"Shorthand" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Bully, sir," replied the shorthand-writer timidly. As a matter of fact, he thought nothing at all, his whole attention having been so completely absorbed by his task of making dots and curves and dashes as to leave no portion of his brain available for receiving mental impressions. ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... environment, reactions upon a stimulus, our attitude of welcome or dissatisfaction toward the various matters of our experience. True, we often think of the quality of pleasantness as inhering in the things we enjoy, and speak of troubles and sorrows as objective. But this is only a shorthand way of describing experience. In reality the pleasure we feel in eating when we are hungry or in seeing a friend we love is something added to and different from the taste sensations, or the complex visual perceptions and ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... repeated), but the state of his education may be inferred from the established fact that the headmaster had said that if he had stayed three months longer he would have gone into logarithms. Instead of going into logarithms, Henry went into shorthand. And shorthand, at that date, was a key to open all doors, a cure for every ill, and the finest thing in the world. Henry had a talent for shorthand; he took to it; he revelled in it; he dreamt it; he lived for it alone. He won a speed medal, the gold of which was as pure as the gold ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... himself into this new career with characteristic energy. Of course a reporter is not made in a day. It takes many months of drudgery to obtain such skill in shorthand as shall enable the pen of the ready-writer to keep up with the winged words of speech, and make dots and lines that shall be readable. Dickens laboured hard to acquire the art. In the intervals of his work he made it a kind of holiday task to attend the Reading-room of the British Museum, ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... band caused the book to open at a definite page, and Steingall, who knew a little of everything, and a great deal of all matters appertaining to his profession, deciphered some shorthand characters which promised enlightenment. He passed no comment, however, but pocketed the book, scribbled a few lines on a sheet of paper bearing the name of the hotel, and intrusted coat and ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... should distinguish pen methods it is Directness. The nature of the pen seems to mark as its peculiar function that of picking out the really vital features of a subject. Pen drawing has been aptly termed the "shorthand of Art;" the genius of the pen-point is ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... Do you need the help of 'Glevering Hall' (how curious the suggestion!). And would you not like to hear him talk? Here is a specimen in his best manner. Surely it must have been taken down by a shorthand writer, or ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... college, the instructor addressed the new class concerning the merits of shorthand. In his remarks, he included ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... such a man any share in the invention or improvement of a plough, a ship, or a mill is an insult. "In my own time," says Seneca, "there have been inventions of this sort, transparent windows, tubes for diffusing warmth equally through all parts of a building, shorthand, which has been carried to such a perfection that a writer can keep pace with the most rapid speaker. But the inventing of such things is drudgery for the lowest slaves; philosophy lies deeper. It is not her office to teach men how to use their hands. The ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... irresistible impetuosity: and, as he wrote, more ideas would come, more and more: and he would write and write, on his shirt cuffs, in the lining of his hat. Quickly though he wrote, yet his thoughts would leap ahead, and he had to use a sort of shorthand. ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... difficult kind of shorthand!" said Dorothea, smiling towards her husband. "It would require all your knowledge to be able to ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... remind the reader that Locke, once happening to be in the company of several great lords, renowned no less for their wit than for their breeding and political consistency, wickedly amused himself by taking down their conversation by some shorthand process of his own; and afterwards, when he read it over to them to see what they could make of it, they all burst out laughing. And, in truth, the tinsel jargon which circulates among the upper ranks in every country yields ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... Paper telling the truth about him says that he is a dull speaker, full of commonplaces, elderly, smelling strongly of the Chapel, and giving the impression that he is tired out; flogging up sham enthusiasm with stale phrases which the reporters have already learnt to put into shorthand with one conventional outline ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... her intelligence! In that one morning she learned all our alphabet and how to write our letters. It appeared that among her people, at any rate in their later periods, the only form of writing that was used was a highly concentrated shorthand which saved labour. They had no journals, since news which arrived telepathically or by some form of wireless was proclaimed to those who cared to listen, and on it all formed their own judgments. In the same way ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... said Mr. Enwright, and he stepped into full view. His unseen partner had ceased to dictate, and the shorthand-clerk could be heard going out ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... carry out her plans. She wants to get a position with us, if possible, in some sort of capacity, secretary, confidential clerk, or, as she puts it, any sort of place that will justify her being in the office. She tells me she is good at shorthand, on the machine, or at correspondence, also that she has been a contributor to the magazines. If this can be arranged, she says she will on her own responsibility select the time and the stock, and hurl the last of the Sands fortune at the market, and, Jim, she is game. The blow seems to ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... trick rider—he could ride bicycles for miles that would have come to pieces instantly under you or me—took to washing his face after business, and spent his surplus money upon remarkable ties and collars, cigarettes, and shorthand classes at the Bun ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... censure Sordello for its obscurity of style, and justly applaud it for a remarkable lucidity in swiftness. Intelligent, however, as Browning was, it implied a curious lack of intelligence to suppose that a poem of many thousand lines written I in shorthand would speedily find decipherers. If we may trust the words of Westland Marston, recorded by Mr W.M. Rossetti in The Preraphaelite Brotherhood Journal (26 February 1850), Browning imagined that his shorthand was Roman type of unusual clearness: "Marston says that Browning, before ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... before. The invention of the pocket recorder, which put a half-hour's conversation on a half-inch disk, had done more to slow down business and promote inane correspondence than anything since the earlier inventions of shorthand, typewriters and pretty stenographers. Finally, he cleared the machine, dumping the whole mess into a basket and carrying it out ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... hand. He had a high sense of romance, and a secret cultus for all soldiers and criminals. His travelling library consisted of a chap-book life of Wallace, and some sixpenny parts of the "Old Bailey Sessions Papers" by Gurney the shorthand writer; and the choice depicts his character to a hair. You can imagine how his new prospects brightened on a boy of this disposition. To be the servant and companion of a fugitive, a soldier, and a murderer, rolled in one—to live by stratagems, disguises, and false ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and are common to the whole Civil Service, the conditions of entry varying according to the Department. In the Post Office alone, are Typists recruited by open competitive examination. The scale of salary is 20s. a week, rising in three years to 26s.: they then have the option of qualifying in shorthand, after which they can rise to 31s. per week. In the Post Office, however, the number allowed to qualify in this way is limited to 50 per cent. of the staff. The supervising posts are: Superintendent, 35s. a week, and Chief Superintendent, ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... a clerical post in some of the offices. She took up shorthand and poked a typewriter and read books on system and efficiency, then gave them up ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... to tell more lies than I could help; a married woman on strike can't tell the truth, you know. And I can't typewrite or do shorthand yet. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... interrupted. My servant brought me a letter from Miss Glynn, telling me that a great chance had come her way. It appears that Mr. Walter Poole, the father of one of her pupils, has offered her the post of secretaryship, and she would like to put into practice the shorthand and typewriting that she has been learning for the last six months. Her duties, she says, will be of a twofold nature: she will help Mr. Poole with his literary work and she will also give music lessons to his daughter Edith. Mr. Poole lives in Berkshire, and wants her to come down at ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... Wardlaw's position. He durst not let his correspondence be read, and filtered, in the outer office. He opened the whole mass; sent some back into the outer office; then touched a hand-bell, and a man emerged from the small apartment adjoining his own. This was Mr. Atkins, his shorthand writer. He dictated to this man some twenty letters, which were taken down in short-hand; the man retired to copy them, and write them out in duplicate from his own notes, and this reduced the number to seven. These Wardlaw ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... finds the Chinaman whom he saved from death the day before sitting on his verandah in the expectation of being kept for the rest of his life that his rescuer has forced upon him. It was true that she was an excellent shorthand-typist, but she vexed the decent grey by her vividness. The sight of her through an open door, sitting at her typewriter in her blue linen overall, dispersed one's thoughts; it was as if a wireless found its waves jammed ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... be embodied, theoretically, in the Christian Church; but unhappily "society" is too often stronger than this embodiment, and turns the church itself into a mere temple of fashion. Other opposing forces are known as science and common-sense, which is only science written in shorthand. On some of these various forces all reforms are based, the woman-suffrage reform among them. If it could really be shown that some limited social circle was opposed to this, then the moral would seem to be, "So much the worse for the social circle." It used to be thought in anti-slavery days that ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... which had to be sent to New York for simultaneous publication with the Baltimore papers. Now the address was not written out; it was to be delivered from notes only. From these notes, then, he delivered it in extenso to the reporter, who took it down in shorthand, and promised to let him have a copy to lecture from next morning. But the fair copy did not come till the last moment. To his horror he found this was written out upon "flimsy," from which it would be impossible to read properly. Again he turned it down ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... characters. The latest Malay immigrants, who had been influenced by Indian culture, introduced a style of writing that is very queer. Three vowels were used,—a, e, and u. The consonants were represented by as many signs that look a good deal like our shorthand. Although there were three characters to represent the vowels when used alone, whenever a consonant would be pronounced with "a," only the sign of the consonant was used. In order to express a final consonant, or ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... in the columns of the Argus. He had a wonderful memory, and simply jotted down figures with which he did not care to burden his mind. Hawkins laughed derisively now and then at the facts they were giving Yates, but the Argus man said nothing, merely setting down in shorthand some notes of the information Hawkins sneered at, which Yates considered was more than likely accurate and important. When he had got all he wanted, ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... moment, Nails Andersen was present, black cigar clamped firmly between his teeth; hamlike Norwegian hands maneuvering a pencil, he was making illegible notes on a scrap of paper—illegible to others because they were in his own form of shorthand that he had worked out over the years as he tried to make penciled notes as fast as his racing mind worked out ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... his wife with a sorrowful earnestness, "your own eyes were as strong as a man's could be. It was ten years after I wore spectacles that you began. Only for that miserable fever, you could read shorthand now." ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... had completed his first part, or quarter. "I send you to-day" (18th of October), "by mail, the first and longest of the four divisions. This is great for the first week, which is usually up-hill. I have kept a copy in shorthand in case of accidents. I hope to send you a parcel every Monday until the whole is done. I do not wish to influence you, but it has a great hold upon me, and has affected me, in the doing, in divers strong ways, deeply, forcibly. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... her note-book, and sat beside him. Being ignorant of shorthand she had invented a little system of her own, and she was glad when she could make him laugh over her funny pot-hooks ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... Mr. Bryan, as Secretary of State, the note was written originally by the President in shorthand—a favorite method of Mr. Wilson in making memoranda—and transcribed by him on his own typewriter. The document was then presented to the members of the President's Cabinet, a draft of it was sent ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... said: "Now, Marion, you and Miss Lena must stay with us. She's not an orator like you; she was meant for a mouse, but you can do all the talk you like. And now, gentlemen, let me lay a few statements before you. I shall talk shorthand style if I can. First, I want Mr. Ferrier to be our first medical director, and I wish him to take the steamer on her first cruise. After that, if he likes to be a sort of inspector-general, we can arrange it. Next, I want to draw some more people into Mr. Fullerton's ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... grocer; on the advertisement of Jones' soap, and thinks with discontent of Polly Perkins, who in a natural way is as pretty a girl as can be looked for in this imperfect world. Thus it is that woman has had to take to shorthand and typewriting. Modern woman is being ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... intensely practical and special. Some of these necessities no words could in any way meet. It was obvious, for instance, that Clark must at once be taken away from his gallery and his copying if he was to live—at least in sanity. He had fortunately learned shorthand, and M'Kay got him employment on a newspaper. His knowledge of his art was by no means perfect at first, but he was sent to attend meetings where verbatim reports were not necessary, and he quickly advanced. Taylor, too, ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... the headings appear, 'De Postumi criminibus.' 'De Servi adulescentis': cf. Plin. Ep. i. 20, 7, 'ex his apparet illum permulta dixisse, cum ederet omisisse.' For the practice of reporting his speeches in shorthand cf. Ascon. in Mil. 'manet illa quoque excepta eius oratio' (his speech at Milo's trial). The only case in which Cicero appeared for the prosecution was that of Verres: the part of an accuser was generally distasteful to him; cf. De Off. ii. 50, 'duri hominis vel potius ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... best seats in the gallery. In this manner we (the strangers) have sometimes been sent away two or three times in the course of one day, or rather evening, afterwards again permitted to return. Among these spectators are people of all ranks, and even, not unfrequently, ladies. Two shorthand writers have sat sometimes not far distant from me, who (though it is rather by stealth) endeavour to take down the words of the speaker; and thus all that is very remarkable in what is said in parliament may generally be read in print the next day. The shorthand writers, ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... "Daily Dozen Set-up." It is a shorthand system of setting-up exercises for use on ...
— Keeping Fit All the Way • Walter Camp
... regret missing, and that was Paget's farewell speech to us, when all agree that he spoke with real and deep feeling. One of our gunners took it down in shorthand, and here ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... declared another of the gang, an effective youth, covered with silk handkerchiefs and nickel plating. "That's shorthand. I see 'em do it ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... and I have thought of just the stunt to get it in shape the quickest. If one of you girls will go with me to present me to the lady, I can take down what she says in shorthand and knock it off on the type-writer afterward. Then we'll all get together, you two girls, Miss Eloise and yours truly, and we'll put the whole thing into shape in double-quick time. How ...
— A Dear Little Girl at School • Amy E. Blanchard
... also consider that their paintings and sculptures were eminently symbolic. When one carves an explanation in hard granite it is apt to be done in shorthand, as it were. Thus, a tree meant a forest, a prisoner meant a whole army; therefore, two sculptured harpists or flute players may stand for twenty or two hundred. Athenaeus, who lived at the end of the second ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... he only left his section for a day, and that was to attend the electrical day in Section G; but in his own section he brought down those words of wisdom that one always hears from him, and which make one always regret that there is not always present about him a shorthand writer to take down thoughts and ideas that never occur again, and are only heard by those who have ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... four editions had been sold. Since then, till now, there has never been a time when Robinson Crusoe has not been read. The editions of it have been countless. It has been edited and re-edited, it has been translated and abridged, turned into shorthand and into poetry, and published in every form imaginable, and at every price, from ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... written language that they should be as simple as possible, and hence they looked about for some system which could be readily grasped by these ignorant people. It was necessary that the system be absolutely phonetic and understood easily. By adapting the system used in shorthand, of putting the vowel marks in different positions by the side of the consonant signs, Mr. Pollard and his assistant found that they could solve their problem. The signs for the consonants are larger than the vowel signs, and the position of the latter by the side of the former gives the ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... boy made to my hand. He had a high sense of romance, and a secret cultus for all soldiers and criminals. His travelling library consisted of a chap-book life of Wallace and some sixpenny parts of the 'Old Bailey Sessions Papers' by Gurney the shorthand writer; and the choice depicts his character to a hair. You can imagine how his new prospects brightened on a boy of this disposition. To be the servant and companion of a fugitive, a soldier, and a murderer, ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for me. One day I proposed marriage to her, and what do you think she did? She took all that I said down in shorthand and brought it, nicely type-written, ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... are here, are you going to stretch me on the rack and delve for my opinions on all sorts of subjects? is Miss Susan there going to take them down in shorthand on her cuff and you make a report to Dartrey ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... been office boy long before he realized that if he learned shorthand he would stand a better chance for advancement. So he joined the Young Men's Christian Association in Brooklyn, and entered the class in stenography. But as this class met only twice a week, Edward, impatient to learn the art of "pothooks" ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... is taking shorthand notes of my 'Lectures to Working Men,' has asked me to allow him, on his own account, to print those Notes for the use of my audience. I willingly accede to this request, on the understanding that a notice is prefixed ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... great man that he had since become, had been much with him. Then they had often discussed together the objects of their ambition and future prospects; then Tom Towers was struggling hard to maintain himself, as a briefless barrister, by shorthand reporting for any of the papers that would engage him; then he had not dared to dream of writing leaders for The Jupiter, or canvassing the conduct of Cabinet ministers. Things had altered since that time: the briefless barrister was still briefless, but ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... helped to justify the more stenographic school of etching. Greatly transcending Japanese expression, the modern etcher has undoubtedly accepted moral support from the islands of the Japanese. He too etches a kind of shorthand, even though his notes appeal much to the spectator's knowledge, while the Oriental shorthand appeals to nothing but the spectator's simple vision. Thus the two artists work in ways dissimilar. Nevertheless, the French etcher would never have written ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... the office I was engaged in conversation for an hour while, unknown to me, a shorthand reporter and an artist were taking notes. I returned to my studio unconscious that my words had been recorded and that my picture had been sketched by the quick hand of Richard Partington. What was my great surprise on opening the Call ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... stern, with his single oar fitted into a shallow notch of his steering post, propels the craft so swiftly and guides it so surely by those short, twisting strokes of his. Really, you reflect, it is rowing by shorthand. You are feasting your eyes on the wonderful color effects and the groupings that so enthuse the artist, and which he generally manages to botch and boggle when he seeks to commit them to canvas; and betweenwhiles you are wondering why all the despondent cats in Venice should have picked out the ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... German or English as it should be read; bake a loaf of bread; play tennis; darn a stocking; play the violin or pianoforte; give the names of flowers and birds and butterflies; write a neat, well-composed letter, either in longhand or shorthand; draw or paint pictures; make a bed or do one or more of a thousand and one other things is accomplished. The more things she can do and the greater the number of subjects on which she is informed, the more highly ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... when at school in England, I had made some acquaintance with shorthand, in order to save me trouble in noting down lectures—for the purpose of afterwards writing themes thereon, as we had to do at Queen's College, under "old Jack's" rule; and, having kept up the acquisition, I found it now of considerable ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... to be a belief with very many watchmakers that there is a set of shorthand rules for setting an escapement, especially in American watches, which, if once acquired, conquers all imperfections. Now we wish to disabuse the minds of our readers of any such notions. Although the lever escapement, ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... a member of the family; he is present at all general entertainments; and quite as often as not at lunches and dinners. The duties of a private secretary are naturally to attend to all correspondence, take shorthand notes of speeches or conversations, file papers and documents and in every way serve as extra eyes and hands and ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... apart the shells with her unhandy weapon far enough to nibble a wee bit at the cold and clammy world within. She knew no more shorthand than if she had been a graduate in stenography just let slip upon the world by a business college. So, not being able to stenog, she could not enter that bright galaxy of office talent. She was a free-lance typewriter and canvassed for odd ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... who did not take up that profession until they were twenty-five or thirty years of age. They were firm believers in the adage, "It is never too late to learn." 2. Munson's appears to be the most popular system of shorthand. 3. A ten or fifteen minutes' walk in the open air before taking breakfast will do no harm; but indulgence in other forms of exercise should be reserved for the middle of the day, if possible, or an hour ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... shorthand prefer to make a stenographic report of the entire speech and rearrange and condense it in the office. This method is advisable only in the case of speeches of the greatest importance; it is too laborious for ordinary purposes, since ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... a lecture on Shorthand, or Passigraphy, and there we met Mr. Chenevix, who came home to dine with us, and stayed till nine, talking of Montgolfier's belier for throwing water to a great height. We have seen it and its inventor: something like Mr. Watt in manner, ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... for about two hours early every morning, by lady doctor living near the Marble Arch; rapid shorthand essential; preference given to a possessor ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various
... around the lighted table,—and of the grotesque eloquence with which either the Governor or some of his prominent people would now and then burst out into an oratorical tirade, all thrown away on his sleepy auditors, and lost to the world for want of some clever shorthand writer. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... worries me most," he said. "We haven't had enough of that kind of work, so far, to justify us hiring a stenographer, but some days the mail is so heavy that it keeps me pounding on the typewriter an hour or more. Now, Mary, if you had only added shorthand to your many accomplishments, there'd be a fine chance for you to help hold the fort ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... leader a copy of Hill's evidence at the inquest, and Mr. Holymead read it out to the jury. He then read out a shorthand writer's account of Hill's evidence on the ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... we account for the absence of any machinery for multiplying copies of documents, an inconvenience which, in the case of the acta diurna, as well as of important letters, must have been keenly felt? Even shorthand and cipher, though known, were rarely practised. Caesar, [81] however, used them; but in many points he was beyond his age. In America, where labour is refractory, mechanical substitutes for it are daily being invented. A calculating machine, and a writing ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... employed many signs, or shorthand expressions, in place of writing the names of substances. The following are a few of the signs which ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... held a notebook. "My stenographer writes a very legible shorthand; at least I find it so—from long practice, I suppose. As I glance over her notes I find many facts which will interest you later—at the trial. But—ah, here ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... the side in real estate. Finally, a thin widow, who was so busy and matter-of-fact that she was no more individualized than a street-car. Any one of them was considered competent to teach any "line," and among them they ground out instruction in shorthand, typewriting, book-keeping, English grammar, spelling, composition (with a special view to the construction of deceptive epistles), and commercial geography. Once or twice a week, language-masters from a linguistic mill down the street were had in to chatter the more ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... With him I soon felt at ease, and was happy in gaining his approbation. One thing found favour in his eyes; I wrote a good clear hand and at fair speed. In those days penmanship was a fine art. No cramped or sprawling writing passed muster. Typewriting was not dreamed of, and, at Derby, shorthand had not appeared on ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... unnecessary, my dear—my jolly old stenographer," said Bones firmly. "I object to shorthand on principle, and I shall always object to it. If people," he went on, "were intended to write shorthand, they would have been born ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... Framework of Home Rule," by Mr Erskine Childers, and "Home Rule Problems," edited by Mr Basil Williams. In general, my aim has been to aid in humanising the Irish Question. The interpretation of various aspects of it, here offered, is intended to be not exhaustive but provocative, a mere set of shorthand rubrics any one of which might have been expanded into a chapter. Addressing the English reader with complete candour, I have attempted to recommend to him that method of approach, that mental attitude which alone can divest him of his preconceptions, ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... the charitable stuff we were made of. Considering it was the end of a long evening, he collected a fairly decent number of francs and presented them to the cocher with an eloquent speech, which it was a pity someone could not have taken down in shorthand for him to use in his next story. The cocher, the least concerned of the group, thanked us with a broad grin, drew up his broken cab close to the sidewalk, took the horse from the shaft, clambered on its back, rode as fast as he could go ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... intelligence, following like a shorthand-writer's pencil, ten words behind the speaker, gave a leap at this. Till now, the matter had been for him a play without a plot; suddenly understanding, he cast a startled glance at ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... it is the secretary's time to begin talking. He consults him about the various letters upon which he needs his advice and makes notations in shorthand on them. He reports on the various calls that have come in and the house memoranda. A good secretary reads and digests these before turning them over to his employer, and in most cases gives the gist of the memorandum ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... thing you can think of?" asked Sally. "I do mean it. I've written to London and I've got the prospectus here of one of the schools for teaching shorthand and typewriting. For eight pounds they guarantee to make any one proficient in both—suitable to take a secretaryship. Doesn't matter how long you'll stay; they agree for that sum to make you proficient, and they also half promise to get you ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... to destroy the lower middle-class, others, especially the Fabians, endeavour to convert it to Socialism, and to set it on against the wealthy. They argue: "The commercial clerk with his reading, his writing, his arithmetic, and his shorthand is a proletarian, and a very miserable proletarian, only needing to be awakened from his poor little superstition of shabby gentility to take his vote from the Tories and hand it over to us. The small tradesmen and ratepayers who are now allying themselves with the Duke of Westminster in a desperate ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... be worked up into a sketch very much as it actually occurred, though with strict selection and careful elaboration. On the whole it may be taken that the conversations are mostly what might have happened, but that they never were shorthand reproductions of overheard talk; and the incidents are almost invariably invented. Occasionally something in an exhibition or show would suggest a typical comment, or a casual remark might provide ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... *SHORTHAND* Writing thoroughly taught *by mail* or personally. *Situations procured* all pupils when competent. Send for circular. *W. G. ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... native talent for sarcasm. His letters, his addresses, perhaps in particular his addresses to the House, bristled with satirical thrusts at his opponents. If he had spelled out in full all the words he was so eager to write, he would have been obliged to lessen his output; so he used a shorthand system of his own, peculiar enough to be remarkable even though abbreviations were the rule in that day. Even the dignity of Kings he sacrificed to speed, and we find "His Majesty" abbreviated to "H M'y"; yet a smaller luminary known as ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... attempting clandestine journeys. Since then he had ascended other steps of the same ladder; he was the most brilliant young interviewer on the Boston press. He was particularly successful in drawing out the ladies; he had condensed into shorthand many of the most celebrated women of his time—some of these daughters of fame were very voluminous—and he was supposed to have a remarkably insinuating way of waiting upon prime donne and actresses the morning after their arrival, or sometimes the very evening, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... exactly the same opportunities for seeing the cards and the votes and for exchanging opinions. The discussions, while carried on for the same length of time, were on the whole less animated. There was less desire to convince and more restraint, but the record, which was taken in shorthand, showed nearly the same variety of arguments which the men had brought forward. Everything agreed exactly with the experiments with the men, and the only difference was in the results. The first vote of all experiments with the women showed a slightly smaller ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... herself, and automatically placed on her knee the shorthand writing-pad ready to take down his instructions. She looked up at him expectantly. Denham, in an embarrassed manner, ran his ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... instance in the Western world of the pure man of letters. Alongside of his strictly literary production, he occupied himself diligently with the technique of composition—grammar, spelling, pronunciation, metre, even an elementary system of shorthand. Four books of miscellaneous translations from popular Greek authors familiarised the reading public at Rome with several branches of general literature hitherto only known to scholars. Following the demand ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... Mountaineer, but Peter the Trailer, all of whose faculties were concentrated upon the ground. With a swinging gait the human bloodhound traveled swiftly and silently along the edge of the crevasse, noting every bunch of moss, fragment of stone, drift of snow or bit of moist earth, reading the shorthand notes of Nature with facility which far excelled the ability of my own stenographer to read her own notes when the latter are a few hours old. But a short time had elapsed before I heard a shout, and, hurrying to the place where my big friend was seated, ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... Arnold promised. "You can rely entirely upon my discretion. You will perhaps tell Mr. Jarvis that I am to do my work in here. Fortunately, I know a little shorthand, so if you like I can take the letters down. It will make my ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... taste of the Athenian, the cruel inflexibility of Robespierre's protege. He was born at Bonay, in the arrondissement of Coutances. His father was a tradesman of the Boulevard des Italians. In his examination before the Council of War in August, 1870, Eudes called himself a shorthand writer and law student, though his real position was said to be that of a linendraper's clerk. His first notable exploit was the assassination of a fireman at La Villette. For this crime he was brought before the First Council of War ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... on a level with the street. The cold stones were strewn with clean straw, on which several of his disciples knelt on one knee, writing on the other, to enable them to take notes from the Master's improvised discourse, in the shorthand abbreviations which are ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac
... is!" answered Mrs. Macallan. "The shorthand writers and reporters put his evidence into presentable language before they printed it. If you had heard what he really said, as I did, you would have been either very much disgusted with him or very much amused by him, ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... study, and his keen mind took advantage of all these. He was a natural mimic, and it was mere blind chance that kept him from the stage and made him a great novelist. He drifted into newspaper work as a shorthand reporter, wrote the stories that are known as Sketches by Boz, and in this way came to be engaged to write the Pickwick Papers, to serve as a story to accompany drawings by Seymour, a popular artist. But Dickens from the outset planned the story and Seymour lived only to ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... journalism and became a Parliamentary reporter, which it is to be presumed developed a craving on the part of Charles for a similar occupation; when following in his father's footsteps, he succeeded, after having learned Gurney's system of shorthand, in obtaining an appointment as a reporter in the press gallery of the House of Commons (the plans for the new Parliament buildings were just then taking shape), where he was afterward acknowledged as being one of ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... think that it is a fear that refers to God at all. It is not a sentiment or emotion of which God is the object. It is not the reverent awe which often appears in Scripture as 'the fear of God,' which is a kind of shorthand expression for all modes of devout sentiment and emotion; but it is a fear, knowing our own weakness and the strong temptations that are round us, of falling into sin. That is the one thing to be ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... will note two volumes of poems in my list. Finding at fifteen that the schools within my reach did not meet my requirements, I went to work and began educating myself along lines of least resistance. My occupations were various: worked in printing offices, learned shorthand, became stenographer in a law office; was in newspaper work for twelve years; at thirty was auditor and treasurer of a coal-mining corporation in Colorado; after three years of business became a writer of books. When I was eighteen I wrote three short stories which ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... ambitious to attend evening classes. At the present time the schools are more largely attended by girls who, during the day, remain in the family, and in the school take up the household arts, sewing, cutting out, and the like, and also languages, mathematics, geography, etc., gymnastics and music, shorthand and typewriting. It is hoped soon to introduce cookery in all girls' schools. Drawing ...
— The Condition and Tendencies of Technical Education in Germany • Arthur Henry Chamberlain
... last of her. Accordingly when she had called each of the company up to her and had spoken a few words in private, she gave some general directions for the future guidance and protection of Miss Cook. From these, which were taken down in shorthand, I quote the following: "Mr. Crookes has done very well throughout, and I leave Florrie [the medium], with the greatest confidence, in his hands." Having concluded her directions, "Katie" invited me into ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... and I need not say the costs will go with their verdict, to say nothing of the damages, which may be heavy. On the other hand, an indictment is hazardous; and I think you can lose nothing by beginning with the suit. By having a shorthand writer at the trial, you may collect materials for an indictment, and also feel the pulse of the court; you can then confer upon the evidence with some counsel better versed in criminal law than myself. My advice is to sue Thomas Hardie; and ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... Association, she decided to choose the highest—that of stenography—if her father thought he could support the family without much help for a few months. She was already very rapid and correct in her penmanship, and if she could become expert in taking shorthand notes she was assured that she could find abundant and highly remunerative scope for her skill, and under circumstances, too, that would not involve unpleasant publicity. She thought very favorably, also, ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... senior's sensibilities seems a trifle dull when all things are considered, though one has to be glad that an honest son can think of him with pity mixed with admiration. But perhaps the oddest thing of all in connection with this story may be looked for in the shorthand reporter's notes of the Recorder's speech at the Old Bailey, when the accusation against Messrs. Barter and Steinberg came to ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... no experience. There was the stage. No—that would not do. She did not like the environments. There remained only the alternative of being a saleswoman in a department store or a stenographer. Having taken a course in shorthand, and being fairly proficient, she chose the latter, and, thanks to the influence and good offices of Dr. Everett, at last succeeded in securing a ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... facts, opinions, statistics, comparisons, and contradictions while they are being read is most desirable and worthy of cultivation. The student should be taught the wisdom of keeping his notes in a neat, legible, and easily available form. Shorthand methods should be discouraged. With a little tactful direction early in the year, the student may be led to form a most useful habit. The greater the proportion of intelligent note-taking that is done without compulsion, the better. No ...
— The Teaching of History • Ernest C. Hartwell
... likely to be a scandalous state of things if this went on; everybody noticed with distress that the shorthand scribes were scribbling like mad; many people were crying "Chair, chair! Order! order!" Burgess rapped with his gavel, ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain
... writer, but some perverse spirit in his blood has mixed them to their mutual undoing. When he writes prose, the prose seems always about to burst into poetry; when he writes verse, the verse seems always about to sink into prose. He thinks in flashes, and writes in shorthand. He has an intellectual passion for words, but he has never been able to accustom his mind to the slowness of their service; he tosses them about the page in his anger, tearing them open and gutting ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... 12 1/2 years of age, and then followed his father's occupation of shoemaking until he was 16 1/2 years of age. After working hard at his trade for four years, he, his brother, and two fellow apprentices, formed themselves into a sort of club to learn shorthand, the whole matter being kept a profound secret. They had no teachers, and they met at the gas-works, sitting opposite the retorts on a bench supported at each end with bricks. They did not penetrate far into the mysteries of Welsh shorthand; they soon abandoned the attempt, and induced ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... of similar lines above and below, but they were so rubbed as to be undecipherable; while, as to the above, fancy my chagrin and disappointment as I turned the paper over, then back, and scanned the crabbed shorthand-like characters over and over again, but only to grow more and more confused, for I could make no sense of it whatever. Even if the upper and lower lines had been plain, I am afraid that I should have been no wiser. Certainly I had gone through a long study of the Eastern languages, ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... constant, and absolutely indispensable act of recognising objects and actions, of spotting their qualities and twigging their meaning: an act necessarily tending to more and more abbreviation and rapidity and superficiality, to a sort of shorthand which reduces what has to be understood, and enables us to pass immediately to understanding something else; according to that law of necessarily ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... areas. They are means by which he brings to bear whatever of reality he has succeeded in gaining in past searchings. But this happens only when the symbol really symbolizes—when it stands for and sums up in shorthand actual experiences which the individual has already gone through. A symbol which is induced from without, which has not been led up to in preliminary activities, is, as we say, a bare or mere symbol; it is dead and barren. Now, any fact, whether of arithmetic, or geography, or grammar, ...
— The Child and the Curriculum • John Dewey
... plunge back for the hall and, as luck would have it, found three of the four reporters at the table. The early close had left them ahead of time, and two were copying out their shorthand while the third was engaged on a pithy paragraph or two under the headline of "Stormy Proceedings—A Professor Ejected. What happens to Dogs ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to content themselves with sending shorthand writers to Norwich to report the case fully for the benefit of their circle of readers, whose appetite for a legal quibble was ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... the yellow journal, and threw her glance from headline to headline. She found the story, and read it through, aloud, at a rate of utterance that would have staggered the swiftest shorthand writer. ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... were thus waiting, the enemy trenches sent up a glaring rocket. It fell shorthand failed to reveal them, but it plainly showed three German soldiers lying prone upon the ground, all of them ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll |
