"Vernacular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sight of the ignorance and filth and heathenism, we forget what our chief aim should be, not simply school-work for the children, but Christianization and civilization for the masses. This, in its greatest effectiveness, can be done at the out-stations and in the vernacular only. It is necessary to have the gospel preached constantly in order to have it penetrate these darkened hearts, preached in a tongue which can be understood, and necessary to have a Christian life lived in its simplicity in their very midst. The native missionary's ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 4, April, 1889 • Various
... catechist's robes, passed within the altar-rails, opened his Tahitian Bible, and began to preach from notes. I understood one word—the name of God; but the preacher managed his voice with taste, used rare and expressive gestures, and made a strong impression of sincerity. The plain service, the vernacular Bible, the hymn-tunes mostly on an English pattern—"God save the Queen," I was informed, a special favourite,—all, save some paper flowers upon the altar, seemed not merely but austerely Protestant. It is thus the Catholics have met ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... current vernacular of the times, so familiar to the world in which she moved, Miss Van Ashton's appearance was decidedly fetching, and strongly suggestive of the things of which poets, in their madness, are continually harping—flower gardens flooded with moonlight and the song of nightingales. ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... change his visible form, and returns au galop. Sometimes he's an ugly little cacophonous brown sparrow; sometimes he's a splendid florid money-lender, or an aproned and obsequious greengrocer, or a trusted friend, hearty and familiar. But he 's always there; and he's always—if you don't mind the vernacular—'on the snatch.'" ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... the Japanese language of a number of young men to be under obligations to serve the Government for a specified time as interpreters at the legation and the consulates in Japan. A limited number of Japanese youths might at the same time be educated in our own vernacular, and mutual benefits would result to both Governments. The importance of having our own citizens, competent and familiar with the language of Japan, to act as interpreters and in other capacities connected with the legation ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... since his youth had left him to a gray world had his strong heart leaped in just this way before. "Merciful God!" he whispered in English. "Has a child come to save me?" Then he whipped again into the vernacular and spoke swiftly; for no further seconds were to be wasted. "Little Shikara, have ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... in the broadest vernacular dialect, as, indeed, was everything that dropped from the fishermen's lips. We take the liberty of modifying it a little, believing that strict fidelity here would entail inevitable loss of sense ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... Bradley in 1913 informed the International Historical Congress that the word son had ceased to be vernacular in the dialects of many parts of England. 'I would not venture to assert (he adds) that the identity of sound with sun is the only cause that has led to the widespread disuse of son in dialect speech, but I think it has ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... music-house, the succeeding landlord, to ridicule its former destiny, chose for his sign a goose striking the bars of a gridiron with his foot, in ridicule of the 'Swan and Harp,' a common sign for the early music-houses. Such an origin does the Tatler give; but it may also be a vernacular reading of the coat of arms of the Company of Musicians, suspended probably at the door of the 'Mitre' when it was a music-house. These arms are a swan with his wings expanded, within a double tressure, counter, flory, argent. This double tressure might have ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... the Satires and the Fables. His Essay on Dramatic Poesy started modern prose. Hitherto English prose had suffered from long sentences, from involved sentences, and from clumsy Latinisms or too bald vernacular. Dryden happily united simplicity with grace, and gave us plain, straightforward sentences, musically arranged in well-ordered periods. This was the vehicle in which he introduced literary criticism, ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... vernacular proper to people who keep the little knowledge they have to themselves, the Brigade Major grasped the hated telephone in the left hand and prepared to say a few words (also in the vernacular) to his fellow Staff Officer ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... sure to turn up. Mother Carey's chicken hovers near when the elements are at strife. He was immensely satisfied with his diggings, he said, liked the natives, and considered this a splendid chance for improving his Spanish. He was reading "Don Quixote" in the vernacular. In a sense, I looked upon his presence as a perfect godsend to us, as he came in most appropriately as a Deus ex machina to create the character of Barbarossa's invented friend. O'Donovan was in good standing with the Republicans ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... lack of knowledge of French as applied to salesmanship is this: That while the average Frenchman is greatly flattered when you tell him that his English is good, he prefers to talk business in his own vernacular. He thinks and calculates better in French. Frequently when you engage him in conversation in English and the question of business comes up, you find that he instinctively ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... born again, and to have one's mind completely reconstructed, from the foundation upwards. It is possible that a person of European parentage, born in Japan, and accustomed from infancy to use the vernacular, might retain in after-life that instinctive knowledge which could alone enable him to adapt his mental relations to the relations of any Japanese environment. There is actually an Englishman named Black, born in Japan, whose proficiency ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... "Pewter-jaw" (I suppose he had worn a dentist's tooth-straightening contrivance during his second dentition), which youth he had finished off, as he said, in good shape, but at the expense of a slight epistaxis, we will translate his vernacular expression. ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the names in the vernacular," explained Robert with grave mendacity, "is the cake! I have often spoken to you, Miss Oldham, of 'the cake.' Of course, it has ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... of the dramatic, his love for posing, with his linguistic ability to adopt the vernacular of the moment so impressed the temperamental Murphy that he disregarded a portion of his friend Corliss's note, and the morning following his lean guest's arrival at the ranch the jovial Irishman himself saddled and bridled the swiftest ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... Marion Hayden's in the evenings, and from things he let fall, Clayton gathered that the irresponsible group which centered about Marion was, in the boy's own vernacular, rather "shot to pieces." Tommy Hale had gone to England to join the Royal Flying Corps. One or two of them were in Canada, trying to enlist there, and one evening Graham brought home to dinner an inordinately tall and thin youngster in the kilts of a ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... marked in his earliest work, and from which at times he quite escapes, Irving's personality shines clearly. He has so employed a conventional medium as to make it serve his original purposes. He possessed, to be sure, a faculty of strong vernacular speech, which is little suggested in his to-be-published writing, or even in his private letters. The Oregon embroilment had led certain British journals into gross speech about America. Irving was much disturbed. ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... boys, in which we are told that "the great philosopher, Newton, was one of the dullest scholars in school when he was twelve years old. Doctor Isaac Barrow was such a dull, pugnacious, stupid fellow, etc., etc. The father of Doctor Adam Clarke, the commentator, called his boy, etc. Cortina," (vernacular for Cortona, probably,) "a renowned painter, was nicknamed, etc., etc. When the mother of Sheridan once, etc., etc. One teacher sent Chatterton home, etc. Napoleon and Wellington, etc., etc. And Sir Walter ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... git out o' sight when thar's a fight on," answered Poke Stover, with a broad laugh. "Them kind o' varmin always does." Usually the frontiersman spoke fair English, but at times he dropped into the vernacular ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... of false literary coin, at the time of the Renaissance, Annius is the most notorious. Annius (his real vernacular name was Nanni) was born at Viterbo, in 1432. He became a Dominican, and (after publishing his forged classics) rose to the position of Maitre du Palais to the Pope, Alexander Borgia. With Caesar Borgia it is said that ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... and inaction the ranch now awoke to life and movement. The bunkhouse was scrubbed;—"swabbed" in the vernacular of the cowboys; the scant bedding was "cured" in the white sunlight; and the cook was adjured to extend himself in the preparation of "chuck" (meaning food) to repay the men for the lack of good things during a fortnight on the open range ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... and preached a sermon an hour and a half long. The sheriff, too, was there in a red coat, and had no doubt got his place by interest. 'Pomp and 'umbug I calls it, and we poor chaps pays for it all.' Fitzjames heartily enjoyed good vernacular embodiments of popular imagination. He admitted that he was not quite insensible to the pleasures of pomp and humbug as represented by javelin men and trumpeters. His work, as my quotation indicates, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... of my vernacular, to find an epithet sufficiently expressive to enunciate the aggravated contempt which all feel for that pseudonymous class of philanthropists, who flauntingly parade a pompous sympathy with popular and distant ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... don't love the man, when it comes to that; but there's no denying he's right smart," replied Denyven, who occasionally marred his vernacular with Americanisms. "The Association couldn't ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... by a younger person, with a beard upon a comparatively diminutive scale, and with the top of his hair very curiously cut in a circular form. He professed his readiness to accompany us immediately into the receptacle of departed imperial grandeur. He spoke Latin with myself, and his vernacular tongue with the valet. I was soon satisfied with the sepulchral spectacle. As a whole, it has a poor and even disagreeable effect: if you except one or two tombs, such as those of Francis I. Emperor of the Romans, and ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... bring no consciousness of ebbing years and joys and strength; they bring rather a sense of eternal resource and beneficence. In Arden one never feels in haste; there is always time enough and to spare; in fact, the word "time" is never used in the vernacular of the Forest except when reference is made to the enslaved world without. There were moments at the beginning when we felt a little bewildered by our freedom, and I think Rosalind secretly longed for the familiar ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... and although he ever remained a bachelor and abhorred womankind, nevertheless tried to demonstrate that not only was polygamy lawful, but that it was a blessed estate commanded by God. He first brought out a dialogue written in the vernacular entitled Sinceri Wahrenbergs kurzes Gespraech von der Polygamie; and this little work was followed by a second book, Das Koenigliche Marck aller Laender (Freyburg, 1676, in-4). Then he produced another work, entitled Theophili Aletaei discursus politicus de Polygamia. A second edition of this ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... Marvell, Herrick, Cowley, Prior, the now forgotten William Spencer, Tom Moore, Thackeray, could be alchemized into one, they might combine to yield an English Horace. Until eclectic nature, emulating the Grecian sculptor, shall fashion an archetype from these seven models, the vernacular student, with his Martin and his Conington, sipping from each alternately, like Horace's Matine bee (IV, ii, 27), the terseness of the professor and the sweetness of the poet, may find in them some echo from the ever-shifting tonality of ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... waiting Suey's deft hands to shift them to the platter. (No need to heat it even on a December day.) Mrs. Stannard's quick and comprehensive glance took in every detail. The "stick" was obviously figurative—mere vernacular—yet something serious, for Suey's olive-brown skin was jaundiced with worry, and the face of Doyle, the soldier striker, as he came hurrying back from the banquet board, was beading with the sweat of mental torment. Soup, it seems, was already served, and Doyle burst ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... each, moreover, individualism showed itself—if not to our apprehension as articulately, yet as indubitably, as among the race which considers them to have been all created for its amusement and advantage. It does not take long, superficial as is our acquaintance with their vernacular and the workings of their little brains, to single out particular specimens, and perceive that no two "birds of a feather" are exactly alike. A particular robin will rule the roost, and assert successfully for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... I said, is to be taken as a separate sentence. It belongs to the dialect, which was probably the vernacular of Palestine in the time of Paul, and to which belong, for the most part, the other untranslated words that are scattered up and down the Gospels, such as 'Aceldama,' 'Ephphatha,' and the like. It means 'our Lord comes.' Why Paul chose to use that untranslated ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... best master of this latter faculty, is uniformly the greatest favorite. It is no unfrequent thing to see the majority of an Irish congregation drowned in sorrow and tears, even when they are utterly ignorant of the language spoken; particularly in those districts where the Irish is still the vernacular tongue. This is what renders notice of the sermon and its purport necessary; otherwise the honest people might be seriously at a loss whether to ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... literature, we include a consideration also of those works written in Latin which are products of the times, and bear a part in the progress of the people and their literature. They are exponents of the Saxon mind, frequently of more value than the vernacular writings. ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... fashionable intelligence in general; but Balaam's ass, if she had marched into the room and commenced an oration in the original Hebrew, or Chaldee, or Syro-Phoenician, or whatever might have been its vernacular tongue in which she formerly addressed her master, could not have been more unintelligible. The old gentleman made an attempt to drive a conversation, and asked a few questions relative to foreign politics, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... words were a proof of possession, and approached to exorcise the demon; but Sister Claire resisted, and pretending to spit in the face of the exorcist, put out her tongue at him, making indecent gestures, using a word in harmony with her actions. This word being in the vernacular was understood by everyone ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Englishman's suavely persistent inquiry and deduction. Besides, the natives were no longer safe. Meredith, with the quickness of a cultured linguist, had picked up enough of their language to understand them, while Joseph talked freely with them in that singular mixture of slang and vernacular which follows the redcoat all over the world. Durnovo had only been allowed to come down to the coast under a promise, gracefully veiled, but distinct enough, that he should only remain ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... France it is hardly possible that St. Francis should not have heard of the poor men of Lyons whose peculiar tenets at this time were arousing very general attention. It is not improbable that he may have fallen in with one of those translations of the New Testament into the vernacular executed by Stephen de Emsa at the expense of Peter Waldo, and through his means widely circulated among all classes. [Footnote: See "Facts and Documents Illustrative of the History, Doctrine, and Rites, ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... his vote. He has not done much more than this since his inception. His work alone has sufficed, for him, at least, though the time is past when he can bury himself in his professional work and, in the vernacular, get away with it. Men of the stamp of Herbert Hoover have demonstrated the very great need for men of scientific training in public affairs. Such places heretofore have been filled with business men and lawyers. These men served and served well. But since administration of public affairs ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton
... that the German Minister to Patagonia, with the assistance of the Swedish Charge d'Affaires, has caused the following Proclamation to be distributed, along with a translation into the vernacular, among the natives; alleging that it reproduces a leaflet composed by the ALL-HIGHEST and dropped from a German aeroplane over ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 19, 1917 • Various
... their public life. But even now they wield great influence over husband and son. Culture has never forsaken them, but the English education of their husbands and sons, with the neglect of Sanskrit and the Vernacular, have made a barrier between the culture of the husband and that of the wife, and has shut the woman out from her old sympathy with the larger life of men. While the interests of the husband have widened, those of the wife have narrowed. The materialising of the husband tended ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant
... full of animation, and his countenance, though bronzed, interestingly expressive, remonstrated with the dog in the French language. "The animal does not understand you," exclaimed Tallyho, in the vernacular idiom of the youth, "Speak to him in English." "He must be a clever dog," answered the boy, "to know English so soon, for neither him nor I have been in England above a week, and for the first time in ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... like many-colored sumach-leaves after the first hard frost. I began to feel myself slowly stiffening, my courage getting gently chilly. I tried to tell a story, but had to mangle it greatly, because I felt in the air around me that parts of it were too vernacular and emphatic; and then, as a man who is freezing makes desperate efforts to throw off the spell, and finds his brain beginning to turn, so I was beginning to be slightly insane, and was haunted with a desire to say some horribly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... shouting had died away, Hira Singh rose to reply, for he was the cadet of a royal house, the son of a king's son, and knew what was due on these occasions. Thus he spoke in the vernacular:— ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... Corintich, Galataich, Ephesich, subjoining the Gaelic termination alone to the Primitive, rather than by introducing the syllable an, to form a Derivative of a mixed and redundant structure, partly vernacular, partly foreign? The word Samaritanaich, John iv. 40, is remarkably redundant, having no fewer than three Gentile Terminations. From [Greek: Samareia] is formed, agreeably to the Greek mode of derivation, [Greek: Samareitai]. To this the Latins added their own termination, and wrote Samaritani; ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... Frisians," says their statute book; "shall be free, as long as the wind blows out of the clouds and the world stands." They agreed, however, to obey the chiefs whom the Frank monarch should appoint to govern them, according to their own laws. Those laws were collected, and are still extant. The vernacular version of their Asega book contains their ancient customs, together with the Frank additions. The general statutes of Charlemagne were, of course, in vigor also; but that great legislator knew too well the importance attached by all mankind to local customs, to allow his imperial capitulara ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... he replied in the peculiar vernacular of the West, 'I reckon,' resuming meanwhile the mechanical and traditional exercise of the hand which no President has ever yet been able to avoid, and which, severe as is the ordeal, is likely to attach to the position so long as ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger
... affair lined with zinc; and the zinc was suffering from tetter or other serious skin trouble and was peeling badly. There was a current superstition about the place to the effect that the bathroom and the water supply might on occasion be heated with a device known in the vernacular as a geezer. ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... of a troublesome kingship, could find time to devote to this work, and realised the importance of vernacular literature, is one of the chief signs of his greatness. What he did had a lasting influence upon our literature. He tapped the wellspring of English prose. Mainly owing to his initiative, from his day till the Conquest all the literature of ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... we have the newspapers. There are three or four in English, one in French, and the rest in the vernacular. The most interesting is "The Peking Gazette," since it represents the pure Chinese point of view. Printed in English, it is owned and edited by the Chinese, and gives their side of the story. The editor is a delightful man, Chinese, an Oxford graduate, fiery, intense, alert, ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... said, though, for the skipper, that he generally left the old hands alone, for they returned his choicest epithets in kind, always giving him quite as good in the rude vernacular as he gave—discipline being rather slack now the vessel was ashore, as in the merchant service a wreck is supposed by the crew to dissolve all contracts and annul whatever articles may have been signed. Such, at least, is my ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... thoughts, the principles he advocates in them are thoroughly unprogressive and unpractical. Plato is to him the 'exhaustive generalizer,' beyond whom it is folly to aspire, and by whose stature he measures the nations. Boethius, Rabelais, Erasmus, Bruno, are only brisk young men translating into the vernacular wittily his good things. St. Augustine, Copernicus, Newton, Behmen, Swedenborg also 'say after him.' Emerson either addresses men whose ignorance he greatly exaggerates, or else the ideal men of some centuries hence. His mission is to the Past or the Future, not to the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... along the rocky road which runs through the estate of Major Lobdell. The party stopped and sat down to smoke with me. The senior took the lead, not with a brogue but with an accent, translating from the Irish vernacular as he went on. "Long ye may live! We're glad we met ye, thanks be to God. Yer honner's glory is the foinest, splindidist man I seen this twinty year. May God protect ye! 'Tis weary work we does. That foine, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... affair, this! A total lack of tall trunks, frills, and curling-kids. Driven by the oestrum of a Yo-Semite pilgrimage, the San-Francisco belle forsakes (the Western vernacular is "goes back on") her back-hair, abandons her capillary "waterfalls" for those of the Sierra, and, like John Phoenix's old lady who had her whole osseous system removed by the patent tooth-puller, departs, leaving her "skeleton" behind her. The bachelor who cares to see unhooped womanhood once ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... human being so strange and mysterious, such an unknown quantity, to Caleb Thayer as his own son. He had not one trait of character in common with him—at least, not one so translated into his own vernacular that he could comprehend it. It was to Caleb as if he looked in a glass expecting to see his own face, and saw therein the face ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Karika, Mundukya Upanishad, &c. Gayatri, the holiest verse of the Vedas. Gehs, Parsi prayers. Gelugpas, "Yellow Caps," the true Magi and their school, so called in Tibet. Gnansaki, the power of true knowledge, one of the six forces. Gujarathi, the vernacular dialect of Gujrat, a province of Western India. Gunas, qualities, properties. Gunava, endowed ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... Affo's edition it is at this point that a dryad tells Orpheus of Euridice's death. Mnesillus, a satyr, mocks him. The hero now sings in the vernacular: ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... the current rules of prosody in tender consideration for its thousands of English readers. There is, however, we are tolerably assured, a certain class of critics who venture to lament that this laughter-inspiring muse should have descended from the sunny Parnassus of its own vernacular to the meads below, where disport the unlearned and uninspired, the mere kids and lambs of its celestial audience: a generous absurdity, at which the very Devil of Delphos might have demurred. These are the dapper gentlemen, who, tripping ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... becomes increasingly fragmentary and uncertain. The greatest source of doubt arises from the confusion between sundials, water-clocks, hand-struck time bells, and mechanical clocks, all of which are covered by the term horologium and its vernacular equivalents. ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... many months at Fort Mackinac with Archie; Archie was my nephew, a young lieutenant. In the short, bright summer came the visitors from below; all the world outside is 'below' in island vernacular. In the long winter the little white fort looked out over unbroken ice-fields, and watched for the moving black dot of the dog-train bringing the mails from the main land. One January day I had been out ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... for the better half of a mighty city to come. The "act" concludes: "And then and there proceed to elect Five discreet freeholders, resident within said village, to be trustees thereof." So witness is borne to this vernacular quality of discretion in the ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... their serenity, it was the refusal of a tradesman to give credit. But uno avulso non deficit alter, as Jack was accustomed, on such occasions, classically to say to his wife—presently deviating into the corresponding vernacular of—'Well, my dear, if one cock ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... his high stove-pipe hat, and his gnarled, wrinkled visage, which he shrouded in a green veil when hiving a swarm. He was a good-hearted old fellow, but very rough in his talk. He had been to sea in early life, and profanity had become the characteristic of his vernacular. Well, word came one morning that the bees were swarming, and a minute later I aroused the old man, who was smoking and dozing on his porch. I don't believe you ever ran faster, Alf, than I did then. Hiving bees was the ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... especially important in that which marks a particular phase of controversy. Secondly, a student's duty to English society, and to the church of which he is a member—as also, I humbly venture to think, to his own soul—requires that he shall first listen thoughtfully to the vernacular theology of England. Let him learn the chief affirmative verities of the Christian faith before meddling with the negative side. Let him master the grand thoughts or solid erudition of Hooker and Pearson; of Bull, and Bingham, and Waterland; of Butler and Paley;—the seven most ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... but combined with the necessity of choosing the right knife and fork, of breaking his bread properly, and of removing his spoon from his coffee-cup, they were quite overpowering. During his two years in the army he had drifted into the easy habits and easier vernacular of the enlisted man. Whatever knowledge he had of the amenities of life had almost been forgotten. But, though his social virtues were few, he passionately identified himself with them rather than with his faults, which were many. To prove his politeness, for instance, ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... talk, a man's common sense means his good judgment, his freedom from excentricity, his GUMPTION, to use the vernacular word. In philosophy it means something entirely different, it means his use of certain intellectual forms or categories of thought. Were we lobsters, or bees, it might be that our organization would have led to our using quite different modes from these of apprehending our experiences. It MIGHT ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... Martin Luther were those by which he gave to the common people a vernacular Bible and vernacular worship, that through the one, God might speak directly to the people; and in the other, the people might speak directly to God. Luther's Bible and Luther's Hymns gave life not only to the churches of ...
— The Hymns of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... of Leoncavallo's opera is "Pagliacci," not "I Pagliacci" as it frequently appears in books and newspapers. When the opera was brought out in the vernacular, Mr. Frederick E. Weatherly, who made the English adaptation, called the play and the character assumed by Canio in the comedy "Punchinello." This evoked an interesting comment from Mr. Hale: "'Pagliacci' ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... She was looking out of window. On being asked what she was after, 'I'm lookin' for my lad,' says she. 'Is that him?' 'Weel, I've been lookin' for him a' my life, and I've never seen him yet,' was the response. I wrote her some verses in the vernacular; she read them. 'They're no bad for a beginner,' said she. The landlord's daughter, Miss Stewart, was present in oil colour; so I wrote her a declaration in verse, and sent it by the handmaid. She (Miss S.) was present on the stair to witness our departure, in a warm, suffused ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... declaring it to be his pleasure that his kingdom shall hear the word of God freely and without hinderance in the language which it understands. At present, throughout our entire diocese, on feast-days, and especially on Sunday, both the epistle and gospel are read to the people in the vernacular tongue, and the parish priest adds a word of exhortation to the epistle or gospel, or both, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... while some faint ambitions of statesmanship—even office—but in the end discarding everything that might obstruct my entire freedom, for I came into the world an insurgent, or, as I have sometimes described myself in the Kentucky vernacular, "a free nigger and not a ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... which I am now employing it, means that sort of education which is specially adapted to the needs of men whose business in life it is to pursue some kind of handicraft; it is, in fact, a fine Greco-Latin equivalent for what in good vernacular English would be called "the teaching of handicrafts." And probably, at this stage of our progress, it may occur to many of you to think of the story of the cobbler and his last, and to say to yourselves, though you will be too polite to put ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... sent a deputation to solicit an indemnity for the damage the town had sustained during the bombardment a member of the Convention threatened them from the tribune with "indemnities a coup de baton!" that is, in our vernacular tongue, with a ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... comprises my writings on subjects chiefly of our vernacular literature. Now collected together, they offer an unity of design, and afford to the general reader and to the student of classical antiquity some initiation into our national Literature. It is presumed also, that they present materials ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... comprehend you aright, Dr. Reasono, when I understand your system of caudology, or tailology, to render it into the vernacular, to dogmatize on the possibility that the seat of reason in man, which to-day is certainly in his brains, can ever descend into ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of Luck Lindsay was singing an impromptu doxology, but the face of him—so well was that face trained to do his bidding—became tinged with disgust and disappointment. With two "real boys" he was talking; he knew them by the unconscious range vernacular and the perfect candor with which they lied to him about themselves. But not so much as a gleam of the eye betrayed to them that ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... read such letters, the work of unskilled writers, in the newspapers which devote space to "Correspondence." The writers, like Dawson, can probably talk vividly and forcibly, using strong nervous vernacular English, but the moment they take the pen all thought and individual character become swamped in a flood of turgid, commonplace jargon. I was disappointed with Dawson's letters, and I am sure that he will be even more ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... Negru Voda, in others Negoije Voda, and in others again Radu Negru. The poem has been translated by Hon. H. Stanley, Roumanian Anthology, p. 215 (Hertford: Stephen Austin), an expensive and beautifully illuminated drawing-room book, containing some Roumanian poems in the vernacular, and others ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... brought them to the house. The moment I saw the strange girl, I recognized a rural type of Melissa Daggett, while the urchin of Bobsey's age did not scruple to use vile language in my hearing. I doubt whether the poor little savage had any better vernacular. I told them kindly but firmly that they must not come on the ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... phrases into the lapidary style of ancient Rome, I confess it is often hard to improve on the brevity of the vernacular, though the admonition "to keep your end up" can be condensed from four words to two in "sursum cauda." Again the familiar eulogy, "Stout fellow," can be rendered in a single word by the Virgilian epithet "bellipotens." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 12, 1917 • Various
... me out!' he said, in a very loud and decided tone; and, quitting his companion, he beckoned to me to follow him. The old gentleman's face and gesture were so urgent that I joined him at once. He told his story in a vernacular racier than I dare to copy; but it came to this. The Government had got wind of the precious scheme (to which it had, of course, never given a moment's sanction), and had come down with an intimation that the originator of ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... word, the single inspiring aim of the author has here been to furnish enlightened readers, versed only in the English language, the means of acquiring, through the medium of their vernacular, some proportioned, trustworthy, and effective knowledge and appreciation, in its chief classics, of the great literature which has been written in French. This object has been sought, not through narrative and description, making books and authors the subject, but ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... frankly contemptuous. "All you English are mad," he said in the vernacular. "If she die not to-day, she will die to-morrow. And already there are ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... define his conception of the commander's character in the freest vernacular of the ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... the following: shirking down town; making devils, or letting off gunpowder behind the school, or in the yard; conducting a foray or predatory excursion in gardens and orchards; emulating Jupiter, a la Salmoneus,— in his attribute of Cloud-Compelling— by blowing a cloud, or to speak in the vernacular, indulging in a cigar; hoisting a frog; tailing a dog or cat, or in any other way acting contrary to the precepts of the Animals' Friend Society; learning to construe on the Hamiltonian system; furtively denuding ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... "it would become me to do so, seeing that I have his soul here in my pocket. Thou wilt not expect me to employ the language of the Church. Nathless, I see not wherefore the vernacular may not serve ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... riots, the largest part of the work for which detectives are employed is not in the detection of crime and criminals, but in simply watching people, following them, and reporting as accurately as possible their movements. These functions are known in the vernacular as spotting, locating, and trailing. It requires patience, some powers of observation, and occasionally a little ingenuity. The real detective under such circumstances is the man to whom they hand ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... was a letter written on ruled paper. The cramped, schoolboyish characters were those of a man unused to much composition and the words were the vernacular of ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... to Five Forks in some open ground along the crest of a gentle ridge. Custer got Capehart into place just in time to lend a hand to Smith, who, severely pressed, came back on us here from his retreat along Chamberlain's "bed"—the vernacular for a woody swamp such as that through which Smith retired. A little later the brigades of Gregg and Gibbs, falling to the rear slowly and steadily, took up in the woods a line which covered the Boydton Road some distance to the right of Capehart, the intervening gap to be filled ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 5 • P. H. Sheridan
... know, Aunt Ray," he said dubiously; "this is hardly a woman's affair. If there's a scrap of any kind, you hike for the timber." Which was Halsey's solicitous care for me, put into vernacular. ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... eagle in one shape—was fast fettered by sheer force and strength to his rock in the Atlantic, there arose a man in Central Germany, on the old Thuringian soil, to whom it was given to assert the dignity of vernacular literature, to throw off the yoke of classical tyranny, and to claim for all the dialects of Teutonic speech a right of ancient inheritance and perfect freedom before unsuspected and unknown. It is almost needless ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... inveighed against it. "We marvel much," he wrote, "that the archbishop should enter this labyrinth without consulting the prelates and chapters of the Church. Every one knows that translations into the vernacular have already given rise to frequent heresy.... It is said the Bible is capable of four different interpretations. Therefore it would imperil many souls were a mere literal translation made. Moreover, laymen cannot read the Bible even if it be translated, and ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... to native tongues by requiring the priests to preach more frequently in the vernacular of the people, and thus helped to make the services of the Church of ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... later vernacular poems, approaches the character of the less-cultured broadside literature. To the critical mind it is somewhat amusing to note the enthusiasm with which the modern Dissenting and Puritan class contemplates the period of which we are writing—an enthusiasm that would probably ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... to explain that this was not to be a rival show—no drinks would be sold; the idea was merely to found a place of amusement for the people. The only effect on the boss was to evoke a contemptuous "E-r-r-r!" and an injunction, in Chicago vernacular, to get out of that as soon as they liked—or sooner. And, by way of punctuation, he turned to expectorate copiously, but with imperfect precision at a box of sawdust which was littered with cigar stumps. The interview was over—he wished them to understand that. He ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Book on the Soul, has, if I am not mistaken, been translated into French, German, and Modern Greek, and has issued from the Mission-press at Ceylon, in one or more of the dialects of India. It has also been partially rendered into the vernacular at the missionary stations, in opposite parts of the world. His Child's Book on Repentance, and his Histories of the Patriarchs, published by the American Tract Society, are the result of diligent study. The Life of Moses may be specified, as ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... daughter and themselves. The time she had spent apart from these friends of her youth had rendered it impossible for her ever to meet them again upon the plane of common interests and common thoughts. It was much as though one, having acquired the vernacular of his native country, had lived in a foreign land long enough to lose the language of his childhood without acquiring fully that of his adopted country. Miss Rowena Warwick could never again become quite the Rena Walden who had left the house behind the cedars no more than a year and ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... will not be understood. It was undoubtedly the weakness of contemporary English verse which reinforced the general Renaissance admiration for the classics; nor must it be forgotten that Wyatt takes, in vernacular metres and with rhyme, nearly as great liberties with the intonation and prosody of the language as any of the classicists in their unlucky hexameters and elegiacs. The majesty and grace of the ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... night, and bedtime when the gray dawn comes shivering cold and ghastly into hotel corridors where the washerwomen are scrubbing the marble floors. "Little old Broadway," as it is affectionately toasted in the vernacular of its habitues, wherever rye whisky is drunk, and faithful homesick hearts recall its lights, its ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... attached him to his person as a body servant. He had never regretted it. Oku was one of those ideal retainers who, once they have found an attachment, would rather die than betray their trust. His command of the vernacular was only limited, but he was the very soul of courtesy and politeness, and when not otherwise able to make himself understood, would content himself by a number of low salaams, accompanied by most apologetic ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... is transformed, and that quite new thing, the Gothic, arises. The conception of representative assembly, monastic in origin, fruitfully transferred to civilian soil, appears in the institutions of Christendom. The vernacular languages appear, and with them the beginnings of our literature: the Tuscan, the Castilian, the Langue d'Oc, the Northern French, somewhat later the English. Even the primitive tongues that had always kept their vitality from beyond recorded ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... engaged in transacting legal or oilier business with the municipal, sociologic or religious world—at which times his vocabulary consisted only of the most rudimentary pidgin—Mock spoke a fluent and even vernacular English learned at night school. Incidentally he was the head of the syndicate which controlled and dispensed the loo, faro, fan-tan and ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... visited Anadyrsk in the spring of 1866, and met there a Chukchee chief. Neither spoke the other's language, and so the governor called his Koriak servant. The same dilemma occurred, as each was ignorant of the other's vernacular. There was an awkward pause until it was discovered that both Koriak and Chukchee could speak English. Business then ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... dark-skinned girl of the tepee. It was the first marriage of Englishman and Indian in the colony, and meant much to the struggling settlers in furthering peaceful relations with the savages. Speaking in the society-column vernacular of a later day, the occasion was marred by the absence of the bride's father. The wary old chieftain was not willing to place himself within the power of the English. But the bride's family was represented by two of her brothers and by her old uncle, Opachisco, who gave her away. Other ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... they got tired of propping up the walls and looking on. Besides what made it even more dangerous for them was that kind-hearted women took compassion on them, and their own empty programmes and introduced themselves. And in the vernacular they were the snags. But all these things were hidden from the man of great ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... divinely called to voice their dumb aspirations. He possessed, {5} like all great prophets, a straightforward moral honesty and sincerity, an absolute fearlessness, a magnetic and commanding personality, an unusual mastery of the vernacular speech, and an abundant power of pathos, humour, and satire. All the world loves a hero who can say in the face of real danger, "I would go forward to Worms if there were as many devils there as there are tiles on the roof!" or again, ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... archangel. He was a changed man instantly. He was all enthusiasm, full of his subject, eager to go on. He proposed to pay Goodman a salary to stay there and keep him company and furnish him with inspiration—the Pacific coast atmosphere and vernacular, which he feared had slipped away from him. Goodman declined the salary, but extended his visit as long as his plans would permit, and the two had a happy time together, recalling old Comstock days. Every morning, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... face upon a troublesome matter. The earliest existing form of the name, after the English Conquest, seems to be that given in a Latin Charter of the eighth century as Weogorna civitas. (Here it is difficult to disentangle the English from its Latin dress.) A little later it appears in a vernacular shape (also in a charter) as Wigran ceaster. In the later part of the English Chronicle it becomes Wigera ceaster, and Wigra ceaster; but by the twelfth century it has grown into Wigor ceaster, from which the change to Wire ceaster and Worcester (fully ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... Dayta are to be found in our best modern map of Hindostan by Arrowsmith. It may be noticed on this subject, that most places in Hindostan have more than one name; being often known to the natives by one name in their vernacular language, while another name is affixed in Persian, by the Mogul conquerors. The names of places likewise are often changed, at the pleasure of successive possessors; and the continual wars and revolutions have made wonderful changes in the distribution of dominion, since ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... Harte, he first found free play for his comic intransigeance in the broad freedom of the journal for the masses. Brilliant as he was, Artemus Ward seemed most effective only when he spoke in weird vernacular through the grotesque mouthpiece of his own invention. Bret Harte sacrificed more and more of the native flavour of his genius in his progressive preoccupation with the more sophisticated refinements of the purely literary. Mark Twain never lost the ruddy glow ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... Chinese language later assumed a monosyllabic, isolating, uninflected form, grammatical relations being indicated by position. From the earliest forms of speech several subordinate vernacular languages arose in various districts, and from these sprang local dialects, etc. Tone-distinctions arose—i.e. the same words pronounced with a different intonation came to mean different things. ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... the Force, they were compelled to take a long chance. A Mounted Policeman can't use his gun except in self-defense. He isn't supposed to smoke up a fugitive unless the fugitive begins to throw lead his way—which method of procedure gives a man who is, in the vernacular, "on the dodge" all the best of a situation like that; for it gives an outlaw a chance to take the initiative, and the first shot often settles an argument of that kind. The dominating idea, as I understood it, was that the majesty ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair |
