"Commoner" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... interesting to refer to the application of forestry to a woodlot containing native nut trees. Like many farmers who regard every tree as just a tree, useful for timber or fire wood, I found several years ago that indiscriminate cutting on my woodlot was destroying walnuts, along with the commoner species of the stand. My first step was to halt the cutting of all black walnuts, hickories, butternuts, oaks and beeches on the seven-acre woodlot. I took an inventory of these trees and found ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... it was a relic of his early admiration and study of Baudelaire that set Wagner to extorting ecstasy from his orchestra by images of death and love; and no doubt the temperament which seeks such combinations—a temperament commoner in mediaeval days than ours—was inherent in Wagner. He makes his Isolde sing mournfully and madly over a corpse and, throwing herself upon the dead body of Tristan, die shaken by the sweet cruel pains of love. Richard Strauss closely patterns after Wagner in his Salome, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... contents. For some while I groped among linen and cotton. Then my teeth were set on edge with silk, of which I drew forth several strips covered with mysterious characters. And these settled the business, for I recognised them as a kind of bed-hanging, popular with the commoner class of the Chinese. Nor were further evidences wanting, such as night-clothes of an extraordinary design, a three-stringed Chinese fiddle, a silk handkerchief full of roots and herbs, and a neat apparatus ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... medicine, to whom their results come daily. Distasteful as the task may be, the social worker should familiarize herself, through reading or through instruction by a qualified physician, in the commoner forms of these maladjustments. This is not urged because it is part of the social worker's task to make detailed inquiry into such matters or to pass judgment upon them, but because they often clamor for attention and need to be recognized by the first responsible person to whose notice ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... types that flourished in the richest soil of the place. Like almost all people who possess in a strong degree the storytelling faculty, Hawthorne had a democratic strain in his composition and a relish for the commoner stuff of human nature. Thoroughly American in all ways, he was in none more so than in the vagueness of his sense of social distinctions and his readiness to forget them if a moral or intellectual sensation were to be gained by it. ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... dropped their crucifixes, and, like the commoner sons of the Church, howled: "The ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... more on those walls. A pair of spurs, of make modern enough, hung between two pewter dish-covers. Hanging book-shelves came next; for although most of my uncle's books were in his bed-room, some of the commoner were here on the wall, next to an old fowling-piece, of which both lock and barrel were devoured with rust. Then came a great pair of shears, though how they should have been there I cannot yet think, for there was no garden to the house, ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... Walpole, and from commoner and coarser men who occupied the same office, Peel forbade that a name which he had made illustrious should be degraded and stigmatized by any title of nobility. For he knew that all those titles had their origin and nomenclature from military services, and belong to military men, ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... childlike without being childish, devout with a fearless familiarity, the spirit to which the Dies Irae and the sermons of St Francis were equally natural expressions, and which, if it could sometimes exasperate itself into the practices of the Inquisition, found a far commoner and more genuine expression in the kindly humanities of the Ancren Riwle. There is no lack of knowledge and none of inquiry; though in embarking on the enormous ocean of ignorance, it is inquiry ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... not be generally known that this epigram came from the pen of Reginald Heber, late Bishop of Calcutta, who was then a commoner of Brazenoze College, and who wrote that extremely clever satire called The Whippiad of which the same Dr. Toe (the Rev. Henry Halliwell, Dean and Tutor) was the hero. The Whippiad was printed for the first time a few ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... others say at Beckington, near Philip's Norton, or at Wilmington in Wiltshire. Anthony Wood tells us that he came "of a wealthy family;" Fuller that "his father was a master of music." Of his earlier years next to nothing is known; but in 1579 he was entered as a commoner at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, and left the university three years afterwards without taking a degree. His first book—a translation of Paola Giovio's treatise on Emblems—appeared in 1585, when he was about twenty-two. ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... son of a local commoner, stood by the hedge of one of the vegetable gardens. What had been red calico once made up his torn shirt; but his face!—it was like that of an angel in a tawny mask covered with spots of dirt and dust. Wings are for light feet, but what can the earth do? Only dust and clay cling ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... satisfied with the loss of the first ten thousand pounds; but Lady Arabella was made of higher mettle. She had married a man with a fine place and a fine fortune; but she had nevertheless married a commoner and had in so far derogated from her high birth. She felt that her husband should be by rights a member of the House of Lords; but, if not, that it was at least essential that he should have a seat in the lower chamber. She would by degrees sink into nothing if she allowed ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... to Oxford, and was entered as a commoner at Balliol. Here his special career very soon commenced. He utterly eschewed the society of fast men, gave no wine-parties, kept no horses, rowed no boats, joined no rows, and was the pride of his college tutor. Such at least was his career till he had taken his little ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... considered very meritorious, and where women are concerned positively a religious duty. Le scandale est ce qui fait l'offense is very much the notion in Egypt, and I believe that very forgiving husbands are commoner here than elsewhere. The whole idea is founded on the verse of the Koran, incessantly quoted, 'The woman is made for the man, but the man is made for the woman'; ergo, the obligations to chastity are equal; ergo, ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... ages. They crowned the wheat-sheaves with flowers, they sung, they shouted, they danced, they invited each other, or met to feast as at Christmas, in the halls of rich houses; and, what was a very amiable custom, and wise beyond the commoner wisdom that may seem to lie on the top of it, every one that had been concerned, man, woman, and child, received a little ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... democratic government. Whether Whigs or Tories were in power, it was always the great families who ruled. For them the Church, at least in its higher branches, existed; and the difference between nobleman and commoner at Oxford is as striking as it is hideous to this generation. For them also literature and the theatre made their display; and if Dr. Johnson could heap an immortal contumely upon the name of patron, we all know of the reverence he felt in the presence of the king. Divine Right and non-resistance ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... mountain-barrier which, refreshed by the Pacific, bears the noble forests of the Sierra Nevada and the Coast Ranges, and among them trees which are the wonder of the world. As I stood in their shade, in the groves of Mariposa and Calaveras, and again under the canopy of the commoner redwood, raised on columns of such majestic height and ample girth, it occurred to me that I could not do better than to share with you, upon this occasion, some of the thoughts which possessed my mind. In their development they may, perhaps, lead ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... extent; but even to the smaller plantations of the Downs it is wonderful what a number come in the course of a year. Besides the shed just visited, there would be certain to be another more or less ornamented near the keeper's cottage, and probably others scattered about, where the commoner vermin could be nailed without the trouble of carrying them far away. Only the owls and hawks, magpies, and such more striking evidences of slaughter were collected ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... will never require more than two coats and the commoner class of goods only one. I would not advise the tradesman in a small way of business to go to the expense of a trough, etc., as it calls for much more room than is ordinarily available, but if he has the necessary plant for bicycle ...
— Handbook on Japanning: 2nd Edition - For Ironware, Tinware, Wood, Etc. With Sections on Tinplating and - Galvanizing • William N. Brown
... not strange that he forgot certain restrictions which a Royal man, in conversing with a commoner, is not supposed to forget. In fact, he forgot that he was Royal, or that she was not, and his voice grew unsteady, his tone eager, as if he had been some poor subaltern with the girl ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... Kureel, which is a Capparis; Phoke —— and Bheir. Mr. E. also says that the material of which the tope of Manikyalah is built, resembles petrified vegetable matter, an observation to be kept in view. The mottled kingfisher occurs throughout, but is commoner ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... the conversation between these two historical characters, the janitor of the theatre put his head into the room and reminded the celebrities that it was very late; whereupon both king and commoner rose with some reluctance and washed themselves—the king becoming, when he put on the ordinary dress of an Englishman, Mr. James Spence, while Cromwell, after a similar transformation, became Mr. Sidney Ormond; and thus, ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... sides of the Atlantic from a common ancestry, their political habits had become mutually incomprehensible. To the Englishman, the rule of the nobility was normal—the ideal political system. He was content, if a commoner, with the place assigned to him. To the colonist, on the other hand, government in which the majority of adult male inhabitants possessed the chief power was the only valid form,—all others were vicious. Patriotism meant two contradictory things. The Englishman's patriotism was ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... aristocratic wife of George Dandin, a French commoner. She has a liaison with a M. Clitandre, but always contrives to turn the tables on her husband. George Dandin first hears of a rendezvous from one Lubin, a foolish servant of Clitandre, and lays the affair before M. and Mde. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... possible you can take my consent for granted. Sara is the daughter of plain people with no family to boast of, but I tell you this, sir, I am a man with few wants, and I will give Sara the largest dowry that has ever been given by prince or commoner. I reckon I'm worth five million pounds, and I'll settle four and a half upon her. Theos wants money, and that may take things a bit smoother in ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... for fair play forces his resignation. Bryan's resignation at this critical moment is the greatest service the Commoner has ever rendered his country, because it has aroused the people to see the danger of the foreign policy now ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... him unsound, and did n't want him; but to save the situation they would be glad to keep him. She did n't want him, but she refused to lose her right to say, "Commoner girls may break their promises; I will not!" He sat down at the table between the candles, covering his face. His grief and anger grew and grew within him. If she would not free herself, the duty was on him! She was ready without love to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Lon's been awful quiet since she told him he had a picturesque name. Said it'd do for to put into a book which she's goin' to write, but when it come to choosin' a husband she'd prefer to tie up to a commoner name. An' so Lon didn't graze on that ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... reunion between the husband and wife, such as can never endure, and which only humiliated and fatigued a woman whose apparent superiority was unreal, while her unseen superiority was genuine. This whimsical medley is commoner than people think. Dinah, who was ridiculous from the perversity of her cleverness, had really great qualities of soul, but circumstances did not bring these rarer powers to light, while a provincial life debased the small change of her wit from day to day. Monsieur de la Baudraye, ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... unchanged, she would not hear a word against the Highlanders, though Colonel Fraser and his Seventy-Eighth Highland regiment had taken her prisoner. It is true, Jeannette was treated with deference, and her food was sent to her from the officer's table, and she had privacy on the ship which the commoner prisoners had not. It is also true that Colonel Fraser was a gentleman, detesting the parish-burning to which his command was ordered for a time. But the habitantes laid much to his blue eyes and yellow hair, ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... men was my peer; but, native or foreign, white or black, rich or poor, educated or ignorant, awake or asleep, sober or drunk, each and every man of them was my political superior; hence, in no sense, my peer. Even, under such circumstances, a commoner of England, tried before a jury of lords, would have far less cause to complain than should I, a woman, tried before a jury of men. Even my counsel, the Hon. Henry R. Selden, who has argued my cause so ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... is to face important subjects objectively. The ablest and most highly cultivated people continually discuss religion, politics, and sex: it is hardly an exaggeration to say that they discuss nothing else with fully-awakened interest. Commoner and less cultivated people, even when they form societies for discussion, make a rule that politics and religion are not to be mentioned, and take it for granted that no decent person would attempt to discuss sex. The three subjects are feared because they rouse the ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... estimates of Pitt none breathes deeper devotion than that of Wellesley. Was it not because he at last saw the pettiness of his own pride and petulance when contrasted with the self-abnegation of him who was truly the Great Commoner? And did not even his meteoric career in the East pale before the full-orbed splendour of the quarter of a century of achievement which made up the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... bearing a spray of sweet peas. Gillian longed to secure it for her mother, but it was very expensive, owing to the uncommon stones used in giving the tints, and Mr. Stebbing evidently did not regard it with so much favour as the jessamines and snowdrops, which, being of commoner marbles, could be sold at a rate fitter for the popular purse. Several beautiful drawings in her office had been laid aside as impracticable, 'unless we had a carte blanche wedding order,' he said, with what Gillian ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and motion of the commoner streets; through the roar and jar of many vehicles, many feet, many voices; with the blazing shop-lights lighting him on, the west wind blowing him on, and the crowd pressing him on, he is pitilessly urged upon his way, and nothing ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... him more cautious;—that's all," said Miss Penge. Miss Penge was now a great heiress, having had her lawsuit respecting certain shares in a Welsh coal-mine settled since we last saw her. As all the world knows she came from one of the oldest Commoner's families in the West of England, and is, moreover, a handsome young woman, only twenty-seven years of age. Lady Penwether thinks that she is the very woman to be mistress of Rufford, and I do not know that Miss Penge herself is ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... University: the competitors are incepting Bachelors of Arts after the examination for that Degree. My day of examination (apparently) was Jan. 21st. The candidates were Turner, Cankrein, Cleasby, and Mr Gordon. The first three had been my private pupils: Mr Gordon was a Fellow-commoner of St Peter's College, and had just passed the B.A. examination as Senior Wrangler, Turner being second. My situation as Examiner was rather a delicate one, and the more so as, when I came to examine the papers of answers, Turner appeared distinctly the first. Late at night I carried ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... what he was reading. Yet the taste was not only genuine, it was exclusive; I tried in vain to offer him novels; he would none of them, he cared for nothing but romantic language that he could not understand. The case may be commoner than we suppose. I am reminded of a lad who was laid in the next cot to a friend of mine in a public hospital, and who was no sooner installed than he sent out (perhaps with his last pence) for a cheap Shakespeare. My friend pricked up his ears; fell at once in talk with his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Science that is curious: And as for such knowledge as is no less than requisite for Men of Families, and Estates to have in regard of the proper business of their Station; it may, I think, be said that never was this more neglected than at present; since there is not a commoner complaint in every County than of the want of Gentlemen Qualified for the Service of their Country, viz. to be Executors of the Law, and Law Makers; both of which it belonging to this Rank of English Men to be, some insight ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... fatally as a pretender to the throne. Again, it seemed to explain the name "A-lektra" (as if from [Greek: lektron] "bed;" cf. Schol. Orestes, 71, Soph. El. 962, Ant. 917) more pointedly than the commoner version. And it helps in the working out of Electra's character (cf. pp. 17, 22, &c.). Also it gives an opportunity of introducing the fine character of the peasant. He is an [Greek: Autourgos] literally "self-worker," a man who works his own land, far from the ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... looked at the room, not to please himself but to obey Lady Kitty, Ashe became aware of a new impression. The crowd was no less, numerically, than he had seen it in the early winter; but it seemed to him less distinguished, made up of coarser and commoner items. He caught the face of a shady financier long since banished from Lady Tranmore's parties; beyond him a red-faced colonel, conspicuous alike for doubtful money-matters and matrimonial trouble; and in a farther corner the sallow profile of a writer whose books were apt to rouse even the ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... novella by Bandello, and is indeed more than worthy of the pen of the good Dominican Bishop of Agen. In all its incidents and motives the story is eternally true. The fateful beauty, playing now the part of Potiphar's wife, and now the yet commoner role of an enchantress whose charms drive men to madness and crime, men who adore her even from their prison cell and are glad to go to a shameful death for her sake, appears in all history, in all literature, nay, in the very newspaper ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... (1892), a curious eulogy supplemented by "excerpts from the wit, wisdom, poetry and eloquence" of the versatile hero; and a life of General Weaver is soon to be issued by the State Historical Society of Iowa. William J. Bryan's "The First Battle" (1896) and numerous biographies of "the Commoner" treat of his connection with the Populists and the campaign of 1896. Herbert Croly's "Marcus A. Hanna" (1912) should also ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... of those men was my peer; but, native or foreign born, white or black, rich or poor, educated or ignorant, sober or drunk, each and every man of them was my political superior; hence, in no sense, my peer. Under such circumstances a commoner of England, tried before a jury of lords, would have far less cause to complain than have I, a woman, tried before a jury of men. Even my counsel, Hon. Henry R. Selden, who has argued my cause so ably, so earnestly, so unanswerably before your honor, is my political sovereign. Precisely ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... meagre account of Johnson's Oxford career we gather some facts which supplement the description of Gibbon. The future historian went into residence twenty-three years after Johnson departed without taking his degree. Gibbon was a gentleman commoner, and was permitted by the easy discipline of Magdalen to behave just as he pleased. He "eloped," as he says, from Oxford, as often as he chose, and went up to town, where he was by no means the ideal of "the Manly ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... this branch of the work alone takes up about forty per cent. of the entire output. Then there is the genuine porcelain for table and decorative use; the porcelain necessary for electrical purposes; stoneware, or the commoner household articles found in the kitchen comprising yellow ware, Rockingham ware, and red earthenware; and in addition the great quantities of sanitary ware for plumbing, drain-pipes, and tiling. Of all these varieties of porcelain the hardest ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... even than these in its immediate results, Dante, while he began his poem in Latin, the learned language of the time, soon transposed and completed it in Italian, the corrupted Latin of his commoner contemporaries, the tongue of his daily life. That is, he wrote not for scholars like himself, but for a wider circle of more worldly friends. It is the first great work in any modern speech. It is in very truth the recognition of a new world of men, a new and more practical set of merchant ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the witch trials of the reign. With most of them we are already familiar. The requirement that the witch should repeat certain words after the justice of the peace was used once in the reign of James. It was an unusual method at best.[24] A commoner form of proof was that adduced from the finding or seeing clay or waxen images in the possession of the accused.[25] The witness who had found such a model on the premises of the defendant or had seen the defendant handling it, jumped readily ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... affirmed, none the less, that one barrel of the original stuff was more than enough for three barrelfuls of the bottled product. Cultured members, on drinking it, were wont to say things about Locusta and Borgia. The commoner sort swore like hell at Freddy Parker. It made you feel squiffy after the sixth glass—argumentative, magisterial, maudlin, taciturn, erotic, sentimental, sea-sick, ecstatic, paralysed, lachrymose, hilarious, pugilistic—according to your temperament. Whatever your temperament it gave ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... its name implies, was doubtless a commoner quality of the rich and precious samite, which ranked in costliness and beauty with baldekin and cloth of gold, and above satin and velvet. Samite was a silk material, of which no more is known than that it was very expensive, and had a glossy ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... also the whelping season, and hundreds of thousands are killed, females and young preponderating. They are still common along the east and south, but diminishing steadily, especially in the St. Lawrence. The Bearded, or "Square-flipper," seal is rare in the St. Lawrence and on the Atlantic, but commoner in Hudsonian waters. It is a large seal, eight feet long, and bulky in proportion. The Grey, or Horse-head, seal runs up to about the same size occasionally and is one of the gamest animals that swims. It is rare on the Atlantic and not common anywhere on the St. Lawrence. ...
— Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood
... in carrying that measure, so valuable for the safety and concord of the state, by which it was rendered impossible for any citizen to be either rich or poor. Solon's power could not reach this height, as he was only a commoner and a moderate man; yet he did all that was in his power, relying solely upon the confidence ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... life or service in this. There were as yet no independent schools or scholars, the monks and clergy represented the one learned class, Theology was the one professional study, the ability to read and write was not regarded by noble or commoner as of any particular importance, and all book knowledge was in a language which the people did not understand when they heard it and could not read. Society was as yet composed of three classes—feudal warriors, who spent their time in amusements or fighting, and who had evolved ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... muffled drums are still. The broken earth of the prairies is wrapped around the dead commoner, the fallen apostle of humanity, the universal brother of all who toil ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... piece of tin or "crampit" before referred to, grasp the stone firmly by the handle and hurl it along the ice. It is almost essential to let go the stone at the right moment, otherwise it will hurl you. The game is almost identical with the commoner game of "bowls," except for the language, which is worse. The term "wood" is inappropriate and must be avoided, as the use of it may lay you under a charge of ignorance or flippancy, which you will find almost impossible to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... and every way expensive), and put himself into a port and course of living agreeably thereunto, and having also removed my brother from Thame school to Merton College in Oxford, and entered him there in the highest and most chargeable condition of a Fellow Commoner, he found it needful to retrench his expenses elsewhere, the hurt of which fell upon me. For he thereupon took me from school, to save the charge of maintaining me there; which was somewhat like plucking green fruit from the tree, and laying it by before it was come to its due ripeness, ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... Ireton's regiment, called for "impartial and speedy justice" upon public criminals, and demanded "that the same fault may have the same punishment in the person of King or Lord as in the poorest Commoner." Such petitions to Fairfax appear to have dropped in upon him from regiment after regiment at St. Alban's during the next fortnight. One Petition, however, heard of in London Oct. 30, was from Colonel Ingoldsby's regiment, then in garrison at Oxford. It also demanded "immediate care ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... this game dates from the period when stiff cylinder-shaped horsehair sofa-cushions were commoner than they are now. One of these is placed in the middle of the room and the players join hands and dance round it, the object of each one being to make one of his neighbors knock the cushion over and to avoid knocking it over himself. Whoever does knock ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... preacher to whom I have alluded did not stand alone in his view, though perhaps it was not often so frankly expressed. But at least acquiescence in the existence of separated bodies of Christians, as a thing inevitable, was commoner than ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... been found there. The tin which she brought from the Cassiterides she distributed generally, for she did not discourage her colonists from manufacturing for themselves to some extent. There was probably no colony which did not make its own bronze vessels of the commoner sort and ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... singed the result is a further improvement. Yarns and fabrics constructed of the ordinary grades of cotton cannot be mercerized to advantage. The cost of producing high-grade mercerized yarn is about three times that of an unmercerized yarn of the same count, spun from the commoner qualities of cotton. ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... was little more than seven years old, the care of his education devolved upon his mother, who placed him under the celebrated schoolmaster, Thomas Farnaby; and in November 1623 he was admitted a Fellow-commoner of Jesus College, Cambridge, where he is said to have prosecuted his studies with success, and to have evinced a taste for classical literature. Being intended for the Bar, he was entered of the Inner Temple on the 22nd of January 1626; but that profession ill-accorded with ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... more sumptuously. He occasionally has fresh meat and fresh fish, and the dried articles nearly every day. He also indulges in cheese, usually of the commoner kind, known as prim, or mysost, which is not unlike brown Windsor soap. There are two other native cheeses, but they are considered somewhat expensive luxuries. They are called gammelost and pultost, and are made from sour skimmed milk, ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... college herself had altered greatly since his day. The fair court that Ralph Symons had constructed had now its complement in the fair new court of Francis Clerke. The enlargement of his mother-college was not so marvellous to him, however, as the enlargement of one among her sons. A fellow-commoner of his time had, like himself, come again to Cambridge, arriving thither by a different road. This fellow-commoner was now the member in Parliament for Cambridge, had buckled a soldier's baldric over a farmer's coat, had carried things with a high hand in the ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... another had actually succeeded in persuading nature to form a socket of gristle just in front of each ear, the socket being in relief and carrying a bunch of feathers. A few men had even painted their faces scarlet or yellow. No one seemed to know the significance of this habit (commoner farther north than at Bontok), but the paint was put on much after the fashion prevailing in Manchuria, and, if possibly for the same reason, certainly with the same result. The pigment or color ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... Europe, England's position was almost as contemptible. Such was the result of the attempt of the aristocracy to rule England. There was only one man who could save England, and he was an old man, poor, a commoner, and sick almost to death. But in 1757 William Pitt was called to the English helm, accepted the responsibility, and steered the country from her darkest to her most brilliant hour. The campaigns which drove the soldiers of ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... retained its privileged position. It was considered a law of nature that the noblemen should assist the monarch in the administration of the State and as leaders of the army; the peasant should cultivate the fields and provide food; the commoner should provide money through ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... successor to Hollweg, was the first commoner to be appointed to that high office, without even a "von" ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... commoner in the southern and eastern parts of Ohio than in the north, but there was at least one whose chief exploit had the north for its scene. Captain Samuel Brady, in 1780, gathered a number of his neighbors and pursued ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... again, and held the crowds by his self-chosen privations no less than by his fierce, fiery eloquence. His desert life and contempt for ease and luxury spoke of a strength of character and purpose which fascinated commoner men, and make the next point the more striking—namely, the utter humility with which this strong, self-reliant, fiery rebuker of sin, and despiser of rank and official dignities, flings himself at the feet of the coming ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... or the remains of a house, could be discerned. Hence the lieutenant and his friends were disposed to believe, that the people were destitute of dwellings, as well as of clothes; and that like the other commoner of nature, they spent their nights in the open air. Tupia himself was struck with their apparently unhappy condition; and shaking his head, with an air of superiority and compassion, said that they were taata enos, ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... evidently felt ashamed of themselves, every now and then I would come upon one or another running on toes and finger-tips, and quite unable to recover the vertical attitude. They held things more clumsily; drinking by suction, feeding by gnawing, grew commoner every day. I realised more keenly than ever what Moreau had told me about the "stubborn beast-flesh." They were ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... had not traversed the archery-ground twenty-five feet, from target to target, on her way to the refreshment-tent, ere half-a-dozen of the household troops, a bachelor baronet, and the richest young commoner of his year were presented by her host, at their own earnest request. Dick's high spirits went down like the froth in a glass of soda-water, and he fell back discouraged, to exchange civilities with ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... The ease with which fruit can be produced, when grown under conditions suitable to its proper development, is often remarkable, and is a constant source of wonder to all who have been accustomed to the comparatively slow growth of many of our commoner varieties of fruits when grown in less favoured climes, and to the care that is there necessary to produce profitable returns. Here all kinds of tree life is rapid, and fruit trees come into bearing much sooner than ...
— Fruits of Queensland • Albert Benson
... appointed carriage and she heard John say: "Rather sultry. Home down the lake shore, George." She wished their driver had not been named "George," but after all it made no difference. There could not be a commoner name than John, and she knew of but one that she liked better. For the ensuing three days she lived in a Lake Shore home of wealth. She watched closely not to trip in the heavy rugs and carpets. She looked at wonderful paintings and long shelves of books. She never had touched such china, or tasted ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... a still commoner disease than syphilis; how common it is very difficult to say. It is also an older disease, for the ancient Egyptians knew it, and the Biblical King Esarhaddon of Assyria, as the records of his court show, once caught ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... Adityan, but it seems King Ranulf insists that he's entitled to precedence, or, rather, his Lord Marshal does. This Lord Koreff insists that his king is not going to yield precedence to a commoner." ...
— Ministry of Disturbance • Henry Beam Piper
... would watch gentlemen in silk hats and black gloves bargaining with the fish-wives, and finally going off with boiled lobsters wrapped in paper in the pockets of their frock-coats.[*] Farther away, at the temporary stalls, where the commoner sorts of fish were sold, he would recognise the bareheaded women of the neighbourhood, who always came at the same hour to ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... articles of the creed, indeed,—"Father, almighty Maker of heaven and earth." But I fear that creed is not written in the tables of flesh, that is, the heart. There is a twofold mistake among men about the point of believing. Some, and the commoner sort, do think it is no other than simply to know such a thing, and not to question it, to hear it, and not to contradict it, or object against it, therefore they do flatter themselves in their own eyes, and do account themselves to have faith in God, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... together. What we may call emotional similarity of setting is therefore not necessarily a fallacy. Even when it subverts the actual, as in the fable of the morning stars, it may yet be representative of reality. In its commoner and less exaggerative phases it is very useful for purposes of suggestion; and only when it becomes blatant through abuse may it be said to belie the ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... rich deposits occur are exceedingly few and far between when compared with the vast areas of continental land, and we have every reason to believe that in past ages, as now, numbers of curious species were rare or local, the commoner and more abundant species giving a very imperfect idea of the existing series of animal forms. Yet more important, as showing the imperfection of our knowledge, is the enormous lapse of time between the several formations in which we find organic remains in any abundance, ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... am sure that by the time I was old enough to stumble over Mr. Harper's favorite big words I was old enough to tell the difference between an ordinary animal—say, a house cat—and any one of the commoner forms of plant life, such as, for example, the scaly-bark hickory tree, practically at a glance. I'll add this too: Nick Carter never wasted any of the golden moments which he and I spent together in elucidating for me the radical points of difference between ...
— A Plea for Old Cap Collier • Irvin S. Cobb
... as never before the reservoirs of ink, for he used every device of newspaper and pamphlet to drive home his message. He even printed his creed in Gaelic, Welsh and Erse. Third, he employed his kinship with the people to the fullest extent. The Commoner won. As the great structure of social reform rose under his dynamic powers so did the influence of the House of Lords crumble like an Edifice of Cards. Democracy in ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... assumptions, whether they call them dogmas or not; and they must clearly be assumptions common enough to stamp those who reject them as eccentrics or lunatics. And the greater and more heterogeneous the population the commoner the assumptions must be. A Trappist monastery can be conducted on assumptions which would in twenty-fours hours provoke the village at its gates to insurrection. That is because the monastery selects its people; and if a Trappist does ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... pictured for him gloriously delightful, utterly impossible scenes—Consuello and he on a yacht skimming the rolling waves of the ocean off Catalina, leisurely inspecting some "gabled foreign town"; she another Princess Patricia with "silken gowns" and "jewels for her hair," loving and wedding him, a "commoner" like the real princess' husband, despite the frowns of kings and queens, and settling down to rule a Graustark-like ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... win any renown in her profession, a geisha must be pretty or very clever; and the famous ones are usually both,—having been selected at a very early age by their trainers according to the promise of such qualities Even the commoner class of singing-girls must have some charm in their best years,—if only that beaute du diable which inspired the Japanese proverb that even a devil is pretty at eighteen(1). But Kimiko was much more than pretty. She was according to the Japanese ideal of beauty; and that standard is ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... motive, her conduct in the matter reacted on my lord; the fellow was in the way, very much so. How could he himself pay court to her when she frivolously, if only for the moment, preferred this commoner's company? That very afternoon my lord, entering the music-room of the great mansion, had found her at the piano playing for him, her slim fingers moving over the keys to the tune of one of Chopin's nocturnes. ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... wealth enormous; its parliamentary influence, as "a Great House," was a part of the British Constitution. At this period, the House of Vipont found it convenient to rend itself into two grand divisions,—the peer's branch and the commoner's. The House of Commons had become so important that it was necessary for the House of Vipont to be represented there by a great commoner. Thus arose the family of Carr Vipont. That division, owing ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... came from there, Juan. He may have come from the mountains of Biscaya, where fair skins are commoner than they are in the south. It is only that he described to us a port, which must have been Cadiz, as the last thing he recollected ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... mountains lift their snows, and send their brooks Down babbling with the news of silent things! But love itself is commonest of all, And loveliest of all, in all the worlds! And he that hath not forest, brook, or hill, Must learn to read aright what commoner books Unfold before him. If ocean solitudes— Then darkness dashed with glory, infinite shades, And misty minglings of the sea and sky. If only fields—the humble man of heart Will revel in the grass beneath ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... is readin' me frind Grover Cleveland out iv th' party. He's usin' the Commoner to read him out. ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne
... resident, and of Hoffmann the Austrian resident, who tell us much that is sought vainly in the meagre pages of Hansard. Then came the epoch of Dr. Johnson and his colleagues in Grub Street. But when the Whig reign ended, at the resignation of the great Commoner in 1761, the Whigs had not admitted the nation to the ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... born in London, 1644, From a private school at Chigwell, Essex, he entered, in 1660, as a gentleman commoner at Christ Church, Oxford; but, as he withdrew from the national forms of worship with other students, who, like himself, had listened to the preaching of Thomas Loe, a Quaker of eminence, who was fined for Non-conformity, and, the next year, as he pertinaciously ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... unto the letter: And why should not That, which authority Prescribes, esteemed be Advantage got ? If th' prayer be good, the commoner the better, Prayer in the Church's words, as well As sense, of all prayers ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... we can see that these ideas are transient. Parities of circumstance were probably commoner in the simple mechanism of ancient society than they are now, and in the succession of similar cases awards are likely to follow and resemble each other. Here we have the germ or rudiment of a Custom, ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... no little interest to the development of this romance. Its sudden termination astonished and mortified her. Had Lashmar turned away to make some brilliant alliance, her pique would have endured only for a moment; Lord Dymchurch's approach would have more than compensated the commoner's retirement. But that she should merely have amused his idle moments, whilst his serious thoughts were fixed on Constance Bride, was an injury not easy to pardon. For she disliked Miss Bride, and she knew the sentiment ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... two elder ladies; they were talking together eagerly. She walked over to the bow-shaped window, and opened the commoner envelope: ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... silence of the grave. Their immortal words ring still down the columned years of our country's history. They appeal to noble sons to emulate the heroes of this great conflict. Shall the slave's chains clank westward? No! Above the din of commoner men, the logic of John Bell, calm and patriotic, brings conviction. The soaring eloquence of Stephen A. Douglas claims ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... often placed above or below the coil so as only to receive a portion of its effect, enough for all practical purposes in the commoner class ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... lacked playmates, indeed, but was by no means neglected or unhappy, my father took me to Winchester College, his old school, to be improved in those classical studies which I had hitherto followed desultorily under our vicar, Mr. Grylls, and there entered me as a Commoner in the house of Dr. Burton, Head-master. I had spent almost four years at Winchester at the date (Midsummer, 1756) ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... our daily work, an' so we can, if we've a mind to! Daily work and common things shows Him to us,—why look there!"— here he pulled from his pocket a small paper-bag, and opening it, showed some dry loose seed—"There ain't nothin' commoner than that! That's pansy seed—a special stock too,—well now, if you didn't know how common it is, wouldn't it seem a miracle as wonderful as any in the Testymen, that out o' that handful o' dust like, the finest flowers of ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... mirrors.' Philosophers should. 'You write verse.' 'Tis permitted. 'You examine fish.' Following Aristotle. 'You worship a piece of wood.' So Plato. 'You marry a wife.' Obeying law. 'She is older than you.' Nothing commoner. 'You married for money.' Take the marriage-settlement, remember the deed of ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... man had committed an infamous crime; no one thanked the emperor for having bestowed upon the Austrian people the inestimable gift of equality before the law. The commoner himself felt aggrieved at the monarch who had treated a nobleman no better than he would ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... will be always but the blossom of all the half-conscious work below it, the fulfilment of the shortcomings of less complete minds: but it will waste much of its power, and have much less influence on men's minds, unless it be surrounded by abundance of that commoner work, in which all men once shared, and which, I say, will, when art has really awakened, be done so easily and constantly, that it will stand in no man's way to hinder him from doing what he will, good or evil. And as, on the one hand, I believe ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... at our lodgings, and she rushed out of the theater and up the street in an agony of terror. She got us out of the house all right, took us to the theater, and went on with the next act as if nothing had happened. Such fortitude is commoner in our profession, I think, than in any other. We "go on with the next act" whatever happens, and if we know our business, no one in the audience will ever guess that anything is wrong—that since the curtain last went down some dear friend has died, or our children ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... in perfect English, as he raised his cap, "that you have lost the rest of your party. You are also in the wrong course, so to speak. We are the commoner people here, you see. Can I help you ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... equals, or if anything she was the better of us two. I never made love to her in the commoner sense of the word, a sense in which the woman is conceived of as shy, unawakened, younger, more plastic, and the man as tempting, creating responses, persuading and compelling. We made love to each other as youth should, we were friends lit by a ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... was thronged with the deputies of the noblesse, the higher clergy, and the invited guests. But the members of the tiers, whose presence had been especially desired by His Majesty, were conspicuous by their absence. Here and there one saw a commoner in black coat and simple white tie, but he seemed to be separated from the rest of the splendid company by some invisible barrier, constrained, uneasy. Indeed, there was over the whole scene that same feeling of ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... letter he claimed to be the most rabid of Sansculottes. It is unlikely that he was ever very bare-kneed and crimson in his anarchy. He believed always that cruelty should be swiftly punished, whether in king or commoner, and that tyrants should be destroyed. He was for the people as against kings, and for the union of labor as opposed to the union of capital, though he wrote of such matters judicially—not radically. The Knights of Labor organization, then very powerful, seemed to Clemens the salvation of oppressed ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... great Commoner, but for whose aid We all should have gone with short commons to bed; And since he has saved all the fat from the fire, I move that the house be call'd Whitbread's Entire. {64} Tol de ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... entirely pleased with the result, but did not consider it necessary to tell him so, no idea having crossed their minds that he might be in one of those moods so frequent with artistic natures, when words of approbation and praise are as necessary to them, as the air we breathe is to us, mortals of a commoner clay. ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... made slaves (sa guiguilir)—through war, by the trade of goldsmith, or otherwise—happened to possess any gold beyond the sum that he had to give his master, he ransomed himself, becoming thus a namamahay, or what we call a commoner. The price of this ransom was never less than five taels, and from that upwards; and if he gave ten or more taels, as they might agree, he became wholly free. An amusing ceremony accompanied this custom. After having divided all the trinkets which the slave possessed, if he maintained a house ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... the outset. For these streets that were not paved at all until the fifteenth century, are only covered with rude stones, and look more like the interior of a vast open drain than anything; pigs and other animals stroll into them from the open doorways of the commoner houses, and even the richer families seem to consider that the highway is little ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... first to the private school of considerable reputation at Ramsbury in Wiltshire, kept by the Rev. Edward Meyrick, and, after four years there, became a commoner at Winchester College, where it is said that he and Dr. William Sewell were the only boys who jointly retarded the breaking out of the rebellion against Dr. Gabell, which took place after their departure. However, in April 1818 he left Winchester, and became a commoner ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge |
