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More "Pastime" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... child-like fashion, had reared his moonshine castle beam by beam. At first he had regarded it as moonshine and had refused to consider the building of it anything but a dangerously pleasant pastime. And then, little by little, as his dreams changed to hopes, it had become more and more real, until, just before the end, it was the foundation upon which his future was to rest. And down it came, and there was his future ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the distinguished statesman; for it overcame his regard for his personal appearance so far that he was willing to appear in that assembly wearing his machine-shop apparel, rather than forego the pleasure of an intellectual pastime. ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... depended upon his self-reliance and independence of thought. And in the heavy work of remodelling the Observatory it was a very valuable quality. This same self-reliance made him in his latter years apt to draw conclusions too confidently and hastily on subjects which he had taken up more as a pastime than as work. But whatever he touched he dealt with ably and in the most fearless truthseeking manner, and left original and ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... meditation of future mischief. This is not the principle of Richard's cruelty, which resembles the wanton malice of a fiend as much as the frailty of human passion. Macbeth is goaded on to acts of violence and retaliation by necessity; to Richard, blood is a pastime.—There are other decisive differences inherent in the two characters. Richard may be regarded as a man of the world, a plotting, hardened knave, wholly regardless of everything but his own ends, and the means to secure them.—Not so Macbeth. The superstitions ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... this man, without his own consent, out of the country, as if they were acting a play upon the stage, and adorned him with a counterfeit thee; they also put upon him the sacred garments, and upon every occasion instructed him what he was to do. This horrid piece of wickedness was sport and pastime with them, but occasioned the other priests, who at a distance saw their law made a jest of, to shed tears, and sorely lament the dissolution ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... unfortunate Bibbs afforded every one such exquisite enjoyment that an effort was made to prolong the pastime by forcible attempts to fasten the placard on to other members of the company, and a general melee, would have followed if the attention of the combatants had not been attracted in another direction. Ronleigh ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... influence on popular sentiment; for of all the arts I think Music has the most mighty, universal, and immediate effect. ["Hear! hear!"] I know there are many educated and intelligent people who, absorbed in commerce, politics, and other pursuits, think that music is a mere family pastime—an ear-gratifying enjoyment. Great popularity has its drawbacks as well as its advantages, and there is no doubt that the widespread, instantaneous appreciation and popularity of melody has detracted ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... favorite pastime with the children. Usually Stella was with them, and they depended a good deal on her taste and skill. But to-day they had to manage without her, and so the dresses, though fairly well made, were not the fashionable garments ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... strongly attached to field sports, and as the "brawn of the tusked swine" was the first Christmas dish, it was provided by the pleasant preliminary pastime of hunting the wild boar; and the incidents of the chase afforded interesting table talk when the boar's head was brought in ceremoniously ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... able to bring only a fitful gleam of joy; to have to endure all this, day after day, and week after week, and month after month, is an affliction that transcends any other that men suffer. Physical pain is pastime to it, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... outside the city could be seen soldiers trying their best to keep their equilibrium, but they became fairly good acrobats before this was accomplished. Later we took to the North West Arm, where cricket and other games were played. We found this most invigorating and splendid pastime. During the winter we formed a society for the purpose of improving ourselves in literature. We had in the regiment John Smith, musketry instructor, and Sergeant George Smith. These were two educated and capable men, and offered to do all in their ...
— A Soldier's Life - Being the Personal Reminiscences of Edwin G. Rundle • Edwin G. Rundle
... tradition most familiar to the European scholar, the time was, when the ancient races of the continent were all plunged in deplorable barbarism; when they worshipped nearly every object in nature indiscriminately; made war their pastime, and feasted on the flesh of their slaughtered captives. The Sun, the great luminary and parent of mankind, taking compassion on their degraded condition, sent two of his children, Manco Capac and Mama Oello Huaco, to gather the natives into communities, and ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... incidentally laying bare the heart's disease, and the poisonous breathings of idolatrous influence—I could easily, and after the true novelist fashion, fabricate a scheme, somewhat as follows: Let me go gayly to the Moors by rail, coach, or cart, say for a sportsman's pastime, a truant vicar's week, or an audit-clerk's holiday: I drop upon the ruined abbey, now indeed with scarcely a vestige of its former beauty remaining, but still used as a burial-place; being a bit of an antiquary, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... niece, Olivo, refers to the polemic on which I have been at work for the last few days, the pastime of leisure hours. I ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... was not among them. They pampered every wish, indulged every folly, loaded me with luxuries, but my dream was dispelled. I respected few of them, and reverenced none. They were my pastime, my playthings. And they have revenged themselves by saying in secret ... what you said in ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... and companionable acquaintance. He was the best posted man in military tactics I ever met, and was thoroughly familiar with all its branches from the school of the soldier to the grand tactics of a division. It was very profitable pastime for me to go over the tactics under his instruction, he illustrating each battalion movement by the use of matches on the coverlets of our cots. In that way I learned the various tactical movements ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... so that the minister's voice seemed to come from farther off. The sunlight through the stained glass projected colored splotches here and there. I wondered if the people knew how homely they looked with those splotches on their faces, like great birth-marks. That suggested a pastime ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... none could be; he made immortal enmities, blocked up appointed roads, and set himself to walk others with a clog on his leg. Better far had she been a wanton of no account, a piece of dalliance, a pastime, a common delight! She was very much other than that. Dame Jehane was a good girl, a noble girl, a handsome girl of inches and bright blood; but by the Lord God of Israel (Who died on the Tree), these virtues ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... It was the deck on which one could occasionally see the patients playing an odd game with long sticks and bits of wood—not shuffleboard but something even lower in the mental scale. This morning, however, the devotees of this pastime were apparently under proper restraint, for the deck ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... horseback, both being very graceful riders, and very fond of that recreation. At moments when Napoleon could unbend from the cares of state, the family amused themselves, with such guests as were present, in the game of "prisoners" on the lawn. For several years this continued to be the favorite pastime at Malmaison. Kings and queens were often seen among the pursuers and the pursued on ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... Whenever a wild pig, a tiger, or a buffalo, takes it into his head to scratch himself, he uses one of our telegraph-posts if he finds it handy. Elephants sometimes butt them down with their thick heads, by way of pastime, I suppose, for they are not usually fond of posts and wire as food. Then bandicoots and porcupines burrow under them and bring them to the ground, while kites and crows sit on the wires and weigh them down. Monkeys, ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... extraordinary strength of the tobacco which the faithful Richard shovelled into the furnace, it developed no enduring popularity, Xanthippe, with a suddenly acquired pallor, being the first to renounce the pastime ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... This is called a quintain post and stands in the center of the village green. It consists of a revolving crossbar on the top of a tall, white post. One end of the bar is flattened and pierced with small holes, while at the other a billet of wood is suspended from a chain. The pastime consisted of riding on horseback and aiming a lance at one of the holes in the broad end of the crossbar. If the aim were true, the impact would swing the club around with violence, and unless the rider were agile he was liable ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... marry, my dear Frank?" said the dowager Lady Aveleyn, one day, when a thick fog debarred her son of his usual pastime. ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... upon the lifeless body of the otter and cried out, "This creature which you mistook for an otter, and which you have robbed and killed, is my son, Oddar, who for mere pastime had taken the form of the furry beast. You are but ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... scientific research. He had written little; what time he had been able to spare from his work, had been given to studies in chemistry whence he had drawn the inspiration for such stories as The Case of Summerfield. With him the writing of fiction was a pastime, not a profession. He wrote because he wanted to, from the urgence of an idea pressing for utterance, not from the more imperious necessity of keeping the pot boiling and of there being a roof against the rain. Literary creation was to him a rest, a matter of holiday in the ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... His principal amusement was to stand on his hind legs, his fore paws resting on the sill of one of the windows, his chin between them, and there contemplate all that was going on in the town below. But this was also a favourite pastime with my uncle's children; and there was not always room for all, so they often pulled him down by the tail, and took his place, without exciting his anger. His attachment to my uncle was very great, and he chiefly lived in his room. He missed him one day when he was ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... Francesca will be proud of you. Women admire you heroes. Rusty sages, Pale poets, and scarred warriors, have been Their idols ever; while we fair plump fools Are elbowed to the wall, or only used For vacant pastime. ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... then, as it is now, a favourite pastime among the students; and though not by nature a brawler, I find that in my student days at Leipzig I fought three duels, of two of which I carry the marks ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... had grave doubts about his self-assumed divinity being arrow-proof, for he protested vigorously against the proposal to make a human pin-cushion of him, whereupon the Sultan, his suspicions now confirmed, gave him his choice between being impaled upon a stake, a popular Turkish pastime of the period, or of renouncing Judaism and accepting the faith of Islam. Preferring to be a live coward to an impaled martyr, he chose the latter, yet such was his influence with the Jews that thousands of his adherents voluntarily embraced ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... Amoure and la bel Pucell, called the Pastime of pleasure," by Stephen Hawes, London, Tottell, 1555, 4to. The same engraving embellishes also "The Squyr of Lowe Degre," published ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... volume is presented simply as a story to be read for pastime, neither morality nor symbolism is hereinafter educed, and no "parallels" and "authorities" are quoted. Even the gaps are left unbridged by guesswork: whereas the historic and mythological problems perhaps involved are relinquished to those really thoroughgoing ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... hunter should be a first-rate judge of distance in order to adjust the sights as required by the occasion. It was accordingly rare to meet with a good rifle-shot fifty years ago. Rifle-shooting was not the amusement sought by Englishmen, although in Switzerland and Germany it was the ordinary pastime. In those countries the match-rifle was immensely heavy, weighing, in many instances, 16 lbs., although the ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... He did not, indeed, disdain pleasure; no one enjoyed physical exercise, or a good play, or a pleasant dinner, more than he; he drank in deep draughts of the highest and the best that life had to offer; but even in pastime he was never idle. He did not know what it was to saunter, he debited himself with every minute of his time; he combined with the highest intellectual powers the faculty of utilizing them to the fullest extent by intense application. Moreover, his industry ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... quickly replied my patron; who was really, on most occasions, a match for his croney in the sublime art of punning, and making conundrums, a favourite pastime with the wits of ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... to return with his fortune made! He marries, sets his wives to hoe the mealies and milk the cows, and thereafter takes life easy, except when he takes a fancy to hunt elephants, or to go to war for pastime. Ever after he is a drone in the world's beehive. Having no necessity he need not work, and possessing no principle ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... two brothers employing their leisure in what to us would, be a childish pastime, the making of paper balloons. The story tells us that their room was filled with smoke, which issued from the windows as though the house were on fire. A neighbour, thinking such was the case, rushed in, but, on being assured ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... fine, silvery-white needles that glisten in the sun. Its stem is hollow and filled with a white pith like the elder. After the prickly bark is stripped off the punk can be picked out through the fenestra with a penknife, which occupation affords pleasant pastime for a leisure hour. When thus furbished up the unsightly club ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... by making a slide on the pavement, M. Godefroy would have been highly incensed. But it really was so all the same; and during the space of one minute this man who was so occupied by business matters, this leading light in the financial and political worlds, indulged in the childish pastime of watching the passers-by, and following with his eyes the files of conveyances as they ...
— The Lost Child - 1894 • Francois Edouard Joachim Coppee
... him to the Camp! Yes, to the Camp. Oh, Wisdom! a most wise resolve! and then, That half a word should blow it to the winds! This last device must end my work.—Methinks It were a pleasant pastime to construct A scale and table of belief—as thus— Two columns, one for passion, one for proof; Each rises as the other falls: and first, Passion a unit and against us—proof— Nay, we must travel in another path, Or we're stuck fast for ever;—passion, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... as he enjoyed a cup of exquisite green tea, "and I'm very glad of it, for I don't approve of the use I make of my leisure. I have passed all this day reasoning upon myself, dissecting my mind and heart,—a most foolish pastime, beyond a doubt"—then drawing from his pocket a note-book, he wrote therein these words: "Forget thyself, forget thyself, forget thyself," imitating the philosopher Kant, who being inconsolable at the loss of an old servant ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... prevailed, of young men, absolutely unknown to the parents, establishing correspondence or meetings with the objects of their adoration by means of a complacent doncella with an open palm, or the pastime known as pelando el pavo (literally, "plucking the turkey"), which consisted of serenades of love songs, amorous dialogues, or the passage of notes through the reja—the iron gratings which protect the lower windows of Spanish houses from the prowling human wolf—or ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... availed, for he would dwell upon the deed of his wife, and despondency, instead of diminishing, prevailed, and leach craft treatment utterly failed. One day his elder brother said to him, "I am going forth to hunt and course and to take my pleasure and pastime; maybe this would lighten thy heart." Shah Zaman, however, refused, saying, "O my brother, my soul yearneth for naught of this sort and I entreat thy favour to suffer me tarry quietly in this place, being wholly taken up with my malady." So King Shah Zaman passed ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... travel and handed to Fremont the communications. As soon as he had read his letters, Fremont made inquiries in regard to Gillespie, and found that he was in rather a precarious position; for, should the Tlamath Indians take the notion, they would murder him and his men just by the way of pastime. Fremont at once determined to return with all haste and succor Gillespie from the imminent peril that surrounded him. With this purpose in view, he selected ten picked men, leaving orders for the rest of the party to follow on his trail, and set out. He had traveled about ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... though we get along very well together. But Mulgrum wrote out for me that he was born in Cherryfield, Maine, and obtained his education as a deaf mute in Hartford. I learned the deaf and dumb alphabet when I was a schoolmaster, as a pastime, and I had some practice with it in the house ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... locality, he had experienced but one attack of chills. He considered the St. Mary's River, on account of the purity of its waters, one of the healthiest of southern streams. The descent of this beautiful river now became a holiday pastime. Though there were but few signs of the existence of man, the scenery was of a cheering character. A brick-kiln, a few saw-mills, and an abandoned rice-plantation were passed, while the low saltmarshes, extending into the river from the forest-covered upland, gave evidence of the proximity ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... had a desperate flirtation with your friend, as desperate and meaningless as those things always are; for it is merely an invention to pass the idler hours of society. There was nothing else to do, so we flirted. It added to the zest to keep her in ignorance of my identity. It was a silly pastime, but better than nothing. I should far rather have been in bed. If I could have talked to you, it would ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... 'This is what you must all come to, gentlemen, when we choose to bring you to book.' This same young damsel was Bella's serving-maid, and unto her did deliver a bunch of keys, commanding treasures in the way of dry-saltery, groceries, jams and pickles, the investigation of which made pastime after breakfast, when Bella declared that 'Pa must taste everything, John dear, or it will never be lucky,' and when Pa had all sorts of things poked into his mouth, and didn't quite know what to do with them when they were ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... lakes, Superior and Erie, touching at Detroit and one or two other points of interest, then after visiting the new entrepot for the territory of Michigan, Chicago, was to return with her passengers to Buffalo; the trip being one of pastime, and calculated to occupy ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... yourself for that. You must say, 'I will not,' and it will be very easy. Besides," she added, with another laugh, in which there was a rather nervous ring,—"besides, you know all this is only a comedy, or a pastime. You are not ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... decidedly of this opinion herself, albeit she would not have dared to say as much. She liked soft raiment, bright colours, dainty ways, and pretty speeches. Looking down from her window upon the passers by, it was her favourite pastime to fancy herself one of the hooped and powdered and gorgeously-apparelled ladies, with their monstrous farthingales, their stiff petticoats, their fans, their patches, and their saucy, coquettish ways to the gentlemen in their train. All this bedizenment, which had by no means died out ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... family washing, ironing, etc., and the men cut fire wood, or worked in the garden, and special truck crops. Christmas? Christmas was a holiday, but the fourth of July meant very little to the slave people. Dances? There was lots of dancing. It was the pastime of the slave race. The children played shimmy and other games, imitating the white children, sometimes ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... dainty preliminaries. He had feared that with Betty he should have to skip them, for he knew that it is only in their first love affairs that women have the patience to watch the flower unfold itself. He himself was of infinite patience in that pastime. He bit his lip and struck with his cane at the buttercup heads. He had made a wretched beginning, with his "good and sweet." his "young and innocent and beautiful like—like." If the girl had been a shade less innocent the whole business ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... recently given less time to him, being engaged in the preliminary instruction of a new member of the Infant Class. Such things will, of course, happen and though George had quite ingenuously raged in secret, the circumstances left him free to "hover" and hovering was a pastime he enjoyed. ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... not because of his toils that I lament for the poor: we must all toil, or steal (howsoever we name our stealing), which is worse; no faithful workman finds his task a pastime. The poor is hungry and a-thirst; but for him also there is food and drink: he is heavy-laden and weary; but for him also the Heavens send Sleep, and of the deepest; in his smoky cribs, a clear dewy heaven of Rest envelops him, and fitful glitterings of cloud-skirted ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... skies. In a word, this folly is that that laid the foundation of cities; and by it, empire, authority, religion, policy, and public actions are preserved; neither is there anything in human life that is not a kind of pastime of folly. ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... something sinister in the profound quietude of the place; it was full of shuttered villas, for through the winter each village in the neighbourhood of Paris hibernates, those whom the peasants style les bourgeois still regarding country life as essentially a summer pastime. ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... Deutsch prize, Santos-Dumont continued for a time to amuse himself with dirigibles. I say "amuse" purposely, for never did serious aeronaut get so much fun out of a rather perilous pastime as he. In his "No. IX." he built the smallest dirigible ever known. The balloon had just power enough to raise her pilot and sixty-six pounds more beside a three-horse-power motor. But she attained a speed of twelve miles an hour, was readily handled, and it was her owner's ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... Roswell's views, for the investment which Eugene Field made in the two years after coming of age in spending $20,000 on experience, returned to him many fold in the profession he was finally driven to adopt, not as a pastime, but to earn a livelihood for ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... backgammon, dice, chess, and billiards," but football was too rough a game for his Majesty, and "meeter for laming than making able." Stubbs also speaks of it as a "bloody and murthering practice, rather than a fellowly sport or pastime." From the descriptions of the old games, it seems to have been very painful work for the shins, and there were no rules to prevent hacking and tripping in ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... parties met constantly in each other's apartments. After two or three nights the gentlemen of an evening had a little piquet, as their wives sate and chatted apart. This pastime, and the arrival of Jos Sedley, who made his appearance in his grand open carriage, and who played a few games at billiards with Captain Crawley, replenished Rawdon's purse somewhat, and gave him the benefit of that ready money for which the greatest ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hearing (and fain to be further, in his present state of mind) were several young officers of the staff, making little mouths at one another, for want of better pastime, but looking as grave, when the mighty man glanced round, as schoolboys do under the master's eye. "Send Admiral Decres to me," the Emperor shouted, as he laid down his telescope and returned to his ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... said Mrs Maurice, 'is the result of what, under other circumstances, would be a mere innocent gratification, a pleasant pastime, and a useful exercise.' ...
— Effie Maurice - Or What do I Love Best • Fanny Forester
... shake together best afterwards. There is not the least use in a prolonged courtship acquaintance. It is only a field for lovers' quarrels, and pastime ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... years ago I passed the winter in the wilderness of northern Maine. I was passionately fond of skating, and the numerous lakes and rivers, frozen by the intense cold, offered an ample field to the lover of this pastime. ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... he was, moreover, one of a nation, every citizen of which was not merely permitted to carry arms, but compelled by law to practice from childhood the use of the bow, and accustomed to consider sword-play and quarter-staff as a necessary part and parcel of education, and the pastime of every leisure hour. The "fiercest nation upon earth," as they were then called, and the freest also, each man of them fought for himself with the self-help and self-respect of a Yankee ranger, and once bidden to do his work, was trusted to carry it out by his own wit as best ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... not founded on any great depth of love for Anne. His appropriation of the three sisters had been a pretty and pleasant pastime. When he had finally decided upon Anne as the pivotal center of his universe he had contemplated a future in which the other sisters also figured—especially Amy. He had, indeed, not thought of ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... pastime for an adult woman! I did not utter this sentiment, for she would rightly have styled me the most ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... a pleasant pastime—so long as it was another who was doing the hard work of beating. And his own experience as a beater proved valuable. He was familiar with the ways and the haunts of animals. What had once been a matter of survival ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... followed by loud voices and laughter reminded him he had promised, at that hour, and in that sequestered place, to decide a bet respecting pistol-shooting, to which the titular Lord Etherington, Jekyl, and Captain MacTurk, to whom such a pastime was peculiarly congenial, were parties as well as himself. The prospect this recollection afforded him, of vengeance on the man whom he regarded as the author of his sister's wrongs, was, in the present state of his mind, too tempting ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... eh! But I'm sorry you hurt his lordship, Terry. Young noblemen ought to be indulged in their frolics. If they do, now and then, run away with a knocker, paint a sign, beat the watch, or huff a magistrate, they pay for their pastime, and that's sufficient. What more could any reasonable man—especially a watchman—desire? Besides, the Marquis, is a devilish fine fellow, and a particular friend of mine. There's not his peer among ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... are sure to follow. It was wonderful how many of the prisoners discovered a talent for music after Punchard and Runnles had thus led the way. Our jailers encouraged this pastime; it was not merely harmless in itself, but it had a quietening effect on the temper of the men, and the squabbles and brawls among them notably diminished. One of the Frenchmen unearthed an old fiddle, and though one of its strings was wanting, a man named Ben Tolliday contrived ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... employment. But the world is richer, and safer, by Muller's early misfortune. For it was this experience which threw him back on his own peculiar talents for a livelihood, and drove him into the police force. Had he been able to enter any other profession, his genius might have been stunted to a mere pastime, instead of being, as now, utilised for the ...
— The Case of the Registered Letter • Augusta Groner
... themselves in the enjoyment of the abundance of the vanquished, who, in their turn, with their accustomed versatility, submitted patiently, and even cheerfully, to a yoke which, after the first onslaught was over, pressed lightly; the Voizins, to whom fighting was a pastime, bearing no malice, and passing imperceptibly ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... she is not in such deadly earnest, but merely indulging in a harmless pastime, such an effort of concentration need not be made. The 'willing' is, of course, akin to 'wishing' when cutting the cards in another ...
— Tea-Cup Reading, and the Art of Fortune-Telling by Tea Leaves • 'A Highland Seer'
... Odden will not talk of you, while you are away, having inherited, as I suspect, his father's way of declining to consider a subject which is painful, as your absence is. . . . I certainly should like to learn Greek and I think it would be a capital pastime for the long winter evenings. . . . How things are misrated! I declare croquet is a noble occupation compared to the pursuits of business men. As for so-called idleness - that is, one form of it - I vow it is the noblest aim of man. When idle, one can love, one ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... money. The American hopes to make money too, but he takes up business as an honourable career and for the sake of winning standing and reputation among his fellows. This being so, business in America has a tendency to become more of a game or a pastime—to be followed with the whole heart certainly—but in a measure for itself, and not alone for the stakes to be won. It is not difficult to see how, in this spirit, it may be easier to forego those ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... by related the story as told by a cavalry lieutenant, who with a party reconnoitered a distance from camp. The thick growth of grass and vines made ambuscading a favorite pastime with the Spaniards. With smokeless powder they lay concealed in the grass. As the party rode along the sharp eye of a colored cavalryman noticed the movement of grass ahead. Leaning over his horse with sword in hand ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... is that Bannockburn was fought on a point of chivalry, on a rule in a game. England must "touch bar," relieve Stirling, as in some child's pastime. To the securing of the castle, the central gate of Scotland, north and south, England put forth her full strength. Bruce had no choice but to concentrate all the power of a now, at last, united realm, and stand just where he ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... shining. She knew of Mrs. Rolfe's skill as a musician, and this same evening uttered a hope that she might hear her play. The violin came forth from its retirement. Playing, it seemed at first, without much earnestness, as though it were but a pastime, Alma presently chose one of her pageant pieces, and showed of what she was capable. Lack of practice had told upon her hand, but the hearers were uncritical, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... which of itself was a crime and disentitled you to Christian burial; in the second she had died in a way greatly to inconvenience persons in the highest society; in the third she had always understood that racing was a perfectly proper pastime for gentlemen; and in the fourth this incident, touching Michael through his relationship with the deceased, would bring him again in contact with that Vivie Warren—there she was and there was he, in close converse—and ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... and neighbors the forenoon was far advanced before we reached the field and began bean-planting. Quite enough of it remained, however, to render me certain that farm work, in summer, is far from being a pastime. We planted the beans among the corn which had been planted two weeks previously and was now a finger's length above the ground. The corn hills were three feet and a half apart, and between the hills ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... the deed and does his will. In fancy I can see him to the end— The duke, perchance, already breathes his last, And for Bernardo—he will join him soon; And for Rosalia, she will take the veil, To which she hath been heretofore inclined; And for my master, he will take again To alchemy—a pastime well enough, For aught I know, and honest Christian work. Still it was strange how my poor mistress died, Found, as she was, within her husband's study. The rumor went she died of suffocation; Some cursed crucible which had been left, By Giacomo, aburning, filled ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... kindled by the kind spirits of the north, to thaw the frozen mist which impedes their light footsteps across the face of the heavens. And the laugh is the laugh of eager joy, which those spirits utter when, indulging in their loved pastime, they remember the occurrence which led to their glorious destiny, and made the bright and starry north their place ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... dreams with others for social pastime, you will meet with fair realization of hopes that have long buoyed you up. Small ills will vanish. But playing for stakes will involve you in difficulties of a ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... gentleman emigrant; but could he point out any colony more suited? Also, that his sons earned daily bread by harassing toil, worse than that of a bricklayer or day labourer at home; but were they not happier than in pursuit of mere pastime like thousands of their equals in the province they had left? Robert would certainly have answered in the affirmative. Arthur's restless spirit less wisely pined for the pleasure-seeking of ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... meant to say all this, but the stretch of boundless green prairies was before his eyes, the memory of heroic action where men utterly forget themselves was in his mind, making life in that little Ohio settlement seem only a boy's pastime, to be put away with other childish things. While night and day, in the battle clamor, in the little college class room, on boundless prairie billows, among lonely sand dunes—everywhere, he carried the memory of the gentle touch ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... Pippin," which seldom bore. It stood in the yard near the smoke-house, where it found abundant nourishment. It grew to great size. In time I became a grafter of trees for the neighborhood, and often as I returned at night would have cions of different kinds in my pockets. It became a pastime to graft these cions in the old tree. More than thirty varieties were placed there. It was with keen anticipation, as the years came, that I looked for the annual crop, to see what strange inhabitants ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... sun, I left the hut and walked about the mountains for some hours. I had lately been thinking of writing some children's verses, addressed to a certain little girl, but nothing had come of it. Now as I walked on the mountainside, I felt again a desire for this pastime, and worked at it on several occasions, but could not get it into shape. The night, when one has slept an hour or two, is the time when such things come ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... the amusement of the rich, who train it to attack large fowls, geese, and even goats and sheep. It seizes these by the great artery of the neck, and does not quit its hold till the victim sinks exhausted from the loss of blood—a cruel pastime which one could only expect ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... as his love Softened our early sorrows. But my sun Has set for ever! Once we talked of cares And deemed that we were sad. Men fancy sorrows Until time brings the substance of despair, And then their griefs are shadows. Give me exile! It brought me love. Ah! days of gentle joy, When pastime only parted us, and he Returned with tales to make our children stare; Or called my lute, while, round my waist entwined, His hand kept chorus to my lay. No more! O, we were happier than the happy birds; And sweeter were our lives than the sweet flowers; The stars ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... the fearful recollection, her eyes fell upon the smouldering ruins of her once happy home. She tottered with her chilled and hungry children towards the heap of smoking rafters and still glowing embers of the cabin, with which the morning breezes were toying as in merry pastime, and sat down upon a mound which stood before what had once been the door. Here, at least, was warmth, but whither should she go for shelter and food. There was no house within forty miles and the ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... books, and busy herself somewhat over fine needle-work, and at one time she was compiling a little floral book, giving a list of the flowers, and poetical selections and sentiments appropriate to each. That was her pastime for three winters, and it is now nearly done; but she has given that up, and all the rest, and sits there in the window and grows older and feebler until spring. It is only I who can divert her mind, by reading aloud to her and ...
— Evelina's Garden • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... superficial; but I suspect that the entire furniture to which a colleger lays claim, is his bed and bureau, tables and chairs being here as much out of keeping (if they could be kept at all) as at Stonehenge. En passant—this tossing was a pastime replete with the sublime and awful. That their efforts might be simultaneous, those who held the blanket, and they were legion, made use ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... pleasure of the Builders that intrigued us. It can best be described as a stimulation produced by drenching their insides with alcoholic compounds, and is a universal pastime among the males and many of ...
— B-12's Moon Glow • Charles A. Stearns
... evening the tremendous clatter of a sword that made such unnecessary noise that one might imagine the owner thereof had betaken himself to the favorite pastime of his childhood, and was prancing in on his murderous weapon, having mistaken it for his war steed, announced the arrival of Captain Bradford, who with two friends came to say adieu. Those vile Yankees ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... changed to groans of rage when they saw the carcasses of their favourite lions, who had already swallowed so many thousand slaves, strewing the wide arena. They shouted loudly to have an end put to the pleasant pastime. ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... do?" he mentally ejaculated. "Why, for mere pastime, should I take away yon noble creature's life, when his carcass would be utterly useless to me? Yet such is the force of habit, that I can scarce resist the impulse that tempted me to fire; and I have known the time, and ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... into use in 1840. The long matchlocks of the Arabs had been very worrying to the French in Algiers. It was a common pastime of the Ishmaelites to pick off the Gauls at a distance which left Brown Bess helpless. Protruded over an almost inaccessible crag, the former primitive instrument would plump its ball into the ranks of the Giaour in the dell below with a precision and an effect hardly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... makes it, I find I have been only in an enchanted castle, imposed upon by spectres and apparitions. I blush inwardly to think how 1 have been deluded; I am ashamed of my frame, and can hardly forbear expostulating with my destiny: Is this thy pastime, O Nature, to put such tricks upon a silly creature, and then to take off the mask, and show him how he hath been befooled? If this is the philosophy of human nature, my soul enter thou not into her secrets. It is surely ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... the ancestors of the Vril-ya feared the aggressions of their own kind, or hunted the lesser animals for food. Indeed, however, so far as the horse was concerned, this region was so rocky that a horse could have been, there, of little use either for pastime or burden. The only creature they use for the latter purpose is a kind of large goat which is much employed on farms. The nature of the surrounding soil in these districts may be said to have first suggested ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Those of our readers who were alive at the time doubtless recall the excitement of that man-hunt two years ago. Mr. Barnes, as innocent as a child unborn, came to our little city engaged in the innocent pastime of getting married. At the same time it was reported that a murder had been committed in this county. Mr. Crow had his suspicions aroused and pursued Mr. Barnes down the river and arrested him. It was a fine piece of detective work. But, unfortunately for Mr. Crow, the real ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... day the Compassionate set about world-making, which is but a pastime with him, nor nearly so much as nest-building to a mother-dove, he rested. The mountains and rivers and seas were in their beds, and the land was variegated to please him, here a forest, there a grassy plain; nothing remained unfinished except ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... harp were the order of the evening for a time; then games were proposed, and "Consequences," "How do you like it?" and "Genteel lady, always genteel," afforded much amusement. Herbert could join in these, and did with much spirit. But dancing was a favorite pastime with the young people of the neighborhood, and the clock had hardly struck nine when Cadmus and his fiddle were summoned to their aid, chairs and tables were put out of the way, and sets began ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... A favorite evening pastime at the Hall, and one which the worthy Squire is fond of promoting, is story telling, "a good, old-fashioned fire-side amusement," as he terms it. Indeed, I believe he promotes it, chiefly, because it was one of the choice recreations ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... pair at Northlands as long as we could, doing all that lay in our power to restore Adrian's idiotically impaired health. I motored him about the county; I took him to golf, a pastime at which I do not excel; and I initiated him into the invigorating mysteries of playing at robbers with Susan. We gave a carefully selected dinner-party or two, and accepted on his behalf a few discreet invitations. At these entertainments—whether at Northlands ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... have admired and striven to perpetuate the group in the drawing-room. In the old days it was quite the proper thing to snap the family group while they were engaged in some pleasant pastime, such as spinning, or painting china, or playing the piano, or reading a volume of poems. No one ever seemed to bother about the incongruence of the eyes, which were invariably focused at the camera lens. Here they all were. Mrs. Harrigan was deep in the intricate maze of the Amelia ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... An edifying pastime for an adult woman! I did not utter this sentiment, for she would rightly have styled me the ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... fire fighting in Southern cities—before the steam engine, the hook and ladder and water tower companies supplanted the old hand pump and bucket companies, the Negro was the chief fire fighter, and there was nothing that tended more to make fire fighting a pleasant pastime than those old volunteer organizations. For many years after the war Wilmington was supplied with water for the putting out of fires by means of cisterns which were built in the centre of streets. When the old bell in the ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... of our fine ladies amusing themselves with giving parties, at which they, and their guests, take chloroform as a pastime? Lady Castlereagh set the example, and was describing to me her sensations under the process. I told her how imprudent and wrong I thought such experiments, and mentioned to her the lecture Brand gave upon the subject, in which the poor little guinea-pig, who ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... liking for the place—and his scant regard for his subjects—by making it the centre of a Chase, having a large extent of the land on either side of the river afforested and enclosed with palings so that, though growing corpulent and unwieldy, he might yet be able to indulge in his favourite pastime ...
— Hampton Court • Walter Jerrold
... Tom, 'one pastime is as good as another; and the less it pretends to, the better. On the whole, it may be a beneficial outlet for the revival ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... me for pastime. How skaunt he eyes his hands! Well, my good brother - Perhaps I should ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... if violet or pansy frames are set in a sunny nook, if it be one of the wind's winter playgrounds, where he drifts the snow deep for his pastime, so that after each storm of snow or sleet a serious bit of engineering must be undergone before the sashes can be lifted and the plants saved from dampness; or if the daffodils and tulips lie well bedded all the winter through, if, when the sun has called ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... Phoebus stands; The feather'd vengeance quiv'ring in his hands. Near Cadmus' walls a plain extended lay, Where Thebes' young princes pass'd in sport the day: There the bold coursers bounded o'er the plains, While their great masters held the golden reins. Ismenus first the racing pastime led, And rul'd the fury of his flying steed. "Ah me," he sudden cries, with shrieking breath, While in his breast he feels the shaft of death; He drops the bridle on his courser's mane, Before his eyes in shadows swims the plain, He, the first-born ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... forgets to carry it to his mouth, must die of hunger and cease from gazing altogether, or be fed by his friends. The instruments of achievement may be adorned, and made delightful in the using, but they must not {197} on that account be mistaken for the achievement; leisure may be made a worthy pastime through the cultivation of the sensibilities, but it must not be substituted for vocation, or allowed to infect a serious purpose ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... misfortune. For it was this experience which threw him back on his own peculiar talents for a livelihood, and drove him into the police force. Had he been able to enter any other profession, his genius might have been stunted to a mere pastime, instead of being, as now, utilised for the ...
— The Case of the Registered Letter • Augusta Groner
... separate out entertainers which do not have their own entry, e.g. musician. Need singer, dancer, comedian wit —> 840. Amusement. — N. amusement, entertainment, recreation, fun, game, fun and games; diversion, divertissement; reaction, solace; pastime, passetemps[Fr], sport; labor of love; pleasure &c. 827. relaxation; leisure &c. 685. fun, frolic, merriment, jollity; joviality, jovialness[obs3]; heyday; laughter &c. 838; jocosity, jocoseness[obs3]; drollery, buffoonery, tomfoolery; mummery, pleasantry; wit ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... war the men of the South engaged, at first, in politics as an elegant pastime. They had plenty of leisure and plenty of money. They did not take to literature and science, because these pursuits require severe work and more or less of a strong bias, for a thorough exposition of their profound penetralia. It may ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... ravine, and far over the moon-lit prairies. Then divers voices were heard in the bluffs, and down in the gorge. These came from Dumont's men, who jeered, and cried that they hoped the soldiers enjoyed the pastime of ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... seems to be generally that the prevalence of the crime, except in seasons of famine, has been enormously overstated. The prevalent idea with us Westerns appears to be, that the murder of their children, especially of their female children, is a kind of national pastime with the Chinese, or, at the best, a national peculiarity. Yet it is open to question whether the crime, excepting in seasons of famine, is, in proportion to the population, more common in China ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... ere thou departest, I purpose to see What merry good pastime This day will show me; For a king of the wassail This night we must choose, Or else the old customs We ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... disdainful Arbaces are ye less homicides than I am? I slay but in self-defence—ye make murder pastime.' ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... you, Mate, living up to being a mother is no idle pastime, particularly if it means reviving the lost art of managing love-smitten youths and elderly male coquettes. There is a specimen of each opposite Sada and me at table who are so generous with their company on deck, before and after meals, I have almost run ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... rather stiff, And foreign from the style of Twenty, There's still enough of cricket stuff Remaining for the pastime. Plenty! Why, such a creed as now you preach Is only fit for scoffs and jeers; Wait till you lose your wind and reach— Wait till you come to ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... exertions. There is nothing to be urged against this method of applauding the performers when kept within reasonable bounds. Sometimes it is to be feared, however, the least discreet of the audience indulge in calls rather for their own gratification—by way of pastime during the interval between one play and another—than out of any strict consideration of the abilities of the players; and, having called on one or two deserving members of a company, proceed to require ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... Hal. "We simply don't care to play, that's all. We do play occasionally, for pastime, ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... forth again furious, and wandered in the town all day. He met friends, and drank with them; they hired a carriage and drove into the country, and there drank again. All the time Keawe was ill at ease, because he was taking this pastime while his wife was sad, and because he knew in his heart that she was more right than he; and the knowledge made him drink ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... experience a good effect from this day's battle and destruction. The story will be remembered in the black man's traditions, and will have its due weight in many a palaver. Nevertheless, though the burning of villages be a very pretty pastime, yet it leaves us in a moralizing mood, as most pleasures are apt to do; and one would fain hope that civilized man, in his controversies with the barbarian, will at length cease to descend to the barbarian level, and may adopt some other method of proving ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... all labour and sorrow now. People who called this sort of thing amusement, thought Dick, would go to purgatory for pastime, and a stage farther for diversion. When he broke poor Redwing's back three fields from home in the Melton steeplechase he was grieved, annoyed, distressed. When he lost that eleven-pounder in the shallows ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... our boys, was that of imitating the noise of every bird and beast in the woods. This faculty was not merely a pastime, but a very necessary part of education, on account of its utility in certain circumstances. The imitations of the gobbling, and other sounds of wild turkeys, often brought those keen-eyed, and ever-watchful tenants of the forest within the reach of their ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... felinus; species, cat; individual, Tabby. But as I got deeper into the subject, I became more interested, and the beauty of the language delighted me. I often amused myself by reading Latin passages, picking up words I understood and trying to make sense. I have never ceased to enjoy this pastime. ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... multitude of sins. But from the depths of my heart I despised him. I had not then learned to hate the sin with all my heart, and yet the sinner love. To me he was the incarnation of social meanness and vice. And just as I felt I acted. We young folks had met at a social gathering, and were engaged in a pastime in which we occasionally clasped hands together. Some of these plays I heartily disliked, especially when there was romping and promiscuous kissing. During the play Frank Miller's hand came in contact with mine and he pressed it. I can hardly ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... rebels, and traitors, whose sole office and labor is to mend these degenerate morals, to heal these corrupting sores, to pour a better life into the rotting carcass of this guilty city? Is it for our pastime, or our profit, that we go about this always dangerous work? Is it a pleasure to hear the gibes, jests, and jeers of the streets and the places of public resort? Will you not believe that it is for ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... fact, he was privately relishing life with enviable gusto. In those days he could and did: being alive was the most satisfying pastime he could imagine, or cared to, who was a thundering success in his own conceit and in fact as well; since all the world for whose regard he cared a twopenny-bit admired, respected, and esteemed him in his public status, and admired, respected, and ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... The art of debugging a blank sheet of paper (or, in these days of on-line editing, the art of debugging an empty file). 2. n. A pastime similar to banging one's head against a wall, but with fewer opportunities for reward. 3. n. The most fun you can have with your clothes on (although ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... whose recollections were all of the bygone ages. So he did his best to laugh. And Sir Tom enjoyed his own joke so much that he did not know that it was from the lips only that his young companion's laugh came. He got up and patted Jock on the shoulders with the utmost benevolence when this pastime ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... the charmed circle of the seceded States. With worn-out rails, scant supply of carriage-material, and wheezy engines, they performed herculean labor throughout the war. Consequently it became the favorite pastime and the almost sole business of Union cavalry to destroy or attempt destruction of railroad communication. Thousands upon thousands of valuable lives were sacrificed in such movements, and without any material damage to the ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... hazardous enterprise,—no holiday adventure, no pastime for boys. It was sober, serious, dangerous work,—and work for men, for cool, earnest, fearless, determined men, who relied on God, who thought more of their object than of their lives, and who, for truth and their country, were ready to meet the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... than ever, but it only makes her lovelier. I believe if she saw me kill some one on the spot she would think it all my generosity; or, if she could not, she would take and die. Oh no! I'll not fail her. No, I won't; not if I have to spend seven years after the model of old Bill, whose liveliest pastime is a good long sermon, when it is ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nature, without even taking thought, to turn her head on her round neck so that the illuminated curls would show against a background of wall, and wreathe her half-bare arms across the sill. To be looked at, to lure and tantalize, was more than pastime. It was a woman's chief privilege. Archange held the secret conviction that the priest himself could be made to give her lighter penances by an angelic expression she could assume. It is convenient ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... not without an approach to accurate judgment, that Haydn and Mozart had completely covered the field of chamber-music. While in the midst of numerous and always congenial pursuits during his long life, quartette-playing remained a favorite pastime of very many days in very ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... festivity begins in the fall, after the birds have left us and the holiday spirit of nature has commenced to subside. How absorbing the pastime of the sportsman who goes to the woods in the still October morning in quest of him! You step lightly across the threshold of the forest, and sit down upon the first log or rock to await the signals. It is so still that ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... This out-door pastime is of comparatively modern creation, and until quite lately was very much in vogue. It nay be played by persons of all ages and of either sex; but it is especially adapted for ladies and young persons, as it demands but slight personal exertion, while it affords ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... metaphysicians; they have concerned themselves far less with what the ancient thinkers really knew than with what they thought. A chance using of a verbal quibble, an esoteric phrase, the expression of a vague mysticism—these would suffice to call forth reams of exposition. It has been the favorite pastime of historians to weave their own anachronistic theories upon the scanty woof of the half-remembered thoughts of the ancient philosophers. To make such cloth of the imagination as this is an alluring pastime, but one that must not divert us here. Our point of view reverses that of the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... gone riding over the old road, and shall be truly delighted to meet or be overtaken by you." As a young man he was extremely fond of riding, but as I never remember seeing him on horseback I think he must have deprived himself of this pastime ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... native Rulers, until the medley of truth and fiction, history and mythology, became an inextricable tangle. The birds' beaks, and hooked noses of the masks in the topeng, and of the puppets in the shadow-play, were made compulsory after the Arabic conquest, in order to reconcile the national pastime with the creed of Islam, which forbade the dramatic representation of the human form. The reigning Susunhan evaded the decree by distorting mask and puppet, but although the outside world might no longer recognise the heroes of the play, Javanese knowledge of national ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... at Hartlepool, who had been a sailor, used to render Psalm civ. 26, as "There go the ships and there is that lieutenant whom Thou hast made to take his pastime therein." ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... dealing with a popular pastime, points to a great lesson, the fact that God is to be found in all our natural surroundings, if we but seek for Him in the same manner that we endeavor to find ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... people, I have contrived the pastime today that I may show you on a mimic scale the deeds which my brave soldiers are called upon to perform in France. It is more specially suited for the combatants of today, since one party have had but small opportunity of acquiring skill on horseback. Moreover, ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... the Temple of Vesta; or, rather (since that name for the brick house was known only to the old and the young doctor), at the Blyth Girls'. The sisters always entertained the society once a year, and it was apt to be the favourite meeting of the season. It was the peaceful pastime of two weeks, for Miss Phoebe and Miss Vesta, to prepare for the annual festivity, by polishing the already shining house to a hardly imaginable point of brilliant cleanliness. In the kitchen of the Temple, Diploma Grotty ruled supreme, as she had ruled for twenty ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... wrote during his absence are, perhaps to prove good spirits, full of the delights of skating, which were afforded by the exceptionally severe frost of February 1855, which came opportunely to regale with this favourite pastime one who would never tread on solid ice again. He wrote with zest of the large merry party of cousins skating together, of the dismay of the old housekeeper when he skimmed her in a chair over the ice, sighing out, in her terror, 'My dear ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a popular pastime; the demand for morning cocktails had unaccountably fallen off; the bar-keeper would fall asleep at the club-room from sheer lack of employment during the afternoons and early evenings, for many of the married ladies had brought maiden relatives as friends to spend the winter with them, and half ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... of this opinion herself, albeit she would not have dared to say as much. She liked soft raiment, bright colours, dainty ways, and pretty speeches. Looking down from her window upon the passers by, it was her favourite pastime to fancy herself one of the hooped and powdered and gorgeously-apparelled ladies, with their monstrous farthingales, their stiff petticoats, their fans, their patches, and their saucy, coquettish ways to the gentlemen in their train. All ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... a stone before him in a disconsolate, disgruntled way. He followed it wherever it went, ever and again kicking it back onto the sidewalk; the simple pastime seemed to afford him infinite relief. And meanwhile, glowing visions arose in his mind, such visions as no one but a poet or a lonely boy on a Saturday morning in the springtime ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... revellings; and card-playing goes on as publickly then as on any other day; nor is this only among the young lads and damsels, who might be supposed to know no better, but men advanced in years, and grave matrons, are not ashamed of being caught at the same pastime. ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... whether she would recognize his back. He hoped that it was not because of her mishap that she was not in a habit. He could hardly be expected to divine the true reason. This was, shortly, that the lady, who had expected to see him, could not enjoy a pastime from participation in which footmen are for a variety of reasons so rigorously debarred. Incidentally, she had seen Anthony before he had seen her, and the smile with which he had credited her companion's bonhomie was due to his presence alone. Had this been explained to the young sportsman, as ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... went into the theatre to see its progress, and found Lord Curryfin swinging over the stage on a seat suspended by long ropes from above the visible scene. He did not see her. He was looking upwards, not as one indulging in an idle pastime, but as one absorbed in serious meditation. All at once the seat was drawn up, and he disappeared in the blue canvas that represented the sky. She was not aware that gymnastics were to form part of the projected entertainment, and went away, associating the idea of his lordship, ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... of love. There is filial love, platonic love, the love leading to marriage, and the greatest love of all, mother love. Too many desecrate love by regarding it as a pastime, or selling all that passes for it, for favors, ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... believe that he has put runners on it, and is engaged in the pleasurable pastime of taking the ladies tobogganing down the Alps?" ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... grow in the grace of gentleness and humility. But no good can come out of this walking mania that is now sweeping over the country, simply because it is a mania and not a natural and wholesome impulse. It is a prostitution of the noble pastime. ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... of my own; I "pass away time," when it is ill and uneasy, but when 'tis good I do not pass it away: "I taste it over again and adhere to it"; one must run over the ill and settle upon the good. This ordinary phrase of pastime, and passing away the time, represents the usage of those wise sort of people who think they cannot do better with their lives than to let them run out and slide away, pass them over, and baulk ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... fountains of leaping water that fell in a cascade and formed a lake beneath the castle walls. On the surface of the lake were little boats, painted and gilt, so pretty and dainty that the princess challenged the ambassadors to a voyage. None hesitated to do so, for they thought it was all a gay pastime, and a merry prelude to the marriage festivities. But no sooner had they embarked than boats, fountains, and lake vanished, and the frogs were ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... groues, And ye, that on the sands with printlesse foote Doe chase the ebbingNeptune, and doe flie him When he comes backe: you demy-Puppets, that By Moone-shine doe the greene sowre Ringlets make, Whereof the Ewe not bites: and you, whose pastime Is to make midnight-Mushrumps, that reioyce To heare the solemne Curfewe, by whose ayde (Weake Masters though ye be) I haue bedymn'd The Noone-tide Sun, call'd forth the mutenous windes, And twixt the greene Sea, and the azur'd vault Set roaring warre: To the dread ratling Thunder Haue ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... as shall be said hereafter. Others for magnificence at the natiuities of Princes children, or by custome vsed yearely vpon the same dayes, are called songs natall or Genethliaca. Others for secret recreation and pastime in chambers with company or alone were the ordinary Musickes amorous, such as might be song with voice or to the Lute, Citheron or Harpe, or daunced by measures as the Italian Pauan and galliard are at these daies in Princes Courts and other places of honourable of ciuill assembly, and ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... for Eileen's supervision of his movements, which was usually marked by an officious severity, was sensibly relaxed on these days and Excalibur found himself at liberty to range abroad amid the heath and through the coppices, engaged in a pastime ...
— Scally - The Story of a Perfect Gentleman • Ian Hay
... pestilence, inhaled while nobly performing duties for which they were scarcely better paid than the commonest soldier—these were the men whom our city fathers were so blandly and pleasantly removing from their field of duty. Was it wonderful, then, that the whole affair seemed quite like pastime to those engaged in it; or that they made themselves jocosely eloquent upon the subject, whenever one of the grave minority ventured to lift his ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... no better pastime, were I condemned to die at sunrise. Tell me, do you wish me to ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... married to his fair lady; yet he complained of the interval being tedious, as indeed most young men are impatient, when they are waiting for the accomplishment of any event they have set their hearts upon: the prince therefore, to make the time seem short to him, proposed as a kind of merry pastime, that they should invent some artful scheme to make Benedick and Beatrice fall in love with each other. Claudio entered with great satisfaction into this whim of the prince, and Leonato promised them his assistance, and even Hero said she would ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... chastened, refined, purified: it appropriates, indeed, language due only to the divine, it almost simulates idolatry; yet it belongs to the best part of man's nature. But in the lower and average characters, it is not so respectable; it is apt to pass into mere toying pastime and frivolous love of pleasure: it astonishes us often by the readiness with which it displays an affinity for the sensual and impure, the corrupting and debasing sides of the relations between the sexes. But however it appears, it is throughout a very great affair, ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... listening outside the sick bay, but soon gave up the pastime, nothing occurring to interest us during the medical examination of the new hands, a fresh batch of whom came aft, by the way, at Four Bells; for all of them were quickly passed by the doctor and were detailed ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... grauted more the I thought I had. He. But what thing you haue ones cofessed too bee true (as Plato sayth) you should not deny it afterward. SPV. Go furth with your matter. HEDO The litle whelpe that is set store and greate price by, is fed most daintely, lieth soft, plaieth and maketh pastime continually, doo you thinke that it lyueth plesautly? SPV. It dooeth truely. HEDO. Woulde you wyshe to haue suche a lyfe? SPV. God forbyd that, excepte I woulde rather bee a dogge then a man, HEDO. Then you confesse ...
— A Very Pleasaunt & Fruitful Diologe Called the Epicure • Desiderius Erasmus
... the night side of nature, I was soon promoted to the post of night nurse, with every facility for indulging in my favorite pastime of "owling." My colleague, a black-eyed widow, relieved me at dawn, we two taking care of the ward between us, like regular nurses, turn and turn about. I usually found my boys in the jolliest state ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the ice. There is snow on the ground, but frozen so hard that I thought Lucy and I might venture to that distance, as the footpath leading there was well beaten by the repair of those who frequented it for pastime. Hazlewood instantly offered to attend us, and we stipulated that he should take his fowling-piece. He laughed a good deal at the idea of going a-shooting in the snow; but, to relieve our tremors, desired that a groom, who acts as gamekeeper ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... lochs—Highland or Lowland—and have the excitement of landing fish, coupled with our enjoyment of fresh air and grand scenery. For this reason, if for no other, cultivate as often as you can, without entrenching on the nobler pastime of fly-fishing, the art of trolling—for we must confess that there is an art in this as in everything else; and should my reader be sceptical on the point, he has only to try conclusions, when he gets the chance, with some old troller, and he will ...
— Scotch Loch-Fishing • AKA Black Palmer, William Senior
... was I, mounted by the stalest of catamites, involuntarily and almost unconsciously responding with as rapid a cadence to him as Quartilla did in her wriggling under me. While this was going on, Pannychis, unaccustomed at her tender years to the pastime of Venus, raised an outcry and attracted the attention of the soldier, by this unexpected howl of consternation, for this slip of a girl was being ravished, and Giton the victor, had won a not bloodless victory. Aroused by what he saw, the soldier rushed upon them, seizing Pannychis, ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... the knowledge that her new sweater and tam-o'shanter were quite as pretty as the prettiest there, transformed Jerry into a new Jerry. She felt, too, that out here in the open she was in her element; a familiarity with these sports that had been her winter pastime since she was a tiny youngster gave her an assurance that added to her ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... was passionately fond of the chase, and used to neglect attendance on divine worship for this amusement. While he was once engaged in this pastime, a stag appeared before him, having a crucifix bound betwixt his horns, and he heard a voice which menaced him with eternal punishment if he did not repent of his sins. He retired from the world and took ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... ideas. The exuberant spirits of boyhood are not indigenous to this country, and the dog-boy has none of them. He never does mischief for mischief's sake; he robs no bird's nest; he feels no impulse to trifle with the policeman. Marbles are his principal pastime. He puts the thumb of his left hand to the ground and discharges his taw from the point of his second finger, bending it back till it touches the back of the hand and then letting it off like a steel spring. Then he follows ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... desertion. Even Crowder, her friend, might condone a transfer of affection from Pancha Lopez to the daughter of George Alston. So the young man, hearing the story ended, saw Mayer as Pancha intended him to—a blackguard, breaking a girl's heart for pastime. ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... "craving," and this is apt in time to lead to its use in larger quantities. But even if this does not occur, the practice is objectionable for its unhygienic effects in general.(111) Tippling with such mild solutions of alcohol as light wine, beer, and hard cider is, for these reasons, a dangerous pastime. ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... 'll have him in a dark room and bound. My niece is already in the belief that he 's mad: we may carry it thus, for our pleasure and his penance, till our very pastime, tired out of breath, prompt us to have mercy on him; at which time we will bring the device to the bar, and crown thee for a finder of madmen. But see, ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... that time, I had not learned what true love was—and offered to make her my wife. I dealt candidly and openly with her. In education, I need not say that I knew she was much beneath me; but she seemed warm-hearted and docile, and I thought it would be a loving pastime for me to make her my pupil. I was not ignorant, however, that she had other lovers; and, although she certainly encouraged my addresses, I saw reason to discontinue my suit. About this time, the awful event took place, the particulars of which are already known to you; and, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... my place with the Comte de N., and has told him, I hear, the reasons for my leaving him. The Comte de G. was at London. He is one of those men who give just enough importance to making love to women like me for it to be an agreeable pastime, and who are thus able to remain friends with women, not hating them because they have never been jealous of them, and he is, too, one of those grand seigneurs who open only a part of their hearts to us, but the whole of their purses. It was of him that I immediately thought. ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... when at work on the old family farm in, let us say, Vermont, be very seriously surprised on some fine morning to see a party of red-coated Hessians come round the angle of the hill. There are those living whose chief pastime as boys was to fight imaginary battles with the loathed British in and out among the old farm-buildings—buildings which yet bear upon them, perhaps, the marks of real British bullets fired in the real war.[57:1] And those boys, moving West as they ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... the dragon, lately so formidably rampant, now relaxed the terror of his claws, uncoiled his tremendous rings, and grumbled out of his fiery throat in a repentant tone, "By the mass, I thought no harm in exercising our old pastime, but an I had thought the good Father would have taken it so to heart, I would as soon have played ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... fishing scattered about in the writings of the early fathers for the most part reflect the two ideas of the sacredness of the fish and divine authorization of the fisherman; the second idea certainly prevailed until the time of Izaak Walton, for he uses it to justify his pastime. It is also not unlikely that the practice of fasting (in many cases fish was allowed when meat was forbidden) gave the art of catching fish additional importance. It seems at any rate to have been a consideration of weight ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... Men came—he was not among them. They pampered every wish, indulged every folly, loaded me with luxuries, but my dream was dispelled. I respected few of them, and reverenced none. They were my pastime, my playthings. And they have revenged themselves by saying in secret ... what you said in public ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... by many prominent citizens. An open pocketbook will easily secure a petition for pardon, it makes but little difference as to the "gravamen" of the crime. The convict promised not to engage again in this pleasant pastime for filthy lucre. The mother of the young man came on from the East and remained until she had secured a pardon for her boy. The young man stated in our hearing that it took one thousand big dollars to secure his pardon. A great many who are acquainted with the facts in the case are not slow ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... glittering bronze. Fergus and Concobar watched him as he strode over the grass; Concobar noted his beauty and grace, but Fergus noted his great strength. Soon the boys, being divided into two equal bands, began their pastime and contended, eagerly urging the ball to and fro. The noise of the stricken ball and the clash of the hurles shod with bronze, the cries of the captains, and the shouting of the boys, filled ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... enormously; and, when she gets tired, she goes to bed. That's all there is about it. Lord! I wish I could. But, when I get tired, I have to go and make another speech. They think the American Ambassador has omniscience for a foible and oratory as a pastime. ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... we found all the inhabitants and guests assembled in the yard witnessing a cock-fight, their eager countenances and excited exclamations showing the interest they took in the brutal pastime. The birds, armed with steel spurs, flew at each other and fought desperately. When one was killed or hopelessly wounded, the owner tore his hair and swore fearfully at his misfortune—by which, probably, he had lost ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... a pause in which they drink with each other and converse quietly across the tables). It seldom chances that so many brave men are seated together, as I see to-night in our hall. It were fitting, then, that we should essay the old pastime: Let each man name his chief exploit, that all may judge which ...
— The Vikings of Helgeland - The Prose Dramas Of Henrik Ibsen, Vol. III. • Henrik Ibsen
... were strongly attached to field sports, and as the "brawn of the tusked swine" was the first Christmas dish, it was provided by the pleasant preliminary pastime of hunting the wild boar; and the incidents of the chase afforded interesting table talk when the boar's head was brought in ceremoniously to the ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... wondering what he could do to occupy his spare moments; for the drifts were too deep for him to continue his beloved pastime of bicycling, and he had to put his wheel out of commission. So he went nosing about, trying a little of everything, and being ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... thee, that all here may view the strife— But how wilt thou oppose one young as I? Thus on the threshold of the lofty gate 40 They, wrangling, chafed each other, whose dispute The high-born youth Antinoues mark'd; he laugh'd Delighted, and the suitors thus address'd. Oh friends! no pastime ever yet occurr'd Pleasant as this which, now, the Gods themselves Afford us. Irus and the stranger brawl As they would box. Haste—let us urge them on. He said; at once loud-laughing all arose; The ill-clad disputants they round about Encompass'd, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... resorted to an occasional pastime, harmless and playful enough in itself, yet intended as a special means of discipline for Grandpa, and certainly, a source of great torment and anxiety to that poor ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... of the Convent, when granted permission to go out into the city, was a favorite pastime, truly a labor of love, of the young gallants of that day,—an occupation, if very idle, at least very agreeable to those participating in these stolen promenades, and which have not, perhaps, been altogether discontinued in Quebec even ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... source of information, turned to join her traveling companions, Gladys and Hinpoha and Migwan, up in the other end of the car. She stood for a moment at the water cooler, looking down the car at the people facing her and indulging in her favorite pastime of trying to read their faces. The car was crowded with all kinds of people, from the stately, judicial-looking man who sat in front of the Winnebagos to a negro couple on their honeymoon. There was a plentiful sprinkling ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... more believe all other rational Knowledge to be so; let us see how reasonably these same Men who willingly allow not to Ladies any employment of their Thoughts worthy of them as rational Creatures, do yet complain, that either Play is their daily and expensive pastime; or that they love not to be at home taking care of their Children, as did heretofore Ladies who were honour'd for their Vertue; but that an eternal round of idle Visits, the Park, Court, Play-houses and Musick Meetings, with ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... of all, came the absorption of revolver-lore under the instruction of experts who made but pastime of picking a jack-rabbit in its flight, or bringing a kite, soaring high in air, tumbling precipitate to earth. A wild life it was and a rough, but fascinating nevertheless in its demonstration of the overwhelming superiority ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... gnoo) is a favourite pastime of the young boers. Large herds of these animals are sometimes driven into valleys, where they are hemmed in, and shot down at will. They can also be lured within range, by exhibiting a red handkerchief or any piece of red cloth—to which colour they ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... become more timid, less inclined to attack man, and also less inclined to attack one another. The higher creatures are the most affected by man's destructiveness of animal life, and the struggle for existence has become so keen that fighting for the glory of supremacy, or as a pastime, will soon have no important place in the lives of ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... few playthings in the simple home, but her chief pastime was in holding meetings in her father's woodshed, with the other children. Great logs were laid out for benches, and split sticks were set upon them for people. Mary was always the leader, both in praying and preaching, and the others were good listeners. Mrs. Rice would be so much ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... would leave of theyr labour and fall to lording outright and let the plough stand. For ever since the Prelates were made lords and nobles, the plough standeth, there is no work done, the people starve. They hawke, they hunte, they carde, they dyce, they pastime in their prelacies with galaunt gentlemen, with their dauncing minions, and with their freshe companions, so ...
— English Satires • Various
... me. I cannot offhand state the cost; but when the sketch and estimate are made, you shall see them; and if the cost exceeds your views, there will be no harm done; on the contrary, I shall have had the pleasure of scheming a little for you by way of pastime. ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... is but one amongst hundreds, and it is little wonder that, surrounded as he was with men who indulged in this charming pastime of always trying to dupe their fellow creatures, Rhodes' moral sense relaxed. It is only surprising that he kept about him so much that was good and great, and that he did not succumb altogether ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... made the most like Florimel that ever was seen. On Thursday morning the puppet-drummer, Adam and Eve, and several others who lived before the Flood, passed through the streets on horseback, to invite us all to the pastime, and the representation of such things as we all knew to be true; and Mr. Mayor was so wise as to prefer these innocent people the puppets, who, he said, were to represent Christians, before the wicked players, who were to show Alexander, a heathen philosopher. To be short, this ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... ceremony known as afternoon tea. There are circumstances in which, whether you partake of the tea or not—some people of course never do,—the situation is in itself delightful. Those that I have in mind in beginning to unfold this simple history offered an admirable setting to an innocent pastime. The implements of the little feast had been disposed upon the lawn of an old English country-house, in what I should call the perfect middle of a splendid summer afternoon. Part of the afternoon had waned, but much of it was left, and what was left was of the finest and rarest quality. ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... airships is not a pastime within the reach of a private purse. The British Government had taken advantage of the enterprise and rivalry of private makers of aeroplanes, whom it wisely permitted to run the risks and show the way. No such policy was possible in the manufacture of airships, which is essentially ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... Softened our early sorrows. But my sun Has set for ever! Once we talked of cares And deemed that we were sad. Men fancy sorrows Until time brings the substance of despair, And then their griefs are shadows. Give me exile! It brought me love. Ah! days of gentle joy, When pastime only parted us, and he Returned with tales to make our children stare; Or called my lute, while, round my waist entwined, His hand kept chorus to my lay. No more! O, we were happier than the happy birds; And sweeter were our ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... most mighty, universal, and immediate effect. ["Hear! hear!"] I know there are many educated and intelligent people who, absorbed in commerce, politics, and other pursuits, think that music is a mere family pastime—an ear-gratifying enjoyment. Great popularity has its drawbacks as well as its advantages, and there is no doubt that the widespread, instantaneous appreciation and popularity of melody has detracted somewhat from the proper recognition of the higher and graver attributes ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... true! I dread no toil; toil is the true knight's pastime— Faith fails, the will intense and fixed, so easy To thee, cut off from life and love, whose powers In one close channel must condense their stream: But I, to whom this life blooms rich and busy, Whose ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... the future rather than the present. Art failed because it did not propound grand ideas which pertain to spiritual and future interests. It especially failed when it pandered to perverted tastes, when it was the mere pastime of the rich, and diverted the mind from what is greatest and holiest. St. Paul, when he wandered through the Grecian cities, said very little of the sculptures and the temples which met his eye at every turn. He was not insensible to beauty and grandeur. But he felt that all renovating ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... to remember is that art is not a mere pastime, but a great world force operating to lift mortals out of mortality. It is the striving of the ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... absurd than to make business of play, to be studious and laborious in toys, to make a profession or drive a trade of impertinency? What more plain nonsense can there be, than to be earnest in jest, to be continual in divertisement, or constant in pastime; to make extravagance all our way, and sauce all our diet? Is not this plainly the life of a child that is ever busy, yet never hath anything to do? Or the life of that mimical brute which is always active in playing ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... eighteen years since the first of the south Jersey colonies was started.[4] There had been a sudden, unprecedented immigration of refugees from Russia, where Jew-baiting was then the orthodox pastime. They lay in heaps in Castle Garden, helpless and penniless, and their people in New York feared prescriptive measures. What to do with them became a burning question. To turn those starving multitudes loose ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... teachers, housekeepers—busy people that you are—have you ever felt the twinge of unrest, almost discouragement, because some friendly letter, which you enjoyed receiving, lay unanswered waiting a spare hour? And have you ever had to "brace up" to what, in a life of leisure might be a pastime, but in a life so full of care and responsibility becomes a task? Then you will surely ...
— American Missionary, Vol. XLII., May, 1888., No. 5 • Various
... ingenuity, a feature which the authors of the romances themselves either did not always understand, or were at pains to obscure by the introduction of the obviously post hoc "motif" above referred to, i.e., that he was called the Fisher King because of his devotion to the pastime of fishing: a-propos of which Heinzel sensibly remarks, that the story of the Fisher King "presupposes a legend of this personage only vaguely ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... Gargantua consulted with the prime of his retinue what should be done. There Ponocrates was of opinion that they should make this fair orator drink again; and seeing he had showed them more pastime, and made them laugh more than a natural soul could have done, that they should give him ten baskets full of sausages, mentioned in his pleasant speech, with a pair of hose, three hundred great billets of logwood, five-and-twenty hogsheads of wine, a good large down-bed, and a deep capacious ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... creditably on lyre or harp. Unlike the young Greek, he will not necessarily have been made to recognise that gymnastic training is an essential part of education. He may indulge in such exercises by way of pastime or for health; he may, and generally will, have been taught athletics; but he does not acknowledge that they have any practical bearing upon his aptitude for ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... by their love for the kindred art of music. Giorgione himself was an admirable musician, and linked with all that is akin to music in his work, is his love for painting groups of people knit together by this bond. He uses it as a pastime to bring them into company, and the rich chords of colour seem permeated with the chords of sound. Not always, however, does he need even this excuse; his "conversation-pieces" are often merely composed of persons placed with indescribable grace in exquisite surroundings, governed ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... the artful bowler "bowl with his head?" Football demands an extraordinary personal courage, and implies the existence of a fierce delight in battle with one's peers. Tennis, with all its merits, is a game for the few, so rare are tennis-courts and so expensive the pastime. But cricketers, football-players, tennis-players, would all give golf the second place after their favourite exercise; and just as Themistocles was held to be the best Greek general, because each of his fellows placed him second, so golf may assert a right to be thought ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... from a hunting and exploring excursion Saturday night, August 31, and had come to the conclusion by that time, after satisfactory experience, that tuk-too hunting is not a pastime. It is good, solid work from beginning to end, with no rest for the weary. If any readers have meditated such a task as a divertisement, I would beg to dissuade them from the undertaking, for they know not what they do. Before attempting to follow ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... horse-racing, which for more than two centuries has made the sport a national one in England, cannot be said to exist in France, and the introduction of this "pastime of princes" into the latter country has been of comparatively recent date. Mention, it is true, has been found of races on the plain of Les Sablons as early as 1776, and in the next year a sweepstakes of forty horses, followed by one of as many ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... frightened by war, some embers of your old spirit ready to flame again. Is it not so? Love hath sharp eyes. It is not for stag hunting that your followers are stringing their bows. The love of your old pastime, like that of an old concealed passion, will act in such a manner as defieth all the art of concealment. I noticed, last night, as you spoke to Scott's John, who was booming his bow to show the power of the cord, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... it well," answered the stranger, calmly. "But, from my cradle upward, it has been my business, and almost my pastime, to ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... innocent maiden is of course a myth, but it is a myth which doubtless had many counterparts in Greek life. Aeschylus did not live so very long after Homer, and in his age it was still a favorite pastime of the Greeks to ravage cities, a process of which Aeschylus gives us a vivid picture in a few lines, in his ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... gesture of impatience, for he felt that his appeal had availed nothing, and he had no heart for a battle of words. His wit had been tempered in many fires, his nature was non-incandescent to praise or gibe. He had had his share of pastime; now had come his share of toil, and the mood for give and take of words ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... very hopeful frame of mind. Though he was not very tired or very sleepy, yet for the want of something better to do, he felt compelled to go to sleep, hoping, as on the previous day, to dispose of the weary hours in this agreeable manner. His pastime, however, was soon interrupted by loud shouts and the tramp of men, not far from the spot where he lay. A hurried examination of the surroundings assured him that he had chosen a resting place near one of the fords of the river, over which a ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... comprehend the intense passion which now filled his whole life. Moreover, he felt certain that Yashvin, as it was, took no delight in gossip and scandal, and interpreted his feeling rightly, that is to say, knew and believed that this passion was not a jest, not a pastime, but ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... highly incensed. But it really was so all the same; and during the space of one minute this man who was so occupied by business matters, this leading light in the financial and political worlds, indulged in the childish pastime of watching the passers-by, and following with his eyes the files of conveyances as they ...
— The Lost Child - 1894 • Francois Edouard Joachim Coppee
... had taken care of my mother in her infancy and had never left her, now took charge of me. She watched over me faithfully and filled up my childhood with affectionate attention and innocent pastime. My uncle, the Count, who had never been married, loved, petted, and indulged me in every wish. When I grew old enough, he secured a governess well qualified to teach and discipline me. Under her care, with the aid of ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... next apartment was stationed the Court of Guard, where were certain soldiers of the same corps amusing themselves at games somewhat resembling the modern draughts and dice, while they seasoned their pastime with frequent applications to deep flagons of ale, which were furnished to them while passing away their hours of duty. Some glances passed between Hereward and his comrades, and he would have joined them, or at least spoke to them; for, since the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... nor to write anything for publication. At the age of nearly sixty-two I received an injury from a fall, which confined me closely to the house while it did not apparently affect my general health. This made study a pleasant pastime. Shortly after, the rascality of a business partner developed itself by the announcement of a failure. This was followed soon after by universal depression of all securities, which seemed to threaten the extinction of a good part of the income still retained, and ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... It is brutal; it is monotonous; it is not at all exquisite. The Arenes at Nimes were arranged for a bull-fight—a form of recreation that, as I was informed, is much dans les habitudes Nimoises, and very common throughout Provence, where (still according to my information) it is the usual pastime of a Sunday afternoon. At Arles and Nimes it has a characteristic setting, but in the villages the patrons of the game make a circle of carts and barrels, on which the spectators perch themselves. I was surprised ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... aristocracy of the Campagna. And it is likely that dancers on the Piazza Navona on a Befana night should belong to this class, for the Campagna shepherd is probably too poor, too abject and too little civilized to indulge in any such pastime. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... his boyhood for years, but he never ceased to think of those happy days. And although he tried hard, he could not believe that it was all a dream. Whenever he played a game of chess, which was his one pastime, he seemed to see himself in his old room at Mayence, and he sighed. His fellow priests wondered why he did this, and he laughingly told them it was because he had no idea how to ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... healthy exercise and enjoyment, and provided that one is keen and wishes to improve, and possesses what is known as a good games' eye, there is no reason why advance should not be rapid. It is also a pastime in which women can combine with and compete against men without in any way spoiling the game; and mixed doubles, to which I refer, are perhaps the most popular department with the average spectator. I think I am not wrong in saying that there is no other game at the present time in which ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers
... declared that if that was her excuse, it applied much more obviously to himself. Accordingly, the remaining members of the house-party had to form the entertainers; and never had Lionel entered into any pastime with so little zest. These people could not act a bit, and yet he had to coach them; and then he and they had to go into the drawing-room and perform their antics before that calm-browed young lady (who nevertheless regarded the proceedings ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... anxiously to Josiah to keep clost watch of his own head, for though they promised to not pursue their favorite pastime till they got back home agin, yet I didn't know what might happen, though I felt he wuzn't in so much danger, his bald head bein' so slippery and nothin' to lay holt on, still I kep' a clost watch on that dear head all ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... daily routine during the first hour or two of their watch below in the daytime, of making, mending and washing their clothes. Some never got beyond this, or making mats, but there were men who varied their pastime by carving models of vessels, making wood sails or rigging, and fitting them out in every detail. This work was done with great skill and neatness. Those that could read and were fond of it gave a share of their time to that. ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... we had a similar one to protect ours. The main lines were, generally, in easy cannon range, in most places within musket range, and the pickets of the two armies were, for the most part, in speaking distance, and the men often indulged in talking, for pastime. Except in rare instances the sentinels did not fire on each other by day, but sometimes at night firing was kept up by the Confederates at intervals to prevent desertion. During the last months of the siege, circulars were ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... tea alone in her boudoir when Beatrice arrived. Her pretty little ladyship was not looking quite so amiable as usual and there was the suggestion of a frown on her face. She had been losing a great deal at bridge lately, and that was not the kind of pastime that Rashborough approved. He was very fond of his empty, hard, selfish, little wife, but he had put his foot down on gambling, and Lady Rashborough had been forced to give her promise to discontinue it. The little woman cared ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... war-dogs closed for action. The crew of the Kent were poorly armed and undisciplined: they had never fought together. With Surcouf it was far different. His sailors were veterans—they had boarded many a merchantman and privateer before—and, they were well used to this gallant pastime. Besides, each had a boarding-axe, a cutlass,—pistol and a dagger—to say nothing of a blunderbuss loaded with six bullets, pikes fifteen feet long, and enormous clubs—all of this with "drinks all round" and the promise of pillage. No wonder ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... work, feel the high import of life. For the ordinary type of man, primarily, has no thought for anything else but what satisfies his physical needs and longings, and accordingly affords him a little amusement and pastime. Founders of religion and philosophers come into the world to shake him out of his torpidity and show him the high significance of existence: philosophers for the few, the emancipated; founders of religion for the many, humanity at large. For [Greek: philosophon plaethos adynaton ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... son pricked up their ears at this, photography being with them only a degree less absorbing a pastime than that of walking; Ron awoke suddenly to the remembrance that his half-plate camera had never been unpacked since his arrival; and the three vied with each other in asking questions about the ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... shapeless, bright, and silvery-gray lump which very much resembled silver-ore. I looked at the mass thoughtfully for some time: an idea germinated, and there and then I planned a new amusement which became our most delightful pastime during those last ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... against the dangerous propensity. Then Mena courted you. You love him truly, and in four long years he has been with you but a month or two; your mother remained with you, and you hardly observed that she was managing your own house for you, and took all the trouble of the household. You had a great pastime of your own—your thoughts of Mena, and scope for a thousand dreams in your distant love. I know it, Nefert; all that you have seen and heard and felt in these twenty months has centred in him and him alone. Nor is it wrong in itself. The rose tree here, which ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... emotional effects. Recognizing these limitations upon his work, he often finds it difficult to avoid one or the other of two dangers that beset all efforts to teach a vernacular literature; the student must not think his reading an idle pastime, nor, on the other hand, must he think it a repellent task. In the first case, he is likely never to read anything well; in the second case, the things best worth reading he will probably never read at all. Of the two dangers, the first is the more serious. The student ought early to learn ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... said that such words as 'pastime' and 'diversion' applied to our pleasures are among the most melancholy in the language, for they are the confession of human nature that it cannot find happiness in itself, but must seek for something that will fill up time, will cover the void which it feels, and divert men's ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... time in indolence; except at sunset, when they feed their horses and camels, they lounge about the whole day, without any useful employment, and without even refreshing their leisure by some trifling occupation. To smoke their pipes and drink coffee is to them the most agreeable pastime; they frequently visit each other, and collecting round the fire-place, they keep very late hours. I was told that there are some men amongst them, who play the tamboura, a sort of guitar, but I ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... repeatedly referred to in the Annals. The legendary origin of some of these dances, indeed, constitute a marked feature in its narratives. They are mentioned by the missionaries as the favorite pastime of the Indians; and as it was impossible to do away with them altogether, they contented themselves with suppressing their most objectionable features, drunkenness and debauchery, and changed them, at least in name, from ceremonies ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... delighted in drawing her out—it was a pastime that took the lead at dinner-parties, to an extent which her hostess often thought preposterous—and she responded with naivete and vigour, perfectly aware that she was scoring all along the line. Upon many charming people she made the impression that she ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... padlocked in Davy Jones' locker, his men would have been compelled to accept a victory over Detroit instead of handing themselves a sixth straight defeat after one of the cheesiest exhibitions of the national pastime ever seen outside the walls of a state institute for the ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... principles, such as Pandolfo Petrucci exercised from after 1490 in Siena, then torn by faction, is hardly worth a closer consideration. Insignificant and malicious, he governed with the help of a professor of juris prudence and of an astrologer, and frightened his people by an occasional murder. His pastime in the summer months was to roll blocks of stone from the top of Monte Amiata, without caring what or whom they hit. After succeeding, where the most prudent failed, in escaping from the devices of Cesare Borgia, he died at last forsaken ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... Peacock traces the poet's taste for boating, which afterwards became a passion with him, to this excursion. About this there is, however, some doubt. Medwin tells us that Shelley while a boy delighted in being on the water, and that he enjoyed the pastime at Eton. On the other hand, Mr. W.S. Halliday, a far better authority than Medwin, asserts positively that he never saw Shelley on the river at Eton, and Hogg relates nothing to prove that he practised rowing at Oxford. It is certain that, though inordinately fond of boats and every ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... You shall build sand castles, while I lie on the beach and read the paper. In the evening we will listen to the band, or stroll on the esplanade, not so much because we want to, as to give the natives a treat. Possibly, if the weather continues warm, we may even paddle. A vastly exhilarating pastime, I am led to believe, and so strengthening for the ankles. And on Monday morning we will return, bronzed and bursting with health, to our ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... in to where me an' Locals was playin' guess. Guess ain't never apt to be a popular pastime 'cause it has to be played without any kind o' cheatin' whatever. The one who is it, guesses what the other one is thinkin' of, an' if he guesses before he falls asleep, he wins. Well, Hammy, he breaks in on our game just the same as if we ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... sack, of coarse and vile-smelling tobacco, puffs forth volumes of smoke, expectorating ad nauseam at intervals of a minute or less. No considerations of place or person hinder him from indulging in his favourite pastime. In steam-boats, in diligences, in the public walks and promenades, into the dining-rooms of hotels, every where does the pipe intrude itself; carried as habitually as a walking-cane; and even when not in actual use, emitting ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... afternoon, delivering a pack of visiting-cards, varied by a perfunctory conversation, seated at the edge of an easy-chair, on subjects of inconceivable triviality. Of course there are men so constituted that they find this pastime a relief and a pleasure; but their felicity of temperament ought not to be made into a rule for serious-minded men. The only social institution which might really prove beneficial in a University is an informal evening ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of love that is pastime And gifts that it brings; I entreat of thee, lord, at this ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... on the coast, or from San Pedro, one may visit the island of Santa Catalina. Want of time prevented our going there. Sportsmen enjoy there the exciting pastime of hunting the wild goat. From the photographs I saw, and from all I heard of it, it must be as picturesque a resort in natural beauty as ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... think Music has the most mighty, universal, and immediate effect. ["Hear! hear!"] I know there are many educated and intelligent people who, absorbed in commerce, politics, and other pursuits, think that music is a mere family pastime—an ear-gratifying enjoyment. Great popularity has its drawbacks as well as its advantages, and there is no doubt that the widespread, instantaneous appreciation and popularity of melody has detracted somewhat from the proper recognition ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... weeping, Frank, from older eyes, Or e'er again that blessed time shall come. Hearts strong and glad now, must be broke ere then: Wild tragedies, that for the days to come Shall faery pastime make, must yet ere then Be acted here; ay, with the genuine clasp Of anguish, and fierce stabs, not buried in silk robes, But in hot hearts, and sighs from wrung souls' depths. And they shall walk in light that ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... could be a pleasant pastime—so long as it was another who was doing the hard work of beating. And his own experience as a beater proved valuable. He was familiar with the ways and the haunts of animals. What had once been a matter of survival became a road ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... remember how many times I fell, but it was pretty nearly as often as the "Professor" of the wily art took hold of me. Before the first lesson was over, falling became more than a mere pastime with me, it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various
... Fox-hunting is a first-class sport; but one of the most absurd things in real life is to note the bated breath which certain excellent fox-hunters, otherwise quite healthy minds, speak of this admirable, but not over-important pastime. They tend to make it almost as much of a fetich as, in the last century, the French and German nobles made the chase of the stag, when they carried hunting and game- preserving to a point which was ruinous ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... two chapters we have seen the contemporary master of various arts, and the reader of poetry, engaged in cultivating the joyful heart. But there is one artist who has not yet been permitted to join in this agreeable pastime. He is the American poet. And as his inclusion would be an even more joyful thing for his land than for himself, this book ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... to sea at fourteen; married about four years ago a French lady at Bordeaux, the father American, with the mother French; two children. A very wet disagreeable day, so that we could not take the usual exercise on deck, and yet tempted to eat more by way of pastime. At dinner one or two Yankees found great fault with my saying "A good deal of factories," declaring it to be bad English, in which Mr. Frankland also acquiesced, thinking it improper to apply the word "deal" to numbers; a deal of money, but not a deal of ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... Tsin, he drops down there one day and looks around. His fishy feelin's got interested, and he says to himself, 'Guess I'll come into this.' He went sailin' up the river till he found a king somewhere, who appeared to own the whole country. This one's pastime was miscellaneous murder, but his taste for tea was cultured and accurate. Then Lo Tsin got down on the floor and kowtowed to this king for an hour and a half, the way it comes natural if you have the right kind of clothes. Then he bought a temple of him. It stands at the foot of the south ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... was literally filled with game, and the region in the immediate vicinity of La Pena contained its full proportion of deer, antelope, and wild turkeys. The temptation to hunt was therefore constantly before me, and a desire to indulge in this pastime, whenever free from the legitimate duty of the camp, soon took complete possession of me, so expeditions in pursuit of game were of frequent occurrence. In these expeditions I was always accompanied by a soldier named Frankman, belonging to ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... offences, such as laziness, neglecting to keep the rifle clean and in good shooting order, attempting to strike up a flirtation with a married woman, to the annoyance of the lady, or any other little matter of the kind, the wayward one is "tossed." Tossing is not the sort of pastime any fellow would choose for fun, not if he were the party to be tossed, though it is a beanfeast for the onlookers. They manage it this way. A hide, freshly stripped from a bullock, smoking, bloody, and ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... dissolution of a name truly written into his letters, as his elements, and a new connection of it by artificial transposition, without addition, subtraction or change of any letter, into different words, making some perfect sence applyable to the person named.'' Dryden disdainfully called the pastime the "torturing of one poor word ten thousand ways,'' but many men and women of note have found amusement in it. A well-known anagram is the change of Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum into ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... The blinds were down and all the shutters closed, Julia was sent to bolt the garden door, And all did whatsoe'er they felt disposed; Mamma, with covered face, lay down and dozed, Papa and his three daughters played at loo, It was a pleasant pastime they supposed, I almost think it must have been, don't you? But everybody wished ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... interested in dog fighting, which latter pleasing pastime is enjoyed quite freely in London to an extent that would amaze the gentlemen who rejoice over the ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... perceptible than ever with the next whiff from the pipe. The whole figure, in like manner, assumed a show of life, such as we impart to ill-defined shapes among the clouds, and half deceive ourselves with the pastime of our ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and other substantial articles of food, sufficient to astonish a southern stomach. The captain then lighted his pipe, inviting Rolf to join him, and they smoked away in that deliberate manner which showed that they considered it a far pleasanter pastime than battling with the fierce gale outside. Captain Maitland at length shook the ashes out of his pipe, and was considering whether he should light another, when Lawrence Brindister's voice was heard from ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... bright'nd, thus repli'd. What call'st thou solitude, is not the Earth With various living creatures, and the Aire 370 Replenisht, and all these at thy command To come and play before thee, know'st thou not Thir language and thir wayes, they also know, And reason not contemptibly; with these Find pastime, and beare rule; thy Realm is large. So spake the Universal Lord, and seem'd So ordering. I with leave of speech implor'd, And humble deprecation thus repli'd. Let not my words offend thee, Heav'nly Power, My Maker, be propitious while I speak. 380 Hast thou not made ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... say that a supper-party is actually given in any one place. Supping in New York has become a peripatetic pastime. The supper-party arranged by Nutty Boyd was scheduled to start at Reigelheimer's on Forty-second Street, and it was ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... porcupines' quills in abundance [36], and shot a rock pigeon called Elal- jog—the "Dweller at wells." At the foot a "Baune" or Hyrax Abyssinicus, resembling the Coney of Palestine [37], was observed at its favourite pastime of sunning itself upon ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... teach that the highest Brahman is essentially free from all imperfection whatsoever, comprises within itself all auspicious qualities, and finds its pastime in originating, preserving, reabsorbing, pervading, and ruling the universe; that the entire complex of intelligent and non-intelligent beings (souls and matter) in all their different estates is real, ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... of a quinquennium. I could scarce await the "Autocrat" himself so long. The heroic age of literature is past, and even a duodecimo may often prove too heavy [Greek: oion nun brotoi] for the descendants of men to whom the folio was a pastime. But what does Mr. Masson mean by "continuous"? To me it seems rather as if his somewhat rambling history of the seventeenth century were interrupted now and then by an unexpected apparition of Milton, who, like Paul Pry, just pops in and hopes ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... the possession of a wealthy manufacturer at Lille, who fled from that city on the approach of the Germans, is now in the National Gallery at Stockholm. The Swede is adept at the gentle pastime of ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... near by related the story as told by a cavalry lieutenant, who with a party reconnoitered a distance from camp. The thick growth of grass and vines made ambuscading a favorite pastime with the Spaniards. With smokeless powder they lay concealed in the grass. As the party rode along the sharp eye of a colored cavalryman noticed the movement of grass ahead. Leaning over his horse ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... anything but act. The ladies seem to take great delight in the sea-bath, and that they may enjoy the luxury in the most secluded privacy, the machines are placed as near to the pier as possible. This is always crowded with men, who, by the aid of opera glasses, find it a pleasing pastime to watch the movements of the delicate Naiads who crowd ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... so largely prevailed, of young men, absolutely unknown to the parents, establishing correspondence or meetings with the objects of their adoration by means of a complacent doncella with an open palm, or the pastime known as pelando el pavo (literally, "plucking the turkey"), which consisted of serenades of love songs, amorous dialogues, or the passage of notes through the reja—the iron gratings which protect the lower windows of Spanish ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... most intently; it was his sweetheart, Kawelu. A mutual recognition took place, and with the permission of Milu she darted up to him and swung with him on the kowali. But even she had to avert her face on account of his corpse-like odor. As they were enjoying together this favorite Hawaiian pastime of lele kowali, by a preconcerted signal the friends above were informed of the success of his ruse and were now rapidly drawing them up. At first she was too much absorbed in the sport to notice this. When at length her attention was ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... princess, they fell to playing at ball, casting away their tires, and among them Nausicaa of the white arms began the song. And even as Artemis, the archer, moveth down the mountain, either along the ridges of lofty Taygetus or Erymanthus, taking her pastime in the chase of boars and swift deer, and with her the wild wood-nymphs disport them, the daughters of Zeus, lord of the aegis, and Leto is glad at heart, while high over all she rears her head and brows, and easily may she be known,—but all are fair; even so the girl ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... born at Berlin; discovered an important papyrus; was professor successively at Jena and Leipzig; laid aside by ill-health, betook himself to novel-writing as a pastime; was the author of "Aarda, a Romance of Ancient Egypt," translated by Clara ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Mate, living up to being a mother is no idle pastime, particularly if it means reviving the lost art of managing love-smitten youths and elderly male coquettes. There is a specimen of each opposite Sada and me at table who are so generous with their company on deck, before and after meals, I have almost run out of excuses and am short on plans to ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... Davy, though a most accomplished sleeper, found no difficulty in wakening himself with the dawn next morning. He was cutting turf in the dubs of the Curragh just then, and he had four hours of this pastime, with spells of sober meditation between, before he came up to the house for breakfast. Then as he rolled in at the porch, and stamped the water out of his long-legged boots, he saw at a glance that a thunder-cloud was brewing there. Nelly was busy at the long table before ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... the Jann." Quoth he, "Thou sayst sooth; I am Abu al-Tawaif[FN164] Iblis, and I come to thee every night, and with me thy sister Kamariyah, for that she loveth thee and sweareth not but by thy life; and her pastime is not pleasant to her, except she come to thee and see thee whilst thou seest her not. As for me, I approach thee upon an affair, whereby thou shalt gain and rise to high rank with the kings of the Jann and rule them, even as thou rulest mankind; and to that end I would ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... which required all the aplomb of a leader of Fashion to carry out successfully; and, though few of the "smart" Ladies of my set habitually indulge in the habit. I am happy to think I am encouraging them in a healthy and amusing pastime, which, in the Summer, may in time even rival Lawn Tennis! However—not to beat about the bush any longer—an utterly absurd expression this is!—as if it could hurt the bush to beat it!—to say nothing of the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892 • Various
... the Spermaceti whale; for like you mortals, the whale is at times a sort of hypochondriac and dyspeptic. You must know, subjects, that in antediluvian times, the Spermaceti whale was much hunted by sportsmen, that being accounted better pastime, than pursuing the Behemoths on shore. Besides, it was a lucrative diversion. Now, sometimes upon striking the monster, it would start off in a dastardly fright, leaving certain fragments in its wake. These fragments the hunters picked up, giving over ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... characteristic scout life. Nevertheless, it may not be amiss to call attention here to the value of such training given almost in play, and without question in such attractive forms as to make character building through its influence an ideal pastime, a valuable investment, and a complete program, for growing girls, who may emerge from the "bundle of habits" as strong members of society, progressive business women, or nicely trained little helpers for the home, or for the more sheltering conditions ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... Stockie produced liberal supplies of the desired article. No doubt most of it belonged to the boy whose innocent pastime was that of flying kites during recess. Paul wound this string firmly and tightly around the Chinese cracker until it had assumed considerable proportions. He argued on the principle that, if paper resisted the force of ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... common forms apart, In every scene had kept his heart; Had sighed and languished, vowed and writ For pastime, or to show his wit, But books and time and state affairs Had spoiled his fashionable airs; He now could praise, esteem, approve, But understood not what was love: His conduct might have made him styled A father and the nymph his ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... protection of the King for his princely delight and pleasure." It was subject to special jurisdiction, and special officers were appointed over it "to the end that it may the better be preserved and kept for a place of recreation and pastime meet for the royal dignity of a prince." The Forest Laws were oppressive, and for the purpose of afforestation many wrongs were committed. In the Crown forests, like Epping Forest and the New Forest, there were a number of commoners who had special rights of pasture and of taking certain ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... beautiful: but they are almost all unfinished. While he and his patrons confine themselves to tasting medals, appreciating cameos, sketching columns, and cheapening gems, their little absurdities are as harmless as insect or fox-hunting, maiden-speechifying, barouche-driving, or any such pastime; but when they carry away three or four shiploads of the most valuable and massy relics that time and barbarism have left to the most injured and most celebrated of cities: when they destroy, in a vain attempt to tear down, those works which have been the admiration ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... be seen washing clothes in the waters, exhibiting tableaux vivans of Nausicaa and her maidens. No vulgar washerwomen are these with corrugated hands at reeking tubs, but such as painters and poets might celebrate. Washing is with them a pastime, and an elegance: their laundry a studio of art. They go right into the water, and splash about their things like naiads sporting; and anon returning to the bank, put forth their little strength in beating out the clothes. It would be rash to say that the process is so effectual ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... of boyhood, fresh from the classroom and tender home circle. Yet, they plunged into the awful fire of that needless sacrifice, like veterans, to whom the smoke and crash of charging squadrons is a pastime. ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea
... delight. His principal amusement was to stand on his hind legs, his fore paws resting on the sill of one of the windows, his chin between them, and there contemplate all that was going on in the town below. But this was also a favourite pastime with my uncle's children; and there was not always room for all, so they often pulled him down by the tail, and took his place, without exciting his anger. His attachment to my uncle was very great, and he chiefly lived in his room. He missed him one day when he was holding a great palaver ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... Prof. Bridger has been infringing my copyright by proclaiming, as an original discovery, that kissing is an excellent tonic and will cure dyspepsia. When the o'erbusy bacteriologists first announced that osculation was a dangerous pastime, that divers and sundry varieties of bacteria hopped blithely back and forth engendering disease and death, I undertook a series of experiments solely in the interest of science. Being a Baptist Preacher and making camp-meetings my specialty, I had unusual ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... thing is not commonly done in business," he said quietly, after a short pause. "As a rule, men who busy themselves with affairs do so in the hope of growing rich, but I can quite understand that where business is a mere pastime, as it is to be in your case, a man of generous instincts may ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... alive, and boiling women, dashing out the brains of many a cherub boy and prattling girl, was the pleasing and satisfactory pastime with which Pope Gregory, Catherine de Medicis, and her congenial son gladdened their Christian hearts. The blood of their victims still cries to us from the ground of their Golgotha; for on the south side of ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... nobleman and gentleman of distinction; and, among the rest, the lord mayor of London and the sheriffs had their lords of misrule, ever contending, without quarrel or offence, who should make the rarest pastime to delight the beholders." Alas! where are all these, or any similar, "merry disports" in our degenerate days? We have no "lords of misrule" now; or, if we have, they are of a much less innocent and pacific character. Mr. Cambridge, also, (No 104, of the ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction - Vol. X, No. 289., Saturday, December 22, 1827 • Various
... citizen of which was not merely permitted to carry arms, but compelled by law to practice from childhood the use of the bow, and accustomed to consider sword-play and quarter-staff as a necessary part and parcel of education, and the pastime of every leisure hour. The "fiercest nation upon earth," as they were then called, and the freest also, each man of them fought for himself with the self-help and self-respect of a Yankee ranger, and once bidden to do his work, was trusted to carry it out by his own wit as best he ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... she said, 'you have loved me as a pastime. I have been the amusement of your youth, the poetry of twenty years, that love-romance which every man wants to have. But you are becoming serious; you want sober affections, and you leave me. Well, be it so. But what is to become of me when ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... happened that many of the best books, extant have been written by men of business, with whom literature was a pastime rather than a profession. Gifford, the editor of the 'Quarterly,' who knew the drudgery of writing for a living, once observed that "a single hour of composition, won from the business of the day, is worth more than the ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... the setting. Tree-cutting, which was with him a frequent recreation until he became a very old man, was chosen "as giving him the maximum of healthy exercise in the minimum of time." This favorite pastime of the great statesman was so closely associated with him that it was deemed the proper thing to do to place on exhibition in the Great Columbian Exposition at Chicago one of the axes ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... in front of the hoary surf-line; and near them were spread vast stores of viands and sweet wine, which the cupbearers had drawn off in pitchers; afterwards they told tales one to another in turn, such as youths often tell when at the feast and the bowl they take delightful pastime, and insatiable insolence is far away. But here the son of Aeson, all helpless, was brooding over each event in his mind, like one oppressed with thought. And Idas noted him and assailed him with ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... oakum-pickers would briefly address some person or persons in the crowd below, yet the six hatchet-polishers neither spoke to others, nor breathed a whisper among themselves, but sat intent upon their task, except at intervals, when, with the peculiar love in negroes of uniting industry with pastime, two and two they sideways clashed their hatchets together,' like cymbals, with a barbarous din. All six, unlike the generality, had the ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... Captain Douglas, in his military tone. "Trevelyan, beware, you are being caught in a pitfall." Lady Douglas smiled as she turned to Miss Douglas, saying "Mr. Trevelyan's request shall be granted, you can choose your own task of imposition, music, reading, or any other pastime." "The matter is settled, thanks to her Ladyship," exclaimed Sir Howard, "and I beg leave to withdraw to mature my views for the coming lengthy topic of this evening." The hour being announced warned the ladies ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... of our host's family at Oregon, when they first went there, after all the pains and plagues of building and settling, found their first pastime in opening one of these mounds, in which they found, I think, three of the departed, seated in the ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... a primary meeting in his life, always having been too busy with his own career to realise this duty, and too nomadic in his habits to acquire a personal interest in local affairs. To him politics was the pastime of the rich, who could afford it, or the business of the poor, who used it as a means of support. The very word, as Emmet used it, conveyed an impression to his mind like that which Borrow received when his ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... vanquished, who, in their turn, with their accustomed versatility, submitted patiently, and even cheerfully, to a yoke which, after the first onslaught was over, pressed lightly; the Voizins, to whom fighting was a pastime, bearing no malice, and passing imperceptibly ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... de Vere, Of me you shall not win renown; You thought to break a country heart For pastime, ere you went to town. At me you smiled, but unbeguiled I saw the snare, and I retired: The daughter of a hundred Earls, You are not one to ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... the others began to poke fun at her, but her parents ended by doing as she asked, big child as she was, who in the fulness of her happiness hardly knew what amusement to seek. However, as by way of pastime she obstinately sought to count the crawfish, quite an affair ensued: some of them pinched her, and she dropped them with a little shriek; and, amid it all, the basket fell over and then the crawfish hurriedly crawled away. The ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... "Neo-Greek" words are extraordinary in themselves and obscure in their origin, though not through antiquity. In his Student's Pastime, at p. 293, Dr. Skeat says "Nowhere can more ignorant etymologies be found than in works on Botany and 'scientific' subjects. Too often, all the science is reserved for the subject, so that there is none to ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... dashing a sabreur as ever crossed a saddle, though lenient to looseness in all other matters, and very young for his command, would have been down like steel on "the boys," had any of them taken to the pastime of overmuch drinking in ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... yourself, aren't you?" she inquired, more to make conversation which might engage the ancient mind in ruminant pastime than to begin any series of inquiries ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... is now of a higher kind: as soon as the child comes into school, he will choose, for instance, the letters of the alphabet, or will write, then (his strenuous work) he will read. For recreation he will choose an intelligent pastime, such as ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... subjects whom he had previously noted for their excellence, in subtility and devilish invention, and, after fully explaining his wants and wishes to his keenly appreciating auditory, made proclamation among them, that the Demon who should invent a new vice, which, under the name and guise of Pastime, should be best calculated to seduce men from the paths of virtue, pervert their hearts, ruin them for earth and educate them for hell, should be awarded a crown of honor, with rank and prerogative second only to his own. He then, with many a gracious and encouraging word to incite in them ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... great bouquet in one hand, and with the other was plucking the roses and gardenias to pieces, and strewing the petals over his head and face, as she did in the sunny afternoons at St. Valery. She must have been engaged in this pastime for a considerable time, for the pillows and quilt were covered with flowers, and his hair was full of them. As neither Pilar's entry with the lamp nor the shower of blossoms had succeeded in wakening him, she had leaned over him and roused him with ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... John Bull for pastime took a prance, Some time ago, to peep at France; To talk of sciences and arts, And knowledge gained in foreign parts. Monsieur, obsequious, heard him speak, And answered John in heathen Greek: To all he asked, 'bout all he saw, 'T was "Monsieur, je ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... O joys unspeakable, O worldly wealth, O palaces gorgeous, O fair children, O wife most amiable; O pleasant pastime, O pomp so glorious, O delicate diet, O life lascivious; O dolorous death which would me betray, And my felicity from me take away! I am fully resolved without further demur[52] In these delights to take my whole solace; And what pain soever hereby I incur, Whether heaven ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... without spoiling their breeches at the knees. And for this I had a fair decree, but it cost me dear. Now reckon up what expense I was at in little banquets which from day to day I made to the pages of the palace. And to what end? said I. My friend, said he, thou hast no pastime at all in this world. I have more than the king, and if thou wilt join thyself with me, we will do the devil together. No, no, said I; by St. Adauras, that will I not, for thou wilt be hanged one time or another. And thou, said he, wilt be interred some time or other. Now which ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... him, that her audience had looked on with roars of laughter. From that time she would be put up every day, and as time went on showed such unchildish courage and spirit that she furnished to her servant companions a new pastime. Soon she would not be held on, but riding astride like a boy, would sit up as straight as a man and swear at her horse, beating him with her heels and little fists if his pace did not suit her. She ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... regulating our lives according to the last and best mode we had learned, we should never be troubled with ennui. Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour. House-work was a pleasant pastime. When my floor was dirty, I rose early, and, setting all my furniture out of doors on the grass, bed and bedstead making but one budget, dashed water on the floor, and sprinkled white sand from the pond on it, and then with a broom scrubbed it clean and white; and by the time the villagers had ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... time. Wooden sewers were also constructed on each side of the street to carry off the surface water. A plank road besides ran out to Mission Dolores, the vicinity of which was a great resort on Sundays, especially in the days when "bull fighting" was a pastime and the old Spanish and Mexican elements of the population had not been eliminated or had not ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... evening, and saw herself condemned to quite a lengthy sojourn in her deserts and a long defensive correspondence, ere she could venture to return to Gondremark. On the other hand, she examined, by way of pastime, the deeds she had received from Otto; and even here saw cause for disappointment. In these troublous days she had no taste for landed property, and she was convinced, besides, that Otto had paid dearer than ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Sir John Lubbock and Frederick Harrison, they make excellent progress and do much to keep up the reading habit. Fourth—The "Oh, just-anything-good-you-know" reader. Her name is legion. She never knows what she has read. Yet the social student who failed to take into account the desultory, pastime reader, would miss a great factor in the spread of ideas. Fifth—The person who does not read. He is commoner than most suppose. He is often young, more often boy than girl, oftener young man than young woman. He commits eternally what Mr Putnam aptly calls the ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana
... rob, to kill, to wench, to fight, Our pastime is, and daily sport; The gibbet claims us morn and night, So let's ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... British billiard-room, and for them a veritable paradise is ready. The Mediterranean laps the beautiful shore at Monte Carlo and all along the exquisite Eiviera—the palms and ferns are lovely—the air is soft and exhilarating, and the gambler pursues his pleasing pastime amid the sweetest spots on earth. From every country in the world the flights of restless gamblers come like strange flocks of migrant birds. The Russian gentleman escapes from the desolate plains of his native land and luxuriates in the beautiful garden of Europe; the queer inflections ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... poses, walking carefully with his toes turned in, breaking off twigs to mark a place, guessing at the time by the sun, and grunting "Ugh" or "Wagh" when anything surprised him. Disparaging remarks about White-men, delivered in supposed Indian dialect, were an important part of his pastime. "Ugh, White-men heap no good" and "Wagh, paleface—pale fool in woods," were among ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the intention and purpose of these gay gentlemen was not the courteous entertainment of their hostess. Like so many men of all times and all nations in this world, they were ready enough to enjoy what she provided for them—the illicit pastime which they could not get elsewhere—but they despised her for giving it them, and cared naught for the heavy risks she ran in keeping up this house for ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... odious, and things nobly done beautiful and gracious. . . There are many who would laugh at the idea of a novelist teaching either virtue or nobility,—those, for instance, who regard the reading of novels as a sin, and those also who think it to be simply an idle pastime. They look upon the tellers of stories as among the tribe of those who pander to the wicked pleasures of a wicked world. I have regarded my art from so different a point of view that I have ever thought of myself as a preacher of sermons, and ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... of the firm was always in a hurry; never seemed to have a minute to spare; the "racing rush" took hold of him. Duncan Fraser smiled grimly as he thought how Alan careered about the country in pursuit of his favorite pastime. ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... thee, Prince Leviathan; and I promise thee that thou shalt long continue with me among the sweet vapours of this place, and scourge the shades of the great princes of the earth for thy pastime. Hem! a fine fellow, and seems to have had quite enough of men and things. Despair, audacity, hate, rancour, agony, and pride, have torn deep furrows in his soul. He looks even at us and hell without trembling. Faustus, art thou become dumb of ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... to play well—far from it. But a rudimentary idea of it suffices to give any one a good deal of healthy exercise and enjoyment, and provided that one is keen and wishes to improve, and possesses what is known as a good games' eye, there is no reason why advance should not be rapid. It is also a pastime in which women can combine with and compete against men without in any way spoiling the game; and mixed doubles, to which I refer, are perhaps the most popular department with the average spectator. I think I am not wrong in ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers
... and for more than three months after, stood at sixty for one. It seems as if the certainty of its being our own, made us careless of its value, and that the most distant thoughts of losing it made us hug it the closer, like something we were loth to part with; or that we depreciate it for our pastime, which, when called to seriousness by the enemy, we leave off to renew again at our leisure. In short, our good luck seems to break us, and our ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... the chiefe and vttermost walles of his Islandish Monarchie, against all forreine encombrance possible. And in that fortification furthering and assuring to trust best his owne ouersight and iudgement, in yerely viewing the same in euery quarter thereof, and that as it were for his pastime Imperiall, also in Sommer time, to the ende that afterward in all securitie, hee might in Winter time (vacare) be at conuenient leisure on land, chiefly to set foorth God's due honour and secondly to vnderstand and ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... following his first stag. And so they are still haunted for the imagination by royal hunts and progresses, and peopled with the faces of memorable men of yore. And this distinction is not only in virtue of the pastime of dead monarchs. Great events, great revolutions, great cycles in the affairs of men, have here left their note, here taken shape in some significant and dramatic situation. It was hence that Guise and his leaguers led ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Stockheath playing a hundred up with his cousin, Algernon Wooster—a spectacle of the liveliest interest—or they could, if fond of golf, console themselves for the absence of links in the neighborhood with the exhilarating pastime of clock golf; or they could stroll about the terraces with such of their relations as they happened to be on speaking terms with at the moment, and abuse their host and the ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... later novels, because of the contrast they furnish to the essentially competitive life of modern Australia. Brentwood is 'excessively attached to mathematics, and has leisure to gratify his hobby'; Harding, 'an Oxford man,' is 'an inveterate writer of songs,' a pastime which only the annual business of shearing is permitted to interrupt; Buckley is intent on the education of his son, in which he is careful to provide for a knowledge of the Latin Grammar; while Doctor Mulhaus finds the new country an even better field than ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... and you, my people, I have contrived the pastime today that I may show you on a mimic scale the deeds which my brave soldiers are called upon to perform in France. It is more specially suited for the combatants of today, since one party have had but ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... Beddoes never possessed. Inheriting from his father the qualities of both poet and physician, the faculties of the scientific man, trained and cultivated through a long life by Dr. Thomas Beddoes (with whom poetry was but an occasional pastime), seem to have overbalanced and diverted the poetic genius of his son. The hereditary instinct overcame the individual bent. And in spite of Lovell Beddoes' opinion that "the studies of the dramatist and physician are closely, almost inseparably, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... to school, and that was the playground; and there they played together, with such soft, graceful action, such caressing ways, and trippings as dainty as in "Pinafore," until at the ringing of a bell they came at once to order from their mixed-up, mazy pastime, and waited the arrival of their teacher, the Professor, who entered with a schoolmaster air, ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... scattered in the prose, most notably (as being not yet collected) in The Four Men. The general impression is, as we have said, one of confusion and lack of order: verse, the revealing instrument, seems to be to Mr. Belloc a pastime for moments of dispersion, and most of these poems seem to point to intervals of refreshment, periods of a light use of the powers, rather than to the seconds of intense feeling whereof verse, either at the time or ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... eyes. The parade, the guard mount, the review were the finest things they knew. To a people trained in such a school and purposely given great burdens that they might attain fortitude, war was second nature. They welcomed it as a sort of pastime. ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... men are impatient when they are waiting for the accomplishment of any event they have set their hearts upon: the prince, therefore, to make the time seem short to him, proposed as a kind of merry pastime that they should invent some artful scheme to make Benedick and Beatrice fall in love with each other. Claudio entered with great satisfaction into this whim of the prince, and Leonato promised them his assistance, and even ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the poet, "would to Heaven that she were only an imaginary personage, and my passion for her only a pastime! Alas! it is a madness which it would be difficult and painful to feign for any length of time; and what an extravagance it would be to affect such a passion! One may counterfeit illness by action, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... that name. The old professors, for whom I always had a sneaking kindness, affected a sort of solitary grandeur, deported themselves with the conscious swagger of genius, read Tooke's Pantheon, and prated of the Heathen gods. This was very harmless and innocent pastime; tiresome, to be sure, yet laughable withal; nor did it call for any further rebuke than an occasional tap upon the cranium of some blockhead who forsook his legitimate sphere, thrust himself in your way, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... unfit him for serious work, than pacing from house to house in the early afternoon, delivering a pack of visiting-cards, varied by a perfunctory conversation, seated at the edge of an easy-chair, on subjects of inconceivable triviality. Of course there are men so constituted that they find this pastime a relief and a pleasure; but their felicity of temperament ought not to be made into a rule for serious-minded men. The only social institution which might really prove beneficial in a University is an informal ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... spirit of resistance. The cowardly insults to which the soldiers were exposed after the reduction of their number led to various scuffles; but their discipline prevented them from effectually retaliating on their persecutors, and baiting the soldiers became a popular pastime. On the evening of the 5th Captain Preston of the 29th regiment and about a dozen soldiers went to the rescue of a sentinel who was being ill-treated by the mob. After some provocation his men fired without orders, three ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... in the house of every nobleman of honour or good worship, whether spiritual or temporal. Among these, the Mayor and Sheriffs of London had their several Lords of Misrule, ever contending, without quarrel or offence, who should make the rarest pastime to divert the beholders. These Lords began their rule, or rather misrule, on All Hallow's-eve, and continued the same until Candlemas-day, in which space there were fine and subtle disguisings, masques, and mummeries, with playing at cards for counters, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... to say truth, dawdled away my time in putting things to rights, which is a vile amusement, and writing letters to people who write to ask my opinion of their books, which is as much as to say—"Tom, come tickle me." This is worse than the other pastime, but either may serve for a broken day, and both must ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... certain fact is that Bannockburn was fought on a point of chivalry, on a rule in a game. England must "touch bar," relieve Stirling, as in some child's pastime. To the securing of the castle, the central gate of Scotland, north and south, England put forth her full strength. Bruce had no choice but to concentrate all the power of a now, at last, united realm, and stand just where he did stand. His enemies knew his purpose: by May 27th writs informed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... rocky, barren, and in some places quite steep. In the clefts of the rocks, generally far above our reach, the bright red columbines stood in groups, drooping their graceful heads. Some of the rocks were worn to a perfect polish by the feet of daring sliders. It was a dangerous pastime even to the most experienced. A loss of balance, a slight deviation from the beaten track, a trip in a hollow, or a momentary entanglement in your dress,—and you are lost! I declined joining in the diversion ever after the first attempt, which was nothing but ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... to correct, and a depressing task his spent brain always found it; but for once he let it beat him altogether. After a morning's tussle with one unfortunate chapter, the desperate author sent off the rest in their sins, and rode his bicycle to abolish thought. But that mild pastime fell lamentably short of its usual efficacy. It was not one of his heroines who was worrying the novelist, but a real woman whom he liked and her husband whom he did not. The husband it was who had finished matters ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... of the Faithful, in the same harsh grunting voice as before; "and you call that pastime, that which we have seen a thousand and one times? By the beard of the Prophet, vizier," he continued in a louder tone, "if I have no sleep to-day, nor appetite to-morrow, there is the bowstring for you, and the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... well-stocked with the best of trout," explained their host. "It is my pastime to catch them in other streams and to bring them here. You remember Horace upon his Sabine farm? Such pleasures as he enjoyed are mine. Yes, there is an abundance of cress. We will wait until later to gather it that it may be ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... necessity of granting that bread of falsehood which poor humanity requires in order to be happy? Doubtless, he begged the pardon of Heaven for allowing it to be mixed up in what he regarded as childish pastime, for exposing it to ridicule in connection with an affair in which there was only sickliness and dementia. But his flock suffered so much, hungered so ravenously for the marvellous, for fairy stories with ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Did the bloodthirsty soul of Tiberius comprehend the stainless innocence of the victims he crushed for pastime on the rocks below Villa Jovis? There is but one arbiter for your hatred, the hang-man, to whom you would so gladly hurry me. Hunting a woman to the gallows is fit sport for men ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... have something else to say to you. I have been in the service for years, while you have only lately entered it, and I consider it my duty as an older colleague to give you a warning. You ride on a bicycle, and that pastime is utterly unsuitable ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... his love Softened our early sorrows. But my sun Has set for ever! Once we talked of cares And deemed that we were sad. Men fancy sorrows Until time brings the substance of despair, And then their griefs are shadows. Give me exile! It brought me love. Ah! days of gentle joy, When pastime only parted us, and he Returned with tales to make our children stare; Or called my lute, while, round my waist entwined, His hand kept chorus to my lay. No more! O, we were happier than the happy birds; And sweeter were our lives than the sweet flowers; The stars were ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... thus trying whether his arms retained their strength and skill for the labors of his youth,—mindful of the day when he wore striped trousers, and toiled in his shirt-sleeves,—and now tasting again, for pastime, this drudgery beneath a fervid sun. He stood awhile, looking at the workmen, and then went to oversee the laborers ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... came—he was not among them. They pampered every wish, indulged every folly, loaded me with luxuries, but my dream was dispelled. I respected few of them, and reverenced none. They were my pastime, my playthings. And they have revenged themselves by saying in secret ... what you said in public ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... and a cock to my hat like a Military Officer,—and felt myself as grand as you please. I never dared speak to him until he spoke to me; but used to sit quietly enough sharpening bolts or twisting bowstrings, or cleaning his Pistols, or furbishing up his Hanger and Belt, or suchlike boyish pastime-labour. He was careful to burn every paper that he Discarded after taking it from the Valise; but once, and once only, a scrap remained unconsumed on the hearth, the which, with my ape-like curiosity of half-a-score summers, I must needs spell over, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... him. Information reached him from so many, and such contrary quarters, that with his discrimination and experience, he could almost instantly distinguish the truth. The secret history of the world was his pastime. His great pleasure was to contrast the hidden motive, with the public pretext, ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... way that if anything is driven through with address, though it causes them pain, yet they do not die of it. You may run large pins into a man's leg without wounding or hurting him, or but very slightly, just like a prick which is felt when the pin first enters; which has sometimes served as a pastime for jokers. In my garden, which, thanks to the care of M. Seguier, is become quite a botanic garden, I have a plant called the onagra,[701] which rises to the height of a man, and bears very beautiful flowers; but they remain ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... two-legged tank again." He wished he knew more about what Ferguson and Metty had been doing. He wished he knew why the two men had gone into the anteroom in the first place. He wished a lot of things, but wishing was a useless pastime at ...
— The Bramble Bush • Gordon Randall Garrett
... a favourite species of dog in the middle ages. In the ancient pipe-rolls, payments are frequently made in greyhounds. In Hawes' "Pastime of Pleasure," (written in the time of Henry VII.) Fame is attended by two greyhounds, on whose golden collars, "Grace" and "Governaunce" are ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... found it, he says, "a barbarous country, where chemical spirits were so misunderstood, and chemical instruments so unprocurable, that it was hard to have any Hermetic thoughts in it;" and he had betaken himself to "anatomical dissections" as the only kind of scientific pastime that Irish conditions favoured. On returning to England, in 1654, he had settled in Oxford, to be in the society of Wilkins, Wallis, Goddard, Ward, Petty, Bathurst, Willis, and other kindred scientific spirits, most of them recently transferred from London to posts in the University, and so ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... to move in any game," Thornly replied. "I rather think it comes from my chess training. When a child begins that pastime, as you might say, in his cradle, with such a teacher as father, it's apt to ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... fair ladies at Brighton he drew, Marrowbones, cherrystones, Bundle'em jig. And jogging along with a jolly fat crew, Quite into the sea for coolness he flew, And made some fine pastime for dandies to view. Like an ambling, scambling, Braying-sweet, turn-up feet, Mane-cropt, tail-lopt, High-bred, thistle-fed, ...
— Deborah Dent and Her Donkey and Madam Fig's Gala - Two Humorous Tales • Unknown
... and the baiting of a great bull, which was being led to the centre of the green, attracted the attention of the bulk of the spectators, and drew them away from other sports. The actors in the miracle play threw off their dresses to come and witness this delightful pastime, and hardly any of those present seemed to regard for a moment the sufferings of the poor brute, or the savage nature of the ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the plank! The super won't forgive a single man who is caught at the royal pastime of hazing! I'm going to write, now, for the money to get home with. You know, in the last two affairs, the hazers have been dismissed from ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... a docile girl, ready always to heed her father and her "Daddy Crisp," ready to obey her kindly stepmother, and try to exchange for practical occupations her pet pastime of scribbling. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... and a boy inhabited this bothy, and the rain had driven them all indoors. In better weather they spend the leisure of the evening at the game of quoits, which is the standard pastime among Scottish ploughmen. They fish the neighboring streams, too, and have burn-trout for supper several times a week. When I entered, two of them were sitting by the fire playing draughts, or, as they called it, ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... the bitter misanthrope, hating your species, and snarling at all things—no longer the gay cavalier rushing to battle as a pastime—that you were altered, entirely changed, rather—that your character was elevated and purified—and that now, you were a patriotic soldier, fit to live or ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... destroy the innate beauty of those popular traditions; but here, in England at least, they had almost dwindled out, or at any rate had been lost sight of as home-growths. We had learnt to buy our own children back, disguised in foreign garb; and as for their being anything more than the mere pastime of an idle hour—as to their having any history or science of their own—such an absurdity was never once thought of. It had, indeed, been remarked, even in the eighteenth century—that dreary time ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... cannot fight, it is no bad pastime to parley. Saint Albans was simultaneously and unanimously voted leader, though we had many older than he, for he was but eighteen. A glorious youth was that Saint Albans! Accomplished, generous, brave, handsome, as are all his race, and of the most bland and ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... gentlemen were a merry crew withal, and had their wit and their wine at table, and knew each other's histories (and soon enough ours) by heart. They betted away the week at billiards or whist or picquet or loo, and sometimes measured swords for diversion, tho' this pastime the bailiff was greatly set against; as calculated to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... from her post between the curtains of Robin's sitting-room. Not in a tone of complaint did she speak, rather as though weighing which pastime would be most worthy of ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... corral (the ilnásjin, the dark circle of branches) on the next day. Some of the visiting women were busy grinding meal and attending to different household duties; others played cards or engaged in the more aboriginal pastime of áz¢ilçil, a game played with three sticks and forty ...
— The Mountain Chant, A Navajo Ceremony • Washington Matthews
... which in early stages of human life was a necessity, has become with advancing civilization not merely a passion but a dilettanteism, and the cruel records of this pastime are among the most discreditable pages in modern literature. It is true that in India and other tropical countries, the number and ferocity of the wild beasts not only justify but command a war of extermination against them, but the indiscriminate ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... I have now to record that my hero, Captain Jack Mackenzie, formed one of the most ridiculous resolutions any young man could have been guilty of making. It is all very well building castles in the air—indeed, it is rather a pretty pastime than otherwise, and may at times be productive of good; but when it comes to building for one's self, willingly and with wide-open eyes, a whole paradise—fool's, of course—and quietly taking up one's abode ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... improved method of fire fighting in Southern cities—before the steam engine, the hook and ladder and water tower companies supplanted the old hand pump and bucket companies, the Negro was the chief fire fighter, and there was nothing that tended more to make fire fighting a pleasant pastime than those old volunteer organizations. For many years after the war Wilmington was supplied with water for the putting out of fires by means of cisterns which were built in the centre of streets. When the old bell in the market house tower sounded the alarm ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... with long, fine, silvery-white needles that glisten in the sun. Its stem is hollow and filled with a white pith like the elder. After the prickly bark is stripped off the punk can be picked out through the fenestra with a penknife, which occupation affords pleasant pastime for a leisure hour. When thus furbished up the unsightly club becomes an elegant ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... free country life and spent the days racing up and down the terraces, chasing the screaming peacocks or climbing the garden trellises to pluck the ripe fruit. But his chief pastime was to watch the flight of a swift falcon which sometimes soared into sight above the tall poplars, and at others swooped down to earth at his master's call. The child had often wondered who the bird's master might be, and one morning he found out that the pair he sought dwelt ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... but I have seen him, nevertheless, and I shall be much surprised if you do not see and hear more of him than you desire before many days are out. That villain does not sail the seas for pastime, you ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... of his advice he thumped Hal's desk. The thump woke McGuire Ellis, who had been devoting a spare five minutes to his favorite pastime. For his behoof, the exponent of policy repeated his peroration. "Isn't that right, Ellis?" he cried. "You're a practical ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... would have admired and striven to perpetuate the group in the drawing-room. In the old days it was quite the proper thing to snap the family group while they were engaged in some pleasant pastime, such as spinning, or painting china, or playing the piano, or reading a volume of poems. No one ever seemed to bother about the incongruence of the eyes, which were invariably focused at the camera lens. Here they all ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... Housekeeper's Pastime; or, The mode of Carving at the Table represented in a Pack of Playing ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... scraped together close upon a couple of hundred reprints of plays, which cost me from 6d to 2s a-piece. He said he would have no acting in his house. I pleaded it was only a bit of pastime; but it was all in vain, and what was more he threw all my books on the fire. This greatly disheartened me—I should be about 14 years old at this period;—but though my father burned my play-books he did not quell my ardent ambition to go on the stage. A few days after, a theatrical ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... but their sherbets and potions naught availed, for he would dwell upon the deed of his wife, and despondency, instead of diminishing, prevailed, and leach craft treatment utterly failed. One day his elder brother said to him, "I am going forth to hunt and course and to take my pleasure and pastime; maybe this would lighten thy heart." Shah Zaman, however, refused, saying, "O my brother, my soul yearneth for naught of this sort and I entreat thy favour to suffer me tarry quietly in this place, being wholly taken up with my malady." So King Shah Zaman passed ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... tennis racket to your meals. However, as I was about to say, I do not wish you to work all the time, like a woman, or even a small part of the time, like a hired man. I wish you to adopt for your recreation games of sport and pastime." ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... the Collegio and most Illustrious Ten!" he responded, with a courtly movement of deference which included them all, "I thank you! In that it graciously pleaseth you to bestow upon me your favor for a trifle of designing which was the pastime of an hour, and made for the pleasure of the giving in homage to the noble Lady Laura Giustiniani. But the praise of it should not be mine; it is rather to the stabilimento which hath shown perfection in its workmanship. ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... unsuspecting boy was covered with yellow jackets. Of course, he ran to the house screaming, and they had a time in getting them off of him. He was badly stung, but we made it appear that we had gone down there to fight them, which was a favorite pastime with us, and that he got too near the nest. Thus we ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... friend continued, "the gowns worn are not so expensive as at Ascot, and I believe there is no Royal Enclosure. But the Derby is nevertheless what they call a National Institution. As you know, I disapprove of horse-racing as a pastime: but my brother-in-law in the Civil Service used to attend it regularly, from a sense of duty, with a green ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... soundly thrashed him, "for the thrick he had put upon him," had not Jerry interfered to prevent. This adventure, however, completely cured Patsey of boasting; for not once again during the entire trip did he indulge in what had heretofore been a favorite pastime. Nor was Patsey the only one who learned a lesson while at the Pimo villages. Master Hal, who was determined to try his hand at trading with the natives, found it anything but a profitable business; for he disposed of nearly his entire share of the stock of goods, for articles that were ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... her own age or of any other. She was one of those unfortunate persons whose education and instincts' unfit them for their position. The diversions of youth had been denied her, the pleasures of dress or company had never been within her reach. For pastime she was turned back continually to her own thoughts, and an active imagination and much desultory reading had educated her in a school of romance, which found no counterpart in the life of Cullerne. She was proud at heart (and it is curious that those are often ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... is that art is not a mere pastime, but a great world force operating to lift mortals out of mortality. It is the striving of the finite to reach ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... time supplies were checked by the whirlwind of "Fairs." The Woman's Central, issued a Circular urging its Auxiliaries to continue their regular contributions, and to make their working for Fairs a pastime only. In no other way could it meet the increased demands upon its resources, for the sphere of the Sanitary Commission's usefulness had now extended to remotest States, and its vast machinery for distribution had ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... was not the idle pastime that more trivial minds find it: a thing, on the contrary, to be gone into with slow spelling, and face knitted up into savage sternness, especially now, when, as he gravely explained to Margaret, "in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... the unreasonable pair at Northlands as long as we could, doing all that lay in our power to restore Adrian's idiotically impaired health. I motored him about the county; I took him to golf, a pastime at which I do not excel; and I initiated him into the invigorating mysteries of playing at robbers with Susan. We gave a carefully selected dinner-party or two, and accepted on his behalf a few discreet invitations. At these entertainments—whether at Northlands or elsewhere—we caused it to ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... venom, that intrudes A visitor unwelcome into scenes Sacred to neatness and repose, the alcove, The chamber, or refectory, may die. A necessary act incurs no blame. Not so when, held within their proper bounds And guiltless of offence, they range the air, Or take their pastime in the spacious field. There they are privileged; and he that hunts Or harms them there is guilty of a wrong, Disturbs the economy of Nature's realm, Who, when she formed, designed them an abode. The sum is this: if man's convenience, health, Or safety interfere, his rights ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... old stories by the fireside, or in the sun, as old folks usually do, quae aprici meminere senes, remembering afresh and with pleasure ancient matters, and such like accidents, which happened in their younger years: others' best pastime is to game, nothing to them so pleasant. [3290]Hic Veneri indulget, hunc decoquit alea—many too nicely take exceptions at cards, [3291]tables, and dice, and such mixed lusorious lots, whom Gataker well confutes. Which though they be honest recreations ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... to write and peered into the garden. "It's all right. He's only violeting. An interesting pastime!" He turned unexpectedly and gave her one of his shrewd glances. "You don't ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... "should His Majesty think fit to restore the game of deer within the said Forrest, the same shall not exceed the number of 800 deer of all sorts at any one time;" intimating that during the Civil War, and the period of the Commonwealth, that kingly pastime had been discontinued. The same Act directs that "the owners, tenants, &c., of any of the several lands lying within the bounds of the Forest may keep any sort of dogs inexpediated to hunt and kill any beast of chase or other game," except during "the fence month," and ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... don't let me interrupt your very fascinating new pastime. Of course, since you are a young man of leisure, playing with your new toy must seem far more important than the fact that I have about twenty miles to walk—through the sand and the heat, and not even a canteen of water to save me from parching with thirst. I—I must ask ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... smaller stages will give some old favourite, Der Freischuetz, Don Juan, Oberon, or Die Zauberfloete. In fact, all through the winter the upper and middle classes make the play and the opera their favourite Sunday pastime. The lower classes depend a good deal on the public dancing saloons, which seem to do as much harm as our public-houses, and to be disliked and discouraged ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... honoured by his friends with various kinds of food, with which he treated his less successful competitors. Some of the pigeons were baked, others were distributed about and tamed for further use. Taming and exercising them for the sporting season was a common pastime. ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... disposes, the posts were either careless, or God ordained it thus; for suddenly the enemy rushed upon our men, who could not unite, as they were by that time scattered through the forest. The enemy, having caught them off their guard, made a pastime of it, killing twenty-six men, and carrying off arms, powder, balls, and fuses. I regard that event as the greatest of all our losses. Among those of our men killed there by the enemy was Captain Lopez Suarez, a fine soldier. Our men were not disheartened by these ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
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