no ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... angular face, which appeared to her as if it had been roughly hewn with a chisel, by some one who was a mere amateur, and she could not ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... considered the matter already. Imagine how nervous one may be waiting in the hall and watching with a keen glance for the approach of the physician who is to announce that one is a forefather. The amateur forefather of 1620 must have felt proud yet anxious about the clam-yield also, as each new ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... Mr. Lemuel's portrait of me appears in the Academy, people would be saying, 'Who is that?' Miss Gertrude White, as Juliet? Ah, there was an actress of that name. Or was she an amateur? She married somebody in the Highlands. I suppose she ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... theory of it is beyond the average man's comprehension. A large number of factors enter into the production of a correct result, and the attaining of that result involves a high degree of technical skill and a large experience. It is no affair for the amateur. The test should be made by a specialist of recognized standing, and this term does not include many of the commercial laboratories which spring up like mushrooms in these days of ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... how just it is, and it will, perhaps, help to prevent you from always setting the lively, noisy artist, above the quiet and silent citizen. Let this, however, be between you and me. If they could hear us talking, neither artist nor citizen would forgive me, and the amateur still less. ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... attractions of the great city, Augustin well knew that he had not been sent there to amuse himself, or to trifle as an amateur with philosophy. He was poor, and he had to secure his future—make his fortune. His family counted on him. Neither was he ignorant of the difficult position of his parents and by what sacrifices they had supplied him with the means to finish his studies. Necessarily he was obliged to ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... magic-lanterns, play their part." How they are to listen to the teas, processions and lanterns, I don't quite understand, in spite of the fact that they (the aforesaid teas, &c.) seem to be "playing their parts." Evidently teas, &c., are amateur Actors. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 19, 1892 • Various
... of hurting the feelings of others was so great that she did not tell people what she was thinking; she was truthful but not candid. Her drawings—both in pastel and water-colour—her portraits, landscapes and interiors were further removed from amateur work than Laura's piano-playing or my dancing; and, had she put her wares into the market, as we all wanted her to do years ago, she would have been a rich woman, but like all saints she was uninfluenceable. I owe her too much to write about ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... the amateur," they say. And—"A bit too much of a sentimentalist to be taken seriously," some knowing fellow in a kennel coat of the latest style will tell you. Perhaps they do not quite know what they mean. Or perhaps they are influenced ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... was the photograph. If it were at all a likeness, the woman who gazed frankly out upon the onlooker from the card-mount must have been a striking creature indeed. It was an amateur production, for the detectives were baffled in that no professional photographer's signature or studio was appended. Across a corner of the mount, in delicate feminine tracery, was written: "Semper idem; semper fidelis." And she looked it. As many recollect, ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... choir, decided she must come out as a prima donna in his theatre. For the fame and success of this theatre Zustiniani cared more than for anything else in the world—not that he was eager for money, but because he was an enthusiast for music—a man of taste, an amateur, whose great business in life was to gratify his taste. He liked to be talked about and to have his theatre and his magnificence ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... boiling caldrons of metal, laired by day in dens of drunkenness and infamy; breathing from infancy to death an air saturated with fog and grease and soot, vileness for soul and body. What do you make of a case like that, amateur psychologist? You call it an altogether serious thing to be alive: to these men it is a drunken jest, a joke,—horrible to angels perhaps, to them commonplace enough. My fancy about the river was an idle one: it is no type of such a life. What if it be stagnant and slimy here? It knows ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... grounded in my youth by an old gentleman, a friend of my family, and I may say my guardian,' said I; 'but I have forgotten it since. God forbid I should delude you into thinking me a herald, sir! I am only an ungrammatical amateur.' ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... same lovely region, half water, half land, over which we had passed in the morning, floating between patches of greenest grass, and large forest-trees, and blackened trunks standing out of the lake like ruins. We did not go very fast nor very far, for our amateur boatmen found the evening warm, and their rowing was rather play than work; they stopped, too, every now and then, to get a shot at a white heron or into a flock of paroquets or ciganas, whereby they wasted a good deal of powder to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... predicted that it would reappear in the early part of 1759. He did not, however, live to see this fulfilled, but the comet duly returned—the first body of the kind to verify such a prediction—and was detected on Christmas Day, 1758, by George Palitzch, an amateur observer living near Dresden. Halley also investigated the past history of the comet, and traced it back to the year 1456. The orbit of Halley's comet passes out slightly beyond the orbit of Neptune. At its last visit in 1835, this comet passed comparatively close ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... boys giving full details of radio work, both in sending and receiving—telling how small and large amateur sets can be made and operated, and how some boys got a lot of fun and adventure out of what they did. Each volume from first to last is so thoroughly fascinating, so strictly up-to-date and accurate, we feel sure all lads will peruse them ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... an amateur naturalist, knew considerable about the woods and their numerous denizens. Larry was an utter greenhorn, and apt many times to display his gross ignorance concerning the habits of game; as well as ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... "What chance should I have? They say an amateur never can compete with a professed gardener, and ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... a certain amount of variety would be secured by the proposed method which under the existing system we miss. There is, of course, such a danger as that of providing too much liturgical variety. Amateur makers of Prayer Books almost invariably fall into this slough. Hymn-books, as is well known, often destroy their own usefulness by including too many hymns; and Prayer Books may do the same ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... and seventeenth centuries amateur dramatic productions called masques were presented. Sometimes even nobles and members of the royal family took part. These plays were accompanied by music, dancing, and spectacular effects. The literary character ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... breaks up the stiffness of a party, brings the sexes together, and provides the exhilaration of rhythmic motion. Barn frolics at maple-sugar or harvest time accomplish the same end, only less satisfactorily. Musicales and amateur theatricals provide an exhibition of skill, cultivate the aesthetic nature, gratify the dramatic instinct, and furnish opportunity for mutual acquaintance among the people of the community, who meet all too seldom in social gatherings, and at the same time they furnish wholesome entertainment ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... face composed in a deathless simper: "Long, long have been the struggles of man, but civilization has produced me at last. Further than this it cannot go. Nothing shall make me continue my line. In me the end is reached. See my back: 'The Amateur. This perfect style, 8s. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... was, however, probably present to my friend's mind, and to that of others, a feeling that a man who had spent his life in writing English novels could not be fit to write about Caesar. It was as when an amateur gets a picture hung on the walls of the Academy. What business had I there? Ne sutor ultra crepidam. In the press it was most faintly damned by most faint praise. Nevertheless, having read the book again within the last month or two, I make bold to ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... now she asked to have the window opened. The train had stopped again and the car was oppressively hot. People around were looking at their watches and grumbling over the delay. The doctor bustled in with a remark about its being his busy day. The amateur detective and the porter together mounted guard over lower ten. Outside the heat rose in shimmering waves from the tracks: the very wood of the car was hot to touch. A Camberwell Beauty darted through the open door and made its way, in erratic ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Mounting with Driving Clock. This instrument was designed to meet the demand for portable low priced telescope suitable for the study of astronomy in the college, high school or for the amateur astronomer. Every observer and teacher in astronomy will appreciate the great usefulness of a driving mechanism, which will keep the star in the field during observation. After several years of experimenting we have succeeded in constructing a ...
— Astronomical Instruments and Accessories • Wm. Gaertner & Co.
... popular, as well as the delightful Spanish "zarzuela" or musical comedy. Owing to the isolation of the country it is not often visited by good professional troupes, and the interior is entirely dependent upon amateur talent. ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... self-denial by the Continental Congress put an end temporarily to plays in the colonies outside the British lines and put Washington into a greater play, "not, as he once wished, as a performer, but as a character." There were amateur performances at Valley Forge, but they aroused the hostility of the puritanical, and Congress forbade them. Washington seems, however, to have ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... Philadelphia, caused by roughs attacking the Quakers. The "shadbellies," as they were derisively called, did not fight back, which made the sport all the more alluring to the cowardly rioters. Young Van de Grift, who was an excellent amateur boxer, joined in these frays with enthusiasm in defense of the Quakers. It was not only his fine American spirit of fair play that urged him into these fights, but he felt a deep gratitude to the Quakers all his life on account of his sister Matilda. Strangely enough, Grandfather Miller ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... a neighbourhood bristling with pianos, amateur singers, gramophones, and other grind boxes it saves its cost in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... where they seemed to improve the text. In this connection the writer must offer his profound gratitude to the industrious typographer, who often makes two jokes grow where only one grew before, and has added generously to the distress of amateur elocutionists. ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... would have been Bean's model if Bean had been less a coward. Bulger was nearly all that Bean wished to be. He condescended to his tasks with an air of elegant and detached leisure that raised them to the dignity of sports. He had quite the air of a wealthy amateur with a passion ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... unexceptionable kind, and likely to offend neither the tastes nor prejudices of the society in which you find yourself. At an evening party given expressly in honour of a distinguished lady of colour, we once heard a thoughtless amateur dash into the broadly comic, but terribly appropriate nigger song of "Sally come up." Before he had got through the first verse, he had perceived his mistake, and was so overwhelmed with shame that he could scarcely preserve sufficient presence of mind to carry ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... provide for the needs which grew and changed daily, he fitted up rude shelf above shelf, till the corners of the room were transformed into rough bric-a-brac stands. Mr. Madigan had the unsuccessful man's pride in trifling successes in amateur carpentering, in husbandry of any sort unrelated to the real issues of his life; and every tool he needed for the exercise of his skill he kept under lock and key. He believed in, he trusted no Madigan. He had been known to lend his penknife to Sissy, but that was ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... letter.[24] I wish to reverence men of science, but they often will not let me. If I know certain facts on this subject, Faraday ought to have known them before he expressed an opinion on it. His statement does not meet the facts of the case—it is a statement which applies simply to various amateur operations without touching on the essential phenomena, such as the moving of ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... upstairs' who daily practises the flute or cornopean from 11 A.M. to 3 P.M. The 'Wandering Minstrels' and their achievements are often mentioned with respect in the western drawing-rooms of London; but if the gentlemen who form that distinguished troupe of amateur performers wish to sacrifice their present popularity and take a leading position amongst the social nuisances of the period, they should migrate from the district which delights to honor them to chambers in Old Square, Lincoln's Inn, and give morning concerts every ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... resumed his good nature: "Go on, Captain. I'm so stale with dolce far niente, after the Black Pearl affair last month, that I act like an amateur myself. Make it short, though, for I'm going to ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... distinction, and the two were united by a generous friendship. The last day was a trial of minstrelsy. In this, also, the Knight of the Blooming Rose bore the palm away from all his rivals, both professional and amateur. Accompanying himself upon the harp, he sang spirit-stirring lays which awakened the enthusiasm of ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... of one week more I should be suffered to take my way; that week being devoted to a round of especial entertainments in honour of my brother's election; the whole to be wound up by that most preposterous of all delights, an amateur play. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... training? That will be a happy day when a course of training in nursing, though it be but a short one, is considered a necessary part of every woman's education. Miss Nightingale truly says, "There is no such thing as amateur nursing ... Three-fourths of the whole mischief in women's lives arises from their excepting themselves from the rule of ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... always were they thus. Of bright, cheerful mornings, they took slow, tottering rambles in the woods; nodding over grotesque walking- sticks, of the Chimpanzee's handiwork. For sedate Rozoko was a dilletante-arborist: an amateur in canes. Indeed, canes at last became his hobby. For half daft with age, sometimes he straddled his good staff and gently rode abroad, to take the salubrious evening air; deeming it more befitting exercise, at times, than walking. Into this menage, he soon initiated ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... in his comely house in Navy Gardens, no fewer than two of his cousins were tramping the fens, kit under arm, to make music to the country girls. But he himself, though he could play so many instruments and pass judgment in so many fields of art, remained an amateur. It is not given to any one so keenly to enjoy, without some greater power to understand. That he did not like Shakespeare as an artist for the stage may be a fault, but it is not without either parallel or excuse. He certainly admired him as a poet; he was the ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... acrid where they should be tolerant; they know nothing about the real evils; and they do no good, for the simple reason that racing blackguards never read anything, while cultured gentlemen who happen to go racing smile quietly at the blundering of amateur moralists. Sir Wilfrid Lawson is a good man and a clever man; but to see the kind of display he makes when he gets up to talk about the Turf is very saddening. He can give you an accurate statement concerning the evils of drink, but as soon as he touches racing his innocence ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... shouldn't run, and that's about as much as I can say. I have never seen Montague run, and I don't think either of us can possibly draw an estimate of the other's form; still, the best man in a camp like Rockcliffe must be a pretty good amateur. I can only take for my comfort that Aldershot is bigger, and I proved myself the best man there over a similar ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... imaginable. She was very small and slender, with quantities of soft dark hair and beautiful great dark eyes that looked like a frightened fawn's. I have heard my father describe her many times, and I have seen the water-colour sketch he made of her—he was quite an amateur. Ahmed has it locked away somewhere. She nearly died when the baby was born, and she never recovered her strength. She made no complaint and never spoke of herself, and seemed quite content as long as the ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... pale-eyed multitude worried the surface, and, at the risk and cost of their lives, probed the depths. Now that deep sinking was in vogue, gold-digging no longer served as a play-game for the gentleman and the amateur; the greater number of those who toiled at it were work-tried, seasoned men. And yet, although it had now sunk to the level of any other arduous and uncertain occupation, and the magic prizes of the early days were seldom found, something of the old, romantic glamour still clung to this ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... people in different parts of England. As a result, first one and then another made a crude locomotive and tried it out without scruple on the public highway, where it not only frightened horses but terrified the passers-by. Many an amusing story is told of the adventures of these amateur locomotives. A machinist named Murdock, who was one of James Watt's assistants, built a sort of grasshopper engine with very long piston rods and with legs at the back to help push it along; with this odd contrivance he ventured out into the road ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... Gentle Art." Occasionally Jim and Bill When Nobody Listens Office Mottoes Metaphysics Heads and Tails An Election Night Pantoum I Can Not Pay That Premium Three Authors To Quotation Melodrama A Poor Excuse, but Our Own Monotonous Variety The Amateur Botanist A Word for It The Poem Speaks Bedbooks A New York Child's Garden of Verses Downward, Come Downward Speaking of Hunting The Flat Hunter's Way Birds and Bards A Wish—An Apartmental Ditty The Monument ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... boxing lessons became a regular thing. The claim Lennox had made for himself had scarcely done him justice. He was one of the best amateur boxers in the West. In Yeager he had a pupil quick to learn. The extra was a perfect specimen physically, narrow of flank, broad of shoulder, with the well-packed muscles of one always trained to the minute. Fifteen years in the saddle had given him a toughness of fiber ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... and Ellen fretted and chafed at her inability to make him see. She was no siren, and was without either the parts or the experience for a definite attack on his senses. She worked as an amateur and a schoolgirl, with only a certain fundamental shrewdness to guide her; she was doubtless becoming closer friends with Alce—he liked to sit and talk to her after tea, and often gave her lifts in ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... guards. The result was at times amusing, and at times alarming. Our locomotives were so unskilfully handled that they at once degenerated into the merest donkey engines, and played upon us donkey tricks. One of these amateur drivers early in the journey discovered that he had forgotten to take on board an adequate supply of coal, and so ran his engine back to get it, while we patiently awaited his return. Soon after we made our second start ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... was welcomed at every mess, and he had the entree of every house in Quebec. He could drink harder than any man in the regiment, and dance down a whole regiment of drawing-room knights. He could sing better than any amateur I ever heard; and was the best judge of a meerschaum-pipe I ever saw. Lucky? Yes, he was—and especially so, and more than all else—on account of the joyousness of his soul. There was a contagious and a godlike hilarity in his broad, open ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... prefer it to be someone less interested in the wares thus pushed. For my part I should be content to call The Silver Chain by no means an uninteresting story, the work of a distinguished man, obviously an amateur in the craft of letters, who nevertheless has pleased himself (and will give pleasure to others) by working into it many pen-pictures of scenes in Egypt and Rome and Sicily, full of the glowing colour that we should ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various
... nothing to Mr Wardlaw, but spent the next week in the assiduous toil of the amateur detective. I procured some maps and books from my friend, the second engineer, and read all I could about Blaauwildebeestefontein. Not that there was much to learn; but I remember I had quite a thrill when I discovered from the chart of the ship's run one ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... off the prizes of his art from all competitors. Consequently it was inevitable that other sculptors should be jealous of him, and should unite together for mutual protection. Story was a man of talent, and not a little of an amateur, but he was the gentlemanly entertainer of those Americans who came to the city with good letters of introduction. Hawthorne evidently fell into Story's hands. He speaks slightingly of Crawford, and praises Story's statue of Cleopatra in unqualified terms; and yet there ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... not genuine; but as it was the practice of Giorgione and Correggio, "in order to learn the effect of the colours, of the masses, and of the work as a whole," he recommends it to the painter. He expects, however, from the amateur an impartiality almost impossible to attain, when it is expected to reach such a point that "all schools, all masters, all manners, and all classes of pictures will be a matter of indifference to him." We fear that an amateur who could reach this indifference, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... their destination, and passed the night comfortably, they next morning determined to kill an hour or two in the town; and were taking a stroll arm in arm, when perceiving by a playbill, that an amateur of fashion from the theatres royal, Drury Lane and Haymarket, was just come in, and would shortly ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... and a rustic boy must stand puzzled for a little how to use his placid and unjaded strength. It happens, too, though in a deeper and more subtle way, to the man who marries for love, if the love be true and fit for foul weather. Mr. Bagehot used to say that a bachelor was "an amateur in life," and wit and wisdom are married in the jest. A man who lives only for himself has not begun to live—has yet to learn his use, and his real pleasure too, in the world. It is not necessary he should marry to find himself out, but ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... of unfriendly comments on the scheme as Watton detailed it. A bit of amateur economics, which would only help the Bill to ruin a few more people than would otherwise ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... time I saw Hook was at Prior's Bank, Fulham, where his neighbors, Mr. Baylis and Mr. Whitmore, had given an "entertainment," the leading feature being an amateur play,—for which, by the way, I wrote the prologue. Hook was then in his decadence,—in broken health,—his animal spirits gone,—the cup of life drained to the dregs. It was morning before the guests departed, yet Hook remained to the last; and a light of other days brightened up his features, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... either in this hotel or another that I met the Naval officer among whose duties is the granting or refusing of permits to amateur photographers in districts where "Dora" does not wish for enemy cameras. Among the requirements of the form which has to be filled up is one asking the applicant, in the interests of identification, to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 17, 1917 • Various
... in the window across the park," continued Rodney, "and I realized how interested you were, it occurred to me that we'd engage that studio and put Miss Mayo into it. Miss Mayo lives in Richmond, Virginia, and she had been making a big hit in amateur theatricals. She wanted to get on the legitimate stage, as Shaw told you; so Mrs. Ordway suggested that Epstein and I ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... improving, and Haydn, who was always lucky in the patrons he secured (at least according to the notion about patrons that then prevailed), was invited to the country-house of Herr von Fuernberg, a wealthy amateur, to stay there and compose quartettes for him—a style of music for which von Fuernberg had an especial liking. To his prompting it is that we owe the lovely series of quartettes which Haydn wrote—still as fresh and full of serene beauty as when first tried over ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... he laid a fine, richly veined, strong old hand upon my arm with a charming gesture. "I have been here twenty-five years; I bought all the antique furniture of my predecessor. I said to myself, 'Yes, I shall buy the furniture for five hundred francs, and then, later I shall sell to a wealthy amateur for one thousand francs, perhaps in a year or two.' Twenty-five years ago, and I have it yet. And now it creaks and creaks and snaps in the night. We all creak and creak thus as we grow old; ah, you should hear my wardrobes. 'Elles cassent les dos,' and I lie in my warm bed in the winter nights ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... really but disappointing writers. It soon became evident enough that the devil was not to be raised by their prescriptions, that the philosopher's stone was beyond the reach of the amateur. Iamblichus is particularly obscure and tedious. To any young beginner I would recommend Petrus de Abano, as the most adequate and gruesome of the school, for "real deevilry and pleesure," while in the wilderness of Plotinus there are ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... pigeons—pretty creatures—and I had been told there was money in pigeons. I paid them extortionate prices on account of extreme ignorance; and the birds, of course, flew home as soon as released, to be bought again by some gullible amateur. I had omitted to secure the names and addresses ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... adventure with a box of cheap watches and gilded trinkets; while Mr. Hugh Roger Littlepage, junior, was to commence his travels at home, in the character of a music-grinder. Modesty will not permit me to say all I might, in favour of my own skill in music in general; but I sang well for an amateur, and played, both on the violin and flute, far better ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... the first scene of The Caprice. Renee was very lively as Mme. de Lery; Henri, in the role of husband, proved himself a talented amateur actor, as so many young men of a cold temperament, and grave society men, often do. Noemi, well sustained by Henri, admirably prompted by Denoisel, and slightly carried away by seeing the large audience, ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... the Moor in search of the picturesque, and coming and going by mere accident through Mambury. He had hovered around the neighbourhood for two days, off and on, in search of his man; and now, by careful watching, like an amateur detective, he had run his prey to earth by a dexterous flank-movement and secured an interview with him where he couldn't shirk or ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... at Lindsay in a manner which was itself a reminiscence of amateur theatricals. "Their relations!" she murmured to Dr. Livingstone. "What ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... that the Sunchild, having come amongst us for our advantage, not his own, would not permit his beneficent designs to be endangered by the discrepancies, mythical developments, idiosyncracies, and a hundred other defects inevitably attendant on amateur and irresponsible recording. Small wonder, then, that he should have chosen the officials of the Musical Banks, from the Presidents and Vice-Presidents downwards to be the authoritative exponents ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... grandfather, "let us next consider what grounds you have for your belief that wrong is being committed. Are they not confined to mere suspicions? Suspicions aroused by the chatter of a wild, ungoverned child? Often the amateur detective gets into trouble through accusing the innocent. Law-abiding citizens should not attempt to uncover all the wrongs that exist, or to right them. The United States Government employs special officers for ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... taken up at once, and the picture became his. John thought himself dreaming. He examined his treasure over and over, and felt sure that it was the work of no amateur beginner, but of a trained hand and a true artist-soul. So he found his way to the studio of the stranger, and apologized for having got such a gem for so much less than its worth. "It was all I could give, though," he said; "and one who paid four times as much could not value ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... it," said the earl, slowly, a faint blush stealing into his cheeks, "an 'amateur' is a lover. If that is right, perhaps you had better put me down as ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith
... speaks volumes for her. They say she is going to marry a son of Keppell Craven's, Lord Craven's uncle. They met first, I believe, at the acting of Lord Leveson Gower's play of Hernani, at Bridgewater House, when Mr. Craven reaped much histrionic fame as an amateur. Of one thing we are quite sure, Miss Kemble will act well wherever she may be ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... what the devil she is doing there. She sails gayly along, though there is no land in sight and plenty of rough weather coming. She never read a book, I believe, in her life. She tries to paint, but she is only a second rate amateur and will never be any thing more, though she has done one or two things which I give you my word I would like to have done myself. She picks up all she knows without an effort and knows nothing well, yet she seems to understand whatever is said. Her mind is as irregular as her face, and both have ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... a mile off in the valley, and the nearest engine, a poor feeble thing, at Wattlesea. Moreover, the assailants might discover how small was the force of rescuers, and return to the attack. Thus, while Griff, who had given amateur assistance at all the fires he could reach in London; was striving to organise resistance to this new enemy, my father induced the gentlemen to cause the horses to be put to the various vehicles, and employ them in carrying the women and children to Chantry House. The old Rector was persuaded ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "distracted puckering and botching." There may be nothing in this article-writing, when once we know how to do it, as there is nothing in balancing a ladder on one's chin, or jumping through a hoop, or swallowing a sword. All we say is, if people think it easy, let them try, and abide by the result. The amateur articles of very clever people are generally what an amateur effort at coat-making would be. It may seem a very easy thing to make a coat; but very expert craftsmen—craftsmen that can produce more difficult and elaborate pieces of workmanship, fail utterly when ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... us,—Tom Rendel and me,—one morning soon after we reached Palermo, when, in the first bewilderment of architects in this paradise of art and color, we were working nobly at our sketches in that dream of delight, the Capella Palatina. He was himself an amateur archaeologist, he told us, and passionately devoted to his island; so he felt impelled to speak to any one whom he saw appreciating the almost—and in a way fortunately—unknown beauties of Palermo. In a little time we ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... often brought here were very beautiful. Nellie did not like him personally, but she could not deny his knowledge and enthusiasm. Margaret, too, used to invite her to the Hall, for Miss Layton has great taste as an amateur gardener, Mr. Brett. But this friendship suddenly ceased. Mr. Capella became very strange and gloomy in his manner. At last Nellie told me that the wretched man had dared to utter words of love to her, hinting that his wife could not live long, and ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... possible that Rossetti owed something of his manner of painting—a fragmentary method of completion—to the teaching of Brown; if so, he was indebted to his friend for the weakest side of his art. But, for the rest, this system of working is very general amongst English painters, in whom the amateur is persistent—the building the picture up in detail, with minor reference to the mass of the structure; and this was the weakness of Brown's art, for what he did was done with such intensity that no after treatment could bring it into complete subordination to the general effect. Theodore ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... Democracy, and as the great dabbler in art, music, literature, and, above all, acting. Sir Claude was really rather magnificent in other than American eyes. There was something of the Renascence Prince about his omnivorous culture and restless publicity—, he was not only a great amateur, but an ardent one. There was in him none of that antiquarian frivolity that we convey by ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... because those who would otherwise be its victims are carried off early by acute inflammation of the implicated organs. "Of course, if these die in the beginning, they cannot die at a later period," as a recent medical writer has wisely and wittily pointed out to certain amateur statisticians who would fain reduce the mortality of Munich by leaving out of view the immense percentage of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... the champion looked on and laughed, being too lazy to redeem his promise of teaching the novice to defend himself. The latter, however, watched the lessons which he saw daily given to others, and, before the end of a month, he so completely turned the tables on the amateur pugilists of Melbourne that Skene one day took occasion to remark that he was growing uncommon clever, but that gentlemen liked to be played easy with, and that he should be careful not to knock them ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... chevrons. When October came, the company muster-roll showed that he had won back his old grade; and the garrison knew no better soldier, no more intelligent, temperate, trustworthy non-commissioned officer, than Sergeant O'Grady. In some way or other the story of the treatment resorted to by his amateur medical officer had leaked out. Whether faulty in theory or not, it was crowned with the verdict of success in practice; and, with the strong sense of humor which pervades all organizations wherein the Celt is represented as a component part, Mr. ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... and there is no need to speak, about the marvellous natural endowments and the equally marvellous, many-sided equipment of attainment which enriched the rich, natural soil. Intermeddling as he did with all knowledge, he must necessarily have been but an amateur in many of the subjects into which he rushed with such generous eagerness. But none the less is the example of all but omnivorous acquisitiveness of everything that was to be known, a protest, very needful in these days, against the possible evils of an excessive specialising which the very ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... an Alexandrian corn-ship, and Paul had already made his force of character so felt that it is not wonderful that he took part in the discussion. Naturally the centurion was guided by the professional rather than by the amateur member of the council, and the decision was come to to push on as far and fast ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... geologists, and every branch of ists and ologists. The material is as superabundant as native labourers and operatives are deficient. All these interesting branches of inquiry, healthful and agreeable, as being out-of-door pursuits, and bringing the amateur in close contact with nature, offer to embryo authors, who are ambitious to book something new, a more worthy subject than the decies repetita descriptions of bull-fights and the natural history of ollas ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... interests or whims prompted. Randolph said of Madison at this time, that he was "President de jure only." Besides this domestic strife, the cabinet was engaged in futile efforts to resist the gradually tightening cordon of British aggression. Erskine's amateur negotiations, quickly disavowed by the British government, and the short and impertinent mission of Jackson, who succeeded him and was dismissed from the United States, well served Canning's policy of delay. Madison, whose prejudices were as strongly with Englishmen ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... mate," answered the son. "It must be quite evident to you by this time, I should think, that I am not cut out for a sailor. After all your trouble, and my own efforts during this long voyage round the Cape, I'm no better than an amateur. I told you that a youth taken fresh from college, without any previous experience of the sea except in boats, could not be licked into shape in so short a time. It is absurd to call me first mate of the Sunshine. That is ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... Poushkin's DAME DE PIQUE and turns up thirty-six times to one. And man shews his indifference or his greatness of soul by continuing to play, by rising imperturbably triumphant over zero. . . . Or perhaps he shews that he is an eternal sex-amateur. . . ."—From the ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... have his plot of ground, in the cultivation and adornment of which he may realize the pleasure which accompanies the calling of amateur farmer, horticulturist, or florist, in which he is in constant communication with nature and her beauty. 'In it there is no corruption, but ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... inhabited, then?" The architect knew very little about the planets. He had been included in the party because, along with his professional knowledge, he possessed remarkable ability as an amateur antiquarian. He knew as much about the doings of the ancients as the ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... cost little more than $1 per yard for a fair quality. It is put down with stair pads ($1 per dozen) and ordinary tacks, and the expenditure of 10 cents per yard for a professional layer will not be regretted. The amateur who can do a really good job on a stair ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... Lord Mansfield's full state wig, which had again come into the possession of the perruquier after the death of his lordship. The wig had been graciously lent by the barber to one Lawrence, belonging to the legal profession, but also an amateur actor. In this wig, we are told, he proposed to disport himself in the character of Shylock. The plaintiff could not get it back again, and brought the action for its recovery. The wig had been accidentally burnt, and the judge awarded ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... I am not going back now," Bell muttered. "It's perfectly useless to come here in the daytime; therefore we must fall back upon a little amateur burglary. There's a girl yonder who might have assisted me at ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... desperately sick-looking, and with a helpless arm; also he had no overcoat, and shivered pitifully. But, alas, it was again the case of the honest merchant, who finds that the genuine and unadulterated article is driven to the wall by the artistic counterfeit. Jurgis, as a beggar, was simply a blundering amateur in competition with organized and scientific professionalism. He was just out of the hospital—but the story was worn threadbare, and how could he prove it? He had his arm in a sling—and it was a device a regular beggar's little ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... of good ready made clothes and it is also an age of clever amateur dressmaking. With excellent patterns which may be easily handled there is no reason why the woman who can sew should not make her own clothes, and have smart clothes at a reasonable price—that is, provided she has the time to give ...
— Armour's Monthly Cook Book, Volume 2, No. 12, October 1913 - A Monthly Magazine of Household Interest • Various
... readers will observe that in many places I have given a reading different from that in the best-known copy of the poem. I have followed a manuscript in the handwriting of Ben Jonson.[70] I cannot tell whether Jonson has put the master's hand to the amateur's work, but in every case I find his ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... led a dilettante life. They reproached him with the selflessness that made him somewhat languid. Others, they seemed to aver, were amateurs at this art or that; he was an amateur at living. So it was, in the sense that he never grasped at happiness, and that many of the things he had held slipped from his disinterested hands. So it was, too, in this unintended sense; he loved life. How should he not have loved ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... Stancy left the room, and soon returned, saying, 'Mr. Somerset, can you give me your counsel in this matter? This Mr. Dare says he is a photographic amateur, and it seems that he wrote some time ago to Miss Power, who gave him permission to take views of the castle, and promised to show him the best points. But I have heard nothing of it, and scarcely ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... for his school-days to end, to live independently in the Latin Quarter, to study law, without being hurried, since his mother wished him to do so, and he did not wish to displease her. But he wished also to amuse himself with painting, at least as an amateur; for he was passionately fond of it. All this was said by the handsome, aristocratic young man with a happy smile, which expanded his sensual lips and nostrils; and Amedee admired him without one envious thought; feeling, with the generous warmth of youth, ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... problems in telephony, this one seems simpler at first sight than it proves to be after more exhaustive study. It is possible for any amateur to produce at once a repeating device which will relay telephone circuits in one direction. It is required, however, that in practice the voice currents be relayed in both directions, and further, that the relay ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... the hotel were ready to go to bed. He was irregular even in playing, which was after all his chief pastime. Possibly he knew of reasons why it should be good to gamble on one day and not upon another. Then he had his fits of amateur seamanship, when he would insist upon taking the tiller from Ruggiero's hand. The latter, on such occasions, remained perched upon the stern in case of an emergency. San Miniato was a thorough landsman and never understood why the wind always seemed ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... detail in his strategy; he had a grandiose scheme for a wide flanking movement, for taking the bulk of his army by sea to the coast of Virginia, and thus to draw the Confederate army homeward for a duel to the death under the walls of Richmond. Lincoln, neither then nor afterward more than an amateur in strategy, was deeply alarmed by this bold mode of procedure. His political instinct told him that if there was any slip and Washington was taken, even briefly, by the Confederates, the game was up. ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... and "the excess of imports over exports" are thus simply pitfalls for the amateur and the unwary. On the statistical side, moreover, there is a good deal more to be urged in order to impress the student with care and attention. The records of imports and exports themselves may vary from the actual facts of international purchases and sales. The actual values of the goods imported ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... mutterings and he and the other captives cowered by the fire, as if their blood had suddenly grown so thin that they must almost touch the coals to secure warmth. Then Colonel Winchester ordered the cooks to prepare food and coffee again for his troopers, who had done so well, while a surgeon, with amateur but competent ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the best intentions in the world, you will never accomplish your end. Even if Miss Lizzie is only to play as an amateur, and is not intended for any thing higher, for which in fact she has not sufficient talent, you must pay some attention beforehand to the acquirement of a correct tone, and get rid of this robin-red-breast touch; and you must then endeavor, by ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... and expectations. He did not know or care what happened; though sometimes, in intervals of seeing marvellous mirages of the Lost Oasis, and fighting robbers, or prescribing for sick camels, he appeared vaguely to recognize the face of his nurse; not the professional, but the amateur. "Sanda, Sanda!" he would mutter, or cry out aloud; but as fortunately no one knew that Mrs. Stanton, nee Corisande DeLisle, was called "Sanda" by those who loved her, the doctor and the professional nurse supposed he was babbling about the sand of the desert. He had ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... living since he first wore a silk hat and caught the eight-forty to the City one morning fifty years ago. I followed him home on a Saturday afternoon. The bookstall clerk at Liverpool Street handed him The Amateur Gardener, and the old boy read it in the train. Five minutes after he had reached his house he was out on the lawn with a daisy fork. No; the cashier ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... that Archbishop Werner of Falkenstein, owner of the grim fortress of Stolzenfels and a wealthy and powerful Churchman, was an amateur of the hermetic art, while his Treasurer, who was by no means rich, was also by way of being an alchemist. To indulge his passion for the bizarre science the latter had extracted many a golden piece from the coffers of his reverend master, always meaning, of course, to ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... for amateur theatricals had always attracted him, and in a few short weeks he was again at Fenmarket. He was obliged to be there for three or four days before the entertainment, in order to attend the rehearsals, which Mrs Martin had put under the control of a professional ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... Smollett could not refrain from expressing decided views. If he had lived at the present day he would infallibly have been a naval expert, better informed than most and more trenchant than all; but recognizably one of the species, artist in words and amateur of ocean-strategy. [Smollett had, of course, been surgeon's mate on H.M.S. Cumberland, 1740-41.] His first curiosity at Nice was raised concerning the port, the harbour, the galleys moored within the mole, and the naval policy of his Sardinian ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... was lying prominently on the control panel. According to the booklet, the ship was simple to operate. It was self-leveling in an atmosphere, and automatic flare computers were supposed to make it possible for an amateur to judge the rate of descent near the surface. It looked reassuring—and was probably written ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... purposes due to stimulation from abroad and, in so far, artificial. So far, none of the more ambitious native efforts have been on the program of the stage of Reykjavik to be performed by the very estimable amateur players of that town. ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... a fashionable musician, whose pavanes and sonatas were composed with that lack of matter and excess of erudition which delight the amateur and irritate the artist, and he walked down the rooms looking for seats where they could talk undisturbed for a few minutes. He was nervous lest Georgina should find him sitting with this girl in an intimate corner, but he did not ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... betray again during all the anxious days to come that more passionate side of the man which Brand's few words seemed to have quickened into life. He talked now as the cool and skilful strategist. Brand, who was something of an amateur soldier himself, listened with ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... for boys giving full details of radio work, both in sending and receiving—telling how small and large amateur sets can be made and operated, and how some boys got a lot of fun and adventure out of what they did. Each volume from first to last is so thoroughly fascinating, so strictly up-to-date and accurate, we feel sure all lads will ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... buzz of chatter, virulent yet oddly subdued, hummed through the chaotic ballroom. Feverish youths swore they would kill Perry or Jumbo or themselves or some one, and the Baptis' preacheh was besieged by a tempestuous covey of clamorous amateur lawyers, asking questions, making threats, demanding precedents, ordering the bonds annulled, and especially trying to ferret out any hint of prearrangement ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... music what so many are in painting—simply practical. In my youth I was a pupil of Seymour of Manchester for the violin, and thought to be a promising amateur, but I have played far more music than I ever talked about. I don't at all know how to talk or write about music. It seems to me that it expresses itself, and that nothing ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... more valuable to the amateur photographer than the lantern slide exhibition, and the fact that even now no more than ten or twelve per cent. of what is shown is pictorially good should provoke ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... to their numbers. The Germans claim, and claim quite rightly, that they frustrated our attempt to break through their line. On the other hand it can be little consolation for them to know that a nation of amateur soldiers[8] drove them out of the strongest fortress in the world; drove them out so completely that they were glad to take refuge, morally as well as physically, ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... said Willmott, "he's an amateur. He has never written professionally for his bread but ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... Bob turned to face the man with the swollen ear; but young Sullivan, being a professional fighter, made no capital of amateur affairs, and declined the issue with an ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... pictures by Cezanne. He had dozens of his canvases stacked away in the rear of his establishment—Cezanne often parted with a canvas for a few francs. When Tanguy was hard up he would go to some discerning amateur and sell for two hundred francs pictures that to-day bring twenty thousand francs. Tanguy hated to sell, especially his Cezannes. Artists came to see them. His shop was the scene of many a wordy critical battle. Gauguin uttered the paradox, "Nothing so resembles ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... career had Holmes helped him to attain success, his own sole reward being the intellectual joy of the problem. For this reason the affection and respect of the Scotchman for his amateur colleague were profound, and he showed them by the frankness with which he consulted Holmes in every difficulty. Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius, and MacDonald had talent ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... "Only an amateur, I never had a lesson in my life. Mr. Escott would think nothing of it, I am sure. But I wish he'd come in and ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... unmitigated falsehood!" cried Noah, angrily. "This man talks like a professional amateur yachtsman. He has no regard for facts, but simply goes ahead and makes statements with an utter disregard of the truth. The Ark was not stove in. We beached her very successfully. I say this in defence of my seamanship, which was top-notch ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... right there. The sun was in an indulgent mood and winked at the signs of advancing age. The bald patch was out of sight, and the smile would have softened the heart of an income-tax assessor. I acquired the negative from the amateur performer, and had it vignetted, which made it better still, as there was a space between the cashmere sock and the spring trousering in the original that I did not want attention drawn to. I had a large ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... invading the two small inns, which are usually more than half empty. Englishmen, Russians, Austrian officers sent down to keep careful watch upon the land, French and Prussian, Swiss and Belgian military attaches and couriers, journalists, artists, amateur army-followers, crowded the two long streets and exhausted the market. Next came a hungry and thirsty mob of refugees from Widdin—Jews, Greeks and gypsies—and these promenaded their variegated ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... it would be, Bearover," he said, with a slight drawl. "Merriwell has made his reputation by defeating second-class amateur teams. I didn't think he'd have the sand to play a nine like ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... longer. Despair lent him strength to walk, and to carry his burden. On his way, he passed a house, about which there was a crowd. He drew nigh, asked what was going on, and received for an answer, that there was to be a sale of many specimens of art, collected by an amateur in the course of thirty years. It has often happened that collections made with infinite pains by the proprietor, have been sold without mercy ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... position of outsider that to remain to witness the unveiling of the great mystery seemed indecently intrusive. Let it be granted, then, that I ought to have got up with stately grace and gone away. Only, I did nothing of the sort. In spite of my exclusion from all its material benefits, I had an amateur's appreciation of that map. I felt that I should gloat over it. Perhaps of all those present I alone, free from sordid hopes, would get the true romantic zest ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... architectural effects. It requires but a very limited experience to become aware of the fact, that dwellings of precisely the same cost, and similarly situated, will differ in their rental at least one half, and it is mainly owing to the reason that one is properly designed, and the other perhaps an amateur performance, modeled after the ill-proportioned Greek pediment style, too prevalent to be countenanced for a moment by any one who prides himself on his good taste. There can be no question that a fitly designed cottage, conveniently arranged, adds, independently of its own cost, a large ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward
... divulge it, and when, after the voyage to the island and the excitement of knocking the wreck to pieces were over—when the secret came out, it was neither pleasant nor probable. That a mild British amateur of water-colour drawing should have taken part in a massacre of men, shot painfully with cheap revolvers, was an example of "the possible improbable," and much more of a tax on belief than the transformation of Dr. Jekyll. When I mildly urged this criticism, I learned, by return of post, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... your conscientious care about the medals. (The Royal Society's medals.) Thank God! I am only an amateur (but a much interested ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... experience Oriental hospitality. They are very fond of all gentlemen and ladies who take a real interest in them, who understand them, and like them. To such people they are even more honest than they are to one another. But it must be a real aficion, not a merely amateur affectation of kindness. Owing to their entire ignorance of ordinary house and home life, they are like children in many respects, though so shrewd in others. Among the Welsh Gipsies, who are the most unsophisticated ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... problem of how this was to be done he became more and more conscious of its difficulty. Such an inquiry to a trained detective could not be easy, but to him, an amateur at the game, it seemed well-nigh impossible. And particularly he found himself handicapped by the intimate terms with the Coburns on which he and Merriman found themselves. For instance, that very ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... showing on the screen a film as structureless as albumen slides, without the great trouble involved in making them. You must not accept the slides put before you this evening as the best that can be done with gelatine. Far from it; they are only the work of an amateur with very little leisure now to devote to their manufacture, and are merely the result of a series of experiments which, so far as they have gone, I now place before you.—Thomas Mayne, T. C., in British Journal ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... the pure air of his country living he was liberated from the unsatisfactory wranglings, the bitter jealousies, and vexatious interference of his London patrons, whose self-sufficiency and spiritual pride were, like those of many amateur theologians at the present day, in inverse ratio to their knowledge and ability. He had the satisfaction of seeing a son grow up to be worthy of his father. To that son we are indebted for the very interesting biography of Thomas Scott, a biography in which ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... highway to John Gaston's shack. A path wide enough for a single traveller, and the dark pointed pines guarded it on either side until within ten feet of the house. The house itself sat cosily in the clearing. It was a log house built by amateur hands, but roughly artistic without, and ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... general opinion that if Beauregard meant to fight he would have made a stand at some of the excellent points of vantage that had been encountered in the day's march. Jack smiled wisely over these amateur guesses, and quite abashed the ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... it ran in 'Belgravia' side by side with a novel of my own, and under those conditions I read as much as I could stand of it. Its main object appears to be to establish the theory that a young woman of refined breeding may be an amateur harlot. The central male figure of the book is a howling bounder, who has a grievance against the universe because he can't entirely understand it. Within the last two or three years it has occurred to Mr. Mallock to recast the book, and in a preface dated 1893 (I think) he informs ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
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