"Second hand" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who read everything he could lay his hands upon, and spared no trouble to master his "period," had not, either at first or second hand, acquainted himself with specimens of this popular literature. (For La Presa e Lamento di Roma, Romae Lamentatio, etc., see Lamenti Storici dei Secoli xiv., xv. (Medin e Fratri), Scelta di Curiosita, etc., ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... order and strike wrong, saying that it is one o'clock when it is two, or two when it is three. God's clock is always right, and when it is one it strikes one, and when it is twelve it strikes twelve, and the second hand is as accurate as ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... "You'll participate at second hand. You'll see through my eyes, hang upon my lips, take sides, feel passions, all sorts of sympathies and indignations. I've an idea," I further developed, "that your young lady's the person on board who will ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... excellent in the past. The day for originality may come ere long, and nothing can be lost in striving for it, but a capacity for the beautiful at first hand cannot come without an appreciation of it at second hand. With the number of cultivated minds so vastly increased as compared with any previous period, the greater variety of objects and conditions presented to them, the multiplicity of races to which they belong, and consequently of distinct ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... news that you escaped death been cried aloud in the streets, my lad, 'twould never have got to your grandfather's ear," he said, in lower tones. "I will tell you what happened, tho' I have it at second hand, being in the North, as you may remember. Grafton came in from Kent and invested Marlboro' Street. He himself broke the news to Mr. Carvel, who took to his bed. Leiden was not in attendance, you may be sure, but that quack-doctor Drake. Swain ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... if Tennyson had charged with the Six Hundred at Balaklava, each of these poets might possibly have pictured what he said as faithfully and as fearfully as Mr. Brownell has painted the sea-fights in which he took part as a combatant. But no man can tell a story at second hand with the truth of incident which belongs to an eye-witness who was part of what he saw. As a mere relator, therefore, of the sights and sounds of great naval battles, Mr. Brownell has a fresh story to tell. Not only so, but these naval battles are not like ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... study. But let us see how we can do it, roughly at least, without any apparatus. Let each member of the class take a sheet of paper and a pencil, and make as many strokes as possible in a half-minute, as shown in Figure I. The instructor can keep the time with a stop watch, or less accurately with the second hand of an ordinary watch. Before beginning the experiment, the instructor should have each student taking the test try it for a second or two. This is to make sure that all understand what they are to do. When the instructor is sure that all ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... the news of the world for the last quarter of a century to an intelligent and once well-educated man who has known nothing of what has happened in all that time except what he might learn from ignorant natives, who had obtained their knowledge second hand from Spanish tax collectors only a ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... demands the greatest care and discrimination. Not only must the miraculous be ruled out, but the prejudices of the observer must be taken into account. Did the pamphleteer himself hear and see what he recorded, or was his account at second hand? Did he write soon after the events, when they were fresh in his memory? Does his narrative seem to be that of a painstaking, careful man or otherwise? These are questions to be answered. In many instances, however, the pamphlets were not narrative in form, but were merely ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... centuries as tending to throw light on those records; of the earliest growth of dogma, as, thanks mainly to German labour, it may now fee exhibited within the New Testament itself. In a Church of private judgment, he takes all this at second hand, after having vowed at his ordination "to be diligent in such studies as help to the knowledge of ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... whose meaning is only symbolic. Since the mass of pupils are never going to become scientific specialists, it is much more important that they should get some insight into what scientific method means than that they should copy at long range and second hand the results which scientific men have reached. Students will not go so far, perhaps, in the "ground covered," but they will be sure and intelligent as far as they do go. And it is safe to say that the few who go on to be scientific ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... and drew out a dirty piece of pasteboard. It read: "R. Canter, Second Hand Furniture, 20 Second Street." And still he stared at Stephen, as one who gazes upon a mystery. A few curious pedestrians had ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... in for it, be forgot that he meant to go away, and said good-morning, as if they knew each other. Their hostess found them talking over the length of the table in a sort of mutual fright, and introduced them. But it's rather difficult reporting a lady verbatim at second hand. I really had the facts from Welkin, who had them from his wife. The sum of her impressions was that Braybridge and Miss Hazelwood were getting a kind of comfort out of their mutual terror because one was as badly frightened ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... home for the delectation of their families in their Lusthausen, was a very amusing companion, having much to tell about bird and beast, while Robert stood staring with open mouth. The long-legged secretary and the beautiful doves were, however, only stuffed, but Anne was much entertained at second hand with the relation of the numerous objects, which on the word of a Leyden merchant had been known to disappear in the former bird's capacious crop, and with stories of the graceful dancing of the cobra, though she was not sorry that ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... version, whether of an ancient or of a modern classic, which is thoroughly appreciative and satisfactory. The majority are utterly disappointing and deceptive. It is in the transfer of the idiom and costume that the difficulty and consequent failure lie. No one who merely knows at second hand Homer, Herodotus, Plautus, Terence, Horace, Virgil, Montaigne, Le Sage (a metonym for Gil Blas), Cervantes, La Fontaine, Dumas, Maupassant, Balzac, can have had an opportunity of forming an adequate and just estimate of those authors. ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... of correction. Either have the witness determine the time in terms of some familiar form, i. e., a paternoster, etc., or give him the watch and let him observe the second hand. In the latter case he will assert that his ten, or his five, or his twenty minutes were, at most, no more than a half or a ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... have a thorough summing up of his stolen property. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says,—I quote it at second hand,—"So very straitly did he cause the survey to be made, that there was not a single hyde, nor a yardland of ground, nor—it is shameful to say what he thought no shame to do—was there an ox or a cow, or a pig passed by, and that was not down in the accounts, and then all these writings were ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... more especially towards evening. Corresponding to this window was a borrowed light on the other side of the passage, looking into the kitchen, which had no direct communication with the free air, but received in the daytime, at second hand, such straggling and obscure light as found its way from the lane through the window opposite. At present, the interior of the kitchen was visible by its own huge fires—a sort of Pandemonium, where men and women, half undressed, were busied in baking, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... fore-castle deck. For as in this world, head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it. ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... would have disposed of it so near home. I then wrote to several friends in the large towns, and one of them, a clergyman at York, wrote to me two days ago to say that just such a book as I had described was on sale in the window of one of the booksellers there. It was a second hand copy, but in excellent preservation. The flyleaf was missing. On going over yesterday I found that it was my book, and was able to prove it by several marginal notes in ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... midway space, of some collective ritual. Moreover, for those of us who are not artists or original thinkers the life of the imagination, and even of the emotions, has been perhaps too long lived at second hand, received from the artist ready made and felt. To-day, owing largely to the progress of science, and a host of other causes social and economic, life grows daily fuller and freer, and every manifestation of life is regarded ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... boys to atrophy their independence. We teach them to take their patriotism at second hand; to shout with the largest crowd without examining into the right or wrong of the matter —exactly as boys under monarchies are taught, and have always ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... beg, by all that binds a friend, Let me go with you, when you next attend; For though you've every detail at command, There's something must be lost at second hand. Then the man's look, his manner—these may seem Mere things of course, perhaps, in your esteem, So privileged as you are: for me, I feel An inborn thirst, a more than common zeal, Up to the distant river-head to mount, And quaff these ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... get your kicks at second hand, you old peeper," Alice put in but, "Quit lying, Pop," I said. "About having quit killing, for one thing. In my books, which happen to be the old books in this case, the accomplice is every bit as guilty as the man with the slicer. You helped us kill the Pilot by ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... honest citizen; she prefers legitimate to illegitimate business; she is never an outlaw until her proper sources of supply fail; she will not touch honey as long as honey-yielding flowers can be found; she always prefers to go to the fountain-head, and dislikes to take her sweets at second hand. But in the fall, after the flowers have failed, she can be tempted. The bee-hunter takes advantage of this fact; he betrays her with a little honey. He wants to steal her stores, and he first encourages her to steal his, then follows the ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... person of considerable reading and cultivation. She had moral and physical courage in an uncommon degree, and was thoroughly reliable, so that this story is to me as well authenticated as one can well be at second hand. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... fingered it a moment, held it to his ear. It ticked and the second hand moved. "Tracy?" ...
— Revolution • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... your kind offices at second hand, but on the best authority; through Little Dorrit.—I mean,' he explained, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... individual open thus directly into the Absolute, it follows that there is something in each and all of us, even the lowliest, that ought not to consent to borrowing traditions and living at second hand. "If John was perfect, why are you and I alive?" Emerson writes; "As long as any man exists there is some need of him; let him fight for his own." This faith that in a life at first hand there is something sacred is perhaps the most characteristic note in Emerson's writings. ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... silence, had it been essential to give any adequate estimate of the labours in question. My purpose, however, is a different one. I have wished to describe the man rather than to give any history of what he did. What I have said of the value of his performances must be taken as mainly a judgment at second hand. But in writing of the man himself I have advantages which, from the nature of the case, are not shared by others. For more than sixty years he was my elder brother; and a brother in whose character and fortunes I took the strongest interest from the ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... Alexandrians knew human anatomy. What their knowledge was we know at second hand, but the evidence is plain that they knew a great deal. Galen's anatomy was first-class and was based on the Alexandrians and on his studies of the ape and the pig. We have already noted how much ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... is love of truth. A love of truth, as the phrase characterizes Huxley, would necessarily produce a scholarly habit of mind. It was the zealous search for truth which determined his method of work. In science, Huxley would "take at second hand nothing for which he vouched in teaching." Some one reproached him for wasting time verifying what another had already done. "If that is his practice," he commented, "his work will never live." The same motive made him a master of languages. ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... which can contain liquor and cause chemical combustion necessary to bring about the state of intoxication in which he delights. He may and does enter saloons, where he interpolates his body into the body of a physical drunkard, so that he may obtain his desires at second hand as it were, he will incite his victim to drink more and more. Yet there is no true satisfaction. He sees the full glass upon the counter but his spirit hand is unable to lift it. He suffers tortures of Tantalus until in time he realizes the impossibility ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... at the book on the table—the book that he had been reading when I entered the room. These sophistical confidences of his were nothing but Rousseau at second hand. Good! If he talked false Rousseau, nothing was left for me but to talk genuine Pratolungo. I let myself go—I was just in ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... Florida,) in a letter addressed to Mr. Tanner of Kentucky, presents, as an eye-witness, so graphically, the share which Capt. Butler had in the campaign which followed, that it may well supersede any narrative at second hand. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... woman," Mrs. Tully said proudly, her eyes fluttering between the second hand of the watch and the unbroken surface of the pool. "Women never swim so well as men. But she does.— Three minutes and forty seconds! ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... man, for he was witty too: But finding himself far gone in poetry, which Seneca assures us was not his talent, he thought it his best way to be well with Virgil and with Horace; that at least he might be a poet at the second hand; and we see how happily it has succeeded with him; for his own bad poetry is forgotten, and their panegyrics of him still remain. But they who should be our patrons are for no such expensive ways to fame; they have much of the poetry of Maecenas, ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... ducal palace. Your Grace will probably agree with me that these records could be better given by one empowered by yourself to give them, by one who had been present, and who would write in your Grace's interest, than by some interloper who would receive his tale only at second hand. ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... Faithful, is alive and well." Quoth the Caliph "What is this thou sayest?" Quoth Al-Danaf, "As thy head liveth I say sooth; for I ransomed him with another, of those who deserved death; and carried him to Alexandria, where I opened for him a shop and set him up as a dealer in second hand goods." Then said the Prince of True Believers,—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... golden light, thrown by the rising moon between the converging tips, lay right across the mouth of the shaft; and up through the rusty bark of the door were thrust a thin long hand and a bony arm. As Dick gazed, trembling and amazed, a second hand appeared. He heard the rattle of a chain, the click of a lock; then the door was thrust upwards and let noiselessly back upon the timber. Now a man's head came into view, and up out of the shaft crawled a figure that Dick recognised in spite of the precautions ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... was fought, but we have in the chronicles something of great value—a true outline of the general situation, and some stirring narratives of the clash and wrestling of armed men, compiled either at first hand from the recollections of those who were actually on the field, or else taken at second hand from others who made notes of what had been told them by those present at the battles. This, then, is what I meant when I said that in early times history was an ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... needless windings, and led by the quickest and easiest direction to the summit. The knowledge that we have thus gained, however late to profit by it ourselves, should at least be valuable to others. But, unfortunately, as Balzac has said, experience is an article that no one will use at second hand. When the great teachers of the world, who have been its most patient scholars, shall go to work to teach us how to study, and when we are content to learn, then we shall all be in a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... into clerks, because there's only one Jaggers, and people won't have him at second hand. There are only four of us. Would you like to see 'em? You are one of us, as I ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... the future. He was not like me, obliged to crouch in presence of those vulgar, those incapable minds, that do but consider the bent back as the footstool of pride. Every man is too busy to act in behalf of others; pity me therefore, but advise me not to hope assistance, by petitioning princes at second hand. I know your good wishes, and, for these, I have nothing to return ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... enough to let you know the whole truth, and to tell it you myself," she said in cut tones; "that you might not consider yourself slighted by hearing of it at second hand. I have even owned the extreme fact that I do not love him. I did not think you would be so rough with me for doing so! I ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... said Dr. O'Grady, "it's perfectly new. At this moment it isn't even finished; I wouldn't ask this committee to buy anything second hand. But you can surely see, Major—you do see, for you raised the point yourself, that with the very short time at our disposal we must, if we are to have a statue at all, get one that's more or ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... distrustful; he fears to give way to those kindling emotions, and brave sallies of thought, which bear him up to excellence; the latter is made fastidious and cynical; or rather, he surrenders his own independent taste and judgment, and learns to like and dislike at second hand. ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... an electric clock with an oversized second hand. His fingers moved nervously on the switch, then threw it to cut contact. The dynamo keened its dying note. A silence so tense that it hurt ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... ticking of the solemn black clock above the mantelpiece struck quite painfully upon his ears. Yet in spite of it, and in spite also of the thick, old-fashioned wooden partition, he could hear voices of men talking in the next room, and could even catch scraps of their conversation. "Second hand was bound to take it." "Why, you drew the last of ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... heads, the Company; people I rarely saw, but whose tricks and manners were imitated and discussed by their maids and valets in the housekeeper's room and the steward's room—so that I had them through a medium at second hand. I gathered that none of the company were really Lady Drew's equals, they were greater and lesser after the manner of all things in our world. Once I remember there was a Prince, with a real live gentleman in attendance, and that was a little above our customary ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... renewed practice on the stump crystallized his thought and brought method to his argument. The opposition newspapers had accused him of "mousing about the libraries in the State House." The charge was true. Where others were content to take statements at second hand, he preferred to verify citations as well as to find new ones. His treatment of his theme was therefore not only ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... writers who do this [borrowing other men's ideas] a good deal, undoubtedly incur discredit by it with their fellows and the general public. It greatly damages a writer's fame to be rightfully accused of want of originality, or of imitation, or of getting materials at second hand. But no one has ever proposed to punish or restrain this sort of misappropriation by law. No one has ever contended for the infliction on the purloiners of other men's ideas of any penalty but ridicule or disgrace." Whoever wrongfully ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... Bradley's philosophy as a whole shows little sympathy for Buddhism but a wondrous resemblance both in thought and language to the Vedanta. This is the more remarkable because there is no trace in his works of Sanskrit learning or even of Indian influence at second hand. A peculiarly original and independent mind seems to have worked its way to many of the doctrines of the Advaita, without entirely adopting its general conclusions, for I doubt if Sankara would have said "the positive relation of every appearance as an adjective ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... for the world have missed knowing her. She is really extraordinary. The way she has already spread her wings is amazing. I don't know when a woman has amused me more. But excuse me," he added in an instant; "she doesn't amuse you, at second hand, and the subject is an impure one. Let us talk of something else." Valentin introduced another topic, but within five minutes Newman observed that, by a bold transition, he had reverted to Mademoiselle Nioche, and was giving pictures of her manners and quoting ...
— The American • Henry James
... a fresh hold on my bedclothes and was preparing to start on, when some movement caught my eye and I looked astern to the rail. A sinewy hand, dripping with water, was clutching the rail. A second hand took form in the darkness beside it. I watched, fascinated. What visitant from the gloom of the deep was I to behold? Whatever it was, I knew that it was climbing aboard by the log-line. I saw a head, the hair wet and straight, shape itself, and then the unmistakable ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... gratifying to myself, as the stories appear to be an attempt to render the fables of classical antiquity into the idiom of modern fancy and feeling. At least, so I judge from a few of the incidents, which have come to me at second hand." ...
— The Three Golden Apples - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... where he would starve to death." And surging upon the "King" came the memories of his long, triumphant, and joyous struggle with wild nature. Then he approached the couple, and greeted Harley with the good-nature that was really a part of him. Sylvia, with shining eyes, told at second hand, though not with diminished effect, the story of the night, and "King" Plummer was loud in his applause. He did not care what criticism the supercilious might make, the act was to him ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... could explain; Some said, "Old Dutchman come again!" Some took his time,—at least they tried, But what it was could none decide; One said he couldn't understand What happened to his second hand; One said 2.10; that could n't be— More like two twenty-two or three; Old Hiram settled it at last; "The time was two—too ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... suspect Lady Emily for a sorceress, or me for a conjurer, which is no joke in Scotland, I must tell you that Frank Stanley, your friend, who has been seized with a tartan fever ever since he heard Edward's tales of old Scottish manners, happened to describe to us at second hand this remarkable cup. My servant, Spontoon, who, like a true old soldier, observes everything and says little, gave me afterwards to understand that he thought he had seen the piece of plate Mr. Stanley mentioned, in the possession of a certain Mrs. Nosebag, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... translation de vulgari. And in one MS. copy of the same Friar Pipino's Chronicle, existing in the library at Modena, he refers to the said version as made "ex vulgari idiomate Lombardico." But though it may seem improbable that at so early a date a Latin version should have been made at second hand, I believe this to have been the case, and that some internal evidence also is traceable that Pipino translated not from the original but from an Italian version ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... your ladyship think that an Edinburgh theatre would be more amused with affectation, folly, and whim of true Scottish growth, than manners which by far the greatest part of the audience can only know at second hand? ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... conclusive of a deep design on the part of Barneveld to sell the Republic to the Archduke and drive Maurice into exile? Had not Esquire van Ostrum solemnly declared it at a tavern table? And although he had mentioned no names, could the "eminent personages" thus cited at second hand be anybody but ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Ivanhoe by such things as were quoted from the Peep a few pages back—so, to those who know something of "the old Elizabeth way," and even nowadays to those who know very little, and that little at second hand, Miss Lee's travesty of it in The Recess is impossible and intolerable. When Mrs. Radcliffe, at the date definitely given of 1584, talks about "the Parisian opera," represents a French girl of the sixteenth century as being "instructed in the English poets," ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... suppose him to be effectually disabled from all the methods he is now allow'd to make use of, for exerting his rage and enmity against God, any farther than as he might suppose it to affect his Maker at second hand, by wounding his Glory thro' the sides of ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... Sit in a chair and place a clock with a second hand on the table. Follow the second hand with your eyes as it goes around. Keep this up for five minutes, thinking of nothing else but the second hand, This is a very good exercise when you only have a few minutes to spare, if you are able to keep every other thought in the stream of consciousness ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... perfect lady, while Dickinson, who succeeds to her old clothes through the law, is small, not handsome, and a quarrelsome female who thinks she has a mission. The people of this country had rather see Fanny Davenport without any wardrobe to speak of than to see Dickinson with clothes enough to start a second hand store. ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... from internal embarrassment. When his father spoke to him about his legal studies, he did not exactly laugh at his father's ignorance, but he recapitulated to his father so much of Mr. Monk's wisdom at second hand,—showing plainly that it was his business to study the arts of speech and the technicalities of the House, and not to study law,—that his father had nothing further to say. He had become a man of such dimensions that an ordinary father could hardly dare to inquire into his proceedings; and ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... you've paid will be rent," the collector told Saxon. "And the furniture's second hand now, too. The deal will be a loss to Salinger's' and they didn't have to do it, either; you know that. So just remember they've been pretty square with you, and if you start over again ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... we've met here before, you and I." His Excellency the Hon. Amory W. Barker, M.D., stood laughing, familiar and genial, his sound white teeth shining. But behind his round spectacles he scrutinized McLean. For in this second hand-shaking was a fervor that seemed a grasp, a reaching out, for comfort. Barker had passed through Separ. Though an older acquaintance than Billy, he had asked Jessamine fewer and different questions. But he knew what he knew. "Well, Drybone's the same old Drybone," ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... owing to temporary incapacitation," and she held out to Mr. Middleton her left hand, upon the third finger of which gleamed a splendid ring of diamonds and emeralds. Mr. Middleton possessed himself of this second hand, but paused, and regarding the sweet face turned up to his so beseechingly, so ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... of the front, from the Lago di Garda to the Stelvio and the frontier of Switzerland, is not at present the scene of important operations, so I contented myself by ascertaining at second hand how matters stand between the Valtellina ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... it to my ear, and it was ticking loudly, while as he lowered it and I glanced at the face, I could see that the second hand had moved some ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... was too wary to be drawn into an argument with the man of books. She could air her father's opinions second hand with an assumption of great assurance, but she was no hand at argument or fence, and had no desire for ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... reflection of Petrarch. A postscript by a friend—'R. B.'—complains that a publisher had intermingled with Tofte's genuine efforts 'more than thirty sonnets not his.' But the style is throughout so uniformly tame that it is not possible to distinguish the work of a second hand. ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... the saintly character of the writer. He wrote like a scholar and a gentleman, and, what is better than either, like a Christian. Those who accuse him of having written bitterly against the Calvinists cannot, one would imagine, have read his writings, but must have taken at second hand the cruelly unjust representation of them given by his opponents.[789] 'If ever,' wrote Southey, with perfect truth, 'true Christian charity was manifested in polemical writing, it was by Fletcher of Madeley.' ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... respectability, and he listened with patient deference to the autobiography which Mrs. Lander poured out upon him, and her identifications, through reference to this or that person in Boston whom he knew either at first or second hand. He had not to pronounce upon her syntax, or her social quality; it was enough for him, in behalf of the Claxons, to find her what she professed ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the Inspired Book an inexhaustible store, which the industry of man, piously directed, ought to elicit; but which if men neglect it, the Lord will not force upon their notice? It is this hidden treasure which should animate the ambition of vigorous and devout minds. From such at second hand, the body of the faithful are to receive it, if at all; and if not so obtained for them, and dealt out by their teachers, nothing will be more meager, unfixed, almost infantile, than the faith ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... That was it, the tissue ... was it cancerous or not? The atmosphere grew heavy. Bart watched the second hand on the large wall-clock swing slowly around its perimeter, and then around again and again. The nurse reentered and spoke softly to the doctor. The two doctors whispered, explaining to each other with hand motions what they were going ...
— The Alternate Plan • Gerry Maddren
... to take the place of socks for tramping, vaseline to rub on the same—it would be madness to attempt a complete inventory, but he would be inventive indeed who could name anything that Teutonic pack did not contain in some abbreviated form, purchased somewhere second hand at a fourth its original cost. The German had learned that the parish priest of Tzintzuntzan wore glasses, and we parted agreed to make ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... in which this truth is expressed are not always adequate to the idea they are meant to convey, and if we are only acquainted with them at second hand they will probably appear even less adequate than they are. When Athanasius, e.g., speaks of God's truth in this connection, and then reduces God's truth to the idea that God must keep His word—the word which made death ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... when he heard from Malcolm that he had actually obtained news at second hand as to his mother, and it was with difficulty that his friend persuaded him to allow matters to go ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... figure stepped silently out of the shadows and stood at his elbow before the startled lad realized that he was not alone. A vice-like hand seized his arm so that he could not turn his rifle upon this unexpected enemy. Before he could cry out a second hand was pressed firmly over his parted lips. "No speak!" breathed a voice in Enoch Harding's ear. "If speak, ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... that had escaped them when the awful blast had knocked them into the hole and deprived them of consciousness. Fortunately none of the missing parts was very small and in twenty minutes of close scrutiny every piece was assembled. They did not find the second hand ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... owe my American birthright to the honourable fact that they fought on the losing side. As I myself am endowed with a fair allowance of stubbornness, and with a strong distaste to taking my opinions at second hand, I certainly should have been with my kinsfolk in that fight had I lived in their day; and since my destiny was theirs to determine I am strongly grateful to them for having shaped it ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... us either from a man who was able himself to converse with native races, or who was at least an eye-witness of what he relates.' Precisely, that is our method. I, for one, do not take even a ghost story at second hand, much less anything so startling as a savage rite. And we discount and allow for every bias and prejudice of our witnesses. I have made a list of these idola in M. R. R. ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... Kazmah has been described to me, at first hand and at second hand. All descriptions tally in one respect: Kazmah has remarkably large eyes. In Miss Halley's evidence you will note that she refers to them as 'larger than any human eyes I have ever seen.' Now, Mareno ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... come mighty convenient just now. It will buy me a better-looking suit, second hand, and make a different man of me. With it I can get a place and set up for ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger
... conventional view of age as the period of fixed ideals. It may be the period of fixed habits, of those helpless iterances which imply no intentions or purposes; but it is not the period in which the mind continues in this or that desire and strives for its fulfilment. The same poet who sang at second hand those ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... is like the breath of the morning and the song of birds. It tells of reality itself, instead of merely reiterating what dusty-minded professors have written about what other previous professors have thought. Nothing in Bergson is shop-worn or at second hand. ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... them after dinner in the drawing-room, while Jewel caressed her watch, never tiring of looking at its clear face and the little second hand which traveled ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... stayed home and helped me fix up the nursery. Yes, I was expecting in the spring. That's why he was so for keeping things from me. We painted the woodwork white and gave a couple of coats to a little brown crib I had picked up second hand. He was for buying an enameled one on casters—he loved the best. Next night—next night—he—didn't come home—and at eight o'clock the following morning the extras were on the street—about the killing. Even then I didn't tie up—Lon and Eckstein. ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... spiritual charm of Nature far more from these early experiences of rural life than from all the books, poetry included, which I have ever perused. Note this well, ye whose best feelings are only a rechauffe of Ruskin and Browning—secundem ordinem—for I observe that those who do not think at second hand are growing rare. ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... would drive in a carriage instead of an omnibus; you would sit in the stalls instead of the upper circle; you would give quantities of money to poor people; and you would buy as many second hand books as you pleased. There are rich people, I believe, ostentatious people, who buy new books. But you, my dear, have been better brought up. No books are worth buying till they have stood the criticism of a whole generation at least. Never ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... Nor is it surprising that monarchs should take pleasure in the stage, since the theatre is one of the places which brings them and their subjects together in the enjoyment of common emotions, and shows them, if only at second hand, the domestic lives of millions, from personal acquaintance with which their royal ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... closer, closely, closenesse, glosingly, hourely, majesticall, majestically. In like sort we grasse upon French words those Buds, to which that soile affordeth no growth; as, chiefly, faultie, slavish, precisenesse. Divers words we derive also out of the Latine at second hand by the French, and make good English, tho' both Latine and French haue their hands closed in that behalfe, as in these verbes, pray, point, paze, prest, rent, &c. and also in the adverbes, carpingly, currantly, colourably, actively, &c. Againe, ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... contracted between Persons of different Humours; the Mind being often pleased with those Perfections which are new to it, and which it does not find among its own Accomplishments. Besides that a Man in some measure supplies his own Defects, and fancies himself at second hand possessed of those good Qualities and Endowments, which are in the possession of him who in the Eye of the World is looked ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... curiosity as to the interrupted narrative, even in despite of the evident frivolity of the narrator. The arrangement of the party in the coach compelled me to hear it at second hand, and I found it less frivolous than I had anticipated: it was an amour between the King and a peasant's daughter, in which the King conducted himself in a manner as little excusable in a monarch, as in a more humble individual. The amour was at length discovered by the pregnancy ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... bankrupt Pasha, Marchetto?" I inquired. Everything offered for sale in the bazaar at second hand is said to come from the establishment of a Pasha; the statement is supposed ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... civilly, but with meagre interest. This long dead mother had bequeathed him not even a memory of herself—was as unreal to him as a dream at second hand. From the chilly contemplation of her he turned back impatiently to his own affairs, which were burning, insistent. And scenting a vague sympathy in this stranger uncle who, like himself, had drifted out from the intimacy of the candle-lit room, ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... they should glow there, and all memory of the runaway slaves who were sheltered in the cave by the sycamore tree should fade, and be only as a tale that is told. Yet, so memory served the boy, and he knew only at second hand how his mother gave her widow's mite to the cause for which she had crossed the prairies as of old ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... clothes might have been bought at a second hand dealer's for a very moderate sum—for they were rent in various places, and no attempt had been made to patch them—was the first speaker, and he howled in the most approved manner, and even our political friends might have taken a lesson from him. He had ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... not and cannot bind the law-maker; he, and he alone, is above the law. But a judge, a person exercising a judicial capacity, is neither to apply to original justice, nor to a discretionary application of it. He goes to justice and discretion only at second hand, and through the medium of some superiors. He is to work neither upon his opinion of the one nor of the other; but upon a fixed rule, of which he has not the making, but singly and solely the application to ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... other went on calmly. "But your objection only brings one nearer the goal. How many who care only for applause content themselves to-day, unfortunately, with Nature at second hand! Without returning to her eternally fresh, inexhaustible spring, they draw from the conveniently accessible wells which the great ancients dug ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... before us as in the case of Justin. Either the Clementine writer quotes our present Gospels, or else he quotes some other composition later than them, and which implies them. In other words, if he does not bear witness to our Gospels at first hand, he does so at second hand, and by the interposition of a further intermediate stage. It is quite possible that he may have had access to such a tertiary document, and that it may be the same which is the source of his apocryphal quotations: ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... Verard, in 1488, was the most desirable acquisition. It is reserved for Lord Spencer's library;[128] at a price which, freight and duty included, cannot reach the sum of twelve shillings of our money. Of venders of second hand and old books, the elder and younger MANOURY take a decisive lead. The former lives in the Rue Froide; the latter in the Rue Notre Dame. The father boasts of having upwards of thirty thousand volumes, but I much doubt whether his stock amount to one half of that number. He unhesitatingly ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... brass Basons, and other Commodities, which they get of the Hollander: because the King permits not his People to have any manner of Trade with the Hollander; so they receive the Dutch Commodities at the second hand. ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... mused. "But all their trappings are second hand. They have bought them up from some show that has discarded them. That's one thing the Sparling outfit never does. All their stuff is new nearly every season. Sully may have some of our old trappings, ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... a pity that a second hand did not remain with Joe, but no one foresaw what would happen. The good mate went below forward, and found the men worse than ever from drink, panic, and religion. He tried all he knew to fetch them on deck, but nothing would serve. He tried the captain, but that worthy seaman ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... men who are not scholars venture to pronounce on Shakespeare's scholarship, and that men who take absurd statements at second hand dare to constitute themselves judges of a question of evidence and ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... as he always called him, who was also a sculptor, though of far less merit than John Gibson himself. Mr. Ben came to Rome younger than John, and he learned to be a great classical scholar, and to read those Greek and Latin books which John only knew at second hand, but from whose beautiful fanciful stories of gods and heroes he derived all the subjects for his works of statuary. His other brother, Solomon, a strange, wild, odd man, in whom the family genius had degenerated into mere eccentricity, never did anything for his own livelihood, but lived ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... we value, and that which really helps, is that of our brother artists, often sharp and unsparing, but always salutary and useful. And if useless to the artist, art criticism is harmful to the public, who take their opinion from it at second hand. Were all art criticism made penal for ten years lovers of art would learn to think for themselves, and a truer appreciation of art than the commercial one would result, with the greatest benefit both to art ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... with the titles of books of characters, has this one among them, in 17th century hand-writing (pasted on to the page). When this was acquired he does not say. "An Atturney is a Broker at Law for hee sels wordes and counsell at the second hand, studies but one language that hee may not bee thought double tonged, and when vpon necessitie hee reades Latin, 'tis with a quaking hast soe feare fully you wold thinke him a fellon at his miserere. Hee speakes nothing ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... by my mother's lamentably premature death. I happen to possess a letter from my father's sister to her sister Anne in which she gives an account of this event, and print it because it conveys the reality more vividly than a narrative at second hand. The reader will pardon the reference to myself. It matters nothing to a dead man—as I shall be when this page is printed—whether at the age of fourteen days he was considered a fine-looking child or ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... present occasion (which made it necessary that I should acquaint myself with it) I own that my own knowledge of these miscellaneous writings was by no means thorough. It is now pretty complete; but the idea which I previously had of them at first and second hand, though a little improved, has not very materially altered. Though in all this hack-work Fielding displayed, partially and at intervals, the same qualities which he displayed eminently and constantly in the four great books here given, he was not, ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... think it well to observe in regard to original narratives of character so marvellous: to record such, namely, only when they can be procured direct from the lips of the witnesses themselves. This comes to me at second hand. I had no opportunity of cross-questioning the actors in the scenes narrated. Yet I had the story from a gentleman of high respectability: the principal Secretary of the —— Legation at Naples: and his sources of information were direct ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... matter of current intelligence the case of the speaker of the small language is still worse. His newspaper will need to be cheaply served, his home intelligence will be cut and restricted, his foreign news belated and second hand. Moreover, to travel even a little distance or to conduct anything but the smallest business enterprise will be exceptionally inconvenient to him. The Englishman who knows no language but his own may travel well-nigh ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... reserve in talking of herself, it was very gradually that I gained this knowledge of Miss Willmanson's character; but many of her opinions were received at second hand from Eleanor, who admired her aunt greatly, and never tired of quoting her. It was she who told me that this talented lady was engaged upon a book the title of which was Footsteps of Women in All Ages. The aunt returned this admiration ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... month of September, 1916, there appeared in the Cornhill Magazine a story entitled "The Lost Naval Papers." I had told this story at second hand, for the incidents had not occurred within my personal experience. One of the principals—to whom I had allotted the temporary name of Richard Cary—was an intimate friend, but I had never met the Scotland Yard officer ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... his mother." But he roar'd like a bull, an' begged th' parson to do it ovver, an' do it reight; but Lucy said, "He'd noa cashion, for shoo'd live an' dee an owd maid for iver afoor shoo'd have ony chap second hand." But her heart worn't as hard as shoo thowt, soa, shoo gave in, an' th' next time ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, First Series - To Which Is Added The Cream Of Wit And Humour From His Popular Writings • John Hartley
... And where shall we look for marks of simplicity and truthfulness, if not in the records which contain them. The fact is." said he (I should mention that it was just about the time that the system of "naturalism" was culminating under the auspices of Paulus of Heidelberg, from whom, at second hand, my infidel friend borrowed as much as he wanted),—"the fact is, that the compilers of the New Testament were pious, simple-minded, excellent enthusiasts, who sincerely, but not the less falsely, mistook natural ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... matter by filching the complete works of Sterne (in one volume) and the poetry of Milton—from an outside stand of a second hand book store.... ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... than we suspect of what we think. The reason is a good one, because our short life gives us no time for a better, but it is not the best. It does not follow, because we all are compelled to take on faith at second hand most of the rules on which we base our action and our thought, that each of us may not try to set some corner of his world in the order of reason, or that all of us collectively should not aspire to carry reason as far as it will go throughout the whole domain. In regard ...
— The Path of the Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... actual Zola manner, in "Jennie Gerhardt"; there came from Dreiser the news that he had never read a line of Zola, and knew nothing about his novels. Not a complete answer, of course; the influence might have been exerted at second hand. But through whom? I confess that I am unable to name a likely medium. The effects of Zola upon Anglo-Saxon fiction have been almost nil; his only avowed disciple, George Moore, has long since recanted and reformed; he has scarcely rippled the prevailing romanticism.... Thomas Hardy? ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... it is fairly certain that he did not know the works at first hand, since the era he refers to runs from Moses to the tenth year of Antoninus,[5] i.e. till the better part of a century after the death of Josephus. Origen likewise probably knew Josephus only at second hand, and the inference is that both the Alexandrian ecclesiastics derived their citations and their interpolation in the text of Josephus from a pious Christian abstract and improvement. The uncompromisingly Christian character of the ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... of poetry; it abounds in natural and well-proportioned sentiment; thoughts and images seem to rise up fresh from the writer's observation, and not merely gathered at second hand; a considerable portion is in blank-verse, but the author uses various measures, in all which his versification is graceful ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... Towns, extending over the northern part of Europe and Flanders, which had become wealthy and powerful by their own industry, and a participation of the trade to India with the Italians, (though at second hand,) were on the decline, through ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... alternately up the street and down it again, hauled out his watch from the depths of his embroidered pocket, and examined the hour hand and the minute hand and the second hand with ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... other hand, in three cases where attacks were defeated, the subjects were happily married men, and in two, if not in the three (the third case the writer gathered at second hand and fortunately remembered later), they had children. On the third visit of Miss Freer to B—— that lady notes that "the influence is evil and horrible. The worn features at breakfast were really ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris
... heavy husband with his one outlook towards the universal in the person of George James Fox, and the Whig policy of 1802. I am under some disadvantage in telling this part of my story, because I was far away from home, and only knew afterwards at second hand what the course of events had been; but I learned them from one who was intimately concerned, and I do not think I can be mistaken on any essential point. I imagine that by this time Mrs. Butts must have become changed into what she was in later years. She had ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford |
