"Hobby" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little wooden cart, While Peggy, brave and tried, Got up in front To bear the brunt Of "Hobby's" mighty stride. ...
— The Adventure of Two Dutch Dolls and a 'Golliwogg' • Bertha Upton
... business of the parish, sir, if we shut up your tribunal? I don't suppose my mother would like to have the constables and the illegitimates introduced either into the drawing-room or the kitchen," (this was, as I meant it to be, a poser; if Mr Hawthorne senior had a hobby, it was his magisterial authority.) "The fact is, that at home, up-stairs or down-stairs, I couldn't read. I should have not only my own idleness, but the various idlenesses of the whole family combined, to fight against. My sisters would be knocking at the door every half hour, if only to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... seen in marriage anything but the means of transmitting property to another self, had long sworn to marry Veronique to some rich bourgeois,—so long, in fact, that the idea had assumed in his brain the characteristics of a hobby. His neighbor, the hat-maker, who possessed about two thousand francs a year, had already asked, on behalf of his son, to whom he proposed to give up his hat-making establishment, the hand of a girl so well known in the neighborhood ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... I roomed together at college, and I learned a lot from him outside my regular course. He was a pretty good scholar despite his love of fun, and his particular hobby was paleontology. He used to tell me about the various forms of animal and vegetable life which had covered the globe during former eras, and so I was pretty well acquainted with the fishes, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... on their hobby-horse Thinke they are riding, when with wanton toile They beare what should beare them. A man may well 175 Compare them to those foolish great-spleen'd cammels, That to their high heads beg'd of Jove hornes higher; Whose most uncomely and ridiculous pride When hee had satisfied, they ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... hour for two years to working like Trojans? though, for that matter, who ever heard of any work the Trojans ever did that amounted to anything—except the spending of ten years in getting themselves badly defeated by a big wooden hobby-horse? ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... clime I can't determine, That lifts its paws most parson-like, and thence, By simple savages—thro' sheer pretence— Is reckon'd quite a saint amongst the vermin. But where's the reverence, or where the nous, To ride on one's religion thro' the lobby, Whether a stalking-horse or hobby, To show its pious paces to ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... reader by a succession of delicate touches rather than by description. He seems to enter into an individual, and make him betray his peculiarities by significant actions and phrases. Thus Mr. Shandy exposes at once the nature of his mind and the vigor of his "hobby-horse," when he exclaims to his brother Toby: "What is the character of ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... doggedly, securely mounted now on his favorite hobby horse. "I knows, and youse knows, Mr. Chames. Gee, I wish I'd bin a cop. But I wasn't tall enough. Dey's de fellers wit' de long green in der banks. Look at dis old McEachern. Money to boin a wet dog wit', he's got, and never a bit of woik for it ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... page 284 of his works, Hall writes: "From the top of Providence Berg, a dark fog was seen to the north, indicating water. At 10 a. m. three of the men (Kruger, Nindemann and Hobby) went to Cape Lupton to ascertain if possible the extent of the open water. On their return they reported several open spaces and much young ice—not more than a day old, so thin that it was easily broken by throwing pieces of ice ...
— The Smoky God • Willis George Emerson
... good after all,' Harold said, and he no longer laughed at his small brother's hobby, but learned to admire the nimbleness of body which, with his ready wit, made him of so much use in ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... inscription recorded his name, as did the learned Dame Elizabeth Hobby on a brass at ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... Joe, sharply; "he'll have been talking to Sam Hardock about it, I know. Here, Tom Dinass, what about that hobby up-and-down thing Sam Hardock wants to ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... and told her the salient details. "Quite a few mercenaries manage to acquire a private fracas-buff." He defined the term for her. "He makes a hobby of your career. Winds up knowing more about it than you, yourself can possibly remember. He follows every fracas you get into. Knows every time you cop one, how serious it was, how long you were in hospital. He glories each time you get a promotion, is in gloom each time your ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... a great chart of the surface of Mars, made by the famous Italian Schiaparelli, and he looked at more of the reviews and found ever the same subject considered in the marked articles. All related to Mars. He was puzzled but delighted. "The dear girl has a hobby," he thought. "Well, she shall ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... diplomatic courtesies, but in secret he was sounding Napoleon's possible attitude in the oncoming Prussian war, against Austria. The Emperor was completely tricked. Bismarck talked frankly of the necessity of "reform" in the German Confederation, and Napoleon, whose hobby was that peoples speaking the same language should be under one rule, fell in quite naturally with the plan to "reform" Prussia. The Emperor thought that Bismarck had in mind only certain constitutional changes in Prussia, not dynastic changes, destroying the European balance of power and preparing ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... of this gallant craft was of a piece with the rest. When a man rides an amiable hobby that shies at nothing and kicks nobody, it is only agreeable to find him riding it with a humorous sense of the droll side of the creature. When the man is a cordial and an earnest man by nature, and withal is perfectly fresh and genuine, it may be doubted whether he is ever seen to greater advantage ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... years younger. He was a pleasant-looking little chap, about five feet four inches in height, slightly built, with blue eyes, yellow hair and an incipient moustache upon which he bestowed a great deal of attention. His hobby was popular chemistry. This he indulged in, greatly to the entertainment of his friends and the detriment of his hands, which were generally discoloured in a manner that defied soap. He lived in a little hut just outside the village. This hut consisted of ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... Clifden, and I was eight-and-thirty; plenty of money, sound in wind and limb. I had been by way of being a writer before the war, the hobby of a rich man; but if I picked up anything in the welter in France, it was that real work is the only salvation this mad world has to offer; so I meant to begin at the beginning, and learn my trade like a journeyman labourer. I had come to the right place. A very wonderful city is Peshawar—rather ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... have several seals of stone with which to stamp on the picture they draw as a guarantee of their personal work or for identification. The shape and kind of seals are quite a hobby among artists, and sales or exchange are of ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... a capable but in some respects a singular man, performed his managerial duties without an office staff, wrote all his own letters, and not only wrote them but first carefully drafted them out in a hand minute almost as Jonathan Swift's. A strenuous worker, Mr. Johnstone, like most men who have no hobby, did not long survive his ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... be very interesting," said Shelton, whose glance was roving for Antonia; "I never managed to begin a hobby." ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... account of a new book. The reviewer is evidently unaware of the author's name, since the words which accompany the title, from the English, are nowhere elucidated, and no hint of authorship, or popularity in England, or possible far-reaching appeal in Germany is traceable. The idea of the hobby-horse is new to the reviewer and his explanation of it implies that he presumed Sterne's use of the term would be equally novel to the readers of the periodical. His compliment to the translation indicates ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... parents on the altar of the proprieties, whereas our grandfathers had a soul in their work, and the man with his heart in his work—whether scraping a fiddle, ploughing a furrow, writing an epic, or fighting a battle—must, by all honest men, be awarded the palm. In this over-riding of music as a hobby there is a danger that the salt may lose its savour, for if there is any individual more to be pitied than another it is the so-called musician standing up to play according to the rules of art with no response from ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... have explained to you that all insane people have some hobby that they ride industriously all ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... Pau. There is really a great artist there—a man whose sole hobby is his kitchen, and who, if he chooses, can send you up a dinner second to none. His name is Guichard. Go and have a talk with him. Hear what he has to say on the fond-de-cuisine theory. Let him arrange your menu and await the ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... was safely mounted on one of her favourite hobby-horses. William withdrew to his room and carefully concealed the cream blanc-mange beneath his bed. He then waited till he heard the guests arrive and exchange greetings in the hall. William, listening with his door open, carefully committed to memory the voice ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... are we wonder at, like children that esteem every trifle, and prefer a fairing before their fathers! What difference is between us and them but that we are dearer fools, coxcombs at a higher rate? They are pleased with cockleshells, whistles, hobby-horses, and such like; we with statues, marble pillars, pictures, gilded roofs, where underneath is lath and lime, perhaps loam. Yet we take pleasure in the lie, and are glad we can cozen ourselves. Nor is it only in our walls and ceilings, but all that ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... dog as a companion, as a guardian of property, as an assistant in the pursuit of game, and as the object of a pleasurable hobby, has never been so great as it is at the present time. More dogs are kept in this country than ever there formerly were, and they are more skilfully bred, more tenderly treated, and cared for with a more solicitous pride than was the case a generation ago. There are fewer mongrels in our midst, ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... met with the following document. It is one of many such; for he was a curious and industrious collector of old local traditions—a commodity in which the quarter where he resided mightily abounded. The collection and arrangement of such legends was, as long as I can remember him, his hobby; but I had never learned that his love of the marvellous and whimsical had carried him so far as to prompt him to commit the results of his inquiries to writing, until, in the character of residuary legatee, his will put me in possession of all his manuscript papers. ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... the first time since my marriage, and things have been a little difficult between us—just at first. He really scarcely ever puts in an appearance at Curzon Street. I dare say you have heard that he makes a hobby of an amazing country house which he has ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... this year of Peace 1947," responded his dragoman, arresting him before a statue; "for the development of this hobby has been peculiar since you were here in 1910, when the childlike and contortionist movement was just beginning to ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... and such like, requisite to such an action: also Minerall men and Refiners. Besides, for solace of our people, and allurement of the Sauages, we were prouided of Musike in good variety: not omitting the least toyes, as Morris dancers, Hobby horsse, and Maylike conceits to delight the Sauage people, whom we intended to winne by all faire meanes possible. And to that end we were indifferently furnished of all petty haberdasherie wares to ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... do go you'll find an elephant or two hanging about to take you to the place in state. He's, the native prince, got some of the finest elephants in the whole of this mosquito-ridden land—makes a hobby ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... Watchmaker, and after skipping the "Comparison" (which made the boy represent a convert and the watch in his pocket illustrative of "Grace within his Heart"), they probably turned eagerly to the next Meditation Upon the Boy and his Paper of Plumbs. Weather-cocks, Hobby-horses, Horses, and Drums, all served Bunyan in his effort "to point a moral" while adorning ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... other chances, Senator," Truslow assured him. "Mrs. Protheroe has a hobby for studying politics and she expects to come down often. She has plenty of time—she's ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... Of course I took pains to mount only a horse that had arrived at years of discretion, matronly brood-mares or run-down plow-horses; but this is only proof of my practical turn of mind. Mozart never learned how to control either horse or man by means of a tattered hat or diplomacy: music was his hobby, and it was long years after his death before the world discovered that his hobby was no hobby at all, but a genuine automobile that carried him miles and miles, clear beyond all his competitors: so far ahead that he was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... him, because he is certainly a gentleman, and I believe, in the ordinary way, quite incapable of anything in the least degree dishonorable; although, of course, they say a collector has no conscience in the matter of his own particular hobby, and certainly Mr. Wollett is as keen a collector as any man alive. He lives in chambers in the next turning past Claridge's premises—can, in fact, look into Claridge's back windows if he likes. He examined the cameo several times before I bought it, and ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... onwards the schoolboy with the strange hobby was constantly able to witness the flights and even the inflations of those ships of the air, which, his family associations notwithstanding took precedence of ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... hobby. He was fond of old china, and had made a beautiful collection, with the help of such friends as Lord Dawne, Dr. Galbraith, and Lady Adeline Hamilton-Wells, who never failed to bring him back any good specimen they might find in the ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Morris, that's it," said the Colonel, seating himself upon a garden chair; "this hobby-horse of yours is carrying you—to the devil, and your family with you. I don't want to be rough, but it is time that I spoke plain. Let's see, how long is it since you ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... was teaching him writing, without blots. Curiously enough, when, some years ago, improvements were being made at the Abbey, a number of copy-books of the style of writing common at the period in which Lady Hobby lived were discovered behind ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... a "hobby of hobbies." Only the big hobbies of your man are worth especial study. Never harp on any of his little idiosyncracies. He may be sensitive about being eccentric. It is bad salesmanship to pretend an interest in another person's whims. You cannot use his hobbies to ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... mounted on her hobby now, and she ambled vigorously along until Amy, with a sigh of relief, announced that she heard wheels. Amy had heard Cousin Barbara's views more than once, when a missing shoe button, a torn glove, or an ...
— Mildred's Inheritance - Just Her Way; Ann's Own Way • Annie Fellows Johnston
... is good, but they are afraid the expense will make it of no practical use. However, they have not decided. It is well it is his last chance, though, as he says. I never saw a man who had dragged himself so near to insanity in pursuit of a hobby. Nothing but a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... 'Every man has his hobby. The thing is to find it out. In the case of comrade Rossiter, I should say that it would be either postage stamps, dried seaweed, or Hall Caine. I shall endeavour to find out today. A few casual questions, and the thing is done. ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... unceasing hobby to the old man. The secondhand dealers never made any objection to his reading books upon the shelves. His purchases were perhaps two books a week, at ten or even five cents each. Now and again he would ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... we shall have you put finger in the eye, and cry, O friends, no friends! Say, man, what new paper hobby-horses, what rattle-babies, are come out in ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... McArthur, riding his hobby enthusiastically, quite forgot the character of his listeners, and laid his theories regarding the interchange of mammalian life between America and Asia during the early Pleistocene period, before Meeteetse Ed, Old Man Rulison, Tubbs, and others, in the same language in which he would ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... correspondent in Washington whom I came to know pretty well and who kept me filled in on the latest UFO scuttlebutt being passed around the Washington press circles. He was one of those humans who had a brain like a filing cabinet; he could remember everything about everything. UFO's were a hobby of his. He remembered when the Grudge Report came out; in fact, he'd managed to get a copy of his own. He said the report had been quite impressive, but only in its ambiguousness, illogical reasoning, and very apparent effort to write off all UFO ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... worth while, Fittsy, my boy. I am making it now. It's going to be a hobby-horse, if I live long enough to finish it. Good night, ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... entirely fresh start. Men and events of the previous two or three centuries were almost as antique then as they are to-day, and perhaps in many respects they were infinitely less clearly understood. As the century grew in age, so the number of book-collectors increased. The hobby became first a passion with the few, and then the fashion with the many. Henry VIII. was perhaps a passive rather than an active collector, with a distinct leaning in favour of beautiful books. ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... huddling out like a flock of sheep that might get together afterward or might not. I did not shine as a shepherd. As a type Eighteen fitted nowhere. I did not find out if he had a nationality, family, creed, grievance, hobby, soul, preference, home, or vote. He only came always to my table and, as long as his leisure would permit, let words flutter from him like swallows leaving a barn ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... has his hobby-liking, mine is for a real farm-lane fenced by old chestnut-rails gray-green with dabs of moss and lichen, copious weeds and briers growing in spots athwart the heaps of stray-pick' d stones at the fence bases—irregular paths worn between, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... trying to collect me, he thought. Her hobby: interesting dates. She wanted to add me to her collection. An Experience. Calmly he walked to the end of the veranda and stared off into the night, choking his rage. He watched the moon making its dead ride across the sky, and stared at the sprinkling of stars. ...
— The Happy Unfortunate • Robert Silverberg
... alone continued to adhere to the mass, and refused to admit the established modes of worship. When pressed and menaced on this head, she applied to the emperor, who, using his interest with Sir Philip Hobby, the English ambassador, procured her a temporary connivance ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... parent.' 'For,' says she, 'I have frequently heard General Washington say to my husband, the navy was your child.' I have always believed it to be Jefferson's child, though Knox may have assisted in ushering it into the world. Hamilton's hobby was the army. That Washington was averse to a navy, I had full proof from his own lips, in many different conversations, some of them of length, in which he always insisted that it was only building and arming ships for the English. 'Si quid novisti ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... will, let my detractors imagine that I have played an occasional game of draughts for a pastime or, if they prefer, taken a ride on a hobby-horse. How unfair it is truly, when we grant every calling in life its amusements, not to allow the profession of learning any amusement at all, particularly if triflings bring serious thoughts in their train and frivolous matters are so treated that a reader not altogether ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... of peace, and posing that day as an American,—one of those men who look as if they would bleed water if you pricked them with a bayonet,—needed no second warning. Running the German gauntlet was not precisely his hobby. Down went the emergency brake and the car jolted ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... to parade a fresh hobby-horse upon the university curriculum that I offer the suggestion, but because I believe that a study of the Japanese language would prove the most valuable of ponies in the academic pursuit of philology. In the matter of literature, ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... to learn their ways, to catch them (which we sometimes did), to take them home and be kind to them, and try to tame them, and teach them our ways (with never varying non-success, it is true, but in, oh, such jolly company!) became a hobby that lasted me, on and off, ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... friends, was the author, later, of Lives of the Statesmen of the Commonwealth and the Lives also of Goldsmith and of Landor and Dickens, whose close friend he was. His Life of Pym, which was in Vol. II. of the Statesman, did not appear until 1837, but I assume that he had ridden the hobby for some years.] ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Lew, is Lady H lne Derl. She is the wife of Lord Derl. You won't see much of Lord Derl, because he spends most of his time in a sort of home for incurables. His hobby is faunal research. In other words, he's a drunkard. Bah! We won't talk any more ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... expressions of grave doubt as to the expediency of "female suffrage," together with the fact that the editor of the Tribune, in his report as chairman of the Suffrage Committee in the New York Constitutional Convention, declared this new hobby "an innovation revolutionary and sweeping, openly at war with a distribution of duties and functions between the sexes as venerable and pervading as government itself," make the Tribune's recommendation that we shall ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... think, as a practical matter, it would be a good thing to cultivate a hobby of a manual kind—and also, above all, the power of genial loafing. Of course, the real pity is that we are not all taught to do some house-work as a matter of course—we depend too much on servants, and house-work is the natural ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Gentleman was on his hobby, exalting his own city at the expense of every other place. I have my doubts if he had been in either of the cities he had been talking about. I was just going to say something to sober him down, if I could, when ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... tell us hardly anything. We know when and where Washington was born; and how, when he was little more than three years old,[1] he was taken from Bridges Creek to the banks of the Rappahannock. There he was placed under the charge of one Hobby, the sexton of the parish, to learn his alphabet and his pothooks; and when that worthy man's store of learning was exhausted he was sent back to Bridges Creek, soon after his father's death, to live with his half-brother Augustine, and obtain the benefits ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... when transferred across a thousand miles of ocean, may propagate itself even more freely than in its native habitat, and yet, to the artistic eye, be never truly at home. Its colour, of flower or foliage, refuses to blend with our landscape, to adapt itself to our Atlantic skies. It is my hobby, Sergeant, to discover not only what imported plants will flourish with our soil and climate, but what particular one is worthiest of cultivation; and, having discovered that, I propose to bend all my best energies upon it.... ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... acquaintances, but no one—not even prudish and fearsome maidens of altogether uncertain age, and prudent mammas, equally alive to expediency and decorum—had ever labelled her "Dangerous," while with young people she was a universal favorite. Although, with an eye single to her hobby, she regarded a man as an uninteresting molecule of animated nature, unless circumstances warranted her in recognizing in him the possible lover of some waiting fair one, and it was notorious that she reprobated as worse than useless—positively demoralizing, in fact—such ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... that every new insight, or realization of his own reveals the fact that you have been there before with commands, cultivating sentiments and habits, and not that he was led to mistake your convenience or hobby for duty, or failed to temper the will by temporizing with it. The young are apt to be most sincere at an age when they are also most mistaken, but if sincerity be kept at its deepest and best, will be ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... lies in discovering the "hobby" of the person with whom one is conversing, and a good talker always throws out several "feelers" in order to find out the things in which his partner is most interested. You should, therefore, next say to mother, "Don't you think this is a glorious day for a picnic?" to which she will ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... it; the Russian war of 1854-5, and the cry for "Administrative Reform"; Dickens in the thick of the movement; "Little Dorrit" and the "Circumlocution Office"; character of Mr. Dorrit admirably drawn; Dickens is in Paris from December, 1855, to May, 1856; he buys Gad's Hill Place; it becomes his hobby; unfortunate relations with his wife; and separation in May 1858; lying rumours; how these stung Dickens through his honourable pride in the love which the public bore him; he publishes an indignant protest in Household Words; and writes an ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... The antique shops of Kyoto give to the simple foreigner the impression that he is being received in a private home by a Japanese gentleman of leisure whose hobby is collecting. The unsuspecting prey is welcomed with cigarettes and specially honourable tea, the thick green kind like pea-soup. An autograph book is produced in which are written the names of rich and distinguished people who have visited the collection. You are asked to add ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... Madonna, and on the mantel itself he had placed his clock. It was a small French clock under a crystal, so that its rapidly-swinging pendulum could be easily seen. All bachelors, however negligent of their surroundings, have some one hobby among articles of furniture. It may be an easy-chair, or a book-case, or a chandelier—there is one thing that must be the best of its kind. There could be no doubt, from the care with which Mr. Bixby placed his clock in its position, and from time to time ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... like other inquiries into English History from 1610 to 1660, I owe more items of information than I can count.—George Thomason was a London bookseller of the Civil War time; his place of business being the "Rose and Crown" in St. Paul's Churchyard. He was of Royalist sympathies; but his hobby was to collect impartially all the pamphlets, broad-sheets, &c., that teemed from the press on both sides, and not only those that teemed from the English press, but also all published abroad that bore on current English questions. He began this labour in 1641, and pursued ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... sketches of the great majority of our winter residents, and these outlines are necessarily very defective from their brevity as well as for other reasons. I have already talked an unconscionably long time; but what else could you expect from a man with a hobby? As it is, I am not near through, for the queer little white-bellied nut-hatch, and his associates in habits, the downy, the hairy, the golden-winged, and the yellow-bellied woodpeckers, and four species of owls, are also with us at this season. With the bluebirds the great tide of migration ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... secretary a few minutes in the hotel lobby this morning and he told me that while some of you were in the nut business with a majority of you it was a hobby. That is the altruistic spirit that counts in these days when most of us look upon things ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... one of the hardest months through which Jimmie Dale had ever lived. The St. James, that most exclusive club, his favourite haunt, had seen nothing of him; the easel in his den, that was his hobby, had been untouched; there had been days even when he had not crossed the threshold of his home. Every resource at his command he had called into play in an effort to solve the mystery. For nearly ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... witness many of these little eccentricities, from being apprised of the peculiar hobby of mine host; yet, I confess, the parade with which so odd a dish was introduced somewhat perplexed me, until I gathered from the conversation of the Squire and the parson that it was meant to represent ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... Willis' great hobby was yachting. He owned a 54-ton yacht named the Opal, and attributed the wonderful health he enjoyed to his numerous sea voyages. "I have circumnavigated the whole of England and Scotland," he said, "and I am my own captain. Those two men ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... of Edward VI. on 14th February 1550, John Poynet, a considerable scholar, but a man of disgraceful life, obtained the appointment to the see, by alienating various estates to the Seymour family, and Merdon was resumed by the Crown. It was then granted to Sir Philip Hobby who had been one of King Henry's privy councillors, and had been sent on an embassy to Portugal, attended by ten gentlemen of his own retinue, wearing velvet coats with ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... ripened, he became tinged with the old gentlemanly vice. He almost made penury his hobby. Oxberry's widow asked him, after his retirement, to play for her benefit: he said he could not, but that, if ever he performed again, he would present her with 100l. It is related of him too, that a friend asking him for a keepsake, he exchanged his old cotton umbrella for his friend's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... christened it knew that it was the god-energy in the human machine. Without its driving force nothing worth doing has ever been done. It is man's dearest possession. Love, friendship, religion, altruism, devotion to hobby or career—all these, and most of the other good things in life, are forms of enthusiasm. A medicine for the most diverse ills, it alleviates both the pains of poverty and the boredom of riches. Apart from it man's heart is seldom joyful. Therefore it should be husbanded with zeal and ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... the Pont de la Concorde to the Pont Saint Michel. What he did with these books, so numerous that no man's lifetime would have been long enough to read them, nobody knew, least of all, himself. But this hobby of his amounted to monomania: when he came home at night without bringing a musty quarto with him, he would repeat the saying of Titus, "I have lost a day." His enticing manners, his language, which was a mosaic of every possible style, and the fearful puns which embellished ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... President rode the hobby of tree-culture, and some fine old trees should still remain to witness it, unless they have been improved off the ground; but his was a restless mind, and although he took his hobbies seriously and would have been annoyed had ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... down upon them from his splendid height, was love—a strong, active love. We were young, human things, of soft features gradually becoming firmer as of shallow characters gradually deepening. And he longed to be in it all—at work in the deepening. We were his hobby. I have met many such lovers of youth. Indeed, I think this is a book ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... provocations, in which he never buried anything. He was not a "clever" dog; and guiltless of all tricks. Nor was he ever "shown." We did not even dream of subjecting him to this indignity. Was our dog a clown, a hobby, a fad, a fashion, a feather in our caps that we should subject him to periodic pennings in stuffy halls, that we should harry his faithful soul with such tomfoolery? He never even heard us talk about his lineage, deplore the length of his nose, or call him "clever-looking." We should ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... curiosities is so narrow, that the fresh aspirant is soon the central object of attention to the few who can provide him with what he imagines he wants. As a rule, where a man has no personal knowledge, and finds that he is gradually becoming a milch-cow for the trade, the hobby is not of long duration; it is only where the buyer can control and check the vendor that satisfactory relations are likely to continue, perhaps for years, perhaps for a lifetime. There is ever a tendency, on the part of the bookish commissariat, to ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... had pursued a hobby which had begun in his boyhood days during summer vacations at the seashore—the collecting of exoskeletons of mollusks and crustaceans. Long ago his assortment of cowries, spiny combs and yellow dragon-castles had outgrown their ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi
... the walls and Gates of Rome To make an entrance for an Hobby-horse; To vaunt to th'people his ridiculous spoyles; To come with Lawrell and with Olyves crown'd For having been the worst of all the singers, ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... GIRL'S REALM does not stand still— its Editor is always abreast of girlish interests. Whether it is a new career for girls, a new game, a new stitch in needlework, or a new hobby or fad, THE GIRL'S REALM is sure to be the first magazine ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... perhaps their favourites, took themselves to exacting gifts and grants from the Bishops, and thus Poynet who was intended in the stead of Gardiner gave Merdon to Edward VI, who presented it to Sir Philip Hobby. It was recovered by Bishop Gardiner, but granted back again by Queen Elizabeth. Sir Philip is believed to have first built a mansion at Hursley, and his nephew sold the place to Sir Thomas Clarke, who was ...
— Old Times at Otterbourne • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on fire with ardour and sympathy. Peggy looked at her in surprise, but the Fluffy Owl laughed. "You have struck the Snowy's hobby," she said. "She is going to study medicine, you know. Go along; she will be happy all the rest of the day, ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... whole company, nor introduce a topic in which he only is interested or informed. The more serious questions of life are barred in society; people wish to be amused, not instructed. An inveterate talker, especially one of a didactic turn, is a bore. So is the man who puts a hobby through its paces. Avoid exaggerations in conversation, also extravagances, such as "beastly this" or "awfully that," also avoid over emphasis. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... I believe what Uncle says is usually about right. He has the habit of it. But I allow when he gets on his hobby he rides rather hard. Most of the other fellows have given up the classics—they like the modern-language course with sciences better—perhaps it's softer. They say not; but I know the classics are hard enough. I flunked out on my Greek exam junior ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... haste, now that his secret was out, he was for dropping everything else and rushing headlong into his hobby. Cicely ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... organs," and magazines devoted to highly specialized interests. Nearly all of these publications are eager to buy matter of interest to their particular circles of readers. Every business, every profession, every trade, every hobby has its mouthpiece. ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... ride a hobby you ride it to death! What's induced you to take such a sudden and violent affection ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... controlling center of the sexual passion is the cerebellum, or little brain, which is situated at the lower and back part of the head. They apparently love to dwell upon the theme, and ride their hobby upon all possible occasions, often in the most disgusting manner, and always leaving the impression that they must be themselves suffering from perversion of the very function of which ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... no longer the teeth? The marriageable age had passed. I resigned my situation, however, to make way for some one poorer than myself. At the end of a month I was sick and tired of life; and, to replace the affections that had been denied me, I resolved to give myself a passion, a hobby, a mania. I became a collector of books. You think, sir, perhaps that to take an interest in books a man must have studied, ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... Trieste that summer was the opening of a Grand International Exhibition—the hobby of the Governor of the town—Baron de Pretis, and Burton thus refers to it in a letter written to Mr. Payne, 5th August (1882). "We arrived here just in time for the opening of the Exhibition, August 1st. Everything went off well, but next evening an Orsini ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... attributed—this power of facing poverty with contentment? To some extent doubtless it rests on Christian teaching, although perhaps not much on the Christian teaching of the present day. Present-day religion, indeed, must often seem to the cottagers a tiresome hobby reserved to the well-to-do; but from distant generations there seems to have come down, in many a cottage family, a rather lofty religious sentiment which fosters honesty, patience, resignation, courage. Much of the gravity, much of the tranquillity of soul of the more sedate villagers ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... the bookseller arrives. They play a game of chess or talk about books. At half-past ten the second violin from the Dramatic Theatre drops in. He is an old Pole who, after 1864, escaped to Sweden, and now makes a living by his former hobby. Both the Pole and the bookseller are over fifty, but they get on with the schoolmaster as if he were ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... brother to cut off the abundant plumes, tying them up in loose bundles with the quill ends level, that they might dry, and carefully carrying them into the room used for storing feathers, eggs, and such curiosities as were collected from time to time; Dyke having displayed a hobby for bringing home stones, crystals, birds' eggs, and any attractive piece of ore, that he found during his travels. These were ranged in an old case, standing upright against the corrugated iron wall, where, a few boardings nailed across for shelves, the boy had an extremely ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... season the man whose hobby is his brain will gradually settle down into a daily routine, with which routine he will start the day. The idea at the back of the mind of the ordinary man (by the ordinary man I mean the man whose brain is not his hobby) is almost always this: 'There are several things ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... pursued Cai cheerfully, "these little interests are the salt of a leisurable man's life. I dare say, f'r instance, as Philp gets quite an amount o' fun out o' funerals, though to me it seems a queer taste. Every man to his hobby; and yours, now, I can understand. When you've finished potterin' around the garden, weedin' an' plantin', —an', by the way, the season for plantin' isn't far off. It's about time we looked up those autumn catalogues we talked so much about ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... seriously indeed. Before the physician quitted the "Boundary," the old squaw bestowed upon him, through the interpreter, certain secret magic formulae for working enchantments on his city patients, and thereby effecting rapid cures and filling his coffers. Knowing of Bayne's hobby for linguistics, the oculist jocularly turned these archaic curios over to him. In that connection Bayne recounted that after the child had departed with his mother from the mountains, he himself being detained by final arrangements ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... persons in your town, or in your university, about their favorite hobbies, and feature the story as "Riding Hobby Horses with ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... organism of that sort, under a Titan's microscope. He was large, undifferentiated, inert—since I could remember him he had done nothing but take his temperature and read the Churchman. Oh, and cultivate melons—that was his hobby. Not vulgar, out-of-door melons—his were grown under glass. He had miles of it at Wrenfield—his big kitchen-garden was surrounded by blinking battalions of green-houses. And in nearly all of them melons ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... himself, but he prized the trout like precious jewels. John and James Ellison, Farmer Ellison's sons, and Benjamin, their cousin, fished the pool once in a great while—and got soundly trounced if caught. It was Farmer Ellison's hobby, this pool and its fish. He gloated over them like a miser. He watched them leap, and counted them when they did, as ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... means on the death of his father, he went, like other ruined provincials, to Paris. On the breaking out of the Revolution he took part in public affairs. In spite of revolutionary principles, which made a hobby of republican honesty, the management of public business in those days was by no means clean. A political spy, a stock-jobber, a contractor, a man who confiscated in collusion with the syndic of ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... was the smartest man in our class. Took scholarship prizes as carelessly as a policeman takes peanuts from a Dago stand. Since then he's gone up so fast that every time I see him I insult him by congratulating him on getting the place he's just been promoted from. But what was Rearick's hobby at Siwash? Stealing hatpins. He had four hundred hatpins when he graduated, and he never could see anything wrong in it. Guess he's got them yet. Perkins is in Congress already. He out-debated the whole Northwest and wrote pieces on subjects so heavy that ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... their own fine house, with themselves and a few friends? He remembered a past Christmas, when he had bought Mamie that now headless doll with the few coins that were left him after buying their frugal Christmas dinner. There was an old spotted hobby-horse that another Christmas had brought to Abner—Abner, who would be driving a fast trotter to-morrow at the Springs! How everything had changed! How they all had got up in the world, and how far beyond this kind of thing—and ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... ran a little behind. But we will do finely next year—I am certain of it. I will have some strawberries and celery which shall astonish our State agricultural committee," answered Randolph Rover. He was always enthusiastic, in spite of almost constant failure. Thus far his hobby had netted him a loss of several ...
— The Rover Boys on the Ocean • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... host came back and laughed a little, till he saw how little I was enjoying it. Then he rotted the orator on his lordly oblivion of one fact. Were there not limits to his experience of Africa? He himself avowed his sympathies with the African. If he had a hobby, it was natives. He wanted to win their trust for a great many reasons. It was worth while having it. He told a certain story and the talk diverged. It was quite sympathetic talk, from my point of view thenceforward, up till bed-time. We slept in that big room within, all ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... the breast of the heaven-inspired poet who composed this glorious fragment. There is more of the fire of native genius in it than in half-a-dozen of modern English Bacchanalians! Now I am on my hobby-horse, I cannot help inserting two other old ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... with his usual painstaking care, to build up a pack of hounds. The year 1768 was probably the period of his greatest interest in the subject and his diary is full of accounts of the animals. Hounds were now, in fact, his hobby, succeeding in interest his horses. He did his best to breed according to scientific principles, but several entries show that the dogs themselves were inclined blissfully to ignore the laws of ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... remarked the lieutenant. "Men with a hobby do strange things. You'd better ride along with me to headquarters. I'd like to introduce you to General Funston. He's a man after your own hearts. You know how he went out and captured Aguinaldo when he was ...
— The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz - Or, Upholding the Honor of the Stars and Stripes • Frank Fowler
... Roman Camp; and this diversion enabled me to escape from Marius—I fear with a somewhat unseemly precipitation—by pressing him for information in regard to the matter which the children had in hand. As to openly checking the Vidame, when once he fairly is astride of his hobby, the case is hopeless. To cast a doubt upon even the least of his declarations touching the doings of the Roman General is the signal for a blaze of arguments down all his battle front; and I really do not like even to speculate ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... mass of broom. I see we were in some degree talking to cross-purposes; when I said I did [not] much believe in hybridising to any extent, I did not mean at all to exclude crossing. It has long been a hobby of mine to see in how many flowers such crossing is probable; it was, I believe, Knight's view, originally, that every plant must be occasionally crossed. (19/3. See an article on "The Knight-Darwin law" by Francis Darwin in "Nature," October 27th, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... two most important studies, nor was her classwork in general good. Whether she would have later proven capable of getting down to rock bottom and meeting the demands of reason on a rational basis, we cannot say, for the family hobby abruptly terminated her missionary career. "Mother dangerously sick with inflammatory rheumatism. Come at once," the telegram said—and she hastily returned home to be met with, what her history records as, "my second shock." ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... the danger feel me, thus will I talk still, And worse when that comes too; they cannot eat me. This is a punishment, upon our own prides Most justly laid; we must abuse brave Gentlemen, Make 'em tame fools, and hobby-horses, laugh and jear at Such men too, and so handsom and so Noble, That howsoe're we seem'd to carry it— Wou'd 'twere ...
— The Little French Lawyer - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont
... welcome to inquire into my motives. As I understand them, they are: First, I take pleasure in your society, sir, because, like myself, you are a quiet, thinking man. Second, you have a hobby—your machine, there—and I admire people with hobbies. Third, I am fond of children, and—and—your daughter is a very pleasant, intelligent child. Fourth, you have insisted on selling me an interest in your invention, in return for ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... Nobili first came to Lucca, the old families looked coldly at him, his nobility being of very recent date. It was bestowed on his father, a successful banker—some said usurer, some said worse—by the Grand-duke Leopold, for substantial assistance toward his pet hobby—the magnificent road that zigzags up the mountain-side to ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... does not plunge against the rein, Nor take a ditch nor clear a rail. He does not toss his flowing mane, He does not even switch his tail. Oh, well, he does his best, of course; He's nothing but a hobby-horse! ...
— A Jolly Jingle-Book • Various
... it was not Sam who was with him, but Marchant. They had been to see Sobieski about a place Captain Chunn had secured for him as a night watchman of the shipbuilding plant of which Clinton Rogers was part owner. The Pole had mounted his hobby and it had been late when they got away from his cabin under ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... Jim's chief hobby, but anything of a mechanical nature appealed to him. While a gasoline car uses electricity only to explode its fuel, Jim was nevertheless deeply interested, particularly as he had never been able to look into the construction of an auto as ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... Sebastian's room, quite excited with the news. He was busy among his bacilli. They were his hobby, his pets. "Well, what do you think, Professor?" I cried. ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... Yet is this no charme for the tooth-ake, old signior, walke aside with mee, I haue studied eight or nine wise words to speake to you, which these hobby-horses must not heare ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Baker Street to see the loom of the opposite houses. The first day Holmes had spent in cross-indexing his huge book of references. The second and third had been patiently occupied upon a subject which he had recently made his hobby—the music of the Middle Ages. But when, for the fourth time, after pushing back our chairs from breakfast we saw the greasy, heavy brown swirl still drifting past us and condensing in oily drops upon the window-panes, ...
— The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans • Arthur Conan Doyle
... dancing condemned as unmanly, and fit only for women and young boys, I must still take the other hand, and think there is no finer sight than a well-proportioned man, with a sense of his powers, and a desire to do justice to them, moving through the figures of a contra-dance. But this is my hobby, my dear, and I may have wearied you with it ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... to see beauty that is worth seeing," he safely generalised. But then—he had put his foot in the stirrup—his hobby bolted with him. "It takes two to make a beautiful object. The eye of the beholder is every bit as indispensable as the hand of the artist. The artist does his work—the beholder must do his. They are collaborators. Each must ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... Mary Snow knew that all that was over. But not the less did Graham recognise her claim. The very bonnet which she must wear when she stood before the altar with Fitzallen must be paid for out of Graham's pocket. That hobby of moulding a young lady is perhaps of all hobbies the most expensive to which a young gentleman ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... you will be interested to hear about my latest hobby, the study of singing with the aid of records." Then he plunged at once into the most absorbingly interesting account of his ideas and achievements in this line I had ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... a singleness of purpose is a valuable thing. Fabre spent his life studying insect life. His books on the spider and others on the life of insects are the result of a whole life spent on the one hobby ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... and enthusiasm and resolute riding of his hobby were very attractive. If he ever gets out of his head the notion that success depends upon apparatus he will doubtless become a photographer of sorts. Enthusiasm of any kind other than mining and "mushing" enthusiasm is so rare in this land that it is welcome even when it seems wasted. ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... Hollins (and HIS hobby, as you may remember, Ned, was the organization of Society, rather than those reforms which apply directly to the Individual),—'my friends, I think we are sufficiently advanced in progressive ideas to establish our little Arcadian community upon what I consider the true basis: ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... of the Well crossed to the Isisi, using the canoes of the Akasava headmen, and made a slow progress through territory which gave them no opportunity of exercising their hobby, since water lay less than a spade's length beneath ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... His letter on Father Damien shows that. But there was nothing of the professional reformer about him. He had no hobby, and he was the artist first and then the philanthropist. This is right; it was the law of his being. Other men are better equipped to do the work of humanity's city missionaries than was he. Let their more rugged health and less sensitive ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... is perhaps true in connection with our minds. We all see the fallacy of the old-fashioned hustlers' cry, "Make your work your hobby; think of nothing else; let every moment be subordinated to the dominating idea of your career; put aside all sentimentalism, all laziness and self-will, all enthusiasm about things not in ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... professor. "You can't speak evil enough of it, say what you will. But I say, both of you—I won't bother you much with my hobby—what a falling off there is everywhere; what a difference between the cities of the rule of the past, with their magnificent palaces and temples, or even the simple, majestic grandeur of the pyramids, and the buildings of the modern inhabitants! The glory has ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... Mrs. Calvert say that there was no gentleman so fine as a southern one. Mr. Seth laughs at her and says that's a 'hobby,' and she's 'mistaken.' He says 'gentlemen don't grow any better on one soil than another,' but are 'indigenous to the whole United States,' though Mr. Winters is a Marylander himself." Then she naively added in explanation, and in ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... became especially interested in ancient civilizations, lost cities, and the like, in the Western Hemisphere. Long before I left the ministry oil was struck on our little Pennsylvania farm, and—well, I didn't have to work after that. So for some years I've devoted myself strictly to my particular hobby of travel. And in my work I find it necessary to discard ceremony, and scrape acquaintance with all sorts and conditions. I especially cultivate clergymen. I've wanted to know you ever since I first saw you out here. But I couldn't wait for a formal introduction. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... have been of the greatest interest. Twice every week the Queen of the Belgians came round our wards. She came quite simply, with one of her ladies and one of the Belgian medical officers, and no one could possibly have taken a deeper interest in the patients. Her father studied medicine as a hobby, and had, indeed, become a very distinguished physician, and she herself has had considerable training in medicine, so that her interest was a great deal more than that of an ordinary lay visitor. She was quite able to criticize and to appreciate details ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... nor uncomfortably lofty; always either amusing or touching; and—most important— himself passionately addicted to literature. You cannot like Lamb without liking literature in general. And you cannot read Lamb without learning about literature in general; for books were his hobby, and he was a critic of the first rank. His letters are full of literariness. You will naturally read his letters; you should not only be infinitely diverted by them (there are no better epistles), but you should receive from them much ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT |
