"Second hand" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Roy; "each one arm himself with a tin plate and after that every scout for himself. This is called a hunter's stew because you have to hunt for the meat in it, but it's got plenty of e-pluribus unions in it. The potatoes and dumplings go to the patrol leaders, carrots to first and second hand scouts; tenderfeet get nothing because the ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... kept in exercise. Our speech, therefore, was of tithes and creeds, of beeves and grain, of commodities wet and dry, and the solvency of the retail dealers, occasionally varied by the description of a siege, or battle, in Flanders, which, perhaps, the narrator only gave me at second hand. Robbers, a fertile and alarming theme, filled up every vacancy; and the names of the Golden Farmer, the Flying Highwayman, Jack Needham, and other Beggars' Opera heroes, were familiar in our mouths as household words. At such tales, like children closing their circle round ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the negroes, I returned to my post. As I neared the door, I saw two figures in white working over the guns. It was Dorothy and her mother, helping the negroes reload. I sent them back to the stair with affected sternness, but I got a second hand-clasp from Dorothy ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... them after dinner in the drawing-room, while Jewel caressed her watch, never tiring of looking at its clear face and the little second hand which traveled so steadily its ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... as bona fide, if it had been written by Bonnet, but it is impossible to accept it from Buffon. It is only those who judge him at second hand, or by isolated passages, who can hold that he failed to see the consequences of his own premises. No one could have seen more clearly, nor have said more lucidly, what should suffice to show a sympathetic reader the conclusion he ought to come to. Even when ironical, his ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... song of birds. It tells of reality itself, instead of merely reiterating what dusty-minded professors have written about what other previous professors have thought. Nothing in Bergson is shop-worn or at second hand. ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... obliged to return to the Court at Aix-la-Chapelle, where his duties kept him through the winter; and he is careful to point out that the later miracles which he proceeds to speak of are known to him only at second hand. But, as he naturally observes, having seen such wonderful events with his own eyes, why should he doubt similar narrations when they ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... itself, with more or less emphasis, in monarch after monarch of the line. Nor is it surprising that monarchs should take pleasure in the stage, since the theatre is one of the places which brings them and their subjects together in the enjoyment of common emotions, and shows them, if only at second hand, the domestic lives of millions, from personal acquaintance with which their royal birth and surroundings ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... poetry, without so much as knowing the names of the writers or the circumstances under which they wrote. But, on the other hand, to him who knows nothing of the masterpieces of our literature, save at second hand, the history of English letters must of necessity be dull, uninteresting, and often unintelligible. While to him who has prepared himself for its study by fitting himself for an appreciation of these noble creations and becoming thoroughly imbued with ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... meant to go away, and said good-morning, as if they knew each other. Their hostess found them talking over the length of the table in a sort of mutual fright, and introduced them. But it's rather difficult reporting a lady verbatim at second hand. I really had the facts from Welkin, who had them from his wife. The sum of her impressions was that Braybridge and Miss Hazelwood were getting a kind of comfort out of their mutual terror because one was as badly frightened as the other. It was a novel ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... considerate enough to let you know the whole truth, and to tell it you myself," she said in cut tones; "that you might not consider yourself slighted by hearing of it at second hand. I have even owned the extreme fact that I do not love him. I did not think you would be so rough with me for doing so! I was going ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... much into clerks, because there's only one Jaggers, and people won't have him at second hand. There are only four of us. Would you like to see 'em? You are one of us, ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... woman's hand, adorned with beautiful gems. What! a second hand? [He examines it with the greatest care.] It seems to me, I recognize this hand. Yes, there is no doubt about it. Surely, this is the hand that saved me. But I must see for myself. [He uncovers the body, looks at it, and recognizes it.] It is my sister in Buddha. [Vasantasena pants ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... hanger-on or sycophant of Ben Jonson's who was caricatured by Dekker in his "Satiromastix" under the name of Asinius Bubo. The gross assurance of self-complacent duncery, the apish arrogance and imitative dogmatism of reflected self-importance and authority at second hand, are presented in either case with such identity of tone and coloring that we can hardly imagine the satire to have been equally applicable to two contemporary satellites of the same imperious and ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... for Buddhism but a wondrous resemblance both in thought and language to the Vedanta. This is the more remarkable because there is no trace in his works of Sanskrit learning or even of Indian influence at second hand. A peculiarly original and independent mind seems to have worked its way to many of the doctrines of the Advaita, without entirely adopting its general conclusions, for I doubt if Sankara would have said "the positive relation of every appearance as an adjective to reality and the presence ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... all his sighs were noted. The disappearance of the greater part of the legend of the Three Companions certainly deprives us of some touching stories, but most of the incidents have been preserved for us, notwithstanding, in documents from a second hand. ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... or three days I count on drawing them," replied Schaunard. "I do not conceal from you that on doing so I intend to give a free rein to some of my passions. There is, above all, at the second hand clothes shop close by a nankeen jacket and a hunting horn, that have for a long time caught my eye. I shall certainly ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... this self-consciousness, which so continually besets us, is in itself a misery and a galling chain. We are never happy till by imagination we are taken out of the pales and limits of self. We receive happiness at second hand: the spring of it may be in ourselves, but we do not know it to be happiness, till, like the sun's light from the moon, it is reflected on us from an object outside. The admixture of a foreign element sweetens and unfamiliarises it. Sheridan prepared ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... letter addressed to Mr. Tanner of Kentucky, presents, as an eye-witness, so graphically, the share which Capt. Butler had in the campaign which followed, that it may well supersede any narrative at second hand. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... special favor, Frank got off from the store two hours earlier than usual. He bought at a Sixth Avenue basement store, a small, second hand trunk for two dollars. He packed his scanty wardrobe into the trunk, which, small as it was he was unable to fill, and had it carried ...
— The Cash Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.
... I think, certainly at second hand, though no doubt he had seen the negroes whom he describes with such disgust, and apparently the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... are good at. Then a textile school for textile design, weaving and dyeing, which for some unexplained reason was bad and poorly attended. The machines were old, German and out of date. In fact, it all looked as if it had been worked off on them second hand by some Germans who didn't want them ever to amount to anything. All of the best work here is still done by hand, although they have good electric power developed from the water they have. Then we went to a Girls' High School, combined with a college for girls, preparing ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... What if God does not care to have you know it at second hand? What if there would be no good in that? There is some testimony on record, and perhaps there might be much were it not that, having to do with things so immediately personal, and generally so delicate, answers to prayer would naturally not often be talked about; but no testimony ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... and second hand. Lathes and Machinery for Polishing and Buffing metals. E. Lyon, 470 ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... with Lord Poynter mid-way between him and the table, uncertain whether to watch the game or venture on more conversation. He had whispered: "I can tell you a story about that cigar you're smoking . . .," when, at the end of the second hand, Barbara looked slowly round, pushed back her chair and walked to ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... his plate and smiled his smile. "For the Big Picture," he began, while the Happy Family leaned to listen, "there'd be the camera and outfit,—I could pick up some things second hand,—we'll call that fourteen hundred and fifty. Then there would be at least five thousand feet of film: perforated raw stock I could get for about three and three quarter cents a foot. Say a couple, ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... these lines, it is very palpable that Shakespeare did not. The second hand in the play was the reviser of 1592 who introduced the Talbot passages. There cannot be the slightest doubt that this was George Peele, who in 1592, and for some time before and later, was the principal producer and reviser of plays for the Lord Admiral's company. The classical ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... the law, which binds all others, does not and cannot bind the law-maker: he, and he alone, is above the law. But a judge, a person exercising a judicial capacity, is neither to apply to original justice nor to a discretionary application of it. He goes to justice and discretion only at second hand, and through the medium of some superiors. He is to work neither upon his opinion of the one nor of the other, but upon a fixed rule, of which he has not the making, but singly and solely the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... It may be the period of fixed habits, of those helpless iterances which imply no intentions or purposes; but it is not the period in which the mind continues in this or that desire and strives for its fulfilment. The same poet who sang at second hand those ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... a pig should eat me," I suggested, "you might mark him to avoid becoming a cannibal at second hand. I should hate to think of you, Aunt Jane, as ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... straight to you. He said what he wanted to do was to work on the river, for a few months at any rate, until he got to know the place. Now I know you have a dozen tugs and a score of barges, and I thought you might set him on at once. He would make a good second hand on one of your large boats. If it's but to oblige me, I wish you would put him on board one with a sober, steady chap of a decent kind; as soon as he gets to know the work and the river, I will guarantee that he will be fit to take ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... breathe more freely in the medium, literally the midway space, of some collective ritual. Moreover, for those of us who are not artists or original thinkers the life of the imagination, and even of the emotions, has been perhaps too long lived at second hand, received from the artist ready made and felt. To-day, owing largely to the progress of science, and a host of other causes social and economic, life grows daily fuller and freer, and every manifestation of life is regarded with a new reverence. With this fresh outpouring of the spirit, this ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... means of correction. Either have the witness determine the time in terms of some familiar form, i. e., a paternoster, etc., or give him the watch and let him observe the second hand. In the latter case he will assert that his ten, or his five, or his twenty minutes were, at most, no more than a half or a ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... proves that men who are not scholars venture to pronounce on Shakespeare's scholarship, and that men who take absurd statements at second hand dare to constitute themselves judges of a question of ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... clothes might have been bought at a second hand dealer's for a very moderate sum—for they were rent in various places, and no attempt had been made to patch them—was the first speaker, and he howled in the most approved manner, and even our political friends might have taken a lesson from him. He had ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... horse sleams; hones and curling tongs; brass ink-pots, horn and ivory combs; white, yellow and steel shoe and knee buckles; gilt, lackered and plated coat and breast buttons, snuff boxes, and a few second hand hats, &c. all ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks
... scholars boarded in the Doctor's house, and through them I learned, at second hand, some particulars of the Doctor's history—as, how he had not yet been married twelve months to the beautiful young lady I had seen in the study, whom he had married for love; for she had not a sixpence, and had a world of poor relations (so ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... who set up for professed critics among us, are so stupid, that they do not know how to put ten words together with elegance or common propriety; and withal so illiterate, that they have no taste of the learned languages, and therefore criticise upon old authors only at second hand. They judge of them by what others have written, and not by any notions they have of the authors themselves. The words unity, action, sentiment and diction, pronounced with an air of authority, give them a figure among unlearned readers, who are apt to believe they are very ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... displays fair gifts of poetry; it abounds in natural and well-proportioned sentiment; thoughts and images seem to rise up fresh from the writer's observation, and not merely gathered at second hand; a considerable portion is in blank-verse, but the author uses various measures, in all which his versification is graceful ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... I should require an accurate watch beating seconds, and a sensitive ear. I mount the fork on a suitable stand, and then, as the second hand of my watch passes the figure 60 on the dial, I draw the bow neatly across one of its prongs. I wait. I listen intently. The throbbing air particles are receiving the pulsations; the beating prongs are giving up their original force; and slowly yet surely the sound dies away. Still I can hear ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... month of September, 1916, there appeared in the Cornhill Magazine a story entitled "The Lost Naval Papers." I had told this story at second hand, for the incidents had not occurred within my personal experience. One of the principals—to whom I had allotted the temporary name of Richard Cary—was an intimate friend, but I had never met the Scotland Yard officer whom I called William Dawson, and was not at all anxious to make his official ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... wicked, certainly frivolous and nonsensical. So the boy remained at home, but, in spite of the parental order, he practiced some of the figures of the quadrilles and the contra dances in his comrades' barns, learning them at second hand, so ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... and everything else required. If you will take the trouble to investigate you will no doubt discover that the coach you have employed has been to my school for a very short time, just in order to get our latest dances and ideas in staging. Why get this service at second hand? It will cost no more to get it from ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... look like a woman who would take a man's love at second hand?" I said, haughtily. "Women like me must respect the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... though of far less merit than John Gibson himself. Mr. Ben came to Rome younger than John, and he learned to be a great classical scholar, and to read those Greek and Latin books which John only knew at second hand, but from whose beautiful fanciful stories of gods and heroes he derived all the subjects for his works of statuary. His other brother, Solomon, a strange, wild, odd man, in whom the family genius had degenerated into mere eccentricity, ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... a version, whether of an ancient or of a modern classic, which is thoroughly appreciative and satisfactory. The majority are utterly disappointing and deceptive. It is in the transfer of the idiom and costume that the difficulty and consequent failure lie. No one who merely knows at second hand Homer, Herodotus, Plautus, Terence, Horace, Virgil, Montaigne, Le Sage (a metonym for Gil Blas), Cervantes, La Fontaine, Dumas, Maupassant, Balzac, can have had an opportunity of forming an adequate and just estimate of those ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... is no joke in Scotland, I must tell you that Frank Stanley, your friend, who has been seized with a tartan fever ever since he heard Edward's tales of old Scottish manners, happened to describe to us at second hand this remarkable cup. My servant, Spontoon, who, like a true old soldier, observes everything and says little, gave me afterwards to understand that he thought he had seen the piece of plate Mr. Stanley mentioned, in the possession ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... larger part than we suspect of what we think. The reason is a good one, because our short life gives us no time for a better, but it is not the best. It does not follow, because we all are compelled to take on faith at second hand most of the rules on which we base our action and our thought, that each of us may not try to set some corner of his world in the order of reason, or that all of us collectively should not aspire to carry reason as far as it will go throughout the whole domain. In regard ...
— The Path of the Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... in the Essay on 'Books,' his learning is second hand; but everything sticks which his mind can appropriate. He defends the use of translations, and I doubt whether he has ever read ten pages of his great authorities, Plato, Plutarch, Montaigne, or Goethe, in the original. He is certainly ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... and shrewd old fellow pulled his silver time-piece from his pocket and placed it in the hollow of his hand. Then he fixed his eyes upon its white face and stood motionless, watching the second hand make its little circuit. When the sixty seconds had been counted, he held up his hand with ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... stands in the Atlantic, and Leopold, now the second hand, explains to the Margate trippers the wonders of the North ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... Generally, nay, with much fewer exceptions, perhaps, than would be readily believed, they are merely simulators of the part they sustain; speaking not out of the abundance of their own hearts, but by skill and artifice assuming or personating emotions at second hand; and the whole is a business of talent, (sometimes even of great talent,) but not of original power, of genius, [7] ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... all such compliments to the persons for whose use they were meant; and he found by experience the great impressions which they made on the philosopher, as well as on the divine: for, to say the truth, there is no kind of flattery so irresistible as this, at second hand. ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... tenets. A man, too, who knows that he formed his opinions originally by a genuine and intellectual process is but little aware of the undue energy those ideas may obtain from the concurrence of those around. Persons who first acquired their ideas at second hand are more open to a knowledge of their own weakness, and better acquainted with the strange force which there is in the sympathy of others. The isolated mind, when it acts with the popular feeling, is apt to ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... of the woods with Tige that he found fullest joy in his new possession. It seemed to him he could never in all his life take his eyes from it again. He watched the hands go round and round, the little flying second hand, the more leisurely minute marker and the creeping hand which told the hours as they passed. Then again and again the back was opened and the busy little wheels held his breathless interest. He took no notice of Tige, but the old dog knew that his mate ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... he stayed home and helped me fix up the nursery. Yes, I was expecting in the spring. That's why he was so for keeping things from me. We painted the woodwork white and gave a couple of coats to a little brown crib I had picked up second hand. He was for buying an enameled one on casters—he loved the best. Next night—next night—he—didn't come home—and at eight o'clock the following morning the extras were on the street—about the killing. Even then I didn't ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... fought, but we have in the chronicles something of great value—a true outline of the general situation, and some stirring narratives of the clash and wrestling of armed men, compiled either at first hand from the recollections of those who were actually on the field, or else taken at second hand from others who made notes of what had been told them by those present at the battles. This, then, is what I meant when I said that in early times history was an art. ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... Dr. Coutras related to me in his words, but in my own, for I cannot hope to give at second hand any impression of his vivacious delivery. He had a deep, resonant voice, fitted to his massive frame, and a keen sense of the dramatic. To listen to him was, as the phrase goes, as good as a play; and ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... now mightily called for; and what was heretofore sold for 8s. I now give 24s. for, at the second hand, and is sold for 30s., it being a book the Bishops will not let be printed again, and so home to dinner, and then to the office all the afternoon, and towards evening by water to the Commissioners of ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... my watch. It was half-past eleven o'clock. Surely we had been more than ten minutes in this awful place! We had left the house at eleven, and I knew that must have been many hours ago. I glanced at the second hand. ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... over the northern part of Europe and Flanders, which had become wealthy and powerful by their own industry, and a participation of the trade to India with the Italians, (though at second hand,) were on the decline, through pride ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... health till he has spoiled it, like a foolish musician that breaks his strings with striving to put them in tune; for Nature, which is physic, understands better how to do her own work than those that take it from her at second hand. Hippocrates says, Ars longa, vita brevis, and it is the ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... whom he had been following in the street, unwittingly enticed him into a revivalist meeting. He described that meeting so vividly that had my stupefied mind been capable of fresh emotions, I too might have been converted at second hand by the revivalist preacher. He repeated parts of the sermon, rose to his feet, waved his arms, thundered out the commonplaces of Salvation Army Christianity, as if he had made an amazing theological discovery. It was pathetic. It was ludicrous. It was also inconceivably painful. ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... when he entered the Cave of Machpelah on March tenth, at noon. It is of interest to note that his account of the Cave agrees fully with that of Conder. It is now quite certain that he was really there in person, and his narrative was not made up at second hand. The visit of Reubeni, as well as Sabbatai Zebi's, gave new vogue to the place. When Sabbatai was there, a little before the year 1666, the Jews were awake and up all night, so as not to lose an instant of the sacred intercourse with the Messiah. ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... three, four, five, six, seven," said the Second Hand, and then he lost count. "One, two, three, four, five—" It ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... other hand, in three cases where attacks were defeated, the subjects were happily married men, and in two, if not in the three (the third case the writer gathered at second hand and fortunately remembered later), they had children. On the third visit of Miss Freer to B—— that lady notes that "the influence is evil and horrible. The worn features at breakfast ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris
... pure air of the fore-castle deck. For as in this world, head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it. But wherefore it was that after ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... something dissatisfied with my daughter—not for letting Mr. Franklin kiss her; Mr. Franklin was welcome to THAT—but for forcing me to tell her foolish story at second hand. However, there was no help for it now but to mention the circumstances. Mr. Franklin's merriment all died away as I went on. He sat knitting his eyebrows, and twisting his beard. When I had done, he repeated after me two of the questions which the chief juggler had put to the boy—seemingly for ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... latter ellipsis may occur after but or than, and it is also sometimes allowed in poetry; as, [There is] "No person of reflection but [who] must be sensible, that an incident makes a stronger impression on an eye-witness, than when heard at second hand."—Kames, El. of Crit., ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Pope always played together. No one knew why, but it had come to be an understood thing. Of "calls" and "echoes" the play of Mr. and Mrs. Pope was innocent; but when Mrs. Pope, being second hand, hesitated whether to trump her opponent's card or pass it, Mr. Pope had an unconscious habit of saying, "Now dearest," when he desired her to trump; and another unconscious habit, when Mrs. Pope had the lead and he wanted trumps, of murmuring, "Your turn, darling." These ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... of the table, Mary by Lazarus and Martha by Joel, the meal began. Eli passed bowls of water for the washing of hands. Grace was said and then after a second hand cleansing, wine was poured and thanks said over the cups, after which came the meat, and as they ate ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... social customs of the people during all their career. In a second part Varro gave his attention to Divine Antiquities, and as St. Augustine drew largely from it in his "City of God," we may be said to be familiar with it at second hand. It was a complete mythology of Italy, minutely describing every thing relating to the services of religion, the festivals, temples, offerings, priests, and so on. Probably the loss of the works of Varro may be accounted ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... after the fashion of Punch and Judy; and even the solemnest of Shakespeare's tragedies were exhibited in this way. There is no possibility of doubt that Bunyan must have often stood agape at these exhibitions, and thus have received much of the highest literature at second hand. ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... to atrophy their independence. We teach them to take their patriotism at second hand; to shout with the largest crowd without examining into the right or wrong of the matter —exactly as boys under monarchies are taught, and have ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... see about that. And about the room. And I can get what you want in furniture, at a second hand place, where the articles will ...
— Trading • Susan Warner
... buildings and of observers stationed in them, shall we doubt of their usefulness to every nation? And while scarcely a year passes over our heads without bringing some new astronomical discovery to light, which we must fain receive at second hand from Europe, are we not cutting ourselves off from the means of returning light for light while we have neither observatory nor observer upon our half of the globe and the earth revolves in perpetual darkness to our ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Quincy Adams • John Quincy Adams
... two volumes of this edition. Until the present occasion (which made it necessary that I should acquaint myself with it) I own that my own knowledge of these miscellaneous writings was by no means thorough. It is now pretty complete; but the idea which I previously had of them at first and second hand, though a little improved, has not very materially altered. Though in all this hack-work Fielding displayed, partially and at intervals, the same qualities which he displayed eminently and constantly in the four great books here given, he was not, as the French ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... here once for all, that I cannot keep the tales I tell in this volume from partaking of my own peculiarities of style, any more than I could keep the sermon free of such; for of course I give them all at second hand; and sometimes, where a joint was missing, I have had to supply facts as well as words. But I have kept as near to the originals as these necessities and a certain preparation for the ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... and father go to Apsley House, where the Duke of Wellington gives a grand entertainment to the King of Prussia. We were asked too, but, though rather tempted by the fine show, it was finally concluded that we should not go, so we shall only have it at second hand. This is all my news for the present, dear Harriet. God bless you. Good-bye. If you ever wish to hear from me, drop me a ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... playfully, and Mrs. Morris's dimple did the same, as Godfrey thrust his hand in upon Ruth's, unasked. The matron laughed very tenderly on the key of O while she added her hand, and received Leonard's heavy palm above it. Then Arthur clapped a second hand upon Leonard's, and Leonard was about to lay a second quietly upon Arthur's, when Isabel, rose-red from brow to throat, gayly broke ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... The last two disadvantages can be to some extent overcome by placing them in situations at least partially sheltered and shaded, and by running a half-inch or three-quarter inch pipe (which may be bought second hand for two to four cents a foot, while good hose costs sixteen to eighteen), a few inches under the sod and up to the top of the vase. Such a pipe should be detached and drained in the fall and will last many years; the few feet running up to the vase will be sufficiently ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell
... an old second hand store and pawnshop a while ago,' says Andy, 'and I see this half hidden under a lot of old daggers and truck. The pawnbroker said he'd had it several years and thinks it was soaked by some Arabs ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... outlaw until her proper sources of supply fail; she will not touch honey as long as honey-yielding flowers can be found; she always prefers to go to the fountain-head, and dislikes to take her sweets at second hand. But in the fall, after the flowers have failed, she can be tempted. The bee-hunter takes advantage of this fact; he betrays her with a little honey. He wants to steal her stores, and he first encourages her to steal his, then follows the thief home with her booty. ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... acquainted with its literature, and yet never be shocked, disgusted, or contemptuously amused in Ivanhoe by such things as were quoted from the Peep a few pages back—so, to those who know something of "the old Elizabeth way," and even nowadays to those who know very little, and that little at second hand, Miss Lee's travesty of it in The Recess is impossible and intolerable. When Mrs. Radcliffe, at the date definitely given of 1584, talks about "the Parisian opera," represents a French girl of the sixteenth century as being ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... race cannot meet me is some whim or notion, a personal crotchet, not a cosmic and eternal truth. Genius is freedom from all oddity, is Catholicity,—and departure from it so much departure in me from Nature and myself. We say a man is original, if he lives at first, and not at second hand,—if he requires a new tombstone,—if he takes law, not from the many or the few, but from the sky,—if he is no subordinate, but an authority,—if he does not borrow judgment, but is judgment. Such a man is singular in his attitude only because we have so fallen from purity. He, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... I beg, by all that binds a friend, Let me go with you, when you next attend; For though you've every detail at command, There's something must be lost at second hand. Then the man's look, his manner—these may seem Mere things of course, perhaps, in your esteem, So privileged as you are: for me, I feel An inborn thirst, a more than common zeal, Up to the distant river-head to mount, And quaff these precious ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... art critic, who, after all, is only an amateur. The criticism we value, and that which really helps, is that of our brother artists, often sharp and unsparing, but always salutary and useful. And if useless to the artist, art criticism is harmful to the public, who take their opinion from it at second hand. Were all art criticism made penal for ten years lovers of art would learn to think for themselves, and a truer appreciation of art than the commercial one would result, with the greatest benefit both to art and to artists. It is the artist and not the professional ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... another hand. The second hand joined the first, and fell to work on the bar, and pulled. The bar stretched finally under an enormous load. One hand let go, and the thud of the highly elastic lux metal bar's return to its original shape echoed through the soundless room. These men of the twenty-second ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... form through the various stages of its growth. But Daniel wrote without system and without accuracy. It was reserved for Dryden—avowedly following in the steps of the French critic Dacier—to introduce the order and the fulness of knowledge—in Dryden's case, it must be admitted, a knowledge at second hand—which are indispensable to a fruitful use of the historical method. In this sense, too—as in his use of the comparative method, as in the singular grace and aptness of his style—Dryden was a pioneer in the field of ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... carrying three, making a bee line for the beach, the schooner covering their retreat with a blazing Nordenfeldt. They were in such a hurry to be gone that they cut away their moorings with an ax, and I had the privilege, later on, of buying their anchor, second hand, ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... floors over our respectful heads, the Company; people I rarely saw, but whose tricks and manners were imitated and discussed by their maids and valets in the housekeeper's room and the steward's room—so that I had them through a medium at second hand. I gathered that none of the company were really Lady Drew's equals, they were greater and lesser after the manner of all things in our world. Once I remember there was a Prince, with a real live gentleman in attendance, and that was a little above our customary ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... here before, you and I." His Excellency the Hon. Amory W. Barker, M.D., stood laughing, familiar and genial, his sound white teeth shining. But behind his round spectacles he scrutinized McLean. For in this second hand-shaking was a fervor that seemed a grasp, a reaching out, for comfort. Barker had passed through Separ. Though an older acquaintance than Billy, he had asked Jessamine fewer and different questions. But he knew what he knew. "Well, Drybone's ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... gun-cleaners, flannel cloth to take the place of socks for tramping, vaseline to rub on the same—it would be madness to attempt a complete inventory, but he would be inventive indeed who could name anything that Teutonic pack did not contain in some abbreviated form, purchased somewhere second hand at a fourth its original cost. The German had learned that the parish priest of Tzintzuntzan wore glasses, and we parted agreed to make the ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... the book on the table—the book that he had been reading when I entered the room. These sophistical confidences of his were nothing but Rousseau at second hand. Good! If he talked false Rousseau, nothing was left for me but to talk genuine Pratolungo. I let myself go—I was just in the humour ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... as to the interrupted narrative, even in despite of the evident frivolity of the narrator. The arrangement of the party in the coach compelled me to hear it at second hand, and I found it less frivolous than I had anticipated: it was an amour between the King and a peasant's daughter, in which the King conducted himself in a manner as little excusable in a monarch, as in a more humble individual. The amour was at ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... and was fifty-three when the eruption of Vesuvius took place which caused his death. Pliny cannot be called a scientific genius, in the sense understood by modern savants; nor was he an original observer. His materials are drawn up second hand, like a modern encyclopedia. Nor did he evince great judgment in his selection. He had a great love of the marvelous, and is often unintelligible. But his work is a wonderful monument of human industry. It treats of every thing ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... Justin. Either the Clementine writer quotes our present Gospels, or else he quotes some other composition later than them, and which implies them. In other words, if he does not bear witness to our Gospels at first hand, he does so at second hand, and by the interposition of a further intermediate stage. It is quite possible that he may have had access to such a tertiary document, and that it may be the same which is the source of his apocryphal quotations: ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... truth that we call life. And this one—the whole abject meaning of it lies simply in the fact that it has pierced down and shown us up. I had no courage. I couldn't see how feeble a hold I had on life—just one's friends' opinions. It was all at second hand. What I want to know now is—leave me out; don't think, or care, or regard my living-on one shadow of an iota—all I ask is, What am I to do for you?' He turned away and stood staring down at the cinders ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... hold on my bedclothes and was preparing to start on, when some movement caught my eye and I looked astern to the rail. A sinewy hand, dripping with water, was clutching the rail. A second hand took form in the darkness beside it. I watched, fascinated. What visitant from the gloom of the deep was I to behold? Whatever it was, I knew that it was climbing aboard by the log-line. I saw a head, the hair wet and straight, shape itself, and then the unmistakable ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... his hands. The clock on the mantel struck. Could it be that when the second hand had ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... robust, he found the beau-ideal of a Scottish hero. He was a man cast in exactly the model of the Harry Bertrams, Halbert Glendinnings, and Quentin Durwards of the novelist. For the short time the vessel lay in the harbour, Wolf and Walter were inseparable. Walter knew a little, mainly at second hand, through his cousin, about the heroes of Scott; and Wolf delighted to converse with him in his broken English about Balfour of Burley, Rob Roy, and Vich Ian Vohr: and ever and anon would he urge him to exhibit before him some feat of strength or agility—a ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... took the share in them that was becoming to faithful gentlemen vowed to the Reform, and I owe my American birthright to the honourable fact that they fought on the losing side. As I myself am endowed with a fair allowance of stubbornness, and with a strong distaste to taking my opinions at second hand, I certainly should have been with my kinsfolk in that fight had I lived in their day; and since my destiny was theirs to determine I am strongly grateful to them for having shaped ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... that very easily. Just take up a stone and hold it out higher than your head, and let it fall; at the same time note, by the second hand of your watch, how long it takes for the stone to reach ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... doings of your ducal palace. Your Grace will probably agree with me that these records could be better given by one empowered by yourself to give them, by one who had been present, and who would write in your Grace's interest, than by some interloper who would receive his tale only at second hand. ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... he mused. "But all their trappings are second hand. They have bought them up from some show that has discarded them. That's one thing the Sparling outfit never does. All their stuff is new nearly every season. Sully may have some of our old trappings, ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... are going to react on the individual missioner who depends on himself. Looking back now at the work done by my father, and by Rowley at Chatsea, I'm beginning to understand how dangerous it is for one man to make himself the pivot of an enterprise. I only really know about my father's work at second hand, but look at Chatsea. I hear now that already the work is falling to pieces. Although that may not justify the Bishop of Silchester, I'm beginning to see that he might argue that if Rowley had shown himself sufficiently humble to obey the forces of law and order in the Church, ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... for booksellers, of old and second hand books, is now nearer the Seine; and especially in the Quai des Augustins. Messrs. Treuttel and Wuertz, Panckoucke, Renouard, and Brunet, live within a quarter of a mile of each other: about a couple of hundred ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... before I pass further, I would observe in respect of those which come from the Latin, that it will be desirable further to mark whether they are directly from it, and such might be marked L1, or only mediately from it, and to us directly from the French, which would be L2, or L at second hand—our English word being only in the second generation descended from the Latin, not the child, but the child's child. There is a rule that holds pretty constantly good, by which you may determine this point. It is this,—that if a word ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... represented in Fig. 2. It is based upon the simultaneous working of two pith-ball electrometers, combined with the synchronous running of two clock-work movements. At the two stations there were identical clocks for whose second hand there had been substituted a cardboard disk (Fig. 3), divided into twenty sectors. Each of these latter contained one figure, one letter, and a conventional word. Before each movable disk there was a screen, A (Fig. 2), containing an aperture through which only one sector could, be seen at a time. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... Mr Biggs pulled out a huge silver watch, almost as big as a Norfolk turnip. A Jew had sold him the watch; the boatswain had heard of repeaters, and wished to have one. Moses had only shown him watches with the hour and minute hands; he now produced one with a second hand, telling him it was ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... returned by a large majority; and, having a loud voice and an easy manner, he soon acquired some reputation both in and out of the House of Commons by the popularity of his own views, and the extent of his wife's information, which he retailed at second hand. He made his maiden speech in the House unabashed the first night he sat there. Indeed, he was afraid of nothing except burglars, big dogs, doctors, dentists, and street-crossings. Whenever any accident occurred through any of these he preserved the ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... yesterday, she said, The Admiral's Wife, she learn'd that Fred Was very ill; she begg'd to be, If possible, of use to me. What could she do? Last year, his Aunt Died, leaving her, who had no want, Her fortune. Half was his, she thought; But he, she knew, would not be brought To take his rights at second hand. Yet something might, she hoped, be plann'd. What did I think of putting John To school and college? Mr. Vaughan, When John was old enough, could give Preferment to her relative; And she should be so pleased.—I said I felt quite sure that dearest Fred Would be most thankful. Would ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... O'Grady, "it's perfectly new. At this moment it isn't even finished; I wouldn't ask this committee to buy anything second hand. But you can surely see, Major—you do see, for you raised the point yourself, that with the very short time at our disposal we must, if we are to have a statue at all, get one that's ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... find a second hand at work. In the second scene of the third act there is far less exuberance of language and a different style of versification, as may be ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... her quilts. I don't think anything will happen to prevent this time—no quarrelling, anyhow. Those two young creatures have learned their lesson. You'd better take it to heart too, Nora May. It's less trouble to learn it at second hand. Don't you ever quarrel with your real beau—it don't matter about the sham ones, of course. Don't take offence at trifles or listen to what other people tell you about him—outsiders, that is, that want ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... limit somewhere placed to wage, or the public must suffer through the employer of labour by being forced to pay higher prices. The staff of this particular establishment consisted of four men at the following wages: A foreman at 28s. and a second hand at 20s. a week, both of whom were outsiders; while, sleeping on the premises, and, at the time of my arrival, buried in the arms of Morpheus, were a third hand, at 16s., and a fourth, at 12s. Besides these wages they had certain ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... Elinor. "You asserted all your authority yourself this morning, and only made matters worse. Yet you expect her to obey you at second hand. Besides, she is bound in honor not to desert me now; and I will tell her so, too, if I see any sign of ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... of a man's experience has done as much for him as education can do; and an educational discipline which has failed to make any such contribution has failed of its essential purpose. The experience of other people acquired at second hand has little value,—except, perhaps, as a means of livelihood,—unless it really illuminates a ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... news that you escaped death been cried aloud in the streets, my lad, 'twould never have got to your grandfather's ear," he said, in lower tones. "I will tell you what happened, tho' I have it at second hand, being in the North, as you may remember. Grafton came in from Kent and invested Marlboro' Street. He himself broke the news to Mr. Carvel, who took to his bed. Leiden was not in attendance, you may be sure, but that quack-doctor Drake. Swain sent me a message, and I killed a horse getting ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... objections by which religion is assailed or the arguments by which it is defended, imparts to his cause all the interest which naturally attaches to these truths, and leaves to his opponent, who passes over them after him as at second hand, a subject divested of the fire-edge of novelty, I can deem Mr. Longmuir well and not unprofessionally employed, in connecting with a sound creed the picturesque marvels of one of the most popular of the ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... so interesting to talk with your sister and Mrs. Jimmie about Paris fashions. We see so little here that is not second hand, and your journey is so fascinating. It seems incredible that you can be travelling simply for pleasure and over such a number of countries! Where ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... will speak to you. They will offer you news at least as definite and credible as that which the paper-boy is hawking in the street: direct messages from that Beauty which the artist reports at best at second hand. Because of your new sensitiveness, anthems will be heard of you from every gutter; poems of intolerable loveliness will bud for you on every weed. Best and greatest, your fellowmen will shine for you with new significance and ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... excellent in the past. The day for originality may come ere long, and nothing can be lost in striving for it, but a capacity for the beautiful at first hand cannot come without an appreciation of it at second hand. With the number of cultivated minds so vastly increased as compared with any previous period, the greater variety of objects and conditions presented to them, the multiplicity of races to which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... fundamentally a matter of testimony. We have, or we have not, a body of fact for which we are in debt to observation. The observation may be first hand—as in Sir Oliver Lodge's sittings where he reports what he saw and heard. It may be second hand as the cases reported in the larger part of the authoritative literature of psychic phenomena. (Second hand, that is, for the authors and those who depend upon them.) Trustworthy observation is probably more difficult here than in any region of investigation. The whole ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... That was it, the tissue ... was it cancerous or not? The atmosphere grew heavy. Bart watched the second hand on the large wall-clock swing slowly around its perimeter, and then around again and again. The nurse reentered and spoke softly to the doctor. The two doctors whispered, explaining to each other with hand motions what they were ...
— The Alternate Plan • Gerry Maddren
... matter of current intelligence the case of the speaker of the small language is still worse. His newspaper will need to be cheaply served, his home intelligence will be cut and restricted, his foreign news belated and second hand. Moreover, to travel even a little distance or to conduct anything but the smallest business enterprise will be exceptionally inconvenient to him. The Englishman who knows no language but his own may travel ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... open thus directly into the Absolute, it follows that there is something in each and all of us, even the lowliest, that ought not to consent to borrowing traditions and living at second hand. "If John was perfect, why are you and I alive?" Emerson writes; "As long as any man exists there is some need of him; let him fight for his own." This faith that in a life at first hand there is something sacred is perhaps the most characteristic note in Emerson's writings. The hottest ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... an Englishwoman, had seen much of the world, and was a person of considerable reading and cultivation. She had moral and physical courage in an uncommon degree, and was thoroughly reliable, so that this story is to me as well authenticated as one can well be at second hand. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... understand the length and breadth and depth of every piece of work submitted to him by his employer, was as special as his despatch in transacting it. He accepted no information or explanation at second hand, but made himself the master ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... undeserving of the emphasis laid on it; not to add, that it was written more than a century before the period, when the Justicia possessed the influence or the legal authority claimed for him by Aragonese writers,—by Blancas, in particular, from whom Sempere borrowed the passage at second hand. ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... the effect of that method upon men who aspired to follow him, at whatever distance, in the path of criticism. The answer can be easily given. He taught us, first and foremost, to judge for ourselves; to take nothing at second hand; to bow the knee to no reputation, however high its pedestal in the Temple of Fame, unless we were satisfied of its right to stand where it was. Then he taught us to discriminate, even in what we loved best, between ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... the memories of his long, triumphant, and joyous struggle with wild nature. Then he approached the couple, and greeted Harley with the good-nature that was really a part of him. Sylvia, with shining eyes, told at second hand, though not with diminished effect, the story of the night, and "King" Plummer was loud in his applause. He did not care what criticism the supercilious might make, the act was ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... tongue," said Reginald fiercely, "if we are to hear what my father says at second hand ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... and flushed with triumph as her fingers came in contact with something loose and soft. It was not a paper parcel, it felt more like cloth—cloth with knotted ends all ready to pull. Darsie pulled with a will, found an unexpected weight, put up a second hand to aid the first, and with a tug and a cloud of dust brought to light nothing more exciting than a workman's handkerchief, knotted round a lumpy parcel which seemed obviously ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey |
