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More "Hobby" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the country squire. Finding himself without means on the death of his father, he went, like other ruined provincials, to Paris. On the breaking out of the Revolution he took part in public affairs. In spite of revolutionary principles, which made a hobby of republican honesty, the management of public business in those days was by no means clean. A political spy, a stock-jobber, a contractor, a man who confiscated in collusion with the syndic of a commune the property ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... it, I hated the army; that sounds like high treason, doesn't it? However, I got used to things and made art my hobby instead of my vocation. You won't mind if I confess that a view of this kind makes me long ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... He cares little about the welfare of his country; his amusement seems to consist in concocting and executing bloody designs, and his mind must be so accustomed to this species of excitement that it can scarce do without it. It is unfortunate that the Rajah's hobby should lie in this peculiar direction, more unfortunate still that the contemplated victim should be Jung; for I presume that there is little doubt that the King's brother, who was engaged in the last conspiracy against the minister's life—which took ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... poor, excepting two or three of the Rajah's own, which were handsomely equipped; these had their tails raised on end, exactly like hobby-horses. In addition to this, each was supplied with supernumerary yak tails, ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... hours hang heavily on you,' I remark, 'or, maybe, you have a hobby like the political prisoners one reads of. You have a favorite flower somewhere? Or, perhaps, you are partial ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... man ought to have a shouk (a hobby) of sorts, and he took the trouble to ride a day out of his way to show me a belt of black soil that was ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... no," said Labertouche readily. "Now and again, of course, I run across a bit of valuable information; and then, somehow, indirectly, the police get wind of it. But this going fantee in an amateur way is simply my hobby; I've been at it for years—and very successfully, too. Of course, it'll have its end. One's bound to slip up eventually. You can train yourself to live the life of the native, but you can't train your mind to think as he thinks. That's how the missteps ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... editor and principal owner of the Vancouver Telegram and Evening News. He has been a father to me, and is greatly interested in my welfare. He has a hobby which I call 'a wild-goose scheme,' and he thinks that I am the only one who can carry it out. He is not the ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... Lord Shaftesbury on that of an author in his time, of which he wrote, "It is free from that affected obscurity and laboured pomp of language aiming at a false sublime, with crowded simile and mixed metaphor (the hobby-horse ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... latest UFO scuttlebutt being passed around the Washington press circles. He was one of those humans who had a brain like a filing cabinet; he could remember everything about everything. UFO's were a hobby of his. He remembered when the Grudge Report came out; in fact, he'd managed to get a copy of his own. He said the report had been quite impressive, but only in its ambiguousness, illogical reasoning, and ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... with her, and each in a somewhat dangerous way: the actor with all the appetite of a savage and a spoilt child; the soldier with all the simple selfishness of a man of will rather than mind; Sir Wilson with that daily hardening concentration with which old Hedonists take to a hobby; nay, even the abject Parkinson, who had known her before her triumphs, and who followed her about the room with eyes or feet, with the dumb fascination ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... bondages that have been heaped upon them by people of the Dark Ages because they are women. Even those who talk so much about woman's rights, are in bondage up to their necks. Look at Laura Stevenson in Orangeville; a fine bright young girl, who makes a hobby of woman's rights, and yet see the bondage she is in. A fine young man whom she was supposed to respect very much, lay sick in his cabin all alone, and with all her talk about her independence and freedom, ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... answered Nelson, quite pleased with the encomiums which his pet hobby received; "and a better organized fire department is ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... in town one sees one's friends. For a sick man, or whatever you like to call me, my taste is decidedly gregarious. "I would not shut me from my kind." Oh dear no! There is no study so interesting as human nature, and I am avowedly a student of anthropology; London is the place for a man with a hobby like mine.' ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... this investigation was the outward and apparent hobby of Phillotson at present—his ostensible reason for going alone into fields where causeways, dykes, and tumuli abounded, or shutting himself up in his house with a few urns, tiles, and mosaics he had collected, instead of calling ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... children's summer house, near which is a cottage with toilette rooms, closets, etc., for the use of ladies and children. Near by are a number of self-acting swings, and a little to the north is the Carrousel, a circular building, containing a number of hobby-horses, which are made to gallop around in a circle by the turning of a crank in the centre of the machine. To the west of this building is the base-ball ground, covering some forty or fifty acres. A commodious brick cottage has been erected here ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... chorus, modulating the voice according to the theme. Symposia is not an unbefitting term. Meetings are held for public competition in gidayu recitation; but in the privacy of one's circle and hobby the banquet is an important feature—at least to the guests. In his history of "Japanese Literature" (Dai Nihon Bungaku Shi, pp. 591-596) Suzuki Cho[u]ko[u] gives a long extract from the play, as sample of Tsuruya's powers as a dramatist. Adopted into the ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... his arguments he lays down general principles with a quaint extravagance which marks the peculiar humor of the man. "No government has the right to make hobby-horses, asses, and slaves of the subject; nature having made sufficient of the two former, for all the lawful purposes of man, from the harmless peasant in the field to the most refined politician in the cabinet; but none of the last, which infallibly proves that they are unnecessary." ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... the day was done I found that deep down in him somewhere he had a passion, quiet as he was—a passion for reforming petty public abuses. He stood for citizenship—it was his hobby. His idea was that every citizen of the republic ought to consider himself an unofficial policeman, and keep unsalaried watch and ward over the laws and their execution. He thought that the only effective way ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... author of the inscription recorded his name, as did the learned Dame Elizabeth Hobby on a brass ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... his ability to read faces. It was his particular hobby, and the leisure he had to apply to it had given him a remarkable appraising eye. Within ten minutes he had read much more than had greeted his eye. A wave of pity went over him—pity for the patient, the girl, and his friend. The poor old imbecile! ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... a hobby of it," he snarled. "I don't even care if they're ladies. But I'm fresh out of romance and slightly soured. And I'm worried about the one friend who's dumb enough to stick by me. You picked a bad time to ask. ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... man, the untamed animal man, self-reliant and self-assertant, having conquered Nature. Well, this fierce masterful freedom was good for the soul, sometimes, doubtless. It was old Knowles's vital air. He wondered if the old man would succeed in his hobby, if he could make the slavish beggars and thieves in the alleys yonder comprehend this fierce freedom. They craved leave to live on sufferance now, not knowing their possible divinity. It was a desperate remedy, this sense of unchecked liberty; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... the vulgar were delighted with it. The wise thought it very foolish, but the many thought it very funny, and the idle amused themselves by chalking it upon walls, or scribbling it upon monuments. But "all that's bright must fade," even in slang. The people grew tired of their hobby, and "There he goes with his eye out!" was heard no more in ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... stage of their history that the Spencers grew proud, making a hobby of their family tree and even possibly breathing a ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... Langley is kind, but he is so wrapped up in his own work that I see very little of him. I took the place because I thought it would give me a good deal of spare time that I might use in furthering some experiments of my own. Electricity is my hobby, and I have one or two ideas that I am foolish enough to hope may be worth developing. I have had time enough, goodness knows, but it's a lonesome sort of life. If it had not been for the captains—and you—I think I should have given it ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... Falcon and Tassel-gentle, The Laner and Laneret, The Bockerel and Bockeret, The Saker and Sacaret, The Merlin and Jack Merlin, The Hobby and Jack: There is the Stelletto of Spain, The Blood-red Rook from Turkey, The Waskite from Virginia: And there is of short-winged Hawks, The Eagle and Iron The Goshawk and Tarcel, The Sparhawk and Musket, The ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... and all of them were warmed without by the sun, so each had a private little sun for her soul to bask in; some dream, some affection, some hobby, at least some remote and distant hope which, though perhaps starving to nothing, still lived on, as hopes will. They were all cheerful, ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... weather, which was his one disagreeable, superior-to-others trick. Most of his qualities were likable, and he was likable, though a queer fellow in some ways, said his best friends—the ones who called him "Petro." When the ship played that she was a hobby-horse or a crab (if that is the creature which shares with elderly Germans a specialty for walking from side to side), also a kangaroo, and occasionally a boomerang, Peter Rolls ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... dealt with them as it is said the Indians are dealt with; they have given them counterfeit brooches and bugle-bracelets for gold and silver;[A] pins and peacock feathers for lands and tenements; gilded coaches and outlandish hobby-horses for goodly castles and ancient mansions; their woods are turned into wardrobes, their leases into laces; and their goods and chattels into guarded coats and gaudy toys. Should your Majesty fly to them for relief, you would fare like those birds that peek at painted fruits; all outside." ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... whom Jimmy subsequently discovered to be the drama-loving Charteris, leaning back and taking advantage of a pause, "is the hobby of the sportsman and the life work of the avaricious." He took a little pencil from his waistcoat pocket, and made a rapid note ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... tablets; he's smart too, and has the right kind of stuff in him, even if he is crazy about birds. I've had to kill three of his linnets already. I told him that a weasel had gotten them, but he's found another hobby, now he paints all the time. He's left the marks of his heels on his Greek already, and is doing pretty well with his Latin, although his master's too easy with him; won't make him stick to one thing. He comes to me to get me to give him ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... asset, and his hobby. There were five of them. The two best, Baldy and Button, were Kentucky coon hounds in their prime, probably being descendants of the English fox hound with the admixture of harrier and bloodhound strains. Their breed has been in the family ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... ride my hobby on the curb," said Horace, laughing, as he went back to his own office, where he found that all his former certainty and enjoyment of his work had returned to him, and by the end of the day he had made so much progress that his designs needed only a few finishing ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... Camp; and this diversion enabled me to escape from Marius—I fear with a somewhat unseemly precipitation—by pressing him for information in regard to the matter which the children had in hand. As to openly checking the Vidame, when once he fairly is astride of his hobby, the case is hopeless. To cast a doubt upon even the least of his declarations touching the doings of the Roman General is the signal for a blaze of arguments down all his battle front; and I really do not like even to speculate upon what might happen were I to meet one of his major propositions ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... straight to their front) had apparently been watching our performance with eager interest, because there was a fatuous grin on the face of every one of them, officers and all. The colonel of the Rifle Brigade said to me afterwards that he trusted the staff did not mean to make a hobby of these knock-about-turns on parade, because if they did it would undermine the discipline ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... I am thirty," I responded. "Haven't you remembered each anniversary since I was five, beginning with a hobby-horse and working up through knives and rifles and ponies to the latest thing ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... the rudiments of education in the best establishment for the purpose that the neighborhood afforded. It was what was called, in popular parlance, an "old field school-house;" humble enough in its pretensions, and kept by one of his father's tenants named Hobby, who moreover was sexton of the parish. The instruction doled out by him must have been of the simplest kind, reading, writing, and ciphering, perhaps; but George had the benefit of mental and moral culture at home, from ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... until then that Dr. O'Rell had made a special study of dreams, of their causes and of their signification. I had always supposed that astrology was his particular hobby, in which science I will concede him to be deeply learned, even though he has never yet proved to my entire satisfaction that the reason why my copy of Justinian has faded from a royal purple to a pale blue is, first, ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... racket at tennis, was always ready to contribute a baritone solo to charity concerts, and gave freely to the poor. He was what you might call a golden-mean man, good-hearted rather than magnetic, with no serious vices and no heroic virtues. For a hobby, he had taken up the collecting of porcelain vases, and he was engaged to Betty Weston, a charming girl of twenty-five, a lifelong ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... this morning, Hobart caught a glimpse of a colored man coming toward us. It suggested to him a hobby which he rides now every day, and he commenced his oration by saying, in his declamatory way: "The negro is the coming man." "Yes," I interrupted, "so I see, and he appears to have his hat full of peaches;" and ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... who should be sent on this honourable mission, the Society were for a long time much perplexed, and began to fear the "foundering of their hobby from want of a jockey of required weight." It was necessary that he should be deeply imbued with classic lore, and profoundly skilled in languages, because he was to "detect lingual affinities," and further, might have to read manuscripts, and decipher inscriptions, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... unknown benefactor is dressed in top-boots, riding breeches of honourable antiquity, a black coat green with age and a "Cup Final" cap. At the same time (this too on The Times' authority) there is an oddly and obsolescently attired lady going about who also makes London hospitals her hobby. She begins by asking the secretary if she may take off her boots, and, receiving permission, takes them off, places her feet on an adjacent chair and hands ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... Countess, "you must not speak in this wild fashion. We women of the Royal House must fully realize our privileges—and as for the Admiral's wonderful tale of world conquest—that is only his latest hobby. It is talked, of course, in military circles, but the defensive war is so dull, you know, especially for the Royal officers, that they must have ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... he minded him of a new book he had in his bag, for literature, he judged, might be her hobby, and had engaged her in conversation, of which his share was meant to impress the tiny, translucent ear that nestled in the dark-brown coils and waves of the pretty ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... hours' stage-ride. However, as long as the couple had a roof over their heads and the Springs continued to plop and vomit their strange, chameleon-colored slime, Leander would continue to bring home the sick and the suffering for Polly and the Springs to practice on. Health became his hobby, and in time, with isolation thrown in, it began to invade his common sense. He tried in succession all the diet fads of the day and wound up a convert to the "Ralston" school of eating. Aunt Polly had clung a little longer to the flesh-pots, but ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... the Naughty Girl Reformed. The Sister Gift, or the Naughty Boy Reformed. Hobby Horse or Christian Companion. Robin Good-Fellow, A Fairy Tale. Puzzling Cap, A Collection of Riddles. The Cries of London as exhibited in the Streets. Royal Guide or Early Introduction to Reading English. Mr Winloves Collection of Stories. " " ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... Howard, Sir Robert Southwell, Sir Richard Leuison, and with diuers other gentlemen, his L. followers of good account: his colours being aduanced by that valiant resolute gentleman, (a man beautified with many excellent rare gifts, of good learning and vnderstanding) S. Edward Hobby Knight. And thus he likewise marching with al possible speede on foote, notwithstanding his L. many yeres, the Intolerable heate, for the time, and the ouertiring tedious deepe sands, with other many impediments: Yet ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... novels: 'Children of the Mist,' 'Rose of Death,' 'Conqueror's Road.' They were no kid stuff. Why, yesterday I'd never even have thought of some of the ideas I used in my detective stories, that I published under a nom-de-plume. And my hobby, chemistry; I was pretty good at that. Patented a couple of processes that made me as much money as my writing. You think a thirteen-year-old just dreamed all that up? Or, here; you speak French, don't you?" He switched languages and spoke at some length in good conversational ...
— Time and Time Again • Henry Beam Piper
... when he found them brought forward as a recommendation; but he could only explain that the Pursuivant was an old established county gentleman's style of paper, in the agricultural interest. Whereupon the Squire mounted his political hobby in such sort and with such abusive violence, especially as to the local representatives of the adverse party, that Felix could not help feeling that if such were indeed the opinions of his own side, he should certainly be on the other. One good effect was the sparing ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Besides, he remembered her course on one occasion when he was in a great strait. He was but three years old then, but he remembered all about it. It was, in fact, this occurrence which had given him his hobby. ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... dipsomaniac wife. She is, of course, under care, and is never mentioned in the house where he lives, maybe with his widowed mother and perhaps a maiden sister. They notice that he has become gloomy and brooding of late, but he lives his usual life, occupying himself each day with some harmless hobby. On foggy nights, once the quiet household is plunged in sleep, he creeps out of the house, maybe between one and two o'clock, and swiftly makes his way straight to what has become The Avenger's murder area. Picking out a likely victim, he approaches her with Judas-like gentleness, ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... his back, and could never enter a boat again. In those days there were no pensions, so for forty years and more he had made a living by inventing riddles and puzzles, tricks of various kinds, and clever Christmas toys. His especial hobby was mathematical puzzles. He used to drop into the station quite frequently, for he was very ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... and accompanied well enough. This time there was perfect silence, and the enthusiasm for my playing increased with each movement. At the end of the quartet so much flattery was heaped upon me that I trotted out my hobby-horse,—the G variations of Rode. With this piece I made quite a sensation, and for the remainder of the evening I was the object of ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... is quite a hobby of his," here interposed Mr. Winston. "He makes lengthy speeches on the subject, and has published two of them in pamphlet form. Have ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... that every single one of them cost me a Louis-d'or? But it is my hobby to have generally everything of the ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... his splendid height, was love—a strong, active love. We were young, human things, of soft features gradually becoming firmer as of shallow characters gradually deepening. And he longed to be in it all—at work in the deepening. We were his hobby. I have met many such lovers of youth. Indeed, I think this is ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... the great artist, his face expanding like that of a man whose hobby is stroked, "an allegorical figure of Harmony; and if you will come and see it, you will understand why it should have taken me two years to paint it. Everything is in it! At the first glance one divines the destiny of the globe. A queen holds a shepherd's crook in her ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... protect emigrants, and to supply a military basis for such forces as should be required to hold the disputed country. Though the Secretary of War indorsed this view,[416] Congress was not disposed to anticipate the occupation of the prairies. Nebraska became almost a hobby with Douglas. He introduced a second bill in 1848,[417] and a third in 1852,[418] all designed to prepare ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... best fruits of education, and it is especially useful when the taste for reading becomes a taste for knowledge, and when it is accompanied by some specialisation and concentration and by some exercise of the powers of observation. 'Many tastes and one hobby' is no bad ideal to be aimed at. The boy who learns to collect and classify fossils, or flowers, or insects, who has acquired a love for chemical experiments, who has begun to form a taste for some particular kind or department of knowledge, ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... other claims and other interests. In 1830 he married Emily, daughter of Lord Cowper, who bore him several children, and who shared all his interests with the fullest sympathy; and henceforth his greatest joys and his deepest sorrows were always associated with his family life. At home his first hobby was astronomy. At the age of twenty-eight he was ardently devoted to it and would spend all his leisure on it for weeks together, till graver duties absorbed his time. But he was no recluse, and all through his ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... It had been one of the hardest months through which Jimmie Dale had ever lived. The St. James, that most exclusive club, his favourite haunt, had seen nothing of him; the easel in his den, that was his hobby, had been untouched; there had been days even when he had not crossed the threshold of his home. Every resource at his command he had called into play in an effort to solve the mystery. For nearly the entire month, following first this lead and then that, he had ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... and posing that day as an American,—one of those men who look as if they would bleed water if you pricked them with a bayonet,—needed no second warning. Running the German gauntlet was not precisely his hobby. Down went the emergency brake and the car jolted ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... are introduced many very graceful plays and contrivances, but these do not stop long; they only approach where the king is and then go out. Then there enter others in other fashion, with battles of people on horseback; these horses are like the hobby-horses made in Portugal for the feast of the Corpo de Dios; others come with casting-nets, fishing, and capturing the men that are in the arena. When these amusements are ended, they begin to throw up many rockets and many different sorts of fires, also castles that burn and fling out ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... world is welcome to inquire into my motives. As I understand them, they are: First, I take pleasure in your society, sir, because, like myself, you are a quiet, thinking man. Second, you have a hobby—your machine, there—and I admire people with hobbies. Third, I am fond of children, and—and—your daughter is a very pleasant, intelligent child. Fourth, you have insisted on selling me an interest in your ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... he looked at his daughter"—if you would wait and take some dinner with us now. Tomorrow you could explore the woods, which are really worth seeing though monotonous, and if you are at all interested I should like to show you our little works. But I warn you the affair is my hobby, as well as my business for the time being, and I am apt to assume others have as great an interest in it as myself. You must not let me ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... desirable, of course. All the same she might leave you a little leisure to play round with your hobby. You mustn't work too hard or Sam will ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... the public functionaries, the difference between the sum proposed and accepted being settled against the interests of Mynheer Krause, by the party putting him in possession of some government movement which had hitherto been kept in petto. Every man has his hobby, and usually pays dear for it, so did ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of living ashore," he told himself. "A man can choose what hobby he will and, if he don't like it, pick ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... engaged. He and his charming fiancee plan to run out of excuses during the early Fall of 1994, but this date may be changed at any time by mutual agreement, or the end of the world. He has given up an interest in river pollution in favor of a new hobby, grading type-cleaner. Garrett, who spends an hour each day expanding his repertoire, now claims the ability to distinguish year and vineyard for over ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... vows to live a life of religious worship or service. Devout adherents of a cult or religion. Persons fervently devoted to a leader or ideal; faithful followers. Persons filled with enthusiasm, as for a pursuit or hobby; enthusiasts. ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... other day by the thoroughly pertinent questions which you put in the House of Commons, and which the Government failed to answer. It put an idea in my head that you were perhaps the man who might take up a task which I am almost ready to give up. Mataafa is now known to be my hobby. People laugh when they see any mention of his name over my signature, and the Times, while it still grants me hospitality, begins to lead the chorus. I know that nothing can be more fatal to Mataafa's cause than that he should be made ridiculous, and I cannot help feeling ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... escape; a device all his own of great wooden wedges raising the lower end of the mattress so that his feet were on a level with his pillowed head; the chest of little drawers which his daughters called "father's hobby," nailed high on the wall and filled with all sorts of odds and ends, the detritus and possible repair-material of years of housekeeping—all this Sissy took in with the unseeing eyes one has for ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... psychoanalysts would say, project his libido upon automobiles, and he will describe a difference in carburetors by looking at the rear end of a car a city block away. That is why it is often such a relief when the talk turns from "general topics" to a man's own hobby. It is like turning from the landscape in the parlor to the ploughed field outdoors. It is a return to the three dimensional world, after a sojourn in the painter's portrayal of his own emotional response to his own inattentive memory of what he imagines ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... he do, then, but take up what he calls a hobby! He buys and gloats over every silly detective story that was ever written; practises disguises and making himself up, as he calls it; takes lessons in conjuring; haunts the police courts; consorts with criminals—in ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... an evasive person—a past master in avoiding observation, as I well knew. It had always been a hobby of his, he had told me, of watching persons without himself ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... called to see his niece. Severe in taste, he cast long, disdainful looks at the tapestries and the artistic trifles that adorned the house. In his opinion, it was rubbish and the luxury of a decaying age. He never changed his tune, always riding the hobby-horse of an aesthetic moralist. ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... to say "No" at the proper time. The loss in scattering one's powers is too great to contemplate with comfort. I had a witty partner who once remarked, "I have great respect for James Bunnell, for he has but one hobby at a time." I knew the inference. A man who has too many hobbies is not respectable. He is not even fair to the hobbies. I have always been overloaded and so not efficient. It is also my habit to hold on. It seems almost impossible to drop what I have taken ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... succeeding century. The son of a Polish exile of German extraction, Hartlib had settled in England about 1627. He found the country behindhand both economically and socially, and with benign fervour applied himself to its regeneration. Agriculture was his principal hobby, and he effected much towards its improvement in England, rather however by editing the unpublished treatises of Weston and Child than by any direct contributions of his own. Next among the undertakings ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... many novels to treat these desirable attributes as if they were ends and objects of life in themselves. It has also misled him but too often into depicting a world of suicides, ignoring or overlooking a secret hobby, or passion, or chimaera which is the one thing that renders existence endurable to so many of the waifs and strays of life. He takes existence sadly—too sadly, it may well be; but his drabs and greys provide an atmosphere that is almost ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... first teacher was a poor sexton, whose name was Mr. Hobby. There is a story that he had been too poor to pay his passage from England, and that he had, therefore, been sold to Mr. Washington as a slave for a short time; but how true this is, I ...
— Four Great Americans: Washington, Franklin, Webster, Lincoln - A Book for Young Americans • James Baldwin
... ages. The overleaning rock, which is separated from my temporary home only by a few yards, probably afforded shelter to generations of those degraded human beings from whom the anthropologist who puts no bridle on his hobby-horse is pleased to claim descent. Near the base is one of those symmetrically scooped-out hollows which are such a striking peculiarity of the formation here, and which suggest to the irreverent that a cheese-taster of prehistoric dimensions must have been brought ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... potters in the garden, teaches the dog tricks. It makes him happy to feel himself rushed, and to go carrying unopened letters at tea-time. They have no children. Mrs. Jowett is a dear. She collects servants as other people collect prints or old china or Sheffield plate. They are her hobby, and she has the most wonderful knack of managing them. Even now, when good servants seem to have become extinct, and people who need five or six are grubbing away miserably with one and a charwoman, she has four pearls with soft voices and gentle ways, experts at their ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... to do will be to put a little note in." All the time he was fixing the camera on the tripod, focussing the lens on a tree by the path. (It was amazing how quickly Bones mastered the technique of any new hobby he took up.) ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... companionship. She was perfectly content with her life, and none the less so although those to whom she recounted the various phases of it were not so content at second hand with hearing the recital of it. She was one of those fortunate persons who have a hobby which takes the place of parents, husband, children, relations—a hobby, moreover, which appears to afford a delight quite independent of the varying degrees of success with which it is pursued. Unhappily the joy of those who thus ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... has been taken into the German language lately, but Germans use it when we should use "hobby." "It is my sport," says an artist when he shows you furniture of his own design. He means that his business in life is to paint pictures, but his pleasure is to invent beautiful chairs and tables. When the talk turns on the absurd extreme to which the Marthas ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... seesawing and urging it forward as if it were a horse at full speed. The visitor, to humor the patient, said, "That 's a fine horse you are riding.'' "Why, no,'' said the patient, "this is not a horse.'' "What is it, then?'' asked the visitor. The patient answered, "It 's a hobby.'' "But,'' said the visitor, "what 's the difference between a horse and a hobby?'' "Why,'' said the patient, "there 's an enormous difference; a horse you can get off from, a hobby ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... there was in a certain law school an aged and eccentric professor. "General information" was the old gentleman's hobby. He held it as incontrovertible that if a young lawyer possessed a large fund of miscellaneous knowledge, combined with an equal amount of common sense, he would be successful in life. So every year the professor put on his examination papers a question very far removed from the ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... his wife. John assumed a meek expression; and Mrs. John, putting the baby in the cradle, turned to her brother-in-law. "I thought the Army was a hobby ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... York that I saw you, for I have never been to Algiers, and I'm certain I have seen you somewhere. I'm afraid you will think me a bore for sticking to the point like this, but the fact is, the one thing I pride myself on is my memory for faces. It's a hobby of mine. If I think I remember a face, and can't place it, I worry myself into insomnia. It's partly sheer vanity, and partly because in my job a good memory for faces is a mighty fine asset. It has helped ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... except the name plate. In fact, the two firms, with others, have a "gentleman's agreement" sharing patents, keeping up separate plants only to preserve the appearance of competition. (Confound it—excuse me, Miss Stanley—there's my hobby again. Shouldn't have said that, but let it go.) Trusting you will find this satisfactory in every particular, and hoping to be favored by your future orders, I am, etc.'—Got ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... countenance of Baumgartner follow the brutal features of the meerschaum Turk through a melting cloud of smoke. The boy had been taken aback. But his bewilderment was of briefer duration than might have been the case with a less ardent photographer; for he took a technical interest in his hobby, and read the photographic year-books, nearly as ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... no charme for the tooth-ake, old signior, walke aside with mee, I haue studied eight or nine wise words to speake to you, which these hobby-horses ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... was a development of Mr. Simcox's hobby as natural as the development of any other hobby from rabbit breeding to china collecting. The craze intensifies, the scope is enlarged. To have a secretary made Mr. Simcox's mail and the work that produced ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... down," cried Cecil cheerily, "and unburden thyself to me of all save affairs of State; of them am I exceeding weary, for the King hath a new hobby, a tax on beets and onions, in the discussion of which the afternoon has ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... Most men have a hobby. Timbrell-Timson's is to bear on his narrow shoulders the burden of Middle Europe. He calls it Mittel-Europa. Lately he has been sharing his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... recorded in history, probably, are so many personal anecdotes related, as of Henry IV. These are for the most part well known, and of easy access. Among them stands out prominently the tale of the Spanish ambassador who to his astonishment, found Henry on the floor playing hobby-horse for his children. "Are you a father?" asked Henry, looking up without any apparent embarrassment. "Yes, your majesty." "Then we will finish our game," said the king. And he did so, before taking up his business with ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... wanderings through the streets of the city,—gaining new experience with every hour, and studying the needs and complaints of his people for himself;—but if we should be told of a modern monarch doing likewise in our own day, we should mount on the stiff hobby-horse of our ridiculous conventionality, and accuse him of having brought the dignity of the Throne into contempt. Yet nothing perhaps can be more contemptible than a monarch who is too surrounded by flunkeyism to be a Man,—and, on the other hand, nothing could be more beneficial ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... His great hobby, it appeared, was antiquarian research, and though he let slip a few remarks that showed he was well versed in his subject, his role, as usual, was that of the flatteringly eager enquirer. Needless to say, his learning had been acquired by diligent application within the last week, ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... again sighed heavily. "You seem to think I am a sort of mountebank who makes a hobby of paying court to women. You misjudge me, Myra. True, I have made love to women before, true, many have fallen in love with me and thrown themselves at my head—as you ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... The men are hobby-riders. They have just one interest and that usually small and dull—stocks or iron or real estate or hunting or automobiles. Our women are not like the English women—stupid, sodden. They are alive, acute. They wish to be ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... a paper for some magazine or review, and can think of nothing else. You know what he is when he once gets mounted on his hobby! He would have thought it a terrible waste of time to have left his papers to ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... Laura joined them, her father's eye was caught and held by the ring upon her finger. Roger knew rings, they were his hobby, and this huge yellow solitaire in its new and brilliant setting at once awakened his dislike. It just fitted the life they were to lead! What life? As he listened to his daughter he kept wondering ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... my first glimpse of Charlie's hobby. And from the luck-less moment when I so innocently invited him to mount it, up to the time when I forcibly compelled him to dismount from it, I had ample opportunity to exercise my "smiling patience, sublime dignity and heroic fortitude." Whether or not I improved my opportunities properly, ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... the case to the Society," said her brother, promptly. "Father believes all charity should be done through organizations. 'Organized effort' is his hobby," added Walter, ruefully. "He says I lack ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... precious and extraordinary volumes, and over the bookcases hung pictures of the Barbizon school. These books and these pictures were the elegant monument of hobbies which their owner had outlived. His present hobby happened to be music. A Steinway grand-piano was prominent in the chamber, and before the ebony ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... life seems to have been associated with the search for that dreadful book," she said. "I wonder if it is one of Kensky's own binding. You know," she went on, "that Israel Kensky bound books for a hobby? He bound six for me, and ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... from our windows in Baker Street to see the loom of the opposite houses. The first day Holmes had spent in cross-indexing his huge book of references. The second and third had been patiently occupied upon a subject which he had recently made his hobby—the music of the Middle Ages. But when, for the fourth time, after pushing back our chairs from breakfast we saw the greasy, heavy brown swirl still drifting past us and condensing in oily drops upon the window-panes, my comrade's impatient and active nature could ...
— The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans • Arthur Conan Doyle
... clears the ground for God very ably, and then makes a well-meaning gesture in the vacant space. There is no help nor strength in his gesture unless God is there. Without God, the "Service of Man" is no better than a hobby or a sentimentality or an hypocrisy in the undisciplined prison of ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... nor prophet Am I, though a jingler of rhymes— 'Tis a hobby of mine, and I'm off it At times, and I'm on it at times; And whether I'm off it or on it, Your readers my counsels will shun, Since I scarce know Van Tromp from Blue Bonnet, Though I might ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... of information than I can count.—George Thomason was a London bookseller of the Civil War time; his place of business being the "Rose and Crown" in St. Paul's Churchyard. He was of Royalist sympathies; but his hobby was to collect impartially all the pamphlets, broad-sheets, &c., that teemed from the press on both sides, and not only those that teemed from the English press, but also all published abroad that bore on current English questions. He began ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... the love of woman is to the race of young men. It supplanted that foolishness. It was his Romance, as we say; that buoyant anticipation on which in youth we ride the airs, and which, as we wax older and too heavy for our atmosphere, hardens to the Hobby, which, if an obstinate animal, is a safer horse, and conducts man at a slower pace to the sexton. Adrian had never travelled. He was aware that his romance was earthly and had discomforts only to be evaded by the one potent talisman possessed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... persons in your town, or in your university, about their favorite hobbies, and feature the story as "Riding Hobby Horses with ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... he was making a sorry impression, he tried to get away from the subject. I say tried, for till a man can double like a hare he will never get away from his hobby. "Excuse me," said he; "I ought never to speak about it. Let us talk of something else. You cannot enter into my feelings; it makes my blood boil. Oh, Miss Bruce! you can't conceive what a disinherited man feels—and I live at the ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... monopolizing a girl two or three years older. He'll make you mend his gloves, and he'll beg your hair-ribbons for hat-strings; and when you're not dancing or playing croquet with him, he'll be after you with some boy-hobby or other, wanting you to sympathize and help. 'I know their tricks and their manners.'" But she looked amused and kind while she threatened, and Leslie only smiled ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... "hobby of hobbies." Only the big hobbies of your man are worth especial study. Never harp on any of his little idiosyncracies. He may be sensitive about being eccentric. It is bad salesmanship to pretend an interest in another person's whims. ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... inspiration. They had too many builders,—and no architect. They thought to make up the lack of a head by a superfluity of hands. This is a characteristic of Hurry. It seeks ever to make energy a substitute for a clearly defined plan,—the result is ever as hopeless as trying to transform a hobby-horse into a real ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... in this year of Peace 1947," responded his dragoman, arresting him before a statue; "for the development of this hobby has been peculiar since you were here in 1910, when the childlike and contortionist movement was just beginning to take ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... face tighten into a frown of perplexity. That wasn't like Literate First Class Stephen S. Bayne. He made quite a hobby of pinching salesgirls behind the counter which was one thing; the boss' daughter ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... expect others to do without, too—the whole thing would be no good if the others had to; she knew that. No, the debt could not be paid this way; she had no right to do it; it was her own fancy, her hobby, perhaps. No one demanded that it should be paid; law did not compel it; Rawson-Clew did not expect it; her father considered that it no longer existed; it was to please herself and herself alone that she would pay it, ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... artist loves money chiefly because it represents luxury, the American business man loves it chiefly because it is the sole proof of success in his endeavor. He loves his business. It is not his toil, but his hobby, passion, vice, monomania—any vituperative epithet you like to bestow on it! He does not look forward to living in the evening; he lives most intensely when he is in the midst of his organization. His instincts are best appeased by the hourly excitements of a good, scrimmaging commercial day. ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... The dispensary was Woodman's hobby. The old-fashioned drug store stood on a corner of the Bowery, and in the rear extension which opened on the side street, he had established what he had laughingly called his "Life Line," a free dispensary where any man needing medicine or a doctor's advice could have it without ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... however, does not spurn them. On the contrary, though he pretends not to notice camels, cows, or buffaloes, he whinnies and prances with delight when he meets anything of his own shape, and assumes hobby-horse attitudes, much to the alarm of Cleopatra and Miss Hassett-Bean. Also, just to remind everybody that sand is his element, he shies at water, and almost swoons at sight of the Fayoum ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... last," said Mrs. Wescott, laughing, and then added, with enthusiasm, "It certainly is splendid for you to have the chance. I know your pet hobby has always been to visit Switzerland, Lucy, and now you will, provided you get that far. ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... to lose their actual substance, and become things of intellect. Nothing is too small or too trifling to undergo this change, and acquire dignity thereby. A child's shoe; the doll, seated in her little wicker carriage; the hobby-horse;—whatever, in a word, has been used or played with, during the day, is now invested with a quality of strangeness and remoteness, though still almost as vividly present as by daylight. Thus, therefore, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... recollection of three well-employed weeks to sweeten it. Even this was denied him. Ever since he came on leave the weather had been abominable: high wind, incessant rain, all the elements conspiring to prevent the enjoyment of his hobby. Rodier had suggested that he should apply for an extension of leave, but Smith, though he did not lack courage, could not screw it to this pitch. He remembered too vividly his interview with the captain when coming ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... Potsdam Guard and its Colonel-King! And all succeeding Autumns the like, so long as Friedrich Wilhelm lived; every Autumn, out of Russia a hundred of the tallest mortals living. Invaluable,—to a "man of genius" mounted on his hobby! One's "stanza" can be polished at ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... explain the congeniality of humour with pathos, so exquisite in Sterne and Smollett, and hence also the tender feeling which we always have for, and associate with, the humours or hobby-horses of a man. First, we respect a humourist, because absence of interested motive is the ground-work of the character, although the imagination of an interest may exist in the individual himself, ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... Greeks who christened it knew that it was the god-energy in the human machine. Without its driving force nothing worth doing has ever been done. It is man's dearest possession. Love, friendship, religion, altruism, devotion to hobby or career—all these, and most of the other good things in life, are forms of enthusiasm. A medicine for the most diverse ills, it alleviates both the pains of poverty and the boredom of riches. Apart from it man's heart is seldom joyful. Therefore it should ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... poverty with contentment? To some extent doubtless it rests on Christian teaching, although perhaps not much on the Christian teaching of the present day. Present-day religion, indeed, must often seem to the cottagers a tiresome hobby reserved to the well-to-do; but from distant generations there seems to have come down, in many a cottage family, a rather lofty religious sentiment which fosters honesty, patience, resignation, courage. Much of the gravity, much of the tranquillity ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... observed of all observers," and realised fabulous prices. In a long range of booths, devoted to the products of manufacturing industry, some of the costliest productions of the looms of Europe were exhibited for sale. There were peep-shows, and swings, and merry-go-rounds, and hobby-horses, and, with so many inducements offered, it will not be supposed that ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... silently at the speaker. Generally on such occasions matters are made infinitely worse by some Job's comforter, who creeps about suggesting abstruse questions, and hinting that they represent some examiner's particular hobby. Such a one came to Dimsdale's elbow, and quenched the last ray of hope which lingered in the ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... now that he had mounted his hobby, and that he would inflict on him, as he was in the habit of doing after dinner, a long-winded series of his magisterial exploits, reminded him that he had expressed a wish to see him on very ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... his surprise, the Fairy turned crimson with rage. It was a hobby of hers to be like nobody, because she was a fairy and able to change her appearance, from one moment to the next, as she pleased. That evening, she happened to be ugly and old and hump-backed; she had lost one of her eyes; and two lean ...
— The Blue Bird for Children - The Wonderful Adventures of Tyltyl and Mytyl in Search of Happiness • Georgette Leblanc
... party, which it was his work to organize and lead. Foreseeing how dangerous the triumph of a vulgar and ignorant mob would be, he tried to provide for educating the people, on the same principle that we would to-day educate the colored race. The great hobby of his life was education. He thus spent the best part of his latter years in founding and directing the University of Virginia, including a plan for popular education as well. To all schemes of education he lent a willing ear; but ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... visitor could have the first for L1,000. "I'll take it," said the prince of penmakers, "and you must make me three or four more at your own price." If other artists did as well with Mr. Gillott they could have had but little cause of complaint. Another hobby of Mr. Gillott's was collecting fiddles, his specimens, of which he once said he had a "boat load," realising L4,000; while his cabinet of precious stones was of immense value. The millionaire died Jan. 5, 1872, leaving ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... said with compunction, "you'll think me an awful bore, Jerrolds, but I've been more or less practising on you, haven't I? But you'll remember, perhaps, this used to be a sort of hobby of mine, and I work it into shape nowadays for a young men's ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... is that a layman will never take an author quite seriously. He regards authorship, not as a profession, but as something between au inspiration and a hobby. In as far as it is an inspiration, it is a gift from Heaven, and ought, therefore, to be shared with the rest of the world; in as far as it is a hobby, it is something which should be done not too expertly, but in a casual, amateur, haphazard fashion. ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... rarities and curiosities is so narrow, that the fresh aspirant is soon the central object of attention to the few who can provide him with what he imagines he wants. As a rule, where a man has no personal knowledge, and finds that he is gradually becoming a milch-cow for the trade, the hobby is not of long duration; it is only where the buyer can control and check the vendor that satisfactory relations are likely to continue, perhaps for years, perhaps for a lifetime. There is ever a tendency, on the part of the bookish ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... purport of his wanderings through the streets of the city,—gaining new experience with every hour, and studying the needs and complaints of his people for himself;—but if we should be told of a modern monarch doing likewise in our own day, we should mount on the stiff hobby-horse of our ridiculous conventionality, and accuse him of having brought the dignity of the Throne into contempt. Yet nothing perhaps can be more contemptible than a monarch who is too surrounded by flunkeyism to be a Man,—and, ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... Peter Grimm. "It's I who have been doing the 'wondering'; through that Scotch brain of yours. I'm making use of that Spiritualistic hobby of yours because you're too dense to hear me except through some rarer ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... that, at last, he had reached the milk in the cocoanut. Captain Dan, with his love for home and his hatred of lodges and societies, had refused to be interested in his wife's pet hobby, and felt himself neglected and forsaken. He had brooded upon it, and this outburst and the letter he ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... These expressions of grave doubt as to the expediency of "female suffrage," together with the fact that the editor of the Tribune, in his report as chairman of the Suffrage Committee in the New York Constitutional Convention, declared this new hobby "an innovation revolutionary and sweeping, openly at war with a distribution of duties and functions between the sexes as venerable and pervading as government itself," make the Tribune's recommendation that we shall "try the experiment ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... in an undertone, clutching the Count's arm and nodding to a tall man. "How pale and grave he is poor man! His hobby has not trotted to his ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... and with diuers other gentlemen, his L. followers of good account: his colours being aduanced by that valiant resolute gentleman, (a man beautified with many excellent rare gifts, of good learning and vnderstanding) S. Edward Hobby Knight. And thus he likewise marching with al possible speede on foote, notwithstanding his L. many yeres, the Intolerable heate, for the time, and the ouertiring tedious deepe sands, with other many impediments: Yet in good time, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... the process of transplanting bodily a tribe of wild bees, is given in the notes to The Tay, a descriptive poem of considerable merit by David Millar. (Perth, Richardson, 1830.) 'When the boy, whose hobby leads him in that direction, has found out a "byke," he marks the spot well, and returns in the evening, when all its inmates are housed for the night. Pushing a twig into the hole as far as it will go, in case he should ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... Howe, Sir——.' He cordially welcomed literary talent of all kinds, giving every man full swing on his own hobby, and changing rapidly from grave to gay, from lively to severe. He cultivated from the first the journalistic spirit of giving fair play in his columns to both sides, even when one of the sides was the editor or the proprietor. After he entered the House of Assembly, ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... his hobby, exalting his own city at the expense of every other place. I have my doubts if he had been in either of the cities he had been talking about. I was just going to say something to sober him down, if I could, when the young ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... profane jest-book would not, in his view, more foully desecrate the church seat of a Christian than a book of prayer printed with red letters and ornamented with a cross on the back. Most active clergymen have their hobby, and Sunday observances are his. Sunday, however, is a word which never pollutes his mouth—it is always "the Sabbath." The "desecration of the Sabbath," as he delights to call it, is to him meat and ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... the time came to leave. "You must come up often, Miss Moore," said Mrs. Kirby kindly. "Look upon Beechwood as a second home while you are in Kinglake. We have no daughter of our own, so we make a hobby of cultivating other people's." ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... brings women and children, hobby-horses and canary birds back to their homes in Johannesburg. Betty has returned, accompanied by Mr. Seymour Port, from Pretoria. She gives a very spirited account of her visit. Through Mr. Sauer, one of the advocates retained by the Reformers, a visiting permit was obtained. She and Mr. ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... in Europe, Iceland is the one which has been the most minutely mapped, not even excepting the ordnance survey of Ireland. The Danish Government seem to have had a hobby about it, and the result has been a chart so beautifully executed, that every little crevice, each mountain torrent, each flood of lava, is laid down with an accuracy perfectly astonishing. One huge blank, however, in the south-west corner ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... simple savages—thro' sheer pretence— Is reckon'd quite a saint amongst the vermin. But where's the reverence, or where the nous, To ride on one's religion thro' the lobby, Whether a stalking-horse or hobby, To show its pious ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... doesn't FEEL a fool? You will come and play at the vicarage, I hope. Indeed, I want you to go and come just as you like. We are relations, you know, in a sort of way—at least connections. I don't know if you go in for genealogy—it's rather a hobby of mine; it fills up little bits of time, you know. I could reel you off quite a list of names, but Mrs. Graves doesn't care ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... believe in self-expression And disdain to be a law-abiding man, You must cultivate a hobby of insulting ev'ry bobby Whenever you conveniently can. You'll find him quite impervious to jesting, But he has another less attractive side, Elemental, unalluring and arresting When his patience ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... sympathize, but nevertheless I should see that the strait-jacket was brought into requisition. When your generosity train dashes recklessly beyond regulation schedules of safety, I must discharge engineer sympathy, and whistle down the brakes. What new hobby do you intend that I ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... teasings of her brother that gave me my first inkling that the old ranchero was a wily matchmaker, though he religiously denied every such accusation. With a remarkable complacency, Jean Lovelace met and parried her tormentor, but her brother never tired of his hobby while there was a ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... right, and I hope that minister of yours will deliver that lecture in many places throughout this country, for there are not many people, even in England, who believe in the reality of the German menace. But this is my hobby, my sister says, and I don't want to ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... in Lynn and bred in Boston; a long-pedigreed New Englander, whose ancestors had smelted iron ore in Lynn when Charles the First was King. He was a lawyer by profession and a university professor by temperament. His specialty, as a man of affairs, had been marine law; and his hobby was the collection of rare books and old English engravings. He was a master of the Greek language, and very fond of using it. On all possible occasions he used the language of Pericles in his conversation; and even carried this preference so far as to write his business memoranda ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... kept me filled in on the latest UFO scuttlebutt being passed around the Washington press circles. He was one of those humans who had a brain like a filing cabinet; he could remember everything about everything. UFO's were a hobby of his. He remembered when the Grudge Report came out; in fact, he'd managed to get a copy of his own. He said the report had been quite impressive, but only in its ambiguousness, illogical reasoning, and ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... have a hobby of my own, and do some steady stiff reading, only, as you are going to be a woman, and not a student, I would choose reading that linked me to as many as possible of other people's interests. How dull and shy poor ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... does not stand still— its Editor is always abreast of girlish interests. Whether it is a new career for girls, a new game, a new stitch in needlework, or a new hobby or fad, THE GIRL'S REALM is sure to be the first magazine to deal ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... the latest hobby, then? Your letters have amused us immensely, for each one had a new theory or experiment, and the latest was always the best. I thought Uncle would have died of laughter over the vegetarian mania it was so funny to imagine you living on bread and milk, baked apples, and ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... Governments those serving terms of imprisonment for offences committed before the 4th of August, 1917, were released, a great number of the gaol-birds being sent to Stroehen. Residing in prison was a captain who made a hobby of being court-martialled. Under this new ruling he was taken out of cells for a few days, only to be put back to await trial for the trumped-up charge of having poison tablets on his person when recaptured after his last escape. ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... and then came "a Grand Tournament," in which a contest between "the Blue Knight" (Mr. Lechmere Whitmore), and "the Yellow Knight" (Mr. Baylis), each mounted upon hobby-horses, was most fiercely executed. Nor was the Giant Cormoran (fourteen feet in height), nor the Queen of Beauty, nor the Dragon Queen wanted to complete the chivalry of this burlesque upon ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... mistress-ship of a small school situated close to the gate of Burnham Park, and almost opposite Nugent's cottage. This was the sphere of labour for which Elsie was destined. The school was a neat, well-cared-for place—the special hobby of Lady Eleanor, who seldom let a day pass when at home without visiting it. Here Elsie Damer at once commenced her labours. The children were bright and clean, and had evidently been carefully taught by her predecessor. Miss Damer was also a welcome acquisition to ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... Languard. In hotels, Cauterets is hardly outgeneraled even by St. Moritz, though in expensiveness they will yield gracefully to the Engadine. The Hotel Continental, we find, has rather a pathetic story. It was built by a widow who had been left rich,—built only a few years ago, as a hobby, it would seem, and with little care for cost or judicious investment. It represented nearly three hundred thousand dollars, was extravagantly run, and lost money from the beginning. She also built a great cafe and music-hall across the street from the hotel, ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... that of the Villa Camellia, and contained choicer and rarer flowers. There were glorious tanks of water-lilies, and there were pergolas of sweet-scented creepers, and the statues and arbors utterly eclipsed even those of a public park. It was evidently the Count's favorite hobby, and he had spared no expense in laying out the grounds. Rather fearful of being caught by some chance gardener the girls walked on, holding themselves in readiness to dive away if necessary and ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... some old deeds and documents written "Bagvil" or "Baggevil," was neither more nor less than a corruption of Bacchi Villa. Axcester and its neighbourhood are rich in Roman remains—the town stands, indeed, on the old Fosse Way—and, tempted by early success, Narcissus rode his hobby further and further afield. Now, at the age of forty-two, he could claim to be an authority on the Roman occupation of Britain, and especially on the conquests of Vespasian. The circle of—the Westcotes' acquaintance gathered in the fine hall of Bayfield—or, as Narcissus preferred ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... good-humoredly, 'are not a moderate man. You and Garrison are of the same stripe, both extremists. You have mounted one hobby, he another; that is all ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... capable but in some respects a singular man, performed his managerial duties without an office staff, wrote all his own letters, and not only wrote them but first carefully drafted them out in a hand minute almost as Jonathan Swift's. A strenuous worker, Mr. Johnstone, like most men who have no hobby, did not long survive his retirement ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... wheels, you cannot match Fortune. After all, she has made trochilics her hobby through all the ages. Look at her handiwork here. Jill knows Jack for a flunkey and seeks to dissemble her knowledge, for fear of bruising his heart. As for Jack, when Jill stumbles upon his secret, he curses his luck: now that he believes it ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... anywhere away from the great tourist tracks, was a favoured hobby with Lady Barbara, and Lester joined her as often as possible. Eastertide usually found her at Knobaltheim, an upland township in one of those small princedoms that make inconspicuous freckles on the ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... hobby," suggested Ainsworth; "that's the only way to choke Bently off. Where's Fenton? I never knew him quiet for so ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... That same day Crowe, by the advice of Sir Launcelot and his nephew, entered into conditional articles with the cynic, to allow him the interest of fifteen hundred pounds for life, provided by this means the captain should obtain possession of the estate of Hobby Hole in Yorkshire, which had belonged to his grandfather, and of which he was heir ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... to have made a hobby of the literature that arouses violent emotion and mental excitement, or lacerates the nerves, or shocks and startles. The lifelike and the natural are not powerful enough for his taste, though some of his Romantic Tales(1808), such as My Uncle's ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... Polk, whose feet, large and booted, were planted against the wall. Mr. Washington, who was a most correct gentleman, with the illustrious forbears his name suggested, had never lifted his feet to one of his own mantels in his life; but Don Roberto's guests always humoured this little hobby, among many others. ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... in your youth, sir," cried John, who had rather a mischievous propensity to start the old man on his hobby. ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... want to join our NNGA. This is a free country and people can just sit in the sun on the bare ground if they want to. They may not want trees and can eat grape nuts if they want. We know they need the hobby—the shade—the beauty—the protection or even nuts which nut trees will ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... why you pass up the toys That Santa considered just right for small boys; I can't understand why you turn up your nose At dogs, hobby-horses, and treasures like those, And play a whole hour, sometimes longer than that, With a thing as prosaic as daddy's ...
— Bib Ballads • Ring W. Lardner
... he left Smithers he buttonholed another acquaintance, a young man who thought he knew Wall Street, and therefore had a hobby—manipulation. No one could induce him to buy stocks by telling him how well the companies were doing, how bright the prospects, etc. That was bait for "suckers," not for clever young stock operators. But any one, even a stranger, who said that "they"—the perennially mysterious ...
— The Tipster - 1901, From "Wall Street Stories" • Edwin Lefevre
... equal sensibility who knows and cares nothing about Romans and Byzantines, so long as I recognise that art criticism and archaeology are two different things, I hope I may be allowed to dabble unrebuked in my favourite hobby: ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... Vaughan, which bade the Lord of Granthuse welcome. Then the King had him and all his company into the little Park, where he made him have great sport; and there the King made him ride on his own horse, on a right fair hobby, the which the King gave him." The King's dinner was "ordained" in the Lodge, Windsor Park. After dinner they hunted again, and the King showed his guest his garden and vineyard of pleasure. Then "the Queen did ordain a great banquet ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... I called to see E. H——, having previously appointed a meeting for the purpose of inquiring about our name. He is an old bachelor, and truly forlorn. The pride of ancestry seems to be his great hobby. He had a good many papers in his desk at the Custom-House, which he produced and dissertated upon, and afterwards went with me to his sister's, and showed me an old book, with a record of the children of the first emigrant, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... I am stark crazy, but there's none of you too sane; It's just a little matter of degree. My hobby is to hunt out gold; it's fortressed in my brain; It's life and love and wife and home to me. And I'll strike it, yes, I'll strike it; I've a hunch I cannot fail; I've a vision, I've a prompting, I've a call; I hear the hoarse stampeding of an ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... mind, as well as in the exercise of the body, diversion is a secondary consideration, and designed only to make that agreeable which is at the same time useful, to such noble purposes as health and wisdom. But what should we say to a man who mounted his chamber-hobby, or fought with his own shadow, for his amusement only? how much more absurd and weak would he appear who swallowed ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... my one absorbing hobby although it boasted no pretensions. I contrived attractive show cases, some from egg-boxes, emblazoning the exterior with striking show cards and signs which I executed in the confines of my horse-box in the barracks after my comrades ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... possible. Many statesmen have been infected by this Dreadnaught fever. Their policy seems to be based on the idea that the safety of a nation depends on the number of its battleships. Even peaceful and moderate men are carried away by this hobby, and support it. It is forgotten that great changes have taken place during the last twenty or thirty years; that a nation can now be attacked by means quite beyond the reach of Dreadnaughts. The enormous sums spent on these frightful monsters, if applied to more worthy ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... Edith made rather a hobby of decoration, and she had a cultured and quiet taste, and much knowledge on the subject. She guessed Madame Frabelle thought her rooms too plain, too colourless. Instead of the dull greys and blues, and surfaces without design, she felt sure her friend ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... strangely sore and jealous as he listened. Who was this man? Some young aristocrat, no doubt, born silver spoon in mouth—one of your idle, insolent rich, with nothing to do but make a hobby of art, and patronise artists. He ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "If your old dad could ride like that he'd never have taken up railway building. Funny nag, that of his. Looks like a hobby horse come to life. What's he trying to tell us? Regrets he can't come? Or is it a challenge to bring my bow and arrow and settle the old feud? Anyway, it's a rattling good stunt—and I'd like ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... me ter do—hangin' ain't never bin no hobby o' mine. As I understand it, this Gaskins wus one o' these yere militia men. I reckon thet if these yere two bug's wus ter swear thet I killed him—as most likely they will—them boys wud string me up furst, ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... good times as well as the others, but her smile came less quickly. And there were days, like the present, when her face would wrinkle with a frown as she tried to work out some problem in photography. Picture-taking was her hobby, and when the other girls skipped and danced about, Shirley would often trudge along burdened ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm
... found a Star as the sign to lead their journeying. Night after night the constellations rise undimmed in the clear sky and fairly urge the beholder to close acquaintance. A knowledge of them fills the sky with friendly forms and gives the student a new and lasting "hobby" that may be pursued anywhere, and kept through life. The Star Club has popularized its celestial interests by presenting to the College a pageant in three scenes, a "Dream of the Sun and Planets," in which the Earth Dweller is transported ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... auditors, however warming to himself; and I am inclined to think that these native teachers, having acquired facility of speaking and an endless supply of religious platitudes to talk about, ride their hobby rather hard, without much consideration for their flock. The Missionaries, however, have much to be proud of in this country. They have assisted the Government in changing a savage into a civilized community in a wonderfully short space of time. Forty years ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... turf on the breast of the heaven-inspired poet who composed this glorious fragment. There is more of the fire of native genius in it than in half-a-dozen of modern English Bacchanalians! Now I am on my hobby-horse, I cannot help inserting two other old stanzas, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... with my father, who at first seemed to listen to me as if I had been talking of an excursion to the moon. But I threw in a dexterous dose of the old Greek Cleruchioe cited by Trevanion, which set him off full trot on his hobby, till after a short excursion to Euboea and the Chersonese, he was fairly lost amidst the Ionian colonies of Asia Minor. I then gradually and artfully decoyed him into his favorite science of Ethnology; and while he was speculating on the origin of the American savages, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in his beloved Roman Camp; and this diversion enabled me to escape from Marius—I fear with a somewhat unseemly precipitation—by pressing him for information in regard to the matter which the children had in hand. As to openly checking the Vidame, when once he fairly is astride of his hobby, the case is hopeless. To cast a doubt upon even the least of his declarations touching the doings of the Roman General is the signal for a blaze of arguments down all his battle front; and I really do not like even to speculate upon what might happen were I ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... to Stevenson this morning, Hobart caught a glimpse of a colored man coming toward us. It suggested to him a hobby which he rides now every day, and he commenced his oration by saying, in his declamatory way: "The negro is the coming man." "Yes," I interrupted, "so I see, and he appears to have his hat full of peaches;" and ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... I wished for a son, to continue the family; but my wife often tells me, that boys are dirty things, and are always troublesome in a house; and declares that she has hated the sight of them ever since she saw lady Fondle's eldest son ride over a carpet with his hobby-horse all mire. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... styling him "Your Excellency," and intimating that he must be perfect master of all great subjects. In truth, they soon discovered from the disjointed character of his discourse upon various subjects that his wits were deranged; for no matter what subject they introduced, he would mount his favorite hobby of taking care of the nation. But how a man could be an adept in politics and a simpleton in so many other things they could not clearly understand. They therefore came naturally enough to the conclusion that the government had set a trap to get rid of a gentleman with designs ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... letter on Father Damien shows that. But there was nothing of the professional reformer about him. He had no hobby, and he was the artist first and then the philanthropist. This is right; it was the law of his being. Other men are better equipped to do the work of humanity's city missionaries than was he. Let their more rugged health and less sensitive nerves ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... amateur, Professor. But it is a good thing for an old man to have a hobby, a very perplexing hobby. Modern science makes so many strides every year, every day, that it is practically impossible for an amateur to keep apace." He preceded them to a spacious shed in the rear of the house. It was carefully and immaculately ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... scrambling through the day's classes with as little exertion as possible. She shivered in her corner, poor mite, sucking audibly, to the distraction of her elders, the while she skimmed over her lessons, and looked forward to the time when she would be free to devote herself to the hobby of the hour. ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... him a friend by accident—the accident of a club, where, finding themselves sitting down to dine at the same moment, they had taken the same table. Primarily, it was an opportunity to adjust some loose ends of Chip's domestic affairs; incidentally, they stumbled on a common hobby in Victorian English politics. There was no subject on which Emery Bland was better informed, with a learning that covered the whole long stretch from Lord Melbourne to Lord Salisbury, and which he could garnish ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... him: what he once had has perished long ago in the dreary toil of money-grubbing. The men who build or decorate his house have a certain pleasure in their work; all that he does is to pay them for being happy. If he should adopt the rich man's hobby of collecting pictures or a library, he rarely enjoys a higher pleasure than the mere lust of possession. He buys what he is told to buy, without discrimination; he has no knowledge of what constitutes rarity or value; and most certainly he knows nothing ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... taught them better! They seem to imagine that they should continually be improving themselves, in either body or mind. If they take up a sport, it is because the sport may improve their health. And if the hobby is intellectual it must needs be employed to improve their brain. The fact is that their conception of self-improvement is too narrow. In their restricted sense of the phrase, they possibly don't need improving; they possibly are already ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... inscription recorded his name, as did the learned Dame Elizabeth Hobby on a brass at ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... spent so pleasant an evening for many years. You have let me ride my hobby to my heart's content. It is ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... her over for dinner—she became almost impotent from agitation, only excusable if it had been some great public disaster. She and Mr. Harry Higgins—an exceptionally clever and devoted friend of mine—having revived the opera, Bohemian society became her hobby; but a tenor in the country or a dancer on the lawn are not really wanted; and, although she spent endless time at Covent Garden and achieved considerable success, restlessness devoured her. While receiving the adoration of a small but influential circle, she appeared ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... all. She knew that argument or persuasion was lost on her sister once she was started on her hobby-horse, ill-temper. She could only hope that she would forget about it by degrees. And after a while it almost seemed so. They went down to the shore, where it was so bright and pleasant that it did not seem possible for the crossest person in the world to resist the soft yet fresh breeze, ...
— The Rectory Children • Mrs Molesworth
... to which he had come fresh from the China station; and he was curious to see Harry Feversham. He did not admit that it was more than the natural curiosity of a man who, disabled in comparative youth, had made a hobby out of the study of human nature. He was interested to see whether the lad took after his mother or his ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... downe the walls and Gates of Rome To make an entrance for an Hobby-horse; To vaunt to th'people his ridiculous spoyles; To come with Lawrell and with Olyves crown'd For having been the worst of all the ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... descended from the gig he found himself close to old Mr. Harkaway, the master of the hounds. Mr. Harkaway was a gentleman who had been master of these hounds for more than forty years, and had given as much satisfaction as the county could produce. His hounds, which were his hobby, were perfect. His horses were good enough for the Hertfordshire lanes and Hertfordshire hedges. His object was not so much to run a fox as to kill him in obedience to certain rules of the game. Ever so many hinderances have been created to bar the killing ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... the gold; it was too heavy for him to pack, especially as he had no way to carry water. Then taking a small bag of gold dust in his pocket he started across the desert. He had a hobby for taking photographs and carried a small camera with him, and before leaving he photographed the place, which he called "The Mound of Eternal Silence," so that in case anything happened to him it could be found without trouble. They developed the negatives later, and ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... has been quite talkative and rides his hobby to death,[155] concerning the rights of the negro to have land for nothing, etc., etc., expatiating upon the tyranny of the newly forming landed aristocracy, the gigantic speculators who are grinding the negro ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... Gardening is a hobby which does not exist under very favorable conditions at the front, its greatest drawback being that when the gardener's unit is moved from one place to another his garden cannot accompany him. Its devotees appear to derive ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... black coat green with age and a "Cup Final" cap. At the same time (this too on The Times' authority) there is an oddly and obsolescently attired lady going about who also makes London hospitals her hobby. She begins by asking the secretary if she may take off her boots, and, receiving permission, takes them off, places her feet on an adjacent chair and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... wretched, scorn'd a Thing. How little cause has mankind to be proud Of Noble Birth, the Idol of the Crowd! Have I abroad in Battels Honour won To be at home dishonourably undone? Mark'd with a Star and Garter, and made fine With all those gaudy Trifles once call'd mine, Your Hobby-Horses [1] and your Joys of State, And now become the Object of your Hate; But, d———'ee, Sir, I'll be Legitimate. I was your Darling, but against your Will, And know that I will be the Peoples still; And when you're ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... we work and fight and grow together, each may learn something from the other. I'm free to confess that your religion looks a bit cold and hard to me, even here in the good city where each man may ride his own hobby to death, and hoot at his neighbors as much as he will. You seem to keep your piety shut up all the week in your bare, white churches, and only let it out on Sundays, just a trifle musty with disuse. You set your rich, warm and soft to ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... is not known; it is a dance of young men in their shirts, with bells at their feet, and ribbons of various colours tied round their arms, and slung across their shoulders. Some writers, Shakespeare in particular, mention a Hobby-horse and a Maid Marian, as necessary in this recreation. Sir William Temple speaks of a pamphlet in the library of the Earl of Leicester, which gave an account of a set of morrice-dancers in King James's ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... going to take at least a year of post-graduate courses in the College of Agriculture. You see, I'm developing a hobby—farming. I want to do something ... something constructive. My father wasn't constructive to amount to anything. Neither were you fellows. You struck a new land in pioneer days, and you picked up money like a lot of sailors shaking out nuggets from ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... long walks, Byron had enough to do to keep himself thin, Tennyson had his pipe, Morris made tapestry at a loom. Southey had no amusements, and he died of softening of the brain. The happy people are those who have work which they love, and a hobby of a totally different kind which they love even better. But I doubt whether one can make a hobby for oneself in middle age, unless one is a very ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in buying books. His hazel-coloured coat was known to all the stall keepers on the quay from the Pont de la Concorde to the Pont Saint Michel. What he did with these books, so numerous that no man's lifetime would have been long enough to read them, nobody knew, least of all, himself. But this hobby of his amounted to monomania: when he came home at night without bringing a musty quarto with him, he would repeat the saying of Titus, "I have lost a day." His enticing manners, his language, which was a mosaic of every possible style, and ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... His childhood was neither healthful nor buoyant.... Chemical experiment was his favorite hobby, involving a lonely, confined, unwholesome sort of life, baneful to body and mind.... The age of fifteen or sixteen produced a revolution; retorts and crucibles were forever discarded.... He became enamoured ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... such an instance in my own freshman days. I fell into the hands of such an instructor in Greek. We were reading that most charming of Greek stories—The Odyssey. Textual criticism was this man's hobby, and we were put to work trying to compare texts, to delve into the intricacies of form and structure—trying to improve upon Homer! Such information as we could not find he gave us, in the formal lecture, ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... to point out this and that miniature of his collection, bending over Thresk as he did so. It seemed that the two collectors were quite lost in their common hobby until Robert ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... archaeological, and this taste he shared with Fabrice, who had cultivated the hobby at Naples. It so happened that the two were engaged in excavations near the bridge over the Po where the main road passes into Austrian territory at Castel-Maggiore. Early one morning Fabrice, after surveying the work that was going on in the trenches, strolled away with a gun, intent upon lark-shooting. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... especially useful when the taste for reading becomes a taste for knowledge, and when it is accompanied by some specialisation and concentration and by some exercise of the powers of observation. 'Many tastes and one hobby' is no bad ideal to be aimed at. The boy who learns to collect and classify fossils, or flowers, or insects, who has acquired a love for chemical experiments, who has begun to form a taste for some particular ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... Learning of adequate rest to refresh his illustrious mind. And all that he said the Professor parried with bows, and drew enchantments from his cupboard of wonder to replenish the bowl on the table. And Rodriguez saw that he was in the clutch of a collector, one who having devoted all his days to a hobby will exhibit his treasures to the uttermost, and that the stars that magic knows were no less to the Professor than all the whatnots that a man collects and insists on showing to whomsoever enters his house. He feared some terrible journey, perhaps ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... especial genius of the artist, and a work that is not aglow with its creator's personality—personality, mind you, not coarse realism—can never rank as a masterpiece. But, come, this won't do. Why did you want to get me astride my hobby?" ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
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