"Hobbyhorse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are all specimens of the upper part of the middle class. They have been liberally educated. They all lie under the restraints of the same sacred profession. They are all young. They are all in love. Not one of them has any hobbyhorse, to use the phrase of Sterne. Not one has a ruling passion, such as we read of in Pope. Who would not have expected them to be insipid likenesses of each other? No such thing. Harpagon is not more unlike to Jourdain, Joseph Surface is not more unlike to Sir ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... sang sometimes as long as nine minutes. Her song usually came forth when she was at play, or exercising in some way. One time she became especially delighted because her wheel squeaked when she turned it. You know how pleased a boy is when his hobbyhorse creaks. So Hespie, too, enjoyed the new noise; but it so drowned her pretty little warble that a drop of oil was put in the wheel ...
— Dew Drops, Vol. 37, No. 8, February 22, 1914 • Various
... mouth. "There was once a large king. It wasn't his fault. The girth went with the crown. All the Koppabottemburgs were enormous. Besides, it went very well with his subjects. Looking upon him, they felt they were getting their money's worth. A man of simple tastes, his favourite hobby ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... Belle galloping away at a great pace, on her new hobby. I should n't be surprised to hear of her preaching in the jail, adopting a nice dirty little orphan, or passing round tracts at a Woman's Rights meeting," said Trix, who never could forgive Belle for having a lovely complexion, and so much hair of her own that she ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... thing is pretty clear. It would be less clear if those coins had been worn by use and circulation. But they are both of them Mint perfect, and they are of different dates. Do you suppose that our friend Fenwick makes a hobby of collecting English sovereigns? Besides, the man in the frock coat was going to do something with these coins; and, of course, you noticed how carefully they were ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... about the educated classes? It has long since been the boast and hobby of advanced theology that it, and it alone, will satisfy the religious longings of the educated man who has broken with the traditional dogma and doctrines of orthodox Christianity. But what are the actual facts in the case? It is a fact that there are a considerable ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... the congeniality of humour with pathos, so exquisite in Sterne and Smollett, and hence also the tender feeling which we always have for, and associate with, the humours or hobby-horses of a man. First, we respect a humourist, because absence of interested motive is the ground-work of the character, although the imagination of an interest may exist in the individual himself, as if a remarkably simple-hearted man should pride himself ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... recommendation, with the exaggerated estimate of my ability with which he prefaced it, was, if you will believe me, Watson, the very first thing which ever made me feel that a profession might be made out of what had up to that time been the merest hobby. At the moment, however, I was too much concerned at the sudden illness of my host to ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... to ride his own hobby horse. Would it not be wise to suggest that some of these seedlings be put in odd corners? Certainly the hickory and walnut are adept in making themselves a home in ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... the worthiest part of every man, and the longest share of his existence (to say nothing of what it has to do with matters now); and the knowledge of what we call Nature, and of all the laws which concern our bodies, and rule the conditions of life in this world. It's a hobby of mine, Mr. Dacre, and I'm afraid I ride my hobbies rather like a witch on a broomstick. But a man must deal according to his lights and his conscience; and if I am intrusted with the lad's education for a while, it will be my duty and pleasure to instruct him in religious lore and ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... gathered were these: M. Destange, who was in failing health and anxious for rest, had retired from business and was living among the architectural books which it had been his hobby to collect. He had no interest left in life beyond the handling and examining of those ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... wishes to meet with a gentleman or lady to share her home as sole paying guest; one with a hobby for gardening preferred; every home comfort; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... a good many helpful ideas into pretty Huldah's somewhat empty pate, though it by no means cured her of all her superstitions. She continued to keep a record of Saturday weather, and it proved as interesting and harmless a hobby as the ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... parishioners are in the best possible health, thank God! and they live to be very old. I have barely two or three marriages in a year, and as many burials, so that, you see, one must fill up one's time somehow to escape the sin of idleness. Every man must have a hobby. Mine is ornithology; ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... in this kingdom where it is not known; it is a dance of young men in their shirts, with bells at their feet, and ribbons of various colours tied round their arms, and slung across their shoulders. Some writers, Shakespeare in particular, mention a Hobby-horse and a Maid Marian, as necessary in this recreation. Sir William Temple speaks of a pamphlet in the library of the Earl of Leicester, which gave an account of a set of morrice-dancers in King James's reign, ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... to the burning. In Gradisca burning petrol was running about the streets. Earlier in the evening there had been a queer scene here. The Headquarters of the British Staff had been at Gradisca, and the Camp Commandant had made a hobby of fattening rabbits for the General's Mess. When the time had come that day to pack up and go, it was found that the lorries provided were fully loaded with office stores, Staff officers' bulky kit and 20,000 cigarettes, ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... prized the trout like precious jewels. John and James Ellison, Farmer Ellison's sons, and Benjamin, their cousin, fished the pool once in a great while—and got soundly trounced if caught. It was Farmer Ellison's hobby, this pool and its fish. He gloated over them like a miser. He watched them leap, and counted them when they did, as a miser ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... it is not so difficult to create the beautiful, if one has a little taste and great patience. My inn—it has become my hobby, my pride, my wife, my children. Some men marry their art, I espoused my inn. I found her poor, tattered, broken-down, in health, if you will; verily, as your Shakespeare says of some country wench: 'a poor thing but mine own.'" Monsieur ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... its efficiency." The next year Mr. Jenckes made a second report, but it was not until 1871 that action on the subject was secured.[44] George W. Curtis says that at first he "pressed it upon an utterly listless Congress, and his proposition was regarded as the harmless hobby of an amiable man, from which a little knowledge of practical politics would soon dismount him."[45] Most members of Congress thought the reform a mere vagary, and that it was brought forward at a most inopportune time.[46] Mr. Jenckes was the pioneer of the reform, according ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... are decorated with charming little pictures depicting children's games. Activities portrayed include skating, bowling, spinning tops, fishing, rolling hoops, using a yo-yo, swinging, wrestling, skipping rope, shooting, playing skittles, riding a hobby horse, sledding, boxing, and playing musical instruments. These pictures remind us that games played by boys and girls today are very similar to those enjoyed by children ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter
... circumstances or of companionship. She was perfectly content with her life, and none the less so although those to whom she recounted the various phases of it were not so content at second hand with hearing the recital of it. She was one of those fortunate persons who have a hobby which takes the place of parents, husband, children, relations—a hobby, moreover, which appears to afford a delight quite independent of the varying degrees of success with which it is pursued. Unhappily the joy of those who ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... but the little grey-haired woman objected that this meant free love, whereupon Kendall was off again on his hobby. ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... exchange of diplomatic courtesies, but in secret he was sounding Napoleon's possible attitude in the oncoming Prussian war, against Austria. The Emperor was completely tricked. Bismarck talked frankly of the necessity of "reform" in the German Confederation, and Napoleon, whose hobby was that peoples speaking the same language should be under one rule, fell in quite naturally with the plan to "reform" Prussia. The Emperor thought that Bismarck had in mind only certain constitutional changes ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... was called Uccello (bird). He was one of the first painters who cultivated perspective. Before his time buildings had not a true point of perspective, and figures appeared sometimes as if falling or slipping off the canvass. He made this branch so much his hobby, that he neglected other essential parts of the art. To improve himself he studied geometry with Giovanni Manetti, a celebrated mathematician. He acquired great distinction in his time and some of his works still remain in the churches and convents ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... just a few years ago flying was popularly regarded as a dangerous hobby and comparatively few had faith in its practical purposes. But the phenomenal evolutions of the aircraft industry during the war brought progress which would otherwise have required a span of years. With the cessation of hostilities considerable attention has been diverted to the commercial ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... us, ambitious demagogues have seized upon the subject of slavery, and are convulsing the country from one end to the other. Slavery is the demagogue's hobby, and he mounts it, raises his hat, kicks and spurs, as if the salvation of the universe was suspended on his elevation, to some petty, insignificant office. Slavery is to us, as a great subterraneous fire, which is ever ready to burst upon us with volcanic violence, deluging our country with ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... Do you make your care the excuse of your Cowardise? Three Boys on Hobby-horses, with three penny ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... interested or informed. The more serious questions of life are barred in society; people wish to be amused, not instructed. An inveterate talker, especially one of a didactic turn, is a bore. So is the man who puts a hobby through its paces. Avoid exaggerations in conversation, also extravagances, such as "beastly this" or "awfully that," also avoid over emphasis. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... Mrs. Calvert say that there was no gentleman so fine as a southern one. Mr. Seth laughs at her and says that's a 'hobby,' and she's 'mistaken.' He says 'gentlemen don't grow any better on one soil than another,' but are 'indigenous to the whole United States,' though Mr. Winters is a Marylander himself." Then she naively added in explanation, and in a little vanity about her botanical lore: "'Indigenous' means, maybe ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... ladies, as well as in those who will sometime become young ladies. My daughters are being brought up according to the rules and regulations laid down by a leading bachelor who has given the subject much study and is himself a man of taste and culture. Politeness is his great hobby, and he claims that if a child is allowed to do an impolite thing one cannot expect the grown person to do ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... was evidently riding a hobby, and what I wanted to know was the plan on which he had formed his library. So I brought him back to the point by asking him the question ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... The men are hobby-riders. They have just one interest and that usually small and dull—stocks or iron or real estate or hunting or automobiles. Our women are not like the English women—stupid, sodden. They are alive, acute. They wish to be interested. Their husbands bore them. So—well, what is the natural temptation ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... and the foregoing extract includes the most practical part of it; the rest is a series of dissertations on bird flight, in which, evidently, the portrait painter's observations were far less thorough than those of da Vinci or Borelli. Taken on the whole, Walker was a man with a hobby; he devoted to it much time and thought, but it remained a hobby, nevertheless. His observations have proved useful enough to give him a place among the early students of flight, but a great drawback to his work is the lack of practical experiment, by means of which alone real advance ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... industrious as an ant, and in the highest degree helpful to those who were deserving of help, but less merciful than Lafontaine's ants were to thoughtless crickets and their fellows. Louise had three hobby-horses, although she never would confess that she had a single one. The first was to work tapestry; the second, to read sermons; and the third, to play Patience, and more especially Postillion. A fourth had of late began to discover itself, and that was for medicine—for the discovering and ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... three are only just common lions, and are always asleep. Now I come to life once in every generation and have a talk to the children, or to any one grown up who is imaginative enough to understand me. I like children, they are a hobby of mine. I am not in my usual spirits to-day," continued the Lion, ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... many personal anecdotes related, as of Henry IV. These are for the most part well known, and of easy access. Among them stands out prominently the tale of the Spanish ambassador who to his astonishment, found Henry on the floor playing hobby-horse for his children. "Are you a father?" asked Henry, looking up without any apparent embarrassment. "Yes, your majesty." "Then we will finish our game," said the king. And he did so, before taking up his business with ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... Italian masters; there is also the spelling school, a very spacious building; the school of looking-glasses; the school of swearing; the school of critics; the school of salivation; the school of hobby-horses; the school of poetry; the school of tops; the school of spleen; the school of gaming; with many others too tedious to recount. No person to be admitted member into any of these schools without an attestation under two sufficient ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... had been behind me, and I knocked down several books which he was carrying. I remember that as I picked them up I observed the title of one of them, "The Origin of Tree Worship," and it struck me that the fellow must be some poor bibliophile who, either as a trade or as a hobby, was a collector of obscure volumes. I endeavoured to apologize for the accident, but it was evident that these books which I had so unfortunately maltreated were very precious objects in the eyes of their owner. With a snarl of contempt he turned upon his heel, and I saw his ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... instant. "I see the subject to be full of perplexities; the class has seemed a bewildering one; the idea of putting the babies away alone in their own room fitted up for the purpose, and feeding them with milk until they are old enough to bear strong meat, has been something of a hobby with me. I like it theoretically, but I confess to you that I have never been able to enjoy its ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... amoeba or some primitive organism of that sort, under a Titan's microscope. He was large, undifferentiated, inert—since I could remember him he had done nothing but take his temperature and read the Churchman. Oh, and cultivate melons—that was his hobby. Not vulgar, out-of-door melons—his were grown under glass. He had miles of it at Wrenfield—his big kitchen-garden was surrounded by blinking battalions of green-houses. And in nearly all of them melons were grown—early melons and late, French, English, domestic—dwarf melons and monsters: ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... HOBBY. A translation. Hobbies are used by some students in translating Latin, Greek, and other languages, who from this reason are said to ride, in contradistinction to others who learn their lessons by study, who are ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... 1906, I was on hand with a capable stenographer—Miss Josephine Hobby, who had successively, and successfully, held secretarial positions with Charles Dudley Warner and Mrs. Mary Mapes Dodge, and was therefore peculiarly qualified for the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... movement might be started as a hobby, and in the end lead public opinion to judicial choice and action. No such movement, however, is possible without leaders, and leaders of ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... anything was being done on his behalf. There was not to be the least semblance of charity, and whatever was done for him had to appear to be the natural payment for value received. If the old man had any special hobby or scheme, no matter how wild, so long as it was legitimate, I was to undertake to see that it should be carried out, no matter what the expense. If the scheme proved feasible, so much the better, and strict business methods were to be used to make it pay. But if not, ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... fleet, the first of modern times, and therefore one in which the out-of-date Great Harry had no proper place at all. She was absurdly top-hampered and over-gunned. And, for all her thousand tons, she must have bucketed about in the chops of the Channel with the same sort of hobby-horse, see-sawing pitch that bothered Captain Concas in 1893 when sailing an exact reproduction of Columbus's flagship, the Santa Maria, across the North Atlantic to the ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... the organ of communication? Is it understood that anti-abolitionism is a passport to popular favor, and that the action of this District shall present for that favor to the public a gentleman upon this hobby? Is this petition presented as a subject of fair legislation? Was it solicited by members of Congress, from citizens here, for political effect? Let the country judge. The petitioners state that no persons but themselves are authorized to interfere with slavery in the District; that Congress are ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... always been loyal to Cape Cod. Now I decided to have a home at Wianno, across the Cape from my old parish at East Dennis. Deep-seated as my home-making aspiration had been, it was realized largely as the result of chance. A special hobby of mine has always been auction sales. I dearly love to drop into auction-rooms while sales are in progress, and bid up to the danger-point, taking care to stop just in time to let some one else get the offered article. But of course I sometimes failed ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... was basking in an Italian civilization, but further still. He showed how the Druids were rather to be described as Ante-Christian than Anti—with an i; and played ponderously on this quip. In Druidism, he observed—I am sure I cannot think why, but it was his hobby—you had a remarkable foreshadowing of Christianity; the idea of the human sacrifice, the Atonement, the Communion of Saints, the mystic Vine, which he clumsily identified with the mistletoe, and what not else. He read portions of his privately-published Tales of Taliessin. ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... seen him, and he was, in fact, a walking De Beers mine. For his personal adornment, more than a million dollars' worth of gems did relay duty. He had scores of sets, every one of them fit for a king of diamonds. It was a curious hobby for a great, strong man, yet he was not alone in his love of and sheer affection for things beautiful. Not love of display or desire to attract notice to himself had prompted him to collect diamonds, but the ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... high thinking," with its queer mixture of culture and agriculture, was Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance, which has for its background an idealized picture of the community life, whose heroine, Zenobia, has touches of Margaret Fuller; and whose hero, with his hobby of prison reform, was a type of the one-idead philanthropists that abounded in such an environment. Hawthorne's attitude was always in part one of reserve and criticism, an attitude which is apparent in the reminiscences of Brook Farm in his American Note Books, wherein he ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... lined with yellow. Beside the piper was another minstrel, similarly attired, and provided with a tabor. Lastly came one of the main features of the pageant, and which, together with the Fool, contributed most materially to the amusement of the spectators. This was the Hobby-horse. The hue of this, spirited charger was a pinkish white, and his housings were of crimson cloth hanging to the ground, so as to conceal the rider's real legs, though a pair of sham ones dangled ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... mother. But, all the time, I was conscious of Lotzen waiting—waiting—waiting. I could hear his voice and Lady Helen's merry laugh, yet I knew nothing but the ending of the supper and the breaking of the party, with Lady Radnor still riding her hobby, would save me from the question. I threw in another remark to keep her going. ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... a taste with Keith's father. It was a hobby, and one of his few pastimes was to skirmish in strange little shops for some particularly old and strong-smelling piece at a reasonable price. When he brought home a bargain of that kind, he acted like a bibliophile having just captured a rare first edition for a song, and the mother ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... eager haste, now that his secret was out, he was for dropping everything else and rushing headlong into his hobby. Cicely counselled patience. ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... A hobby, or a secondary object of interest, is therefore a real necessity to the man or woman battling for a purpose, whose interest must be sustained. It acts to relax, to shift the excitement and to allow something of the feeling of novelty as one ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... whose reverses had driven him to the sad necessity of earning a living in Paris entirely without assistance. He had fallen back on the extraordinary bibliographical knowledge which, especially in reference to music, it had been his hobby to acquire in the days of his prosperity. His real name he never told me, wishing to guard the secret of that, as of his misfortunes, until after his death. For the time being he told me only that he was known as Anders, was of noble descent, and had held property on the Rhine, but ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... deal of idleness and waste of time, unless a man or woman be very determined to employ their spare time profitably. For this reason, I should advise any actor, or actress, to cultivate some rational hobby or interest by the side of their work; for until the time comes for an actor to assume the cares and labours of management, he must have a great deal of time on his hands that can be better employed ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... I had a little hobby horse, And it was dapple grey; Its head was made of pea-straw, Its tail was made of hay. I sold it to an old woman For a copper groat; And I'll not sing my song ...
— Young Canada's Nursery Rhymes • Various
... of them ever came to camp again. I hope Kay's'll try and behave decently. It'll be an effort for them; but I hope they'll make it. It would be an awful nuisance if young Billy made an ass of himself in any way. He loves making an ass of himself. It's a sort of hobby ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... Cecil cheerily, "and unburden thyself to me of all save affairs of State; of them am I exceeding weary, for the King hath a new hobby, a tax on beets and onions, in the discussion of which the ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... any time or in any weather, which was his one disagreeable, superior-to-others trick. Most of his qualities were likable, and he was likable, though a queer fellow in some ways, said his best friends—the ones who called him "Petro." When the ship played that she was a hobby-horse or a crab (if that is the creature which shares with elderly Germans a specialty for walking from side to side), also a kangaroo, and occasionally a boomerang, Peter Rolls ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... climatic surroundings, yet I must disclaim any desire to pose as a "faddist." In truth, there are too many worthy people who would submit all the world to their theories in a Procrustean fashion, and who see in their particular hobby a panacea for the whole of human frailties and human sufferings. Instead, therefore, of dilating on the undeniable consequences attached to the reasonless use of animal food at present followed throughout Australia, I shall content myself with ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... "pothooks," when she was teaching him writing, without blots. Curiously enough, when, some years ago, improvements were being made at the Abbey, a number of copy-books of the style of writing common at the period in which Lady Hobby lived were discovered behind ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... inquired into what they were doing, and found there was in that Quarter the great Magazine of Rebus's. These were several Things of the most different Natures tied up in Bundles, and thrown upon one another in heaps like Faggots. You might behold an Anchor, a Night-rail, and a Hobby-horse bound up together. One of the Workmen seeing me very much surprized, told me, there was an infinite deal of Wit in several of those Bundles, and that he would explain them to me if I pleased; I thanked him for his Civility, but told him I was in very great haste at that time. As I was going ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Dick, "this is interesting. I'm not an architect, but construction's my business, as well as my hobby." ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... medicine and religion. It is the "new tongue" of Truth, having its best interpretation in the power of Christianity to heal. My system of Mind-healing swerves not from the highest ethics and from the spiritual goal. To climb up by some other way than Truth is to fall. Error has no hobby, however boldly ridden or brilliantly caparisoned, that can leap into the sanctum of ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... that is worth while it is one that takes us out- of-doors. What the attractive features of your hobby may be, is not of very great importance provided this object is secured. You must be lured away from your stuffy living rooms and encouraged to breathe the fresh, ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... he is certainly a gentleman, and I believe, in the ordinary way, quite incapable of anything in the least degree dishonorable; although, of course, they say a collector has no conscience in the matter of his own particular hobby, and certainly Mr. Wollett is as keen a collector as any man alive. He lives in chambers in the next turning past Claridge's premises—can, in fact, look into Claridge's back windows if he likes. He examined the cameo several times before I bought it, and made several high ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... brains; for instance, the daemon belief of Socrates and the ludicrous superstitions of Pythagoras; and you have laid your finger on the softened spot in Mill's skull, 'suffrage.' That is a jaded, spavined hobby of his, and he is too shrewd a logician to involve himself in the inconsistency of 'extended suffrage' which excludes women. When I read his 'Representative Government' I saw that his reason had dragged anchor, the prestige of his great name vanished, and I threw the book into ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... university was part of the great Palo Alto ranch of the Stanfords, devoted to the raising of grain, grapes and the famous trotting horses that were "the Senator's" hobby and California's pride. It resembled the Berkeley situation, in that the bay lies before it and the foothills of the Santa Cruz range behind, but the former is three miles away and the Palo Alto country is so level that only when one climbs the rolling slopes behind the college ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... chance I came to a place I'd never been in before. It was in a wood, and there was an old chalk-pit there, and out of the chalk-pit there came a queer kind of a sort of a humming, humming noise. So I got off my hobby to see what made it, and went quite quiet to the edge of the pit and looked down. And what do you think I saw? The funniest, queerest, smallest, little, black Thing you ever set eyes upon. And it had a little spinning-wheel and it was spinning away for dear life, but the wheel didn't ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... ashore," he told himself. "A man can choose what hobby he will and, if he don't like ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... did not abate my thirst for knowledge, developed my constructive powers. I became a mechanician and an inventor. Perpetual motion was my first hobby. Six times during the course of boyhood did I burst into my mother's presence with the astounding news that I had "discovered it at last!" The mild and trustful being believed me. Six times also was I compelled to acknowledge ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... third, was first the wife of Sir Thomas Hobby, ambassador to France, and afterwards, of John, Lord Russel, son and heir of Francis Russel, Earl of Bedford. Such was her progress in the learned languages, that she gained the applause of the most eminent scholars of the age, and for the tombs of both her husbands, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various
... great speed, and meeting with the resistance of the Ferriers and other huge rocks, whirls, and turns, and foams in all directions, so that a frail craft like a canoe would be a death-trap to anyone foolhardy enough to venture out in it. That being the case, I could only follow my canoeing hobby when the sea was calm, but even then did ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... much retired from the world, and meddling little in its concerns, yet I think it almost a religious duty to salute at times my old friends, were it only to say and to know that 'all's well.' Our hobby has been politics; but all here is so quiet, and with you so desperate, that little matter is furnished us for active attention. With you too, it has long been forbidden ground, and therefore imprudent for a foreign friend to tread, in ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... produce the vine and the maize in large quantities, deserve to be accounted fertile. It is true that if you be a soldier, you will examine, with interest, the ground over which the hostile armies manoeuvred both previous to the battle of Austerlitz and afterwards. If geology be your hobby, in the low but picturesque hills, the far-off roots of nobler mountains, which, in many places, hang over the road, and give to it an exceedingly romantic character, you will find something for the eye to rest upon. Various dilapidated castles, too, that crown these rocks, may ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... professor, doubtless, he had caught the idea that strength was as much of the quality as the quantity of the muscle, while superiority in performance required a certain mind as well as strength. Having adopted the doctrine, like most men with a hobby, he was always looking ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... HOBBY-HORSE, imitation horse of some light material, fastened round the waist of the morrice-dancer, who imitated the ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... politics drew him, and, step by step, through rough and ready service at the polls, in town caucus, county convention, what not, he secured his footing and finally a seat in the lower house of the State Legislature. In politics a hobby is often a useful piece of property, and Shelby, who had a hobby, rode it to success; it made him a marked man in the first month of his term, it gave him a popular title, it compelled his renomination and reflection. Nowadays chairmen always introduced him as the "Champion of Canals," ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... dipsomaniac wife. She is, of course, under care, and is never mentioned in the house where he lives, maybe with his widowed mother and perhaps a maiden sister. They notice that he has become gloomy and brooding of late, but he lives his usual life, occupying himself each day with some harmless hobby. On foggy nights, once the quiet household is plunged in sleep, he creeps out of the house, maybe between one and two o'clock, and swiftly makes his way straight to what has become The Avenger's murder area. Picking out a likely victim, he ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... been more of a hobby with him than a profession. He knew that he had talent, but talent without hard work is a poor weapon, and he had always shirked hard work. He had an instinct for colour, but his drawing was uncertain. He hated linework, while knowing ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... Henry put it on the day when he first invited him to lunch with him at his club. "I'd about as soon think of sitting down with one of my grooms as breaking bread with one of that lot; and I shall never get it out of my head that you're a gentleman going in for this sort of thing as a hobby—never b'Gad! if I live to be ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... of course I know what you mean, for the whole house is full of the perfume of Margaret's flowers. Sometimes our friends declare that they can smell them half-way down the road, but that is nonsense. Still flowers are my sister's hobby; she can not live without ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Hawksley. "My word, though, I wobbled a bit going round that block. I almost kissed the hobby. I say, he thought I'd been tilting a few. But it was ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... bloom, as well as spring plants, Lord Fawn. You come and see her, Mr. Finn;—only you must bring a little money with you for the Female Protestant Unmarried Women's Emigration Society. That is my aunt's present hobby, as Lord Fawn knows ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... programme of the moderate party; with the reconstruction of our penal system; with education, and so many kindred interests; and, finally, of course, with colour photography and process printing. This last Deane Elmer always spoke of as his hobby, but we may doubt whether all his interests were not hobbies in the same sense. He is the natural descendant of those earlier amateur scientists—the adjective conveys no reproach—of the nineteenth century, among ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... was on his hobby, exalting his own city at the expense of every other place. I have my doubts if he had been in either of the cities he had been talking about. I was just going to say something to sober him down, if I could, when the young Marylander ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... judgment of ninety." These expressions of grave doubt as to the expediency of "female suffrage," together with the fact that the editor of the Tribune, in his report as chairman of the Suffrage Committee in the New York Constitutional Convention, declared this new hobby "an innovation revolutionary and sweeping, openly at war with a distribution of duties and functions between the sexes as venerable and pervading as government itself," make the Tribune's recommendation that we shall ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... he lays down general principles with a quaint extravagance which marks the peculiar humor of the man. "No government has the right to make hobby-horses, asses, and slaves of the subject; nature having made sufficient of the two former, for all the lawful purposes of man, from the harmless peasant in the field to the most refined politician in the cabinet; but none of the last, which infallibly proves that they are unnecessary." ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... seems to have made a hobby of the literature that arouses violent emotion and mental excitement, or lacerates the nerves, or shocks and startles. The lifelike and the natural are not powerful enough for his taste, though some of his Romantic Tales(1808), such ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... made 'axeth' to rhyme with 'taxeth.' No word is more common in Suffolk than 'fare'; a pony is a 'hobby'; a thrush is a 'mavis'; a chest is a 'kist'; a shovel is a 'skuppet'; a chaffinch is a 'spink.' If a man is upset in his mind, he tells us he is 'wholly stammed,' and the Suffolk 'yow' is at least as old as Chaucer, ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... the day was done I found that deep down in him somewhere he had a passion, quiet as he was—a passion for reforming petty public abuses. He stood for citizenship—it was his hobby. His idea was that every citizen of the republic ought to consider himself an unofficial policeman, and keep unsalaried watch and ward over the laws and their execution. He thought that the only effective way of preserving and protecting public rights ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... my room in Albemarle Street, watching Haines, who was cleaning a piece of old silver I had bought at an auction on the previous day. The collecting of old silver is, I may say, my hobby, and the piece was a very fine old Italian reliquary, about ten inches in height, with the Sicilian mark of ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... antiquary and collector, born in London; passed through Edinburgh University to the Scotch bar, and was chief authority on genealogical cases; his hobby was the collection of literary rarities, and he published editions of ancient literary remains; ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... this, friend bee-hunter," added the missionary, who by this time had fairly mounted his hobby, and fancied he saw a true Israelite in every other Indian of the west, "and tell me if words were ever more prophetic—'Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf; in the morning he shall devour his prey, and at night he shall divide the ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... play at night, which their majesties had ordered, with Mrs. Siddons to play Lady Townly.(311) Dinner-time, however, came and passed, and they arrived not. They went by sea, and the wind proved contrary; and about seven o'clock a hobby groom was despatched thither by land, with intelligence that they had only reached Lulworth Castle at five o'clock. They meant to be certainly back by eight ; but sent their commands that the farce might be performed first, and the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... (1) At the at-home aforesaid. (2) At Macmurdo's house in Fitzroy Street in the days of the Century Guild and its paper 'The Hobby Horse.' (3) At a meeting somewhere in Westminster at which I delivered an address on Socialism, and at which Oscar turned up and spoke. Robert Ross surprised me greatly by telling me, long after Oscar's death, that it was this address of mine that moved ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... I must give orders for these seats to be placed;" and as soon as he was outside he summoned Wrench—the pale-faced and red-nosed official whose principal duty it was, with the assistance of a sturdy hobbledehoy (Mounseer Hobby-de-Hoy, as the boys called him) to keep well-blackened the whole of the boots in the big establishment—and gave orders to carry out and run a line of forms all along the outer wall of the great playground, which was continued farther on by ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... a bevy of quail. Our fat Belgian chauffeur, violinist in times of peace, and posing that day as an American,—one of those men who look as if they would bleed water if you pricked them with a bayonet,—needed no second warning. Running the German gauntlet was not precisely his hobby. Down went the emergency brake and the car jolted ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... know pretty well and who kept me filled in on the latest UFO scuttlebutt being passed around the Washington press circles. He was one of those humans who had a brain like a filing cabinet; he could remember everything about everything. UFO's were a hobby of his. He remembered when the Grudge Report came out; in fact, he'd managed to get a copy of his own. He said the report had been quite impressive, but only in its ambiguousness, illogical reasoning, and very apparent effort to write ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... the Monasteries was exhausted, the Tudor Sovereigns, or perhaps their favourites, took themselves to exacting gifts and grants from the Bishops, and thus Poynet who was intended in the stead of Gardiner gave Merdon to Edward VI, who presented it to Sir Philip Hobby. It was recovered by Bishop Gardiner, but granted back again by Queen Elizabeth. Sir Philip is believed to have first built a mansion at Hursley, and his nephew sold the place to Sir Thomas Clarke, who was apparently ...
— Old Times at Otterbourne • Charlotte M. Yonge
... blazing sands under a sun of fire. All the members of the party felt fresh and hardy after the involuntary bath, except one of the Indians, who was affected with a kind of ophthalmia. This attack, which Mr. Marcoy attributed partly to the glare, partly to the wet, and partly to a singular hobby peculiar to the individual of sleeping with his eyes wide open, was of no long duration. The pain which he complained of disappeared with a few hours of exercise and with the determination he showed in staring straight at the god of day, who, as if in memory of the worship ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... his usual manner on his special hobby, which is that modern nations are taking an entirely false route in preventing the settlement of their difficulties by trained diplomatists, and intrusting them to arbitration by men inexperienced in international matters, who really cannot be unprejudiced or uninfluenced; ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... impunity. When Nobili first came to Lucca, the old families looked coldly at him, his nobility being of very recent date. It was bestowed on his father, a successful banker—some said usurer, some said worse—by the Grand-duke Leopold, for substantial assistance toward his pet hobby—the magnificent road that zigzags up the ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... "It's his greatest hobby. In his taste for salt water he at least resembles his ancestors. The Gurneys were all sailors ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... I dunno what to do with it. If Carter ever comes back he might not like my getting rid of it. I was thinking mebbe I'd put it in the hobby show at the county fair next week, though. Ya notice how that funny-looking cube inside there gets bigger every time you look at it? There ... it just doubled its size again, see? People at the fair oughtta get a big kick outta that. No ...
— Vanishing Point • C.C. Beck
... on the breast of the heaven-inspired poet who composed this glorious fragment. There is more of the fire of native genius in it than in half-a-dozen of modern English Bacchanalians! Now I am on my hobby-horse, I cannot help inserting two other old stanzas, which please ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... modernism. If he were to shift his activities to Paris, he would be taken up at once for his actual value as modern artist expressing present day notions of actual things. Perhaps he will not care to be called Dada, but it is nevertheless true. He has ridden his own vivacious hobby-horse with as much liberty, and one may even say license, as is possible for one intelligent human being. There is no space to tell casually of his various aspects such as champion billiard player, racehorse enthusiast, etcetera. This information would please ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... called Master Vaughan, which bade the Lord of Granthuse welcome. Then the King had him and all his company into the little Park, where he made him have great sport; and there the King made him ride on his own horse, on a right fair hobby, the which the King gave him." The King's dinner was "ordained" in the Lodge, Windsor Park. After dinner they hunted again, and the King showed his guest his garden and vineyard of pleasure. Then "the Queen did ordain a great banquet in her own chamber, at which King Edward, her eldest daughter ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... Chow's hobby of concocting weird dishes was a standing joke at Enterprises, and already had led to such dubious triumphs as ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... a pleasant hobby of his imaginary maladies, trying each patent nostrum, and giving herbalists, electric-belt men, Christian Scientists, and dozens of other weird "specialists" a chance ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... Guglielmo had tutors and he led them a merry chase to keep up with his questions. Then, when still young, he was sent to an advanced school in Leghorn, later entering the University at Bologna. But with all that he learned of theory and practice concerning what had become his hobby, he obtained more knowledge at home, for his investigations were not along discovered routes, but ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... glare eagerly and silently at the speaker. Generally on such occasions matters are made infinitely worse by some Job's comforter, who creeps about suggesting abstruse questions, and hinting that they represent some examiner's particular hobby. Such a one came to Dimsdale's elbow, and quenched the last ray of hope which lingered in the ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... were an unceasing hobby to the old man. The secondhand dealers never made any objection to his reading books upon the shelves. His purchases were perhaps two books a week, at ten or even five cents each. Now and again he would find one of his own "Irving's Latin Prose ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... stone steps, through a low doorway, and into a dark little corridor, was Lesley conducted. She noticed that Mrs. Romaine and Ethel were quite accustomed to the place. "We have often been before, you know," Ethel explained. "It's your father's hobby, you know; his doll's house, or Noah's Ark, or whatever you like to call it—his pet toy. I always call it his Noah's Ark myself. The animals walk in two by two. The men may bring their wives on Sundays. Oh, by the bye, Lesley, I hope you don't mind ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... compliment by praising her flowers in his eager, hearty, enthusiastic way. Her coolness made her seem to him very superior; his enthusiasm made him very piquant and delightful to her. And when he got upon his hobby and told her how grand a vocation the teacher's profession was, and recited stories of the self-denial of Pestalozzi and Froebel, and the great schemes of Basedow, and told how he meant here in ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... do not make other people uncomfortable in the pursuit of your hobby. You will find that almost every one is afraid of bugs and toads and that most people live in a world full of wonderful things and only see a little beyond ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... "francs-tireurs." Above all she is a woman of business. She is without home or child, and her time and labour are arranged with military precision. She has her theory of the poor and of what can be done for the poor, and she rides her hobby from morning to night with an equal contempt for the sentimental almsgiving of the District Visitor and for the warnings of the political economist. No doubt an amazing deal of good is done, but it is done in a methodical fashion that is a little trying ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... exaggerate his ability to read faces. It was his particular hobby, and the leisure he had to apply to it had given him a remarkable appraising eye. Within ten minutes he had read much more than had greeted his eye. A wave of pity went over him—pity for the patient, the girl, and his friend. The poor old imbecile! Why, this child was ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... lectures had not been passed in vain, and surgery had been my hobby. I knelt and strove to aid him. It was a cruel wound. I asked for bandages. She tore them from her garments wildly. I stilled the trickling crimson stream, and going into the tent, found some restoratives. I poured the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a battle was fought over the three little manuscripts of Greek music; what a host of differing opinions were held about the scriptural word 'Selah:' and now, about this hydraulic organ, each writer mounts his hobby-horse, and careers over the field of conjecture. Vitruvius has given a full description of the instrument from personal inspection; but as his technical terms have lost all significance to modern readers, and have been translated in various ways, and as his work contained no diagrams ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... these enthusiasts have subsided renders the question easier to ask than to answer. I believe it would have been found that most of these persons were of ardent temperament and of considerable imagination, and that their history would show that Perkinism was not the first nor the last hobby-horse they rode furiously. Many of them may very probably have been persons of more than common talent, of active and ingenious minds, of versatile powers and various acquirements. Such, for instance, was ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... power of facing poverty with contentment? To some extent doubtless it rests on Christian teaching, although perhaps not much on the Christian teaching of the present day. Present-day religion, indeed, must often seem to the cottagers a tiresome hobby reserved to the well-to-do; but from distant generations there seems to have come down, in many a cottage family, a rather lofty religious sentiment which fosters honesty, patience, resignation, courage. Much of the gravity, much of the tranquillity of soul of the more sedate ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... than business. He had never acquired a taste for art and literature, nor had he given himself time for broad culture. But we meet narrow artists, narrow clergymen, narrow scientists just as truly. If you do not get on their hobby and ride with them, they seem disposed to ride over you. Indeed, in our brief life with its fierce competitions, few other than what are known as "one idea" men have time to succeed. Even genius must drive with tremendous and concentrated ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... the north Cornish coast, is celebrated by an ancient custom of peculiar interest. The whole town is en fete, the ships in the harbour decked with flags, the people adorned with flowers. The feature of the day's celebrations is the Hobby Horse Dance, or procession, to two very old tunes. Until comparatively recent times the Maypole was still erected each ...
— Legend Land, Volume 2 • Various
... town and a terror to outsiders! And hadn't they given up every free hour for two years to working like Trojans? though, for that matter, who ever heard of any work the Trojans ever did that amounted to anything—except the spending of ten years in getting themselves badly defeated by a big wooden hobby-horse? ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... plan of nature to keep man happy, so when you have all the money you need, have some occupation or hobby to ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... got on the moral hobby again, and had the assurance to auscultate. Their imagination began to ferment. They wrote to the king, in order that there might be established in Calvados an institute of nurses for the sick, of which they would ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... a taste of St. Thomas home life," Dr. Ernst said. "You shall be my guests at dinner. Dr. Briotti will be interested in my collection of Indian pottery. And you young men will be interested in my wife's hobby, which is fish. She ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... some old deeds and documents written "Bagvil" or "Baggevil," was neither more nor less than a corruption of Bacchi Villa. Axcester and its neighbourhood are rich in Roman remains—the town stands, indeed, on the old Fosse Way—and, tempted by early success, Narcissus rode his hobby further and further afield. Now, at the age of forty-two, he could claim to be an authority on the Roman occupation of Britain, and especially on the conquests of Vespasian. The circle of—the Westcotes' acquaintance gathered in the fine hall of ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to the gentleman farmer, from the small lot owner to the owner of hundreds of acres of non-dividend paying land, from the keen horticulturist to the youth who is taking his first step in following a fascinating new hobby. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... smiled. "If you were not a stranger, you would know that saving cutlers' lives is my hobby, and one in which I am steadily resisted and defeated, especially by the cutlers themselves: why, I look upon you as a most considerate and obliging young man for indulging me in this way. If you had been a Hillsborough ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... you cannot match Fortune. After all, she has made trochilics her hobby through all the ages. Look at her handiwork here. Jill knows Jack for a flunkey and seeks to dissemble her knowledge, for fear of bruising his heart. As for Jack, when Jill stumbles upon his secret, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... dance the people assumed certain characters. There was always Robin Hood, the great hero of the rustics; Maid Marian, the queen, with gilt crown on her head; Friar Tuck; a fool, with his fool's-cap and bells; and, above all, the hobby-horse. This animal was made of pasteboard, painted a sort of pink color, and propelled by a man inside, who made him perform various tricks not common to horses, such as threading a needle and holding a ladle ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... one doesn't FEEL a fool? You will come and play at the vicarage, I hope. Indeed, I want you to go and come just as you like. We are relations, you know, in a sort of way—at least connections. I don't know if you go in for genealogy—it's rather a hobby of mine; it fills up little bits of time, you know. I could reel you off quite a list of names, but Mrs. Graves doesn't care ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... about it," declared the other, in more or less confusion; "the fact of the matter is, Thad, when I found I was going to be your canoemate on this little adventure, I went down at once and turned the boat over to see that it was perfectly clean. You know it's a hobby of mine to want everything just so; and I noticed that a little washing would improve the looks of our boat. So I took out the false bottom that keeps heavy shoes from cutting into the thin planking; and what do you suppose I found ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... Herrick peculiar, eccentric in his ways. It seemed odd for a man to live alone as he lived, doing his own work except for the occasional aid of a woman whom he called Mrs. Swastika. If he had had any particular work or hobby which necessitated solitude Owen could have understood it; but Herrick seemed to spend his days as idly, as aimlessly, as ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... intellectuality; an alert matron, plainly, almost shabbily, dressed (aristocratic Boston still scorns sartorial smartness); a very well-bred young girl with bone spectacles; a student, shabby, like the Back Bay matron, but for another reason; a writer; a business man whose hobby is Washingtonia. These, all of them, you may enjoy along with your cup of tea for three cents, if—and here is the crux—you can only be admitted in the first place. And if you are admitted, do not ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... and also the gold; it was too heavy for him to pack, especially as he had no way to carry water. Then taking a small bag of gold dust in his pocket he started across the desert. He had a hobby for taking photographs and carried a small camera with him, and before leaving he photographed the place, which he called "The Mound of Eternal Silence," so that in case anything happened to him it could be found without trouble. They developed the negatives later, and he has them pasted ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... was received with cheers, and preparations were instantly made for the mock tourney. A large circle being formed by the yeomen of the guard, with an alley leading to it on either side, the two combatants, mounted on gaudy-caparisoned hobby-horses, rode into the ring. Both were armed to the teeth, each having a dish-cover braced around him in lieu of a breastplate, a newly-scoured brass porringer on his head, a large pewter platter instead of a buckler, and a spit with a bung at the point, to prevent mischief, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... object of his thus striving after an erect posture, was to put himself in motion, and conduct us to his fish-ponds, famous throughout the Archipelago as the hobby of the king of Mondoldo. Furthermore, as the great repast of the day, yet to take place, was to be a grand piscatory one, our host was all anxiety, that we should have a glimpse of our fish, while yet alive ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... if you believe in self-expression And disdain to be a law-abiding man, You must cultivate a hobby of insulting ev'ry bobby Whenever you conveniently can. You'll find him quite impervious to jesting, But he has another less attractive side, Elemental, unalluring and arresting When his patience ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... nothing of the sort. It is a hobby of mine never to waste gas or electricity, and I remember distinctly stopping to put out the light after I ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... South by their physicians,—as most of them undoubtedly were,—compelled to spend the winter away from friends and business, amid all the discomforts of Southern hotels, they were happy in having at least one thing which they loved to do. Blessed is the invalid who has an outdoor hobby. One man, whom I met more than once in my beach rambles, seemed to devote himself to bathing, running, and walking. He looked like an athlete; I heard him tell how far he could run without getting "winded;" and as he sprinted up and down the sand in ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... husband," the great Mrs. Star admitted. "She married him for his money, and he has a hobby—fossils, I think it is—and he has gone to collect them at Cape Horn. She bears his absence surprisingly well, doesn't she? Old Mrs. Minthrop's son married the sister, and she begged me to be civil to them. I forget ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... black coat green with age and a "Cup Final" cap. At the same time (this too on The Times' authority) there is an oddly and obsolescently attired lady going about who also makes London hospitals her hobby. She begins by asking the secretary if she may take off her boots, and, receiving permission, takes them off, places her feet on an adjacent chair and hands him two ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... would not suit our views at all, though we did not choose to say so; we therefore changed the subject by asking him what more particularly were the services which we should be asked to perform. His answer was to the effect that his especial hobby was the study of fortification, respecting which, it seems, he had several rather novel theories, in the working out and testing of which—and also by way of amusement—he had constructed the model of a fortified town on the shores of a small lake within the castle grounds; and ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... genius. In 1878 he went back to Rome, which, although it was no longer the quiet and aristocratic Rome of Papal days, was still immensely attractive to his temperament. He was now, in some measure, "a person of means," and he made the habit of connoisseurship his hobby. He formed a small collection of pictures, selecting works with, as he believed, great care. The result could be seen long afterwards by those who visited him in his final affluence, for they hung ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... were to be disposed of in order to found a hospital in his native town. Mr. Von Whele was a keen and discriminating patron of art, a lover of both the ancient and the modern, and his vast wealth permitted him to indulge freely in his hobby. His collection was well known by repute throughout the civilized world. But the trustees of the estate seem to have committed a grave blunder—which will undoubtedly cause much complaint—in waiting until almost the last moment to announce the sale. But few bidders ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... really was fond of music, and would lean back in his chair and thoroughly enjoy it. I tried to make myself as pleasant to every one as I could: I helped Mrs. Forsyth in her gardening, which was her particular hobby; I ran errands for the girls, and made a point of obliging them in every way possible; I practised my violin with Violet, and was always ready for an outdoor scramble with her when Miss Graham was not able to accompany ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... life-work, my stedenpferd, my 'hobby' you call it, hein? This study of the arachnids, spiders, scorpions! Geology, you say? True, that is my work, but this other is different, this I love! Already have I four large volumes written upon the known varieties of scorpion and now to have been ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell |
