"Pastime" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... decidedly it resorted not to the classical literature, but to the most modern and frivolous productions of the Greek mind; instead of moulding the Roman character in the Hellenic spirit, they contented themselves with borrowing that sort of pastime which set their own intellect to work as little as possible. In this sense the Arpinate landlord Marcus Cicero, the father of the orator, said that among the Romans, just as among Syrian slaves, each was the less worth, the more he ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... or two, followed by loud voices and laughter reminded him he had promised, at that hour, and in that sequestered place, to decide a bet respecting pistol-shooting, to which the titular Lord Etherington, Jekyl, and Captain MacTurk, to whom such a pastime was peculiarly congenial, were parties as well as himself. The prospect this recollection afforded him, of vengeance on the man whom he regarded as the author of his sister's wrongs, was, in the present state of his mind, too tempting to be relinquished; and, setting spurs to his horse, he rushed ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... For long have we been here, by far too long." "Let us then leave it now," Cuchullin said, "O Laegh, my friend, but know that every fight In which I hitherto have drawn my sword, Has been but as a pastime and a sport Compared with this one with Ferdiah fought." And he was saying, and he ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... broad in views, and cosmopolitan in habit. He founded the University of Naples and encouraged the study of medicine; he had the Greek of Aristotle translated, and himself set the fashion in verse-making, which was soon to be the pastime of every court ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... to that," retorted Beasley, with a grin. "The feller that robs me'll need to chew razors fer a pastime. If it comes to that you're yearnin' fer glory at the ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... war temporarily deprives such a country and its few misguided prophets whose monomania is dread of that chimera, the "Colossus of the North," of the pastime of nestling up to Europe in the hope of annoying us. It postpones, too, the hope of the morbid ones that we shall come to war with a powerful enemy. Now, perhaps, even these will appreciate the remark of a diplomatist of a certain weak country in contact ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... privileges. The smoking-room was thronged for a few moments, but owing to the extraordinary strength of the tobacco which the faithful Richard shovelled into the furnace, it developed no enduring popularity, Xanthippe, with a suddenly acquired pallor, being the first to renounce the pastime ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... of resistance. The cowardly insults to which the soldiers were exposed after the reduction of their number led to various scuffles; but their discipline prevented them from effectually retaliating on their persecutors, and baiting the soldiers became a popular pastime. On the evening of the 5th Captain Preston of the 29th regiment and about a dozen soldiers went to the rescue of a sentinel who was being ill-treated by the mob. After some provocation his men fired without orders, three of the mob were killed on the spot, two others ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... sunset, when they feed their horses and camels, they lounge about the whole day, without any useful employment, and without even refreshing their leisure by some trifling occupation. To smoke their pipes and drink coffee is to them the most agreeable pastime; they frequently visit each other, and collecting round the fire-place, they keep very late hours. I was told that there are some men amongst them, who play the tamboura, a sort of guitar, but I never heard any of them perform. If the young men would condescend to assist in agriculture, ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... Anne Hathaway's cottage, once formed part of Richard Hathaway's farmhouse, and there, and in the neighbouring lanes, the lovers did their courting. The wooing on Shakespeare's side was nothing but pastime, ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... protest unto you it may rather be called a friendlie kind of a fight than a play or recreation, a bloody and murthering practice than a felowy sort of pastime. For doth not every one lie in wait for his adversary, seeking to overthrow him and kicke him on the nose, though it be on hard stones or ditch or dale, or valley or hill, so he has him down, and he that can serve the most of this fashion is counted the only fellow, ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... ease and advantage, as to commit, perfectly, the signs of the moods and tenses before you proceed farther than to the subjunctive mood. If you do, the supposed Herculean task of learning to conjugate verbs, will be transformed into a few hours of pleasant pastime. ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... had a good deal of pastime with him in the cool garden, while Felix was being walked over the schoolyards in the sun; and they were excellent friends, though Ethel certainly had a certain repugnance to the discovery of how big a boy it was with whom Gertrude had danced barefooted on the rocks. Of course Ethel was ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to have mentioned in the beginning, that, among several other qualifications, the prince was fond of collecting and breeding mice, which being an harmless pastime, none of his counsellors thought proper to dissuade him from; he therefore kept a great variety of these pretty little animals in the most beautiful cages, enriched with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, pearls, and other precious stones. Thus he innocently spent four hours each day in contemplating ...
— The Story of the White Mouse • Unknown
... Claude de Buxieres attained his thirty-sixth year, it was noticed that he had a more settled air, and that his habits were becoming more sedentary. The chase was still his favorite pastime, but he frequented less places of questionable repute, seldom slept away from home, and seemed to take greater pleasure in remaining under his own roof. The cause of this change was ascribed by some to the advance of years creeping over him; others, more perspicacious, verified a curious ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... declined, in his fine bold hand, to countenance in person an act of folly he disapproved. Christopher put his letter away with a momentary sigh, and would not show it Rosa. All other letters they read together, charming pastime of that happy period. Presents poured in. Silver teapots, coffeepots, sugar-basins, cream-jugs, fruit-dishes, silver-gilt inkstands, albums, photograph-books, little candlesticks, choice little services of china, shell ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... of these "Mohocks," and the helpless terror of London, is scarcely credible in modern days. Wild bands of drunken men nightly infested the streets, attacking and ill-using every passer-by. A favourite pastime was to surround their victim with drawn swords, pricking him on every side as he endeavoured to escape. Many persons were maimed and dangerously wounded. Gay, in his Trivia, has noted some of their more innocent ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Crowd, unskilled in these Affairs, To day wou'd laugh with us, to morrow with the Bears: Careless which Pastime did most Witty prove, Or who pleas'd best, Tom Poet, or ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... as old intrigues are dull, I want pastime, and would like to earn fifty pounds, and if my chances in other quarters ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Love in '76 - An Incident of the Revolution • Oliver Bell Bunce
... Simon Dun. Matth. Paris. Simon Dun. King Stephan sicke.] Now after that king Stephan had concluded a peace with king Dauid, he returned to London, and there kept his Easter with great ioy and triumphes: who whilest he was yet in the middest of all his pastime, about Rogation weke, he chanced to fall sicke of a litargie, by reason whereof a rumor was spred ouer all the realme that he was dead. Which though it was but a vaine tale, and of no importance at the first, yet was it after the occasion of much euill. ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (4 of 12) - Stephan Earle Of Bullongne • Raphael Holinshed
... falling oak? As years increase, she brighter shines; Cadenus with each day declines: And he must fall a prey to time, While she continues in her prime. Cadenus, common forms apart, In every scene had kept his heart; Had sigh'd and languish'd, vow'd and writ, For pastime, or to show his wit, But books, and time, and state affairs, Had spoil'd his fashionable airs: He now could praise, esteem, approve, But understood not what was love. His conduct might have made him styled A father, and the nymph his child. That ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... arrows they are as clever as all savages, and wonderfully good shots, attempting many wonderful feats. They are swift as deer, when they choose, though somewhat lazy and indolent. All the kings and chiefs have been special adepts in the invigorating pastime of surf-swimming, and the present king's sisters are considered first-rate hands at it. The performers begin by swimming out into the bay, and diving under the huge Pacific rollers, pushing their surf-boards—flat pieces of wood, ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... niece, Olivo, refers to the polemic on which I have been at work for the last few days, the pastime of leisure hours. I used to ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... occupation if I had one, and is scarcely interest enough in life for an energetic woman. My household duties take, on an average, half an hour a day; and everything in our house is done regularly, and well done. My social duties may be got through at odd moments, and the more of a pastime I make them the better I fulfil them; and, with the exception of these, there is nothing in my life that I cannot have done for me by some one better able to do it than I am. And even if I had children I should not be much more occupied, ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... to stop writing, though lecturing you is a fascinating pastime, for the day is almost done, and Boggley ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... society, but at that time the power-driven plane was regarded by the great majority as an absurd dream of more or less mad inventors, while ballooning ranked on about the same level as tight-rope walking, being considered an adjunct to fairs and fetes, more a pastime than a study. ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... gives to his Madonnas their unique expression and charm. He has worked out in them a distinct and peculiar type, definite enough in his own mind, for he has painted it over and over again, sometimes one might think almost mechanically, as a pastime during that dark period when his thoughts were so heavy upon him. Hardly any collection of note is without one of these circular pictures, into which the attendant angels depress their heads so naively. Perhaps you have sometimes wondered why ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... title-page—the fact that before the Tales from Shakespear, which are usually thought to be the brother and sister's first experiment in writing for children, Charles at any rate had tried his hand at that pastime. The King and Queen of Hearts thus becomes his first ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... it really was a very dangerous pastime, for although sometimes the drift tunnel led us to a sunlit opening on the hillside, more often we reached a blind end and were forced to return to the main shaft and to "shin" up the rope, with from ten to forty feet of inky water waiting to ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... up, overlooking the gardens and a portion of the city wall. It was at Oxford that he first developed that passion for self-discipline which afterwards distinguished him. He took up rowing; and, though thoroughly unsuited by nature to this pastime, secured himself a place in his College 'torpid.' At the end of a race he was usually supported from his stretcher in a state of extreme extenuation, due to having pulled the last quarter of the course entirely with his spirit. The same craving for self-discipline guided him ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... companion, who kept a hawk, and vainly endeavoured to teach the bird to know him and perch on his wrist. But Perry was fond of hawks, and much regretted that the days were gone by when hawking was a favourite pastime. ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... passenger at every train. On this occasion the late passenger was a short-sighted elderly gentleman in a brown top-coat and spectacles. He was accompanied by a friend, who assisted him to push through the crowd of people who had come to see their friends away, or were loitering about for pastime. The late passenger carried a bundle of wraps; the boots of his hotel followed with ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... also made a casual remark, but it was evident that the intention and purpose of these gay gentlemen was not the courteous entertainment of their hostess. Like so many men of all times and all nations in this world, they were ready enough to enjoy what she provided for them—the illicit pastime which they could not get elsewhere—but they despised her for giving it them, and cared naught for the heavy risks she ran in keeping up this ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... FRANCIS SEYMOUR, an etcher and writer on etching, born in London; was bred to medicine, and in 1857 became F.R.C.S.; in 1843 he took up etching as a pastime and has since pursued it with enthusiasm and conspicuous success; he has won medals in France, America, and England for the excellency of his workmanship, while his various writings have largely contributed to revive interest in the art; he is President ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... have different pastimes, and I dare say that most of those who read this will wonder that such a search should be a pastime for any man, but I confess it is a pastime for me. To discover these things, to recreate them, to dig out on foot the base upon which two thousand years of history repose, is the ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... learned what true love was—and offered to make her my wife. I dealt candidly and openly with her. In education, I need not say that I knew she was much beneath me; but she seemed warm-hearted and docile, and I thought it would be a loving pastime for me to make her my pupil. I was not ignorant, however, that she had other lovers; and, although she certainly encouraged my addresses, I saw reason to discontinue my suit. About this time, the awful event took place, the particulars ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... young men having been making merry with their sweethearts, were at their coming home to come over a heath. Robin Good-fellow, knowing of it, met them, and to make some pastime, he led them up and down the heath a whole night, so that they could not get out of it; for he went before them in the shape of a walking fire, which they all saw and followed till the day did appear: then Robin left them, and at his departure spake ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... written little; what time he had been able to spare from his work, had been given to studies in chemistry whence he had drawn the inspiration for such stories as The Case of Summerfield. With him the writing of fiction was a pastime, not a profession. He wrote because he wanted to, from the urgence of an idea pressing for utterance, not from the more imperious necessity of keeping the pot boiling and of there being a roof against the rain. Literary creation was to him a rest, a matter of holiday in the daily round of a man's ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... to be impossible to fix on the time when skating first took root in England, there can be no doubt that it was introduced there from more northern climates, where it originated more from the necessities of the inhabitants than as a pastime. When snow covered their land, and ice bound up their rivers imperious necessity would soon suggest to the Scands or the Germans some ready means of winter locomotion. This first took the form of snow-shoes with two long runners of wood, like those still used by the inhabitants of the northerly ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... call'st thou solitude, is not the Earth With various living creatures, and the Aire 370 Replenisht, and all these at thy command To come and play before thee, know'st thou not Thir language and thir wayes, they also know, And reason not contemptibly; with these Find pastime, and beare rule; thy Realm is large. So spake the Universal Lord, and seem'd So ordering. I with leave of speech implor'd, And humble deprecation thus repli'd. Let not my words offend thee, Heav'nly ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... charred, bearing witness to the fierceness of the flames in which the town perished. These discoveries reveal to us the daily life of the people of Troy. Judging from the number of boars' tusks found, hunting must have been a favorite pastime with them. The bones of oxen, sheep, and goats, of smaller species than those of the present day, have also been found. Horses and dogs were rare, and cats unknown. The domestic poultry of the present day was also wanting, no remains of birds having been found except a few bones ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... between the tropics, we saw various kinds of fish, in greater abundance than elsewhere. As the whale, or mighty Leviathan, whom God hath created to take his pastime in the seas; Dolphins also, and Albicores, with Bonitoes, flying-fishes, and many others. Some whales were of an exceeding greatness, which, in calm weather, would often rise and shew themselves above the water, appearing like vast rocks; and, while rising, they would spout up a great quantity ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... themselves of the tribulation of riches; and adjoining it was Simpson Brothers & Company, wherein hick'ry-shirted gentlemen bartered for threshing machines, hayrakes, axle grease, and such like baubles of Arcadian pastime. ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... cling to the old city as long as it will cling to me; but even now across one's aching sight comes a "dream of pastime premature" which shakes such resolves a little. Peter, for example, has been having a disturbing effect on me. Only now and then, of course—when I am not quite myself; when the two and thirty (what remains of them) are not so firmly gritted as they should ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... dim, Unappeasable Grisliness Prone down the nethermost Chasms of the Void! - Clear singing, clean slicing; Sweet spoken, soft finishing; Making death beautiful, Life but a coin To be staked in the pastime Whose playing is more Than the transfer of being; Arch-anarch, chief builder, Prince and evangelist, I am the Will of God: I ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... from the she-goat Heidrum. When the heroes are not feasting they amuse themselves with fighting. Every day they ride out into the court or field and fight until they cut each other in pieces. This is their pastime; but when meal time comes they recover from their wounds and return to feast ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... see what they are. They have not been brought up in a country where bull-fighting, as in all Spanish America, is the principal pastime, without having become acquainted with most matters relating to it. And what Gaspar has brought before their eyes are some torterillas, or spitting-devils, used, along with the banderillas for rousing the fury of the bull while being goaded by the ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... more careful examination taught me to know this adorable woman's character. Coquetry was with her not a vice of the heart or of an unscrupulous mind; having nothing better to do, she enjoyed it as a legitimate pastime, without giving it any importance or feeling any scruples. Like all women, she liked to please; her success was sweet to her vanity; perhaps flattery turned her head at times, but in the midst of this tumult her heart remained in perfect peace. She found so little danger for herself in ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... III., and calculated to hold three bottles of claret, all to be drunk at once by one member of the company, who then won the prize of a seven-guinea piece deposited at the bottom. Gambling was not a pastime, but a business; and a business shared by the ladies. On rainy days it was customary to lay the card-tables at ten o'clock in the morning, and on all days the work began immediately after the four-o'clock dinner. Of all field-sports hunting was the favorite; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... of our fine ladies amusing themselves with giving parties, at which they, and their guests, take chloroform as a pastime? Lady Castlereagh set the example, and was describing to me her sensations under the process. I told her how imprudent and wrong I thought such experiments, and mentioned to her the lecture Brand gave upon the subject, in which ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... rattled again. At this juncture I emerged from my hiding place, when the old villain scampered off with great precipitation. She knew she was trespassing, and she had learned that there were usually some swift penalties attached to this pastime. ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... I was with him againe and so continued there till night, and he shewed me his house with pastime in ducking with water-Spaniels, and baiting buls with ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... is a matter of temperament, and instead of writing briefs, Calvin began translating Luther's Bible into French. He was requested to relinquish this pastime long enough to draw up a legal opinion concerning the divorce of our ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... twice Baptiste raised his head, and stared about him with drowsy eyes, but, satisfied there was nothing to be done in the way of forcing the vessel ahead, he resumed his nap, without interfering in the pastime of those whom he had hitherto seemed to take pleasure in annoying. Left entirely to themselves, therefore, the crowd on the forecastle represented one of those every-day but profitable pictures of life, which abound under our eyes, but ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... indeed. Monsieur Thuran had learned that the beautiful Miss Strong, of Baltimore, was an American heiress—a very wealthy girl in her own right, and with future prospects that quite took his breath away when he contemplated them, and since he spent most of his time in that delectable pastime it is a wonder that he breathed ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... upon the defenseless houses of citizens. The attacks of Pougatcheff made very little excitement. I was dying of ennui. I had promised Accoulina that I would correspond with her, but communication was cut off, and I could not send or receive a letter from Belogorsk. My only pastime consisted in military sorties. Thanks to Pougatcheff I had an excellent horse, and I shared my meager pittance with it. I went out every day beyond the ramparts to skirmish with Pougatcheff's advance guards. The rebels had the best of it; they had plenty of food and ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... when a man was down, Though many a stunning blow was felt, None ever struck below the belt; The ring was form'd, and fair play Reign'd without challenge at each fray, And never yet, that I could hear, Did constable e'er interfere, Or even think that amongst crimes Rank'd this brave pastime of old times. Then Martin Hennessy was young, A Hercules with sinews strung; You might as well an anvil "lick," Or stand against a horse's kick And fear not shattered rib or jaw As risk a smash from Martin's paw. I've seen him in the days of yore His fist crash through a panel door. Martin soon ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... to tell. Well, so be it. I think you are a young person of good sense, and practicalness, or if you prefer, of good practical sense, who knows very well how to arrange her pastime, to amuse people, to hide her views, to lay her snares, and who, ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... pageant passes and the exile sleeps, And well his tongue the solemn secret keeps Of the great peace he found afar, until, Death's writ of extradition to fulfill, They brought him, helpless, from that friendly zone To be a show and pastime in his own— A final opportunity to those Who fling with equal aim the stone and rose; That at the living till his soul is freed, This at the ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... 'her brother Rowsley,' who loomed in his mind incomprehensible, and therefore black. Once he had thought the great General a great man. He now regarded him as a mere soldier, a soured veteran; socially as a masker and a trifler, virtually a callous angler playing his cleverly-hooked fish for pastime. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the table of a numerous Korps do not easily forget the sensations evoked by the strains in which they have joined. Song holds a large place in German life, and an essentially good one. As a means of strengthening popular patriotism no one has ever denied its efficacy, and as a mere pastime it is probably the most pacific and harmless that could be named. It may even be believed that the capacity and willingness among young men to amuse themselves with chorus singing indicates to some extent a national love of law and order. Italians ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... which required all the aplomb of a leader of Fashion to carry out successfully; and, though few of the "smart" Ladies of my set habitually indulge in the habit. I am happy to think I am encouraging them in a healthy and amusing pastime, which, in the Summer, may in time even rival Lawn Tennis! However—not to beat about the bush any longer—an utterly absurd expression this is!—as if it could hurt the bush to beat it!—to say nothing of the difficulty of keeping a bush always handy to beat!)—it is ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892 • Various
... had not counted on the "fair" Ehrengard. She refused point-blank to go with him to that "odious England," where chopping off heads seemed to be a favourite pastime. She was quite happy in Hanover, and there she meant to stay. She fumed and raged, ran about the Palace gardens, embracing her dearly-loved trees and clinging hysterically to the marble statues, declaring that she could not and would not desert them. ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... Lubbock and Frederick Harrison, they make excellent progress and do much to keep up the reading habit. Fourth—The "Oh, just-anything-good-you-know" reader. Her name is legion. She never knows what she has read. Yet the social student who failed to take into account the desultory, pastime reader, would miss a great factor in the spread of ideas. Fifth—The person who does not read. He is commoner than most suppose. He is often young, more often boy than girl, oftener young man than young woman. ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana
... cathedral dome, Such as the Florentine, who bore the name Of heaven's most potent angel, reared, long since, Or the unknown builder of that wondrous fane, The glory of Burgos. Here a garden lay, In which the Little People of the Snow Were wont to take their pastime when their tasks Upon the mountain's side and in the clouds Were ended. Here they taught the silent frost To mock, in stem and spray, and leaf and flower, The growths of summer. Here the palm upreared ...
— The Little People of the Snow • William Cullen Bryant
... vanity, and solemn trumperies of pride,— Harmful copings with the better, and empty-headed apings of the worse; Vapid pleasures, the weariness of gaiety, the strife and bustle of the world; The hollowness of courtesies, and substance of deceits, idleness and pastime— All these and many more alike, thick conveying fancies, Flit in throngs about my theme, as honey-bees at even ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... our readers who were alive at the time doubtless recall the excitement of that man-hunt two years ago. Mr. Barnes, as innocent as a child unborn, came to our little city engaged in the innocent pastime of getting married. At the same time it was reported that a murder had been committed in this county. Mr. Crow had his suspicions aroused and pursued Mr. Barnes down the river and arrested him. It was a fine piece of detective work. ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... 'For God's sake, don't speak of it!' about Scott and his tears? He knew what he was saying. The fear of that hour is the skeleton in all our cupboards; that hour when the pastime and the livelihood go together; and - I am getting hard of hearing myself; a pore young child of forty, but new come frae ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cockatoo parrots are talking Of races to far away lands; The native companions are walking A go-as-you-please on the sands; The little foals gallop for pastime; The wallabies race down the gap; Let's try it once more for the last time, Bring out ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... a pastime peculiar to themselves, furnished by their own climate. It is the season of sugar-making. At the period in which the events of our story occurred, the cultivation of the maple was much more extensive than now, but even at present it is sufficiently ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... Deutsch prize, Santos-Dumont continued for a time to amuse himself with dirigibles. I say "amuse" purposely, for never did serious aeronaut get so much fun out of a rather perilous pastime as he. In his "No. IX." he built the smallest dirigible ever known. The balloon had just power enough to raise her pilot and sixty-six pounds more beside a three-horse-power motor. But she attained a speed of twelve miles ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... attention was paid to the breaking and training of hacks than at present, on account of the great demand for "complete ladies' horses." The advent of the bicycle for ladies has almost abolished hacking as a pastime and means of exercise, and hence the difficulty in finding a well-broken animal for this work. The best substitute is, I think, a good polo pony, because the requirements of that game demand that the animal should be temperate, handy, and capable of being ridden with a slack rein. The polo pony ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... you about every piece of paper he's got. It's a poor line, wobbly and uncertain. There was a new examiner here not long ago, and he stayed in town two or three days when he usually cleans up in a day. Banking is a business, Lois, not a pastime, and Bill isn't a banker; he's a promoter. Do you get ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... of a brass cannon, weighing about thirty pounds.[4] We leave it to philosophers to inquire, whether the future love of war was suggested by the accidental possession of such a toy; or whether the tendency of the mind dictated the selection of it; or, lastly, whether the nature of the pastime, corresponding with the taste which chose it, may not have had each their action and reaction, and contributed between them to the formation of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... admiring this childish pastime, which in Uganda is considered royal sport, I rather looked disdainful, until, apparently disappointed at my indifference, he asked what the box I had brought contained. On being told it was the medicine he desired, he asked me to draw near, and sent his courtiers away. When only ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... mature age of four, Scott Brenton's favourite pastime had been what he termed "playing Grandpa Wheeler." The game accomplished itself by means of a chair by way of pulpit, and a serried phalanx of other chairs by way of congregation, whom the young preacher harangued by the hour together. The harangues were punctuated by occasional bursts of song, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... spritefull Quire with choicest sports, All pastime fit for Phoebus Courts; And Thou great Master of the Revels, joyne The Graces, to thy Daughters nine; Witt pure and quaint, with rich conceits and free From all obscaene scurrilitie: Here free from care, nimbly let's dance a round Upon ...
— The Odes of Casimire, Translated by G. Hils • Mathias Casimire Sarbiewski
... him, as appeared when his sons, who did not wish to live by painting any longer, devoted themselves entirely to commerce, opening an establishment at Venice in conjunction with their father, who after a certain time abandoned painting altogether, only to take it up as an amusement and pastime. By dint of trading and practising his art, Agnolo had amassed considerable wealth when he came to die in the sixty-third year of his life, succumbing to a malignant fever which carried him off in a few days. His ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... propensities by engaging his nephew in field-sports, which had been the chief pleasure of his own youthful days. But although Edward eagerly carried the gun for one season, yet when practice had given him some dexterity, the pastime ceased ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... rascals who have lost their own characters in the business of playing they are somebody else. And yet I'll explain for the benefit of the captious that, although Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry both fiddled, they never did and never would fiddle while Rome burned. Music was with them a pastime, ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... Carlton for similar success in Canada—the one becoming Sir William Howe, and the other Sir Guy Carlton; but neither did much afterwards to merit the honour. The English officers seemed to have anticipated a pastime in America instead of hard fighting and severe service, and the German mercenaries anticipated ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... is not because of his toils that I lament for the poor: we must all toil, or steal (howsoever we name our stealing), which is worse; no faithful workman finds his task a pastime. The poor is hungry and a-thirst; but for him also there is food and drink: he is heavy-laden and weary; but for him also the Heavens send Sleep, and of the deepest; in his smoky cribs, a clear dewy heaven of Rest envelops him, and fitful glitterings ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... as if surprised at such ignorance. "Why, humans is their favorite pastime! Humans is just pie to a Hydrophoby Skunk. It ain't really any fun to be bit by a Hydrophoby Skunk neither." He raised his coffee cup to his lips and ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... unawakened to more vigorous passion by the fresh wind blowing from Thrace. Of all the Olympians, Diana has been most often hymned by M. De Banville: his imagination is haunted by the figure of the goddess. Now she is manifest in her Hellenic aspect, as Homer beheld her, "taking her pastime in the chase of boars and swift deer; and with her the wild wood-nymphs are sporting the daughters of Zeus; and Leto is glad at heart, for her child towers over them all, and is easy to be known where all are fair" (Odyssey, ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... that any man young enough will have had any experience in such commands in this country. But even this difficulty will disappear in a very great measure if statesmen will make the study of the art and science of war, instead of far less important subjects, a part of their pastime. They will thus acquire the ability to judge, from personal acquaintance with military men and conversation with other best informed, of the relative fitness of officers for ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... peasant, and which in the more cultivated classes is carried to an exquisite degree of refined development! And again, a Japanese incense party, where different qualities of delicately aromatic incense are passed round—and the pastime consists in placing the different qualities in the order of the beauty of their perfume—would almost suggest that the West had neglected the cultivation of ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... which it is said the cockneys believe to be the highest land in the world, after Richmond Hill; and many of them stumble and slip and roll to the bottom, screaming and laughing as they go. This I understand to be a favorite pastime with people who are big enough to know better; for a part of the fun, and that which all seem to enjoy most, is in tripping one another up. Plenty of giants and dwarfs to be seen for a penny, with white Circassians, silver-haired, and actors of all sorts and sizes. "Walk in, ladies and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... power that has succeeded, in these commercial days, in reducing art to a pastime for the leisured and wealthy—is the original inert ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... for his release, signed by many prominent citizens. An open pocketbook will easily secure a petition for pardon, it makes but little difference as to the "gravamen" of the crime. The convict promised not to engage again in this pleasant pastime for filthy lucre. The mother of the young man came on from the East and remained until she had secured a pardon for her boy. The young man stated in our hearing that it took one thousand big dollars to secure his pardon. A great many who are acquainted with the ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... shy at having anything to do with the case. He told my father he was going to retire and devote his leisure time to fishing—that being his great pastime." ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... the unreasonable pair at Northlands as long as we could, doing all that lay in our power to restore Adrian's idiotically impaired health. I motored him about the county; I took him to golf, a pastime at which I do not excel; and I initiated him into the invigorating mysteries of playing at robbers with Susan. We gave a carefully selected dinner-party or two, and accepted on his behalf a few discreet invitations. ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... were going to lift up something very heavy with one hand and astonish the whole world by doing so. His mischievous mocking eyes glided over the road, the waggons, and the sky without resting on anything, and seemed looking for someone to kill, just as a pastime, and something to laugh at. Evidently he was afraid of no one, would stick at nothing, and most likely was not in the least interested in Yegorushka's opinion of him. . . . Yegorushka meanwhile hated his flaxen head, his clear ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... or from San Pedro, one may visit the island of Santa Catalina. Want of time prevented our going there. Sportsmen enjoy there the exciting pastime of hunting the wild goat. From the photographs I saw, and from all I heard of it, it must be as picturesque a resort in natural beauty as the ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... little done save to build a kitchen and shed and widen the clearing in the forest. Inspection of the details of our domain was reserved as a sort of reward for present task and toil. According to the formula neatly printed in official journals, the building of a slab hut is absurdly easy—quite a pastime for the settler eager to get a roof of bark or thatch over his head. The frame, of course, goes up without assistance, and then the principal item is the slabs for walls. When you have fallen your tree and sawn off a block of the required length, you have only ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... Gates, later to New Brunswick, where he stayed with another friend of the past. General White, in a family circle that attracted his warm regard. He was still confined to his sofa, and amused himself by his favourite pastime of drawing and painting, tended by the ladies of the house with a solicitude which drew from him after he had gone back to Philadelphia a charming "hospitable roof" letter. I have been unable to see the original English ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... Atilius, who was a signal example of both extremes of fortune, may form a warning to us. Without doubt, Publius Cornelius, when you shall have a view of Africa from the sea, the reduction of your province of Spain will appear to you to have been a mere matter of sport and pastime. For what similarity is there between them? After sailing along the coast of Italy and Gaul to Emporiae without any enemy to oppose you, you brought your fleet to land at a city of our allies. There landing your soldiers, you marched them through countries entirely secure from danger ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... so far as to wear a tiny bit of ribbon by way of asserting allegiance to this or that crew, which sported the same color in cap, uniform, or flag. This, strange to say, did not act in the least as "a damper" on the pastime; even the fact that girls became popular as coxswains did not take the life out of it; all of which, as Dorry said, served to show the great hardihood ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... about them. The word Indian means to us a member of the savage hunting tribes of the North; a fierce, treacherous, implacable foe, though he could be loyal and generous as a friend; a being who made war a trade and cruelty a pastime, and was incapable of civilization. But this is only one type of the native inhabitants of the land. Those of the South were very different. Instead of being rude savages, like their Northern brethren, they had made some approach to civilization; instead of being ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the doctor's presence, asked the sick girl whether there was anything in particular she would like, any food she fancied, any pastime she preferred. ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... him, at first he deemed that all this was some sport or play done for his pastime and the pleasure of the hall-folk in all kindness and honour. But when he looked in the eyes of him, and saw him fierce and eager and true, he knew well it was no jest; and as the shouts of men went up from the hall and beat against the roof, himseemed that he remembered, as in a dream, ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... thy Pastime. Let me be to thee A daily refuge from the haunting fears That bind thee, choke thee, fill thy soul with woe. Seek thou my hand, let ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... their first care was to order dinner, and then, as there would be some time taken up in preparation for that meal, they looked about for some mode of pastime. The landlord recommended to them a visit to a convent at the top of the hill. He informed them that it stood on the site of a famous temple, and that it was visited every day by large numbers of travellers. On, ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... Did you assay him to any pastime? Rosin. Madam, it so fell out, that certaine Players We ore-wrought on the way: of these we told him, And there did seeme in him a kinde of ioy To heare of it: They are about the Court, And (as I thinke) they haue already order This ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... exercised from after 1490 in Siena, then torn by faction, is hardly worth a closer consideration. Insignificant and malicious, he governed with the help of a professor of juris prudence and of an astrologer, and frightened his people by an occasional murder. His pastime in the summer months was to roll blocks of stone from the top of Monte Amiata, without caring what or whom they hit. After succeeding, where the most prudent failed, in escaping from the devices of Cesare Borgia, he died at last forsaken and despised. His sons maintained a qualified ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... a self-respecting man's personal baggage. Painting doesn't matter; music doesn't matter very much. But "everyone is supposed to know" about literature. Then, literature is such a charming distraction! Literary taste thus serves two purposes: as a certificate of correct culture and as a private pastime. A young professor of mathematics, immense at mathematics and games, dangerous at chess, capable of Haydn on the violin, once said to me, after listening to some chat on books, "Yes, I must take up literature." As though saying: "I was rather forgetting literature. However, I've polished ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... to recover the pearl shells from the ship, it occurred to me that I might use them as material with which to build some kind of a hut. Altogether there were about thirty tons of pearl shells on board, and at first I took to diving for them merely as a sort of pastime. ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... labor of all-day marching up and down streets and stairs and Zone hills beneath it; but to me, fresh from tramping over the mountains of Central America with twenty pounds on my shoulders, this was mere pastime. Heat had no terrors for the enumerated, however. Often in the hottest hour of the day I came upon negroes sleeping in tightly closed rooms, the sweat running off them in streams, yet apparently ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... But since man proposes and God disposes, the posts were either careless, or God ordained it thus; for suddenly the enemy rushed upon our men, who could not unite, as they were by that time scattered through the forest. The enemy, having caught them off their guard, made a pastime of it, killing twenty-six men, and carrying off arms, powder, balls, and fuses. I regard that event as the greatest of all our losses. Among those of our men killed there by the enemy was Captain Lopez Suarez, a fine soldier. Our men were ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... warrants by the name of master of the king's pastimes. Which gentleman so well supplied his office, both in show of sundry sights and devices of rare inventions, and in act of divers interludes and matters of pastime played by persons, as not only satisfied the common sort, but also were very well liked and allowed by the council, and other of skill in the like pastimes; but best of all by the young king himself, as appeared ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... cost; but when the sketch and estimate are made, you shall see them; and if the cost exceeds your views, there will be no harm done; on the contrary, I shall have had the pleasure of scheming a little for you by way of pastime. ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... a primitive pastime," observed OLD MORALITY, when, later, we sat down to dinner; "but remarkably refreshing; a great stimulant for the appetite. Indeed," he added, as he transferred a whole grouse to his plate, "I do not know anything that more forcibly brings home to the mind ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 25, 1890 • Various
... The term Patriot is derived from two Greek words, Pat, a patronymic, and Riot, a national pastime. ...
— This Giddy Globe • Oliver Herford
... bright, and silvery-gray lump which very much resembled silver-ore. I looked at the mass thoughtfully for some time: an idea germinated, and there and then I planned a new amusement which became our most delightful pastime during those ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... Come with me, I beseech you, Reverend Sir; else you will be poorly able to do Sabbath duty to-morrow. Aha! see now, how they trouble the brain,—these books!—these books! You should study less, good Sir, and take a little pastime; or these night-whimseys will grow ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... immediately, but, as it seemed, when he had controlled the unpleasant influence the speaker's enthusiastic mode of address had upon him. It seemed as if he were not merely speaking, and engaging the organist in speech for pastime—but rather because he could not help it. His questions, when he asked them, had a more surprising sound to himself than to the person who answered. And they vexed him—but not Summerman. When Mr. Rush asked him if he supposed it possible for ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... Pepys' time. He writes in 1662 to the effect: "It being a great frost, did see people sliding with their skates, which is a very pretty art." It is remarkable that it was the German poet Klopstock who made skating fashionable in Germany. Until his time, the art was considered a pastime, only fit for very ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... recreative interludes: a reunion of brother-artists or fellow-countrymen and their families,—an occasional journey, almost invariably with a professional intent,—a summer holiday or a winter festival; but, methodical in pastime as in work, his family and his books were his cherished resources. Often so weary at night that he returned home only to recline on a couch, caress his children, or refresh his mind with some agreeable volume provided by his vigilant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... day I came upon Astounding Stories on our local newsstand. I immediately procured a copy because Science Fiction is my favorite pastime, so to speak. I was very much overjoyed that another good Science Fiction magazine should come out, and a Clayton Magazine too, which enhances its splendid value still further. I have read various members of the Clayton family and I ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... its being an image of war. Mercy on us! that destruction of any species should be a sport or a merit! What cruel unreflecting imps we are! Every body is unwilling to die; yet sacrifices the lives of others to momentary -pastime, or to the still emptier vapour, fame! A hero or a sportsman who wishes for longer life is desirous of prolonging devastation. We shall be crammed, I suppose, with panegyrics and epitaphs on the King of Prussia; ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... for more than two centuries has made the sport a national one in England, cannot be said to exist in France, and the introduction of this "pastime of princes" into the latter country has been of comparatively recent date. Mention, it is true, has been found of races on the plain of Les Sablons as early as 1776, and in the next year a sweepstakes of forty horses, followed by one of as many asses, was run at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... he, who had so often for mere amusement's sake plunged to the bottom of the sea to fetch up the bright coral branch, hesitate to entertain the same project? He could do it in an hour, and how many times had he, for pure pastime, continued in the water for more than twice as long! At once Dantes resolved to follow the brave example of his energetic companion, and to remember that what has once been done may ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... for the day, and had requested me to escort Imperia to the Pope's villa of Magliana, where he had secured her an invitation to sing for a party of sport-loving cardinals whom Leo had asked to enjoy his favourite pastime of hunting. ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... as a boot-black in Brooklyn, was of the Americanized type of her race. She could not, of course, eliminate her Latinity of eye and tress nor her wild luxuriance of bust, but English was her mother-tongue, and the chewing of gum her national pastime. She chewed it now, slowly, thoughtfully, as she stood looking in on Mademoiselle Odette, who was turning the skirt this way and that, searching out the almost invisible traces of use which were ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... inaugurated as a society pastime and accompanied by all the frivolity of the age, paved the way for Weishaupt's two classes of women members, who, although never initiated into the secrets of the Order, were to act as useful tools ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... happiness in store for him, the king meanwhile continues to give utterance to his longings and laments. "The day has not passed so very sadly; there was something to do, no time for longing. But how shall I spend the long night, for which there is no pastime?" The viduschaka counsels hope, and the king grants that even the tortures of love have their advantage; for, as the force of the torrent is increased a hundredfold if a rock is interposed, so is the power of love if obstacles retard the blissful union. The twitching of his right arm (a favorable ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... of this opinion herself, albeit she would not have dared to say as much. She liked soft raiment, bright colours, dainty ways, and pretty speeches. Looking down from her window upon the passers by, it was her favourite pastime to fancy herself one of the hooped and powdered and gorgeously-apparelled ladies, with their monstrous farthingales, their stiff petticoats, their fans, their patches, and their saucy, coquettish ways to the gentlemen in their train. All this bedizenment, which had by no means ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Double Throne, and I swear that I will lift thee higher than ever man has climbed. Reject me, and beware lest I pull thee down! And now, putting aside the cold delicacy of custom, stung to it by what I saw of the arts of that lovely living falsehood, Cleopatra, which for pastime she practises on thy folly, I have spoken out my heart, and answer thou!" And she clasped her hands and, drawing one pace nearer, gazed, all white ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... duties, but that of his colleagues. I remember, likewise, that the only military service of my life was as a private soldier in a college company, of which Pierce was one of the officers. He entered into this latter business, or pastime, with an earnestness with which I could not pretend to compete, and at which, perhaps, he would now be inclined to smile. His slender and youthful figure rises before my mind's eye, at this moment, ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Commentary on Hippocrates put no heavy tax on the brain or the vital energies; the Commentary was of portentous length, but it was not much more than a paraphrase with his own experiences added thereto. Mathematics were his pastime, to judge by the ease and rapidity with which he solved the problems sent to him by Francesco Sambo of Ravenna and others.[296] He worked hard no doubt, but as a rule mere labour inflicts no heavier penalty than healthy fatigue. The destroyer of vital power and spring ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... been going on at the castle. Day after day, Margherita had dinned the name of Caponsacchi into the wife's ears. How he loved her, what a paragon he was, how little she owed fidelity to the Count who used her, Margherita, as his pastime—ought she not at least to see the priest and warn him, if nothing more? Guido might kill him! Here was a letter from him; and ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... polo are played to a limited extent by enthusiastic young men in the capital, who have followed the example of British or American residents, but it is not to be expected that these alien games could be grafted upon a different stock. Horsemanship is, of course, a natural pastime; but this has nothing in common with the pastime of the English hunting-fields, notwithstanding that a certain class of Mexicans are exceedingly famous as horsemen and have no superiors in the world in this art, in ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... Greek and Persian pastime. "Throw the spear and speak the truth," was a national maxim of the Persians that ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... to hide it. Marsh lands please me best, and so I am called the Marsh Hawk. The voices of the Hawk Brotherhood are like the voices of the winds, far-reaching, but not to be put in words. Mine is one of the softest of the cries of the Wise Watchers. Some brothers take their pastime in the skies, but I keep near the ground, in search of the things I harry—mice and other small gnawing animals, insects, lizards, and frogs. Sometimes I take a stray Chicken or some other bird, but ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... incensed. But it really was so all the same; and during the space of one minute this man who was so occupied by business matters, this leading light in the financial and political worlds, indulged in the childish pastime of watching the passers-by, and following with his eyes the files of conveyances as they ...
— The Lost Child - 1894 • Francois Edouard Joachim Coppee
... diversions they have but one sort, and in all their meetings the same is still exhibited. Young men, such as make it their pastime, fling themselves naked and dance amongst sharp swords and the deadly points of javelins. From habit they acquire their skill, and from their skill a graceful manner; yet from hence draw no gain or hire: though this adventurous gaiety has its reward, namely, that of pleasing the ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus
... extent will furnish a more complete and exhaustive exhibit of the progress of science and the arts in this country for the past twenty-two years than a complete file of the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN. It is a curious and interesting pastime to compare the condition of the mechanic arts as presented in some of our first volumes with that shown in our more recent ones. During all this time, nearly a quarter of a century, our journal has endeavored to represent the actual condition of ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... solemn and imposing, flanked by the silver jug and urn—and on the old ticking clock, and antique furniture, and smiling portraits, and recumbent Caesar, did it shine, merry and laughing, taking its pastime ere it went away to other lands, like a great, cheerful simple soul, smiling at nature and ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... himself was well content, and increasingly self-satisfied. He could be an intelligent and mildly amusing companion, when it served his turn; and he was beginning to lose sight of Desmond in keen enjoyment of the oldest pastime in the world. They fell into occasional spells of silence now as they rode—silence such as familiarity breeds, and which is not without a degree of danger at a certain stage of intimacy between ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... train; and Peter of Russia following his first stag. And so they are still haunted for the imagination by royal hunts and progresses, and peopled with the faces of memorable men of yore. And this distinction is not only in virtue of the pastime of dead monarchs. Great events, great revolutions, great cycles in the affairs of men, have here left their note, here taken shape in some significant and dramatic situation. It was hence that Guise and his leaguers led Charles the Ninth ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... begun in Florence at this time by order of the people of that quarter, who had made the Prior superintendent of that building. This person made profession of much knowledge in architecture, and was ever amusing himself therewith by way of pastime. And they had already begun the building by making piers of brick, when Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici, who had promised the people of that quarter and the Prior to have the sacristy and a chapel made at his own expense, invited Filippo one morning to dine with ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... country the slaughter of game for the market is not considered a gentlemanly pastime, even though there is a surplus of preserve-bred game that must be reduced. To the average American, the slaughter of half-tame elk, deer and birds that have been bred in a preserve does not appeal in the least. He knows that in the protection ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... base, thou baffled traitor! Six trusty slaves wait but my call to bind And bear thee to the king. Ay, rage, rage, rage, For I'll invent such tortures to despatch thee, Such racks, such whips, such baths of boiling sulphur, The damned shall think their pains mere mirth and pastime, And envying furies own their skill outdone. I ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... who were disputing at the same table, over a child who had been stolen that evening, hold their noses. All circumstances which, two centuries later, "seemed so ridiculous to the court," as Sauval says, "that they served as a pastime to the king, and as an introduction to the royal ballet of Night, divided into four parts and danced on the theatre of the Petit-Bourbon." "Never," adds an eye witness of 1653, "have the sudden metamorphoses of the Court of Miracles been more ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... health-giving exercise of which modern ideas of war robbed us. The same baneful influence has caused the old-fashioned healthful gymnastic exercises with heavy weights to be discarded. I have seen young men on board ocean-going steamers throwing heavy bags of sand to one another as a pastime. This, though excellent practice, hardly equals our ancient athletic feats with the bow or the heavy weight. Western sports have been introduced into some mission and other schools in China, but I much doubt if they will ever ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... him to the end— The duke, perchance, already breathes his last, And for Bernardo—he will join him soon; And for Rosalia, she will take the veil, To which she hath been heretofore inclined; And for my master, he will take again To alchemy—a pastime well enough, For aught I know, and honest Christian work. Still it was strange how my poor mistress died, Found, as she was, within her husband's study. The rumor went she died of suffocation; Some cursed crucible which had been left, By ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... battle is their pastime; they go forth Gay in the morn as to the summer's sport: When evening comes, the glory of the morn, The youthful warrior, is a clod ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... unblushingly published his infamy amongst strangers, and this man a would-be patriot, too, and candidate for the Presidential chair, which, it will be remembered, he afterwards obtained. I was told that flogging his negroes was a favourite pastime with this eminently-distinguished general, and that he was by no means liked by his officers or men. His appearance bespoke his tyrannical disposition; and this, coupled with incapacity, there is little doubt, conduced to make it necessary for him to relinquish his command of the ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... solum of my brain. But I would rather, from soon on, be released from the obligation to write. In five or six years this plantation—suppose it and us still to exist—should pretty well support us and pay wages; not before, and already the six years seem long to me. If literature were but a pastime! ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the day (still like this delightful Silas Foster) by rinsing your fingers and the front part of your face in a little tin pan of water at the doorstep, and teasing your hair with a wooden pocket-comb before a seven-by-nine-inch looking-glass. Your only pastime will be to smoke some very vile tobacco in the black stump of ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... horses to start and swerve. Was it possible that, as old Jackie Deeds said, God Almighty had His jokes too, jokes at the expense of His own creation? That in cynical abuse of human impotence, as a wanton pastime, He sent human beings forth into the world thus ludicrously defective? The thought was unformulated. It amounted hardly to a thought indeed,—was but a blind terror of insecurity, which, coursing through the boy's mind, filled him with agonised ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... been truly said that such words as 'pastime' and 'diversion' applied to our pleasures are among the most melancholy in the language, for they are the confession of human nature that it cannot find happiness in itself, but must seek for something that will fill up time, will cover the void which it feels, and divert men's thoughts from the ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... to retire to the most isolated and rugged parts of the islands, where they now are. They are still so brutal and so averse to civilization that they scarcely deserve more than the name of men; for they often cut off the heads of their own fathers and brothers as a pastime, for no other reason than their natural cruelty and brutality. Very few of them have fixed settlements, nor do they plant crops; but they live upon camotes (a kind of potato), other herbs and roots, and the game which they ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... forgotten first line of a popular song, which no scratching would erase—seemed too like an ironical postscript to be thought of for a moment. He threw aside his pen and cast the discordant record of past foolish pastime into the dead ashes of ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... affinities to the beast of prey. By superior strength or ingenuity he slew or snared the means of subsistence. Civilized man leaves the coarsest forms of slaughter to a professional class, and, if he kills at all, elevates his pastime to the rank of sport by the refining element of skill and the excitement of uncertainty and personal risk. But civilized man is still only too prone to prey upon his fellows, though hardly in the brutal manner of his ancestors. He preys upon inferior intelligence, upon ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... therefore, what pastime he offered to a wicked world in its fancied security. He predicts destruction to the whole world through the flood, nevertheless, he himself marries. Why? Was it not sufficient for him to perish alone, that he must join to himself a companion for the disaster? Oh, foolish old ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... not know at the time, but they discovered it afterwards, that Mrs Partlett, the matron, had a standing feud with all the cabmen of Templeton, whose delight it was to enjoy themselves at her expense—a pastime they could not more effectively achieve than by fleecing her young charges, so to ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... labour and fall to lording outright and let the plough stand. For ever since the Prelates were made lords and nobles, the plough standeth, there is no work done, the people starve. They hawke, they hunte, they carde, they dyce, they pastime in their prelacies with galaunt gentlemen, with their dauncing minions, and with their freshe companions, so that ...
— English Satires • Various
... and despondency, instead of diminishing, prevailed, and leach craft treatment utterly failed. One day his elder brother said to him, "I am going forth to hunt and course and to take my pleasure and pastime; maybe this would lighten thy heart." Shah Zaman, however, refused, saying, "O my brother, my soul yearneth for naught of this sort and I entreat thy favour to suffer me tarry quietly in this place, being wholly taken up with my malady." So King Shah Zaman passed his night in the palace ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... I met, whose head Was crammed with pastime's annals, And who, to judge from what he said, Must simply live in flannels: A shallow mind his talk proclaimed, And showed of culture no trace: One "book" and one alone he named— His own—'twas ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... the weighty matters in debate. George felt that she was entitled only to the courteous toleration one accords the weaker sex in matters too deep for their inconsequent minds to grasp fully; for even if she was his father's racing partner, she had openly acknowledged that she considered dogs a pastime, and not a life study, which ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... chimed in. "I've just been telling her," he said, "that little heads like hers can't contain books. It's all very well to scribble a little for pastime, and all that, but she mustn't seriously imagine she can do that sort of work. She'll only do herself harm. Literature ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... it was not because of her mishap that she was not in a habit. He could hardly be expected to divine the true reason. This was, shortly, that the lady, who had expected to see him, could not enjoy a pastime from participation in which footmen are for a variety of reasons so rigorously debarred. Incidentally, she had seen Anthony before he had seen her, and the smile with which he had credited her companion's ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... into the higher faith of the Aryan; and, according to their mood and preference, give themselves to the worship of Hindu gods or village demons. Worshipping in pure Hindu temples is to that people but a pastime, a mere holiday diversion; while the appeasing of the demons at their village shrines and under old trees in their hamlets is the most serious concern of their life. And yet all of them are regarded, and rightly regarded, as ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... wear the good soil of thought. I should try to establish a barrier against this kind of reading, not only on Sunday, but on Monday, on Tuesday, and on all days. Instead, therefore, of objecting to any particular class of books for Sunday reading, I should say in general that reading merely for pastime, without any moral aim, is the thing to be guarded against. That which inspires no thought, no purpose, which steals away all our strength and energy, and makes the Sabbath a day of dreams, is the reading I ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... sickens the man. He did not know he was so nervous. To read ror pastime while a great city is filled with his obsequies—he ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... severe kicks were given, and the whole thing was taken so keenly "that a Bro or a Blaenau would as soon lose a cow from his cowhouse as the football from his portion of the parish." There is plainly more than a mere pastime here; the thing appears to have been originally ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... as they would their God. Marguerite of Valois said of her: "I did not dare to speak to her, and when she looked at me I trembled for fear of having done something that displeased her." Ladies who had been delinquent were stripped and beaten with lashes; for correction—frequently for mere pastime—she would have them undressed and slapped vigorously with the back of the hand. Francoise of Rohan, cousin of Jeanne d'Albret, wrote the ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme |
