"A B C" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... refinement of form in his own works and his exacting acuteness as a critic might have seemed likely to carry him away from Whitman in sympathy at least, if not in actual latitude of perception. Those who find the American poet "utterly formless," "intolerably rough and floundering," "destitute of the A B C of art," and the like, might not unprofitably ponder this very different estimate of him by the ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... the native. "A whole herd of names, honest to God. Most any of 'em has five or six, the way the Denver Post tells it. Me, I can't keep mind of so many fancy brands. I'll give you the A B C of it. The old parties are Lord James and Lady Jim Farquhar, leastways I heard one of the young ladies call her Lady Jim. The dude has Verinder burnt on about eight trunks, s'elp me. Then there's a Miss Dwight and a Miss Joyce Seldon—and, oh, yes! a Captain ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... mud near a spring-hole he gets off his horse, steppin' with one foot—an' makin' little circles with dots like those made by the end of your crutch. Then 'way over in the woods there's a cabin where he meets his accomplices. Here he leaves the same horse tracks an' crutch tracks.... Simple as a b c, Wils, when you see how he did it. But I'll tell you straight—if I hadn't been suspicious of Buster Jack—that trick of his would have made you ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... transporting passion there is nothing like them in Magyar literature till we come to the age of Michael Csokonai and Alexander Petofi. Balassa was also the inventor of the strophe which goes by his name. It consists of nine lines—a a b c c b d d b, or three rhyming pairs alternating with the rhyming third, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... I never remember one—unnecessarily," he answered. "It is the A B C of my profession. To-day I believe that it is Mr. Guest, and his friend Mr. Courage, whom I have the pleasure ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... some incident of his boyish days. His eyes glistened when he came in sight of Killingworth pit-head. Pointing to a humble red-tiled house by the road-side at Benton, he said, "You see that house—that was Rutter's, where I learnt my A B C, and made a beginning of my school learning. And there," pointing to a colliery chimney on the left, "there is Long Benton, where my father put up his first pumping-engine; and a great success it was. And this humble clay-floored cottage ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... Cadmus, lest there should be too much of the dragon's tooth in his children's disposition, used to find time from his kingly duties to teach them their A B C—which he invented for their benefit, and for which many little people, I am afraid, are not half so grateful to him as they ought ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... king of that district became a Christian, and he and the queen, with one or two others of the royal household, used to attend school with the children every day, and their diligence in studying the A B C was beyond all praise. But they were terribly stupid. The children beat them easily, showing how true is the saying that 'youth is the time to learn.' The king was always booby, and Makarooroo was ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... sea gull heard this awful racket And seized the mole, just like a packet. He carried him across the seas To teach the young gulls A B C's. But the loving mole went blind with rage And they had to put him in a cage, And ever since that fatal night The moles have all been out ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... all your kindness to me long ago, down to this very day—you've a right to be first told of anything about me. Change of opinion I can't exactly call it, for I don't see the good of schools and teaching A B C, any more than I did before, only Mr. Gray does, so I'm to shut my eyes, and leap over the ditch to the side of education. I've told Sally already, that if she does not mind her work, but stands gossiping with Nelly Mather, I'll teach her her lessons; ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Uncle Beamish, unconsciously raising his voice a little. "Wilson bought him, and his bringin' us here is as plain as A B C. And now he don't ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... a' doctor's saws and whittles, Of a' dimensions, shapes, an' mettles, A' kinds o' boxes, mugs, an' bottles, He's sure to hae; Their Latin names as fast he rattles As A B C. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Hawaii are brought up. They live in the open, and they know how to ride and swim before they know what six- times-six is. As for me, I can't remember when I first got on a horse nor when I learned to swim. That came before my A B C's. Dad owned cattle ranches on Hawaii and Maui—big ones, for the islands. Hokuna had two hundred thousand acres alone. It extended in between Mauna Koa and Mauna Loa, and it was there I learned to shoot goats and wild cattle. On Molokai they have big spotted ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... law is the beginning and end of ordinary calculations as to electric current, and it should be thoroughly understood by any farmer who essays to be his own electrical engineer. Once understood and applied, the problem of the control of the electric current becomes simple a b c. ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson
... there is no truer saying," remarked the teacher, watching the tyro's eager efforts. "It's as easy as A B C ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... wouldn't have them write 'M. Beautrelet, senior'! What then? The way in which the operation was performed? The miracle by which your father was taken out of Cherbourg Arsenal, in spite of his twenty body-guards? Pooh, it's as easy as A B C! And the fact remains that the luggage has been dispatched. What do ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... desired above all else to become a rich man—a truly rich man, and marry a fairy-princess sort of person. And as far as education was concerned he felt that if he was not quite so brushed up on his A B C's as he was on minding his P's and Q's the result would not be half bad. Unconsciously his attitude toward the world was a composite of the philosophy of Marcus Aurelius, the cynical wisdom of Omar Khayyam, and plain and not to ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... suspecting that there yet remains a fair sprinkling even of "philosophic thinkers" to whom it may be a profitable, perhaps even a novel, task to descend from the heights of speculation and go over the A B C of the great biological problem as it was set before a body of shrewd ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... readers of this generation shall be the great thinkers and inventors of the next. There are amazing powers just waiting to be revealed. Draw aside the curtain. We have not yet learned the A B C of science. We have not yet grasped the scepters of provided dominion. Those who are most in the image and likeness of the Cause of these forces are most likely to ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... we can add anything to this explanation; the difficulty lies in the audacious sweep of the speculation itself; we will however attempt an illustration, although we fear it will be to illustrate obscurum tier obscurius. Let A B C D be four out of the Infinite number of the Divine attributes. A the attribute of mind; B the attribute of extension; C and D other attributes, the nature of which is not known to us. Now A, as the attribute of mind, is that which perceives all ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... Not I. That's precisely what I meant, only you wouldn't give me time to say it. Why, that's the A B C of politics. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893 • Various
... a Yankee can do anything, was exemplified by this lad; for he worked my snail into a gallop. He was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, and appeared to have taken to speculation at the age when most children are learning A B C. He was now in his fourteenth year, owned two horses, and employed another boy to sell papers for him likewise. His profits upon daily sales of four hundred journals were about thirty-two dollars. He had five hundred dollars in bank, and was debating ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... attempt any rigid classification upon the shelves. One good reason for this is that by so doing you are trying to do what can so much better be done by a catalogue. No one who uses books very much but sooner or later becomes grateful for the existence of an alphabet and an arrangement by A B C. Carlyle once said, 'A library is not worth anything without a catalogue; it is a Polyphemus without any eye in his head, and you must confront the difficulties, whatever they may ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... that. Let those who are fit for nothing else go and drone over A B C with ragged children, if they like. It is just their vocation; but there is an order in everything, Margaret, and minds of a superior kind are intended for higher purposes, not to ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... liar," said Mrs. Peters, reinterring the note. "No tea store, nor no A B C store, nor no junk shop would have you. I rubbed the skin off both me hands washin' jumpers and overalls to make that dollar. Do you think it come out of them suds to buy the kind you put into you? Skiddoo! Get your mind ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... question passionately. He had no answer ready. Platitudes would not do for this child, he reflected, and to lecture her then even on the A B C's of the social code would be ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... we was eating breakfast, "it's as plain as A B C that those agents don't want us for tenants, and it isn't because they think we are not to be trusted, for we'd have to pay in advance, and so their money's safe; it is something else, and I think I know what it is. These London ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... should I have to work long and hard for the simple reason that it pleases my neighbors to shove a dozen new members into society?'" It should seem that a critic should first acquaint himself with the A B C of Socialism before presuming to write upon the subject, and such preposterous stuff ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... are clever enough to batten on its foibles, to sell it bad stuff and bad securities, and then feels hurt because it has a pain in its inside, or a worthless bond at its banker's, while the producers thereof are founding county families. If the public would learn the A B C of investment, and also learn that there is an essential difference between investment and speculation, that they will not blend easily but are likely to spoil one another if one tries to mix them, then the whole business of loan issuing and company promotion would be on a sounder basis, with ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... hen with one chick. Like many of the West country Highlanders he was something of a scholar. French he could speak like a native, and he had dabbled in the humanities; but he would drag forth my smattering of learning with so much glee that one might have thought him ignorant of the plainest A B C of the matter. More than once I have known him blunder in a Latin quotation that I might correct him. Aileen and he had a hundred topics in common from which I was excluded by reason of my ignorance of the Highlands, ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... took common cartilage and mingled the white fibrous tissue with it, to serve the same purpose as the hair in the mortar, the straw in the bricks and in the plaster of the old wall, and the amianthus in the earthen vessels. Thus we have the combination A B C, or fibro-cartilage. Again, the bones were once only gristle or cartilage, A B. To give them solidity they were infiltrated with stone, in the form of salts of lime, an inorganic element, so that bone would be spelt out by the letters ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Happy Jack's distaste for schoolma'ams dated from his tempestuous introduction to the A B C's, with their daily accompaniment of a long, ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... his glass violently upon the counter. "Thunder! how that fellow provokes me! He does not know the A B C of his profession. When he can't discover anything, he invents wonderful stories, and then misleads the magistrates with his high-sounding phrases, in the hope of gaining promotion. I'll give him advancement with a vengeance! I'll teach him to ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... writing was utterly unknown (though probably not unheard of) in Norway at the end of the ninth century, and long after that; so that Erling, although a gentleman of the period, and a Sea-king to boot, had not up to the time we write of, learned his A B C! ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... grandeur have alternate reign'd; Thither, in latter days, have genius fled From yonder city, to respire and die. There the sweet bard of Auburn sat, and tuned The plaintive moanings of his village dirge. There learned Chambers treasured lore for men, And Newbery there his A B C's for babes.] ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... symbols, letters, crossrow; rudiments, elements, a b c. Associated Words: abecedary, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... delusion common to maternity, my dearest mother. A brat learns his A B C a shade quicker than other children, or construes Qui fit Maecenas with tolerable correctness; and straightway the doting mother thinks her lad is an embryo Canning. You should never have hoped anything of me, except that I would love you dearly all my life. You have made that very ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... I was a lad I was bad as I could be, Wouldn't say 'Thank you' nor 'Please,' not me, And at church I wouldn't kneel but only on one knee, And at school I wouldn't study my A B C, And I couldn't conscientious with the Golden Rule agree, Nor understand the secret of its popularitee, Nor get a ounce of pleasure from the Rule of Three,— I was bad right through; sweared 'hully ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... a hopeless case of barrenness against all your best endeavors. Fortunately most young men of our day lose balance on the left side and give all up to their intense emotions. They have never learned the A B C of self-denial, and they make an act of resignation first and ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... would interpolate new matter, or alter it so that it was impossible to recognise it. Once upon a time, one of those gentlemen who, like the usurers at our yearly fairs, clutch and beg and steal every sort of frippery, and issue mean little volumes, no thicker than an A B C book, every month, or even every week, wormed this same story out of Thoma Grigorovitch, and the latter completely forgot about it. But that same young gentleman, in the pea-green caftan, came from Poltava, bringing with him a little book, and, opening it in the middle, showed it to us. ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... all equally brilliant pictures. No one short of a genius could rout the philosophers from their lairs and label them as individuals 'tempering life with rules agreeable to themselves' or could follow Mildred Rogers, waitress of the London A B C restaurant, through all the shabby windings of her tawdry soul. No other than a genius endowed with an immense capacity for understanding and pity could have sympathised with Fannie Price, with her futile and self-destructive art dreams; or old Cronshaw, the wastrel of poetry and philosophy; ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... turned up and she sniffed some. She wuz a foreigner, how could she know what I said? But Dorothy and Robert seemed to understand my language, though they couldn't speak it yet. And good land! I hain't learnt its A B C's yet, and don't spoze I shall till I git promoted to a ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... sister threw themselves between her and the door. 'Are you insane, Cilly? What do you mean should become of you? Are you going to join the menage, and teach the A B C?' ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sure," agreed his brother. "Let's go in and learn our A B C's and then we can go home and tell mamma all about it. This ...
— Curly and Floppy Twistytail - The Funny Piggie Boys • Howard R. Garis
... told the story in his 'Metamorphoses,' is apparent in many of the details. But the theme was doubtless first suggested to Shakespeare by a contemporary effort. Lodge's 'Scillaes Metamorphosis,' which appeared in 1589, is not only written in the same metre (six-line stanzas rhyming a b a b c c), but narrates in the exordium the same incidents in the same spirit. There is little doubt that Shakespeare drew from Lodge some of ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... country, and high and pure in his moral views—also (let me add) more anglomane in general than I am. He was talking of the English press. He said he 'did it justice for good and noble intentions' (more than I do!), 'but marvelled at its extraordinary ignorance. Those writers did not know the A B C of France. Then, as to Louis Napoleon, whether he was right or wrong, they erred in supposing him not to be in earnest with his constitution and other remedies for France. The fact was, he not only was in earnest—he ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... you readily that the A B C of this training is mere sense gratification at the sight of bright colors. Most insects and birds have probably not advanced much beyond this first lesson. Savages have generally stopped there or reverted to it. But any appreciation of form and ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... predicated, one of which is coextensive with that one and the same, the other may be predicated of that which is thus coextensive." The fact of this coextensiveness must be ascertained by [Greek: nous], in other words, by the Inductive Faculty. We will take Aldrich's instance. All Magnets attract iron A B C are Magnets | Presupposed Syllogism reasoning A B C attract iron. ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... be assisted. The first of these only is before us. The direction of youth seems one of the greatest concerns in moral life, and one that is the least understood: to form the generation to come, is of the last importance. If an ingenious master hath flogged the a b c into an innocent child, he thinks himself worthy of praise. A lad is too much terrified to march that path, which is marked out by the rod. If the way to learning abounds with punishment, he will quickly detest it; if we make his duty a task, we lay a stumbling-block before ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... in the delicately chosen shade of this oath. He also recited to them a new verse about how he took his Looloo girl to the schoolhouse for to learn her A B C; and as it was quite original and unprintable, the camp laughed and swore joyfully, and rolled in its blankets to sleep ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... the type of a cup, the first part of the petal is that in which it expands from the bottom to the rim; the second part, that in which it terminates itself on reaching the rim. Thus let the three circles, A B C, Fig 6., represent the undivided cups of the three great geometrical orders of flowers—trefoil, quatrefoil ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... Madame Guyon, in her precious A B C of the spiritual life, introduces her book with the title, "A Short and Easy Method of Prayer"; St. Theresa describes the degrees of the soul's progress as degrees of prayer, styling them Prayer of Quiet, Prayer of Union, and so on; St. John of the Cross names his mystical way as the Ascent ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... sir, really you expose yourself when you parade that as a surprising circumstance. Bless your heart and hide, you are ignorant of the very A B C of meanness! ignorant as the unborn babe! ignorant as unborn twins! You don't know anything about it! It is pitiable to see you, sir, a well-spoken and prepossessing stranger, making such an enormous pow-wow here about a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... hez gut A high-school, where they teach the Lord knows wut: Three-story larnin' 's poplar now: I guess We thriv' ez wal on jes' two stories less, For it strikes me ther' 's sech a thing ez sinnin' By overloadin' children's underpinnin: Wal, here it wuz I larned my A B C, An' it's a kind o' favorite spot with me. We're curus critters: Now ain't jes' the minute Thet ever fits us easy while we're in it; Long ez 'twuz futur', 'twould be perfect bliss,— Soon ez it's past, thet time's ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... in the unoccupied lot next door. The schoolroom door opened at the side. There were two rows of desks, with benches for the older children, two more with no desks for the A B C and spelling classes. The rest they learned in concert, orally. The dame had a table covered with a gray woollen cloth, some books, an inkstand, a holder for pens and ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Bethel, importing into thought and aesthetics the zealotry they had lost in religion. The book of Experience, thought I, is not an Encyclopaedia, with every possible topic neatly ranged in alphabetical order; 'tis no A B C Time Table, with the trains docketed for the enlightenment of the simple,'t is rather an Encyclopaedia torn into a million million fragments by kittens and pasted together again by infants, so that all possible things are inextricably interfused, every one with every other; ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... come, us stays right on with massa and missus. Massa teach school for us at night. Us learn A B C and how spell cat and dog and nigger. Den one day he git cross and scold us and us didn't go back to school no more. Us didn't have sense 'nough to know ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... "It's like she says: 'A woman as brings up twelve children learns something besides her A B C. Children's as good as 'rithmetic to set you ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... school in the village had been opened a year or two earlier by Joshua Dewey, a graduate of Yale, who taught Fenimore Cooper his A B C's. He was succeeded as village schoolmaster by Oliver Cory. The latter assumed charge of the new Academy. The school exhibitions of this institution in which Brutus and Cassius figured in hats of the cut of 1776, blue coats faced with red, of no cut at all, ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... problem I shall touch but briefly. There is no call for the Negro "to get out of politics;" as the term is popularly used. The fact is the Negro should begin "to get into politics" in the truest sense of the word—that is, to begin at the a b c of political power and come up by the usual processes of individual development. The suffrage is a privilege conferred by the state. States make certain restrictions for their own protection as sovereign commonwealths. Although it is ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... trade, and did the dominie in brown and red, and the squire's daughter in vermilion and flake white, and set the whole village agog with his marvellous achievements. Julian cultivated his acquaintance, received some secret instructions in the A B C of art, and bargained for some drawing and painting materials. His aspirations had at length found an object. Long and painfully he labored in secret; but his advances were rapid, for he took nature as a model. At last he ventured to display his latest achievement—a ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... sign. i iii. (51^b): "Thus endeth the castell of labour, wherin is rychesse, vertue, and honour. Enprynted at London in Fletestrete in the sygne of the sonne. by Wynkyn de worde. Anno d[n]i M.ccccc.vi." There is no indication of authorship. Signatures: a b c d e f g h, alternately 8s and 4s, i 4; 52 leaves, not numbered. The British Museum and Cambridge University Library copies of this book have been collated, but as the former ends with H 3 and the latter wants the last leaf, that leaf must remain undescribed. Mr Bradshaw, however, says, ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... for his first insight into the mysteries of book-learning; and although he was in due time to become the greatest man of this or any other age or country, yet he began his education by first learning his A B C, just as did other boys of that day, just as they are now doing, and just as they will continue to do for all time to come. After he had taken his A B C into his memory, and set them there in a straight row each in its proper place, he was not long, depend upon it, ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... his whole thought, his whole being, so to speak, to his profession. There's too much of it for him to divide himself up. Why, take a single specialty; take rheumatism. If I gave my lifetime, or twenty lifetimes, to the study of that one malady, I should not begin to learn the A B C of it." ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... teach the kids their A B C's, do you? And you just out of them yourself! How many scholars ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... to take so much trouble with the Duchess? Between ourselves a man of my stamp ought first to take her in hand and break her in; I would make a charming woman of her; she is a thoroughbred; whereas, you two left to yourselves will never get beyond the A B C. But you are in love with her, and just now you might not perhaps share my views on this subject——. A pleasant time to you, my children," added Ronquerolles, after a pause. Then with a laugh: "I have decided ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... the office! I am but little wiser than the booby brother! Whereas Solomon himself, and the seven sages to boot, are but so many men of Gotham, when he is present. The quintessence of all the knowledge, wit, wisdom, and genius that ever saw the sun, from the infantine days of A B C and king Cadmus, to these miraculous times of intuition and metaphysical legerdemain, is bottled up in, his brain; from which it foams and whizzes in our ears, every time discretion can be induced to draw the cork of silence.—Once again, ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... school-teacher," suddenly exclaimed the girl, laughing: "giving the children A B C and making them read: 'I see the cat'—when there aren't any cats nowadays—no tame ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... pastor and exhorted him to study my books and then to proclaim our message of Peace. But my message was not popular and it teaches, that the belief of the close connexion of men in mortal bodies with congenial departed spirits is the A B C, to arrive gradually to a deep knowledge of true religion and to the true freedom and deliverance from lying destroying spirits. But pastors who became materialists, were scared when they perceived, that my message presupposes the ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... I may not dwell too long upon the A B C of our belief, let me urge you in one sentence to be on your guard against present-day tendencies which weaken the force of this solemn, tragical conviction as to the realities of heathendom. The new ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... "Registro. a b c d e f g h i k l Tutti questi sono quaderni excepto l chie duerno"; audessous le monogramme de l'imprimeur en blanc sur fond noir.—Verso of ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... very often ached clear down into her shoulder blade and up into a bandeau around her brow, and to whom city walls were sometimes like slaps confronting her whichever way she turned, her enjoyment of Coney Island was as uncomplex as A B C. Untortured by any awarenesses of relative values, too simple to strive to keep simple, unself-conscious, and with a hungry heart, she was not a spectator, half ashamed of being amused. She was Coney Island! Her heart a shoot the chutes for sheer swoops of joy, her ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... A B C's in the Hebrew language. Instead of A, he showed them how to make a mark like this: [Hebrew: a]. Instead of B, they learned to make this letter: [Hebrew: b]; and so on, through all the alphabet. Then when they knew their letters, they could learn to read. And ...
— The King Nobody Wanted • Norman F. Langford
... you sung below (Evening Hymn), she knows he, but she lips (lisps), so she's ashamed before strangers." Another woman, after surveying with, much admiration a large alphabet-sheet (as I should Egyptian hieroglyphics), said, "I suppose, sir, that's the A B C." I gave little books to all who desired them. Though most of them had a considerable distance to return, they seemed unwilling to leave me and the vessel, and I was in no hurry to dismiss them. It was very sad indeed to think that the meeting ...
— Extracts from a Journal of a Voyage of Visitation in the "Hawk," 1859 • Edward Feild
... seen on examination, the rhyme scheme is as follows: a b b a a b b a c d c d c d. But the quatrains may have alternate rhymes, and the sestet may consist of a quatrain and couplet or of interwoven triplets, as in the following schemes: a b a b a b a b c d c d e e; a b b a a b b a c d e ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... primer suits me so I would not choose a book to know Than that, be sweeter wise; Might some one else so learned be, And leave me just my A B C, Himself ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... in the least. Legally the thing's as simple as A B C. The man has only to take the benefit of the Act of Insolvency, assign his estate to his creditors, and then— supposing that ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... made at the Bureau of Longitudes concerning population authorize us again to subtract from the total mentioned two millions of young girls, pretty enough to kill; they are at present in the A B C of life and innocently play with other children, without dreading that these little hobbledehoys, who now make them laugh, will one day make ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... imagination. Of those men the Philosopher says that it is not right to trouble about them, or to have business with them, saying, in the first book of Physics, that against him who denies the first postulate it is not right to dispute. And of such men as these are many idiots, who may not know their A B C, and who would wish to dispute in Geometry, in Astrology, and ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... to the foregoing should be followed with each bird that is studied. With almost all other birds the study will be far more interesting. The English sparrow may be considered as the A B C of birds in his appearance and in the kind of life he leads. He is therefore a good subject to begin with. But even he will be found to exhibit ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... accepted the offer with eagerness. I was to rest that evening, he said—I had had enough for one day; but it was understood that on other evenings generally he was to come to Mr. Bull's and instruct his assistant teacher in the A B C of mathematics. I could not help thinking that few employers ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... twenty-five cents a week for each pupil, and opened her school with prayer; after which came a chapter of the Bible, with explanations, and the rules of conduct. Then the A B C class was called, because their recital was a ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... an error of analysis in regard to Mr. Corbin in judging his brain by his topics of conversation. His conversation was limited to the A B C's of life, with which, up to the time of his meeting her, his brain had been fed. When, however, she began to cram it full with all the other letters of the alphabet, it showed itself just as capable of digesting ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... special marks: first, you have learned, like Sir Proteus, to wreath your arms like a malcontent; to relish a love-song, like a robin redbreast; to walk alone, like one that had the pestilence; to sigh, like a school-boy that had lost his A B C; to weep, like a young wench that had buried her grandam; to fast, like one that takes diet; to watch, like one that fears robbing; to speak puling, like a beggar at Hallowmas. You were wont, when ...
— The Two Gentlemen of Verona • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... never asked me anything about it. You told me what you wanted done, and I did it. How could I believe you were such an ignoramus as not to know the a b c of the thing you were talking about?" He added, in cynical contempt, "But you needn't worry. You can make it right with the managers by spending a little more money than you ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... be called by the names of our English alphabet, and to stand in the order of our alphabet, then A is through B C D, etc., to pass down with its total power upon Z, which reciprocally is to come round undiminished upon A B C, etc., for ever. Never was a nominal definition of what you want more simple and luminous. But coming to the real definition, and finding that every letter in succession must still give something ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... I first saw the strong panegyric heaped upon my argument here. So true is this, that on the evening after I had concluded it, I wrote to my friend Wickham, telling him if his eye should see anything of it through the newspapers, he would wonder how so much A B C knowledge could be tolerated here, but that I saw it was necessary to state it, and therefore he must not think me so much of a pedant as he might otherwise be disposed to do. Had the thing been suffered to pass unnoticed, I might have hoped at some time or other to gain some credit for a speech ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... standing in the world who cannot read might have a certain interest. There are probably more persons laboring under that disability than is usually supposed, and this with no reference to unfortunates who in early life have missed the opportunity of learning their A B C, but thinking only of those who have never found the way to utilize a knowledge of letters,—of persons, in short, who do not know what to do with a book. Trustworthy statistics, however, would not be ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... arch, as constructed, with sections, A B C, in combination with the foot block, I, provided with a flange or boss, K, when arranged in the manner as and ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... I know all about it. I was there when he was told of this affair. Upon my word, Sir; upon my word, you could not apply to a more skilful doctor. He is a man who understands medicine thoroughly, as well as I do my A B C;[8] and who, were you to die for it, would not abate one iota of the rules of the ancients. Yes, he always follows the high-road—the high-road, Sir, and doesn't spend his time finding out mares' nests. For all ...
— Monsieur de Pourceaugnac • Moliere
... then it has had time and opportunity to become strong, bold, masculine, potential. Once it had only the knowledge and power to alleviate evil consequences; now it has both the knowledge and the power to deal with evil causes. Now, I say to you, leave this emotional A B C of human charity to nuns and mite societies. It's a good work; let them do it. Give ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... A B C, three mahogany boards, two, four, and six inches long, and of the same breadth respectively, so as to double in the ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... days, when as yet I was ignorant of the A B C's of floriculture. I bought an Agapanthus. No pains were taken with it, but it grew right along and blossomed freely. I was much astonished afterwards to learn that the Agapanthus is considered an ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... drooping their heads for want of water. Nobody had watered them for so long. Clearly Molly had not changed. Was it only I? I looked and wondered, as I saw myself again at ten years old in that very room. Here had been those first cups of tea; those first lessons in A B C; and other lessons in the beginnings of a higher knowledge. What had they all come to? Was Molly the better in anything beyond her flowers? What had eleven ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... with a point. This point, a, [Figure 14] is conceived to move in a direction w, developing the line a b. This line next moves in a direction at right angles to w, namely, x, a distance equal to its length, forming the square a b c d. Now for the square to develop into a cube by a movement into the third dimension it would have to move in a direction at right angles to both w and x, that is, out of the plane of the paper—away from it altogether, either up or down. This is not possible, of course, but the third direction ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... Creek the boy began to go to an "A B C" school. His first teacher was Zachariah Riney. Of course, there were no regular schools in the backwoods then. When a man who "knew enough" happened to come along, especially if he had nothing else to do, he tried to teach ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... could only have reached the window! But the arms that felt so strong were as weak as an infant's, while the dead weight of his helpless legs dragged on him like lead. The only result of his struggle was a dreadful access of pain. Reaction followed, for he had learnt in his A B C days not to whimper when he was hurt, and by the time the nurse returned Clowes had scourged himself back to his usual savage tranquillity. "Can I have that window shut, please?" he asked, cynically frank. "I ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... because the heart is pure; you'll see no letters of introduction to the devil,' as the chaplain called cards, 'in his knapsack.' By the way, he was so hard on cards, that even the boatmen, who knew them better than their A B C's, were ashamed to play them. He would say, 'Snowden is brave as man can be; he has a right to be, he is prepared for every fate. A christian, boys, makes all the better soldier for his being a Christian,' and he would tell ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... first he had only taken temporarily, and quaintly managing it. He was found setting as a copy "A blind man's wife needs no paint," which he defended as "Proverbs, sir, Proverbs." Giving up part of his business to his nephew, he still sat up at night baking, for the nephew, he said, was only in the A B C book of baking, and he also had other troubles: there was insanity in his family, and he was much harassed. His kindness and simplicity were sometimes abused. He never had the heart to refuse to lend money, or to deny bread on credit to hopeless debtors; and ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... breakfast rather wanting in appetite—from the fact that their consciences were not very clear regarding studies in English and French or certain algebraic solutions or arrangements in angles specified by "A B C" and "D E F," according to the declarations of a well-known gentleman named Euclid—felt in their great relief as if they would like another cup of coffee and two slices more, for ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn |
