"Hobby" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... able to avoid an occasional outbreak of splenetic patriotism. The greatness and the generosity of France are the hobby-horse on which they ride with such a fanfare of trumpets as to provoke the ridicule of the passer-by. Madame de Bourboulon, as a woman, may be excused her little bit of sarcasm, though she must have known and ought to have remembered what has been done and endured by English missionaries ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... guilty, I rejoiced and exulted in our dangers. With a glow of admiration I watched Holmes unrolling his case of instruments and choosing his tool with the calm, scientific accuracy of a surgeon who performs a delicate operation. I knew that the opening of safes was a particular hobby with him, and I understood the joy which it gave him to be confronted with this green and gold monster, the dragon which held in its maw the reputations of many fair ladies. Turning up the cuffs of his dress-coat—he had placed his overcoat on a chair—Holmes laid out ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Governments those serving terms of imprisonment for offences committed before the 4th of August, 1917, were released, a great number of the gaol-birds being sent to Stroehen. Residing in prison was a captain who made a hobby of being court-martialled. Under this new ruling he was taken out of cells for a few days, only to be put back to await trial for the trumped-up charge of having poison tablets on his person when recaptured ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... that summer was the opening of a Grand International Exhibition—the hobby of the Governor of the town—Baron de Pretis, and Burton thus refers to it in a letter written to Mr. Payne, 5th August (1882). "We arrived here just in time for the opening of the Exhibition, August ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... man's trencher. Again, that feeding their friends with nothing of their own, but what they have twice or thrice cooked, they should not wantonly give out, how soon they had drest it; nor how many coaches came to carry away the broken meat, besides hobby-horses and ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... is the proprietor's hobby. Under a system of equality, all economy which does not aim at subsequent reproduction or enjoyment is impossible—why? Because the thing saved, since it cannot be converted into capital, has no object, and is without a FINAL CAUSE. This will be explained ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... Hobby—whose husband resided at Bisham Abbey, a fine old place, maintained in admirable repair, near Windsor—was a terrible disciplinarian, and there is an ugly story of her having whipped a wretched son of hers into his grave, from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... man likes to ride his own hobby horse. Would it not be wise to suggest that some of these seedlings be put in odd corners? Certainly the hickory and walnut are adept in making themselves a home in ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... the judgment of ninety." These expressions of grave doubt as to the expediency of "female suffrage," together with the fact that the editor of the Tribune, in his report as chairman of the Suffrage Committee in the New York Constitutional Convention, declared this new hobby "an innovation revolutionary and sweeping, openly at war with a distribution of duties and functions between the sexes as venerable and pervading as government itself," make the Tribune's recommendation that we shall "try the experiment ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Petternek let the cat out of the bag prematurely," he said with a smile. "I hadn't intended to spring it until it was a polished work of engineering art. It's been more of a hobby than anything else, ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... my novels: 'Children of the Mist,' 'Rose of Death,' 'Conqueror's Road.' They were no kid stuff. Why, yesterday I'd never even have thought of some of the ideas I used in my detective stories, that I published under a nom-de-plume. And my hobby, chemistry; I was pretty good at that. Patented a couple of processes that made me as much money as my writing. You think a thirteen-year-old just dreamed all that up? Or, here; you speak French, don't you?" He switched languages and spoke at some length in good conversational slang-spiced Parisian. ...
— Time and Time Again • Henry Beam Piper
... assumption, presentiment; fixed idea, preconceived idea; ide fixe; mentis gratissimus error[Lat]; fool's paradise. [causes of misjudgment.2] esprit de corps, party spirit, partisanship, clannishness, prestige. [causes of misjudgment. 3] bias, bigotry, warp, twist; hobby, fad, quirk, crotchet, partiality, infatuation, blind side, mote in the eye. [causes of misjudgment. 4] one-sided views, one-track mind, partial views, narrow views, confined views, superficial views, one-sided ideas, partial ideas, narrow ideas, confined ideas, superficial ideas, one-sided conceptions, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Tho'daghtless awhile tha's been on the wing; But yet tha mun try to cum up ta t'mark, An' give us sum rhyme for a bit of a lark: An' tho' at thy notes in this sensation age, Wiseacres may giggle an' critics may rage, Thou art my sole hobby there is no mistake, So sing ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... crew that he had ever encountered in his long naval career. Not gifted with much patience, he soon gave up trying to guide the helm of that unmanageable ship, his own home. Betaking himself to his special hobby, which was the compiling an epitome of all the naval engagements that have taken place within the memory of man, he left his boys and girls to grow up anyhow or, to put it more exactly, just as they pleased. His conscience was satisfied when he had placed his young folk in the ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... matron in her early forties who would have been perfectly happy to work for the Society for nothing, as a hobby. That she was paid a reasonable salary made her job almost heaven ...
— What The Left Hand Was Doing • Gordon Randall Garrett
... to gardening, and full of home-like habits. He had at one time been fond of acting, had even rented a theatre in London, and on its boards had first seen Miss Marion Dawson, to whom he had offered his hand, his title, and the third of a county. Since his marriage this early hobby had become distasteful to him. Even in private theatricals it was no longer possible to persuade him to exercise the talent which he had often shown that he possessed. He was happier with a spud and a watering-can among his orchids ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... are not content unless they are helpful. Hence we have our work or vocation. However, people who get into a rut, and they are liable to if they work all the time at one thing, lose efficiency. Therefore it is well to have an avocation or a hobby to sharpen mind ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... people go and see it—afraid, I expect, of paper bags but if you do go you'll find an elephant or two hanging about to take you to the place in state. He's, the native prince, got some of the finest elephants in the whole of this mosquito-ridden land—makes a hobby of them." ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... my hobby—one of the last." A broad, boyish smile flashed over the handsome old face. "Look at me; I'm seventy-five, and I can tire out my own grandsons at riding and shooting. That comes of avoiding all allopathic messes like the devil. But the ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... surprise. 'He has a hobby for half-baked youth, just as another rich man might fancy orchids or fast trotters. You sure can place him ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... moment. "I've always wanted one of them to marry a preacher," he said, laughing apologetically. "It is very narrow-minded, of course, but a man does make a hobby of his own profession. I always hoped Prudence would. I thought she was born for it. Then I looked to Fairy, and she turned me down. I guess I'll have to give up ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... that every single one of them cost me a Louis-d'or? But it is my hobby to have generally everything ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... honourable antiquity, a black coat green with age and a "Cup Final" cap. At the same time (this too on The Times' authority) there is an oddly and obsolescently attired lady going about who also makes London hospitals her hobby. She begins by asking the secretary if she may take off her boots, and, receiving permission, takes them off, places her feet on an adjacent chair and hands him ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... down," cried Cecil cheerily, "and unburden thyself to me of all save affairs of State; of them am I exceeding weary, for the King hath a new hobby, a tax on beets and onions, in the discussion of which the ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... quiet and intelligent fashion; he returned the compliment by praising her flowers in his eager, hearty, enthusiastic way. Her coolness made her seem to him very superior; his enthusiasm made him very piquant and delightful to her. And when he got upon his hobby and told her how grand a vocation the teacher's profession was, and recited stories of the self-denial of Pestalozzi and Froebel, and the great schemes of Basedow, and told how he meant here in this new country to build a great Institute on rational principles, Helen Minorkey found him more interesting ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... young. If it is cowardly for a man to kill a woman, it is cowardly for a man to kill the female sex in any shape or form. Yet, what scientist allows the matter of sex to interfere with the impalement of his beetle? Nor would he do so if his hobby were to impale human beings. If he searches for a beautiful beetle to kill, it only requires a broadening of his particular outlook for him to search for a beautiful woman to kill. There may be a perfectly sane and moral country in the world (although I have never heard ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... inscription recorded his name, as did the learned Dame Elizabeth Hobby on a brass at ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... remarked of the late tenant, "I reckon there was a good parson spoiled when 'e was made a farmer." And of a lawyer, who combined legal practice with the hobby of a small farm, that there was no doubt that "Lawyer ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... was his one disagreeable, superior-to-others trick. Most of his qualities were likable, and he was likable, though a queer fellow in some ways, said his best friends—the ones who called him "Petro." When the ship played that she was a hobby-horse or a crab (if that is the creature which shares with elderly Germans a specialty for walking from side to side), also a kangaroo, and occasionally a boomerang, Peter Rolls did ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... from his Dominions: what a windfall to the Potsdam Guard and its Colonel-King! And all succeeding Autumns the like, so long as Friedrich Wilhelm lived; every Autumn, out of Russia a hundred of the tallest mortals living. Invaluable,—to a "man of genius" mounted on his hobby! One's "stanza" can be ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... a young man, whom Jimmy subsequently discovered to be the drama-loving Charteris, leaning back and taking advantage of a pause, "is the hobby of the sportsman and the life work of the avaricious." He took a little pencil from his waistcoat pocket, and made a rapid ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... "It's his greatest hobby. In his taste for salt water he at least resembles his ancestors. The Gurneys were all sailors and ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... buggy, on the road side, computing the number of Texas steers within sight. How the cattle men separated their droves, claiming their cattle, was a wonderment. Cowboys and Texas steers was a theme on which the invalid never tired talking. Texas steers were a hobby with him. He would talk with cowboys ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... them, her father's eye was caught and held by the ring upon her finger. Roger knew rings, they were his hobby, and this huge yellow solitaire in its new and brilliant setting at once awakened his dislike. It just fitted the life they were to lead! What life? As he listened to his daughter he kept wondering if she were so sure. Had she felt no uneasiness? She must have, he decided, for all her gay ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... "hobby," as some fancy it, of poking over old bones and stones, and learning a little of the composition of this earth on which ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... been a terrible thing to have given up my life's ambition. The thought of Adela trudging to the office hurt—it was the touch of the spur. I needn't tell you, you can guess how I worked! People were kind. One summer, old Doctor Inglis, whose amiable hobby it was to help young medical students, engaged me for the holidays as his chauffeur and general helper at a wage which would see me through my next term. It seemed an unusual piece of luck, for he lived only twenty miles from my mother's home and an electric tram connected the towns. ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... efficiency." The next year Mr. Jenckes made a second report, but it was not until 1871 that action on the subject was secured.[44] George W. Curtis says that at first he "pressed it upon an utterly listless Congress, and his proposition was regarded as the harmless hobby of an amiable man, from which a little knowledge of practical politics would soon dismount him."[45] Most members of Congress thought the reform a mere vagary, and that it was brought forward at a most ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... too quick to stay: Yet, to our cost, in that short time, we find They left their itch of novelty behind. 10 The Italian Merry-Andrews took their place, And quite debauch'd the stage with lewd grimace: Instead of wit and humours, your delight Was there to see two hobby-horses fight; Stout Scaramoucha with rush-lance rode in, And ran a tilt at centaur Arlequin. For love you heard how amorous asses bray'd, And cats in gutters gave their serenade. Nature was out of countenance, and each day Some ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... to build a boat, and he built one five hundred feet long, eighty or ninety feet broad and fifty-five feet high, with one door shutting on the outside, and one window twenty-two inches square. If Noah had any hobby in the world it was ventilation. Then into this ark he put a certain number of all the animals in the world. Naturalists have ascertained that at that time there were at least eleven hundred thousand insects necessary to go into the ark, about forty thousand ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... himself thin, Tennyson had his pipe, Morris made tapestry at a loom. Southey had no amusements, and he died of softening of the brain. The happy people are those who have work which they love, and a hobby of a totally different kind which they love even better. But I doubt whether one can make a hobby for oneself in middle age, unless one is a very ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... neither poet nor prophet Am I, though a jingler of rhymes— 'Tis a hobby of mine, and I'm off it At times, and I'm on it at times; And whether I'm off it or on it, Your readers my counsels will shun, Since I scarce know Van Tromp from Blue Bonnet, Though I might know Cigar from ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... postage-stamps, and the hobby had, incidentally, helped him wonderfully in his study of geography. Why should not autograph letters from famous persons be of equal service in his struggle for self-education? Not simple autographs—they were meaningless; ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... in which he announced his candidacy he made no reference to national politics, but confined himself mainly to a discussion of the practicability of improving the navigation of the Sangamon, the favorite hobby of the place and time. He had no monopoly of this "issue." It formed the burden of nearly every candidate's appeal to the people in that year. The excitement occasioned by the trip of the Talisman had not yet died away, although the little steamer was now dust and ashes, and ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... Professionally he may be a specialist, but in New York his specialty must be only the axis around which are grouped encyclopaedic learning, faultless skill, and catholic intuitions. Nobody will waste a Saturday afternoon riding on his hobby-horse. He must be a broad-natured person, or he will be a mere imperceptible line on the general background of obscure citizens. He feels that he is surrounded by people who will help him do his best, yes, who will make him do it, or drive ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... cynically indifferent as Anastasie, and who sometimes put him on his mettle by the most relevant objections. Besides, was he not educating the boy? And education, philosophers are agreed, is the most philosophical of duties. What can be more heavenly to poor mankind than to have one's hobby grow into a duty to the State? Then, indeed, do the ways of life become ways of pleasantness. Never had the Doctor seen reason to be more content with his endowments. Philosophy flowed smoothly from his lips. He was so agile a dialectician ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at an exciting moment. A crowd had gathered, and boys, and even women, were laughing and singing in ridicule snatches of, "Vive Napoleon!" For, in derision of yesterday's event, a small boy, tricked out with a paper cocked-hat and incongruous regimentals, with a hobby-horse between his legs, was marching up and down, preceded by another lad, who played a toy drum in derision of Lagroin. The children had been well rehearsed, for even as Valmond arrived upon the scene, Lagroin and Parpon on either side of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... such abandon as I could wish. I entertain, and have always entertained, the sincerest regard for such games as Hunt-the-Slipper and Blind-Man's Buff. But I have now reached a time of life, when, to have my eyes blindfolded and to have a powerful boy of ten hit me in the back with a hobby-horse and ask me to guess who hit me, provokes me to a fit of retaliation which could only culminate in reckless criminality. Nor can I cover my shoulders with a drawing-room rug and crawl round on my hands and knees under the pretence that I am a bear without a sense of personal insufficiency, ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... tree. For as Miss Liz had come across the lawn to join them half an hour earlier, this refreshment was hurried out of sight—the Colonel's resolution of independence notwithstanding—and now, before the ice could entirely melt, Brent, by a polite tirade against the prim old lady's pet hobby, trusted her increasing wrath to clarify the situation by routing her housewards. While he and the Colonel knew this would inevitably come, her anger was not yet at sufficient heat, and she held her ground with ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... of many such; for he was a curious and industrious collector of old local traditions—a commodity in which the quarter where he resided mightily abounded. The collection and arrangement of such legends was, as long as I can remember him, his hobby; but I had never learned that his love of the marvellous and whimsical had carried him so far as to prompt him to commit the results of his inquiries to writing, until, in the character of residuary legatee, ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... play a game of chess or talk about books. At half-past ten the second violin from the Dramatic Theatre drops in. He is an old Pole who, after 1864, escaped to Sweden, and now makes a living by his former hobby. Both the Pole and the bookseller are over fifty, but they get on with the schoolmaster as if he were ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... to smile at a man who rides a hobby. Once there was a man who rode a hobby all his life, to the great amusement of his enemies and the mortification of his wife; and when the man was dead they found it was a real live horse and had carried the man ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... and a hatred of "francs-tireurs." Above all she is a woman of business. She is without home or child, and her time and labour are arranged with military precision. She has her theory of the poor and of what can be done for the poor, and she rides her hobby from morning to night with an equal contempt for the sentimental almsgiving of the District Visitor and for the warnings of the political economist. No doubt an amazing deal of good is done, but it is done in a methodical fashion that is a little trying to ordinary flesh ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... he had caught the idea that strength was as much of the quality as the quantity of the muscle, while superiority in performance required a certain mind as well as strength. Having adopted the doctrine, like most men with a hobby, he was always looking ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... fire; one solitary arm of the blighted tree alone remained, extending its scraggy and shattered remnants to a considerable distance over the greensward which had been, from time immemorial, trodden by the merry morrice dancers, and broken by the curvetting of the hobby-horse and the Dragon of Wantley, sports it was now deemed sinful but to name. From a fragment of this dilapidated branch, hung the sign of mine host of the Oliver's Head; and right glad would he have been, if ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... high as the uppermost piazza. The park was furnished with rustic seats and shade trees, frequently of immense size, branched above its smooth walks and promenades, where baby wagons, velocipedes and hobby horses on wheels could have ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... of the process of transplanting bodily a tribe of wild bees, is given in the notes to The Tay, a descriptive poem of considerable merit by David Millar. (Perth, Richardson, 1830.) 'When the boy, whose hobby leads him in that direction, has found out a "byke," he marks the spot well, and returns in the evening, when all its inmates are housed for the night. Pushing a twig into the hole as far as it will go, in case he should lose it by the falling in of the rubbish, he commences ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... complaints, and menacing remonstrances (with little twinges of fulfilment here and there) from all quarters of Germany; a tempest of trouble and public indignation rising everywhere, and raining in upon Friedrich Wilhelm and this unfortunate Hobby of his. No riding of one's poor Hobby in peace henceforth. Friedrich Wilhelm always answered, what was only superficially the fact, That HE knew nothing of these violences and acts of ill-neighborship; ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... always either amusing or touching; and—most important— himself passionately addicted to literature. You cannot like Lamb without liking literature in general. And you cannot read Lamb without learning about literature in general; for books were his hobby, and he was a critic of the first rank. His letters are full of literariness. You will naturally read his letters; you should not only be infinitely diverted by them (there are no better epistles), but you should receive from them much ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... 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 ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... his hobby, and was beginning to be rather tedious. The contempt which a genuine old family ghost has for mere parvenus and impostors is not to be expressed in mere words apparently, for Mauth-hounds of prodigious size and blackness, with white birds, and other disastrous ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... was conducted on military principles, it was not peculiarly the school of the soldier. The principal believed in discipline; this was his hobby; and he believed that he could best secure system and order by adopting military routine. His success justified his theory. He had more applicants than he ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... astride his hobby horse. "War me no war, it's all lunacy! And look, look—look at those red trousers that you can see miles away! They must do it on purpose for soldiers to be killed, that they don't dress 'em in the color ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... 1610 to 1660, I owe more items of information than I can count.—George Thomason was a London bookseller of the Civil War time; his place of business being the "Rose and Crown" in St. Paul's Churchyard. He was of Royalist sympathies; but his hobby was to collect impartially all the pamphlets, broad-sheets, &c., that teemed from the press on both sides, and not only those that teemed from the English press, but also all published abroad that bore on current English questions. He began this ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... Thing. How little cause has mankind to be proud Of Noble Birth, the Idol of the Crowd! Have I abroad in Battels Honour won To be at home dishonourably undone? Mark'd with a Star and Garter, and made fine With all those gaudy Trifles once call'd mine, Your Hobby-Horses [1] and your Joys of State, And now become the Object of your Hate; But, d———'ee, Sir, I'll be Legitimate. I was your Darling, but against your Will, And know that I will be the Peoples still; And when you're dead, I and my Friends, ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... reminiscences, containing letters from various old-time amateurs, is extremely inspiring to the younger members, showing how persistently the amateur spirit adheres to all who have truly acquired it. "Nita at the Passing Show" is a witty and entertaining parody by Mr. Smith, illustrating the theatrical hobby of Miss Gerner; one of the latest United recruits. The Boys' Herald discharges a peculiar and important function in the life of the associations, connecting the present with the past, and furnishing us ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... those flints of his, that weigh me down at this moment. This stone-collecting, par exemple! I wonder what induced me to take up such a hobby. The German Professor, as usual. Ah, Mr. Koken, Mr. Koken—those light words of yours have borne a heavy fruit. I possess four hundred implements now, and they will double the weight of my luggage and ruin my starched shirts, especially those formidable "praechellean" skull-cleavers. And ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... a sort of close fitting frock, a plain colored one piece suit that displayed their practicality and modesty. It is a hobby of mine to observe the clothing worn by different groups of people and compare it to their characteristics. As I have said before, clothes do not make the man, but the man certainly makes the clothes, and it is possible ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... you to take up the cudgels, Mr. Ericson, and please don't misjudge me—of course I realize that I am only a silly old woman and that my passion to see the Winslows keep to their fine standards is old-fashioned, but you see it is a hobby of mine that I've devoted years to, and you who haven't known the Winslows so very long——" Her manner ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... that evening in a somewhat despondent frame of mind in consequence, but a brisk walk home and a good supper had done him so much good, that with a tranquil mind and his pipe in his mouth, he was able to devote himself to the hobby of his leisure hours ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... she answered gravely, and then we changed the subject. So far as I recollect, we returned to the discussion of doctors and their trade, and before long I had the opportunity of airing my special hobby at that time—the study of native drugs. Miss Watson was deeply interested—at least, she made me think so, and before we parted I had promised to send round to her "diggings," as she called them, a bottle of a perfectly harmless narcotic which I ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... mountain—what has he not sketched with that masterly pen that had already been so carefully trained by long and arduous practice in a life-school? His heart was in his work from first to last; beyond his bagpipes and his old books (for he was a passionate reader), he seemed to have no other hobby. His facility in sketching became phenomenal, as also his knowledge of what to put in and what to leave out, so that the effect he aimed at should be secured in perfection and with ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... been in parliament, and wanted too again; but the men mistrusted him as Thompson, M.P., though they swore by him as old Baldy Thompson the squatter. His hobby was politics, and his politics were badly boxed. When he wasn't cursing the banks and government he cursed the country. He cursed the Labour leaders at intervals, and seemed to think that he could run the unions better than they could. Also, he seemed to think that he could run parliament ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... contend that the controlling center of the sexual passion is the cerebellum, or little brain, which is situated at the lower and back part of the head. They apparently love to dwell upon the theme, and ride their hobby upon all possible occasions, often in the most disgusting manner, and always leaving the impression that they must be themselves suffering from perversion of the very function ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... to him. These feathers were dressed in the proper way by the boys themselves, and then made up into large pillows or cushions, which were then taken up to the secret chamber (at that time the favourite hobby of the boys), in order to make restful and comfortable the hard pallet bed, in case any fugitive were forced to take shelter there. In the same way had several rudely-made rugs, formed of the skins of wild bears taken in the woods, and tanned by the ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... have him here in a week." They were an adventurous family, always ready for anything, always on the look-out for new sources of pleasure, full of zest in life. They liked novelties, and hospitality was their chief hobby. They made fun of nearly every body, but it was not ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... soil that had been allowed to remain unmoved for ages. The overleaning rock, which is separated from my temporary home only by a few yards, probably afforded shelter to generations of those degraded human beings from whom the anthropologist who puts no bridle on his hobby-horse is pleased to claim descent. Near the base is one of those symmetrically scooped-out hollows which are such a striking peculiarity of the formation here, and which suggest to the irreverent that a cheese-taster of prehistoric dimensions ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... life was singularly virtuous; he was a faithful husband, a careful father and a considerate master. A book-lover and antiquary, he made a special hobby of heraldry and genealogy. It was the conscious and unconscious aim of the age to reconstruct a new landed aristocracy on the ruins of the old, and Burghley was a great builder and planter. All the arts of architecture and horticulture were lavished on Burghley House ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... sometimes do the same.[203] Guttceit, in Russia, knew women who made a large knot in their chemises to rub against, and mentions a woman who would sit on her naked heel and rub it against her. Girls in France, I am informed, are fond of riding on the chevaux-de-bois, or hobby-horses, because of the sexual excitement thus aroused; and that the sexual emotions play a part in the fascination exerted by this form of amusement everywhere is indicated by the ecstatic faces of its devotees.[204] ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... for there was no ceremony; each comer brought his mission, idea, or need, and genuine hospitality made the visit profitable or memorable to all, for entire freedom prevailed, and there was stabling for every one's hobby. ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... Bousquier was a cross between the bourgeois and the country squire. Finding himself without means on the death of his father, he went, like other ruined provincials, to Paris. On the breaking out of the Revolution he took part in public affairs. In spite of revolutionary principles, which made a hobby of republican honesty, the management of public business in those days was by no means clean. A political spy, a stock-jobber, a contractor, a man who confiscated in collusion with the syndic of a commune the property of ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... of bullocks;" so how could he "have understanding," at least for Catullus? Had not a neighbouring fair taken off the agriculturists after a few days, his ideas, like his stick, would have become porcine. He rode his hobby, and at a brisk pace; and, when a little tired of him, stabled him and littered him, and seemed glad of a little quiet and leg-tapping in his easy-chair. He had worked off the lessened excitement by an evening's nap, and awoke ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... smallest of the trio, Septimus Codd by name, who was habitually taciturn, spoke scarcely a word. He was a strange little man, a nineteenth century villain in a sense. He was a rogue and a vagabond, yet his one hobby, apart from his business, was a study of the Past, and many an authority on Eastern History would have been astonished at the extent of his learning. He was never so happy as when burrowing amongst ancient records, and it was mainly due to his learning in the first place, and to a somewhat ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... interested in fox hunting, our Farmer proceeded, with his usual painstaking care, to build up a pack of hounds. The year 1768 was probably the period of his greatest interest in the subject and his diary is full of accounts of the animals. Hounds were now, in fact, his hobby, succeeding in interest his horses. He did his best to breed according to scientific principles, but several entries show that the dogs themselves were inclined blissfully to ignore the laws of ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... "he's only a gentleman fond of science and philosophy and poetry, and, in fact, every kind of knowledge; and being lonely here, he passes his time in making such matters his hobby." ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... At the at-home aforesaid. (2) At Macmurdo's house in Fitzroy Street in the days of the Century Guild and its paper 'The Hobby Horse.' (3) At a meeting somewhere in Westminster at which I delivered an address on Socialism, and at which Oscar turned up and spoke. Robert Ross surprised me greatly by telling me, long after Oscar's death, that it was this address ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... that a layman will never take an author quite seriously. He regards authorship, not as a profession, but as something between au inspiration and a hobby. In as far as it is an inspiration, it is a gift from Heaven, and ought, therefore, to be shared with the rest of the world; in as far as it is a hobby, it is something which should be done not too expertly, but ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... alone with that abominable ally," cried the emperor, vehemently; "I do not want to hear of it nor to have anything to do with it. Public opinion is the hobby which my brother, the popular Archduke John, is riding all the time; but it will throw him one day into the mire, and then he will find out what it really amounts to. Pray, never speak to me again of public opinion, for I detest ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... Earl of Merivale, she regarded as a necessary encumbrance, inevitable to the possession of the famous Merivale diamonds. His hobby was farming, and he detested Society; though quite content that his wife should be made queen so long as he was left in ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... hobby, I suppose," Saton continued. "Mine has always been the study of the least understood of the sciences—I mean occultism. I, too, was prejudiced at first. I saw wonderful things in India, and my British instincts rose up like a wall. I did not believe. I refused to believe my eyes. In ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... had narrowed down his life to little else than business. He had never acquired a taste for art and literature, nor had he given himself time for broad culture. But we meet narrow artists, narrow clergymen, narrow scientists just as truly. If you do not get on their hobby and ride with them, they seem disposed to ride over you. Indeed, in our brief life with its fierce competitions, few other than what are known as "one idea" men have time to succeed. Even genius must drive with tremendous and ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... considerable scholar, but a man of disgraceful life, obtained the appointment to the see, by alienating various estates to the Seymour family, and Merdon was resumed by the Crown. It was then granted to Sir Philip Hobby who had been one of King Henry's privy councillors, and had been sent on an embassy to Portugal, attended by ten gentlemen of his own retinue, wearing velvet coats ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... Burdett back with me to the studio. As we opened the door the music of the girl's strange little foreign laugh was ringing through the room. Arthur was mounted upon his hobby, talking of the delights of motoring, and she was listening with sparkling eyes. They stopped ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... must give orders for these seats to be placed;" and as soon as he was outside he summoned Wrench—the pale-faced and red-nosed official whose principal duty it was, with the assistance of a sturdy hobbledehoy (Mounseer Hobby-de-Hoy, as the boys called him) to keep well-blackened the whole of the boots in the big establishment—and gave orders to carry out and run a line of forms all along the outer wall of the great playground, which was continued farther on ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... to his care. For a few brief years during the height of his prosperity he had owned a small place in New Jersey and during that period had seemingly been the country gentleman. Flowers had been his hobby; so that now he could have had no work which would have more suited him than this guardianship of the roses. For himself he desired no better thing than to spend what remained of his life in this sunlit privacy and ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... who hope to coin spare hours into dollars and cents, or others who must make a hobby pay its own expenses at least, an important question is, what is my ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... thought Sant' Ilario, "the boy's new hobby will take him to places where he is not likely ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... the luxurious sun-parlor, "my washerwoman dropped a remark the other day which gave me something to build on. Her two babies are in the General Orphan Asylum, up on Twenty-third street. Well, it happens that this institution is the Beaubien's sole charity—in fact, it is her particular hobby. I presume that she feels she is now a middle-aged woman, and that the time is not far distant when she will have to close up her earthly accounts and hand them over to the heavenly auditor. Anyway, this last year or two she has ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... of the week's repose came Shaykh Jami, the Berteri, equipped as a traveller with sword, praying-skin, and water-bottle. This bustling little divine, whose hobby it was to make every man's business his own, was accompanied by his brother, in nowise so prayerful a person, and by four burly, black-looking Widads, of whose birth, learning, piety, and virtues he spoke in terms eloquent. I gave them a ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... solemnly filing them away are observed in order that they may buy the large automobiles in which they do not have time to take the air. Efficiency of production they have learned; efficiency of life they still consider an effeminate hobby. ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... laughed, "don't tempt me! When I mount my hobby it carries me fast and far. Save yourself from its heels. ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... were busy experimenting with crystal outfits, and the name of the cruiser was suggested to them by the fine spring-wires used to make contact with the crystals in their detectors. No doubt, it was the catchiness of the word, as well as its association with their hobby, that appealed to them in the general search for ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... equal sensibility who knows and cares nothing about Romans and Byzantines, so long as I recognise that art criticism and archaeology are two different things, I hope I may be allowed to dabble unrebuked in my favourite hobby: ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... a chance," observed Will, whose mind usually ran in the one channel, which of course covered his hobby, "I mean to snap off a picture of him. I've got a lot of freaks in my collection, but nary a hermit ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... Professor. But it is a good thing for an old man to have a hobby, a very perplexing hobby. Modern science makes so many strides every year, every day, that it is practically impossible for an amateur to keep apace." He preceded them to a spacious shed in the rear of the house. It was carefully and immaculately arranged, ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... met with a misfortune that troubled him, and he was smoking and trying to think of some way to explain the affair. All his life he had been an all-around sport, and cluck shooting had been his hobby. He had prided himself that he could ride any boat that an Indian could, and bragged that he had never got his feet wet in his forty years as a duck shooter; but this morning he had gone out in a boat, before anybody was up about the ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... I am stark crazy, but there's none of you too sane; It's just a little matter of degree. My hobby is to hunt out gold; it's fortressed in my brain; It's life and love and wife and home to me. And I'll strike it, yes, I'll strike it; I've a hunch I cannot fail; I've a vision, I've a prompting, I've a call; I hear the hoarse stampeding of an army on my trail, ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... secretary and almoner, Louis made him successively clerical councillor in the parliament of Paris, then Bishop of Evreux, and afterwards cardinal; and he employed him in his most private affairs. It was a hobby of his thus to make the fortunes of men born in the lowest stations, hoping that, since they would owe everything to him, they would never depend on any but him. It is scarcely credible that so keen and contemptuous a judge of human nature ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... their goblets. Emptying his, the Baron spun out Farther still the conversation. "My young friend, you know, as long as This world lasts, there will be people Who are fond of hobby-horses. Some are mystics and ascetics, Others love old wine or brandy. Some, antiquities are seeking, Others are for chafers craving; Many others make bad verses. 'Tis a curious joke that each one Much prefers to choose a calling Most unsuited to his nature. I thus also ride my hobby, And this ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... curtains, in rooms uncarpeted, whose paper was dropping off the wall,—well might it be called paper-hanging indeed!—whose washing-tables were of deal, and whose delf was of the plainest ware, and even that minus sundry handles and spouts. Nor was the renowned O'Grady without his hobby, too. While the various members of his family were thwarting each other, his master-mischief was thwarting them all; like some wicked giant looking down on a squabble of dwarfs, and ending the fight ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... at the moment with the pipes, and catching the Captain's last word, "on one of your hobby horses already! You're not safe!—I can't leave you for two minutes. Here's a long pipe for you. How in the world ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... find Mrs. Harley," grieved Meg. "Yesterday, when we were playing at Mr. Harley's house, we found a little hobby horse, that must have belonged to one of the boys. I s'pose there wasn't room for it ...
— Four Little Blossoms on Apple Tree Island • Mabel C. Hawley
... triumph of the Democratic party, which it was his work to organize and lead. Foreseeing how dangerous the triumph of a vulgar and ignorant mob would be, he tried to provide for educating the people, on the same principle that we would to-day educate the colored race. The great hobby of his life was education. He thus spent the best part of his latter years in founding and directing the University of Virginia, including a plan for popular education as well. To all schemes of education he lent a willing ear; but it was the last thing which aristocratic ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... now at work at my hobby-horse essay on Expression, and I have been reading some old notes of yours. In one you say it is easy to see that the spines of the hedgehog are moved by the voluntary panniculus. Now, can you tell me whether each spine has likewise an oblique unstriped or striped muscle, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... as Mr. Polk, whose feet, large and booted, were planted against the wall. Mr. Washington, who was a most correct gentleman, with the illustrious forbears his name suggested, had never lifted his feet to one of his own mantels in his life; but Don Roberto's guests always humoured this little hobby, among ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... lawns, and roses, and English trees falls sheer to the eddying river below. The two sportsmen had spent a couple of days here on their way back, the Resident being down in Chumba on State business; and his suggestion had been the natural outcome of Desmond's keen interest in the book which was his hobby of the moment. ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... brought those three together in such a quiet way, after all the weeks she had been seeing Mr. Carleton at a distance. And she enjoyed the conversation, too; for though Dr. Gregory was a little fond of his hobby, it was still ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... awful heralds of the revocation of the edict of Nantes. The king, said a celebrated writer, exhibited his power by humbling the Pope and by crushing the Huguenots. He wished the unification of the Church and of France—the hobby of the great men of the day, presided over by Bossuet. Madame de Maintenon, a converted Calvinist, and who had secretly become his wife (1685) encouraged him in this design and suggested to him the cruel ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... he built himself was his hobby, and in the refinement and catholicity of taste it shows, there is so just a reflex of his characteristics that an account of it is indispensable to any book which ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... about his lips encourages some of the spectators to fancy that he estimates their value pretty accurately. His last book of 'Coningsby' opens with a Christmas scene worthy of an illustrated keepsake. We have buttery-hatches, and beef, and ale, and red cloaks, and a lord of misrule, and a hobby-horse, and a boar's head ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... herself, for that matter, who seemed to him, in theatrical parlance, "a beautiful culprit," he could not help viewing the affair from a purely scenic standpoint, and finally cried out, carried away by his hobby: ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... amateur, who obtain new varieties and take prizes; form a body of men who furnish naturalists with countless of the required proofs. But there is no such body of men, led either by pecuniary interest or the interest of a hobby, to ascertain by experiments whether the effects of use ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... but he is so wrapped up in his own work that I see very little of him. I took the place because I thought it would give me a good deal of spare time that I might use in furthering some experiments of my own. Electricity is my hobby, and I have one or two ideas that I am foolish enough to hope may be worth developing. I have had time enough, goodness knows, but it's a lonesome sort of life. If it had not been for the captains—and you—I think I should have given it up ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... an instance in my own freshman days. I fell into the hands of such an instructor in Greek. We were reading that most charming of Greek stories—The Odyssey. Textual criticism was this man's hobby, and we were put to work trying to compare texts, to delve into the intricacies of form and structure—trying to improve upon Homer! Such information as we could not find he gave us, in the formal lecture, day after day. But when we got it, we did not want it because we did not know what to ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... is interesting. I'm not an architect, but construction's my business, as well as my hobby." ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... itself to a good deal of idleness and waste of time, unless a man or woman be very determined to employ their spare time profitably. For this reason, I should advise any actor, or actress, to cultivate some rational hobby or interest by the side of their work; for until the time comes for an actor to assume the cares and labours of management, he must have a great deal of time on his hands that can be better employed than in hanging about clubs or lolling in drawing-rooms. ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... importance, I think," said Mr. Flexen. "But, as I expect you've noticed, he likes to feel himself of importance. And whatever knowledge he has helps him to feel important. It's a harmless hobby. By the way, is there anything in the way of insanity ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... by bein' shrewd and careful and always lookin' out for number one. 'Number one' was his hobby. I gathered that the heft of his spare change had come from dickers ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... said, now that Prynne was setting forth on his dearly-loved hobby, of which the name was Cedant arma, is unknown; for the serving-man entered at this moment with a simple but plentiful repast carried on his head from the adjacent tavern; and even Prynne's eagerness was dashed with caution enough to keep him to ordinary topics of talk so long ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... covering a bevy of quail. Our fat Belgian chauffeur, violinist in times of peace, and posing that day as an American,—one of those men who look as if they would bleed water if you pricked them with a bayonet,—needed no second warning. Running the German gauntlet was not precisely his hobby. Down went the emergency brake and the car jolted to a ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... is my special hobby. The differences are obvious. The supra-orbital crest, the facial angle, the ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... are sustained by more than ordinary littleness of mind you will never see threescore and ten. All these things are good in proportion as you have difficulty in finding time for them. When you have to rise early in the morning and work hard to make a little leisure for your favourite hobby, then you are getting its blessing. Now, the Dirzee is not a means of killing time. On the contrary, I see that he compels his mistress to take thought how she may save time alive, if she wishes to get anything done. He hurries the day along and scatters its hours, so ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... collecting fleas—he, it is rumoured, having paid as much as a thousand dollars for specimens of a particularly rare species. It is a passion perhaps hard to understand, but, at least, as we say, it is "different." Mr. Carnegie's more comprehensible hobby for building libraries shows also no little originality in a man of a class which is not as a rule devoted to literature. Another millionaire I recently read of, who refused to pay the smallest account till it had run ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... cannot wander far at school. A schoolmaster once advised his colleagues to take up some literary hobby—essay writing, articles for the press, etc.; for, said he, teaching is a narrowing profession. I wonder if any schoolmaster has ever imagined how narrowing it is for the boys? Have they never seen the look of abject boredom creep over the faces of even clever lads as the "lesson" ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... envelope and stamps for the purpose. The paper must be ruined by so discourteous an editor, indeed she had not been nearly so much interested as usual by the last few numbers. If only she could get her paper back, she should try the "Englishwoman's Hobby-horse," or some other paper of more progress than that "Traveller." "Is it not very hard to feel one's self shut out from the main stream of the work of the world ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... recorded in history, probably, are so many personal anecdotes related, as of Henry IV. These are for the most part well known, and of easy access. Among them stands out prominently the tale of the Spanish ambassador who to his astonishment, found Henry on the floor playing hobby-horse for his children. "Are you a father?" asked Henry, looking up without any apparent embarrassment. "Yes, your majesty." "Then we will finish our game," said the king. And he did so, before taking up ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... Southwell, Sir Richard Leuison, and with diuers other gentlemen, his L. followers of good account: his colours being aduanced by that valiant resolute gentleman, (a man beautified with many excellent rare gifts, of good learning and vnderstanding) S. Edward Hobby Knight. And thus he likewise marching with al possible speede on foote, notwithstanding his L. many yeres, the Intolerable heate, for the time, and the ouertiring tedious deepe sands, with other many impediments: ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... of happiness, who knew nothing of love, and had never seen in marriage anything but the means of transmitting property to another self, had long sworn to marry Veronique to some rich bourgeois,—so long, in fact, that the idea had assumed in his brain the characteristics of a hobby. His neighbor, the hat-maker, who possessed about two thousand francs a year, had already asked, on behalf of his son, to whom he proposed to give up his hat-making establishment, the hand of a girl so well known in the neighborhood for her exemplary conduct and Christian ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... propulsion. I presume the writer meant on propelling rocket planes. I have experimented on rocket ships for the past three years and can give some data on these as to the construction of models (for when I say ships I really mean model airplanes). I have had this as my hobby for the past four and a half years, and can give extensive information on model building. I specialize in models powered by power other than rubber; and I took second place at the Atlantic City Tournament held in October by the National Play-ground Association, in the Annual ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... would teach him to bank up the potatoes in the little piece of ground he had hired behind the villa, intending to cultivate it with his own hands. Manual labour, to which he had recently taken, was a pet hobby of Giovanni's of which Maria did not altogether approve, deeming it incompatible with his habits and with his age. However, she respected his whim and held her peace. At that moment the girl from Affile, who served them, came to tell them that their guests were on their ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro |
