"A B C" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a great sophister-doctor, called Maitre Tubal Holophernes, who taught him his A B C so well that he could say it by heart backward; and about this he was five years and three months. Then read he to him Donat, Facet, Theodolet, and Alanus in parabolis. About this he was thirteen years, six months, and two weeks. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... at home a little more, perhaps, than was discreet to one who was presumably a stranger. She was curious, too, about dining out. Poor little girl, though. Just fancy, John Dory has never taken her anywhere but to Lyons' or an A B C, and ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... current, and it should be thoroughly understood by any farmer who essays to be his own electrical engineer. Once understood and applied, the problem of the control of the electric current becomes simple a b c. ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson
... 'Metamorphoses,' is apparent in many of the details. But the theme was doubtless first suggested to Shakespeare by a contemporary effort. Lodge's 'Scillaes Metamorphosis,' which appeared in 1589, is not only written in the same metre (six-line stanzas rhyming a b a b c c), but narrates in the exordium the same incidents in the same spirit. There is little doubt that Shakespeare drew from Lodge ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... dead. Tomorrow you 'll bury him. The sheriff is here, and he's already beginning to understand this affair. He stands to help you. Now, all you 've got to do is to swear out warrants for Farnham's partners, and show up in evidence that tunnel running along your lead. It's simple as A B C, now that you know it's there. They can't beat you, and you don't require a word of testimony from me. But that poor girl needs me,—she's almost crazed by this thing,—and I 'm going with her, if I have to fight my way out from here with a rifle. That's the whole ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... your efforts, your wife persists in wishing to read, put at her disposal at once all possible books from the A B C of her little boy to Rene, a book more dangerous to you when in her hands than Therese Philosophe. You might create in her an utter disgust for reading by giving her tedious books; and plunge her into utter idiocy with Marie Alacoque, The Brosse de Penitence, or with the chansons which were ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... diagram, Fig. 143 A B C D is the fixed coil; E F G H is the movable coil; S is the spiral spring attached at K to the movable coil. The arrows show the course of the current as it goes through ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... continued the priest. 'In Lyons, among the lower orders, there are witch doctors who know a little about the witchcraft practised in the country. But be reassured. These people are not powerful. They know little more than the A B C's of the art. Then, mademoiselle, you wish to ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... that the A B C of this training is mere sense gratification at the sight of bright colors. Most insects and birds have probably not advanced much beyond this first lesson. Savages have generally stopped there or ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... a' doctor's saws an' whittles, Of a' dimensions, shapes, an' mettles, A' kind o' boxes, mugs, an' bottles, He's sure to hae; Their Latin names as fast he rattles as A B C. ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... and invited Jacob to come over and take his A B C degree. Before sending the invitation they smiled, cut out the C, added the proper punctuation marks, and all ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... is visible enough by Figure I: where A B C represents the Tube, which may be either Blunt, or with a Head, as A B C (by which latter shape, more room is allow'd for any remainder of Air, to expand the better.) This is to be filled with Quick-silver, and inverted as commonly; but into ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... A B C D, the top lid of the oblong box; G H, the half of it made to fall back, and supported at an angle by the hinges, h h; l, the upper part of the lock of the box; i k, the two gable ends of the roof; i, the perforated zinc shown as secured in a triangular frame; and k, the ...
— A Description of the Bar-and-Frame-Hive • W. Augustus Munn
... "'tis toil have p'oduce it! Toil of the teacher, industry of the chil'run! But it has p'oduce' beside! Sir, look—that school! Since one year commencing the A B C—and now spelling ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... whom, In that smoked and dingy room, Where the district gave thee rule O'er its ragged winter school, Thou didst teach the mysteries Of those weary A B C's,— Where, to fill the every pause Of thy wise and learned saws, Through the cracked and crazy wall Came the cradle-rock and squall, And the goodman's voice, at strife With his shrill and tipsy wife, Luring us by stories old, With a comic unction told, More ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... no truer saying," remarked the teacher, watching the tyro's eager efforts. "It's as easy as A B C to you, apparently." ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... trade, and did the dominie in brown and red, and the squire's daughter in vermilion and flake white, and set the whole village agog with his marvellous achievements. Julian cultivated his acquaintance, received some secret instructions in the A B C of art, and bargained for some drawing and painting materials. His aspirations had at length found an object. Long and painfully he labored in secret; but his advances were rapid, for he took nature as a model. At last he ventured to ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... SECVLVM REDIVIVVM. Henricus Madathanus, Theosophus. II. Ein gueldener Tractat vom Philosophischen Steine. Von einem noch Lebenden, doch vngenanten Philosopho ... beschrieben. Anno M.DC.XXV. III. Einfaeltig A B C Buechlein fuer junge Schueler so sich taglich fleissig ueben in der Schule des H. Geistes ... Von einem Bruder der Fraternitet CHRISTI des Rosenkreuzes P. F.—Auf dem Titelblatt der ersten beiden Hefte heisst es: "Aus einem alten ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... she said. "If you'll lend me those books, I'll read them and tell you everything that's in them afterward, and I'll tell it to you so that you will remember it. I know I can. The A B C children always ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... she rejects neither the science nor even the teacher. It is the method of instruction that makes her uneasy. She is afraid lest this young professor, whose knowledge is so extensive, should turn over the pages of the book too quickly and neglect the A B C. ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... yer, and then we'll try agin at the letters. I know three—A B C: you'll soon find out about the others, and make 'em in the ...
— A Sailor's Lass • Emma Leslie
... something of a scholar. French he could speak like a native, and he had dabbled in the humanities; but he would drag forth my smattering of learning with so much glee that one might have thought him ignorant of the plainest A B C of the matter. More than once I have known him blunder in a Latin quotation that I might correct him. Aileen and he had a hundred topics in common from which I was excluded by reason of my ignorance of the Highlands, but the Macdonald was as sly as a fox on my behalf. He would draw out the girl ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... too much of it for him to divide himself up. Why, take a single specialty; take rheumatism. If I gave my lifetime, or twenty lifetimes, to the study of that one malady, I should not begin to learn the A B C of it." ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... is not right to trouble about them, or to have business with them, saying, in the first book of Physics, that against him who denies the first postulate it is not right to dispute. And of such men as these are many idiots, who may not know their A B C, and who would wish to dispute in Geometry, in Astrology, and ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... had sent a letter, with a quick-delivery stamp on it, to William Cass, at A B C, East Fourteenth Street, New York, at 3:30 p.m., on June 12. So far as guilt or innocence was concerned there was nothing left to discover; the connection between these two men was demonstrated. Farrell's misidentification established another truth—they ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... the point across country. The trains to and from the capital are swifter and more frequent, and you are not likely to lose your way in the mazes of Bradshaw if you consult the indefinitely simplified A B C tables which instruct you how to launch yourself direct from London upon any objective, or to recoil from it. My impression is that you habitually drive to a London station as nearly in time to ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... a schoolma'am?" Happy Jack's distaste for schoolma'ams dated from his tempestuous introduction to the A B C's, with their daily accompaniment of a long, ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... precipitation. These postulata being admitted," added he, taking pen, ink, and paper, and drawing a parallelogram, "let youth be represented by the right line, a b, and discretion by another right line, c d, parallel to the former. Complete the parallelogram, a b c d, and let the point of intersection, b, represent perdition. Let passion, represented under the letter c, have a motion in the direction c a. At the same time, let another motion be communicated to it, in the direction c d, it will proceed in the diagonal ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... ask any dog, what would you have done in my place? Ever since I was old enough to listen, mother had told me over and over again what I must do in a case like this. It is the A B C of a dog's education. 'If you are in a room and you hear anyone trying to get in,' mother used to say, 'bark. It may be someone who has business there, or it may not. Bark first, and inquire afterwards. Dogs were made to ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... the same, the other may be predicated of that which is thus coextensive." The fact of this coextensiveness must be ascertained by [Greek: nous], in other words, by the Inductive Faculty. We will take Aldrich's instance. All Magnets attract iron A B C are Magnets | Presupposed Syllogism reasoning A B C attract iron. ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... while going through the daily drill of your A B C regiments, your multiplication table platoons, and ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... by which Snell connected together all the measurements executed up to his time, is this: Let A B C D (fig. 5) represent the outline of our circular vessel, A C being the water-line. When the beam is incident along B E, which is perpendicular to A C, there is no refraction. When it is incident along ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... prettier, and very brown; and when I told her she was like my own little child, she danced about, and laughed like mad at the idea that she could look like 'pretty white Missy'. She was mighty proud of her needlework and A B C performances. ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... the village had been opened a year or two earlier by Joshua Dewey, a graduate of Yale, who taught Fenimore Cooper his A B C's. He was succeeded as village schoolmaster by Oliver Cory. The latter assumed charge of the new Academy. The school exhibitions of this institution in which Brutus and Cassius figured in hats of the cut of 1776, blue coats faced with red, ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... regulations. As soon as you have got beyond the mere parade-ground work (and that is all the civilian ever sees) the book brings you to a region where nothing else is considered than the one thing, attack, attack, attack. There is something very grim and inexorable in this primer of war, this A B C of the principles of destruction. And if the innocent little pocket manual contains a codification, so condensed as to be amazing, of the ways to slay your enemy, the officers are ready with every possible amplification of its dry paragraphs. Get forward, always ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... the turning point. Benavente the dramatist, Azorin the critic, Ruben Dario the poet, Pio Baroja the novelist, all date from this period, belonging to and of the new generation, and, together with the Valencian Blasco Ibanez, form the A B C of ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... to the manners and customs of the people, everything is reversed, and the surest way to go right is to take pains to go dead wrong! "To speak backward, write backward, read backward, is but the A B C of Oriental contrariety." ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... air bubbles it is convenient to cause the metal to spread slowly over the chill, and Mr. Nasmyth's method of accomplishing this is shown in the figure (61). The chill rests on three pins, A B C (Figs. 59 and 61). Before pouring begins the chill is tilted up off C by means of the counterpoise D, which is insufficient to tilt it after the speculum is poured. It is important that the chill should be horizontal at the close of the operation, ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... face—and I never remember one—unnecessarily," he answered. "It is the A B C of my profession. To-day I believe that it is Mr. Guest, and his friend Mr. Courage, whom I have ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... marry a ship-builder, my dear. Don't be absurd! I'm not planning to take an intelligent interest in Mr. Davidge's business. I'm planning to take an intelligent interest in my own. I'm going to be a ship-builder myself, and I want to learn the A B C's." ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... himself, and the seven sages to boot, are but so many men of Gotham, when he is present. The quintessence of all the knowledge, wit, wisdom, and genius that ever saw the sun, from the infantine days of A B C and king Cadmus, to these miraculous times of intuition and metaphysical legerdemain, is bottled up in, his brain; from which it foams and whizzes in our ears, every time discretion can be induced to draw the cork of silence.—Once again, let ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... "You never asked me anything about it. You told me what you wanted done, and I did it. How could I believe you were such an ignoramus as not to know the a b c of the thing you were talking about?" He added, in cynical contempt, "But you needn't worry. You can make it right with the managers by spending a little more money ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... anglomane in general than I am. He was talking of the English press. He said he 'did it justice for good and noble intentions' (more than I do!), 'but marvelled at its extraordinary ignorance. Those writers did not know the A B C of France. Then, as to Louis Napoleon, whether he was right or wrong, they erred in supposing him not to be in earnest with his constitution and other remedies for France. The fact was, he not only was in ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... lad I was bad as I could be, Wouldn't say 'Thank you' nor 'Please,' not me, And at church I wouldn't kneel but only on one knee, And at school I wouldn't study my A B C, And I couldn't conscientious with the Golden Rule agree, Nor understand the secret of its popularitee, Nor get a ounce of pleasure from the Rule of Three,— I was bad right through; sweared 'hully gee,' And worse sometimes, like 'jiminee;' Scrawled with a ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... of the utmost importance in that first consideration for setting out a drawing, namely the fixing of salient points, and getting their relative Positions. Fig. Z, on page 87 [Transcribers Note: Diagram IV], will illustrate what is meant. Let A B C D E be assumed to be points of some importance in an object you wish to draw. Unaided, the placing of these points would be a matter of considerable difficulty. But if you assume a vertical line drawn from A, the positions of B, C, D, and E can be observed in relation to it by noting ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... Well, I should say so! That's another little thing that's as simple as A B C, but it saves lives and broken bones just the same. Sometimes I think we get to thinking too much about the big things, Colonel, and not enough about these little, everyday ideas that spell Safety to all these thousands of men who look to us for a ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... "Registro. a b c d e f g h i k l Tutti questi sono quaderni excepto l chie duerno"; audessous le monogramme de l'imprimeur en blanc sur fond noir.—Verso of folio 84 ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... and took from it a considerable sum of money which he kept there for emergency journeys, also pocketing an automatic pistol. Pouncing on an A B C time table, be looked up the trains for East-bourne. A fast train left Victoria at 1:25 p. m. The ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... The lines A B C represent parallel rays which pass through the lens, D D, and meet at F; this point being the principal focus, its distance from the lens is called the focal length. Those rays of light which are traversing a parallel course, when they enter the lens are brought to a focus nearer the ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... printer, binder, or seller, for books published contrary to statutes, acts, and proclamations. King James, in the first year of his reign, by letters-patent, granted the Stationers' Company the exclusive privilege of printing Almanacs, Primers, Psalters, the A B C, the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... special marks: first, you have learned, like Sir Proteus, to wreath your arms like a malcontent; to relish a love-song, like a robin redbreast; to walk alone, like one that had the pestilence; to sigh, like a school-boy that had lost his A B C; to weep, like a young wench that had buried her grandam; to fast, like one that takes diet; to watch, like one that fears robbing; to speak puling, like a beggar at Hallowmas. You were wont, when ...
— The Two Gentlemen of Verona • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... many of the rising generation as a part of the dark ages, I am not without some grounds for suspecting that there yet remains a fair sprinkling even of "philosophic thinkers" to whom it may be a profitable, perhaps even a novel, task to descend from the heights of speculation and go over the A B C of the great biological problem as it was set before a body of shrewd artisans ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... compare stand to one another. There is room for choice only in the intermediate stage of the cognitive process; at the beginning (in the reception of the simple ideas of perception, a, b, c, d), and at the end (in judging how the concepts a b c and a b d stand related to each other), the understanding ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... A B C D E is the work of the enemy to be besieged. The working parties advance by the zigzag paths M N and O to the position chosen for the first parallel, K L. At the proper time they proceed by the zigzag paths to the second parallel, H I, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Hilda's sake, I braved it out, and continued to learn the A B C of agriculture on an unmade farm with great assiduity from Oom ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... I believe, Uniacke, yes, on my soul, I believe that I had bland visions of the sea-urchin being happy and prosperous on a high stool in an office, at home with ledgers, a contented little clerk, whose horizon was bounded by an A B C shop, and whose summer pastime was fly-killing. My big work finished, a sort of eager idiocy seized me. I was as a man drugged. My faculties must have been besotted, I was in a dream. Three days afterwards I woke from it and learnt that there ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Hymn), she knows he, but she lips (lisps), so she's ashamed before strangers." Another woman, after surveying with, much admiration a large alphabet-sheet (as I should Egyptian hieroglyphics), said, "I suppose, sir, that's the A B C." I gave little books to all who desired them. Though most of them had a considerable distance to return, they seemed unwilling to leave me and the vessel, and I was in no hurry to dismiss them. It was very sad indeed to think that the meeting and intercourse, after so long delay, and ...
— Extracts from a Journal of a Voyage of Visitation in the "Hawk," 1859 • Edward Feild
... were no Sunday schools in those days, Mrs. Carroll gathered her children around her on Sunday afternoons and drilled them in the church catechism until it was as familiar to them as their A B C; but Anna Ella always inclined to the Westminster Confession and the tenets in which her father's childhood had been so ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... again. I see I don't even know the A B C of this business. In the old days the leech was a physician. You don't mean I'm to drown ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... common to maternity, my dearest mother. A brat learns his A B C a shade quicker than other children, or construes Qui fit Maecenas with tolerable correctness; and straightway the doting mother thinks her lad is an embryo Canning. You should never have hoped anything of me, except that I would love you dearly all my life. You ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... castell of labour, wherin is rychesse, vertue, and honour. Enprynted at London in Fletestrete in the sygne of the sonne. by Wynkyn de worde. Anno d[n]i M.ccccc.vi." There is no indication of authorship. Signatures: a b c d e f g h, alternately 8s and 4s, i 4; 52 leaves, not numbered. The British Museum and Cambridge University Library copies of this book have been collated, but as the former ends with H 3 and the latter wants the last ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... can fuse your guests the better," she went on, as if she were giving a lecture. "Everyone knows that; it's the A B C of entertaining; but they must have something to agree about—a sort of rallying point. And I was the first hostess to discover that no party is complete unless you have someone in it whom all the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 6, 1914 • Various
... A B C thoroughly, and mark, for yourselves, what you, at present, think the vital events in each century. As you know more, you will think other events the vital ones; but the best historical knowledge only approximates to true thought in that matter; only be sure that what is truly vital in the character ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... irregular—oh no, not in the least. Legally the thing's as simple as A B C. The man has only to take the benefit of the Act of Insolvency, assign his estate to his creditors, and then— supposing that ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... doubt. And it was with infinite astonishment I first saw the strong panegyric heaped upon my argument here. So true is this, that on the evening after I had concluded it, I wrote to my friend Wickham, telling him if his eye should see anything of it through the newspapers, he would wonder how so much A B C knowledge could be tolerated here, but that I saw it was necessary to state it, and therefore he must not think me so much of a pedant as he might otherwise be disposed to do. Had the thing been suffered to pass unnoticed, I might have ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... in her inventions of new kinds of work. Such things as book-markers and slippers, paper-baskets, bed-quilts and tablecloths, card-baskets, and chair-cushions were all too simple—the mere a b c of the art. Wonders like embroidered pictures for the walls, various kinds of fringes for the legs of pianos, fireplace hangings, gold nets for window-curtains, mottoes for the canary's cage, silk covers for books, were the order of the day. When any one came in he was first struck with ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... Madame Guyon, in her precious A B C of the spiritual life, introduces her book with the title, "A Short and Easy Method of Prayer"; St. Theresa describes the degrees of the soul's progress as degrees of prayer, styling them Prayer of Quiet, Prayer of Union, ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... whole group. I was brought up the way most girls in Hawaii are brought up. They live in the open, and they know how to ride and swim before they know what six- times-six is. As for me, I can't remember when I first got on a horse nor when I learned to swim. That came before my A B C's. Dad owned cattle ranches on Hawaii and Maui—big ones, for the islands. Hokuna had two hundred thousand acres alone. It extended in between Mauna Koa and Mauna Loa, and it was there I learned to shoot goats and wild cattle. On Molokai they have big spotted deer. Von was ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... those who are fit for nothing else go and drone over A B C with ragged children, if they like. It is just their vocation; but there is an order in everything, Margaret, and minds of a superior kind are intended for higher purposes, not to be ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... start as far back as we can: with a point. This point, a, [Figure 14] is conceived to move in a direction w, developing the line a b. This line next moves in a direction at right angles to w, namely, x, a distance equal to its length, forming the square a b c d. Now for the square to develop into a cube by a movement into the third dimension it would have to move in a direction at right angles to both w and x, that is, out of the plane of the paper—away from it altogether, either up or down. This is not possible, of course, but the third direction ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... Thus an adult of simple structure being taken as the starting-point which we will call a, another species which was a in its young stage and became b in the adult was placed above it in the zoological series. By this process I presently found that a, then a b and a b c, c representing the adult stage, were very often found; but that practically after passing these two or three stages it did not often happen that a species was found which was a b c in the young and then became d in the adult. But ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... probably not unheard of) in Norway at the end of the ninth century, and long after that; so that Erling, although a gentleman of the period, and a Sea-king to boot, had not up to the time we write of, learned his A B C! ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... playing tag in the unoccupied lot next door. The schoolroom door opened at the side. There were two rows of desks, with benches for the older children, two more with no desks for the A B C and spelling classes. The rest they learned in concert, orally. The dame had a table covered with a gray woollen cloth, some books, an inkstand, a holder for pens and pencils, ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... so long the able Secretary of the Board of Education in Massachusetts, after pointing out the absurdity of worrying a child's life out, in teaching the A B C, &c., and their doubtful and often-varying sounds utterly destitute of meaning, instead of words which have distinct sounds and distinct meaning, thus winds up:—"Learning his letters, therefore, gives him no new sound; ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... foregoing chapters, and to be able to follow their courses through the sky and recognize them wherever they appear. No telescope, or any other instrument whatever, is required for the purpose. There is but one preliminary requirement, just as every branch of human knowledge presupposes its A B C. This is an acquaintance with the constellations and the principal stars—not a difficult thing ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... It taught him to appreciate his life at Woolridge's, and to discern variety where variety had not been too apparent. There was the change from Granville to Woolridge's, and from Woolridge's to Granville. There was the dinner hour when he rose from his desk and went out to an A B C shop with Booty or some other man. Sometimes the other man had ideas, views of life and so forth, that interested Ransome; if he hadn't, at any rate he was a man. That is to say, he didn't sulk or nag or snap at you; or nip the words out of your mouth and twist them; he wasn't perverse; he ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... and his pupil were assigned a room near Ki Pak's library, where Yung Pak would spend several hours each day trying his best to learn the Korean A B C's. ...
— Our Little Korean Cousin • H. Lee M. Pike
... Presumably the books he distributed came from the Gallic schools, although his followers no doubt began transcribing as opportunity offered and as material came to hand. Patrick himself wrote alphabets, sometimes called the "elements"; most likely the elements or the A B C of the Christian ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... we can add anything to this explanation; the difficulty lies in the audacious sweep of the speculation itself; we will however attempt an illustration, although we fear it will be to illustrate obscurum tier obscurius. Let A B C D be four out of the Infinite number of the Divine attributes. A the attribute of mind; B the attribute of extension; C and D other attributes, the nature of which is not known to us. Now A, as the attribute of mind, is that which perceives all which takes ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... those who are clever enough to batten on its foibles, to sell it bad stuff and bad securities, and then feels hurt because it has a pain in its inside, or a worthless bond at its banker's, while the producers thereof are founding county families. If the public would learn the A B C of investment, and also learn that there is an essential difference between investment and speculation, that they will not blend easily but are likely to spoil one another if one tries to mix them, then the whole business of loan issuing and company promotion ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... and altar and wood and water in the trench, are licked up and converted into fiery light. So, dear brethren! it is because the Christian Church as a whole, and we as individual members of it, so imperfectly realise the A B C of our faith, our absolute dependence on the inbreathed life of Jesus Christ, to fit us for any of our work, that so much of our work is ploughing the sands, and so often we labour for vanity and spend our strength ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... arms that felt so strong were as weak as an infant's, while the dead weight of his helpless legs dragged on him like lead. The only result of his struggle was a dreadful access of pain. Reaction followed, for he had learnt in his A B C days not to whimper when he was hurt, and by the time the nurse returned Clowes had scourged himself back to his usual savage tranquillity. "Can I have that window shut, please?" he asked, cynically frank. "I used to play ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... from dying brows. But since then it has had time and opportunity to become strong, bold, masculine, potential. Once it had only the knowledge and power to alleviate evil consequences; now it has both the knowledge and the power to deal with evil causes. Now, I say to you, leave this emotional A B C of human charity to nuns and mite societies. It's a good work; let them do it. Give them money, if ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... there should be too much of the dragon's tooth in his children's disposition, used to find time from his kingly duties to teach them their A B C—which he invented for their benefit, and for which many little people, I am afraid, are not half so grateful to him ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... some four hundred such signs as these was the task set, as an equivalent of learning the a b c's, to any primer class in old Assyria in the long generations when that land was the culture Centre of the world. Nor was the task confined to the natives of Babylonia and Assyria alone. About the fifteenth century B.C., and probably for a long time before and after that period, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... but you wouldn't have been what you are if you hadn't had a bit of old lame Bartle inside you. The strongest calf must have something to suck at. There's plenty of these big, lumbering fellows 'ud never have known their A B C if it hadn't been for Bartle Massey. Well, well, Vixen, you foolish wench, what is it, what is it? I must go in, must I? Aye, aye, I'm never to have a will o' my own any more. And those pups—what do you think I'm to do with 'em, when they're twice ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... 'sapping' at the Alif Bey (A B C) to-day, under the direction of Sheykh Yussuf, a graceful, sweet-looking young man, with a dark brown face and such fine manners, in his fellah dress—a coarse brown woollen shirt, a libdeh, or felt skull-cap, and a common red ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... and design, it is impossible to treat of here; it would require as large a book as this to itself: but I will hazard the devotion of a page each to the A and the B of my own A B C of the subject as I try to teach it to my pupils, and put them before you without comment, hoping they may be of some slight use. (See ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... days, have genius fled From yonder city, to respire and die. There the sweet bard of Auburn sat, and tuned The plaintive moanings of his village dirge. There learned Chambers treasured lore for men, And Newbery there his A B C's for babes.] ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... new horn-book that cost a silver penny. The handle was carven and the horn was clear as honey. The other little boys stood round about in speechless envy, or murmured their A B C's and "ba be bi's" along the chapel steps. The lower-form boys were playing leap-frog past the almshouse, and Geoffrey Gosse and the vicar's son were in the public gravel-pit, throwing stones at the robins in the Great House ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... direction of youth seems one of the greatest concerns in moral life, and one that is the least understood: to form the generation to come, is of the last importance. If an ingenious master hath flogged the a b c into an innocent child, he thinks himself worthy of praise. A lad is too much terrified to march that path, which is marked out by the rod. If the way to learning abounds with punishment, he will quickly detest it; if ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... instruction of parents, the most effective means of improving the general attitude towards sex health is to give the simple truth to the millions of children who have not yet left school. Armed with the A B C's of sex hygiene at school, boys and girls will be prepared to select employment, associates, and newspapers that will permit normal, healthy sex development. Men and women who are leading normal lives, who have plenty of work, sleep, fresh ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... that we can add anything to this explanation; the difficulty lies in the audacious sweep of the speculation itself; we will, however, attempt an illustration, although we fear it will be to illustrate obscurum per obscurius. Let A B C D be four out of the Infinite number of the Divine attributes. A the attribute of mind; B the attribute of extension; C and D other attributes, the nature of which is not known to us. Now, A, as the ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... error of analysis in regard to Mr. Corbin in judging his brain by his topics of conversation. His conversation was limited to the A B C's of life, with which, up to the time of his meeting her, his brain had been fed. When, however, she began to cram it full with all the other letters of the alphabet, it showed itself just as capable of digesting the economic conditions of Egypt as it had previously succeeded in ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... A B C, in Fig. 16, represent your blade lying flat on the paper, d o the intersection of a plane at right angles to the plane of the paper and also at right angles to the tangent to the curve at the point o, where we ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... Fraulein Rottenmeier, "for who wants to torment children!" But now she went on to explain how dreadfully she had been taken in about the child, and related all the unimaginable things of which she had already been guilty, so that not only would he have to begin with teaching her the A B C, but would have to start with the most rudimentary instruction as regarded everything to do with daily life. She could see only one way out of this disastrous state of affairs, and that was for ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... soil from which the seeds of Knowledge will bring forth fruit, a hundred fold. "I do not know": this is the beginning and the end of wisdom. One who has never learned to say: "I do not know," has not the A B C of education. He who professes to be educated but will not confess Ignorance ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... turned up and she sniffed some. She wuz a foreigner, how could she know what I said? But Dorothy and Robert seemed to understand my language, though they couldn't speak it yet. And good land! I hain't learnt its A B C's yet, and don't spoze I shall till I git promoted to ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... "A B C" is a spirited game, admirably adapted for indoor practice on a wet day, which is played by children seated round a table, or at the fireside. One sings a solo—a verse of some nursery ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... at twenty years of age; others simply mischievous lads, with a trade at their fingers' ends, if they chose to work. A few were honest, unless temptation stared them too hard in the face. On such occasions their views were simple as A B C. "Well, if yer lost a chance, somebody else collared it, an' w'ere ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... too elementary, Whatson, but I am always willing to oblige a friend. I shall be relieved, however, when you are able to work out the A B C of detection for yourself, although I shall never object to helping you with the words of more than three syllables. Having made up his mind to commit suicide, Kipson naturally intended to do it before he reached Brewster, because tickets are again examined at that point. When the train ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... draw from the Antique. If somebody can be found who has influence enough with your father to get him to enter you at the Royal Academy, you must be prepared beforehand with a drawing that's fit to show. Now, if you promise to be a good boy, you shall come here, and learn the A B C of Art, every evening if you like. We'll have a regular little academy," continued Valentine, putting down his palette and brushes, and rubbing his hands in high glee; "and if it isn't too much for Lavvie, the ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... friends, that I may not dwell too long upon the A B C of our belief, let me urge you in one sentence to be on your guard against present-day tendencies which weaken the force of this solemn, tragical conviction as to the realities of heathendom. The new science of comparative religion has done much for us. I am not saying one word against this pursuit, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... I know all about it. I was there when he was told of this affair. Upon my word, Sir; upon my word, you could not apply to a more skilful doctor. He is a man who understands medicine thoroughly, as well as I do my A B C;[8] and who, were you to die for it, would not abate one iota of the rules of the ancients. Yes, he always follows the high-road—the high-road, Sir, and doesn't spend his time finding out mares' nests. For all the gold in the world he would ...
— Monsieur de Pourceaugnac • Moliere
... threw themselves between her and the door. 'Are you insane, Cilly? What do you mean should become of you? Are you going to join the menage, and teach the A B C?' ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... well acquainted with algebra and geometry that he could tell at a single glance how many drops of water there were in a bottle of wine. As for Latin and Greek—he could patter them off like his A B C's. Nevertheless, he was not satisfied with the things he knew, but was for learning the things that no schools could teach him. So one day he came knocking ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... we would better see if we all remember our A B C's," she said dryly. "You, Sammy, after being out so long last term because of the scarlet fever, will have to make up some studies if you wish to keep ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... This poem, of the form called Octava real, with the regular rhyme scheme a b a b a b c c, is composed of hendecasyllabic verses of the first class, save the 2d, which is of ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... Cuss me for a vool! A B C D. Why didn't they whop my letters into I when a was a boy? A B C"—and so persevering with an industry which he commonly kept ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... type of a cup, the first part of the petal is that in which it expands from the bottom to the rim; the second part, that in which it terminates itself on reaching the rim. Thus let the three circles, A B C, Fig 6., represent the undivided cups of the three great geometrical orders ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... irony.] Yes, that seems to be the A B C of commerce, sir; and the A B C of commerce is between your ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... at your service, Nikolai Petrovitch; but Liebig's miles over our heads! One has first to learn the a b c, and then begin to read, and we haven't set ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... "It's like she says: 'A woman as brings up twelve children learns something besides her A B C. Children's as good as 'rithmetic to ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Street Wood the trees had worn thin under showers of shrapnel, but the long avenues between the trenches were cool and pleasant in the heat of the day. It was one of the elementary schools where many of our soldiers learned the A B C of actual warfare after their training in camps behind the lines. Here one might sport with Amaryllis in the shade, but for the fact that country wenches were not allowed in the dugouts and trenches, where I found our soldiers killing flies in the intervals ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... as a drowning man might enjoy the Rhine. Whenever the machine skidded dangerously near a steep ravine, he was seen to cling in alarm to the seat. He was informed, however, that this was not even A B C of what the rest of the party were used to, and his ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... his sons many other things good and useful to know. They were of an age to go to school, but the school was many miles away down in the village, out of reach. Isak had himself taught the boys their A B C on Sundays, but 'twas not for him, not for this born tiller of the soil, to give them any manner of higher education; the Catechism and Bible history lay quietly on the shelf with the cheeses. Isak apparently thought it better for men to grow up without ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... very odd," said Sergeant Channell to Thessiger, "that Tindal should have decided against me on that point of law which, to me, seemed as plain as A B C." "Yes," replied Thessiger, "but of what use is it that it should have been A B C to you, if the judge was determined to be D E ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 21, 1841 • Various
... roynes, 22 Of themperour, kynges, and quenes, Des ducs, countes, et princes, 24 Of dukes, erles, and princes, Barons, cheualiers, escuyers; 24 Barons, knyghtes, and squyers; 8 Les noms dhommes et des femmes, 25 The names of men and of wymmen, Et des mestiers, selon lordre de a b c; 26 And of craftes, after thordre of a b c; Les grandes festes et termes de lan; 28 The grete festes and termes of the yere; 12 Des orfeures, tisserans, & foulons[1], 31 Of goldsmythes, weuers, ...
— Dialogues in French and English • William Caxton
... their point of view exclusively, he has in writing it placed himself quite outside the church of England in point of spirit and sympathy. As far as regards the proposition for which he intended mainly to argue, I believe not only that he is right, but that it is an a b c truth, almost a truism of the reign of Elizabeth, namely that the authoritative documents of the church of England were not meant to bind all men to every opinion of their authors, and particularly ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... I know there is one near, for Homer wrote all that when she asked us to go down for a day. Stay, there's something about English history mixed up with it in my mind. I do believe it's coming. Ring the bell, Jack, dear, and we'll look through an A B C. It's something about putting the fires out at night, ...
— The Girls and I - A Veracious History • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... pipe freely. Now pull the pipe round until it just begins to flatten, as at Fig. 37, put the ball into the pipe, and with some short pieces of wood (say, 2 in. long by 11/2 in. diameter) force the ball through the dented part of the pipe, or you may use several different-sized balls, as at A B C, Fig. 40, and ram them through the pipe with a short mandrel, as at D M. You will require to proceed very carefully about this ramming, or otherwise you will most likely drive the bobbins through the back at L K J. You must also watch the throat ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various
... vile herd who are content to suffer, provided that they live? And yet are not these very errors inculcated at school, and impressed upon their mind inversely by the birch? Do not they there receive their first lesson in slavery with the first lesson in A B C; and are not their minds thereby prostrated, so as never to rise again, but ever to bow to despotism, to cringe to rank, to think and act by the precepts of others, and to tacitly disavow that sacred equality which is ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... one side, as before stated, is put together, A B C D (Fig. 1), then that of the opposite side, E F G H, the various corners being mortised into one another (Fig. 2). Then the remaining parts of the frame having been got ready piece by piece, the whole may be set up. The two iron stays between each couple of upright rafters must on no account ...
— Harper's Young People, May 25, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... nothing to do. It's as simple as A B C. It's too simple, really, to be much of a rag. However, as it isn't a rag, but serious, I suppose we oughtn't to grumble. Now, ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... brother. "Let's go in and learn our A B C's and then we can go home and tell mamma all about it. This is ...
— Curly and Floppy Twistytail - The Funny Piggie Boys • Howard R. Garis
... with the Duchess? Between ourselves a man of my stamp ought first to take her in hand and break her in; I would make a charming woman of her; she is a thoroughbred; whereas, you two left to yourselves will never get beyond the A B C. But you are in love with her, and just now you might not perhaps share my views on this subject——. A pleasant time to you, my children," added Ronquerolles, after a pause. Then with a laugh: "I have decided myself for facile ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... "recreation," as he called, it,—political economy, we may note that his contributions to it were really voluminous, consisting of papers, popular articles and several books, including "The A B C of Finance" (1877) and "Principles of Political Economy" (1886). Authorities in the science never really took these as seriously as they deserved, possibly because they regarded Professor Newcomb as scarcely orthodox. Some of his distinctions, however, are of undoubted value and will live; for ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... interposed Dickens. So, when Stanfield said of his mid-shipman son, then absent on his first cruise, "the boy has got his sea-legs on by this time!" "I don't know," remarked Dickens, "about his getting his sea-legs on; but if I may judge from his writing, he certainly has not got his A B C legs on." ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... of the Spyttell House; "A thousande fyve hundredth fortye and foure," no printer's name, mark, or date, 4to. Here begynneth a lytell propre Jest, called Cryste Crosse me spede, a b c. ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... much to say about my father's education. For the most part, he was his own schoolmaster. I have heard him say that his mother taught him his A B C; and that he afterwards learned to read at Mammy Smith's. This old lady kept a school for boys and girls at the top of a house in the Grassmarket. There my father was taught to rear his Bible, and to repeat his Carritch.* [footnote... The Shorter ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... Doctor, "how much trouble some women would escape if they kept on saying A B C like that—for the A B C is usually lovely—and when it was time to X Y Z—often terrible, they just slipped out through the ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... made at the Bureau of Longitudes concerning population authorize us again to subtract from the total mentioned two millions of young girls, pretty enough to kill; they are at present in the A B C of life and innocently play with other children, without dreading that these little hobbledehoys, who now make them laugh, will one ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... his own islands. To this speech President Spalding responded in well-chosen words, thanking both the King and the residents of Honolulu for the hospitality shown us, after which, at the King's request, Lincoln entertained the guests with his satire on after-dinner speeches, his "A B C" orations, and his mixing of a soda cocktail, all of which provoked roars of laughter. After the banquet the King and the members of his court and family held a levee beneath his birth-tree, where, just before nine o'clock, we all filed by to bid him farewell, Clarence Duval having danced for him ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... of my childhood! Farewell, you walls, insensible witnesses of my first tears, my first smiles, and my first false steps on the slippery path of life—of my first acquaintance with water-gruel and A B C! Thou corner, in which I stood with lessons difficult to be learned; and thou, in which I in vain endeavoured to tame the most thankless of all created things, a fly and a caterpillar!—you floors, ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... influence, Columbus, who did not like to play with the A B C boys, was allowed to take the handkerchief and give out the first name. All the rest stood up in a row like a spelling-class, while little Columbus, standing in front of them, held a knotted handkerchief with which to scourge them when the name should ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... instead of starting off as an amateur angel, feeling my wings growing every moment, I had been compelled to prepare for an entrance examination. I suppose I should have been put with the backward pupils whose early education had been neglected, and should have had to learn the A B C's of charity. School of Philanthropy! Ugh! And in the ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... it is,' sez I. 'I haven't waited till I'm old enough to have gran'children to l'arn my a b c's.' ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... say so, for all your kindness to me long ago, down to this very day—you've a right to be first told of anything about me. Change of opinion I can't exactly call it, for I don't see the good of schools and teaching A B C, any more than I did before, only Mr. Gray does, so I'm to shut my eyes, and leap over the ditch to the side of education. I've told Sally already, that if she does not mind her work, but stands gossiping with Nelly Mather, ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... these ships all through school-hours,—one had brought him to that cold gray land, another would take him away. And possessed by this fixed idea, he paid no attention to his A B C's, for his eyes saw nothing save the blue of the sea and the blue of the sky above. The result of this was, that one fine day he escaped from the college and hid himself on one of the vessels of M. Bonfils; he was found in ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... quiet change going on that was destined to bear more abundant fruit in the future. Some of the men and women had begun to think a little for themselves. The pupils of the cooking-school were beginning the A B C of beauty and neatness. Their rooms were swept cleaner; their clothes took on a more tidy aspect. With the opening spring, gardens and court-yards were cleared of their rubbish, and flower-beds flourished again. Sylvie gave her girls one very instructive lecture on slips and flower-seeds, ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... on Edison's generator was a scientific gentleman, who in a long article published in the Scientific American, in November, 1879, gravely undertook to instruct Edison in the A B C of electrical principles, and then proceeded to demonstrate mathematically the IMPOSSIBILITY of doing WHAT EDISON HAD ACTUALLY DONE. This critic concludes with a gentle rebuke to the inventor for ill-timed jesting, and a suggestion to ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... joy is this for your poor mother! But oh, hinny, hae ye it weel aff? I hope there's nae fears o' ye stickin' or using notes!" "Dinna fret, mother—dinna fret," replied the young divine; "stickin' and notes are out o' the question. I hae every word o' it as clink as the A B C." The appointed hour arrived. She was first at the kirk. Her heart felt too big for her bosom. She could not sit—she walked again to the air—she trembled back—she gazed restless on the pulpit. The parish minister gave out the psalm—the book shook while she held ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... then a' doctor's saws and whittles, Of a' dimensions, shapes, an' mettles, A' kinds o' boxes, mugs, an' bottles, He's sure to hae; Their Latin names as fast he rattles As A B C. ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... man says he has succeeded in learning his A B C, his Paternoster, and his Ave Mary, but he cannot, do what he will, learn his Creed. He sets out, therefore, to find some one whose life, according with his profession, may give him a hope that he will teach him his creed aright. He applies to the friars. One after another, every order abuses ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... I have to work long and hard for the simple reason that it pleases my neighbors to shove a dozen new members into society?'" It should seem that a critic should first acquaint himself with the A B C of Socialism before presuming to write upon the subject, and such preposterous stuff ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... desired what he saw, and he would willingly have been a doctor too. So he remained standing a while, and at length inquired if he too could not be a doctor. "Oh, yes," said the doctor, "that is soon managed." "What must I do?" asked the peasant. "In the first place buy thyself an A B C book of the kind which has a cock on the frontispiece: in the second, turn thy cart and thy two oxen into money, and get thyself some clothes, and whatsoever else pertains to medicine; thirdly, have a sign painted for thyself with the words, "I am Doctor Knowall," and have that nailed up above ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... yet, but Silver Jack and Big Dan perfectly well knew that it only needed the suggestion, the temptation, to arouse the spirit of restlessness. That a taste or so of whiskey will shiver the patience of men oppressed by long monotony is as A B C to the north-country saloon-keeper. Silver Jack resolved to make the rounds of the camps sure that the investment of a few jugs of whiskey would bring down to Beeson Lake at least ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... men and cost enough to buy a whole new tract to do all the monkey business they want you to do. I've only been in the lumber business forty years! When a college boy can teach me, I'm willing to listen; but he can't teach me the A B C of the business." ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... I'd never go to school if I could help it. What's the use of so much learning? I'm going to a trade as soon as I get old enough; and Pete Elder says that a boy who don't know A B C, can learn a trade just as well as one ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... incident of his boyish days. His eyes glistened when he came in sight of Killingworth pit-head. Pointing to a humble red-tiled house by the road-side at Benton, he said, "You see that house—that was Rutter's, where I learnt my A B C, and made a beginning of my school learning. And there," pointing to a colliery chimney on the left, "there is Long Benton, where my father put up his first pumping-engine; and a great success it was. And this humble ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... to him; and for the sake of those dream-journeys, the journeys that might have been, I still hail with a certain affection the call of the engine in the night: even as I love sometimes to turn the enchanted pages of the railway a b c, and pass from one to the other name reminiscent or suggestive of joy and freedom, Devonian maybe, or savouring of Wessex, or bearing me away to some sequestered reach of ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... associate shooting with freedom." Half this blessed Sunday at this country house I have been ramming the idea down the throat of the Lord Chancellor[37]. He sees it, too, being a Scotchman. I take the members of the Government, as I get the chance or can make it, and go over with them the A B C of the President's principle: no territorial annexation; no trafficking with tyrants; no stealing of American governments by concession or financial thimble-rigging. They'll not recognize another Huerta—they're sick of that. And they'll not ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... strange that Sandy could make a song like this, by himself; but, you see, he was not entirely alone—there were the baby faeries. They helped a lot; as fast as ever he thought out the words they rhymed them for him—this being a part of the A B C of ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... "the very first thing you have to do is as simple as A B C! All you have to do is to tie up your hands every night with a ribbon, and so keep them raised ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... that you think so," I answered, "but, though I am still learning the A B C of this new world, I knew my contemporaries, and I know that it would not have been as you fancy. The poor would have listened no better than the rich, for, though poor and rich in my day were at bitter odds in everything else, they were agreed in believing that there must always ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... effort, a great deal that would be useful to him to know later: history, studying dates unweariedly, but mistaking the lesson to be learned from facts and the elementary notions of political economy necessary to a deputy, the A B C of sociology for the ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... of the diagram C D E, representing the luminous radiation. Indeed the idea forced upon the mind by this diagram is that the light rays are a mere insignificant appendage to the heat-rays represented by the area A B C D, thrown in as it were by nature for the purpose ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... but little," said Sancho, "for I don't even know the A B C; but it is enough for me to have the Christus in my memory to be a good governor. As for arms, I'll handle those they give me till I drop, and ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... glass violently upon the counter. "Thunder! how that fellow provokes me! He does not know the A B C of his profession. When he can't discover anything, he invents wonderful stories, and then misleads the magistrates with his high-sounding phrases, in the hope of gaining promotion. I'll give him advancement with a vengeance! I'll teach him to ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... prisons, and suicides' graves, washed daily by that grim flood's ebb and flow—the every-day people, I am sure, will not take in the blackness of this transaction at this stage of my story, but before it is ended I will lay this and many more of an equally hellish nature before them in such A B C simplicity that all can read the portent as clearly as the Prophet Daniel read the writing on the wall ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... followed by Wyatt and adopted (still from the Italian) the one which was subsequently used by Shakspere, consisting of three independent quatrains followed, as with Wyatt, by a couplet which sums up the thought with epigrammatic force, thus: a b a b c d c d e ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... books in a needlework bag that we all used to laugh at—I am sure I don't know why; but her teaching could not have amounted to much, for I went into the schoolroom one day, and found Tommy riding defiantly on the rocking-horse, while poor Miss Feechim stood by him with an A B C in one hand and a long pointer in the other, with which she showed him the letters. When he said them correctly, Miss Feechim gave him a sugar-plum out of the bag on her arm, but when he refused to look at them, which he did as often as not, she only said, "Oh, Tommy!" and shook her curls, ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... "it's all over, I guess. What an experience! I thought I knew the desert and the rough life before, but I wasn't out of my A B C's." ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... liked her prattle immensely, and they were on the best terms. She told Tom she should like to go to school to Mr. Stelling, as he did, and learn just the same things. She knew she could do Euclid, for she had looked into it again, and she saw what A B C meant; they were the ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... days; but in these days of ours, In dividing the work, we distribute the powers. Yet a dwarf on a dead giant's shoulders sees more Than the 'live giant's eyesight availed to explore; And in life's lengthen'd alphabet what used to be To our sires X Y Z is to us A B C. A Vanini is roasted alive for his pains, But a Bacon comes after and picks up his brains. A Bruno is angrily seized by the throttle And hunted about by thy ghost, Aristotle, Till a More or Lavater step into his place: Then the world turns and makes an ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... committed; but his day was over. The advance of the Constitutionalists southward compelled him in July to abandon the capital and leave the country. Four months later the American forces were withdrawn from Vera Cruz. The "A B C" Conference, however barren it was of direct results, helped to allay suspicions of the United States in Hispanic America and brought appreciably nearer a "concert of the ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... cents a week for each pupil, and opened her school with prayer; after which came a chapter of the Bible, with explanations, and the rules of conduct. Then the A B C class was called, because their recital was a hand-to-hand ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine |
