"Penman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... occasionally from Alfred; but he was not an apt penman, and did not prove himself so good a correspondent as we had hoped. We had a letter from him written at Rio de Janeiro, and a short one from the Cape of Good Hope. Then the ship went to India, and ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... a building more feelingless or ridiculous. It is more like a German summer-house, or angle turret, than a chapel, and may be briefly described as a bee-hive set on a low hexagonal tower, with dashes of stone-work about its windows like the flourishes of an idle penman. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... these reminiscences that I had not observed that during our absence our camp had been honoured by visitors. These were Jericho Boswell, christened, I believe, Jasper, his daughter Rhona, and James Herne, called on account of his accomplishments as a penman the Scollard. Although Jasper Boswell and Panuel Lovell were rival Griengroes, there was no jealousy between ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... do; the knowledge that comes of books, widened and freshened by the knowledge that comes of experience; the literary sense fortified by common sense; the bashfulness and delicacy of the scholar hovering as a finer presence above the forceful audacity of the man of the world; at once bookman, penman, swordsman, diplomat, sailor, courtier, orator. Of this type of manhood, spacious, strong, refined and sane, were the best men of the Elizabethan time, George Gascoigne, Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Walter Raleigh, and, in ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... expressions, bombastic paraphrases are always chosen, which become in the end intolerably prolix and dull, and are enough to drive a foreigner to despair." The style is indeed august; but the real penman is not the King, whose strong point was not grammatical composition, but some confidant, very likely Sir Herbert Taylor, who was employed by the King to negotiate with the "waverers" in the House of Lords, and get the Reform Bill passed without a swamping creation of peers. The Memoir ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... "She must be very sure of herself to come to anchor like that. Still that is Captain Penman's business. If he can discharge his cargo, I can put it out of harm's way. We shall have two hundred lads on the beach by midnight, and whatever force they may bring against us, we can go through them with ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... the carved lions in red marble now on the Piazzetta de' Leoni does not count for much, when we consider that there is nothing in the workmanship of these heads to suggest that they were done after sculptured originals;—the manes, &c., being represented by an easy penman's convention, as they might have been whether the models were living or merely imagined. Nor is there any good reason for dating the drawings of sites in the Tyrol, supposed to have been sketched on the road, rather this year than ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... the introductions to Marmion, and a little crow-quill drawing of Melrose Abbey by Nelson, whom I used to call the Admiral. Poor fellow! he had some ingenuity, and was, in a moderate way, a good penman and draughtsman. He left his situation of amanuensis to go into Lord Home's militia regiment, but his dissipated habits got the better of a strong constitution, and he fell into bad ways and poverty, and died, I believe, in ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Hopton, at Wytham in Somersetshire, where, at leisure, he learned to handle the pike and musket. When Thomas earl of Strafford became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, he was retained in his family to teach the art of dancing, and being an excellent penman, he was frequently employed by the earl to ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... penman; I'm a good mechanic; I could be a passable druggist if I tried, and I wouldn't shy at taking a hand at running a bank, if it was big enough ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... Gerbert are too well known to need any further remark. Bernward of Hildesheim, made bishop there in 992 by Theophano, and tutor to her son Otho III., "excelled no less in the mechanical than in the liberal arts. He was an excellent penman, a good painter, and as a household manager was unequalled." Such is Tangmar's tribute to his pupil's character. He was, indeed, an enthusiast in painting, mosaic, and metal-work, and used to collect all the objects ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... express desire of Mr. Biglow himself, whose entire winter leisure is occupied, as he assures me, in answering demands for autographs, a labour exacting enough in itself, and egregiously so to him, who, being no ready penman, cannot sign so much as his name without strange contortions of the face (his nose, even, being essential to complete success) and painfully suppressed Saint-Vitus-dance of every muscle in his body. This, with his having been put in the Commission of the Peace by our excellent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... as a gag, that he'll find you there. My method may be a little crude, but I have reasons of my own for not walking into a police station with you. but before we go, there's still that matter of—the men higher up. They needed a clever penman for this job and one who wouldn't be recognised—and they got the best! Who brought ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... unhappy, and the shadow of her unhappiness was over his nights and days. It was when he felt this that he had written to Captain Langrishe, saying nothing to her about it, stealing out, in fact, at night to post the letter secretly, he whose correspondence, such as it was—he was no great penman—had always lain in the letter-basket on the hall table for the servants to scrutinise the addresses if they would before ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... convinced of the truth. He declines searching for evidence. Of the truth of this remark we have a striking instance in the scriptures. Paul preached at Thessalonica, but they heeded not his words. He preached also at Berea, and the inspired penman says, "These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily whether these things were so." It is our duty to search the scriptures prayerfully and "labor ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... perhaps, this of Plutarch. Tostatus[7] laies this opinion upon Isioder. Hispalensis, and the venerable Bede; and Pererius[8] fathers it upon Strabus and Rabanus his Master. Some would have it to bee situated in such a place as could not be discovered, which causes the penman of Esdras to make it a harder matter to know the outgoings of Paradise, then to weigh the weight of the fire, or measure the blasts of wind, or call againe a day that is past.[9] But notwithstanding this, there bee some others who thinke ...
— The Discovery of a World in the Moone • John Wilkins
... to a "ragged school," and became, at the mature age of ten, so exact a penman that he almost rivaled his father, who could write the Lord's Prayer on the back of a postage-stamp. At this school, beside getting an education, Charles got pedagogic scars on his body which ten years later, when he enlisted in the army, were ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... back he Feels fit for scourge or brand, No scurril scribes that lackey The lords of Lackeyland, No penman that yearns, as he turns on his pallet, For the place or the pence of a peer or a valet, No whelp of as currish a pack As the litter whose yelp it gives back, Though he answer the cry of his brother As echoes might answer from caves, Shall be witness ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... of any sort, be it wedding or dinner or any other, a blank line or lines are left for the insertion of the name of the guest, there is danger that, unless this is done with great care and by an able penman, the beauty of the invitation be ruined, and therefore its cost thrown away. For that reason a wholly engraved invitation is perhaps better, unless the work of addressing them and inserting the name is to be done by ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... Havana its cigars, Portugal its port wine. I have known a hairdresser who had nothing better to do than to make a portrait of the General out of hair belonging to persons who were dear to him; a professional penman had the same idea, but the features were composed of thousands of little phrases in tiny characters which sang the praise of the General. As to letters, he had them in all scripts, from all countries, ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... has had the Bill to discharge. But the whole particulars of his Route, his Weather-observations, the picturesque Sketches he took, though all regularly jotted down (in indelible sympathetic-ink by an invisible interior Penman), are these nowhere forthcoming? Perhaps quite lost: one other leaf of that mighty Volume (of human Memory) left to fly abroad, unprinted, unpublished, unbound up, as waste paper; and to rot, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... colouring. But that which gratifies the impatience of the human disposition will be practised in the teeth of danger, and in defiance of admonition; and, in despite of the Cambrian antiquary, mail-coaches not only roll their thunders round the base of Penman-Maur and Cader-Idris, but ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... composer of Latin hymns and a penman of no mean order, as the Book of Kells, if written by him, sufficiently proves. In all the monasteries which he founded, provision was made for the pursuit of sacred learning and the multiplication of books by transcription. The students of his schools were taught classics, ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... certain allowance in money for every page he transcribes; and that, as in those days the greater part of the business, even of the supreme courts, was carried on by means of written papers, a ready penman, in a well-employed chamber, could earn in this way enough, at all events, to make a handsome addition to the pocket-money which was likely to be thought suitable for a youth of fifteen by such a man as the elder Scott. The ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... under the kings to whom their building is ascribed by profane authors, because the Scripture says little or nothing on that subject. This silence of Scripture, so little satisfactory to our curiosity, may become an instructive lesson to our piety. The holy penman has placed Nimrod and Abraham, as it were, in one view before us; and seems to have put them so near together on purpose, that we should see an example in the former of what is admired and coveted by men, and in the latter of what is acceptable and well-pleasing to God. ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... a very good penman, sir. You told me so, Copperfield?' 'Excellent!' said I. And indeed he was. He wrote with ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... this, and told his father that he would study diligently. He was sent to the University of Pavia, where he learned all the geography that was then known, as well as how to draw maps and charts. He became a skillful penman, and also studied astronomy, ...
— Discoverers and Explorers • Edward R. Shaw
... by the moral Faculty. Memory gathers up all our yesterdays. Often her writing is invisible, like that of a penman writing with lemon juice, taking note of each transgression and recording words that will appear when held up to the heat of fire. Very strangely does conscience bring out the processes of memory. Sir William Hamilton tells of a little child brought to England at four years of age. When a few ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Spencerian, but a clear, legible handwriting is not only an indication of clear-cut thinking but a means and promoter of accurate thought. Moreover, as a business proposition, one cannot afford to become a slovenly penman. Every composition should be a lesson in penmanship, and by so much improve one's chances in the business world. And last, the teacher who has to read and correct the compositions of from one hundred ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... She said that it had been given to her by a man whom she did not know. Jack had been busy when it came and did not open it until she had gone away. It was an astonishing and most welcome message in the flowing script of a rapid penman, but clearly legible. It was without date and very brief. These were the ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... he styled himself, was a traveling teacher, and generally had two or three evening schools in progress in different places at the same time. He was really a very good penman, and in a course of twelve lessons, for which he charged the very moderate price of a dollar, not, of course, including stationery, he contrived to impart considerable instruction, and such pupils as chose to learn were likely to profit by his instructions. His venture in Millville ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... against even superior men, Mr. Stewart could enter safely and at will. We heard him, scarce a twelvemonth since, deliver a discourse of singular power, on the sin-offering of the Jewish economy, as minutely particularized by the divine penman in Leviticus. He described the slaughtered animal—foul with dust and blood—its throat gashed across—its entrails laid open—and steaming in its impurity to the sun, as it awaited the consuming fire, amid the uncleanness of ashes outside the camp,—a ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... of history, and the like, to all kinds of periodical publications, many of them long since dead and forgotten. That the world should have forgotten all these articles "goes without saying." But what is not perhaps so common an incident in the career of a penman is, that I had in the majority of cases utterly forgotten them, and all about them, until they were recalled to mind by turning the yellow pages of my treasured but almost equally forgotten journals! I beg to observe, ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... learned how to declaim. I could read, write, and cipher, and had begun the study of algebra and of Latin. A letter written to my Uncle Lauder during the voyage, and since returned, shows that I was then a better penman than now. I had wrestled with English grammar, and knew as little of what it was designed to teach as children usually do. I had read little except about Wallace, Bruce, and Burns; but knew many familiar pieces of poetry by heart. I should add to this the fairy tales of childhood, and especially ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... consider the quill and the sword as two distinct professions, both useful and honourable when honourably pursued; and having chosen the sword, he thinks he does quite enough in learning how to use and support it through all grades, and ought not to be expected to encroach on the profession of the penman. This is a tone of feeling which it is clearly the interest of Government rather to foster than discourage, and the order which militated so much against it has happily been either ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... Sunday afternoon, unmindful whether the audience was duly attentive or not. From a dame's school, where, by the age of eight, he had read through the whole of the Old and New Testament, he passed to one held by a certain Mr. Akers, celebrated as a penman and also moderately efficient in Latin and Mathematics. Godwin next became the pupil of Mr. Samuel Newton, whose Sandemanian views, surpassing those of Calvin in their wholesale holocaust of souls, for a time impressed him, till later thought caused him to detest both ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... foreign or domestic, ever made a greater name for himself than Daniel Webster, but he was not so good a penman as Noah; ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... to record the fact that he passed the balance of the night writing letters from fictitious "Sallies, aged six," "Warry and Georgie, twins, aged twelve," and others dwelling in widely separated sections of the country, to the number of at least two dozen, all of which, being an expert penman, Partington wrote in a diversity of juvenile hands that was worthy of a better cause. Here are two samples of the letters ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... achievements of a writing-master are detailed by contemporaries with laborious accuracy. Mr D'Israeli, in his "Curiosities of Literature," has not scrupled to devote many pages to Bales's contests for superiority with a rival penman of the name of Johnson. Bales was the improver of Dr Bright's system, and, according to his own account in his "Writing Schoolmaster," he was able to keep pace with a moderate speaker. He seems to have been engaged in public life, by acting as secretary where caligraphy was required; ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... and dearest friend, and boon companion, Dr. J. C. Buckingham, of Springfield, was then entering upon his profession. He was an admirable penman. He obtained leave of the clerk of the court, to write out my certificate of admission as a member of the bar, and this he did in beautiful form, handsomely illustrated. He attached to it an enormous seal, and it was duly signed by the clerk of the court. I have ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... said, "why do I need to be a good penman? I'm going to be a manager some day, and I'll have a stenographer to ...
— Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls • Howard J. Chidley
... Government; that he was the proper one to commence such negotiations. This Mr. Davis refused, saying the Federal authorities would refuse to treat with him. Then General Johnston proposed doing so in his own name. This was agreed to, and a letter written by Mr. Mallory, he being the best penman in the group, and signed and sent by General Johnston to General Sherman. The letter recapitulated the results in the army in the last few days, changing the status of the two armies and the needless amount of bloodshed and devastation of property that ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... with Mr. Cavana, that gentleman received a government appointment as surveyor in the territories, taking Mr. Gilchrist with him in the capacity of book keeper and assistant surveyor; they left in the spring of 1882. He was well fitted for the position, for besides being an excellent penman, was an expert at figures; when the winter set in, he remained there, taking a situation in a store in Winnipeg, and when the summer opened out he again went with Mr. Cavana on the survey, (1883) ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... "fonografic alfabet," the pen has to make fifty strokes. To the penman, the saving in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the Bravo, without betraying shame at the confession. "The art of deciphering a scroll, like this, was never taught me; if thou art so expert in the skill of a penman, tell me the name the ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... does this in all his biographical efforts. Sometimes he appears (for here another criticism of Carlyle's on the Burns, not the Scott, is more to the point) to quote and extract from other and much inferior writers to an extent rather surprising in so excellent a penman, especially when it is remembered that, except to a dunce, the extraction and stringing together of quotations is far more troublesome than original writing. But even then the extracts are always luminous. With ninety-nine out of a hundred biographies the total impression ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... father lived to see them both married; and enjoyed a firm health, until above eighty years of age. He was a handsome gentleman of great natural parts, a great accomptant, vast memory, an incomparable penman, of great integrity and service to his prince; had been a member of several Parliaments; a good husband and father, especially to me, who never can sufficiently praise God for him, nor acknowledge his most tender affection and bounty to me and mine; but as in duty bound, ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... eyes that just a little wink As deep I go into the merit Of this and that distinguished spirit— His cheeks' raised color, soon to sink, As long I dwell on some stupendous And tremendous (Heaven defend us!) Monstr'-inform'-ingens-horrend-ous Demoniaco-seraphic Penman's latest piece of graphic. Nay, my very wrist grows warm With his dragging weight of arm. E'en so, swimmingly appears, Through one's after-supper musings, Some lost lady of old years With her beauteous vain endeavor And ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... was bright, attractive, and I think I may add without fear of contradiction, very ambitious, and this in no bad sense. She devoted herself to her studies with such energy and diligence as not only to attract the attention of the teacher, but to make herself a fair scholar, a good penman, and an exceptional painter, and it was not long until, from among all the concubines, she had gained the attention and won the admiration—and shall we say affection—not only of the Empress, but of the Emperor himself, and she was ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... Longmans and Murray have been with me proposing such an association. That I shall support. But having seen the Cockspur Street Society, I am as well convinced of its invincible hopelessness as if I saw it written by a celestial penman in ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... a good penman, and the lines that he wrote On that sad occasion was too fine for me to quote,— For I was there and heard it, and I ever will recall It brought the happy tears to the ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... Nelson, of the Supreme Court, had on garden affairs, as well as on legal and political questions of the day; many were their visits to the hot-beds and melon hills. "Ah, those muskmelons! Carefully were they watched." This penman was frankly proud of his melons, their early growth and flavor. But for all his care this melon-pride met its Waterloo one spring in a special box of superior seed, started in a favored place for light and warmth, and to be early transplanted. Soon the tiny ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... great pains, and crossed all the t's without missing one. But it is never an easy task to decipher a woman's meaning, particularly when not addicted to penmanship; and although my excellent wife had attended a penman's instructions, and had acquired the reputation, in her native place, of being an accomplished clerk, still, since her marriage, she had applied her genius to the making of tarts and other confections, rather than to the parts of scholarship, and it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... make but a poor penman, Agnes. I love the sea dearly, and it is seldom that we have such gales to meet as that; and after all, it is no worse to be drowned than it is to come to any other death. I am well content, cousin, with matters as they are; and would not ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... approvingly; but hinted that the late brother was an excellent penman, and his work could not be continued but by a master. Gerard on this drew from his wallet with some trepidation a vellum deed, the back of which he had cleaned and written upon by way of specimen. The monk gave quite a start at sight of it, and very hastily went up the hall to ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... recorded in the xviith chapter of Exodus and the xxth of Numbers about the Israelites, when, in their wanderings, they murmured for want of water, and the Lord instructed Moses to "take the rod with which he smote" the waters of the Red Sea: the sacred penman proceeds: "And Moses took the rod from before the Lord, as he commanded him: And Moses and Aaron gathered the congregation together before the rock, and he said unto them, 'Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of this rock?' And Moses lifted up his hand, ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... down with its stars, and its rising moon, flooding with glory nature in her repose. These, and a thousand lovely and touching scenes of that pastoral life, are all unrecorded. The great events in history, and bold points in character, are seized by the inspired penman as sufficient to mark the grand outline of God's providential and moral government over the world, and his care ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... until they were satisfied. They then came down cellar, and I gave up all hope of escape. Still, I resolved never to be taken alive. I could strangle myself, and I would do it, rather than suffer as I did before. At that moment I could truly say with the inspired penman, with whose language I have since become familiar, "my soul chooseth strangling ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... the Scots, perhaps, could this jape have been taken seriously, but, with a gravity that would have delighted Charles Lamb, Knox denounced the skit from the pulpit as a fabrication by the Father of Lies. The author, the human penman, he said (according to Calderwood), was fated to die friendless in a strange land. The galling shaft came out of the Lethington quiver; it may have been composed by several of the family, but Thomas Maitland, who later died in Italy, was regarded as the author, {264b} perhaps because ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... something. I have only a smattering of Latin and Greek, it is true, and a very slight knowledge of French, but, if I am to believe my teacher's reports, I am not a bad arithmetician, and I know a good deal of mathematics, besides being a pretty fair penman." ...
— Digging for Gold - Adventures in California • R.M. Ballantyne
... or testimonial, had been sent up to the Governor, composed apparently by the hapless wizard himself, who seemed to be no mean penman, and signed by a dozen or more of the coloured inhabitants: setting forth how he was known by all to be far too virtuous a personage to dabble in that unlawful practice of Obeah, of which both he and his friends testified the deepest abhorrence. But there was the bottle, safe ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... scattered hints that he was backward in technical scholarship, and low in his class, in which he seems to have had no ambition to stand high; but that he eagerly took to history and romance, especially luxuriating in the Arabian Nights. He was an indifferent penman, and always disliked mathematics; but was noted by masters and mates as of quick temper, eager for adventures, prone to sports, always more ready to give a blow than to take one, affectionate, ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... primitive witnesses vouch for the genuineness of the verse. Surely, it is nothing else but the reductio ad absurdum of a theory of recension, (with Tischendorf in his last edition,) to accommodate our printed text to the vicious standard of the original penman of Cod. {HEBREW LETTER ALEF} and bring the last chapter of S. John's Gospel to ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon |
