"Avocation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... made! I do not mean to disparage mercantile pursuits; they afford constant opportunities for the exercise and display of keenness and clearness of intellect, but do not require the peculiar gifts so essential in statesmen. Indolence is unpardonable in any avocation, and I would be commended to the industrious, energetic merchant, in preference to superficial, so- called, 'professional men.' But Eugene had rare educational advantages, and I expected him to improve them, and be something more than ordinary. He expected it, five years ago. ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... breezes of the Highgate hills, and presenting to any guest we may receive the attractions of a home rather than of a lodging, you will find our retreat no less eligible than unique. You are, I presume, sir, in some profession, some city avocation—or—or trade?" ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... apparently by its strict truth. Some of M. Thiers's political antagonists, seeking to annoy him, volunteered to circulate in the form of a card the following advertisement for a lady who appears to be related to M. Thiers, and also to carry on an honest avocation:— ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... engaged in this noble and useful calling? Among them may be found representatives of all the nations of Europe—Germans in greatest number; but there are Swedes and Russ as well, Danes and Britons, Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Portuguese, Swiss and Italians. They may be found pursuing their avocation in every corner of the world—through the sequestered passes of the Rocky Mountains, upon the pathless prairies, in the deep barrancas of the Andes, amid the tangled forests of the Amazon and the Orinoco, on the steppes of Siberia, in the glacier valleys of the Himalaya—everywhere—everywhere ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... these two words so nearly alike. Vocation is the employment, business or profession one follows for a living; avocation is some pursuit or occupation which diverts the person from such employment, business or ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... It has been indicated that he was quick-witted, because he had to be, in the very nature of his avocation. Just now his brain was working rather more rapidly than usual, even: which was one reason why the light ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... him, cooped up for a year and more in the narrow confines of Simiti, the ready flow of this man's conversation was like a fountain of sparkling water to a thirsty traveler. He urged him to go on, plying him with questions about his strange avocation. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... cannot quite understand," he said, "is the exact meaning of that word 'abduction.' Why should I be suspected of forcibly removing a harmless and worthy young man from his regular avocation, and, as you term it, abducting him, which I presume means keeping him bound and gagged and imprisoned? I do not eat young men. I do not even care for the society of young men. I am not naturally a gregarious person, but I think I would go so far," he added, with a bow towards Miss Hyslop, "as to ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... meeting takes place: a meeting which bears a family resemblance to our own Public Dinner, in respect of its being a main part of the proceedings that every gentleman present is required to drink something nasty. These Mataboos are a privileged order, so important is their avocation, and they make the most of their high functions. A long way out of the Tonga Islands, indeed, rather near the British Islands, was there no calling in of the Mataboos the other day to settle an earth-convulsing ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... of course, by the division of labor.(376) Yet the skill produced by the division of labor is unavoidably connected with a corresponding one-sidedness. The Russians, for instance, are exceedingly apt, but they rarely distinguish themselves in any thing.(377) Love of his avocation, or pride in it, is a thing unknown to the Russian workman. He shirks all continuous labor.(378) Experience has shown that the Neapolitans and Italians, in general, exhibit great skill when they ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... so common at that period that people had ceased to inquire into their particular grounds. In one department of industry or another, they had been nearly incessant ever since the great business crisis of 1873. In fact it had come to be the exceptional thing to see any class of laborers pursue their avocation steadily for more than a few ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... to the original propensities of our nature? It is true, these propensities may by an undue cultivation be so much increased, as to be productive of the most extensive mischief. The man who, for the sake of indulging his corporeal appetites, neglects every valuable pursuit, and every important avocation, cannot be too warmly censured. But it is no less true, that the passion of the sexes for each other, exists in the most innocent and uncorrupted heart. Can it then be reasonable to condemn such a moderate indulgence of this passion, as interrupts no employment, and impedes no pursuit? This indulgence, ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... Carhaix, "I am only a poor ignorant man. But the type you speak of does exist. In Switzerland, I believe, a bell-ringer has for years been collecting material for a heraldic memorial. I should think," he continued, laughing, "that his avocation would ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... brothers “of the cloth” with piscatorial proclivities, who visit Woodhall, the writer would point to this means of healthful relaxation, which he can recommend from experience. Any qualms of the clerical conscience as to the legitimacy of such an avocation—a wholesome calling away from graver duties—may be set at rest on episcopal, and even archi-episcopal, authority. The late Archbishop Magee was an ardent fisherman, and would go on flogging on Irish lough or ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... being crowned would not perhaps be much greater. If the equanimity of an ordinary man be at the mercy of trifles, how much more will the equanimity of the man of letters, who is usually the most sensitive of the race, and whose peculiar avocation makes sad work with the fine tissues of the nerves. Literary composition is, I take it, with the exception of the crank, in which there is neither hope nor result, the most exhausting to which a human being can apply himself. Just consider ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... by some of the more respectable loyalists of the town. On the morrow, therefore, the rabble of the town again sounded the cry of "Church and King," and being joined by the rabble of the mining and foundery districts in the neighbourhood, they resumed their dreadful avocation. On that day the houses of Messrs. John Ryland, Taylor, and Hutton, were destroyed; the magistrates making no effectual preparations to stop the ravages. It does not appear that the mob had been furnished with any drink on this day by the loyalist magnates ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... M. de T[reytorre]us family is as follows. A breakfast of coffee and bread and butter is served up to each person separately in their own room, or in the Salle a manger, Before dinner every one follows his own avocation or amusement. At one, the family assemble to dinner which generally consist of soup, bouilli, entrees of fish, flesh and fowl, entremets of vegetables, a roti of butcher's meat, fowl or game, pastry and desert. The wine of the country is drunk at dinner as ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... possibly aware, my dear Dolorosus,—for I remember that you were destined by your parents for the physician of your native seaside village, until you found a more congenial avocation in curing mackerel,—that the ancient medals represented the goddess Hygeia with a serpent three times as large as that carried by Aesculapius, to denote the superiority of hygiene to medicine, prevention to cure. To seek health as you are now seeking it, regarding ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... they were lost. Nothing would satisfy them short of making a complete translation. It became an obsession; it was at first their recreation; then because it went very slowly it seemed likely to become their life avocation. ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... trouble and those who had fallen upon "gringoes" in the region had despatched their victims thoroughly, leaving them mutilated and robbed even of their clothing. The charming part of it all was one could never know which of these slinking fellows was a bandit by avocation and saving up his unvented anger for the boss who ordered him ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... Chicago. Again what was to be done? They could take her back to Scutari, whence they had come, in the hope of finding a Roman Catholic sisterhood. The proposal evoked but lukewarm enthusiasm. Liosha being convinced that they would turn her into a nun—the last avocation in the world she desired to adopt. Her simple idea was to go out to America, like her father, return with many bags of gold and devote her life to the linked sweetness of a gradual extermination of her enemies. When asked how she would manage to amass the gold she replied that she would work in the ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... your most melancholy letter of the 8th of this month, in which you seem to feel all or more than I apprehended. As I trust to time and the necessary avocation of your thoughts, rather than to any arguments I could use for your consolation, I choose to say as little more as possible on the subject of your loss. Your not receiving letters from your brothers as early as mine was ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... thought in which Aristide discovered him. Now, the fact that North is North and South is South and that never these twain shall meet is a proposition all too little considered. One of these days when I can retire from the dull but exacting avocation of tea-broking in the City, I think I shall write a newspaper article on the subject. Anyhow, I hold the theory that the Northerners of all nations have a common characteristic and the Southerners of all nations have a common characteristic, and that it is this common characteristic in each ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... events, many of these ladies,and worthy ones too, are placed, par force of poverty, in this avocation, unsuited to their abilities, their hearts, their habits, or their former expectations. The government of their young flock is odious to them, and although they may go through the duties of their situation with apparent patience, it is in fact ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Mr. Sandys had improved and enlarged. It was a big room, with an immense, perfectly plain deal table in the middle, stained a dark brown; and the Vicar showed Howard with high glee how each of the four sides of the table was consecrated to a different avocation. "My accounts end!" he said, "my sermon side! my correspondence end! my genealogical side!" There were a number of small dodges, desks for holding books, flaps which could be let up and down, slits in the table through which papers could be dropped ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... outstanding warrants, but this explanation in itself merits notice and explanation, because of the fact that the persons named were the holders of such a large amount of warrants imply some inducement on their part to invest in them, more especially as by avocation the majority of them were not brokers but employees in the Custom-House. Some of them have testified that all the warrants they held were paid. Another has refused to disclose for whom he collected. A third was a relative of a personal ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... porter from the public-house, for his meal, recounting the feasts of the great as if h had been present at them; and in tattered trousers and dingy shirt-sleeves, cheerfully describing and arranging the most brilliant fetes of the world of fashion. The incongruity of Finucane's avocation, and his manners and appearance amused his new friend Pen. Since he left his own native village, where his rank probably was not very, lofty Jack had seldom seen any society but such as used the parlour ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... little picture by John Sargent, entitled "The Hermit" (Pl. 21). Mr. Sargent is a portrait-painter by vocation, and the public knows him best as a penetrating and sometimes cruel reader of human character. He is a mural painter by avocation and capable, on occasion, of a monumental formality. In this picture, as in the wonderful collection of watercolors in the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, one fancies one sees the essential John Sargent, working for himself alone without regard to external demands, ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... a cheer that made the ocean shiver, and fluttered the flags over the tents, and made even the trick-o'-the-loop men pause in their honest avocation, and the orange-sellers hold their wares ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... Hale said every man needed "both a vocation and an avocation"—something by which he earned his living and something by which he maintained his interest in activity. It is the avocation that must be planned for. The vocation is often thrust upon one by necessity or chance association. If every aged person had something to do that made each day short ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... Romans were a sensual, ostentatious, and luxurious people, they accordingly wasted their fortunes by an extravagance in their living which has had no parallel. The pleasures of the table and the cares of the kitchen were the most serious avocation of the aristocracy in the days of the greatest corruption. They had around them regular courts of parasites and flatterers, and they employed even persons of high rank as their chamberlains and stewards. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... abstract truth in a form plain, attractive and intelligible to the common understanding, it is to be hoped that Mr. Hoyt will continue to contribute to the higher departments of our periodical literature, and thus by his studies and his pen add to his present usefulness in his daily avocation, for we seldom find one blessed with such a versatility of talent. He is methodical in everything, and thorough in everything. In short, he is a good lawyer, a good preacher, a good citizen, a good business man, a good father, a good ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... among the palatial residences of the Queen City. A rather restricted income compelled him to find a more unpretentious home than was perhaps in keeping with his avocation and position in life. Yet, carrying into practice the teaching he set forth, to "owe no man anything," and never live beyond one's income, he established his home in a portion of the city that was rather characterized by low rents than aristocratic abodes. However, they were ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... satellites, Austin and Langley. At a little distance from the party, sat a tall, sinister-looking personage, with harsh inflexible features, a gaunt but muscular frame, and large bony hands. He was sipping a glass of cold gin and water, and smoking a short black pipe. His name was Marvel, and his avocation, which was as repulsive as his looks, was that of public executioner. By his side sat a remarkably stout dame, to whom he paid as much attention as it was in his iron nature to pay. She had a nut-brown skin, ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Syrian family, that of Habbit Jummal, or interpreted, the esteemed camel-driver. Our landlord, Giorgius, the head of this family, was a young man hardly out of his teens; and having some competency, and being moreover un beau garcon, did not follow either his ancestral, or any other avocation. The harem, or woman's portion of the house, was composed of his mother, a fair widow of forty, and her two daughters, both Eastern beauties of their kind, Sarah and Nasarah (meaning Victory or Victoria;) the first, a laughing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... him to admission at either the Ecole Polytechnique or the Ecole Normale,* and he had chosen the latter, entering its scientific section with No. 1 against his name. His father had wished him to make sure of an avocation, that of professor, even if circumstances should allow him to remain independent and follow his own bent on leaving the college. Francois, who was very precocious, was now preparing for his last examination there, and the only rest he took was in walking ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... favourable hearing. But certainly these great exertions of friends and enemies have forced many a poor fellow out of the common paths of life, and obliged him to make a trade of what can only be gracefully executed as an occasional avocation. When such a man is encouraged in all his freaks and follies, the bit is taken out of his mouth, and, as he is turned out upon the common, he is very apt to deem himself exempt from all the rules incumbent on those who keep the king's highway. And so they play ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... give way to an indispensable avocation, I will make thee taste a little, in thy turn, of the plague of suspense; and break off, without giving thee the least hint of the issue of my further proceedings. I know, that those least bear disappointment, who love most to give it. In twenty instances, hast thou afforded me proof ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... passing rapidly during which Douglas should have laid broad and deep the foundations of his professional career, if indeed law was to be more than a convenient avocation. These were formative years in the young man's life; but as yet he had developed neither the inclination nor the capacity to apply himself to the study of the more intricate and abstruse phases of jurisprudence. To be sure, he had picked up much practical information in the courts, but ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... FOR THE YOUNG of both Sexes; Relating to the Formation of Character, Choice of Avocation; Health, Amusement, Music, Conversation, Cultivation of Intellect, Moral Sentiments, Social Affection, Courtship and Marriage. By Rev. G. S. Weaver. Price, in paper, 62 cents; muslin, ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... the author has so well succeeded in describing the cold selfish fopperies of the time, that the copy is almost as dull as the original. I think I will take up my bundle of Sheriff-Court processes instead of Almacks, as the more entertaining avocation of ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... And Tom, the waiter, his napkin twisted in his hand and his face turned with a sudden dark abstraction towards the window, appeared to be really "lying low," and waiting for something outside his avocation. ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... and very interesting I found my new avocation on the County Down, which for short the Belfast and County Down Railway was usually called. My salary certainly was not magnificent, 500 pounds a year, but it was about 100 pounds more than the whole of the income ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... with other people, broadens her interests, increases her usefulness, and, moreover, is often a recreation. The home-maker needs outside interests. The girl at home is never dull, or unhappy because she is dull, when she has an avocation in addition to her work ...
— The Canadian Girl at Work - A Book of Vocational Guidance • Marjory MacMurchy
... the master laid. John Torrey, born in New York City in 1796, was the son of a Revolutionary soldier, and in early life determined to become a machinist, but afterwards studied medicine and began to practice in New York, taking up the study of botany as an avocation. He found the profession of medicine uncongenial, and finally abandoned it altogether for science, serving for many years as professor of chemistry and botany at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City. The succeeding years brought ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... recorded, that, "wherever he had been, in the smallest place equally with the largest, he had been received with unsurpassable politeness, delicacy, sweet temper, hospitality, consideration, and with unsurpassable respect for the privacy daily enforced upon him by the nature of his avocation there" (as a public reader), "and the state of ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... factor. We are prone to believe that the particular status of the sexes that prevails among ourselves corresponds to a universal and unchangeable order of things. In reality this is far from being the case. It may, indeed, be truly said that there is no kind of social position, no sort of avocation, public or domestic, among ourselves exclusively appertaining to one sex, which has not at some time or in some part of the world belonged to the opposite sex, and with the most excellent results. We regard it as alone right and proper for a man to ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... The avocation of a colonist, usually so active, had little interest for me. This vast territorial lordship, in which, could I have endeared its possession by the hopes that animate a Founder, I should have felt all the zest and ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hated anything, he hated this work of his; long ago, had he been alone concerned, he would have dropped it, and taken to tramping the roads with boot-laces to sell, or some other equally unstrenuous and unlucrative avocation. But he had not, from the first, been alone concerned; first he had had to help Hilary and Peggy, and now he had to keep a wife too. Eventually there would probably be also children to keep; Peter didn't know how much these ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... of my profession doesn't take a solemn oath to wait until the remains are resting in pieces: it might not be a difficult task to take up an avocation as well as a vocation. I wonder if I couldn't be a pretty good ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... Study of vocations and avocations for women. Avocations—the work which serves as play—should be wisely studied, and some avocation adopted by ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... crime, it was the master who must sue or be sued. In many of the States there has been special legislation, giving married women the right to property inherited or received by bequest, or earned by the pursuit of any avocation outside the home; also giving them the right to sue and be sued in matters pertaining to such separate property; but not a single State of this Union has ever secured the wife in the enjoyment of her right to equal ownership of the joint ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... employed, if he was to retain either health or energy to aid him in any of the important projects that now loomed before him, he gave no place to useless repinings, but busily engaged with the necessities of his new avocation, found the hours slipping by which intervened between the period when he swore the true fealty of his soul to the flag of his love, and that which was to see him a hostile invader upon the shores he had ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... was very painful, and could be accomplished only with the aid of a cane. A galvanic bath on the 27th and one on the 28th of August were sufficient to remove both swelling and pain, enabling the patient to resume his avocation. ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig
... equally with the largest, I have been received with unsurpassable politeness, delicacy, sweet temper, hospitality, consideration, and with unsurpassable respect for the privacy daily enforced upon me by the nature of my avocation here and the state of my health. This testimony, so long as I live, and so long as my descendants have any legal right in my books, I shall cause to be republished, as an appendix to every copy of those two ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... the experiment of a formal apology. The apology was accepted with a smile. I repeated the offence with less ceremony; the excuse was admitted with the same indulgence: the slightest motive of laziness or indisposition, the most trifling avocation at home or abroad, was allowed as a worthy impediment; nor did my tutor appear conscious of my absence or neglect. Had the hour of lecture been constantly filled, a single hour was a small portion of my academic leisure. No plan of study was recommended for my use; ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... are these reporters of newspapers in general, I mean English newspapers; surely if there be any class of individuals who are entitled to the appellation of cosmopolites, it is these; who pursue their avocation in all countries indifferently, and accommodate themselves at will to the manners of all classes of society: their fluency of style as writers is only surpassed by their facility of language in conversation, and their attainments in classical and polite literature only ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... down in an university, to come out, as if thrown into a burning mould, a bright physician, a bright lawyer, a bright divine—in other words, to adapt themselves for a profession preconcerted by their parents. By this means we may secure a titular profession for our son, but the true genius of the avocation in the bent of the mind, as a man of great original powers called it, is too often absent! Instead of finding fit offices for fit men, we are perpetually discovering, on the stage of society, actors out of character! Our most popular writer has ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... little of the antecedents of Summerfield. He was of Northern birth, but of what State it is impossible to say definitely. Early in life he removed to the frontier of Arkansas, and pursued for some years the avocation of village schoolmaster. It was the suggestion of Judge Wheeler that induced him to read law. In six months' time he had mastered Story's Equity, and gained an important suit, based upon one of ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... the side of the mistico, she had, in every respect, the appearance of one belonging to a harmless fisherman just returned from his day's avocation. Although Zappa had with justice full confidence in his own masquerading talents, he wisely did not wish to run any unnecessary risk, and he, therefore, ordered the mistico to get under weigh, and to sweep close in shore after him, that he might, in case of necessity, have ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... was no one there who knew the "blind girl." All my mother's friends had vanished, and "they were all gone, the dear familiar faces." I fondly bade adieu to Jonesville with the consciousness of having performed a sad duty, and proceeded with my avocation, with my wonted success, until we reached Toledo, Ohio, where Miss Weaver was attacked with a serious illness which kept me in constant attendance upon her for ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... whose avocation is selected simply because they fancy, it easier to write than to sew for bread, or because they covet the applause and adulation heaped upon successful genius, or desire mere notoriety, generally barter their ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... Kemble Oliver, author of "Federal St.," was born in Salem, Mass., March, 1800, and was addicted to music from his childhood. His father compelled him to relinquish it as a profession, but it remained his favorite avocation, and after his graduation from Harvard the cares of none of the various public positions he held, from schoolmaster to treasurer of the state of Massachusetts, could ever wean him from the study of music and its practice. At the age of thirty-one, while ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... his fellow-traveller. We thought such an abrupt departure would be less shocking than to stay and take a formal leave of my lover, whose heart was of such a delicate frame, that, after I told him I should one day withdraw myself in his absence, he never came home from the chase, or any other avocation, without trembling with apprehension that ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... legal or moral, to establish, in an inhabited vicinage, a trade or manufacture which confessedly poisons the air or the water in his neighborhood; nor has one a moral right (even if there are technical difficulties in the way of declaring his calling a nuisance), to annoy his neighbors by an avocation grossly offensive or intolerably noisy. It is on this ground alone that legislation with reference to the Lord's day can be justified. Christians have no right to impose upon Jews, Pagans, or infidels, entire cessation of labor, business, ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... think one of the surest ways to injure a Church, and to make the pulpit lose its power over the rising generation, is for men without a true calling, or requisite qualifications to enter the ministry because they have failed in some other avocation and find in preaching an open ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... form in this country. In a land where the theory of caste is not admitted, the relative respectability of the various professions is not quite the same as it is with us. There the profession does not disqualify if the man himself be right, nor the claim to the title of gentleman depend upon the avocation followed. I know of one or two clowns in the ring who are educated physicians, and not thought to be any the less gentlemen because they propound conundrums and perpetrate jests instead of prescribing pills ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... the campaign, however, the army speedily dispersed, each man returning to his former avocation; save therefore for the retainers, who formed the garrisons of the castles of the nobles, there was no military career such as that which came into existence with the formation of standing armies. Nevertheless, there was honour and rank to be won ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... no means the same in those other functions which have been just referred to. In later years (it is Mr Humphry Ward, I think, who is our sufficient authority for it) poetry was but occasional amusement and solace to him, prose his regular avocation from task-work; and there is abundant evidence that, willingly or unwillingly, he never allowed either to usurp the place of the vocation which he had accepted. Not everybody, perhaps, is so scrupulous. It is not an absolutely unknown thing to hear ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... May morning, as the ladies had made all things tidy, and were seating themselves to their daily avocation of the needle, they heard the garden gate swing, and beheld Mrs. Edson approaching in her little white sun-bonnet and spotted muslin dressing-gown, open from the waist downwards, revealing a fine cambric skirt, wrought in several rows of vines and deep ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... permitted to run as engineer on a locomotive, most of the mines closed against us. Labor-unions—carpenters, painters, brick-masons, machinists, hackmen, and those supplying nearly every conceivable avocation for livelihood have banded themselves together to better their condition, but, with few exceptions, the black face has been left out. The Negroes are seldom employed in our mercantile stores. At this we do not wonder. Some day we hope to have them employed in our own stores. With all these odds ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... the right, and followed a wooded lane to the house of an honest surf-man, Captain George Bogart, who had recently left his old home on the beach, beside the restless waves of the Atlantic, and had resumed his avocation as a ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... person, as by incarceration, but the term is deemed to embrace the right of the citizen to be free in the enjoyment of all his faculties; to be free to use them in all lawful ways; to live and work where he will; to earn his livelihood by any lawful calling; to pursue any livelihood or avocation, and for that purpose to enter into all contracts which may be proper, necessary and essential to his carrying out to a successful conclusion the purposes ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... where precept would utterly perish. Its impression is so indelible, that the greatest difficulty is experienced when attempting to eradicate it. The salutary influence which good example propagates, we find stamped on every avocation in life. In some people a heinous negligence, and in others a culpable apathy is evinced with respect to the principles their conduct is implanting. Profuse illustrations abound in every profession, calling, and trade, of the effect of evil example, and also of the disregard paid ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... host's family by telling it, since they were not aware of any stranger in the house. The room over the great door had always been considered the haunt of peculiar people, who molested nobody living, but appeared there in some quiet avocation, ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... domestic life. 1. Young women should have some avocation. Labor regarded as drudgery. 2. Domestic employment healthy. 3. It is pleasant. 4. It affords leisure for intellectual improvement. 5. It is favorable to social improvement. 6. It is the employment assigned them by Divine Providence, and is eminently conducive ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... flowers, covered as it were by a glass shade, but which turns out to be only water. There a miniature palace is in course of erection, with crowds of workmen in its different storeys, each man at his avocation with hammer and chisel, pulley and wheel, and the grave architect himself directing their labour. All this is set in motion by water, and is not a mere doll's house, but a symmetrical model. Then we enter a subterranean grotto, ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... a peculiar appeal to persons engaged in a particular occupation or devoted to a particular avocation or amusement. Special articles on these subjects of limited appeal are adapted to agricultural, trade, or other class publications, particularly to such of these periodicals as present their material in a popular rather ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... sunning himself, a thought came to Jacob Kent that brought him to his feet with a jerk. The pleasures of life had culminated in the continual weighing and reweighing of his dust; but a shadow had been thrown upon this pleasant avocation, which he had hitherto failed to brush aside. His gold-scales were quite small; in fact, their maximum was a pound and a half,—eighteen ounces,—while his hoard mounted up to something like three and a third times that. He had never been able to weigh it all at one operation, and hence considered ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... hardly do so more than it has perplexed the narrator. Explanations, let me say at the start, I have none to offer. That which took place I relate. I have had no special education or experience as a writer; both my nature and my avocation have led me in other directions. I can claim nothing more in the construction of these pages than the qualities of a faithful reporter. Such, I have tried ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... of his better informed friend. The only mode of recognition, to prove that we belonged to each other, being by that excellent and truly English custom of drinking wine together, Tom seized the first idle moment from his avocation as carver to say, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... Did he not fondle and cuddle the little one with even as great a show of affection as Teeka herself displayed? Their fears were allayed and Tarzan now found himself often in the role of nursemaid to a tiny anthropoid—an avocation which he found by no means irksome, since Gazan was a never-failing fount of surprises ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and in his acts imitate the example of the righteous. There are virtuous men, versed in holy writ and learned in all departments of knowledge. Man's proper duty consists in following his own proper avocation, and this being the case these latter do not become confused and mixed up. The wise man delights in virtue and lives by righteousness. And, O good Brahmana, such a man with the wealth of righteousness which he hereby acquires, waters the root of the plant in which he ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Seizing upon all that was good offered by the inventors preceding him, he carefully re-proportioned the various parts and produced English clocks and watches that were at once the pride and despair of his brother craftsmen. Watches were something of an avocation with him, for his primary trade was in clocks, to which for many years he devoted his entire labor. Probably, however, the problems a watch presented won his interest and led him to try his skill in this new field, with the result that he was soon making watches ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... he had taken, with his motives for it, was far from being offended at it; tho' he told him it added to his trouble, to think his eldest son should be compelled, by his having entered into a second marriage, to have recourse to any avocation whatever for bread; but concluded with telling him, that in the severe necessity of their present circumstances, he could not have pitched on any thing more agreeable to his inclinations, ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... that he would probably use his influence as a statesman to involve his country in war again. To some it may possibly seem strange that Gordon, who had distinguished himself as a soldier, and had saved an empire, should again take up the humble avocation of an engineer officer, but so he did. He was in reality only a captain of engineers, though a brevet lieutenant-colonel in the army, when in February 1865 he returned home. He took a few months' leave, which he spent quietly at Southampton with his father ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... investigation of any subject be the proper avocation of the philosopher," says Strabo, "geography, the science of which we propose to treat, is certainly entitled to a high place; and this is evident from many considerations. They who first undertook to handle the matter were distinguished men. Homer, Anaximander the Milesian, and Hecaeus (his fellow-citizen ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... writers and men working in the arts or interested in them. It had grown to a membership of 750. It still kept for its nucleus painters, writers, musicians and actors, amateur and professional. They were a gay group of men, and hospitality was their avocation. Yet the thing which set this club off from all others in the world was the ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... sick-room of the child, her eyes full of sorrowful anxiety as if the life she sought to save were part of her own being. He wondered that any one could think of her as a stranger. It was true she had come from the North and was engaged in a despised avocation, but even that she had glorified and exalted by her purity and courage until his fastidious lady mother herself had been compelled to utter words of praise. So his heart grew sore and his face flushed ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... output, though scanty, was diverse; he wrote light verse, character sketches, and essays, including two controversial pieces in support of the French Revolution.[1] It is apparent, however, that for him writing was hardly more than an avocation. ...
— A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) • John Courtenay
... Washington, where the wounded and sick have mainly been concentrated. The Capital city, truly, is now one huge hospital; and there Whitman establishes himself, and thenceforward, for several years, has but one daily and nightly avocation. ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... with both as men are who have no object in society. Now the way society is enjoyed is to have a pursuit, a metier of some kind, and then to go into the world, either to make the individual object a social pleasure, or to obtain a reprieve from some toilsome avocation. Thus, if you are a politician—politics at once make an object in your closet, and a social tie between others and yourself when you are in the world. The same may be said of literature, though in a less degree; and ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of a permanent business or profession, however, the most interesting men I know are those who have an avocation as well as a vocation. I mean a taste or work quite apart from the business of life. This revives, inspires, and cultivates them perpetually. It matters little what it is, if only it is real and personal, is large enough to last, and possesses the power of growth. ...
— Why go to College? an Address • Alice Freeman Palmer
... in the arrangement and expression of thoughts, in her avocation of translator, and compiler, which was no doubt of great use to her afterward. It was not long until she had occasion for them. The eminent Burke produced his celebrated "Reflections on the Revolution in France." Mary full of sentiments of liberty, and indignant at what she thought ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... of National Service, the ultimate aim of which was to ensure that every youth should, by the time that he had reached the age of manhood, twenty-five years, have undergone a course of training, which, without interfering with his civil avocation, would render him a desirable asset as a soldier. With this object in view I submitted a scheme to ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... anyways purporting to be the whale's, is to be found in the famous cavern-pagoda of Elephanta, in India. The Brahmins maintain that in the almost endless sculptures of that immemorial pagoda, all the trades and pursuits, every conceivable avocation of man, were prefigured ages before any of them actually came into being. No wonder then, that in some sort our noble profession of whaling should have been there shadowed forth. The Hindoo whale referred to, occurs in a separate department of the wall, depicting the incarnation of Vishnu ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... especially the upper boys, will remember what I have said. I shall now tear down the insulting notice, and put it into your hands, Avonley, as head of the school, that you may make further inquiries." He left the room, and the boys resumed their usual avocation till twelve o'clock. But poor Eric could hardly get through his ordinary pursuits; he felt sick and giddy, until everybody noticed his strange embarrassed manner, ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... two hackney-drivers, who, no doubt, had they stayed in the Crescent City in pursuit of their daily avocation, would have given notoriety to an occurrence curious as it ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... to attain it is the greatest art of life. The prince might gain it if he devoted himself earnestly, not merely in a half-absent dilettante fashion, to some art, science, or useful avocation. Only it required a self-discipline of which, unfortunately, he was incapable. In all pursuits requiring dexterity, all sciences, the first steps are laborious, wearisome, and apparently thankless, and the Canaan which they promise is reached only after weary ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... the baby things, which Henley had prevailed upon them to accept. He sank into his accustomed place at home and at the store as naturally as if he had been away only for a day. The news of his return drew around him many of the motley ilk who made trading and swapping both a business and an avocation. They seldom dealt with him, to be sure, but it was a liberal education to hear his experiences, and even better to see him actually make a deal. On his first day at home he had bought a lame horse for the small sum of fifty dollars, after he had delivered a free lecture about ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... shore-going young gentlemen who strutted about in silk doublets, feathers in their hats, and jewelled swords by their sides, fought bravely enough. When they found themselves in the presence of an enemy, they could ably superintend the working of the guns, which they looked upon as their principal avocation; or when boarders had to be repelled, or a boarding-party led, they were generally found fighting bravely at the head of their men. Since Charles the Second, however, made peace with the Dutch, the navy ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... Tuck was an old Yale man and that his avocation in life seemed to be tennis. The engineers had a good court in the woods and after Tuck found that Jim liked the game, he took the boy over to the court every afternoon before supper and beat him with monotonous regularity. And ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... of a great town. When I arrived there, I was much surprised to see vast numbers of people in different postures, but all immovable. The merchants were in their shops, the soldiery on guard; every one seemed engaged in his proper avocation, yet all were become as stone.... I heard the voice of a man reading Al Koran.... Being curious to know why he was the only living creature in the town,... he proceeded to tell me that the city ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... aristocracy, and the name was a matter of some pride to the dwellers in the narrow, unpaved alley that writhed its watery way between two rows of tumble-down cottages, Joe's family consisted of his father, whose vocation was plumbing, and whose avocation was driving either in the ambulance or the patrol wagon; his mother, who had discharged her entire debt to society when she bestowed nine healthy young citizens upon it; eight young Ridders, and Joe himself, who had stopped school at twelve to assume the financial responsibilities ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... appears at the site of infection. It may be so slight as to pass unnoticed. This is the primary stage of syphilis. Later, often after two months, the secondary stage begins, and if not properly treated may last for two years. The patient is not too ill usually to attend to his avocation, and has severe headache, skin rashes, loss of hair, inflammation of the eyes, or other varied symptoms. The tertiary stage may be early or delayed, and its effects are serious. Masses of cells of low vitality, known as "gummata," with a tendency to break down or ulcerate, may form in almost ...
— Venereal Diseases in New Zealand (1922) • Committee Of The Board Of Health
... fishing, as it appeared to the mind of speaker and hearers on the margin of the Lake of Galilee, diverged into two dissimilar branches as soon as it descended into practical detail. The fishermen prosecuted their avocation sometimes with line and baited hooks, sometimes with boat and nets. Fishing with line and hook, a process of watching, selecting, discriminating, whereby the fishes are one by one enticed and taken, readily spontaneously leaps up before the imagination as a line parallel with the work of an evangelist, ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... earlier days of his marriage had temporarily put aside authorship to join in a newspaper venture, so now again literature had dropped into the background, had become an avocation, while financial interests prevailed. There were two chief ventures—the business of Charles L. Webster & Co. and the promotion of the Paige type-setting machine. They were closely identified in fortunes, so closely that in time the very existence ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... and national enterprises. She had two daughters, aged 18 and 16, respectively (whom Mrs. O'Grady was expected to train and prepare for entrance into society), also a son about 22, who, although educated as a lawyer, pursued no avocation other than the collection of rents on his father's estate, and minor offices in connection with the investment of his money. Randolph Thomson, the young gentleman in question, suddenly became very attentive to his sisters. ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... which so long oppressed the lower orders of the people, and the action of which is illustrated by disorders among them. But in Chaucer we find the true philosophy of English society, the principle of the guilds, or fraternities, to which his pilgrims belong—the character and avocation of the knight, squire, yeoman, franklin, bailiff, sompnour, reeve, etc., names, many of them, now obsolete. Who can find these in our compendiums? they must be dug—and dry work it is—out of profounder histories, or found, with greater pleasure, in poems ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... me, madam; that is the avocation of a man of taste. But for amusement, I positively know of nothing that can be called so, unless you dignify with that title the hopping once a fortnight to the sound of two or three squeaking fiddles, and the clattering of the old tavern windows, or sitting to see the miserable mummers, ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... suffer while the slave is cared for and comfortable," why belie ourselves? Malcome's influence is, and always has been, with the whites, and manifestly good in the preservation of order and obedience on the part of the slaves. He pursues his avocation with spirit and enterprise, while he is subjected to menial and oppressive laws. His father visited New York, and was forbidden to return. He appealed again and again, set forth his claims and his integrity to the State and her laws, but all was of no avail. He ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... not, however, for some years after he began the use of it that chloral produced any sensible effects of an injurious kind, and meantime he pursued as usual his avocation as a painter. Mention has been made of the fact that Rossetti abandoned at an early age subject designs for three-quarter-length figures. Of the latter, in the period of which we are now treating, he painted ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... you to give yours up. I'll build a separate one for you right beside mine, any time you say the word, and you shall pursue your avocation in perfect freedom. All I object to is your making the thing your vocation. I know of a ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... Tim's vocation, but fiddling was his avocation and dear delight. He was presently fiddling away, while the company sat about, completely relaxed in spirit, and Mrs. Kelcey and Mrs. Murdison hustled the table clear of dishes, refusing sternly Brown's eager offer to help ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... with the displays of previous years in this department, that the breeding of fine cattle in this country is, at the present time, attracting the attention and commanding the best and most intelligent care of not alone the farmers who have been bred to their avocation, but of capitalists, who comprehend the great money values involved, and who either of themselves or through their sons have set out to identify themselves with this great interest. As the result of the fact the display of cattle was more varied as to breeds and greater as to number, ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... both in rivers and in stews or ponds. The angler sometimes stood or squatted upon the bank; at other times, not content with commanding the mere edge of the water, he plunged in, and is seen mid-stream, astride upon an inflated skin, quietly pursuing his avocation. [PLATE CXXVI., Fig. 1.] Occasionally he improved his position by amounting upon a raft, and, seated at the stern, with his back to the rower, threw out his line and drew the fish from the water. Now and then the fisherman was provided with a ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... business, no avocation whatever, which will not permit a man, who has the inclination, to give a little time, every day, to study. ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others
... got over the interview yet. His remarks on the design, conception, and the drawing were equally clear and decisive. He more than hinted that I was a hopeless idiot, that the time he had given me was altogether wasted, that I had mistaken my avocation, and that if the Germans knocked me on the head it would be no loss either to myself or to society in general. It is true that after he had finished he cooled down a bit and made a number of suggestions ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... Colonel House, across the Atlantic to study the possibilities of reaching a modus vivendi. There was no man so well qualified for the mission. Edward Mandell House was a Texan by birth, but a cosmopolitan by nature. His hobby was practical politics; his avocation the study of history and government. His catholicity of taste is indicated by the nature of his library, which includes numerous volumes not merely on the social sciences but also on philosophy and poetry. His intellectual background was thus no less favorable than his political ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... York, on the 12th of February, 1791. His maternal grandfather, John Campbell, was Mayor of New York and Deputy Quartermaster General during the Revolution, and his father was a lieutenant in the Continental army. After the return of peace, Lieutenant Cooper resumed his avocation as a hatter, in which he continued until his death. It required close attention to business and hard work to make a living in those days, and as soon as young Peter was old enough to pick the fur from the ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... and an order, issued after some provocation, on May 15th, that if any woman should "insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the United States, she shall be regarded and shall be held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation." This order provoked protests both in the North and the South, and also abroad, particularly in England and France, and it was doubtless the cause of his removal in December 1862. On the 1st of June he had executed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... organism keyed up to a high pitch. These centres become fatigued easily and ought to be rested occasionally. Therefore, the student should relax at intervals, and engage in something remote from study. To forget books for an entire week-end is often wisdom; to have a hobby or an avocation is also wise. A student must not forget that he is something more than an intellectual being. He is a physical organism and a social being, and the well-rounded life demands that all phases receive expression. We grant that it is wrong to exalt the physical ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... page it is recorded: "April the 28th day, Old John Seagle departed this world, 1780." On page 11 this entry appears: "May the 3rd day I sowed flax seed in the year 1779," and other entries relating to the same agricultural avocation are interspersed through the little book. The culture of flax was then an indispensible employment. Our soldiers then wore hunting shirts, made of flax, to the battle fields. Cotton was not generally cultivated until ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... pursued his avocation of a stone-mason; no further remedy was required; no inconvenience experienced; and the eschar ...
— An Essay on the Application of the Lunar Caustic in the Cure of Certain Wounds and Ulcers • John Higginbottom
... unlike a scientist's customary means of transit—and ordinarily he acted quite unlike one. As a matter of fact, most of the people Tommy associated with had no faintest inkling of his taste for science as an avocation. There was Peter Dalzell, for instance, who would have held up his hands in holy horror at the idea of Tommy Reames being the author of that article. "On the Mass and Inertia of the Tesseract," which in the Philosophical Journal had caused ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... his son not to allow his upper man to doff his livery, though this valet was to attend his person, when the toilet was a serious avocation requiring a more delicate hand and a nicer person than he who was to walk before his chair, or climb behind his coach. This searching genius of philosophy and les petites moeurs solemnly warned that if ever this man were to cast off the badge ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... spray appeared to dash from the bow and the brig to fly through the sea. He was now close enough to hope his voice might be heard; but he hailed and hailed in vain, not a soul was to be seen on deck; the man who steered was too intent upon his avocation to listen to the call of mercy. The brig passed, and the swimmer was every second getting further in the distance, every hope was gone, not a ray of that bright divinity remained; the fatigue had nearly exhausted him, and ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... which laymen read with keenest enjoyment. Insurance writing might be said to be his vocation—a sort of daily-bread affair, well executed, because one should not quarrel with his sustenance—with librettos for operas, and poems and essays as an avocation. Fate must have doomed his operas in the very beginning, for despite some delicious productions, captivating in words and spirit, and set to slashing music, they go unsung because a ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... by going for a little drive in the runabout with me. She came down looking as fresh as a wild rose, in a soft, white dress with some kind of light greenery about it, and a pale green sash around her waist, and her pretty, sunset hair uncovered. If there is any pleasanter avocation for an old fellow than driving in an open buggy with a girl like that, I don't know it. She talked charmingly: about my travels; about her college friends; about Eastridge; and at last about her disappointment ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... mode of life. Further, they are charitable to the poor, and, in a way, religious; or, perhaps, superstitious would be a better term. Thus, they often go to church on Sundays, and do not follow their avocation on Sunday nights. On New Year's Eve, their practice is to attend the Watch Night services, where, doubtless, poor people, they make those good resolutions that form the proverbial pavement of the road to Hell. Nearly all of them drink more or less, as they say that they could not live their life ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... a future state and my notions of a career in this world. The height of my then ambition was to keep a fried-fish shop. The restaurateur with whom my good mother dealt used to sit for hours in his doorway in Drury Lane reading a book, and I considered this a most dignified and scholarly avocation. When I made this naive avowal to Paragot, he looked at me with a queer pity in his eyes, and muttered an exclamation in a foreign tongue. I have never met anyone so full of strange oaths as Paragot. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... Winona viewed the latest avocation of her charge with little enthusiasm. It compelled a certain measure of her difficult respect, especially when she beheld him worm his truck through crowded River Street with a supreme disregard for ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... was an old friend of the Lanstron family. It was not in Partow's mind to lose such a recruit in a time when the heads of the army were trying, in answer to the demands of a new age, to counteract the old idea that made an officer's the conventional avocation of a gentleman ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... had chosen for himself a gentler avocation than his wife's, and one which brought him greater peace of mind—proprietor of the big red stable which spread itself over half a block, he had unconsciously defined himself, as well as his place of business, by having ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... my orders by doing any thing of the kind," she said quietly, yet resolutely, as she pursued her avocation, that of dusting with a bunch of colored plumes the delicate ornaments of the etagere ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... being merely hirelings of the chief squatter, had no personal feeling, and I was not therefore surprised to hear that they presently allowed Rutli to come in occasionally and look after his precious "slips." If they had any suspicions of his great strength, it was probably offset by his peaceful avocation and his bland, childlike face. Meantime, I had begun the usual useless legal proceeding, but had also engaged a few rascals of my own to be ready to take advantage of any want of vigilance on the part of my adversaries. I never thought of ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... in such a state of nerves—if I may use the expression, in such a state of funk—that every passer-by, however innocent, is looked at with suspicion by his neighbour if his avocation happens to take him abroad between the hours of one and ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes |
