"Callow" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with Cuchulain, [6]to drive him off from them on the ford[6] [7]at the early morning-hour[7] [8]on the morrow,[8] for that the men of Erin had failed her [9]to go and do battle with him.[9] "Ill would it befit me," quoth Fergus, "to fight with a callow young lad without any beard, and mine own disciple, [10]the fosterling of Ulster,[10] [11]the foster-child that sat on Conchobar's knee, the lad from Craeb Ruad ('Red Branch')."[11] Howbeit Medb [W.2861.] murmured sore that Fergus foreswore her ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... rest of it—she had a desperate time. I gather he was pretty high in favour with the old Court. Then when the Bolsheviks started he went over to them, like plenty of other grandees, and now he's one of their chief brains—none of your callow revolutionaries, but a man of the world, a kind of genius, she says, who can hold his own anywhere. She believes him to be in this country, and only waiting the right moment to turn up. Oh, it sounds ridiculous, I know, in Britain in the twentieth century, but ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... grandee; his eyes were large, dark and languishing; his complexion was a pale olive; while his moustache, black and exquisitely pencilled, was a sign of itself of towering superiority above the rest of us callow youths. That alone would ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... the use of ONE COLOR. Ten Facsimiles of Original Studies in Sepia by J. CALLOW, and numerous Illustrations in pencil. With full Instructions in easy language. 4to, cloth elegant, ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... the instruction of others, leaving none for his own purposes. He would take callow youths to his chambers and teach them ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... drawing. My first master in this line was M. Barbier, the father of Jules Barbier, the poet and librettist, who, with Emile Augier, was a class-mate of my young brothers. I did watercolours too, under an Englishman, William Callow, and oils in Gudin's studio. But my real master, who taught me to draw, and led and guided me, and gave me my taste for things artistic, was Ary Scheffer, with whom I remained on terms of the ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... Henry so amiable. In fact he seemed hard put to it to keep from unrestrained merriment, and Tom, who found the affair more alarming as it progressed, would have preferred avoiding him altogether. He knew that Henry was calling him callow, a lightweight, charges well-nigh proved by his present undertaking, and to save himself from rout he had to remember that Henry was a heavy Grave man and that his own participation was only a question of common courtesy ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... second cigarette when he caught sight of the plush-framed photograph. He stared till his match went out, and rising, crossed the room. As he scrutinized the likeness of his callow self, he gave way to laughter, his first spontaneous expression of feeling since he entered ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... was fixed, with increasing fondness, upon the Red House. There lay the callow brood marked out by Nature and man, for her ministrations. With infinite adroitness, Miss Temperley questioned her sister-in-law, by inference and suggestion, about the affairs of the household. Hadria evaded the attempt, ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... interest grave; that Indian Prince Will alternate swell and wince as they struggle; The young Scottish Knight BALFOUR (who looks callow more than dour) Hopes the Silver Knight may score, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... is clear on that point," said Frank. "It's the only way we can get even with them for the deprecating, contemptuous way in which they will allude to us over their snuff and tea, as callow and flighty youth, if indeed they deign to remember us at all, ...
— The Old Folks' Party - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... the son was worse, for he asked questions without number and when at last I was reduced to silence, lectured me about shooting. Yes, this callow youth who was at Sandhurst, instructed me, Allan Quatermain, how to kill elephants, he who had never seen an elephant except when he fed it with buns at the Zoo. At last Mr. Smith, who to Scroope's great amusement had taken the end of the table and assumed the position ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... be dropped into them. It is utterly absurd (and I am afraid the members of parliament in question are quite aware they are talking nonsense) to argue from the contented squawks of a brood of these callow creatures, that full grown swallows and larks have no need of wings, and are always happiest when their ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... forest glade. He saw it all! No longer could the spear be counted as the thing with which to do most grievous hurt at a safe distance from whatever might be dangerous. With the better bow and straighter shaft the marksmanship improved; even for these two callow archers it was not difficult to hit at a distance of a double spear's cast the bole of the huge tree, two yards in width at least. And the arrow whistled as if it were a living thing, a hawk seeking its prey, and the flint head was buried so deeply in the wood that both Mok and Ab knew that ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... movement which gave her a more virginal suggestion than her unmarried sister. For Miss Kate, from her earliest youth, had been distinguished by that matronly sedateness of voice and step, and completeness of figure, which indicates some members of the gallinaceous tribe from their callow infancy. ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... was as easy as that to Miranda Brown. She wanted a simple little Callot frock which would cost ninety pounds, and Callow Girl was obviously marked out to ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... latter, who was a daughter of Antoninus Pius, seeing that her husband had fallen ill, and expecting that he might die at any moment, was afraid that the imperial office might revert to some outsider and she be left in private life; for Commodus was both young and rather callow, besides. So she secretly induced Cassius to make preparations to the end that if anything should happen to Antoninus he might take both her and the sovereignty. [Sidenote:—23—] Now while he was in this frame of mind, a message came that Marcus was dead (in such circumstances ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... and I are not fully agreed on all of life's themes, so existence for us never resolves itself into a dull, neutral gray. He is a Baptist and I am a Vegetarian. Occasionally he refers to me as "callow," and we have daily resorts to logic to prove prejudices, and history is searched to bolster the preconceived, but on the following important points we stand together, solid ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... get married they lose their sentimentality. Are you the proving exception? My acquaintance with Chicago masculinity is confined to the office, the Methodist Church, and the boarding-house. The office force is all married but the office boy. The Methodist congregation is composed of women, callow youths and bald heads of families. Women are counted out, of necessity. I am beyond callow youths, and not advanced to heads of families. Why, I haven't a chance to fall in love,—worse luck, too, for I need the experience ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... party, or anything else that men hold dear. Heavens! to think of being held in such bondage! I could stand it with more patience if I were in prison sharing the hard lines of the fellows. But to be here; to be hand in glove with these boasting, audacious coxcombs, and forced to listen to their callow banter of us and our army, it makes me feel like a sneak and a traitor, and I'm glad ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... impression on him as he strolled back to Redlands. It was not the first time he had tasted the dregs of former sectional hatred in incivility and discourtesy, but as it seldom came from his old personal antagonists—the soldiers—and was confined to the callow youth, previous non-combatants and politicians, he could afford to overlook it. He did not see Miss Sally ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... William Meanwell, Edward Callow, Esqrs., standing in a Row, fell all four at the same time, by an Ogle ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... without a shock, and now, upon a slight cloud of sadness, dost thou prepare to quit thy life, only to save thy anguish? If thou bear trifles so ill, how shalt thou endure the heavier frowns of fortune? Callow is the man who has never tasted of the cup of sorrow; and no man who has not suffered hardships is temperate in enjoying ease. Wilt thou, who shouldst have been a pillar of courage, show a sign of a palsied spirit? Born of a brave sire, wilt thou ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... anxious to be interviewed, the second when people are anxious to interview them. With some there thus arrives a third period, in which they are anxious not to be interviewed, but this is rare. Doubtless there are superior persons who never craved for fame even in their callow youth, and possibly Ouida herself may have taken to authorship as an elaborate means of diverting attention from herself. But the majority of mortals, being fools by edict of Puck and Carlyle, are pleased to fly through the lips of men. Even Tennyson, ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... Even deadly plants, and herbs of poisonous juice, Wild hunger seeks; and, to prolong our breath, We greedily devour our certain death: The soldier in th' assault of famine falls: And ghosts, not men, are watching on the walls. As callow birds— Whose mother's killed in seeking of the prey, Cry in their nest, and think her long away; And at each leaf that stirs, each blast of wind, Gape for the food, which they must never find: So cry ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... isolated act of deviltry and daring of the sharp-winged pirate of the sky, a sudden assertion of over-mastering energy and power, and a very slight offence compared with that of the crow when he carries off and devours his callow little cousins of ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... "When callow Blackstones soar too high, Quit common-sense, and reckless fly, Soon, Icarus-like, they headlong fall, And down ...
— Eli - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... world. Through heaven I roll my lucid moon along; I shed in hell o'er my pale people peace; On earth I, caring for the creatures, guard Each pregnant yellow wolf and fox-bitch sleek, And every feathered mother's callow brood, And all that love green haunts and loneliness. Of men, the chaste adore me, hanging crowns 10 Of poppies red to blackness, bell and stem, Upon my image at Athenai here; And this dead Youth, Asclepios bends above, Was dearest ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... 'llustrate my meanin',' resooms Cherokee, 'let me onbosom myse'f as to what happens a party back in Posey County, Injeanny. I'm plumb callow at the time, bein' only about the size an' valyoo of a pa'r of fives. but I'm plenty impressed by them events I'm about to recount, an' the mem'ry is fresh enough for yesterday. But to come flutterin' from my perch. Thar's a sport who makes his home- camp in that hamlet which fosters ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... bent, he marked, with ravenous eyes, Where wrapped in down the callow songsters lay; Then rushing, rudely seized the glittering prize. And bore it ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... inward pangs of laughter or despair he may have felt as he sat behind the old desk in Chase Hall and watched us file in, year after year! Callow, juvenile, ignorant, and cocksure—grotesquely confident of our own manly fulness of worldly savoir—an absurd rabble of youths, miserable flint-heads indeed for such a steel! We were the most unpromising of all material for the scholar's eye; comfortable, ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... Valley Coal Company,—that is, he was its necessary physiognomy,—but really the coal company was an incorporated private farm of the officers and friends of the A. and P.,—an immensely profitable farm. Lane in his callow youth did not know this fact; but he learned it after he had been in Torso a few weeks. He was quick to learn, a typical Beals man, thoroughly "efficient," one who could keep his eyes where they belonged, his tongue in his mouth, and his ears open. As he told Isabelle that Sunday afternoon, ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... and seventh heaven, and more so when, on inquiry from a bystander, I understood that the performance was taken from Mr TERRISS'S Adelphi Theatre, which I had heard was conspicuous for excellence in fierce combats, blood-curdling duels, and scenes in court. And I narrated to him how I too, when a callow and unfledged hobbardyhoy, had engaged in theatrical entertainments, and played such parts in native dramas as heroic giant-killers and tiger slayers, in which I was an "au fait" and "facile princeps," also in select scenes from SHAKSPEARE'S play of Macbeth in English and being correctly ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... who boasted before the duke that he would fight me. He is a big callow fellow, and it would be a ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... Mant's "Months" in our pocket. The good Bishop—who must have been an indefatigable bird-nester in his boyhood—though we answer for him that he never stole but one egg out of four, and left undisturbed the callow young—treats of those beauteous and wondrous structures in a style that might make Professor Rennie jealous, who has written like a Vitruvius on the architecture of birds. He expatiates with uncontrolled delight on the unwearied activity of the architects, who, without any apprenticeship to ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... weather White waves break tether, And whirled together At either hand, Like weeds uplifted, The tree-trunks rifted In spars are drifted, Like foam or sand, Past swamp and sallow And reed-beds callow, Through pool and shallow, To wind and lee, Till, no more tongue-tied, Full flood and young tide Roar down the rapids ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... over against a window in which there were strong iron bars. For a long time he lay there wondering where he could be and how he came to be in this unfamiliar place. There was a racking pain in his head, a weakness in his limbs that alarmed him. Once, in his callow days, he had been intoxicated. He recalled feeling pretty much the same as he felt now, the day after that ribald supper party at Maxim's. Moreover, he had a vague recollection of iron bars but no such bed ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... only secret upon which any secret society holds a caveat. Wisdom can not be corraled with gibberish and fettered in jargon. Knowledge is one thing—palaver another. The Greek-letter societies of our callow days still survive in bird's-eye, and next to these come the Elks, who take theirs with seltzer and a smile, as a rare good joke, save that brotherhood and good-fellowship are actually a saving salt which excuses much that would otherwise ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... He found the three other members of the little house-party—to wit: Mrs. Somerby-Miles, Lieutenant Forshay, and Mr. Robert Murdock—respectively, a silly, flirtatious, little gadfly of a widow; a callow, love-struck, lap-dog, young army officer, with a budding moustache and a full-blown idea of his own importance; and a dour Scotchman of middle age, with a passion for chess, a glowering scorn of frivolities, and a deep and abiding conviction that Scotland ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... such a reaction. Never before had a man's hand, even on her bare flesh, produced such thrill and excitement. Desperately, her common sense struggled with this new thing. She dismissed with annoyance the callow, schoolgirl thought that this was the way love finally came—in the door, unannounced, to take over a woman's heart and soul ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... not forget that it was in his very arms that Larcher had been killed, and he repeated: "If I had minded my own business, he might have been alive to this day." It occurred to him also that with his experience he was much more useful than the callow, ignorant boy, so that to risk his more valuable life to save the other's, from the point of view of the general good, was foolish rather than praiseworthy. But it appealed to his sense of irony to receive the honour which he was so little ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... that," returned the musician; "for with the callow poets of our day the way is for every one to write as he pleases and pilfer where he chooses, whether it be germane to the matter or not, and now-a-days there is no piece of silliness they can sing or write that is not set down to ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... his readers "the public will soon be hearing more of Madame Montez." They did. What they heard was something quite unexpected. This was that she had made a second experiment in matrimony, and that her choice had fallen on a Mr. George Heald, a callow lad of twenty, for whom a commission as Cornet in the Life Guards had ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... at the club and arrived at the theater rather late. The audience was brilliant; indeed, though I had been an ardent first-nighter for a year or two in my callow youth, I think I have never seen such a representation of fashion and genius in America, except at ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... remarkable cases given; one, the child who climbed upon my knee to amaze and upset me by her pessimistic remarks about life; the second, my little friend Nesta— that was her name and she is still on my visiting list—who revealed her callow mind striving to grasp an abstract idea—the idea of time apart from some visible or tangible object. Now these two were aged five years; but what shall we say of the child, the little girl-child who steps ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... Charming had never appeared, unless—Nora laughed aloud at the thought—he had disguised himself with a cleverness defying detection. With Reginald Hornby, a callow youth, the son of Miss Wickham's dearest friend, who occasionally made the briefest of duty visits; Mr. Wynne, the family solicitor, an elderly bachelor; and the doctor's assistant, a young person by the name of Gard, Nora's list of eligible men was complete. There had been a time ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... fifteen,' thought Sister Constance, as she drove up to the station in the omnibus with Cherry, who was too miserable and bewildered to cry now; not that she was afraid of either the Sister or the Sisterhood, but only because she had never left home in her life, and felt exactly like a callow nestling shoved out on the ground with ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this exaggerated tyranny, by reason of its evil effect upon his moral nature, we cannot but feel glad that it existed, to afford a piquant contrast to the life awaiting him. Had he passed through the callow dissipations of Eton and Oxford, like other young men of his age, he would assuredly have lacked much of that splendid, pent vigour with which he rushed headlong into London life. He was so young and so handsome and so strong, that can we wonder if all the women fell at his feet? 'The graces ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... the color of his hair, which, apparently not in full keeping with his years, was lightly sprinkled with gray. Yet his carriage was assuredly not that of middle age, and indeed, the total of his personality, neither young nor old, neither callow nor acerb, neither lightly unreserved nor too gravely severe, offered certain problems not capable of instant solution. A hurried observer might have guessed his age within ten years but might have been wrong upon either ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... worm! A foreigner must long to ask the consequential youths to "kindly excuse him while he continues to breathe"; for few strangers can sympathize with the contempt we English have, while still in callow youth, for everyone we don't know. But, let a newcomer blossom into an acquaintance, or mention a relative at Eton, and all is changed. The Winchester boys turn into the most ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... husband died I had but one child. I left her with her two adoring grandmothers and fled to New York. I was still as callow as a boarding-school girl, but my saving grace was that I knew I did not know anything, that I never would know enough to write about life until I had seen more of it than ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Edgar rejoined, with a laugh. "She's a lady I've a high opinion of; in fact, I'm a little afraid of her. Though I'm nearly as old as she is, she makes me feel callow. It's a sensation ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... by the quick, measured tramp of the soldiers, aroused a furtive enthusiasm. Old men, bearded and bent, men whom one would never suspect of having borne arms, straightened themselves, stood to attention, and saluted the swaying flag. Callow youths, hooligans, round-shouldered slouchers at the best, made shift to lift their heads and keep step. And the torrent caught the human flotsam of the pavement in its onward swirl. If Royson had not utilized that clear space lower down the street, it would have demanded ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... to be amused at the ebullitions of jealousy that rolled so ominously into the young hearts of the chums. "Black as thunderclouds were their faces," he said, "as they saw these sweet young ladies, whom they in their callow affections would already wholly monopolise, kissed by a dozen different gentlemen during ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... forsooth, herself no wider than before. It is not enough that we have edified her a pedestal and perform impossible rites in celebration of her altitude and distinction. It does not suffice that with never a smile we assure her that she is the superior sex—a whopper by the repetition whereof certain callow youth among us have incurred the divine vengeance of belief. It does not satisfy her that she is indubitably gifted with pulchritude and an unquestionable genius for its embellishing; that Nature has endowed her with a prodigious knack at accroachment, ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... generals, immoral panto boys in fleshtights and the nifty shimmy dancers, La Aurora and Karini, musical act, the hit of the century. I was hidden in cheap pink paper that smelt of rock oil. I was surrounded by the stale smut of clubmen, stories to disturb callow youth, ads for transparencies, truedup dice and bustpads, proprietary articles and why wear a truss with testimonial from ruptured gentleman. Useful hints ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... emerald, virid, virescent; immature, unripe; raw, untrained, callow, unsophisticated, awkward, inexperienced, unskilled, undisciplined, gullible; unseasoned; fresh, undecayed. Antonyms: sear, parched, seasoned, ripe, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... de bedrooms," said Spike, almost blushing. He felt like a boy reading his first attempts at original poetry to an established critic. What would this master cracksman, this polished wielder of the oxy-acetylene blow-pipe, this expert in toxicology, microscopy and physics think of his callow outpourings! ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... they without adventure. Sometimes he would be caught in the wake of a stickleback, and would reach the bottom spinning, or on his back. He was lucky to reach it at all. Sometimes a sunbeam's dazzling radiance would check him in mid-career, and his callow eyes would take an hour to recover. It was a month before his eyelids developed. Sometimes he would collide with others of his own kind, equally unskilled in steering, and sometimes a vague quiver in the water ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... meaning of a word or phrase; and the rabbins who told of a worm which shatters rocks no more thought of the writhing thunderbolts than the modern reader thinks of oyster-shells when he sees the word ostracism, or consciously breathes a prayer as he writes the phrase good bye. It is only in its callow infancy that the full force of a myth is felt, and its period of luxuriant development dates from the time when its physical significance is lost or obscured. It was because the Greek had forgotten that Zeus meant the bright sky, that he could make him king over an anthropomorphic Olympos. The ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... Nora, "and proud of it. Our green and callow days are over, and we have entered into the realm of the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... thought: it was the lad's nature to give and crave affection. Only—I was different. I had never really cared about a girl before, and my life had been singularly loveless. I had fought a lonely battle always. Once before, in college, we had both laid ourselves and our callow devotions at the feet of the same girl. Her name was Dorothy—I had forgotten the rest—but I remembered the sequel. In a spirit of quixotic youth I had relinquished my claim in favor of Richey and ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... she could say it backwards, never forgetting to cross her fingers before saying, "Until death do us part." The Proprietor drew the Stranger's attention to the group before the cage, a mischievous smile on his face as he looked over the half dozen of callow youths who are always in the train ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... the message now in her hand. In her soul sat burning impatience, in her heart contempt for the callow youth before her. Yet to that youth her attitude seemed to speak naught but deference for himself and ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... is the readiness with which the American newspaper tumbles to these frauds. The yellow press especially luxuriates in them; woodcuts the callow bedizened bride, the jaded game-worn groom; dilates upon the big money interchanged; glows over the tin-plate stars and imaginary garters and pinchbeck crowns; and keeping the pictorial paraphernalia in cold but not forgotten storage waits for the inevitable scandal, and ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... hazard. He perceived that he had misjudged the height of the hummock. Had the gaff been a foot longer he would have cleared the chasm. It occurred to him that he would break his back and merit the fate of his callow mistake. Then his toes caught the edge of the flat-topped hummock. His boots were of soft seal leather. He gripped the ice. And now he hung suspended and inert. The slender gaff bent under the prolonged strain of his weight and shook in response to a shiver of his arms. ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... the explanation. She could not imagine her companion's patronizing a callow young lieutenant, but this was not important. Admitting that a hint might have been intended for Millicent's benefit, Mrs. Chudleigh's boldness in laying claim to the man by suggesting that she had come out for his sake was puzzling. It was not in good taste, but although Mrs. ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... came into Wesson's face, the look of one who sees a miracle performed before his eyes. For years he had been using all the large stock of diplomacy at his command to induce callow youths to play picquet with him and here was this admirable young man, this pearl among young men, positively offering to teach him. It was too much happiness. What had he done to deserve this? He felt as a toil-worn ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... ingenuous lad, with the callow simplicity of a theological college still untouched, and had arrived on the preceding Monday at the Free Kirk manse with four cartloads of furniture and a maiden aunt. For three days he roamed from room to room in the excitement of householding, and made suggestions ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... wears too many braids, and puffs, and curls, and in the basement misses' ready-to-wear there's another who likes to break store rules about short-sleeved, lace-yoked lingerie waists. And one of the floor managers tells me that a young chap of that callow, semi-objectionable, high-school fraternity, flat-heeled shoe type has been persistently hanging around the desk of the pretty little bundle inspector at the veilings. We're trying to clear the store of that type. They call ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... half-opened ... an exquisite young creature. Alva was gawky and younger. She was callow and moulting, flat-footed and long-shanked. Her face was sallow and ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... valley. Laughing and scoffing, he strode into that hideous vapor; Just as he said he would do, just as he bantered and threatened, Ere they could fasten the door, Peter had gone and done it! Wasting his time over books, you see, had unsettled his reason— Soddened his callow young brain with semi-pubescent paresis, And his neglect of his chores hastened ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... passing, and after circling several times around Olla's head, alighted on her finger, which she held out for it to perch upon. It was a young wood-pigeon, which she had found in the grove, when a callow half-fledged thing, the old bird having been captured or killed by some juvenile depredators. Taking pity on its orphan state, Olla had adopted and made a pet of it: it was now perfectly tame, and would come readily at her call of 'Lai-evi', (little captive), ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... pure ambrosial food Might charm and cherish their expected brood. The potent wish in the productive hour Calls to its aid Imagination's power, O'er embryon throngs with mystic charm presides, And sex from sex the nascent world divides, 120 With soft affections warms the callow trains, And gives to laughing Love his nymphs and swains; Whose mingling virtues interweave at length The mother's beauty with ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... in the matter of his courtship: there were elements in it of romantic, abandoned passion, but likewise of shrewd, calculating selfishness. In his callow youth his relations to the other sex had been either childish, morbid, or immoral. During his earliest manhood he had appeared like one who desired the training rather than the substance of gallantry. As a Jacobin he sought such support as he could find in the good will of the women related ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... dropping into densest shade, now climbing out upon a bare spur of rock or lap of smooth lawn; the musical rain of a fountain in the green depths below; the hamlet and neighboring villas so lost to sight that the very birds might well doubt where to pierce the leafy canopy to find home, wife and callow nestlings; beyond, and round all, the half ring of quiet-colored, placid sea—the emerald sea, rough with white caps; the blue sea, sparkling in sunshine; the moonlit sea, silver-gleaming, but melancholy, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... whatever there was to arrange; and, after some charmingly spoken words of farewell from the gentle lady, we took our departure. Again the mummified negro hobbled before us, to open the gate,—followed by all his callow rabble of chickens. As we resumed our places in the carriage we could still hear the chippering of the creatures, pursuing after that ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... their health somewhere along the Upper Congo. My Aunt Georgiana had been a music teacher at the Boston Conservatory, somewhere back in the latter sixties. One summer, while visiting in the little village among the Green Mountains where her ancestors had dwelt for generations, she had kindled the callow fancy of the most idle and shiftless of all the village lads, and had conceived for this Howard Carpenter one of those extravagant passions which a handsome country boy of twenty-one sometimes inspires in an angular, ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... one of the Chesterton family does not contribute his morsel of pompous imbecility, or unfold his budget of obsolete and exploded prejudices, or add his mite of curious misinformation. That such painful exhibitions of callow and contracted bigotry should so frequently be made in a body claiming for itself the finest culture and the highest civilization in Christendom is certainly a most mortifying circumstance, and serves to show that narrow views and unstatesmanlike opinions ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... gravely shook his head. "At least," Henry amended, "they are gross exaggerations. Oh, I confess to you, my friend, that I am sick with love of her. Day and night I see nothing but her gracious image. I sigh and fret and fume like any callow lad of twenty. I suffer the tortures of the damned. And yet... and yet, I swear to you, Sully, that I will curb this passion though it kill me. I will stifle these fires, though they consume my soul to ashes. No ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... as an eagle, who, with pious care Was beating widely on the wing for prey, To her now silent eyrie does repair, And finds her callow infants ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... sinking sun, into undreamed islands, Fortunate, far in the West; Lure of the star, with speechless news o'er brimming, With language of darted light; Of the sea-glory of opening lids of Aurora, Ushering eyes of the dawn; Of the callow bird in the matin darkness calling, Chorus of drowsy charm; Of the wind, south-west, with whispering leaves illumined, Solemn gold of the woods; Of the intimate breeze of noon, deep-charged with a message, How near, at times, unto speech! Of the sea, that ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... isn't above reproach, Miss Van Osdel. But has it ever occurred to you that Young America has abandoned its sieve for a man of war? I met a callow junior from Harvard, the other day, and by way of making polite conversation, I asked him to suggest a clever subject for a debate. He promptly told me that at his eating club they had been discussing the origins ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... me that he will do it," I assured her. "Let's let the widower go his way. He talks about me; says I'm 'callow, that's it, just callow.' I don't mind being callow, as long as it's not catching. Look at the river, how it glistens now. We can almost see the shallows up by the stone cabin below the big cottonwood. The old tree ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... lady who reared these little birds from the nest; they would suck honey from her lips, and fly in and out of her chamber. Only think of seeing these callow fledglings! It is as if the winged thought could be domesticated, could learn to make its nest with us ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... cool hand on my forehead when I drew her down beside me. "The sun has darkened you to the color of a Blackfoot. You are thin, and there are too many wrinkles on your brow—put them away immediately. I wonder whether any one would recognize in you the fresh-faced and somewhat callow stripling with whom I talked about the Dominion that day on Starcross Moor. It is not so very long ago, and yet life has greatly changed and taught us much since then. You must not be vain about it, but I really think I ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... last regarded him at least as one who neglected his opportunities, but his great laugh at their callow jests and their advice to him was so frank and indifferent a thing that they found it singularly baffling. 'Twas indeed as if a man of ripe years and wisdom had laughed at them with good-nature, because he knew they could not understand the ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of 1841, revival meetings and conventions started up with increased activity, the fruits of which were of a most cheering character. At Nantucket, Garrison made a big catch in his anti-slavery net. It was Frederick Douglass, young, callow, and awkward, but with his splendid and inimitable gifts flashing through all as he, for the first time in his life, addressed an audience of white people. Garrison, with the instinct of leadership, saw at once the value of the runaway slave's oratorical possibilities in their relations to ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... connection being a statement that "Mr. D. D. Home frequently urged us to hold his hands and feet." But it none the less created a tremendous sensation, public attention being focused on the fact that an awkward, callow, country lad had successfully sustained the scrutiny of men of learning, intelligence, and high repute. No longer, it would seem, could there be doubt of the validity of his claims, and greater demands than ever were made on him. As before, he willingly responded, adding to his ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... the hours of springtime When the heart inclines to woo, And it's deemed all right for the callow wight To do what he wants ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... seats with the proper air of insupportable boredom. Scotty's first task was to take the measure of his new instructor. At the first glance he was conscious of a distinct sensation of disappointment. He had expected the stranger to be young and callow, but this man had grey hair and was apparently nearing middle age. His face, which was pale and showed signs of ill-health, was clearly cut and refined. His frame was well-built and wiry, and he had a pair of ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... no mistake. I am no callow, ardent youth. I am an elderly man, broken in health and body, and soon to die. I am a scientist and a philosopher. I, as all the generations of philosophers before me, know woman for what she is—her weaknesses, and meannesses, ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... universities—places whose conservative formalism is even dangerous to his originality, because they try to melt him along with all the other students and pour him into their one mold. It is distressing to think of all the sums now devoted to inducing callow, overdriven sophomores to compose forced essays and doggerel, by luring them on with the glitter of cash prizes. One shudders to think of all the fellowship money which is now being used to finance reluctant young dry-as-dusts while they are ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... write novels," retorted Marchmont, "that are neither indecent nor political, and expect 'em to succeed. Callow youth! Well, I must be off to the office. I've some copy up my sleeve, and if it's a go it'll give your book the biggest boom ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... to the eyes of strange women. The reason for this was well understood by those who knew him. The young man was an exceedingly sensitive human being. No doubt he had suffered more than any one knew from ill concealed ridicule, but he had been able to bear it with composure in his callow youth. Later nothing roused his anger like an attempt to ridicule him. No man who came in his way in after life was so quickly and completely floored as one George Forquer, who, in a moment of folly, had attempted to make light ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... details, is just that Jehovah brought Israel out of its fixed abode in Goshen, and trained it for mature national life by its varied desert experiences. As one of the prophets puts the same idea, 'I taught Ephraim to go,' where the figure of the parent bird training its callow fledglings for flight is exchanged for that of the nurse teaching a child to walk. While, then, the text primarily refers to the experience of the infant nation in the forty years' wanderings, it carries large truths about us all; and sets forth ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... jade right for being so callow. How long she's been hanging upon the fellow! Such a promenading! To fair and dance parading! Everywhere as first she must shine, He was treating her always with tarts and wine; She began to think herself something fine, And let ...
— Faust • Goethe
... stead was a blessed peacefulness. She watched lazily the visible details of forest life around about her. Her attention centered finally on a yellow-hammer, which was industriously boring the trunk of a dead chestnut. From the nest near-by, the callow young thrust naked heads, with bills gaping hungrily. Then, in a twinkling, birds and forest vanished, and she was standing on the mist-strewn steeps of Stone Mountain, and Zeke's arm was about her, and her hand ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... the country the lad becomes maudlin—a callow lover of nature—and makes feeble attempts at verse. Returning to the city he melts and unbosoms—the tender shaft of the unknowable Eros has penetrated to his heart—Nature's subtle spell is on him, to disappear and reappear. Then follow discussions, ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... convictions. His friends seemed to look upon them, so far as they differed from their own, as a mere veneer, which would scale off in time, as had the multiplied coats of whitewash over the pencil drawing made on the school-house wall in his callow youth. ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... This callow politician delighted in interrupting public speakers, and at last Lincoln determined to squelch him. One night while addressing a large meeting at Springfield, the fellow became so offensive that "Abe" dropped the ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... "O callow innocence!" exclaimed the other. "Is it possible you do not know, or do not suspect, the intrigue in which you move? I find it in my heart to pity you! We are both women after all—poor girl, poor girl!—and who is born a woman is born a fool. And though ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... beside the river. But there lay the whole scene of my boyhood: there the little creek where my boat was kept, and where I landed on the morning after my duel with Bodkin; there stretched for many a mile the large, callow meadows, where I trained my horses, and schooled them for the coming season; and far in the distance, the brown and rugged peak of old Scariff was lost in the clouds. The rain by this time had ceased, the wind ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... each other somewhat distantly; and with feelings which it would be hard to describe, Ben recognized the tall, rather callow youth as the Rutherford who stoned him several years before, when he was floating down the river on a log, and to whom Ben in turn had ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... callow," she remarked, "but I should have thought anybody with the slightest grain of sense could have seen at a glance what Raymonde is. Why, she's simply been playing ragtime on you. Did you actually and seriously believe that the girls at this school were ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... remember this Red Light o'casion, for jest prior to Dave alarmin' us by becomin' melodious, furtive—melody bein' wholly onnacheral to Dave, that a-way—thar's a callow pin-feather party comes caperin' in an' takin' Old Man Enright one side, asks can he yootilise Wolfville as a strategic p'int in a elopement he's goin' to ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... fair and sweet and tender, Dear brown-eyed little sweetheart mine! As when, a callow youth and slender, I asked to be ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... by her tears and lamentations, and the clamors of her callow brood. The corporal was sent up to the Alhambra under a guard, in his gallows garb, like a hooded friar; but with head erect and a face of iron. The Escribano was demanded in exchange, according to the cartel. The once bustling ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... portent; From Jove himself the dreadful sign was sent. Straight to the tree his sanguine spires he roll'd, And curl'd around in many a winding fold; The topmost branch a mother-bird possess'd; Eight callow infants fill'd the mossy nest; Herself the ninth; the serpent, as he hung, Stretch'd his black jaws and crush'd the crying young; While hovering near, with miserable moan, The drooping mother wail'd her children gone. ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... at first did me a world of good. Dumped in this community of over a thousand callow youths, three hundred in my class alone and each one absorbed in getting acquainted, fitting in, making friends and a place for himself, I was soon struggling for a foothold as hard as the rest. Within a month the thing I ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... grievous deeds, perhaps; with murder, no! Find then such cause, the charge of murder falls— Be judge thyself if it abound not here. All know how weak the eagle, Heracles, Soaring from his death-pile on OEta, left His puny, callow eaglets; and what trials— Infirm protectors, dubious oracles Construed awry, misplann'd invasions—wore Three generations of his offspring out; Hardly the fourth, with grievous loss, regain'd Their fathers' realm, this isle, from Pelops named. Who made that triumph, though deferr'd, secure? ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... thought she was some notorious actress—everybody said so. ... Who were those callow fools who put you up to it? ... Never mind if you don't care to tell. But it strikes me they are candidates for club discipline as well as you. It was up to them to ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... which should have been stored up for the purposes of the hard struggle for existence in practical life, have been washed out of them by precocious mental debauchery—by book gluttony and lesson bibbing. Their faculties are worn out by the strain put upon their callow brains, and they are demoralised by worthless childish triumphs before the real work of life begins. I have no compassion for sloth, but youth has more need for intellectual rest than age; and the cheerfulness, ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... that, the glory of Covent Garden Ball had departed. It may be so. Yet the floor, with its strange conglomeration of music-hall artists, callow university men, shady horse-dealers, and raucous military infants, had an atmosphere of more than meretricious gaiety. The close of an old year and the birth of a new one ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... him, and he lay beneath, Hushed as the babe upon its mother's breast, Drooped as the willow when no winds can breathe, Lulled like the depth of Ocean when at rest, Fair as the crowning rose of the whole wreath, Soft as the callow cygnet in its nest;[bp] In short, he was a very pretty fellow, Although his woes had turned ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... thing which happened to me thirteen years ago, when I had just succeeded in stirring up a little Nevadian literary puddle myself, whose spume-flakes were beginning to blow thinly California-ward. I started an inspection tramp through the southern mines of California. I was callow and conceited, and I resolved to try the virtue of my 'nom de guerre'. I very soon had an opportunity. I knocked at a miner's lonely log cabin in the foothills of the Sierras just at nightfall. It was snowing at the time. A jaded, melancholy man of fifty, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the Callow—a spinney of silver birches and larches that topped a round hill. A purple mist hinted of buds in the tree-tops, and a fainter purple haunted the vistas between the silver and ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... was watching. And when she had noted me it I wot well that she became much more animated, and laughed and spoke quickly, with color in her cheeks and a flash of defiance on her countenance, which were manifestly wasted on such a boastful, callow blubber-tun as Michael Texel. ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... arms. Fierce to the field of death the hero flies; The faint crane, fluttering, flaps the ground, and dies; And by the victor borne (o'erwhelming load!) With bloody bill loose-dangling marks the road. And oft the wily dwarf in ambush lay, And often made the callow young his prey; With slaughtered victims heaped his board, and smiled, To visit the sire's trespass on the child. Oft, where his feathered foe had reared her nest, And laid her eggs and household gods to rest, Burning for blood, ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... old Lady, who immediately passes up coppers out of her glove to the Conductor)—went to him, and said—(addressing a smartly dressed young Lady with a parcel, who giggles)—I said, "You're a man of the world—so am I. Don't you take any notice," I told him—(this to a callow young man, who blushes)—"they're a Couple of young fools," I said, "but you tell your dear wife from me not to mind those boys of mine—they'll soon get tired of it if they're only let alone." And so they ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various
... was here. I had English, one or two—Bardsley, and Jackson, and Smith; he was a gentleman, but he was not young. He was fifty years, Mr Smith—a good servant. Also there was Monsieur Callow." ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... had a quiet humour of her own in spite of her demure looks, laughed at the dejection and martyrdom of Sir Harry; and taking the eagerly-proffered arm of a callow lieutenant, ostentatiously and hopelessly in love with her, went away to play her part of deputy hostess. She moved from group to group, and everywhere received smiles and congratulations, for she was a general favourite, and, with the exception of Mrs Pansey, everyone approved of her ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... the result of an immediate impulse to imitation felt irresistibly on the reading of Sterne's narrative. That the critics and readers of that day treated with serious consideration the efforts of a callow youth of twenty or twenty-one in this direction is indicative either of comparative vigor of execution, or of prepossession of the critical world in favor of the literary genre,—doubtless of both. Schummel confesses that the desire to write came directly after the book had been read. "Ihad ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... that man as if he were an open book," the boy announced, with callow boastfulness. "He has the subtlety of Satan, yet he does not delude me. It was at me he struck through Killigrew. Because he desires you, Rosamund, he could not—as he bluntly told me—deal with me however I provoked ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... oars, and cut their liquid way In larger compass on the roomy sea. As, when the dove her rocky hold forsakes, Rous'd in a fright, her sounding wings she shakes; The cavern rings with clatt'ring; out she flies, And leaves her callow care, and cleaves the skies: At first she flutters; but at length she springs To smoother flight, and shoots upon her wings: So Mnestheus in the Dolphin cuts the sea; And, flying with a force, that force assists his way. Sergesthus in the Centaur soon he pass'd, Wedg'd in the rocky shoals, ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... had died, six years before. The girl had come out of school to take upon her slim young shoulders the management of her father's house. Moreover, in that aged town where, aside from a few score new professors and their callow young assistants, everybody's grandparents had played dolls and tin soldiers together, Dr. Keltridge's absent-minded fashion of failing to provide his daughter with a feminine chaperon had caused no comment whatsoever. Everybody that one met out at dinner knew all about everybody ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... wealth, could be dispensed with in the social order. In spite of the impression fostered by a sensational press that the average person of wealth devotes himself to the gaieties and dissipations of a pleasure-loving society, the truth is that after the self-centred years of callow youth are over most men and women take life seriously and only the few are idlers. If the investigator should go through the wealthy sections of the cities and suburbs, and record his observations, he would find that the men ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... agreed Emma. "Although no one ever asked my hand in holy matrimony except a callow youth whom I tutored in algebra last summer. He had failed in his June examination and had to pass in September or be forever labeled a dunce by his fond family. Now you see why I can understand the psychology ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... aside, but study them, let them raise you to higher planes and make you better. You taught me in my callow days, let me pay back the debt now in my old age out of a thesaurus with wisdom smelted from the golden ores of experience. Ever yours for sweetness ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... his callow, youthful days, 'tis time he made some woman a duchess," Dunstanwolde said reflectively once to his wife. "'Twould be more fitting that he should; and it is his way to honour his house in all things, and bear himself without fault as the ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett |
