"Playground" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... expression. When he fails in the class, the kind of social lesson which is valuable may be taught him by submitting the same question to a pupil of the plodding, deliberate kind, and waiting for the latter to work it out. Of course, if the teacher have any supervision over the playground, similar treatment can be ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... reason why the Athenians rejoice in the country. The dusty streets are at best a poor playground for the children, the inner court of the house is only a respectable prison for the wife. In the country the lads can enjoy themselves; the wife and the daughters can roam about freely with delightful ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... factory rules—can be described in figures and actions that appeal to the imagination and impress upon the mind pictures that are repeatedly reawakened by experience and observation on the playground, at home, on the way to school or to work. "Once upon a time—" will always arrest attention more quickly than "The human frame consists—." What others think of me helps me to obey law—statutory, ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... word expresses everything. Free passion, arranged and expurgated for the use of schools! Life, that vast plain swept by the winds,—inclosed within the four walls of a school playground! The fierce, proud beat of a heart in anguish, reduced to the tic-tacs of a four-tune pendulum, which goes its jolly way, hobbling and imperturbably leaning on the crutch of time!... To enjoy the Ocean you need to put it in a bowl with goldfish. You only understand ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... Mrs. Morrison, in black silk and old lace, her white hair dressed high, was an imposing figure, and set a standard of cultured deportment that was copied by every girl in the room. The Brackenfielders prided themselves upon their manners, and, though they might relapse in the playground or dormitory, no Court etiquette could be stricter than their code for public occasions. The hall was quite en fete; it had been charmingly decorated by the Seniors with autumn leaves and bunches of chrysanthemums and Michaelmas daisies. A grand piano and pots of palms stood ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... and range the more sightly ones midst lawns and flowers; while others, still more thorough, will be satisfied with nothing short of sweeping away all traces of the graves, and transforming the whole space at one stroke into a public playground. The choice of systems is in some degree a question of environment. Wherever open ground is needed for the health and enjoyment of dwellers in towns, it is now generally conceded that, with certain reservations and under reasonable conditions, disused churchyards—especially such as are neglected ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... the door of his delivery had been swung wide, with its mockery of open and honest sunlight, and yet his feet were to remain fettered in that underworld gloom he had grown to hate. He must still stay an unwilling prisoner in this garden of studied indolence, this playground of invalids and gamblers; he must still dawdle idly about these glittering, stagnating squares, fringing a crowd of meaningless foreigners, skulking half-fed and poorly housed about this opulent showplace of the world that set its appeasing ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... years of life, which included seven years of uncongenial tasks, and three of writing, and three of wandering in search of health,—that sums up the story of Keats. He was born in London; he was the son of a hostler; his home was over the stable; his playground was the dirty street. The family prospered, moved to a better locality, and the children were sent to a good school. Then the parents died, and at fifteen Keats was bound out to a surgeon and apothecary. For four years he worked as an apprentice, and for three years more in a ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... of the teacher's work lies in the playground, and the teacher who does not play with his boys will never quite win their hearts. Indian boys as a rule do not play enough, and time should be given for games during the school day. Even the teachers ...
— Education as Service • J. Krishnamurti
... strangely unfamiliar with his surroundings. He had never before experienced anything like fear in the woods. The rigours of seven Canadian winters had bred a hardy spirit in this little backwoodsman, and besides what was there to dread in the forest? It had been his playground ever since he was first able to steal away from Granny and toddle off to "the bush" to gather blue flags and poke up the goggle-eyed frogs from their fragrant musk-pools. But here was something unfamiliar; a strange uncanny place the swamp seemed to-day; and, being Nature's intimate, ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... into their true fold of rest, while these are scattered on the hills, as sheep having no shepherd. And do not think your daughters can be trained to the truth of their own human beauty, while the pleasant places, which God made at once for their schoolroom and their playground, lie desolate and defiled. You cannot baptize them rightly in those inch-deep fonts of yours, unless you baptize them also in the sweet waters which the great Lawgiver strikes forth for ever from the rocks of your native land—waters which a Pagan would have worshipped in their ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... is given by Genest ('English Stage', vol. viii. pp. 432-434). As a comic actress, Mrs. Jordan was unrivalled; her voice was perfect; and her natural gaiety irresistible. Sir Joshua Reynolds preferred her to all other actresses as a being "who ran upon the stage as a playground, and laughed from sincere wildness of delight." In genteel comedy, critics like Genest ('English Stage', vol. viii. p. 431) and Leigh Hunt ('Dramatic Essays', ed. 1894, p. 82) agree that she failed, perhaps, as the latter suggests, because she was so "perpetually employed" ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... as to these early years, which would show that besides being a weakling, he was in no sense remarkable. He was merely another of those small, backward urchins that one may see at any recess, on any public school playground. ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... who had found his way into his presence. Kind they were without exception, these simple homely folk; but their gravity was hardly to be measured. Stern Calvinists to a man and a woman, the world was clearly to them no playground, no place for the frivolous pursuit of pleasure; and even the innocent sports of a child seemed to jar on their sense ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... sense of humour, of the seemly and the absurd, of pleasure and pain, success and failure, in narratives where the plot moves briskly and dramatically from a beginning to an end. They treat, not of the corner of a nursery or a playground, but of the world at large, and life in perspective; of forces visible and invisible; of Life, ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... Square dwelling of Liverpool. Here, on the former site of miserable tenement houses, sheltering more than a thousand people, stands to-day a palatial structure built around a hollow square, the major part of which is utilized as a large shrub-encircled playground for the children. The halls and stairways of the building are broad, light, and airy; the ventilation and sanitary arrangements perfect. The apartments are divided into one, two, and three rooms each. No room is smaller than 13 x 8 feet 6 inches; ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... upon which my eyes rest oftenest and with deepest content is a broad sweep of meadow slowly climbing the western sky until it pauses at the edge of a noble piece of woodland. It is a playground of wind and flowers and waving grasses. There are, indeed, days when it lies cold and sad under inhospitable skies, but for the most part the heavens are in league with cloud and sun to protect its charm against all comers. When the turf ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... opportunity to go to a brook or river to find out, do not state that the banks are low. The fact presented in that way would be almost devoid of meaning. But let the child model a river valley in the sand box or out on the playground showing steep banks in places and in others banks that slope gently. Then let him think of a herd of cattle feeding on the hillsides. The cattle need water. Suppose that they come up to the steep ...
— The Tree-Dwellers • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... the east of here bordering on Rock Creek has been made into a park and playground, and some attractive houses ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... tremendous combat ever known was that between Berry and Biggs the gown-boy, which commenced in a certain place called Middle Briars, situated in the midst of the cloisters that run along the side of the playground of Slaughter House School, near Smithfield, London. It was there, madam, that your humble servant had the honour of acquiring, after six years' labour, that immense fund of classical knowledge which in after life has been so ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... massive new one was half built, of gray stone, to the left, but the old one, with its shingles on the outside that had once caused her such wonder, still lay warm in the sun, but closed and deserted. There was the playground where she had been caught in "Ring around the Rosy," and Hale and that girl teacher had heard her confession. She flushed again when she thought of that day, but the flush was now for another reason. Over ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... picture to ourselves some little garrison holding a lonely outpost against lurking savages ready to attack if ever the defenders slacken their vigilance for a moment. And that is the truer picture of human nature as it is than the one by which most men are deluded. Life is not a playground, but an arena of grim, earnest fighting. No man does right in his sleep; no man does right without ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... as a babe, but adjudged to have been the guiltiest of the guilty. We each had to write out a sermon, and my sermon was the longest of the four. During the whole of one term-time we were helped last at every meal. We were not allowed to visit the playground till the sermon was finished. Mine was only done a day or two before the holidays. Mrs. Drury, when she saw us, shook her head with pitying horror. There were ever so many other punishments accumulated on our heads. It ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... keen for their new playground," he said at last, with a quick nod in the direction of the ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... in the event of a foray, and was as pleased with 'the Bower' as Lord William Howard with Naworth. 'Twas a quaint name enough, for 'the Bower' stood on the true march line of the naked Border, and in the very haunt and playground of the winds. Not only was it obnoxious to the winds, but equally exposed to raiding from Scotland, as also to the 'broken men' of 'the Waste,' for it stood erect above the Lewis Burn where it flows forth from Hells-bottom on the edge of Coplestone, ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... This was in the playground before dinner. Quentin, who had to keep his mouth shut very tight these days, because, of course, a boy of ten cannot cry before other chaps, shut the book he was ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... I had really been taught to study, not merely turned loose with a book in my hands, gave me an advantage over my mates, I do not know, but when Roger came back he found me only three classes below him and graduated from the little boys' playground forever. ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... Russia excepted, was attainable in a day's journey. A flying machine of but equal speed would have no advantages, but if the speed could be raised to 90 or 100 miles per hour, the whole continent of Europe would become a playground, every part being within a daylight flight of Berlin. Further, some marine craft now had speeds of 40 miles per hour, and efficiently to follow up and report movements of such vessels an aeroplane should ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... broke in on her confession. "What a delicious jumble!" cried Rosamond, springing up to adjust a lock that had fallen. "One can't tell which is the place of confinement and which the playground. For Heaven's sake, though, don't complain that you've never seen Niagara Falls, no self-respecting person nowadays is willing to confess that such a place even exists. It went out of date with the bridal bonnet and ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... the Kembles' Weybridge holidays. This is to be seen in the Eastlands' cottage garden, and is a semi-circular heap of earth or sand planted with trees and shrubs. Once, when it was much larger and higher, it was "the Mound," and was the favourite playground of the Kemble girls and boys. It grew out of a huge heap of sand which the landlord refused to move, and which Mrs. Kemble therefore planted and cut into shape with a walk round the top. Naturally enough, tradition has grown up round this heap of sand. ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... city bred, was an American, and evidently an old hand at the present business. The Maine wilds had long been his playground. He had studied the knack of noiseless paddling under the teaching of a skilled forest guide until he fairly brought it to perfection. And, in perfection, it is about the most wizard-like art practised in the ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... N. arena, field, platform; scene of action, theater; walk, course; hustings; stare, boards &c. (playhouse) 599; amphitheater; Coliseum, Colosseum; Flavian amphitheater, hippodrome, circus, race course, corso[Sp], turf, cockpit, bear garden, playground, gymnasium, palestra, ring, lists; tiltyard[obs3], tilting ground; Campus Martins, Champ de Allars[obs3]; campus [U.S.]. boxing ring, canvas. theater of war, seat of war; battle-field, battle-ground; field of battle, field of ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... on a bench under a great fir that overlooked a deserted playground, emerald green with new grass. They faced a sinking sun, a ball of molten fire on the far crest of Vancouver Island. Behind them the roar of traffic on downtown streets was like the faint murmur ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... these Thomases?" asked Kinch, as he sat beside Charlie in the playground munching the last of the apple-tart; "what kind of folks are they? Tell me that, and I can give ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... called the twin maples. These two very old trees grew side by side, their great trunks not more than four feet apart and their branches so intermingled that they were practically one tree in two parts. The delightful shade of this double tree afforded a favorite playground for the children, and they had missed it during the past week when they were forbidden to ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... growth that covered it was tangled and twisted as if thrown together by a mad burst of storms. Dark, sinister and threatening the interior loomed before them; and without needing to consult their maps they spoke as one: "The Devil's Playground!" ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... cruel man with the wooden leg aggravated my sufferings. He was in authority; and if he ever saw me leaning against a tree, or a wall, or the house, he roared out from his lodge door in a stupendous voice, 'Hallo, you sir! You Copperfield! Show that badge conspicuous, or I'll report you!' The playground was a bare gravelled yard, open to all the back of the house and the offices; and I knew that the servants read it, and the butcher read it, and the baker read it; that everybody, in a word, who came backwards and forwards to ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... don't want to break all your hearts, Cherie's especially, but why should all that space be nothing but a playground for us Underwoods, instead of ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the man whose sphere of life is large, whose spirit is capable of reacting to the orient and the occident, to height and depth, and whose mind flashes across the space from the dawn to the sunset, and from nadir to zenith. Space is his playground, and his companions are the stars. Such a man feels and knows more life in an hour than his antithesis could feel and know in a century. To his spirit there are no metes and bounds; it has freedom and ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... flash and being prepared for catastrophes, ducked below their desks, and were none of them seriously hurt. The window was blown out into the playground, and the blackboard on its easel was upset. The slate was smashed to atoms. Some plaster fell from the ceiling. No other damage was done to the school edifice or appliances, and the boys at first, seeing nothing of Plattner, fancied he was knocked down and lying out of their sight below ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... ghost of precedent to guide them, the club undertook the work, and as women have had considerable experience in taking care of children at home, they soon discovered ways of taking care of them successfully in the playground. ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... back and I found a public playground and bathhouse by the water's edge. This attracted me at once. I investigated this and found it offered a fine opportunity for bathing. Little dressing-rooms were provided and for a penny a man could get a clean towel and for five cents a bathing suit. There was ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... admitted. "Every country seems to have sent its statesmen holiday-making. And what a playground, too!" he added, glancing towards Hunterleys with something which was almost a wink. "Here, political crises seem of little account by the side of the turning wheel. This is where the world unbends and it is well that there should be such a ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... everything they prayed for, discover, as a peculiar gift of Providence, some fault in the actions or opinions of a neighbour, and run it down, crying and shouting after it, with more alacrity and more clamour than boys would a leveret or a squirrel in the playground. Are our years and our intellects, and the word of God itself, given us for ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... life was easy; hours at the Rialto were short and the pay was high. Inasmuch as the place was a playground where cares were forgotten, there was a wholly artificial atmosphere of gaiety and improvidence about it. When patrons won at the gambling-games, they promptly squandered their winnings at the bar and in the theater; when they lost, they cheerfully ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... at play in their playground one day when a herald rode through the town, blowing a trumpet, and crying aloud: "The King! The King passes ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... very large playground; beyond it were fields, orchards and walks of large extent reserved for the use of the two head-masters' families, many of whom were girls. On Saturday half-holidays only, if the fruit was not ripe, we were allowed to range certain fields, and the ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... this respect some way behind their brothers and sisters on the mainland. If at whiles the small trio looked back wistfully as old Jan rowed them homeward, or if the shouts that followed across the water from the playground now and again reproached them, on the whole they would not have changed places with their school-fellows even at a price. After all, no island in the world could compare with Saaron. Their father had never said this, but ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the routine for five of the six work days. Saturday is whole holiday, and all hands go to fish if the sea permits; if not, to play rounders or what not. Merry lads they are, as ever gladdened an English playground. ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... my sincere appreciation of the contribution to the book from Mr. Cabot, who, descendent of the ancient explorers, is peculiarly well fitted to speak of Labrador. The great peninsula has been, as he terms it, his "playground," and by canoe in summer or on snowshoes in winter he has travelled thousands of miles in the interior, thus placing himself in closest ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... kindly custom of allowing the children of Amsterdam the run of the Bourse as a playground for a week every year is some compensation for the suppression of the Kermis, but another story makes the sanction a perpetual reward for an heroic deed against the Spaniards performed ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... great organisms. Each has an individuality, a specific identity, so marked, and peculiarities so especially characteristic of itself, that one might almost allow it a soul. Down through the centuries has fair Lutetia come, growing in the artistic graces, until now she stands the playground of princes and the capital of the world, even as mighty Rome among the ancients. And shall we object, because a few pages of "A Love Episode" are devoted to descriptions of Paris? Rather let us be thankful for them. These descriptions of the wonderful old city form a glorious pentatych. ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... two processes in the closest juxtaposition in ordinary life. There is many a house where there is a coffin upstairs and a cradle downstairs. The churchyard is often the children's playground. The web is being run down at the one end and woven at the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... The hospitals, the county agencies, and State asylums are often but vague rumors to the people who need them most. Another function of the Settlement to its neighborhood resembles that of the big brother whose mere presence on the playground protects the ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... cats, and dogs, and rabbits, and, above all, the boys that I have. What sort of a garden would there be, and do you think it would be fair to take their playground from them?" ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... says: "Children do not play because they are young; they are young in order that they may play." Play is a normal process of the child's growth through spontaneous activity. Joseph Lee, the president of the Playground and Recreation Association of America, goes so far as to say: "Play is thus the essential part of education. It is nature's prescribed course. School is invaluable in forming the child to meet actual social opportunities and conditions. Without the school, he will not grow up to fit ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... was only through fear of our school being beaten if she did not relent that Julia handed me the portrait, charging me solemnly to bring it back. I promised, of course. Heriot went into his favourite corner of the playground, and there looked at it and kissed it, and then buttoned his jacket over it tight, growling when I asked him to return it. Julia grew frightened. She sent me with numbers of petitions ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... acre a few years ago in the United States to-day sell for five hundred dollars and one thousand dollars an acre. The point they miss is—that these top values are the result of exceptional conditions; of millionaires turning a region into a playground as in the walnut and citrus groves of California; or of nearness to market and water transportation; or of peculiarly finely organized marketing unions. If the rich estates of England like to take these risks, it is their affair; but they ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... where English is a foreign language. Needless to say, the lack of Gaelic is a terrible drawback to these two men. They should never have been where they are, for they are aliens. The scholars, unbreeched little rogues, have an advantage over their teacher, and in the playground talk the tongue of the Celt invariably, and may be maligning him for all he knows. I am afraid, too, that teacher and minister do not always consider themselves as auxiliaries in these outer isles. The younger generation of teachers have, as might be expected, a more extensive knowledge ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... be somewhere in the Academy playground, I will hunt for her there; or perhaps you might find her over in the church, listening to the choir practising, you know she is strangely fond of ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... saw that I must camp. I crossed the river to an opening where the bear tracks were so thick that the spot seemed a playground for all these animals roundabout. The black bears on the western slope were timid and not dangerous; but I did not know about this species of the ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... proceeding of the fresh-listed soldier at drill; he has ever his eye on his right-hand man, and does not raise his arm, nor advance his foot, nor move his finger, but as he sees another perform the same motion before him. It is when the schoolboy proceeds to the playground, that he engages in real action and real discussion. It is then that he is an absolute human ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... such affairs that contests are decided—on the playground or in strategy. Lord Roberts proceeded with his preparations undisturbed by the mosquito buzzings about his ears or on his trail. At last, when ready, a second long leap was made. The British army, leaving Bloemfontein on the 2nd of May, was on the 12th at Kroonstad, ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... thick, black wintry afternoon, when the writer stopt in the front of the playground of a suburban school. The ground swarmed with boys full of the Saturday's holiday. The earth seemed roofed with the oldest lead, and the wind came, sharp as Shylock's knife, from the Minories. But those happy boys ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... for corn, oats or hay in the county!" he exclaims, "and you have made it the playground of a lot of rich dudes! Jack, I should think your father would turn over in his grave. I'd like to run a plow an' harrer over them puttin' greens of yours, as ye call them. You've wasted enough manure on that grass to ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... admiral that evening that there was no hope for the family, since Robert had got hold of Mervyn as well as of the rest of them. People in society actually asked her about the schools and playground at Mr. Fulmort's distillery; there had been an educational ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... men; there are some that have no luck. A genuinely unfortunate tree was the poor sycamore which grew in the playground of an institution for boys on the Rue de la Grande-Chaumiere, ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... after his arrival Peter, after midday dinner, standing desolately in the playground and feeling certain that he ought to be playing football somewhere but completely ignorant as to the place where lists commonly hung, saw another new boy and hailed him. This boy he had noticed before—he was shapeless of body, with big, round, ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... mangrove swamp were cleared for a wonderland playground, of divine climate whither winter tourists throng by the hundred thousand. In time, too, these sand-spits and swamps and older formations of the sunny peninsula furnished homes and sources of livelihood or of wealth to many thousands ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... clock was about four minutes slower than Mrs. Knight's, so the next playground was empty. It was a warm, breezy day, and as Katy sat here, suddenly a gust of wind came, and seizing her sun-bonnet, which was only half tied on, whirled it across the roof. She clutched after it as it flew, but too late. Once, twice, thrice, it flapped, then it disappeared ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... kind and tender feelings, especially for the young. Little children would show their trust in him by clasping him about his knees or by nestling in his arms. While he was in Savannah, large groups of children made a playground of the general's headquarters and private room, the doors of which were never closed ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... scattered on the hills, as sheep having no shepherd. And do not think your daughters can be trained to the truth of their own human beauty, while the pleasant places, which God made at once for their school-room and their playground, lie desolate and defiled. You cannot baptize them rightly in those inch-deep fonts of yours, unless you baptize them also in the sweet waters which the great Lawgiver strikes forth forever from the rocks of your native land—waters ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... the edge of the bluff at the steep bend in Cliff Street, a point of rock projects beyond the rough side. By a rude sort of stone steps beside this point we could clamber down many feet to the bush-grown ledge below. This point had been a meeting-place and playground for Marjie and myself all those years. We named it "Rockport" after the old Massachusetts town. Marjie could hear my call from the bushes and come up to the half-way place between our two homes. The stratum of rock below this point was full of cunning little crevices and ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... came back from her deep-sea fishing she would go straight to their playground and call as a sheep calls for a lamb, and wait until she heard Kotick bleat. Then she would take the straightest of straight lines in his direction, striking out with her fore flippers and knocking ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... failed to look for the natural elegance of the boy. Possibly no artist admires the female form more than I do, but any artist will corroborate me when I say it is a matter of the greatest difficulty to find a graceful young female model, while you seldom find a youth who is really awkward. The playground of a girls' school is a conglomeration of awkward figures, awkward running, awkward gesticulating, enough to make an artist shudder, while the cricket or football ground of a college is the best study an artist can possibly have for the poetry of motion. Mr. Sterry cannot ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... the street and its allied institutions will throw light upon the precocious ways of the typical city boy. The street is the playground, especially of the small boy who must remain within sight and call of home. Numerous fatalities, vigorous police, and big recreation parks will not prevent the instinctive use of the nearest available open area. If congestion is to be ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... him that night, and I can always recollect the view from the greenroom window. It looked out on a great square courtyard, in which the spare scenery, that was not in immediate use, was stacked. For some reason or other this courtyard was a favorite playground for a large company of rats. I don't know what the attraction was for them, except that they may have liked nibbling the paint off the canvas. Out they used to troop in swarms, and I, from my perch on the window-seat, would watch and wonder. Once a terrible storm came on, and years after, ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... on to take a small part in one of those historical processions or pageants which happened to be fashionable in or about the year 1909. And since I tend, like all who are growing old, to re-enter the remote past as a paradise or playground, I disinter a memory which may serve to stand among those memories of small but strange incidents with which I have sometimes filled this column. The thing has really some of the dark qualities of a detective-story; though I suppose that Sherlock Holmes ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... sent us to bed in the colossal four-poster, in the middle of the afternoon, we were scarcely downcast, for it was not such a bad playground after all, and by drawing the curtains, we could shut ourselves completely away from the world dominated ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... the school, but with the social life at Eton. But her interest in the gay world, as there represented, was lukewarm. Its shallowness provoked her. She, looking upon life as real and earnest, and not as a mere playground, could not sympathize with women who gave themselves up to dress, nor with men who expended their energies in efforts to raise a laugh. Wit of rather an affected kind was the fashion of the day. At its best it was odious, but when manufactured ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... these violent mental exercises I had reduced my mind to a comfortable stupor by the time I reached the school gates. There I was overcome by shyness, and although I saw lights in the form-rooms and heard the voices of boys, I stood awkwardly in the playground, not knowing where I ought to go. The mist in the air surrounded the lights with a halo, and my nostrils were filled with the acrid smell ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... ravine which separated Storm hill from the property that had formerly belonged to Jacques Benoix, a roofless, tumbledown stone cabin which had been from childhood Jacqueline's own particular playground, as sacred to her as the eyrie to her mother. She called it, grandiloquently, the Ruin. The place had a sinister reputation, and was sedulously avoided by both negroes and whites of the neighborhood; which ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... the monkey, the merriest and most active of two-legged or four-legged beings on board. It might have puzzled many to determine to which he belonged, as he was seen dressed in a blue jacket and white trousers, sitting up on the break of the forecastle, his usual playground in fine weather, cracking nuts, or peeling an orange like a human being, while his tongue was chattering away, as if he had a vast ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... years, and a good fighter; strong because he was coarsely fed and hard worked about the house, and a good fighter because Tom furnished him plenty of practice—on white boys whom he hated and was afraid of. Chambers was his constant bodyguard, to and from school; he was present on the playground at recess to protect his charge. He fought himself into such a formidable reputation, by and by, that Tom could have changed clothes with him, and "ridden in peace," like Sir Kay in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... before the others were astir. Work was left behind, for who could work indoors on days like these? There was a holiday feeling in the very air. Songs and laughter and the echo of merry voices were heard on every side, and the city seemed one vast playground, where all the grown-up children as well as the babies were ready to ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... stood at the corners directing traffic as only the members of that unit can. Into the Rue d'Arras we turned, and outside an Ecole de Filles we halted. There was our billet, the best we ever had. In the playground stood our cooker. Upstairs we were packed into the classrooms, with just enough room allowed to stretch one's legs and to turn over should one wish. We had our stew, and quickly rushed off to see all the town. In the square a military band was playing 'Nights of Gladness,' ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams
... with cushions, awnings, and fluttering pennons. Everyone rowed, and the girls as well as the youths had their races, and developed their muscles in the most scientific manner. The large, level meadow near the old willow was now the college playground, and here baseball battles raged with fury, varied by football, leaping, and kindred sports fitted to split the fingers, break the ribs, and strain the backs of the too ambitious participants. The gentler pastimes of the damsels were at a safe distance ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... as he looked out. "How selfish I have been!" he said; "now I know why the Spring would not come here. I will put that poor little boy on the top of the tree, and then I will knock down the wall, and my garden shall be the children's playground for ever and ever." He was really very sorry for ...
— The Happy Prince and Other Tales • Oscar Wilde
... both ends of the playground, the players divided into two equal divisions, occupying the two goals. About ten paces to the right of each goal is a prison. A player advances toward the opposite goal, when one from that goal starts out to catch him. He retreats, and one from ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... first got into trouble. They began at once building forts in their playground at school, and were soon divided into two opposing forces, each with one of ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard
... want to be the chaperon but the dictator of this tour," declared Winnie when they alighted at the big playground. "I've never been here before, and I don't want anybody to tell me anything I'm ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... moonlight striping the dark woods, and there was the incense smell of balsam firs. We sniffed the perfume joyously and reminded each other—Jack and I—that Maine is America's Scotland: like Scotland for beauty of lake and forest and mountain; like Scotland, too, "hard for the poor, and a playground ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... letter as having once had a great oak in it which was blown down in the great storm of 1703—a storm of which Defoe collected the chief records into a book—bears witness also to the cheerful village life of old. The name is a corruption of Play- stow; it was the playground for the village children. That oak blown down in 1703, which the vicar of the time vainly endeavoured to root again, was said to have lived 432 years before the time of its overthrow. The old yew in the churchyard has ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... will be necessary to enlarge the scope and, perhaps, to build two stories higher, so that the elders and perhaps bachelors of both sexes, who do not care for the garden, may help to bear the expense of the children's playground. Whatever form the advance may take, this is a sign-post in ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... devils had used it for a playground; the trees were mere blackened stumps; the fields on each side stretched burnt and bare. And then came the climax: something passed us,—high above our heads, I fancy, though its frightful winds seemed brushing us,—a ghost of the night, an aerial demon, a shrieking thing that made the ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... tell you: I'm going out among men and spread the gospel of mercy and forbearance, teach the lessons of peace, urge men to forgive instead of fight—showing them that courts of law are more often the devil's playground than the abode of real justice. I have worked hard, I have read many books, I have stored information in my mind, I have laid up money enough. You behold my armor—I have wrought at it patiently for a ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... lingered in the school building to prepare a history lesson from references they had to find in the library. Gyp hated to study; the drowsy stillness of the room was broken by the pleasant shouting from the playground outside. She threw down her pencil and stretched her ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... less a favorite with Jack than with the rest of the household. Indeed, he has constituted himself her especial guardian. Rough as he is in the playground, he is always gentle with her. When she was just learning to walk, and in her helplessness needed the constant care of others, he used, from choice, to relieve his mother of much of the task of amusing the child. He had never had a little ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... the Sandwich Islands; where, a few years ago, a playground for the children of the missionaries was inclosed with a fence many feet high, the more effectually to ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... the city moans with a human cry, And the man-gnomes delve and burrow for gold till they drop and die; But here there is naught for conquest and the spoiler stands at bay, For God still keeps one playground where ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... either end of the roof-ridge rose twin chimneys each with three salmon-coloured chimney-pots. The gigantic word 'Steam-printing' could be seen from the windows of the Dragon, from the porch of the big Wesleyan chapel higher up the slope, from the Conservative Club and the playground at the top of the slope; and as for Duck Square itself, it could see little else. The left-hand shop window was alluringly set out with the lighter apparatus of writing and reading, and showed incidentally several rosy pictures ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... like one's idea of a coal "camp" than of a pretty suburban development, or a military post, with officers' houses built around a parade. The grounds are well kept; there is a tennis court with vine-clad trellises about it, a fine playground for children, pretty brick walks, with splendid trees to shade them; and there is a brick schoolhouse which is a better building, better equipped, better lighted, and, above all, better ventilated than the schools I ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... class. Such a bright, clever fellow he was! Always through with his lessons before any of the rest of us, he was, and always at the top of the class. And the stories he could tell, lad! Never did I hear such stories. In the playground before school opened we used to get around him and make him tell stories till our hair ...
— The Marx He Knew • John Spargo
... church, by which it was masked from the view of persons approaching from the direction of Vittoria. A sort of cloister, with stone benches beneath it, ran along the wall of the church, and in front of the platform was a broad greensward, used as a playground by the village children. Whilst the Carlists grouped themselves in the cloisters, talking eagerly together, and waiting the coming of Count Villabuena, their horses and ponies stood saddled and bridled upon the green, held by peasant boys, and in readiness for their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... laboring life, City and country, women's, men's and children's, Their wants provided for, hued in the sun and tinged for once with joy, Marriage, the street, the factory, farm, the house-room, lodging-room, Labor and toll, the bath, gymnasium, playground, library, college, The student, boy or girl, led forward to be taught, The sick cared for, the shoeless shod, the orphan father'd and mother'd, The hungry fed, the houseless housed; (The intentions perfect and divine, The workings, details, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... place about the house during the heated hours of the day. Here the women bring their sewing or embroidery, and chat. It is also the favorite playground of the children, and in its shade the men of the household ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George
... pupils to better efforts and higher ideals.—The recitation is the teacher's mental "point of contact" with his pupils. He meets them socially in a friendly way at intermissions and on the playground. His moral character and personality are a model to the children at all times. But it is chiefly in the recitation that the mental stimulus is given. The teacher who is lifeless and uninspiring in the teaching of the recitation cannot but ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts
... been some other, and happily minor, fields that were not won—that were more or less lost. Where did this loss take place, if the gains were secured at football? This inquiry is not quite so cheerful as the other. But while the victories were once going forward in the playground, the defeats or disasters were once going forward in some other place, presumably. And this was surely the place that was not a playground, the place where the future wives of the football players were sitting still while their future husbands were ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... to my ears,) and who had never vouchsafed to waste a word on such a child as myself. The day was come, however, when all that would be changed. One of these leaders strode up to me in the public playground, and, delivering a blow on my shoulder, which was not intended to hurt me, but as a mere formula of introduction, asked me "what the devil I meant by bolting out of the course, and annoying other people in that ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... the Doctor more quietly, "that the boy who did it has not had the courage to own up, but I will give him another chance. I will take every boy's separate answer, and, after that, the whole school will be kept in the playground until the end of the term, unless the guilty boy will take ...
— Brave and True - Short stories for children by G. M. Fenn and Others • George Manville Fenn
... with a folding door between, the only other sitting-room being a small study built out over the garden. A long, narrow, green strip, which must have been a good deal longer before a row of garages was built at the back, was Gilbert's playground. His bedroom was a long room at the top of a not very high house. For what is in most London houses the drawing-room floor is in this house filled by two bedrooms and there is only one ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... at one or two fights before, at the school I used to attend at Westham, where the boys used to settle their differences generally at the bottom of the playground under a little clump of shady trees that were grouped there, which shut off the view of the house and the headmaster's eye; but never previously had the surroundings of any similar pugilistic encounter seemed ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... hotel, the 'Black Horse,' which was so famous in those days, I found the playground in which I was able to carry the mischievous spirit not exhausted at the Pachta's house to the point of recklessness. Out of the most accidental material in table and travelling guests we succeeded in gathering a company around us which allowed us, until far into the night, to lead it into ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... essential element of the Oriental architecture of the Mediterranean, which provided the theme of the Exposition plan. There, however, it is the patio, the place of the siesta, the playground of the children. Here the courts have been made the chief architectural feature of the group. There the courts are private. Here they ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... Vava, not seeing very well how she was to get out of it, but wondering what Stella would say to her choice of a friend. As they entered the playground she saw Rosie Brown the centre of a little group of girls, who looked up as she came in, and then looked away again, without nodding good-morning ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin |
