"Unpractised" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... God. The pierced tympanum has a quatrefoil for the four cardinal virtues, or a trefoil for faith, hope, and charity. Compared with the lovely Angel Choir which flowered seventy years later, under our great King Edward, it may look all unpractised, austere; but Hugh built with sweet care, and sense, and honesty, never rioting in the disordered emotion of lovely form which owed no obedience to the spirit, and which expressed with great elaboration—almost nothing. He may have valued the ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... the noon of the following day fell at 'half-past eighteen o'clock' by the mediaeval clocks. In summer, it might fall as early as three quarters past fifteen; and this manner of reckoning time was common in Rome thirty-five years ago, and is not wholly unpractised in some parts ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... accomplish it? To one unpractised in actual deeds of wickedness, it was a question not easy to be answered, and a thousand frightful forms of evil, stalking shapes of death came and went before her imagination, and she clutched first at one, then at another of the dire suggestions that came in crowds that overwhelmed ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... time, had been anticipated long before by satirists. But even the logical fribble, even the logical jargonist, was bound to be exact. Now exactness was the very thing which languages, mostly young in actual age, and in all cases what we may call uneducated, unpractised in literary exercises, wanted most of all. And it was impossible that they should have better teachers in it than the few famous, and even than most of the numerous unknown or almost unknown, philosophers ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... twitched as he stooped down to pat the dog. Mrs. Lynch looked at her son—youngest of her five. Not the hardness of her heart but the hardness of her life had made her unpractised in moments of tenderness. Something in the way Stubby was patting the dog suggested to her that Stubby was a "queer one." He was kind of little to be carrying papers all ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... Esperanto gazette out of the numbers that are published all over the world; you will hardly be able to draw any conclusion as to the nationality of the writer of the article you light upon, save perhaps for an occasional turn of an unpractised hand. Esperanto now has its style; it is—lucidity based upon common sense and the rudiments of ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... feelings harmonized entirely with her own, yielded, with secret reluctance, to her husband's wishes, and exchanged that peaceful retreat, for the brilliant, but heartless scenes of fashionable life. The world was new to her, and no wonder if her unpractised eye was dazzled by the splendor of its pageantry. She entered a magic circle, and was borne round the ceaseless course with a rapidity which threw a deceitful lustre on every object, and concealed the falseness of its colors. She became the idol of a courtly ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... side, and with equal want of skill and coolness by both parties, can form a just estimate of the danger incurred by one who ventured to encounter a duellist of the old school. Perfect coolness in the field, and a steadiness and accuracy (which to the unpractised appeared almost miraculous) in the use of the pistol, formed the characteristics of this class; and in addition to this there generally existed a kind of professional pride, which prompted the duellist, in default of any more malignant feeling, from motives ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... improved the arrangement of the figures, but even now they are not, I imagine, quite as Tabachetti left them. The figure of Christ is greatly better in technical execution than that of either of the two thieves; the folds of the drapery alone will show this even to an unpractised eye. I do not think there can be a doubt but that Tabachetti cut this figure himself, as also those of the Magdalene and St. John, who stand at the foot of the cross. The thieves are coarsely executed, with no very obvious distinction between the penitent ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... feet in height, and proportionally broad and powerful, was much inferior to his gigantic antagonist; but to the superior size and physical force of the latter he opposed the lithe activity and the fervid energy of youth, so that to an unpractised eye it might have seemed doubtful at first which of the two men had ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... allowed to remain there until all the dirt has soaked out. If not sufficiently purified, a little hydrochloric or oxalic acid, or caustic potash may be put in the water, according as the stains are from grease or from ink. Here is where an unpractised binder will probably injure a book for life. If the chemicals are too strong, or the sheets remain too long in the bath, or are not thoroughly cleansed from the bleach before they are re-sized, the certain seeds of decay are planted in ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... side, and whilst you feel that a total change has been effected, you shall not always easily assign the secret of the change wrought. There then comes into view, it must be owned, something like an unpractised awkwardness in the gait of the great elder bard, which you less willingly believe, or to which you shut your eyes, when you have him by himself to yourself. The step of Dryden is rapid, and has perfect decision. He knows, with every spring he takes, where he shall alight. Now ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... even to my unpractised eye, was breaking up. I saw that she was parting in the middle, and that the life of the solitary man upon the mast hung by a thread. Still, he clung to it. He had a singular red cap on,—not like a sailor's cap, but of a finer colour; and as the few yielding ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... of them, just as the bee-master keeps the drones out of the hive. Now in a democracy, too, there are drones, but they are more numerous and more dangerous than in the oligarchy; there they are inert and unpractised, here they are full of life and animation; and the keener sort speak and act, while the others buzz about the bema and prevent their opponents from being heard. And there is another class in democratic States, of respectable, thriving individuals, who can be ...
— The Republic • Plato
... such dear fellows woo us,— The nothings that then, love, are—everything to us— That quick correspondence of glances and sighs, And what BOB calls the "Two-penny-post of the Eyes"— Ah, DOLL! tho' I know you've a heart, 'tis in vain, To a heart so unpractised these things to explain. They can only be felt, in their fulness divine, By her who has wandered, at evening's decline, Thro' a valley like that, with a ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Both had long been loyal, and had earned many laurels against the rebels, while Champagny was still devoutly a Papist, and wavered painfully between his hatred to heresy and to Spain. Egmont and De Heze were raw, unpractised lads, in whom genius did not come to supply the place of experience. The Commander, De Goignies, was a veteran, but a veteran who had never gained much glory, and the chiefs of the cavalry, infantry, and artillery, were absent ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and the earth Knows thee not, thus afflicted, for a God; And ocean too, with all its solemn noise, Has from thy sceptre pass'd; and all the air Is emptied of thine hoary majesty. Thy thunder, conscious of the new command, 60 Rumbles reluctant o'er our fallen house; And thy sharp lightning in unpractised hands Scorches and burns our once serene domain. O aching time! O moments big as years! All as ye pass swell out the monstrous truth, And press it so upon our weary griefs That unbelief has not a space to breathe. Saturn, sleep on:—O thoughtless, why did I Thus violate thy slumbrous solitude? Why ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... test both his degree of success and my own power of constructing a coherent history out of the detached fragments. Unpromising as is the matter, said I, let me see whether he can conceal his secret from even such unpractised eyes as mine. ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... positively asserted that the famous old Dutch florist Voorhelm, who kept above 1200 varieties of the hyacinth, was hardly ever deceived in knowing each variety by the bulb alone. Hence we must conclude that the bulbs of the hyacinth and the branches and leaves of the camellia, though appearing to an unpractised eye absolutely undistinguishable, yet ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... place is occupied by others—and what was considered as having substance and reality in their proceedings, is transferred to the head of physiology. The phrenologist is admitted into the hierarchy of science as an honest, though hitherto an unpractised, and not very successful labourer; the metaphysician, with his class of internal observations, is entirely scouted. M. Comte considers the mind as one of those abstract entities which it is the first business of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... surveying the general attack of our Infantry on the centre and right 3,000 yards ahead of us. The guns were giving the Boers lyddite and shrapnel, and the fighting line were cheering as kopje after kopje was taken. It was evident to my unpractised eye that we had the Boers on the run at last. I told the Commander-in-Chief that my guns had arrived, when he replied, "Why, you should be in Colenso," and turned to his Staff, saying that some mistake had been made. I therefore showed my written orders, ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... saying all he was sure of, and forthwith racking his unpractised mind for an excuse. "I'm sorry I can't oblige you, but ... my arrangements ... I've made arrangements, in fact, for ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... it,' she coaxed, with a softness in her voice which any man but unpractised Swithin would have felt to be exquisite. 'I feel that I have been so foolish as to put in your hands an instrument to effect my own annihilation. Not a word have you spoken for the ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... eat buns. I was never, from a kitten, fond of such things. I got very hungry. Again and again the mice rushed through the straw, and I, heavily, helplessly, in my unpractised way, rushed after them. At first the elephant laughed heartily at my inexpertness; but when he saw how hungry and ...
— Pussy and Doggy Tales • Edith Nesbit
... outcast on the earth, by hazard led Hither and thither. Such a man thou seest Woful, unworthy, holding in his heart Always that sin. I was that lady's lord, Whom she did follow through the dreadful wood, Living by me abandoned, at this hour; If yet, in truth, she lives—youthful, alone, Unpractised in the ways, not meriting Fortunes so hard. Ah, if indeed she lives, Who roamed the thick and boundless forest, full Of prowling beasts—roamed it, my Jivala, Unguarded by her guilty lord—forsook, Betrayed, good friend!" Thus did Nishadha grieve, Calling sweet Damayanti to his mind. So tarried ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... the prisoners? Fifteen of them, including La Saussaye and the Jesuit Masse, were turned adrift in an open boat, at the mercy of the wilderness and the sea. Nearly all were lands-men; but while their unpractised hands were struggling with the oars, they were joined among the islands by the fugitive pilot and his boat's crew. Worn and half starved, the united bands made their perilous way eastward, stopping from time to time to hear mass, make a procession, or ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... supplant: And all this without ever having entertain'd the least previous Design or Thought for that Purpose: No Art used to inflame him, no Coquetry practised to tempt or intice him, and no Prudery or Affectation to tamper with his Passions; but, on the contrary, artless and unpractised in the Wiles of the World, all her Endeavours, and even all her Wishes, tended only to render herself as un-amiable as she could in his Eyes: Tho' at the same time she is so far from having any Aversion to his Person, that she seems rather prepossess'd ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... as yet unpractised in philosophical reflection, Bergson's skill and clarity of statement, his fertility in illustration, his frequent and picturesque use of analogy may be a pitfall. It all sounds so convincing and right, as Bergson puts it, that the critical faculty is put to sleep. There is ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... other hand; the power of an unblemished heart and a brave spirit is shewn, in the events of war, not only among unpractised citizens and peasants; but among troops in the most perfect discipline. Large bodies of the British army have been several times broken—that is, technically vanquished—in Egypt, and elsewhere. Yet they, who were conquered as formal soldiers, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... way, in the writings of the Old Testament those primers for the rude Israelitish people, unpractised in thought, the doctrines of the immortality of the soul, and future recompenses, might be fairly left out: but they were bound to contain nothing which could have even procrastinated the progress of ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... of sentences, the sequence of verbs, the marshalling of the ranks of auxiliaries are all, in a sense, to be learned. There is a kind of inarticulate disorder to which writers are liable, quite distinct from a bad style, and caused chiefly by lack of exercise. An unpractised writer will sometimes send a beautiful and powerful phrase jostling along in the midst of a clumsy sentence—like a crowned king escorted by ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... are like helots set, A virtuous shame within us to beget. For by example most we sinn'd before, And glass-like clearness mix'd with frailty bore. But, since reform'd by what we did amiss, We by our sufferings learn to prize our bliss: 210 Like early lovers, whose unpractised hearts Were long the May-game of malicious arts, When once they find their jealousies were vain, With double heat renew their fires again. 'Twas this produced the joy that hurried o'er Such swarms of English to the neighbouring shore, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... town husband of a raw country girl, wholly unpractised in the ways of the world, and whom he watches with ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Brooks was proved to have cheated himself so much more than his lady as to be entirely exonerated from all but puzzle-headedness. The young man's farmer life qualified him to be highly popular at the Holt. He was curious about English husbandry, talked to the labourers, and tried their tools with no unpractised hand, even the flail which Honor's hatred of steam still kept as the winter's employment in the barn; he appreciated the bullocks, criticized the sheep, and admired the pigs, till the farming men agreed 'there had not been such an one about ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the end of "Hester," there is one unerring indication of an uncultivated mind and an unpractised pen. This is the writer's fondness for well-worn phrases, which authors of a severer taste have long discarded as suited only to the newspapers, but which Mr. Beckett has picked up with eager delight, and, having distributed them liberally throughout the poem, contemplates with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... saw what the room contained. Over the chairs, over the sofa, over the table, in the stacked and open pasteboard boxes on the floor, were dresses and evening gowns outspread with the profusion of a splendid shop, and even to his unpractised eyes, costly and magnificent beyond anything he had ever seen before. Florence swept an opera cloak from a chair and made him sit down, watching him the while with a charming gaiety and excitement. At such a moment it seemed to him ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... materialized thought-form—that is, an artificial elemental created by the energy with which a man thinks of himself as present at that particular spot. These varieties would be easily distinguishable one from the other by any one accustomed to use astral vision, but an unpractised person would be quite likely to ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... exercises, since it is the test of merit to make the hardest things look easy. Moreover, there may be a distinction between two feats almost imperceptible to the eye,—a change, for instance, in the position of the hands on a bar,—which may at once transform the thing from a trifle to a wonder. An unpractised eye can no more appreciate the difficulty of a gymnastic exercise by seeing it executed, than an inexperienced ear, of the perplexities of a piece of music by hearing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... was in that part of the house to which he by social standing also belonged, he had many chances to seize upon cups, jugs, and dishes. If detected with any thing that he ought not to have had, it was his custom to drop the forbidden toy and toddle off as fast as his unpractised feet would carry him. The havoc which this caused amongst the glass and china was bewildering in a household where tea-sets and dinner-sets had passed from generation to generation, where slapdash, giddy-pated kitchenmaids never came, where Miss Betty washed the best teacups ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... very closest proximity to the sea, but with none of the properties of the real seaside course—no seaside turf, no sand dunes, no wild natural golf. These courses are usually elevated on cliffs. In many cases the golf that is to be obtained upon them is excellent, and I only wish to point out to unpractised golfers who are about to start for a holiday and have taken no advice, that if they are making for a seaside place and want that kind of golf which they have heard is to be had at Deal, Sandwich, Rye, Westward Ho! Littlestone, St. Andrews, North Berwick, and scores of other places, ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... and spake not.—'Wherefore dost thou smile At what I say? Laon, I am not weak, 1010 And, though my cheek might become pale the while, With thee, if thou desirest, will I seek Through their array of banded slaves to wreak Ruin upon the tyrants. I had thought It was more hard to turn my unpractised cheek 1015 To scorn and shame, and this beloved spot And thee, O dearest friend, to leave and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... itself imperceptibly. It is likely indeed, that, for a short period, while his gills were decrepit, and his lungs infantile, he might have breathed air and water alternately and at will. Now, however, his gills were, for all practical purposes, useless; his lungs, ready but unpractised. The necessity of air-breathing was forced on ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... ends of life, even tolerably, by making proper exceptions. But the moral law commands the most punctual obedience from everyone; it must, therefore, not be so difficult to judge what it requires to be done, that the commonest unpractised understanding, even without worldly prudence, should fail ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... scholar was not enough for Fra Bartolommeo's new energies. He pined for his old friend, Mariotto, who could follow out his designs in his own style so closely, that an unpractised eye could not see the difference of hand; and such was his influence on the rulers of the order, that they allowed a most unique partnership ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... was greeted with howls of derision, which fell into silence as John Wendell made the trial. His unpractised hand in some way pulled down the goose, and the rebound of the sapling plucked the booty out of his grasp, and flung it ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... Leonard, if I can get through a quadrille;' and therewith Ethel was seized upon by both boys to hear the story of every hit and miss, and of each of the difficulties that their unpractised corps had encountered in getting round the corners between Stoneborough and the Grange. Then came Leonard's quadrille, which it might be hoped was gratifying to him; but which he executed with as much solemn ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... general movement that followed he had presence of mind enough to seize a chair next to Kathleen. He saw Falstaff's burly figure enter, habited as the conventional "black beetle" of the church, and in the sharpened state of his wits noticed that the unpractised curate had put on his clerical collar the wrong way round. He rejoiced in Carter's look of dismay on finding his ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... my teeth on edge. Bide here a moment, General, for as Master of the Palace it will be your duty to receive certain guests to-day of whom I wish to speak with you. Bide you also, Martina, that you may remember my words in case this unpractised officer ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... and confusions which delighted the eye by their quaintness, and in a measure reasonableness, in this rare old market-town, were metropolitan novelties to the unpractised eyes of Elizabeth-Jane, fresh from netting fish-seines in a seaside cottage. Very little inquiry was necessary to guide her footsteps. Henchard's house was one of the best, faced with dull red-and-grey old brick. The front door was open, and, as in other houses, she could see through ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... from his, she fled to her own room, locked the door and burst into a passionate flood of tears. Poor child! Her lover with his unpractised hand, had opened a new chapter in her life, too precipitately. She was not prepared for its revelations, and the shock had shaken her a ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... not to know at large of things remote From use, obscure and subtle; but, to know That which before us lies in daily life, Is the prime wisdom: What is more, is fume, Or emptiness, or fond impertinence: And renders us, in things that most concern, Unpractised, unprepared, and still to seek. Therefore from this high pitch let us descend A lower flight, and speak of things at hand Useful; whence, haply, mention may arise Of something not unseasonable to ask, By sufferance, and thy wonted favour, deigned. Thee I have heard relating what ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... you have this record, you will know the private history of my life.... I have told all, with unpractised tongue, but with a wish to be understood, and to set forth a story of which the letter should be as true as the spirit. Friend beyond all price to me, some day this tale will reach your hands, and I ask you to house it in your heart, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the exercise of no small amount of observation and invention. Persons unacquainted with minerals would be unable to discover the slightest affinity between the rough ironstone as brought up from the mine, and the iron or steel of commerce. To unpractised eyes they would seem to possess no properties in common, and it is only after subjecting the stone to severe processes of manufacture that usable metal can be obtained from it. The effectual reduction of the ore requires an intense heat, maintained by artificial methods, such ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... specimens sent from distant places, by persons unpractised in geology, fail to give the instruction which is intended, from the want of attention to a few necessary precautions, that the following directions may perhaps be useful to some of those, into whose hands these pages are likely to fall. It will be sufficient to premise, ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... and deceived somewhere... for the first time... you understand? and they've put her out into the street like that. Look at the way her dress is torn, and the way it has been put on: she has been dressed by somebody, she has not dressed herself, and dressed by unpractised hands, by a man's hands; that's evident. And now look there: I don't know that dandy with whom I was going to fight, I see him for the first time, but he, too, has seen her on the road, just now, drunk, ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... namely, that not only changes of opinion take place in consequence of experience, but that those changes are from variation of opinion to unity of opinion; and that whatever may be the differences of estimate among unpractised or uncultivated tastes, there will be unity of taste among the experienced. And that therefore the operation of repeated trial and experience is to arrive at principles of preference in some sort common to all, and which are ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... this nervous dread of loving his neighbour as himself, went up the hill, and Oak walked on to the village, still astonished at the reencounter with Bathsheba, glad of his nearness to her, and perplexed at the rapidity with which the unpractised girl of Norcombe had developed into the supervising and cool woman here. But some women only require an emergency to ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... defiance of those hidden perils that lurk where sanitation and hygiene are unpractised sciences, Joe's numerous family throve and multiplied. The baby carriage which had held his firstborn,—Arthur, now aged fourteen,—was still in use, the luster of its paint much dimmed and its upholstery but a memory. It ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... and a few professionals, whose hair, hands and glasses betrayed them. The latter stood in groups, eying each other suspiciously, while regarding the rest of the world with that indulgent air they assume at musicales. Everything to my unpractised eye seemed in hopeless disorder; a frightful buzz filled the air, and a blond girl at the big piano was trying to disentangle a lot of music. Near her stood a long-haired young man who perspired incessantly. "Ah!" I gloated. "Nervous! serves ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... orator to Demosthenes. For in Hyperides there is a richer modulation, a greater variety of excellence. He is, we may say, in everything second-best, like the champion of the pentathlon, who, though in every contest he has to yield the prize to some other combatant, is superior to the unpractised in all five. ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... carried in triumph, ribanded and decorated as at Gargantuan feasts. Just these men cried louder than others, turned furiously towards the solitary seat where the poor leper listened, still and downcast. Yet in the midst of the general uproar, one voice was raised in his favour, but low, unpractised, less a voice than a sympathetic murmur, through which was distinguished vaguely: "Great services to ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... of ode 'to the Daisy,'—very flat, feeble, and affected; and in a diction as artificial, and as much encumbered with heavy expletives, as the theme of an unpractised schoolboy. The two following stanzas will serve ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... progress; and then, as a furious surge overtook her in the chase, she settled heavily into the element, like a wounded animal, that, despairing of escape, sinks helplessly in the grass, resigned to fate. At such times the crests of the waves swept past her, like vapour in the atmosphere, and one unpractised would be apt to think the ship stationary, though in truth whirling along in ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... righteous, devoted, and holy scarcely are saved, where stall I appear? How do my vain thoughts, and unprofitable conversation, swell heaven's register? Where is my watchfulness! Where are my humility, purity, and hatred of sin? Where is my zeal? Alas! alas! they are things unpractised, unfelt, almost unknown to me. How little do I share in the toils, the labours, or the sorrows of the righteous, and consequently how little do I participate in their confidence, their joys, their ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... eyes, and of her hair—"a brown tress." She had gravely heard the words as "a brown dress," and she silently bore the poet a grudge for having been the accessory of Providence in the mandate that she should wear the loathed corduroy. The unpractised ear played another little girl a like turn. She had a phrase for snubbing any anecdote that sounded improbable. "That," she said more or less after Sterne, "is a ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... the others, turned in righteous wrath toward the high, solitary bench where the poor leper sat motionless, listening, his head in his hands. But amid the general hue and cry, a single voice arose in his favor, a low, unpractised voice, rather a sympathetic buzzing than speech, in which could be vaguely distinguished the words: "Great services rendered to Corsica. ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirrour of manners and of life. His characters are not modified by the customs of particular places, unpractised by the rest of the world; by the peculiarities of studies or professions, which can operate but upon small numbers; or by the accidents of transient fashions or temporary opinions: they are the genuine progeny of common ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... individuals of which to an unpractised eye would appear absolutely similar, which would give, it might have been thought, no scope to selection, the whole appearance of the animal has been changed in a few years (as in the case of Lord Western's sheep), so that practised agriculturalists could scarcely credit ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... dismounted, and picked up the end of a wire that lay trailing on the ground. With new-found interest she examined the fracture, and stared at it in wonder. Dropping it, and kneeling excitedly in the grass, she searched another, and still another wire, and with the same result. Even to her unpractised eye the facts were plain: the four wires had not been broken; they had been cleanly cut, and very recently, as shown by the absence of rust on the severed ends. By whom? And why? Seth Huntington, Haig ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... An unpractised writer is generally anxious to bespeak public attention, and to solicit public indulgence. Except on professional subjects, military men are, perhaps, too fearful of critical censure. For the present narrative no other ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench
... had been brought, by the late dispute between his colleague and himself." He warmly recommended to Decius and Fabius to "live together with one mind and one spirit." Observed that "they were men qualified by nature for military command: great in action, but unpractised in the strife of words and eloquence; their talents were such as eminently became consuls. As to the artful and the ingenious lawyers and orators, such as Appius Claudius, they ought to be kept at home to preside in the city and the forum; and to be appointed praetors for the administration of justice." ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... State House, and Wetherell followed Mr. Duncan in, to have a look at the woodchuck session himself. Several members hurried by and up the stairs, some of them in their Sunday black; and the lobby above seemed, even to the storekeeper's unpractised eye, a trifle active for a woodchuck session. Mr. Duncan muttered something, and quickened his gait a little on the steps that led to the gallery. This place was almost empty. They went down to the rail, and the railroad president cast his ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... ordered the goose to make its appearance every Michaelmas. In some places, particularly Caithness, geese are cured and smoked, and are highly relishing. Smoked Solan geese are well known as contributing to the abundance of a Scottish breakfast, though too rank and fishy-flavoured for unpractised palates. The goose has made some figure in English history. The churlishness of the brave Richard Coeur de Lion, a sovereign distinguished for an insatiable appetite and vigorous digestion, in an affair of roast goose, was the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 392, Saturday, October 3, 1829. • Various
... we have left smoking on the wharf, consisted of the military commandant, or governor, of St. Blas, Don Gaspar de Luna, Don Diego Pinto, the commander of a guarda-costa of eighteen guns, that lay in the offing, and which, to the most unpractised eye, bore about the same resemblance to an English or American man of war of the same class, as an old, worn-out jackass does to a handsome, high spirited, well groomed race-horse. The rest of the group was made up of young ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... came to be told; the less the narrator appears the better. It is seldom that more than one narrator is necessary, yet two, three, or even more are often introduced, with full descriptions of persons and circumstances. "It is a frequent device of the unpractised to cover pages with useless explanations of how they heard a tale which is thus elaborately put too far off from the reader to appeal to his sympathies. One writer, after describing a rural station, his waiting for the train, ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... your Lordships to pardon me that I may put you in remembrance to move her Majesty that she may have an especial care to draw ten or twelve thousand men about her own person, that may not be men unpractised. For this she may well assure herself that 10,000 men, that be practised and trained together under a good governor and expert leaders, shall do her Majesty more service than any 40,000 which shall come from any other parts ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... Acheul, or from the Liege caves. In them, or in the upraised bed of the Mediterranean, on the south coast of Sardinia, instead of the rudest pottery or flint tools so irregular in form as to cause the unpractised eye to doubt whether they afford unmistakable evidence of design, we should now be finding sculptured forms surpassing in beauty the masterpieces of Phidias or Praxiteles; lines of buried railways or electric telegraphs from ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... himself is understood to have afterwards admitted to have been unseemly towards those who had so recently been his colleagues. The course followed by the government was "marked with all that timidity, that want of dexterity, which led to the failure of the unpractised shoplifter." His late colleagues were compared to "thimble-riggers at a country fair," and their plan was "petty larceny, for it had not the redeeming qualities of bold ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... exercise might calm his spirit, which never had been more profoundly agitated. Still young and unpractised in his pitiless system, he was troubled at the thought of a victim so pure as Madame de Tecle. To trample on the life, the repose, and the heart of such a woman, as the horse tramples on the grass of the road, with as little care or pity, was ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... time for the calm discussion of theological differences, the time for friendly salutation between the champions of the rival systems of faith, was rapidly drawing to a close. If some rays of sunshine still glanced athwart the landscape, conveying to the unpractised eye the impression of quiet serenity, there were also black and portentous clouds already rising far above the horizon. Those who could read the signs of the times had long watched their gathering, and they trembled ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... was dropped. They produced and read a copy of Joan's first effort at dictating—her proclamation summoning the English to retire from the siege of Orleans and vacate France—truly a great and fine production for an unpractised girl of seventeen. ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... friends. But if you think of Cooper as a helpless victim you are sadly mistaken. There is an elaborate scheme behind it all, a scheme of such transcendent ingenuity as only simple-hearted, sweet-natured, unpractised, purblind visionaries like Cooper ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... and accustomed to vanquish the barbarians on the frozen Danube. [32] They quitted, with a sigh, the pleasures of the baths and theatres, to put on arms, whose use they had almost forgotten, and beneath the weight of which they were oppressed. The unpractised elephants, whose uncouth appearance, it was hoped, would strike terror into the army of the north, threw their unskilful riders; and the awkward evolutions of the marines, drawn from the fleet of Misenum, were an object of ridicule ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... (13) with as broad a front as the nature of the ground permits. I am quite clear that your troopers, if they can trust their own skill in galloping, will take kindly to such an exhibition; while as certainly, if unpractised, they must look to it that the enemy does not give them a lesson in ...
— The Cavalry General • Xenophon
... boat's headway—which in its turn affects the rudder. (If we run down those fishermen the damages may be heavy.) But you see I have this advantage,—I know beforehand your system of navigation—you don't know mine. Let me inform your unpractised eyes, Miss Derrick, that the dark object just ahead of us ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... hasten to you under the command of their king. They swear not to rest, till Italy is free. Italians of all countries, second their magnanimous efforts ... let those, who have borne arms, resume them, let the unpractised youth exercise themselves in the use of them, let all the friends of their country raise up one ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... was a moss basket filled with arbutus blossoms. Hid away in the leaves was a tiny paper, on which were written some graceful verses, evidently by a not unpractised hand. The signature was in initials unknown to Mercy; but she hazarded a guess as to the authorship, and sent the following ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... oo as heard in oo-ze, which sound rapidly slides into that of i, and then advances to that of ee as heard in e-ve, and on which it gradually passes off into silence."—Kirkham's Elocution, p. 75. Thus the "unpractised student" is taught that b-y spells bwy; or, if pronounced "very deliberately, boo-i-ee!" Nay, this grammatist makes b, not a labial mute, as Walker, Webster, Cobb, and others, have called it, but a nasal subtonic, or semivowel. He delights ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... lasted. When he could go on no longer, he took a breath, and then continued as before. Unconsciously, he reminded one of a diver, who every now and then raises his head above water, obtains a supply of air, and disappears again. Noel was the only one to listen attentively to the reading, which to unpractised ears was unintelligible. It apprised him of many things which it was important for him to know. At last Constant pronounced the words, "In testimony whereof," etc., which end ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... a kiss and a smile— Wae 's me! can I tak' it amiss? My laddie 's unpractised in guile, He 's free aye to daut and to kiss! Ye lasses wha lo'e to torment Your wooers wi' fause scorn and strife, Play your pranks—I hae gi'en my consent, And this nicht I ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... so this time. The master was a fencer, and something of a boxer; he had played at singlestick, and was used to watching an adversary's eye and coming down on him without any of those premonitory symptoms by which unpractised persons show long beforehand ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... this speechifying; especially to an unpractised orator. I never conceived, till now, what toil the temperance lecturers undergo for my sake. Hereafter, they shall have the business to themselves. Do, some kind Christian, pump a stroke or two, just to wet my whistle. Thank you, sir! My dear ...
— A Rill From the Town Pump (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... dissolution and spiritual decay of Protestantism with the Papacy. But in order to complete the contrast, and give force to the vindication, it was requisite that the true function and character of the Holy See should not be concealed from the unpractised vision of strangers by the mask of that system of government which has grown up around it in modern times. The importance of this violent disruption of the two authorities consists in the state of religion throughout the world. Its cause lies ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... was his own. But in general it is not so much the sentiments and images that are new as the modulation of the verses in which they float. The cold obstruction of two centuries' thaws, and the stream of speech, once more let loose, seeks out its old windings, or overflows musically in unpractised channels. The service which Spenser did to our literature by this exquisite sense of harmony is incalculable. His fine ear, abhorrent of barbarous dissonance, his dainty tongue that loves to prolong the relish of a musical phrase, made possible the transition from ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... of grass, and nearer the woods with a stunted growth of brush and small dwarf birches. Gold Creek itself spread out to nearly twice its former width, with innumerable little sandbars and a few boulders protruding from the bottom. Even Jack's unpractised eye could see that the current had no depth ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... address Myengeen earnestly at some length. Stonor could not guess what he was saying, for he used no gestures. He saw that it was true Imbrie was unpractised in their tongue, for he spoke with difficulty, hesitating for words, and they had to pay close attention to get his meaning. Myengeen listened with a face as inscrutable as Imbrie's own. At the end he nodded with an expression of approval, ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... in full, and I do so the more readily, not only because it contains the first detailed account of the man whose extraordinary audacity was shortly to raise the interest of the public to fever pitch, but also because it tells the story with a force and colour of which my unpractised pen is incapable. Apologising therefore to the editor for the liberty I have taken, I reprint the Star account verbatim. I think, however, the story ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... favoured Knight of the Emperor, whose advent now brightens the frontiers of Italy!—me—you dare not detain. For your friends, I shall meet them yet perhaps, ere many days are over, where none shall separate our swords. Till then, remember, Orsini, that it is against no unpractised arm that thou wilt ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... were lucky enough to meet with frigates and brigs who had unskilful gunners or worthless crews; he also carefully shows that the Macedonian was incompetently handled, the Peacock commanded by a mere martinet, the Avon's crew unpractised weak and unskilful, the Java's exceedingly poor, and more to the same effect. Now the Americans took in single fight three frigates and seven sloops, and when as many as ten vessels are met it is exceedingly probable that they represent the fair ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... confess'd to human eyes! Unnamed, methinks, distinguish'd I had been From other shades, by this eternal green, About whose wreaths the vulgar poets strive, And, with a touch, their wither'd bays revive. Untaught, unpractised, in a barbarous age, I found not, but created first the stage; And if I drain'd no Greek or Latin store, 'Twas that my own abundance gave me more. On foreign trade I needed not rely, Like fruitful Britain, rich without supply. In this my rough-drawn play you shall ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... this characteristic in narrating a conversation which occurred while he was at Carnarvon, a little town in Wales. "It was on this occasion," he says, "that I learned how vague are the ideas of number in unpractised minds. 'What number of people do you think,' I said to an elderly person, 'will be assembled this day at Carnarvon?' 'What number?' rejoined the person addressed; 'what number? Well, really, now, I should reckon—perhaps a matter of four million.' Four millions of extra people ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant
... in the morass through which we can force our way; and, were we once on firm ground, I trust there is no man in the Life-Guards who supposes our squadrons, though so weak in numbers, are unable to trample into dust twice the number of these unpractised clowns.—What ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... thought, and thought much. But George's honourable ambitions, the esteem in which he was held, the place he was to make for himself in the world of men—in thinking of these her mind was all stiff and unpractised. She was conscious first of a moral prick, then of a certain ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and dull; when indeed it is those men that are in fault who want the right way of addressing, the true and secret arts of moving, that sovereign remedy against disdain. It is you alone, my lord, like a young Columbus, that have found the direct, unpractised way to that little and so much desired world, the favour of the fair; nor could love himself have pointed his arrows with any thing more successful for his conquest of hearts: but mine, my lord, like Scaeva's ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... to detect a bad mushroom if all are quite fresh; but after being gathered a few hours the colours change, so that unpractised ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... entirely immodeset, unmeasured, and (in evil sense) unmannered, execution with the fist; and the entirely modest, measured, and (in the noblest sense) mannered, or moral'd execution with the finger; between the impatient and unpractised doing, containing in itself the witness of lasting impatience and idleness through all previous life, and the patient and practised doing, containing in itself the witness of self-restraint and unwearied toil through all previous life; between ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... marking minute portions of time; the three-hundredth parts of a second were indicated by it. It was a kind of watch, with a pin for stopping one of the hands. I proposed that we should each endeavour to stop it twenty times in succession, at the same point. We were both equally unpractised, and our first endeavours showed that we could not be confident of the twentieth part of a second. In fact, both the time occupied in causing the extremities of the fingers to obey the volition, as well as the time employed ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... with confusion. She earnestly hoped his incog. would ever remain unknown, for her delicacy shrunk at the publicity and notoriety which would then attend his attachment. It was certainly delightful to be loved, and so loved—to be attended, and so attended; but the heart of Julia was too unpractised to relish the laugh and observations of a malignant world. "No, my Antonio," she breathed internally, "hover around me, shield me from impending dangers, delight me with your presence, and enchant me ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... an unpractised hand, is made over to an artist to reduce to proportion; from him it passes over to the hand of an engraver, and an interesting plate is produced by their joint labours. But, in this making up, the character and features of the individual are lost, or the scenery is composed of foliage not indigenous ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... myself on the curbstone, afraid to plunge into the boiling vortex of the crossing. Every time I made a start, a clanging street car snatched up the way. I could not even pick out my street; the unobtrusive street signs were lost to my unpractised sight, in the glaring confusion of store signs and advertisements. If I accosted a pedestrian to ask the way, I had to speak several times before I was heard. Jews, hurrying by with bearded chins on their bosoms ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... and useful of the metals lie, in many places, so near the earth's surface that, in the earliest times, mining is unneeded and therefore unpractised. We are told that in Spain silver was first discovered in consequence of a great fire, which consumed all the forests wherewith the mountains were clothed, and lasted many days; at the end of which time the surface of the soil was found ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... he entered the kitchen, a strange scene met his view. His master was propped up by pillows, and evidently suffering painfully from his breathing, and over his pinched features had crept that grey shadow which even the unpractised eye can discern and comprehend. The young doctor stood sympathetically by, conscious that he had given his last aid and must stand aside. Gladys knelt by the bed with folded hands, her golden head bowed in deep and bitter silence. She saw her last friend ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... withdrew at a sign from his master, and was followed by the porter. Fisher advanced to the bedside and took the Baron's wrist. Even his unpractised touch told him that the pulse was alarmingly high. He was much puzzled, and not a little uneasy at the turn which the affair had taken. "Have I got myself and the Russian into an infernal scrape?" he thought. "But no—he's well out of his teens, and ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... it will always happen, that at all times, and whether circumstances be adverse or favourable, they will remain of unaltered courage and preserve the same noble bearing. But when its citizens are unpractised in arms, and trust not to their own valour but wholly to the arbitration of Fortune, they will change their temper as she changes, and offer always the same example of behaviour as ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... the dependents from ennui. But to supply these in a style of proper and antique dignity was beyond the power of the poets. In the wild forests of the mind they could rarely capture a mature idea, and they were as yet unpractised artists. Yet contemplative leisure called eagerly for constant titbits of romance to tickle the palate and furnish a diversion, while the genius of Christian poetry was yet in infantile weakness. The dilemma lasted but a moment, and was solved by an heroic effort ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... force to sever or unite, And trained alike to vanquish or endure. Nor skilful less, cheap conquest to ensure, Discord to breathe, and jealousy to sow, To quell by boasting, and by bribes to lure; While nought against them bring the unpractised foe, Save hearts for Freedom's cause, ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... what results from a less felicitous choice of situation! 'Roxana.' 'Singleton,' 'Moll Flanders,' 'Colonel Jack,' are all genuine offspring of the same father. They bear the veritable impress of De Foe. An unpractised midwife that would not swear to the nose, lip, forehead, and eye of every one of them! They are in their way as full of incident, and some of them every bit as romantic; only they want the uninhabited island, and the charm that has bewitched ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... unskill'd in venal praise, Unstain'd with flattery's art; Who loves simplicity of lays Breathed ardent from the heart; While gratitude and joy inspire, Resumes the long unpractised lyre, To hail, O HAY, thy natal morn: No gaudy wreath of flowers she weaves, But twines with oak the laurel ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... Casas translated the contents into Latin, adding his own observations or objections to the different reports or proposals, and then returned them to the Chancellor, who was delighted to have such expert assistance in dispatching complicated affairs, in which he was himself unpractised. From the Chancellor's favour to that of the King was but a step, and the charge of reforming Indian legislation, which Las Casas had held from Cardinal Ximenez, was renewed to him. This welcome news was given him one ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... beside him. Then he looked round, and lifted his hand to request silence; and ascending the chair, rose in full view of all. Every one felt that the squire was about to make a speech, and the earnestness of the attention was proportioned to the rarity of the event; for (though he was not unpractised in the oratory of the hustings) only thrice before had the squire made what could fairly be called "a speech" to the villagers of Hazeldean,—once on a kindred festive occasion, when he had presented to them his bride; once in a contested election for the shire, in which he took more than ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... whirl past us; and, only a minute later, Herman Mordaunt's followed; the poor, exhausted beasts struggling in the harness for freedom, that they might swim for their lives. Anneke heard the snorting of those wretched horses; but her unpractised eyes did not detect them, immersed, as they were, in the current; nor had she recognised the sleigh that whirled past us, as her father's. A little later, a fearful shriek came from one of the fettered beasts; such a heart-piercing cry as it is known ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... moving picture my palace—and must I call it mine? presented, upon my first arrival. The old steward, and the grey-headed lacqueys endeavoured to assume a look of complacency, but their recent grief appeared through their unpractised hypocrisy. "Health to our young master! Long life," cried they, with a broken and tremulous accent, "to the marquis of Pescara!" You will readily believe, that I made haste to free them from their restraint, and to assure them that the more they lamented ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... recall the peaceful errand of the merchantmen and reflect that their armature was little calculated to cope with the war-waging outlaws, it is quite apparent how gross the inequality of the struggle must necessarily be. While most of the merchantmen carried defensive armament, the unpractised, unskilled crew made the guns in their hands little more than ineffective. As the pirate ship approached, she displayed the same flag flying from the stern of the merchantman; and with the crew hidden below decks, ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann
... first rise and infancy of Farce, When fools were many, and when plays were scarce, The raw, unpractised authors could, with ease, A young and unexperienced audience please: No single character had e'er been shown, But the whole herd of fops was all their own; Rich in originals, they set to view, In every piece, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... time, in not looking round; so the surprise came off to his satisfaction. She was nervous and unpractised, and he constantly found her feet where they had no business to be. But sooner than hurt her feelings, he piloted her twice round the room before stopping; and found himself next to Mrs Hunter-Ranyard, who 'snuggled up' ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... The Kitchen-maid who Became a Marchioness; and Sixty Soups, by One who Knows, lay strewn about the room, the Dream-Book sadly torn, and Little Lucy disfigured forever with batter. Even to the unpractised eye it was evident that something had happened, and Mr. Terwilliger felt a cold chill mounting his spine three sections at a time. Whether it was the chill or his concern for the prostrate cook that was responsible or not I cannot say, but for some cause ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... a hostess in a high hat and a stiff-bustled dress at the door. Then there were small wood-cuts which one might have framed for a doll's house; portraits of fish of all kinds, not easily distinguishable by the unpractised eye; and nicer wood-cuts still of country scenes, and country towns, and almost all of these with a river in them. By the time that my father and mother returned, I had come to the conclusion that the bank of a river was, of all situations, the most desirable ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Stephens. "In France and Italy, the greatest national festivals pass off without fatal accident, or danger to any one. The fact is, in our country we have not learned how to be amused. Amusement has been made of so small account in our philosophy of life, that we are raw and unpractised in being amused. Our diversions, compared with those of the politer nations of Europe, are coarse and savage,—and consist mainly in making disagreeable noises and disturbing the peace of the community by rude uproar. The only idea ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... Astarte to a hawking party, and, leaving the rugged ravines, they descended into a softer and more cultivated country, where they found good sport. Fakredeen was an accomplished falconer, and loved to display his skill before the Queen. Tancred was quite unpractised, but Astarte seemed resolved that he should become experienced in the craft among her mountains, which did not please the Emir, as he caracoled in sumptuous dress on a splendid steed, with the superb falcon resting ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... all made relatively: an absolute datum is only imagined. The small gentry about Knapwater seemed unpractised to Miss Aldclyffe, Miss Aldclyffe herself seemed unpractised to Mr. Nyttleton's ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy |
