"Alphabet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had been a college undergraduate, and Kilburn's knowledge of the language was measured by his acquisitions at the Groton Academy. Of knowledge wholly useless to me I had learned to read the Hebrew alphabet from Dr. Bard's elementary Hebrew book. The reading-books, especially Scott's Lessons, contained extracts from good writers and speakers, with selections from the best of English poets, and these ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... wheat? Certainly, and live well. We must recognize the scientific fact that no one food (with the exception of milk) is indispensable. There are four letters in the food alphabet: A, fuel for the body machine; B, protein for the upkeep of the machinery; C, mineral salts, partly for upkeep and partly for lubrication—to make all parts work smoothly together; D, vitamines, subtle and elusive substances upon whose presence depends the successful use by the body of all ...
— Everyday Foods in War Time • Mary Swartz Rose
... their rage for "utilitarianism," encumbering him. Nor were some of the correspondents of this body much more solid in their speculations than themselves; one intelligent gentleman having suggested, as a means of conferring signal advantages on the cause, an alteration of the Greek alphabet. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... herself in relation to little Nicholas some symptoms of her father's irritability. However often she told herself that she must not get irritable when teaching her nephew, almost every time that, pointer in hand, she sat down to show him the French alphabet, she so longed to pour her own knowledge quickly and easily into the child—who was already afraid that Auntie might at any moment get angry—that at his slightest inattention she trembled, became flustered and heated, raised her voice, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... which becomes highly comic. Another writer followed in his steps,—Don Juan de Erro y Aspiroz,—who surpassed him in absurdity; proving to his own satisfaction, not only that the Basque is ancient, but that its alphabet furnished one to the Greeks, and that the same nation instructed the Phoenicians in the use of money; added to which, they passed into Italy, and from them sprung the Romans—those conquerors ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... race will know all the alphabet of nature and be able to read the story of the unchanging goodness; some day we shall comprehend the wavering handwriting of history; some day we shall catch the harmony of love and law; we shall know the full truth that is religion; ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... say that, since none of the letters of the alphabet were known to her; but when she conveyed the idea that she did not know the name of the visitor, it was certainly a stretch of the truth; but then she did not know as "Marse Hesden" would care about his mother knowing ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... sat in my Philadelphia church I was more embarrassed at her presence than by all the audience, because I felt that in religion I had got no further than the A B C, while she had learned the whole alphabet, and for many years had finished the Y and Z. When she went out of this life into the next, what a shout there must have been in heaven, from the front door clear up to the back seat in the highest gallery! I saw the other day in the village cemetery of Somerville, ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... applicable to all events, does not give us the 'slightest aid' to determining, independently of experience, any particular event. We observe that B follows A, but, for all we can say, it might as well follow any other letter of the alphabet. Yet we are entitled to say in general that it does uniformly follow some particular letter. The metaphor which describes cause and effect as a 'bond' tying A and B together is perfectly appropriate if taken to express the bare fact ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... that his father's brushes were his alphabet. It may be true, though I doubt it, that his father's teaching was his only technical school. But if he was, as to the last he gloried in being, the child of the Old Period, he was much more truly the immediate pupil of the Van Eycks than of his father's irresolute ideals; ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... who cry "Plato! Plato!" are Platonists. So, not all those who now appeal to Lincoln's mighty name for sanction of their own petty caprices and crazy creeds, have learned the first letter of the alphabet which Lincoln used; but Roosevelt, I believe, knew Lincoln better, knew the spirit of Lincoln better, than any other President has known it. And Lincoln would have approved of most, if not of all, of the measures which, in that Ossawatomie speech, Roosevelt declared must be adopted. Whenever he ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... this time. He had the sudden feeling that Dr. O'Connor's flow of words had broken itself up into a vast sea of alphabet soup, and that he, Malone, was occupied in ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... intend always to keep women slaves, political and civil, they make a great mistake when they let the girl, with the boy, learn the alphabet, for no educated class will long remain in subjection. We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... with money, and she not as young as she had been; and how she compromised by always using the abbreviation, both in writing and speaking. "She always calls him H," said Grandma Cobb, "and I tell her sometimes it doesn't look quite respectful to speak to her husband as if he were part of the alphabet." Grandma Cobb, if the truth had been told, was always in a state of covert rebellion against ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... I give him for his dinner to-day, Norrse?"—(impossible to persuade the English alphabet to disclose Mrs. Mangan's pronunciation of this word)—his hostess would say, drifting largely into Larry's room, and seating herself on ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... perfect method of writing prevailed among the Mayas of Yucatan and Central America. Their books were exceedingly neat, and strongly resembled an ordinary quarto volume, such as appears on European bookshelves. I have so lately discussed their manufacture, and the so-called alphabet in which they were written, and in a work of such easy access, that it is enough if I quote the conclusions there ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton
... descending, but stops far short of him. She would die before she would reach him: he dwells below her fall. I would hate him, if I did not despise him. It is not WHAT he is, but WHERE he is, that puts my thoughts into action. The alphabet which writes the name of Thersites, blackguard, squalidity, refuses her letters for him. That mind which thinks on what it cannot express, can scarcely think on him. An hyperbole for MEANNESS would be ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... time, there was a master and there was a maid. We will call the master by the first letter of the alphabet—Mr. A. And we will call the maid by ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... corner of the room, where the ivy from the ceiling nearly touched their heads. The small round table was produced; the saucer, with an arrow pencilled on its edge, was carefully placed upon the big sheet of paper which bore the letters of the alphabet and the words oui and non in the corners. The light behind them was half veiled by ivy; the rest of the old room lay in comparative darkness; through the half-opened door a lamp shone upon the oil-cloth in the hall, showing the stains and the worn, streaked patches where the boards ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... collection of books, among which I found Shakespeare, and read it at every moment I could spare from my domestic duties. These occupied a great part of my time; besides, I had to shew (sew) my sampler, working the alphabet from A to Z, as well as the ten ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... prepare himself in good time to resist the passions, and he will be capable of checking the vehemence of the most furious. Let us assume that Augustus, about to give orders for putting to death Fabius Maximus, acts, as is his wont, upon the advice a philosopher had given him, to recite the Greek alphabet before doing anything in the first heat of his anger: this reflexion will be capable of saving the life of Fabius and the glory of Augustus. But without some fortunate reflexion, which one owes sometimes to a special divine mercy, or without some skill acquired beforehand, like that of Augustus, ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... needless to Transcribe the Chinese Character, or to put their Alphabet into our Letters, because the Words would be both Unintelligible, and very hard to Pronounce; and therefore, to avoid hard Words, and Hyroglyphicks, I'll translate them ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... out his hands, he took the child from the mother's arms, kissed it full upon the lips, and added: "Men do not understand women, because men's minds have not been trained in the same school. When once a man has mastered the very alphabet of motherhood, then he shall have mastered the mind of woman; but I, at least, refuse to say that I do not understand, from the stand-point of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... discussed in this essay is translated from the so-called "Alphabet of Ben Sira," the edition used being Steinschneider's ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... in the doorways and on the pavement. There is a corner by the road crossing the main street which is the prettiest in east Surrey. Weatherbeaten, brick-and-timber cottages frame it: the Bell Inn, with its beams like letters of a big black alphabet, hangs out its gold bell; beyond, the road slopes to dim country greennesses and ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... amount of pollen is correlated with direct transportation by insects. Even in so simple a case as this it is not easy to see how this difference in the conveyance would reduce the quantity of pollen produced. It is, we know, in the very alphabet of Darwinism that if a male willow-tree should produce a smaller amount of pollen, and if this pollen communicated to the offspring of the female flowers it fertilized a similar tendency (as it might), this male progeny would secure whatever ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... given us two books—the book of all living beings, or Nature, and the Holy Scriptures. The first was given to man from the beginning when all things were created, for each living being is but a letter of the alphabet written by the finger of God, and the book is composed of them all together as a book is of letters ... man is the capital letter of this book. This book is not like the other, falsified and spoilt, but familiar and intelligible; ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... little books, made of this writing-paper, and filled with rude drawings, and with strange and apparently illegible characters, which, however, were at once seen to be the child's work. Upon closer inspection, the characters were found to consist of the printed alphabet; some of the letters being formed backwards, some sideways, and there being no spaces between the words. These writings were deciphered, not without much difficulty; and it then appeared that they consisted of regular verses, generally in explanation of a rude ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 400, November 21, 1829 • Various
... use of a parlour, ever appear to come to terms with these other people who live in a rural situation remarkable for its bracing atmosphere, within five minutes' walk of the Royal Exchange. Even those letters of the alphabet who are always running away from their friends and being entreated at the tops of columns to come back, never DO come back, if we may judge from the number of times they are asked to do it and don't. It really seems,' said Tom, relinquishing the paper with ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... story of the sampler, and so the teaching and practice of the canvas went constantly forward. The method was so simple, quite within the capacity of an alphabet-studying child. To make an A in cross-stitch was to create a link between the baby mind and the letter represented. There was no choice, no judgment or experience needed. The limit of every stitch was fixed by a cross thread, ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... batch of large good-natured looking policemen, whose function I cannot explain, but it was agreeable to see them again. There was no order or organisation of any kind to protect and annoy you. The authorities had thoughtfully painted the letters of the alphabet on the platform where the luggage was deposited, and you were supposed to find your own trunks in front of your own letter. I, full of German ideas still, waited a weary time near my letter. "You'll never get them ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... returned the other, "that it's a kind of universal spelling-book amongst us, and so it is—an alphabet aisily larned. Your health, now and under all circumstances! Teddy, or Thaddeus, I drink to your symmetry and inexplicable proportions; and I say for your comfort, my worthy distillator, that if you are not so refulgent in beauty as Venus, you are ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... still decline a Latin noun and repeat some of the old paradigms in the old meaningless way, because their rhythm sticks to me, I have never yet seen a Latin inscription on a tomb that I could translate throughout. Of Greek I can decipher perhaps the greater part of the Greek alphabet. In short, I am, as to classical education, another Shakespear. I can read French as easily as English; and under pressure of necessity I can turn to account some scraps of German and a little operatic Italian; but these I was never ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... vocabulary, and similar lists for classes three and four. (To make a list for class one would be but a waste of time.) Procure if you can for this purpose a loose-leaf notebook, and in the several lists reserve a full page for each letter of the alphabet as used initially. Do not scamp the lists, though their proper preparation consume many days, many weeks. Try to make them really exhaustive. Their value will be in proportion to their ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... the life of the land farmer because it gives obviously a mere hint of learning. It has been the boast of its advocates that it taught only the "three Rs." Its training for life is rudimentary only: it gives but an alphabet. The land farmer expected to live in his group. Secure in his own acres and believing himself "as good as anybody," he relied for his son and daughter not upon trained skill, but upon native abilities, ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... The Chinese alphabet was never intended to represent the sound of words. It was in its origin a hieroglyphic system, each word having its own graphic representative. Nor would it have been possible to write Chinese in any other way. Chinese is a monosyllabic language. No word ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... our fondlings in alphabetical order. The last was a S,—Swubble, I named him. This was a T,—Twist, I named him. The next one comes will be Unwin, and the next Vilkins. I have got names ready made to the end of the alphabet, and all the way through it again, when we come ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... command has gone forth over all the beauty and over all the art of the present world, crowded for time and crowded for space. "Telegraph!" To the nine Muses the order flies. One can hear it on every side. "Telegraph!" The result is symbolism, the Morse alphabet of art and "types," the epigrams of human nature, crowding us all into ten or twelve people. The epic is telescoped into the sonnet, and the sonnet is compressed into quatrains or Tabbs of poetry, ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... Mr. Orvel Bissell 'Mas' today; I raised him but I still call him Mas. Orvel. My young Missus was the one who taught me; she kept a school for us; we took it for a play school; when I was a little boy I knew the alphabet. ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... animated. The evening was confessedly a dull one, but matters appeared to brighten towards its close. The spirits were requested to spell the name by which I was known in the heavenly world. Our host commenced repeating the alphabet, and when he reached the letter 'P' a knock was heard. He began again, and the spirits knocked at the letter 'O.' I was puzzled, but waited for the end. The next letter knocked down was 'E.' I laughed, and remarked ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... communicated to all the company except Mr. Crabtree, who suffered by his loss of hearing, that cynic was soon after accosted by a lady, who, by means of an artificial alphabet, formed by a certain conjunction and disposition of the fingers, asked if he had heard any extraordinary news of late. Cadwallader, with his usual complaisance, replied, that he supposed she took him for a courier or spy, by teasing ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... colt-breaking. Gradually, as I watched him that night, the truth dawned on me: the man was trying to teach himself to read. The "Cardinal's Snuff-box"! and the only clue to the mystery, a fair knowledge of the alphabet learned away in a childish past. In truth, it takes a deal to "beat the Scots," or, what is even better, to make them ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... wouldn't believe that Hilary was doing his duty by them, though I assured him that he read them all the 'Ancient Mariner' yesterday morning while they watched him dress, and that I was teaching them the alphabet whenever I had a spare minute. But nothing would satisfy him; and off the two eldest must go to the Catholic school next week to be destroyed by the fog and to pick up with all ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... sputters of dots may, with a good lens, be discerned to proceed from this alphabet, and to stop at various points, or lose themselves in the texture, of the represented wood. And, knowing now something of the matter beforehand, guessing a little more, and gleaning the rest with my ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... eternity and omnipotence. He describes himself here in the very words which in the 4th verse are descriptive of the eternal subsistence of the person of the Father. "Alpha and Omega," the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, are explained in the words,—"the beginning and the ending." This language is not to be understood as expressing or defining the duration of the Godhead only; but it points also to the divine purpose and providence. To the same ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... bits of knowledge all we gained from those soldier friends. They taught us the alphabet, how to spell easy words, and then to form letters with pencil. They explained the meaning of fife and drum calls which we heard during the day, and in mischievous earnestness, declared that they, the best fighters of Colonel Stephenson's ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... primer of information about the invention of the alphabet and the history of bookmaking up to the invention of movable types. 62pp.; illustrated; ...
— The Uses of Italic - A Primer of Information Regarding the Origin and Uses of Italic Letters • Frederick W. Hamilton
... vivid dreams, in which they recall the impressions of their earliest infancy. So was it with the blind poet, Dr. Blacklock; and so also was it with Laura Bridgman, and it is a very interesting fact that she, being unable to speak, when asleep used the finger alphabet. This she did sometimes in a very confused manner, the irregularity of her finger-signs corresponding with that defective articulation which persons give utterance to, when they murmur and mutter indistinctly their dream-impressions. It was, be ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... to talk to, and then by his watching the forefinger of the writer, if across the room, or if near enough, by placing the hand of the writer carelessly on the shoulder of the party we desired to communicate with, the communication was written out in the telegraph alphabet or by taking hold of his hand and writing upon ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... nor Mrs. Coomber ever forgot that day. A new element was introduced into the lives of the fisherman's family. The little girl learned her first lesson in self-control, and Dick and Tom began to master the difficulties of the alphabet; for, when the net was finished, and Bob and his father waded out into the sea on their shrimping expedition, Tiny ran and fetched her pretty picture to show the boys, and then they all set to work with bits of stick to make the ...
— A Sailor's Lass • Emma Leslie
... into a sitting position, and with signs and gestures we endeavoured to explain what we wanted him to do. Neither of us understood the deaf and dumb alphabet, but the alphabet was hardly necessary. With much pantomimic action we described Leith, the Professor, and the two girls, and Kaipi enjoyed himself immensely by waving his knife in front of One Eye's face to ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... the premises, and at the angles formed with them by the slanting or by the perpendicular lines the middle term occurs. The schema of Figure IV. resembles Z, the last letter of the alphabet: this helps one to remember it in contrast with Figure I., which is thereby also remembered. Figures II. and III. seem ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... it prudent to side with the latter, and therefore, doubtless, considered it wise to suppress all evidence of Reuchlin's influence upon his beliefs. All the other editions of the Margarita in my possession are content with teaching, under the head of the Alphabet, that the Hebrew letters were invented by Adam. On Luther's view of the words "God said," see Farrar, Language and Languages. For a most valuable statement regarding the clashing opinions at the Reformation, see Max Muller, as above, lecture iv, p. 132. For ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... religious orders are able to master the native languages with so little difficulty that "it seems a gift from heaven." Chirino gives some account of these, illustrated with specimens of three—Tagalan, Harayan, and Visayan—with the alphabet used by the Filipinos. He also praises the politeness, in word and act, of the Tagalos, and gives them credit for much musical ability. A chapter is assigned to the native alphabet and mode of writing. All, women as well as men, write and read; and they have ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... day the cripple came to the sick man, and received his first lesson; and every day, at an appointed hour, he was in Mr. Croft's room, eager for the instruction he received. Quickly he mastered the alphabet, and as quickly learned to construct small words, preparatory to combining them in a ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... very few words of the children's language, and Kalliope, who acted as assistant mistress, did not know much English. But the laws of arithmetic, so the Queen felt, must be of universal application, two and two making four, by whatever names you called them. And the Alphabet must be a useful thing to learn whatever words you spell with it afterwards. So the Queen drew Arabic numerals on large sheets of paper and tried to impress on a giggling group of children that the figures corresponded in some way to little piles of pebbles which she ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... succeeded so well that before the "Sully" reached New York he had conceived "not merely the idea of an electric telegraph, but of an electro-magnetic and chemical recording telegraph, substantially and essentially as it now exists," and had invented an alphabet of signs, the same in all important respects as that now in use. "The testimony to the paternity of the idea in Morse's mind, and to his acts and drawings on board the ship, is ample. His own testimony is corroborated ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... work of Cyril and Methodius was not directly concerned with the Bulgarian conversion. In Pannonia and Moravia and Croatia they were the great missionaries to the Slavs. Cyril invented a Slavonic alphabet, and was able to preach to the Slavs everywhere in their own tongue; and in Serbia a flourishing Church sprang {125} up which retained the Slavonic rite. Early in the tenth century many Slavonian priests were ordained by the Bishop of Nona, himself a Slav ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... the word "law"; but in the land of science they are singularly fond of it. Thus they will call some interesting conjecture about how forgotten folks pronounced the alphabet, Grimm's Law. But Grimm's Law is far less intellectual than Grimm's Fairy Tales. The tales are, at any rate, certainly tales; while the law is not a law. A law implies that we know the nature of the generalisation and enactment; ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... the Middle Ages, which formed the basis of the legal system of the mediaeval Church, and which has largely influenced modern practice; the development of a language from which many modern tongues have been derived, and which has modified all western languages; and the perfection of an alphabet which has become the common property of all nations whose civilization has been derived from the Greek and Roman—these constitute the chief contributions of Rome ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... never applied himself to the study of letters, [Greek: grammata mathein], fearing the danger of falling into had company at school, he seems to mean only Greek letters, then the language of all the learned; for he must have learned at home the Egyptian alphabet. In the same manner we are to understand Evagrius and others, who relate, that a certain philosopher expressing his surprise how St. Antony could employ his time, being deprived of the pleasure of reading, the saint told him that the universe was his book. (Socr. l. 4, c. ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... arm and led him to a carriage in waiting. Then he took him to Pine street, and introduced him, in the most deferential manner, to the broker who held half of New York at his disposal, and knew the city as he knew his alphabet. ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... second letter of the alphabet. It is called a vocal labial consonant, which, no doubt, serves it ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott
... three distinct types of rays named after the first three letters of the Greek alphabet—Alpha, Beta, Gamma—besides a gas emanation as does thorium which is a powerfully radio-active substance. The Alpha rays constitute ninety-nine per cent, of all the rays and consist of positively ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... a good child, who, according to his mother, displayed remarkable peculiarities from the very day of his birth. For instance, he had a great objection to going to bed at the proper hour; he would pore time untold over his picture-alphabet, and hold lengthy conversations with the red cock depicted upon its last page, imploring him to exert himself in the cause of his young family, and not allow the maid-servant to carry them off and roast them. Lastly, he would often run away from his playfellows, and ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... Stars, the Earth, the Trees, the Winds, the universal voice of Nature, tempest, and avalanche, the Sea's roar and the grave voice of the waterfall, the hoarse thunder and the low whisper of the brook, the song of birds, the voice of love, the speech of men, all are the alphabet in which it communicates itself to men, and informs them of the will and law of God, the Soul of the Universe. And thus most truly did "THE WORD BECOME ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... third letter of the alphabet. It is also used in music, especially by prima donnas who try to reach it ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott
... he will sacrifice to Cybele or Isis, he will be pardoned—if not, the tiger has him. At least, so I suppose; but the trial will decide. We talk while the urn's still empty. And the Greek may yet escape the deadly Theta of his own alphabet. But enough of this gloomy subject. How ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... blind man with a knotted twig, and a piece of string which he wound round the twig according to some cipher of his own. He could, after the lapse of days or hours, repeat the sentence which he had reeled up. He had reduced the alphabet to eleven primitive sounds, and tried to teach me his method, ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... part of the body. By prefixing different letters of the alphabet I may be changed into a fruit, a period of time, an animal, a term of affection, wearing apparel, a sign of emotion, anxiety, or verbs signifying to approach, to attend, to raise up, to wither, and to waste gradually. What am I? and what are ...
— Harper's Young People, August 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... numbers are to be thrown or hit. Why? Because you must turn your ill luck in love to advantage: and those from whom it comes are the two beautiful Ortlieb Es, as Nuremberg folk call the ladies Els and Eva. That makes the two. But E is the fifth letter in the alphabet, so I should choose the five. If Biberli did not put ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... their physical needs, yet the primary and fundamental result of the gospel is to develop man himself, not merely to relieve his want on an occasion. It does that as a matter of course, but that is scarcely the first letter of the alphabet. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things [food and raiment] shall be added unto you." The way to relieve a man is to develop him so that he will need no relief, or to raise higher and higher the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... be in need of nothing. Well, this, too, is indeed a sure sign that they despise both their office and the souls of the people, yea, even God and His Word. They do not have to fall, they are already fallen all too horribly, they would need to become children, and begin to learn their alphabet, which they imagine that they ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... eyes. Now where the blue hell am I bringing her beyond the veil? Into the ineluctable modality of the ineluctable visuality. She, she, she. What she? The virgin at Hodges Figgis' window on Monday looking in for one of the alphabet books you were going to write. Keen glance you gave her. Wrist through the braided jesse of her sunshade. She lives in Leeson park with a grief and kickshaws, a lady of letters. Talk that to someone else, Stevie: a pickmeup. Bet she wears those curse of God stays ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Charles wished to prosecute the five members for treason, a bill against them should have been sent to a grand jury. That a commoner cannot be tried for high treason by the Lords at the suit of the Crown, is part of the very alphabet of our law. That no man can be arrested by the King in person is equally clear. This was an established maxim of our jurisprudence even in the time of Edward the Fourth. "A subject," said Chief Justice Markham ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... he was accounted dull and even stupid. He would not, or could not, learn his letters until, in his seventh year, his eye was caught by the illuminated capitals in an old music folio. From these his mother taught him the alphabet, and a little later he learned to read from a black-letter Bible. "Paint me an angel with wings and a trumpet," he answered, when asked what device he would choose for the little earthenware bowl that had been promised him as a gift.[4] Colston's Hospital, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... with Eriksen! He understands the deaf-and-dumb alphabet!" they shouted. The stranger shrugged his ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... in writing sentences, since it was not always possible to get a consistent answer to the question as to what part of a sentence constitutes a single word, and time was too limited for any extensive language study. The following alphabet has been ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... out, And point to every corner of the sky, And say, "Thy feet shall follow in the trail Of every tribe; and thou shalt pitch thy tent Wherever thou shalt see a human face Which hath thereon the alphabet of life; Yea, thou shalt spell it out e'en as a child: And therein ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... has declared his intention to become a circus-rider, and Talbot, who has not so soaring an ambition, has resolved to be a policeman, it is likely the world will hear of them before long. In the mean time, and with a view to the severe duties of the professions selected, they are learning the alphabet, Charley vaulting over the hard letters with an agility which promises well for his career as circus-rider, and Talbot collaring the slippery S's and pursuing the suspicious X Y Z's with the promptness and boldness of ...
— The Little Violinist • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... which it shone and disappeared, he came to the conclusion that it was caused by signallers endeavouring to open communications. The flashes were watched, and were found to be in accordance with the Morse alphabet; and the joyful news was spread that their friends ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... Niebuhr, Grotefend, and Lassen, had made some guesses at the meaning of the cuneiform letters; but Major Rawlinson of the East India Company's service, after years of labor, has at last accomplished the glorious achievement of fully revealing the alphabet and the grammar of this long unknown tongue. He has, in particular, fully deciphered and expounded the inscription on the sacred rock of Behistun, on the western frontiers of Media. These records of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... temperaments—the bile, the atrabile, phlegm, and blood—are represented in the Arabian system of physics by the four elements, which are considered to be connected with them; the figures refer to the numerical power of the abjad, or alphabet; and the enigma itself has been attributed, though on uncertain grounds, to Ali, the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... there seemed to be a spark of almost extinguished fire feebly glimmering in the bottom of his soul; and as the squire hinted at a sly story of the parson and a pretty milkmaid whom they once met on the banks of the Isis, the old gentleman made an "alphabet of faces," which, as far as I could decipher his physiognomy, I verily believe was indicative of laughter; indeed, I have rarely met with an old gentleman that took absolute offence at the imputed gallantries of ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... children came to Sinai, they accepted thee, and they honored thee. And now, on the day of their distress, thou standest up against them?" Hearing this, the Torah stepped aside, and did not testify. "Let the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet in which Torah is written come and testify against Israel," said God. They appeared without delay, and Alef, the first letter, was about to testify against Israel, when Abraham interrupted it with the words: "Thou chief of all letters, thou comest to testify against Israel in the time ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... hour, ye suitors learn I pray, Is not each time the clock strikes through the day, In Cupid's alphabet I think I've read, Old Time, by lovers, likes not to be led; And since so closely he pursues his plan, 'Tis right to seize him, often as you can. Delays are dangerous, in love or war, And Nicaise is a proof they ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... learne thy thought: In thy dumb action, will I be as perfect As begging Hermits in their holy prayers. Thou shalt not sighe nor hold thy stumps to heauen, Nor winke, nor nod, nor kneele, nor make a signe; But I (of these) will wrest an Alphabet, And by still practice, learne to know ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... twelve. It may even have been that specific rumors of the signs, symbols, and hieroglyphics used in educational institutions had reached him in the obscurity of his cranberry meadows. At all events, when confronted by the alphabet chart, whose huge black capitals were intended to capture the wandering eyes of the infant class, Alcestis exhibited unusual, almost unnatural, excitement. "That is 'A,' my boy," said the teacher genially, as she pointed to the first character ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the opening chapter, on self-confidence, and again lay its precepts to heart. Learn by rules to speak without thinking of rules. It is not—or ought not to be—necessary for you to stop to think how to say the alphabet correctly, as a matter of fact it is slightly more difficult for you to repeat Z, Y, X than it is to say X, Y, Z—habit has established the order. Just so you must master the laws of efficiency in speaking until it is a second ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... chemical combinations, and thus collected upward of 8000 different crystals of various chemical combinations, discovering several hundred different substances which would fluoresce to the X-ray. So far little had come of X-ray work, but it added another letter to the scientific alphabet. I don't know any thing about radium, and I have lots of company." The Electrical Engineer of June 3, 1896, contains a photograph of Mr. Edison taken by the light of one of his fluorescent lamps. The same ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... is, or what the job, he finds something of interest because he goes upon the theory that every minute is meant to be lived. Maroon him at a cross-roads, with five hours until train time, and he'd have the operator's first name in ten minutes and be learning the Morse alphabet, after which he would rush up to his new friend's house to see the babies or to pass judgment on a Holstein calf or ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... full of original power. Through reading, lecturing, and experimenting, he had become thoroughly familiar with electrical science: he saw where light was needed and expansion possible. The phenomena of ordinary electric induction belonged, as it were, to the alphabet of his knowledge: he knew that under ordinary circumstances the presence of an electrified body was sufficient to excite, by induction, an unelectrified body. He knew that the wire which carried an electric current was an electrified body, and still that all attempts had failed to make it excite ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... where they will be taught cooking, dress-making, laundry work, house-keeping economy, and for those who wish it, office work. It will require some training even to pronounce the name of this new institution, which requires something more than the number of letters in the alphabet to spell it, for it has this ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... Latin Grammar till we knew every word of it by heart, but we did scarcely any retranslation from English into Latin. Much of our time was wasted on the merest trifles, such as learning to write, for example, like copperplate, and, still more extraordinary, in copying the letters of the alphabet as they are ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... deeper and deeper, and his liking and respect for his young subordinate increased rapidly. Finally the ranger was given his first lesson in radio-telegraphy. While Lew was writing down for him the wireless alphabet, Charley was showing him how to make the letters on the spark-gap. Before they turned in for the night, the ranger had learned to distinguish the difference between the sound of a dot and of a dash as the signals buzzed in ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... no longing was ever more firmly planted in the human heart, than that of discovering some short cut to the high road of mental acquirement. The toilsome learner's "Progress" through the barren outset of the alphabet; the slough of despond of seven syllables, endangered as they both are by the frequent appearance of the compulsive birch of the Mr. Worldly-wisemen who teach the young idea how to shoot, must ever be looked upon as a probation, the power of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 20, 1841 • Various
... it wasn't a Z; then she tried a Y; then an X; then a W, and went so backwards through almost the whole alphabet. ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... but his literary acquirements were of a very low order, for upon becoming prime minister he could neither read nor write. Finding great inconvenience from his incapacity in these respects, he applied himself diligently to his alphabet, and was soon able to carry on all official correspondence of any importance to himself. The whole of the political, fiscal, and judicial communications are submitted to him, and the departments controlled ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... Biblical influence, they would not illustrate what we are trying to discover. So we come, without apology to the unnamed, to the twelve, without whom English literature would be different. This is the list in the order of the alphabet: Matthew Arnold, Robert Browning (Mrs. Browning being grouped as one with him), Carlyle, Dickens, George Eliot, Charles Kingsley, Macaulay, Ruskin, Robert Louis Stevenson, Swinburne, ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... together with the Benedicite, Gratias, Ave Maria, Psalms, and other matter, were taught also in the Latin schools, where probably Luther, too, learned them. In the Instruction for Visitors, Melanchthon still mentions "der Kinder Handbuechlein, darin das Alphabet, Vaterunser, Glaub' und andere Gebet' innen stehen—Manual for Children, containing the alphabet, the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and other prayers," as the first schoolbook. (W. 26, 237.) After the invention of printing, chart-impressions with pictures illustrating the Creed, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... 43., and No. 7. p. 104.)—I beg to state my own mode, than which I know of none better. I have several books, viz., for History, Topography, Personal and Family History, Ecclesiastical Affairs, Heraldry, Adversaria. At the end of each volume is an alphabet, with six columns, one for each vowel; in one or other of which the word is entered according to the vowel which first appears in it, with a reference to the page. Thus, bray would come under B.a; church under C.u.; and ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 26. Saturday, April 27, 1850 • Various
... always look at these sort of things from every point of view. Start with a conviction of the man's guilt, and you'll go hunting up evidence to bolster that conviction. My plan is to begin at the beginning; learn the alphabet of the case, and work up ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... It will seem pale as compared with that of Hanover of last year; but I want to be present at it, considering my unvarying interest in the work undertaken by the late Brendel and bravely continued by Riedel and Gille. After having said A, and even B and C, I ought to go through the whole alphabet. ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... death. Nevertheless, he belonged in a manner to the inner circle of the "Punch set," and frequented the taverns that were their clubs; and he even went in double harness with Mark Lemon as co-editor, vice "Alphabet" Bayley, of "The Bude Light"—an English imitation of "Les Guepes." He was, in fact, a man of some celebrity who had already gained public reputation beyond the band of men, brilliant, no doubt, but, for the most ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... Amedee recalled the pleasant reading-lessons that the eldest of the Gerards had given him—that good Louise, so wise and serious and only ten years old, pointing out his letters to him in a picture alphabet with a knitting-needle, always so patient and kind. The child was overcome at the very first with a disgust for school, and gazed through the window which lighted the room at the noiselessly moving, large, indented leaves ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... listened with eagerness to the stories which Sister Frances read, or watched with interest the progress of her work; soon she longed to imitate what she saw done with so much pleasure, and begged to be taught to work and read. By degrees she learned her alphabet, and could soon, to the amazement of her schoolfellows, read the names of all the animals in Sister Frances' picture-book. No matter how trifling the thing done, or the knowledge acquired, a great point is gained by giving the desire for employment. Children frequently become industrious ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... time scarcely sufficient to give them a relish for learning, and far inadequate to wide and profound researches. As soon as a young man has closed this period of study, and while he is at the beginning of the alphabet of science, he must betake himself to a profession, he must hurry through a few books,—which, by the way, are rarely original works, but compilations and abridgments,—and then must enter upon practice, and get ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... four psalters. The framer of the catalogue then passes to the opposite end of the room, and, beginning with the top shelf (suprema theca opposita), enumerates 37 volumes. Next, he deals with the rest of the books, which, he tells us, were in other shelves, marked with the letters of the alphabet (in aliis thecis distinctis per alphabetum). If I understand the catalogue correctly, there were eleven of these divisions, each containing an average of about 25 volumes. The total number of volumes in ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... are not of the antiquity which generally renders the few specimens we have of alphabet bells so peculiarly interesting, but probably they were copied from the bells in the more ancient tower. No. 3. has in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various
... pronunciation, the Protestants gave countenance to the new. Gardiner employed the authority of the king and council to suppress innovations in this particular, and to preserve the corrupt sound of the Greek alphabet. So little liberty was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... which had evidently been plucked from a tea-plant in China, since the forms and figures were all suggested by the flowery kingdom. The lids of the vessels were shaped like tea-leaves; and miniature China men and women picked their way about among the letters of the Chinese alphabet, as if they were playing at word-puzzles. Nicholas admired the service to its owner's content, establishing thus a new bond of sympathy between them; and both were soon seated near the table, sipping the tea with demure ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... European children so far as they have been tried, but they have not been put to abstract reasoning. Their perceptive powers are large, as they are much exercised in procuring food, etc. Anything requiring perception only is readily mastered, the alphabet will be known in a few lessons; figures are soon recognised, and the quantities they represent, but addition from figures alone always presents difficulties for a while, but in a little ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... knew he would come, without wishing to hurry him. He had the world beyond the hills; I this one, where a slow full river flowed from the sounding mill under our garden wall, through long meadows. In Winter the wild ducks made letters of the alphabet flying. On the other side of the copses bounding our home, there was a park containing trees old as the History of England, John Thresher said, and the thought of their venerable age enclosed me comfortably. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... notes, which arrived in an ordinary stamped envelope, should not be accompanied by any letter of advice, and suspicion attached to Madame Derues, who hitherto had remained unnoticed. An inquiry as to where the packet had been posted soon revealed the office, distinguished by a letter of the alphabet, and the postmaster described a servant-maid who had brought the letter and paid for it. The description resembled the Derues' servant; and this girl, much alarmed, acknowledged, after a great deal ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... it isn't easy to be kind," she answered, "when you don't stand for much else in the universe but a letter of the alphabet." She turned back to her grate and commenced sweeping ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... River. There is an averted strangulation of a baby and for the second time in a Saltus opus a dying millionaire leaves his fortune to the St. Nicholas Hospital. Was Saltus ballyhooing for this institution? The hero is a modern Don Juan. Alphabet Jones appears occasionally, as he does in many of the other novels. This Balzacian trick obsessed the author for a time. The book is dedicated to John S. Rutherford and bears as a motto on its title page this quotation from Rabusson: "Pourquoi la mort? ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... these ovens and with sweet dough to bake in them. For five cents the boys and girls can get the use of an oven, and dough enough to bake little cakes. They often make cakes shaped like animals. The peddler makes the letters of the alphabet in dough. Then he bakes them in the oven for the boys and girls. With these cake letters they often learn ...
— Big People and Little People of Other Lands • Edward R. Shaw
... be the most difficult language to learn in our day; but the ancient cuneiform was certainly quite as complicated as Chinese. The cuneiform had no real alphabet, only 'signs.' There were five hundred simple signs, and nearly as many compound signs, so that the student had to begin with a thousand different signs to memorize. Yes, boys had their ...
— The Bible in its Making - The most Wonderful Book in the World • Mildred Duff
... in her face, "I am glad to see you Billy wants you sadly for he has learned his lesson." Then out came the little boy. "How do, Doody Two-Shoes," says he, not able to speak plain. Yet this little boy had learned all his letters; for she threw down this alphabet mixed together thus: ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... idle, careless little Prince; he laughed at everything that happened, morning, noon, and night; he played tricks on all his Professors instead of learning his lessons, and he could not keep grave long enough even to say the alphabet. He was so determined to look on the bright side of everything, that when people were angry with him he thought it was only their way of being amusing; and when they tried to punish him, he found it such ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... Welland called after him, "we'll do the Chiverses and the Dallases"; and he perceived that she was going through their two families alphabetically, and that they were only in the first quarter of the alphabet. ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... for?—to humour the arrogance of the proud,—to pamper the appetite of the full,—to tighten the grip of the iron hand of power;—and though it be sometimes for better ends, yet the soldier cannot choose what letters of the alphabet of obedience he will learn. Politics was the very shaking of the government sieve, where if there were any solid result it was accompanied with a very great flying about of chaff indeed. Society was nothing but whip syllabub,—a mere conglomeration of bubbles,—as ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... gayly responded, "what's spellin', anyway? Just alphabet lettuhs fixed like some man chose to fix 'em befo' you an' me were bawn. An' so I say such a man's had his notions more'n long enough, and it's high time we-all took a whirl at ...
— How Doth the Simple Spelling Bee • Owen Wister
... had been taught a number of tricks. We could sneeze and cough, and be dead dogs, and say our prayers, and stand on our heads, and mount a ladder and say the alphabet,—this was the hardest of all, and it took Miss Laura a long time to teach us. We never began till a book was laid before us. Then we stared at it, and Miss Laura said, "Begin, ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... proceeded Grandfather, "our chair was bequeathed to Mr. Ezekiel Cheever, a famous schoolmaster in Boston. This old gentleman came from London in 1637, and had been teaching school ever since; so that there were now aged men, grandfathers like myself, to whom Master Cheever had taught their alphabet. He was a person of venerable aspect, and ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... they correspond by signs; they have a simpler alphabet than that of the deaf and dumb, for each idea that they may require to express for ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... dear sir, credit is the first letter in the alphabet of contemporary finance. Send some ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... no reflection upon your abilities," she explained, hurriedly. "I know all that you have done in London and in Edinburgh, and these German places. You can tack more than half the letters of the alphabet after your name if you choose to. But I don't quite see what you are doing in ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... that the soul has the same uncertainty about the alphabet of things, and sometimes and in some cases is firmly fixed by the truth in each particular, and then, again, in other cases is altogether at sea; having somehow or other a correct notion of combinations; but when the elements ...
— Statesman • Plato
... ground up in the school-teaching machine than in any other way. Go on! The girl who taught me my alphabet in the little red school-house in Harrison County earned her salary, I can tell you. She was seventeen ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... them. Fools! are there no words made of letters that would sound as well as Charles Stewart, with that magic title beside them? Why, the word King is like a lighted lamp, that throws the same bright gilding upon any combination of the alphabet, and yet you must shed your blood for a name! But thou, for thy part, shalt have no wrong from me. Here is an order, well warranted, to clear the Lodge at Woodstock, and abandon it to thy master's keeping, or those whom he shall appoint. He will have ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... several amendments were moved and adopted, but its main features were preserved, and the bill finally passed both houses with triumphant majorities. In the whole, twenty-one new clauses were added to the bill, which were distinguished by the letters of the alphabet; and Sheridan humourously suggested that three other clauses should be affixed, in order, as he observed, "to complete the horn-book of the present ministry;" The minority in the lords, in a protest, branded the bill as a measure ineffectual in its provisions, unconstitutional ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... answer is, Don't we all change as we grow to know one another? What were just features, what just dingily represented one, as it were, is forgotten, or rather gets remembered. Of course, the first glimpse is the landscape under lightning as it were. But afterwards isn't it surely like the alphabet to a child; what was first a queer angular scrawl becomes A, and is always ever after A, undistinguished, half-forgotten, yet standing at last for goodness knows what real wonderful things—or for just the dry bones of soulless words? Is ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... hands set to and quickly cleared away the tea-things, and the ladies and their good brother brought out the spelling and copy books and slates, &c., and commenced with their new and green pupils. We had, by stratagem, learned the alphabet while in slavery, but not the writing characters; and, as we had been such a time learning so little, we at first felt that it was a waste of time for any one at our ages to undertake to learn to read and write. But, as the ladies were so anxious that we should learn, and so willing to ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft
... symbolic wisdom cannot be acquired, without much studious application, how preposterous would it be to place, among its disciples, one who had lived to adult years, without having known the necessity or felt the ambition for a knowledge of the alphabet of his mother tongue? Such a man could make no advancement in the art of Masonry; and while he would confer no substantial advantage on the institution, he would, by his manifest incapacity and ignorance, detract, in the eyes of strangers, from ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... each circle of the alphabet absolutely blocks the preceding one, but, when the entire deal is complete, the removal of cards from the alphabet releases those on the circles beneath, which ...
— Lady Cadogan's Illustrated Games of Solitaire or Patience - New Revised Edition, including American Games • Adelaide Cadogan
... Congress by the President on April 3, 1798. In the original the names of the French officials concerned were written at full length in the Department cipher. In making a copy for Congress, Secretary Pickering substituted for the names the terminal letters of the alphabet, and hence the report has passed into history ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... incomprehensible. Consider the possibilities of combination also of the enormously varied disclosures of patents. Calculations of the possible combinations and permutations of a small number of objects are familiar. Different combinations of the letters of the alphabet are sufficient to record the sum of human knowledge in many languages. With substantially two octaves of the diatonic scale the world's melodies have been sounded, nor do any doubt that our successors will thrill to airs that we have never heard. ...
— The Classification of Patents • United States Patent Office
... seemed very far away—so far, that I have covenanted with myself to learn the alphabet of music. Tom Bodkin had promised to present me with a musical instrument called a dulcimer—I persist in thinking that this is a species of guitar, although I am assured that it is a number of small metal plates which are struck with sticks, and I confess that this description of its function ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... stock), yet, in the way of encroachment, from the influence, both political and religious, acquired by its immediate neighbours, the Batta tongue appears to have experienced less change than any other. For a specimen of its words, its alphabet, and the rules by which the sound of its letters is modified and governed, the reader is referred to the Table and Plate above. It is remarkable that the proportion of the people who are able to read and write is much greater than of those who do not; a qualification seldom observed in such uncivilized ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... flew over the road and the hills, and Pellicanus cried: "Look there! They always fly in two straight lines, and form a letter of the alphabet. This time it is an A. Can you see it? When the Lord was writing the laws on the tablets, a flock of wild geese flew across Mt. Sinai, and in doing so, one effaced a letter with its wing. Since that time, they always ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... little bare hill back of the camp, and two of the other fellows were to hike over to another about a mile or so away. Then they would exchange sentences by means of the signal flag, waved up and down and every which way, according to the alphabet used in the U. S. Signal Corps. And to-night the result was to be ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter |
