"Alphabet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... endeavour to give you in a few words an idea of his merits. First he has penetrated into the spiritual sense of the books of Moses, after that into the value of the Hebrew characters, which depends on the order of the letters of the alphabet. This order has been thrown into confusion from the eleventh letter forward. Mosaide has re-established it, which Atrabis, Philo, Avicenne, Raymond Lully, P. de la Mirandola, Reuchlin, Henry More and ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... buoyed a lodestone and observed it set towards the north. There is reason to believe that the magnet was employed by the priests of the Oracle in answering questions. We are told that the Emperor Valerius, while at Antioch in 370 A.D., was shown a floating needle which pointed to the letters of the alphabet when guided by the directive force of a lodestone. It was also believed that this effect might be produced although a stone wall intervened, so that a person outside a house or prison might convey ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... of time and place are indicated by prefixes, not by suffixes. The meanings of the monosyllables were differentiated, as in the other Tai languages and in Chinese, by a system of tones, but these were rarely indicated in writing, and the tradition regarding them is lost. The language had an alphabet of its own, which was clearly related to ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... writings would follow phonetic characters, or marks for sounds; that is, the alphabet. Even the alphabet, which in civilized countries has now existed for more than three thousand years, was perfected by degrees; for it has been clearly ascertained that the earliest known did not comprise more than one-half or, at most, two-thirds ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... me what Hobbs thinks," growled Robin. "Let her make use of all the letters in the alphabet if it pleases her. What is it to us? Moreover, she may be utilising a lot of borrowed trunks, who knows? Or B may have been her initial before ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... the alphabet," Polly advised him, rather proud to be able to answer him so promptly. "Bars, cars, fars, jars—that way, you know. How I found out is that Sister Winnie writes so ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... should rebel at their being taught even Bible verses by novices. Why, it isn't allowed in public schools. The days have gone by when anybody is supposed to be smart enough to teach children to drawl through the alphabet. We have the best of trained teachers even for that work, why should the Sunday-school not need them even ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... alphabet," suggested Maud. "Say all the names you can think of beginning with A and then B, and so on. Maybe you will stumble across one that you recognize as ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... their containing many Things abstruse or insignificant to us, it will probably be fifty Years before the Whole can be gone thro' in this Manner of Publication. There are likewise in those Books continual References from Things under one Letter of the Alphabet to those under another, which relate to the same Subject, and are necessary to explain and compleat it; those are taken in their Turn may perhaps be Ten Years distant; and since it is likely that they who desire to acquaint themselves with ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... arrow-heads of the oldest form pointing in all directions, while all the intervening spaces were filled up with woven characters half-way in appearance between Runes and Cryptic-Sanskrit. Round the borders these characters ran into a wild maze, a perfect jungle of an alphabet through which none but a wizard could have forced a way ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... dots and dashes. Telegraph the word "cat," using the alphabet shown on the next page. Telegraph your own name; ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... Aunt Martha better than I had expected, for though I thought her looks very terrible at first—and she was certainly firm—she was really kind and gentle. Under her instruction I gained the first knowledge of the letters of the alphabet, of which I was before profoundly ignorant. Of course she was very gentle with Ellen, as everybody was, and Fanny seemed to be very fond of her. She was courageous, too, as I before long had evidence. I remember one night being suddenly lifted in her arms, and carried out ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... properly. As to his yol for l (a compendious delivery of the provincial eh-al), and other metropolitan refinements, amazing to all but cockneys, they cannot be indicated, save in the above imperfect manner, without the aid of a phonetic alphabet. He is dressed in somebody else's very second best as a coast-guardsman, and gives himself the airs of a stage tar with sufficient success to pass as a possible fish porter of bad character in ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... air,—high jumps. Again they did it, and again. Then a low jump; then a high one. I caught the idea in a moment. They were telegraphing to our world, in the hope of an observer. Long leaps and short leaps,—the long and short of Morse's Telegraph Alphabet,—were communicating ideas. My paper and pencil had been of course before me. I jotted down the despatch, whose language I ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... under his care. He answered, that he was sorry to say that they were in a state of great ignorance, very few of the common people being able either to read or write; that with respect to schools, there was but one in the place, where four or five children were taught the alphabet, but that even this was at present closed; he informed me, however, that there was a school at Colhares, about a league distant. Amongst other things, he said that nothing more surprised him than to see Englishmen, the most learned ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... realm of popular knowledge, and information of this class sought only in a clandestine manner. The people have suffered by deplorable ignorance on those topics, which should be as familiar to us as the alphabet. Dr. Napheys, by his scientific handling of the physiological points which relate to health, training, and development, has rendered a great service to the world. This, the press, and public men, have not been slow to acknowledge. The book has gained ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... enveloped, for the purpose of enslaving, plundering, and imposing upon mankind, it is of all things the least mysterious and the most easy to be understood. The meanest capacity cannot be at a loss, if it begins its enquiries at the right point. Every art and science has some point, or alphabet, at which the study of that art or science begins, and by the assistance of which the progress is facilitated. The same method ought to be observed with respect ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... in Boston. This old gentleman came from London in 1637, and had been teaching school ever since; so that there were now aged men, grandfathers like myself, to whom Master Cheever had taught their alphabet. He was a person of venerable aspect, and ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and forgive! heaven's alphabet Hath many a word of mystery; I read not all thy record yet, Though perseveringly I try; But teach me, Lord! and none shall be More prompt, more pleased to ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... four walls had, at ground level, a narrow entrance, plastered without a trace of woodwork. This opened into a vestibule containing a dirt-encrusted staircase which spiraled upward. They were each labeled with one of the first four letters of the alphabet painted on ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... correctly without referring to the book. It will then be well to clear the board of all but a single Piece, and practise with that until perfect in its movements; another, and then another, may be added, until the action of every one is as familiar as the alphabet. ...
— The Blue Book of Chess - Teaching the Rudiments of the Game, and Giving an Analysis - of All the Recognized Openings • Howard Staunton and "Modern Authorities"
... was a success. Gillian was at home, and every one found congeners. Lady Merrifield's sister, Miss Mohun, pounced upon Miss Prescott as a coadjutor in the alphabet of good works needed in the neglected district of Arnscombe, where Mr. Earl was wifeless, and the farm ladies heedless; but they were interrupted by Mysie running up to claim Miss Prescott for a game at croquet. "Uncle Redgie was so glad to see the hoops come into fashion again," ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... are known as the syllabic characters was undoubtedly Mr. Evans' greatest work, and to his unaided genius belongs the honour of devising and then perfecting this alphabet which has been such a blessing to thousands of Cree Indians. The principle on which the characters are formed is the phonetic. There are no silent letters. Each character represents a syllable, hence no spelling is required. As soon as the alphabet is mastered, the student can commence at the ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... where an armchair was placed in front of a small desk below a large instrument panel. The gauges and dials on the panel, and the levers and switches and buttons on the desk control board, were all lettered and numbered with characters not of the Roman alphabet or the Arabic notation, and, within instant reach of the occupant of the chair, a pistollike weapon lay on the desk. It had a conventional index-finger trigger and a hand-fit grip, but, instead of a tubular barrel, two ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper
... they all rejected thee with disdain. (34) Then my children came to Sinai, they accepted thee, and they honored thee. And now, on the day of their distress, thou standest up against them?" Hearing this, the Torah stepped aside, and did not testify. "Let the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet in which Torah is written come and testify against Israel," said God. They appeared without delay, and Alef, the first letter, was about to testify against Israel, when Abraham interrupted it with the words: "Thou chief of all letters, thou comest to testify against Israel in the time ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... design'd them; and consequently, that the World is deprived of so much Benefit, as otherwise it might have reap'd from his prodigious Learning, and Force of Judgment. One may see by the first Volume of his Dictionary, which goes through but two Letters of the Alphabet, that he forecasted to make that Work three times as large as it is, cou'd he have waited for the Printer's Money so long as was requisite to the finishing it according to his first Design. Thus much I thought fit to say, in order to abate the Edge of ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... between the sound and the animal designated, but because we have agreed that that sound shall represent that object. So, also, we have agreed that the characters h-o-r-s-e shall represent the same thing; and by the use of twenty-six characters, called the alphabet, placed together in various combinations, we are able to write ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... thin, and apparently very exhausted; gradually a party of ten assembled, and we gathered round the witch's table. The majority were ladies—those adorers of the marvellous! The names of friends were called for; the ladies took the alphabet, and running over it with the point of a pencil, the spirit rapped as the wished-for letter was reached. John Davis was soon spelt, each letter probably having been indicated by the tremulous touch of affectionate hope. Harriet Mercer was then rapped out by the ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... mixed up s's and x's Like an alphabet coming to strife. It seemed the discordant echo Of a row ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... south of the stream are upper and lower Moesia, consisting of the slope of the Thracian mountains northward to the river, with the plains between it and them. This district you must notice for its importance in forming the Moeso-Gothic alphabet, in which "the Greek is by far the principal element",[28] giving sixteen letters out of the twenty-four. The Gothic invasion under the reign of Valens is the first that establishes a Teutonic nation within the frontier ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... recognition of the one true God, which they recite daily, early and toward evening, and as to which they persuade themselves that it is the most efficacious safeguard against idolatry, fortified wherewith they can not lapse from true to false religion. The other secret alphabet consisted in this, that in inversed order they change the last letter [Hebrew: T] with the first [Hebrew: '], and this and another in turn, and so on through the rest, which inversion it is the custom ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... their kindness. I have that twist in my brain, which is the curse of my countrymen—a sort of devilish quickness at doing well, that prevents us ever doing best; just the same sort of thing that makes our goatherds rhyme perfect sonnets, and keeps them dunces before the alphabet. ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... hurry him. He had the world beyond the hills; I this one, where a slow full river flowed from the sounding mill under our garden wall, through long meadows. In Winter the wild ducks made letters of the alphabet flying. On the other side of the copses bounding our home, there was a park containing trees old as the History of England, John Thresher said, and the thought of their venerable age enclosed me comfortably. He ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in a little market-town not far from Upsala, a peasant who lived there with his family, digging the earth during the week and singing in the choir on Sundays. This peasant had a little daughter to whom he taught the musical alphabet before she knew how to read. Daae's father was a great musician, perhaps without knowing it. Not a fiddler throughout the length and breadth of Scandinavia played as he did. His reputation was widespread and he was always invited to ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... nuisances, widely destructive to our literature. Their mode of training will explain the nature of the danger. The infant reciting bore is trained much after the manner of a learned pig. Before the quadruped are placed, on certain bits of dirty greasy cards, the letters of the alphabet, or short nonsensical phrases interrogatory with their answers, such as "Who is the greatest rogue in company?" "Which lady or gentleman in company will be married first?" By the alternate use of blows and bribes of such food as pleases the pig, the animal is brought to ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... of the people of India is disclosed by the recent census. Ninety-five per cent of the men and more than 99 per cent of the women have never learned the first letter of the alphabet, and would not recognize their own name it written or printed. I have been told by ladies engaged in missionary and educational work that grown people of the lower classes cannot even distinguish one picture from another; that their mental perceptions are entirely blank, and ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... calm. Whilst, indeed, it seems tossed like a shuttlecock on the engulphing waves, it is in reality being most skilfully piloted. The veteran at the stern we could not see, but doubtless his skill was equally remarkable. The two, of course, act in concert, both knowing the river as other folks their alphabet. ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... never learnt to read and write. If any o' dem was caught trying to learn to read or write, dey was whipped bad. I kotched on to what de white chilluns said, and learnt by myself to say de alphabet. ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... commencing the study of Greek, and seized it with avidity. That language had never been totally extinct in Italy; but at the time on which we are touching, there were not probably six persons in the whole country acquainted with it. Dante had quoted Greek authors, but without having known the Greek alphabet. The person who favoured Petrarch with this coveted instruction was Bernardo Barlaamo, a Calabrian monk, who had been three years before at Avignon, having come as envoy from Andronicus, the eastern Emperor, on pretext of proposing a union between the Greek and Roman churches, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... completed, always, and did not necessarily terminate with the last letter occurring in the cryptographic message. A subsequent inspection of this curious code has enabled Nayland Smith, by a process of simple deduction, to compile the entire alphabet employed by Dr. Fu-Manchu's agent, Samarkan, in communicating with his awful superior. With a little patience, any one of my readers my achieve the same result (and I should be pleased to hear from ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... At first he tried writing within oblongs cut out of cardboard, but the result was apt to be illegible. In 1891 he conceived the device of having a series of squares cut out in card, and inventing an alphabet, of which each letter was made of lines, which could be written along the edges of the squares, and dots, which could be marked at the corners. The thing worked well, and he named it the "Typhlograph," but, at the ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... windows. For he is at the moment advertising the most undesirable article in the world, a commodity for which I can conceive of no demand whatever. Yet there—the result of the caprice of adhesive cement or the desire of one letter of the alphabet to get level with its neighbour and be dropped too—the amazing notice is, in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... richest jokes, and one which he always enjoyed telling, related to a country singing school which was located in the neighborhood of Pierceton, in which reading (the alphabet, at least), spelling, geography, arithmetic, rules of grammar, and so forth, were still taught by a process of singing. The method adopted in this form of education was to have the scholar memorize all knowledge by singing it. Thus in the case of geography the students would sing ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... Phoenicians, far more enterprising than either, must have been fully acquainted with their means of written communication—and indeed we are assured that they were so. Now, if a Phoenician had imparted so much of the art to Greece as the knowledge of a written alphabet, is it probable that he would have suffered the communication to cease there! The Phoenicians were a commercial people—their colonies in Greece were for commercial purposes,—would they have wilfully and voluntarily neglected the most convenient mode of ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... begins with a side-table of hors d'oeuvres, called "zakouska." That may not be spelled right, but no Russian would correct me, because the language is phonetic, and they spell the same word in many different ways. Their alphabet has thirty-eight letters in it, besides the little marks to tell you whether to make ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... within recent years that the Serbs and the Croats in the south-west corner of the Austro-Hungarian Empire have begun to realise that the only things which divide them one from the other are a difference of religion and a difference of alphabet; and now that the realisation of this fact has spread from the study to the market-place, we see the formation of a new nationality, that of the Serbo-Croats. The researches of historians and other learned men have done an immense deal to stimulate ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... manage to tint and gradate tenderly with the pencil point, get a good large alphabet, and try to tint the letters into shape with the pencil point. Do not outline them first, but measure their height and extreme breadth with the compasses, as a b, a c, Fig. 3, and then scratch in their shapes gradually; the letter ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... gentleness with firmness; and if these had not been sufficient, she had reserves of character which would have given her the mastery over much less plastic material than these ignorant but eager young people. The work of instruction was simple enough, for most of the pupils began with the alphabet, which they acquired from Webster's blue-backed spelling-book, the palladium of Southern education at that epoch. The much abused carpet-baggers had put the spelling-book within reach of every child of school age in North Carolina,—a fact which is often overlooked when the carpet-baggers ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... 1752-1817, was born at Northampton, Massachusetts. His mother was a daughter of the celebrated Jonathan Edwards. It is said that she taught her son the alphabet in one lesson, that he could read the Bible at four years of age, and that he studied Latin by himself at six. He graduated at Yale in 1769, returned as tutor in 1771, and continued six years. He was chaplain in a brigade ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... certainly Parthian, exists in the gorge of Sir-pul-i-zohab, and has been recently published in the great work of M. Flandin. [PLATE VIII.] The inscription on this monument, though it has not yet been deciphered, appears to be written in the alphabet found upon the Parthian coins. The monument seems to represent a Parthian king, mounted on horseback, and receiving a chaplet at the hand of a subject. The king wears a cap bound round with the diadem, the long ends of which depend over his shoulder. He ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... occurrences were as simple as the alphabet to Uncle Robin. He would explain it as a sight reflected on the cloud and thrown on a sea of mist or a desert as on a screen, using difficult words, like "refraction," and words from Euclid, like "angles." But Uncle Alan ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... contain the alphabet in Lombardic capitals; but the inscription and date on each ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various
... languages, it will be at once apparent, that to seize upon, and note from the sound, a word belonging to one country, so as to compare its sound and accentuation with a word belonging to another country, needs a thorough knowledge of the genius of the two languages, and of their alphabet, through which alone the ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... during her seventeen years' occupancy of the chair in which she sat. Upon the flyleaf was inscribed "Aphorisms: by Eugenie Ram." It was her intent to publish this darling work when beneath each letter of the alphabet twelve ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... philosophically explain the transition from sensation to thought, from thought to word, from the word to its hieroglyphic presentment, from hieroglyphics to the alphabet, from the alphabet to written language, of which the eloquent beauty resides in a series of images, classified by rhetoric, and forming, in a sense, the hieroglyphics of thought? Was it not the ancient mode of representing ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... full of original power. Through reading, lecturing, and experimenting, he had become thoroughly familiar with electrical science: he saw where light was needed and expansion possible. The phenomena of ordinary electric induction belonged, as it were, to the alphabet of his knowledge: he knew that under ordinary circumstances the presence of an electrified body was sufficient to excite, by induction, an unelectrified body. He knew that the wire which carried an electric current was an electrified body, and still that all attempts had failed to make ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... conveniences of life too well Leave me in peace; be assured that I can put no heir in danger Most intriguing little Carmelite in the kingdom Princes thus accustomed to be treated as divinities Princess at 12 years was not mistress of the whole alphabet Taken pains only to render himself beloved by his pupil The Jesuits were suppressed The King delighted to manage the most disgraceful points To be formally mistress, a husband had to be found Ventured to give ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Court Memoirs of France • David Widger
... B." I had no ambitions in that direction. My views on the subject of ornamental initials and sampler autographs were put into pregnant English at a subsequent date by the elder Weller. He professed to have received at second-hand from the charity-boy, set to con the alphabet, what the retired stage-driver applied to matrimony—to wit, that it was not worth while to go through so much to get so little. Knitting delighted not me, nor ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... honoured, emancipated, mitred, crowned, adored—who loses anything, that does not find it.' 'And what matters it,' says the philosophic wisdom, speaking in the abstract, 'what name it is proclaimed in, and what letters of the alphabet we know it by?—what matter is it, so that they spell the name that is good for ALL, and good for each,'—for that is the ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... Louvre, the Luxembourg, the Salon, insisting with a feverish eloquence and invention that he should worship all that she worshipped—no matter if he did not understand!—let him worship all the same—till he had learnt his new alphabet with a smiling docility, and caught her very tricks of phrase. Especially were they haunters of the sculptures in the Louvre, where, because of the difficulty of it, she piqued herself most especially on knowledge, and could convict him most triumphantly ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... feverishly to working from a different viewpoint. From the cryptic snarl came presently the single English word in the cipher—his name. The keen suspicion of his hot brain had, at last, been right. For every letter in the alphabet, four symbols had been used interchangeably but whether they pointed up or down or right or left, their significance was the same. There were no ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... who knew Syntax enough, and of the human soul thus much: that it had a faculty called Memory, which could be acted on through the muscular integument by appliance of birch rods." At Annan, however, he acquired a fair knowledge of Latin and French, the rudiments of algebra, the Greek alphabet, began to study history, and had his first glimpse of Edward Irving, the bright prize-taker from Edinburgh, later his Mentor and then life-long friend. On Thomas's return home it was decided to send him to the University, despite the cynical warning of one of the village cronies, "Educate a boy, ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... "shin," which is some like our "sh" in its effect, is a very pretty letter, and enough of them would make very attractive trimming for pantalets or other clothing. The entire Arabic alphabet, I think, would work up first-rate into trimming for aprons, skirts, ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... Psalms, and other matter, were taught also in the Latin schools, where probably Luther, too, learned them. In the Instruction for Visitors, Melanchthon still mentions "der Kinder Handbuechlein, darin das Alphabet, Vaterunser, Glaub' und andere Gebet' innen stehen—Manual for Children, containing the alphabet, the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and other prayers," as the first schoolbook. (W. 26, 237.) After the invention of printing, chart-impressions with pictures illustrating ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... Immediately underneath was a wilderness of roofs. Farther along were the railway tracks that Yates objected to; and a line of masts and propeller funnels marked the windings of Buffalo Creek, along whose banks arose numerous huge elevators, each marked by some tremendous letter of the alphabet, done in white paint against the somber brown of the big building. Still farther to the west was a more grateful and comforting sight for a hot day. The blue lake, dotted with white sails and an occasional ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... language was corrupted. The infection spread to the national conscience. Political double-dealings naturally grew out of verbal double meanings. The teeth of the new dragon were sown by the Cadmus who introduced the alphabet of equivocation. What was levity in the time of the Tudors grew to regicide and revolution in the age of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... little is known beyond the fact that the letters of the alphabet were used to represent pitches. This method was probably accurate enough, but it was cumbersome, and did not afford any means of writing "measured music" nor did it give the eye any opportunity of grasping the general ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... musician! He had a new pleasure in turning this over in his mind. Of all the closed doors which his choice of a career had left along his pathway, no other had for him such a magical fascination as that on which was graven the lute of Orpheus. He knew not even the alphabet of music, and his conceptions of its possibilities ran but little beyond the best of the hymn-singing he had heard at Conferences, yet none the less the longing for it raised on occasion such mutiny in his soul that more than once he had ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... had an opportunity of learning, he set himself to read with such close application that, from being comparatively thin, the effect of having been fond of the chase, he became quite corpulent from want of exercise. Mr. Oswell gave him his first lesson in figures, and he acquired the alphabet on the first day of my residence at Chonuane. He was by no means an ordinary specimen of the people, for I never went into the town but I was pressed to hear him read some chapters of the Bible. Isaiah was a ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... for every letter of the alphabet, each illustrated by a full page picture in colors. The verses appeal to the child's sense of humor without being foolish or sensational, and will be welcomed by kindergartners for teaching rhythm ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... passage of the current, would fall back when the current was interrupted. This movement of the plate thus obtained, Harding could easily fasten to it a needle arranged on a dial, bearing the letters of the alphabet, and in this way communicate from one ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... for an hour or two, in the year 1801, when, amidst Napoleon's mighty projects for remodelling the religion and government of his empire, the ironical satirist, Sylvain Marechal, thrust in his "Plan for a Law prohibiting the Alphabet to Women." Daring, keen, sarcastic, learned, the little tract retains to-day so much of its pungency, that we can hardly wonder at the honest simplicity of the author's friend and biographer, Madame Gacon Dufour, who declared that he must be partially insane, and proceeded to prove ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... I know his taste to a hair, and if ever I did, he must have doted on that author. What took him was a richness in the speech; he loved the exotic, the unexpected word; the moving cadence of a phrase; a vague sense of emotion (about nothing) in the very letters of the alphabet: the romance of language. His honest head was very nearly empty, his intellect like a child's; and when he read his favourite authors, he can almost never have understood what he was reading. Yet the taste was not only genuine, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... into the room in which Armand Monnier was seated, his chin propped on his hand, his elbow resting on a table, looking abstractedly into space. In a corner of the room two small children were playing languidly with a set of bone tablets, inscribed with the letters of the alphabet. But whatever the children were doing with the alphabet, they were certainly not ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... association affected Damaris but dimly, since speaking a language of which she barely knew the alphabet. Carteret they took in a different measure. He read their direction and potency with clear understanding, the insidious provocations and satisfactions of them printed in large type. With a rush, his youth returned and troubled him. Or was it the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... conductor, born in London and still a cockney, has succeeded in extracting thrills from the alphabet—imparting excitement to the names of the national capitol's streets. On a recent Sunday morning he was calling ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... phrenologically, after mature deliberation, conclude to descend to a little harmless amusement, contriving, however, to mingle some instructive elements with the frivolous ones that less enlightened spirits delight in. For instance, the flowers, that are truly the "alphabet of angels" to the simple souls that love the violets and daisies for their own sweet sakes, offer a very different alphabet to the "Schoolma'ams" and Professors. They are no longer flowers, but specimens, each bud and blossom pleading ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... disc. Captain Hardy laid the disc beside the dollar on the table, and painstakingly examined again the marks on the coin. After a time he took a sheet of paper and across it in a row wrote down the letters of the alphabet. Then he picked up the message and made check marks below the letters in his alphabet as he found those letters in the message. When he had gone through the message, ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... sometimes endowed. We have a school here, directed with as much perseverance as enlightened patience, which already offers the most satisfactory results; by a very ingenious method, the mental and physical capacities are exercised at the same time; and many have been taught the alphabet, figures, and to distinguish colors; they have also succeeded in teaching them to sing in chorus; and I assure you, madame, that there is a kind of strange charm, at once sad and touching, in hearing ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... plus and minus. Four days later, he was beginning multiplication and division. In four months' time, he knew how to extract square and cubic roots; and, soon after, he learnt to spell and read by means of the conventional alphabet devised by Krall. ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... alliterative names adopted at that time. Look over the magazines and Annuals of those years, and you will find many such, as "Mary Maywood," "Dora Dashwood," "Ella Ellwood" "Fanny Forrester," "Fanny Fern," "Jennie June," "Minnie Myrtle," and so on through the alphabet, one almost expecting to find a "Ninny Noodle." Examining one of Mrs. Lippincott's first scrapbooks of "Extracts from Newspapers," etc., which she had labelled, "Vanity, all is Vanity," I find many ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... not long ago, in one of his charming essays, that almost persuade the reader, "Ought women to learn the alphabet?" and added, "Give woman, if you dare, the alphabet, then summon her to the career," his physiology was not equal to his wit. Women will learn the alphabet at any rate; and man will be powerless to prevent them, should he undertake ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... himself with a long pole, and stood by a sandy portion of ground, upon which he had no difficulty in tracing what letters and characters he wished. With due preparation and importance he marked out the first letter of the German alphabet, and then, straightening himself up, demanded in a thundering tone "vot dat was." His two sons looked mute and dumbfounded. They had not the remotest idea in the world of its name and significance. For over three months the patient father had instructed ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... the Lord Mayor of London by a country clergyman, to give, as a warning to others, publicity to a letter he had just received from the East. The clergyman, it seems, had advertised in the 'Times' for pupils, and gave for address a certain letter of the Greek alphabet. To this address there came in due time an answer from a gentleman, dated Constantinople, stating that he was an Anglo-Indian on his way to England, to place his two sons in an educational establishment; but that having, by an excursion to Jerusalem, exhausted his immediate resources, ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... think that to teach anything well it is necessary to know only that one thing. That young woman who undertakes to teach a primary school, or even an infant class, has mistaken her calling if she supposes that because she has to teach only the alphabet or the "table card," she has therefore no need to know many other things. There are some things which every teacher needs. Every teacher needs a cultivated taste, a disciplined intellect, and that enlargement of views which results ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... cause. He felt no resentment for his misguided assailant—he would willingly have exposed himself to a second attack, could he have thus restored her reason. The memento of the crucifixion—that Catholic alphabet, the crucifix—held up unto his soul the wondrous truth that God had voluntarily suffered, for the sake of man, all that humanity can endure; and the youth interiorly acknowledged that the errors of his life were but imperfectly balanced by the ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... Plaatje pursued his interests in language and linguistics by collaborating with Professor Daniel Jones of the University of London — inventor of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and prototype for Professor Higgins in Shaw's "Pygmalion" and thus the musical "My Fair Lady". In the same year as Native Life was published, 1916, Plaatje published two other shorter books which brought together the European languages (English, ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... tripled now. Read my letter once and again. Preserve it as a sacred deposit. Lay it under your pillow. Meditate upon it fasting. Commit it to memory, and repeat the scattered parcels of it, as Caesar is said to have done the Greek alphabet, to cool your rising choler. Be this the amulet to preserve you from danger! Be this the chart by which to steer the little skiff of your political system safe into ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... domestic management depends the preservation of their fortune Prevent disorder from organising itself Princes thus accustomed to be treated as divinities Princess at 12 years was not mistress of the whole alphabet Rabble, always ready to insult genius, virtue, and misfortune Saw no other advantage in it than that of saving her own life She often carried her economy to a degree of parsimony Shocking to find so little a man in the son of the Marechal Shun all ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... witch! That is, I can put two and two together, and read men, though I don't read the alphabet. Well, one reading is a good deal rarer than the other. So you mean to disobey the Hawk to-night? I like you for that. But listen here—did you ever ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... the list of December, 1892, he named the Golden type, from The Golden Legend, which was to have been the first book printed with it. This fount consists of eighty-one designs, including stops, figures, and tied letters. The lower case alphabet was finished in a few months. The first letter having been cut in Great Primer size by Mr. Prince, was thought too large, and 'English' was the size resolved upon. By the middle of August, 1890, eleven punches had been cut. At the end of the ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... his untiring energy that the Political Union owed much of its success. In his later years he printed (partly with his own hands) one of the strangest works ever issued from the press, being nothing less than an alphabet, grammar, and dictionary of a new and universal language. On this he must have spent an immense amount of philosophical and philological research during the busiest years of his active life, but like other schemes of ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... about him (which he has not an eye to follow in its fantastic changes, nor an understanding to reduce to fixed principles), to the quiet monotony of the dead languages, and the less startling and more intelligible combinations of the letters of the alphabet. It is well, it is perfectly well. 'Leave me to my repose,' is the motto of the sleeping and the dead. You might as well ask the paralytic to leap from his chair and throw away his crutch, or, without a miracle, to 'take up his bed and walk,' as expect the learned reader ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... she saw the last of them go clattering, whirling up the street through the bazaar. The old hag rose out of a shadow and trotted after her again as she turned and rode on, pale-faced and crying now a little, to the little begged school place where her father tried to din the alphabet into a dozen ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... Epoch of Reform, the modern "secular" or "civil" alphabet was substituted for the ancient Church Slavonic, and the modern Russian language, which Lomonosoff did so much to improve, began to assume shape, literature and science at last freeing themselves completely from ecclesiasticism ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... good-natured looking policemen, whose function I cannot explain, but it was agreeable to see them again. There was no order or organisation of any kind to protect and annoy you. The authorities had thoughtfully painted the letters of the alphabet on the platform where the luggage was deposited, and you were supposed to find your own trunks in front of your own letter. I, full of German ideas still, waited a weary time near my letter. "You'll never get them that way," said an English friend. "You'd ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... you stop or stay, or turn your feet from out your way, say but the word that is spelled with the fourteenth and fifteenth letters of the alphabet three times in a loud voice, and all will go well with ...
— The Story-teller • Maud Lindsay
... since it was not always possible to get a consistent answer to the question as to what part of a sentence constitutes a single word, and time was too limited for any extensive language study. The following alphabet has been ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... matter of typewriting. My brother-in-law owned a machine which he used in the day-time. In the night I was free to use it. That machine was a wonder. I could weep now as I recollect my wrestlings with it. It must have been a first model in the year one of the typewriter era. Its alphabet was all capitals. It was informed with an evil spirit. It obeyed no known laws of physics, and overthrew the hoary axiom that like things performed to like things produce like results. I'll swear that machine never did the same thing in the same ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... manuscript of Diego de Landa—Second Bishop of Yucatan, in 1573,—which was discovered and published by M. de Bourbourg. It contains an account of the manners and customs of the Maya Indians, a description of some of their chief towns; and more important than all besides, it furnishes an alphabet, which is the most probable key that is known to us for reading the hieroglyphics which are found upon many of the Yucatan ruins. The alphabet, though imperfect in itself, may at some future time explain, not only the inscriptions, but also the manuscripts of this ancient ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... Epic. If they applied their art to literature, then the preservation of the Epic is explained. Written first in a prae-Phoenician script, it continued to be written in the Greek adaptation of the Phoenician alphabet. There was not yet, probably, a reading public, but there were ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... elements are names only, and that definition or explanation begins when they are combined; the letters are unknown, the syllables or combinations are known. But this new hypothesis when tested by the letters of the alphabet is found to break down. The first syllable of Socrates' name is SO. But what is SO? Two letters, S and O, a sibilant and a vowel, of which no further explanation can be given. And how can any one be ignorant of either of them, and yet know both of them? There is, however, another ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... and as to the other side of a soldier's life, again he thought, what is it for?—to humour the arrogance of the proud,—to pamper the appetite of the full,—to tighten the grip of the iron hand of power;—and though it be sometimes for better ends, yet the soldier cannot choose what letters of the alphabet of obedience he will learn. Politics was the very shaking of the government sieve, where if there were any solid result it was accompanied with a very great flying about of chaff indeed. Society was nothing but whip syllabub,—a mere conglomeration of bubbles,—as ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... trouble of mind went from him, and at the end of the third day's idleness he made a drawing in chalk upon the deck, with letters of the alphabet at the angles. He pointed out that, though the piston-rod was more or less straight, the piston-rod cross-head—the thing that had been jammed sideways in the guides—had been badly strained, and had cracked the lower end of the piston-rod. He was going ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... teach her to read and write, but, whether from the teacher's inability to impart knowledge, or from some strange lack in the child's odd brain, Lib never learned the lesson. She could not read a word, she did not even know her alphabet. I cannot explain to myself or to you the one gift which gave her her homely village name. She told stories. I listened to many of them, and I took down from her lips several of these. They are, as you will see if you read them, "kind o' fables," as the country folk said. They ...
— Story-Tell Lib • Annie Trumbull Slosson
... names of the French officials concerned were written at full length in the Department cipher. In making a copy for Congress, Secretary Pickering substituted for the names the terminal letters of the alphabet, and hence the report has passed into history ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... do this, not because it is startling, but because it is soothing. To people wholly weary or partly drunk in a dimly lighted train, it is a simplification and a comfort to have things presented in this vast and obvious manner. The editors use this gigantic alphabet in dealing with their readers, for exactly the same reason that parents and governesses use a similar gigantic alphabet in teaching children to spell. The nursery authorities do not use an A as big as a horseshoe in order to make the child jump; on the contrary, they use it ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... beginnings of what is called our Literature. Literature really means letters, for it comes from a Latin word littera, meaning a letter of the alphabet. Words are made by letters of the alphabet being set together, and our literature again by words being set together; hence ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... ranger's expression of amazement and admiration grew deeper and deeper, and his liking and respect for his young subordinate increased rapidly. Finally the ranger was given his first lesson in radio-telegraphy. While Lew was writing down for him the wireless alphabet, Charley was showing him how to make the letters on the spark-gap. Before they turned in for the night, the ranger had learned to distinguish the difference between the sound of a dot and of a dash as the signals ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... had given? But chiefly this, him First, him Last to view 15 Through meaner powers and secondary things Effulgent, as through clouds that veil his blaze. For all that meets the bodily sense I deem Symbolical, one mighty alphabet For infant minds; and we in this low world 20 Placed with our backs to bright Reality, That we may learn with young unwounded ken The substance from its shadow. Infinite Love, Whose latence is the plenitude of All, Thou ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... and the idea for which it is used is in this case through the sound of the name of the object depicted. That the early alphabets are of this type of rebus pictures appears in their names. The first three letters of the Hebrew alphabet, for example, are named, respectively, aleph which means ox, beth which means house, and gimmel ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... for the use of Colored pupils was erected in Washington, D. C., by three Colored men, named George Bell, Nicholas Franklin, and Moses Liverpool. Not one of this trio of Negro educators knew a letter of the alphabet; but having lived as slaves in Virginia, they had learned to appreciate the opinion that learning was of great price. They secured a white teacher, named Lowe, and put their ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... they cultivated no corn, their vegetable food consisting of batata(?) and banana. They had not a single domestic animal; they were acquainted with iron and gold, but with no other metal, and were clothed in stuffs of cotton and alpaca, woven by themselves. They had invented a peculiar phonetic alphabet; and their religion consisted in the belief in good and evil spirits and witches, in circumcision, and in somewhat of divination by the stars. They therefore were superior to the inhabitants of the South Sea, inasmuch as they possessed gold, iron, ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... beyond our fountain head, nor can we even dream beyond the souls of the two things who gave us birth. There are men born in this age of ripeness, born with an alphabet in their mouths and reared in the regal ways of learning, who can neither read nor write. And yet had Shakespeare been born without a language, he would have carved his thoughts as ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... dozen persons in that room could have perceived any difference in the two readings of a thesis written in a language of which even the alphabet was unknown known to them, yet every individual among them could keenly appreciate the magnanimity of Ishmael, who would have sacrificed his scholastic fame for his friend's benefit, and the quickness and integrity of Walter ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... have ventured to deviate from the very inconvenient Scandinavian arrangement, which puts þ, æ, œ, right at the end of the alphabet. ...
— An Icelandic Primer - With Grammar, Notes, and Glossary • Henry Sweet
... Ogham," so called because the letters resembled the branching of twigs from a stem. The Ogham alphabet was in use in Ireland in pre-Christian times, and many sepulchral inscriptions in it ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... criteria, the English stands alone in the highest rank; but as a written language, in the way in which its alphabet is used, the English has but ...
— On the Evolution of Language • John Wesley Powell
... substance. Each wire ended in a stalk mounted with a little ball of elder-wood suspended by a silk thread. When a stream of electricity, no matter how slight., was sent through the wire, the elder-ball at the opposite end was repelled, such movement designating some letter of the alphabet. A few years later we find Arthur Young, in his Travels in France, describing a similar machine invented by a M. Lomond of Paris, the action of which he also describes.[12] In these and similar cases, though the idea was born and the model of the ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... in the first edition of this pamphlet, that the Maya deities be designated by letters of the alphabet, has been very generally adopted by Americanists, especially by those in the United States of America. This circumstance, in particular, has seemed to make it desirable to prepare for publication a new edition, improved to accord with the present ...
— Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts • Paul Schellhas
... bidder, annulled the wills made in favour of the bishoprics and abbeys, and sought to impose upon his subjects a rationalistic conception of the Trinity. He pretended to some literary culture, and was the author of some halting verse. He even added letters to the Latin alphabet, and wished to have the MSS. rewritten with the new characters. The wresting of Tours from Austrasia and the seizure of ecclesiastical property provoked the bitter hatred of Gregory of Tours, by whom Chilperic was stigmatized as the Nero and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... terms and names of branches of learning come from the Greek. In fact, nearly all the terms of learning and art, from the alphabet to the highest peaks of metaphysics and theology, come directly from the Greek— philosophy, logic, anthropology, psychology, aesthetics, grammar, rhetoric, history, philology, mathematics, arithmetic, astronomy, anatomy, geography, stenography, physiology, architecture, and hundreds more ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... descent of this people, which does not appear of terrestrial origin, but descended from some of the inhabitants of the moon, because the principal language spoken there, and in the centre of Africa, is very nearly the same. Their alphabet and method of writing are pretty much the same, and show the extreme antiquity of this people, and their exalted origin. I here give you a specimen of their writing [Vide Otrckocsus de Orig. ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... of the Syndicate had no individual names. The spring-armoured ships were termed "repellers," and were numbered, and the crabs were known by the letters of the alphabet. Each repeller was in charge of a Director of Naval Operations; and the whole naval force of the Syndicate was under the command of a Director-in-chief. On this momentous occasion this officer was on board of Repeller No. 1, and ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... the Doctor, who had studied long in Germany, and become an authority on mental diseases, developed a distaste for therapeutics, and a passion for research and the laboratory. There was the Lawyer, who knew international law as he knew his Greek alphabet, and hated a court room. There was the Violinist, who was known the world over in musical sets,—everywhere, except in the concert room. There was the Journalist, who had travelled into almost as many queer places as Richard Burton, seen more wars, ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... beginning has no restriction, but may be applied to action, state, material, extent, enumeration, or to whatever else may be conceived of as having a first part, point, degree, etc. The letter A is at the beginning (not the commencement) of every alphabet. If we were to speak of the commencement of the Pacific Railroad, we should be understood to refer to the enterprise and its initiatory act; if we were to refer to the roadway we should say "Here is the beginning of the Pacific Railroad." In the great majority of cases begin ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... had a curious method of keeping tally of events. They had no alphabet, and instead of writing they made use of strings of various make, colour, and length, and, with the addition of knots, more or less complicated, were able to place on ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge
... the proprietor's arm and led him to a carriage in waiting. Then he took him to Pine street, and introduced him, in the most deferential manner, to the broker who held half of New York at his disposal, and knew the city as he knew his alphabet. ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... which has cost me many months' heavy work, 'while I bore burdens with dull patience and beat the track of the alphabet with sluggish resolution[31],' I have, I hope, shown that I am not unmindful of all that I owe to men of letters. To the dead we cannot pay the debt of gratitude that is their due. Some relief is obtained from its burthen, if we in our turn make the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... him, gazed steadily into his eyes. Again he commanded him to do these ridiculous, degrading things. Howard felt himself weakening. He was suddenly seized with the feeling that he must obey. Amid roars of laughter he recited the entire alphabet standing on one leg, he crowed like a rooster, he hopped like a toad, and he crawled abjectly on his belly like a snake. One of the fellows told him afterward that he had been hypnotized. He had laughed at it then as a good joke, but now he came to think of it, perhaps it ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... his father died of injuries received in rescuing a person from drowning. At the age of 10 years Andrew was apprenticed to a tailor. His early education was almost entirely neglected, and, notwithstanding his natural craving to learn, he never spent a day in school. Was taught the alphabet by a fellow-workman, borrowed a book, and learned to read. In 1824 removed to Laurens Court-House, S.C., where he worked as a journeyman tailor. In May, 1826, returned to Raleigh, and in September, with his mother and stepfather, set out for Greeneville, Tenn., ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... many answering needles. The going-away of friends does not make the remainder more precious. It takes so much from them, as there was a common link. A, B, and C make a party. A dies. B not only loses A, but all A's part in C. C loses A's part in B, and so the alphabet sickens by subtraction of interchangeables. I express myself muddily, capite dolente. I have a dulling cold. My theory is to enjoy life; but my practice is against it. I grow ominously tired of official confinement. Thirty years have I served the Philistines, and my neck is not ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... its officers' excursions into Kent and Essex, its dealing with the Plague, the disposal of its goods at the Reformation, &c., &c., and will help our members to realize the church-life of its time. The third Text will be Part I of An Alphabet of Tales, avery interesting collection, englisht in the Northern Dialect, about 1440, from the Latin Alphabetum Narrationum by Etienne de Bsanon, and edited by Mrs. M.M. Banks from the unique MS. in the King's Library in the British Museum; the above-named ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... words that came to his ear. Some boys looked to see how red his eyes were: some were surprised to see him abroad, and hinted a favouritism because he was not shut up in the school-room. Some asked whether he could say his alphabet yet; and others whether he could spell "dunce." The most cruel thing of all was to see Tooke in particularly high spirits. He kept away from Hugh; but Hugh's eye followed him from afar, and saw that he capered and laughed, and was gayer than at any time this half-year. Hugh saw into his heart (or ...
— The Crofton Boys • Harriet Martineau
... the alphabet to L, when the table responds. Similarly she finds that the second letter ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... Bourbonism, or Orleanism, or each in its turn. It is rather strange that, with such an experience, Paris should not take refuge in that tame but enduring system of street nomenclature which is based on the letters of the alphabet and the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... and then by his watching the forefinger of the writer, if across the room, or if near enough, by placing the hand of the writer carelessly on the shoulder of the party we desired to communicate with, the communication was written out in the telegraph alphabet or by taking hold of his hand ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... was a master and there was a maid. We will call the master by the first letter of the alphabet—Mr. A. And we will call the maid ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... has baffled the ingenuity of every one of their collectors. Our Ray, after long premeditation, has chosen a system with the appearance of an alphabetical order; but, as it turns out, his system is no system, and his alphabet is no alphabet. After ten years' labour, the good man could only arrange his proverbs by commonplaces—by complete sentences—by phrases or forms of speech—by proverbial similes—and so on. All these are pursued in alphabetical order, "by the first letter of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... day, far among the hills to the south, a twinkling light. From the regularity with which it shone and disappeared, he came to the conclusion that it was caused by signallers endeavouring to open communications. The flashes were watched, and were found to be in accordance with the Morse alphabet; and the joyful news was spread that their ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... syllables of sound in unmeaning rotation, and you despise its words, its purposes, its narrative feats; carry out your principle, it will show you where you are. Buy a dirty palette for a picture, and dream the alphabet is a poem." ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... aloud from the Bible, his curiosity was aroused. He felt so secure in her kindness that he had the boldness to ask her to teach him. Following her natural impulse to do kindness to others, and without, for a moment, thinking of the danger, she at once consented. He quickly learned the alphabet and in a short time could spell words of three syllables. But alas, for his young ambition! When Mr. Auld discovered what his wife had done, he was both surprised and pained. He at once stopped the perilous practice, but it was ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various |
