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Second hand   /sˈɛkənd hænd/   Listen
Second hand

noun
1.
An intermediate person; used in the phrase 'at second hand'.
2.
Hand marking seconds on a timepiece.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Second hand" Quotes from Famous Books



... although Mr 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

... deepened playfully, and Mrs. Morris's dimple did the same, as Godfrey thrust his hand in upon Ruth's, unasked. The matron laughed very tenderly on the key of O while she added her hand, and received Leonard's heavy palm above it. Then Arthur clapped a second hand upon Leonard's, and Leonard was about to lay a second quietly upon Arthur's, when Isabel, rose-red from brow to throat, gayly broke the heap and ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable

... 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

... squee-geed, but you don't care about looks. They ask you all kinds of prices for them when they're new; but you can have this for two-twenty-five. There's a bite out of the shade, but you can turn that side to the wall. They're rather hard to get second hand." ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson

... this from some 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 ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford

... universe, still trying to piece the fragments of his knowledge into a law-ordered and will-ordered whole. What he knows has been the product of experience, what he may yet know further must be the product of experience. This experience may not all be personal, but even that which he gets at second hand is so far useful in helping him toward that understanding of the universe for which he hopes. He never will reach that understanding, all his experience will make but a fraction of things to be known matters of fact to him; and yet a deathless interest in the scarcely ...
— The Writing of the Short Story • Lewis Worthington Smith

... Maxwell, unclerically. "We'll have that tent up this very afternoon—if Nickey will lend it to us, second hand, and get ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott

... is the tiny second hand. It rushes around, jumping, hurrying, fussy, as though it were doing the whole job. But you cannot tell time by the second hand. Knock it off and the watch goes right ...
— The Children's Six Minutes • Bruce S. Wright

... them off easily," and with a word of encouragement to the negroes, I returned to my post. As I neared the door, I saw two figures in white working over the guns. It was Dorothy and her mother, helping the negroes reload. I sent them back to the stair with affected sternness, but I got a second hand-clasp from Dorothy ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... o'clock they came to the Schleswig Stone, where the Social- Democrats were holding a meeting. Pelle had never yet attended any big meeting at which he could hear agitators speaking, but had obtained his ideas of the new movements at second hand. They were in tune with the blind instinct within him. But he had never experienced anything really electrifying—only that confused, monotonous surging such as he had heard in his childhood when he listened with his ear to the hollow of ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... also they bring Salt and Salt Fish, and 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

... 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 ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... 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 Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck

... leaves Eubulus 'in a great quandary' and in tears. Nevertheless, the old gentleman has the righteous energy which prompts him to say to the departing Euphues, already out of hearing, 'Seeing thou wilt not buy counsel at the first hand good cheap, thou shalt buy repentance at the second hand, at such unreasonable rate, that thou wilt curse thy hard pennyworth, and ban thy hard heart.' Euphues takes to himself a new sworn brother, one Philautus, who carries him to visit his lady-love, Lucilla. Lucilla is rude at first, but becomes ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent

... many railroads were built like this, even the regular roads that were used all the year round. But gradually they were all changed, and the rails were made the same on railroads all over the country, and then these people were able to get their cars and the other things they needed second hand. And it's plenty good enough, of course, for all the use anyone wants to make ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart

... the wristwatch, fingered it a moment, held it to his ear. It ticked and the second hand ...
— Revolution • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... dear child, you are worrying yourself over trifles. [His second hand joins the first in holding her hands.] Women do it every day. Because you have changed your mind, or did not know you mind, because you have—to use an unnecessarily harsh word—jilted ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London

... she said aloud, to herself. She moved nearer to the clock, watching the stiff, jerking revolution of the second hand around ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... attainments, almost always tacitly imply a theory that the investigation of truth consists in contemplating and handling our ideas, or conceptions of things, instead of the things themselves: a doctrine tantamount to the assertion, that the only mode of acquiring knowledge of nature is to study it at second hand, as represented in our own minds. Meanwhile, inquiries into every kind of natural phenomena were incessantly establishing great and fruitful truths on most important subjects, by processes upon which these views of the nature of Judgment and Reasoning threw no light, and ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... perfect epidemic of so-called "garrotting" in London. Harmless citizens proceeding peaceably homeward through unfrequented streets or down suburban roads at night were suddenly seized from behind by nefarious hands, and found arms pressed under their chins against their windpipe, with a second hand drawing their heads back until they collapsed insensible, and could be despoiled leisurely of any valuables they might happen to have about them. Those familiar with John Leech's Punch Albums will recollect how many of his drawings turned on this outbreak of garrotting. The little boy had heard ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... Jacks, new and second hand. Lathes and Machinery for Polishing and Buffing Metals E. Lyon & Co., 470 Grand ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various

... 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

... language the cheaper will it be to supply copies of the desired work. In the 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

... 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.' There is but one passage[790] in which ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... passage, till the author is reduced to a collection of fragments, or till those, who fancied they possessed the works of some great man, find that they have been put off with a vile counterfeit got up at second hand. If we compare the theories of Knight, Wolf, Lachmann, and others, we shall feel better satisfied of the utter uncertainty of criticism than of the apocryphal position of Homer. One rejects what another considers the turning-point of his theory. One cuts a supposed knot by expunging what ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... highness of such difficulties, straits, and annoyance, as did not appear therein to her eyes, nor, I found, could be brought to her ear; for her choler did outrun all reason, though I did meet it at a second hand. For what show she gave at first to my lord deputy at his return, was far more grievous, as ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... waste of time and, if not wicked, certainly frivolous and nonsensical. So the boy remained at home, but, in spite of the parental order, he practiced some of the figures of the quadrilles and the contra dances in his comrades' barns, learning them at second hand, so to speak. ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln

... here once for all, that I cannot keep the tales I tell in this volume from partaking of my own peculiarities of style, any more than I could keep the sermon free of such; for of course I give them all at second hand; and sometimes, where a joint was missing, I have had to supply facts as well as words. But I have kept as near to the originals as these necessities and a certain preparation for ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald

... he desired. The next moment it was struck by a hand feeling about. Then the trouser was tugged at, and directly after the bottom was turned over and over, so as to form a good roll to grip. Then, with this for a second hand-hold, Mike was helped, and his climb on to the shelf-like projection became easier for the aid afforded, and he too rose ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn

... assumes them. His object was simply to tell the story of the Conquest, as he had seen it. He was to deal with facts, not with words, which he wisely left to those who came into the field after the laborers had quilted it, to garner up what they could at second hand. ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... 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, ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs

... dissatisfied with my daughter—not for letting Mr. Franklin kiss her; Mr. Franklin was welcome to THAT—but for forcing me to tell her foolish story at second hand. However, there was no help for it now but to mention the circumstances. Mr. Franklin's merriment all died away as I went on. He sat knitting his eyebrows, and twisting his beard. When I had done, he repeated after me two of the questions which the chief juggler had put ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... sympathy that was more than intellectual—that reached down to sources of spiritual strength and inspiration which the colonel could not touch but of which he was conscious and of which he did not hesitate to avail himself at second hand. Little Phil had made the house almost a second home; and the frequent visits of his father had only strengthened the colonel's admiration of Laura's character. He had learned, not from the lady herself, how active in good works she was. A Lady Bountiful in any large sense she could ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt

... 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, ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew

... get our knowledge of objects, if we are to get it well, from the objects themselves at first hand, and not second hand through descriptions of them by others. The fact that there is so much of the material world about us that we can never hope to learn it all, has made it necessary to put down in books many of the things which have been discovered concerning nature. This necessity has, I fear, led many ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts

... Directly, these things have never been experienced by us, but indirectly they have. Others, within whose experience these things have fallen, have led us to accept them so thoroughly that they have become our experience second hand. ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon

... 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 ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair

... second-hand," 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 ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham

... round us, and be able to say, 'With me it is a very small matter to be judged of you or of man's judgment.' That new life ought to make men original, in the deep and true sense of the word, as drawing their conceptions of duty and their methods of life, not at second hand from other men, but straight from God Himself. If the Christian Church was fuller of that divine life than it is, it would be fuller of all varieties of Christian beauty and excellence, and all these would be the work of 'that one and the selfsame ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... mean to do anything wrong," Karen pleaded, as she led now with the ten of Hearts, which drew in Carolyn's Queen to cover—Carolyn murmuring religiously: "Always cover an honor with an honor—or should I have played second hand low, Penny?"—topped by the King in the dummy, the trick being completed by Penny's ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin

... other like places, of which we have all read so much that we feel acquainted with them, not as pictures or descriptions, at second hand, but as decided and positive realities, I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various

... half a gun-shot from the camp, a 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. ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster

... (none, however, bearing the name of Edison), a young electrical engineer of the present generation might well inquire whether the great inventor had ever contributed anything to the art beyond a mere TYPE of machine formerly made and bearing his name, but not now marketed except second hand. ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... you 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 giving that funny scream ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... 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 ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney

... of the 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 whom I called William Dawson, and was not at all anxious to make ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone

... Gunda, active Swedish Lena, and pert Jakobina. If she could not be with them herself, she might at any rate hear what fun they had had, and all that had happened. In this way she could live their life at second hand. ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie

... together for the second time at 2 hr. 10 min. 546/11 sec. (twice the above time); next at 3 hr. 16 min. 219/11 sec.; next at 4 hr. 21 min. 491/11 sec. This last is the only occasion on which the two hands are together with the second hand "just past the forty-ninth second." This, then, is the time at which the watch must have stopped. Guy Boothby, in the opening sentence of his Across the World for a Wife, says, "It was a cold, dreary winter's afternoon, and by the time the hands of the clock on my mantelpiece joined forces ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... meet with a 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 ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt

... what Dr. Coutras related to me in his words, but in my own, for I cannot hope to give at second hand any impression of his vivacious delivery. He had a deep, resonant voice, fitted to his massive frame, and a keen sense of the dramatic. To listen to him was, as the phrase goes, as good as a play; ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham

... her feet. Whatever Mr. Rollo's own right to comment upon her or her dress might be, she was not in the least disposed to take the comments at second hand. ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner

... soul in patience till twelve o'clock, the hour being yet barely 11:30 a. m., Theydon tackled a page of reviews, since there is always consolation for a writer in learning at second hand what sheer drivel ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy

... rains which had begun to fall, and sometimes he read aloud to her a little, but in spite of Pearl's intelligence she had never cared much for books. She craved no record of another's emotions and struggles and passions. No life at second hand for her. She ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... me, O auspicious King, that the Wazir Dandan said to Zau al-Makan, "Thus spake the second hand maid to the King who hath found mercy, Omar bin al-Nu'uman. 'Quoth a man to Mohammed bin Abdillah, Exhort thou me!' 'I exhort thee,' replied he, 'to be a self ruler, an abstainer in this world, and in the next a greedy slave.' 'How so?' asked the other and Mohammed answered, 'The abstinent ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... amplification of the paper published in the Proceedings of the American Association, as above cited. The author states that "numerous additions and corrections, as well as personal observations of much before taken at second hand, have placed it in my power to enlarge ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various

... watch again. The minute hand was moving with the speed at which the second hand usually traveled. ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West

... surrounded with them; seeing them not, to be sure, but knowing, all the same, that they are there; yet feeling, too, like the birds, that in some way or other we shall elude them a while longer, and holding at second hand the truth which these humble creatures practice upon instinctively,—"Sufficient unto the day is the ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey

... cut short by the reflection that he has yet to face that awful bugbear—the old folk. There is something terrible about age, it would seem, not only to its possessor, but even to those who must encounter it second hand, and Steve was not without his qualms. Although in his wooing he had not for one moment lost his gentle self-possession, he had entirely forgotten about the ordeal of an interview with Nannie's guardians until she reminded him by saying ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington

... 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 ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont

... thing comes clear from the farthest off, we know there ain't anything beyond; and when it comes from the beginning, we don't take it second hand." ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle

... very unpleasant if one happened to step on the toes of a pet ignorance. Mary soon discovered that there was no profit in talking with her on the subjects she loved most: plainly she knew little about them, except at second hand—that is, through the forms of other minds than her own. Such people seem intended for the special furtherance of the saints in patience; being utterly unassailable by reason, they are especially trying to those who desire to stand on brotherly terms with all men, and so are the more sensitive ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... trees, when he cannot blossom Book that they are content to know at second hand Business to take advantage of his necessity Competition has deformed human nature Conditions of hucksters imposed upon poets Fate of a book is in the hands of the women God of chance leads them into temptation and adversity Historian, ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of William Dean Howells • David Widger

... rooms, and whilst I was lighting the candles, he said calmly, and to my great surprise, that he was not qualified to maintain such a discussion, for he was alike ignorant of Italian and German, and had only read the works of the Germans in translations, and but little of Italian poetry, even at second hand. For my part, I confessed, with an equal ingenuousness, that I knew nothing of German, and but little of Italian! that I had spoken only through others, and like him, had hitherto seen by the glimmering light of translations. It is upon ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 528, Saturday, January 7, 1832 • Various

... consciousness, distinct in kind from what it always had, it can only derive this from one cause. That cause is a second cue, tampering with the balls and interfering with them, or even more than this—a second hand taking them up and arranging them ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock

... Oh! at second hand I know various amiable little odds and ends such as are commonly reported by the uncharitable and censorious," Ludovic answered mildly. "Probably more than half of these little treasures are pure fiction, generated by envy, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... and carrying three, making a bee line for the beach, the schooner covering their retreat with a blazing Nordenfeldt. They were in such a hurry to be gone that they cut away their moorings with an ax, and I had the privilege, later on, of buying their anchor, second hand, for ten ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... Bijoux, nor the slightest notice from Pickering about omitting 4 out of 5 of my things. The best thing is never to hear of such a thing as a bookseller again, or to think there are publishers: second hand Stationers and Old Book Stalls for me. Authorship should be an idea of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... gal when I married 'bout thirty or forty years after the War. I married George McIntosh. Wedding clothes!" she chuckled, and said: "I didn't have many. I bought 'em second hand from Mrs. Ed. Bond. They was nice though. The dress I married in was red silk. We had a little cake and wine; no big to do, just a little fambly affair. Of our four chillun, two died young, and two lived to git grown. My daughter was a school teacher and she has been dead sometime. I stays wid my ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration

... in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication. After this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... 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 ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... nothing better to do visit the de luxe book shops of some department store, and then visit a dusky old second hand shop, and you will see what books can do! In the de luxe shop they are leathern covered things, gaudy and snobbish in their newness. In the old book shop they are books that have lived, books that invite you to browse. You'd rather have them with all their germs ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe

... 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 ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen

... 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

... life, but has no stomach 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 ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel

... considerations seem to knock away all the main props of Mr. Delepierre's hypothesis, save that furnished by the apparent testimony of Jeanne's brothers, given at second hand in the Metz archives. And those who are familiar with the phenomena of mediaeval delusions will be unwilling to draw too hasty an inference from this alone. From the Emperor Nero to Don Sebastian of Portugal, there have been many ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... had gained in the last two years—there were now three of Henry Galleon's novels there. Bobby had given him one, "Henry Lessingham," shining bravely in its red and gold; he had bought another, "The Downs," second hand, and it was rather tattered and well thumbed. Another, "The Roads," was a shilling paper copy. He had read these three again and again until he knew them by heart, almost word by word. He took down "Henry Lessingham" now and opened it at a page that was turned down. ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... know how much easier it is to declare what has come to our knowledge from our own experience, than what we have gathered coldly at second hand from that of others;—how much easier it is to describe feelings we have ourselves had, and pleasures we have ourselves enjoyed, than to fashion a description of what others have told us;—how much more freely and convincingly we can ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware

... 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

... proves that 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 ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang

... fundamentally a matter of testimony. We have, or we have not, a body of fact for which we are in debt to observation. The observation may be first hand—as in Sir Oliver Lodge's sittings where he reports what he saw and heard. It may be second hand as the cases reported in the larger part of the authoritative literature of psychic phenomena. (Second hand, that is, for the authors and those who depend upon them.) Trustworthy observation is probably more difficult here than in any region of investigation. The whole ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins

... the 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 ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... That money will 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 a ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger

... never dwells solitary; it readily finds boon companions. And at one period of the night she began to look back upon her experience with a curious sense of prior familiarity—to see it as a story already known to her at second hand. She viewed it as the first stage of one of those tragedies that later find their way into the care of family physicians, into the briefs of lawyers, into the confidence of clergymen, into the papers and divorce courts, and that receive their final flaying or canonization on the stage and in ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen

... inner office, strode briskly up the aisle of the briefing room, and took his customary stance on the platform in front. His face looked stern, and he held his hands clasped behind his back. His royal blue uniform was neat and trim. Over his head, the second hand of the big clock whirled endlessly. In the silence of the briefing room, it seemed to be ...
— The Judas Valley • Gerald Vance

... constitution of the universe, by the means of these buildings, and of observers stationed in them, shall we doubt of their usefulness to every nation? And while scarcely a year passes over our heads without bringing some new astronomical discovery to light, which we must fain receive at second hand from Europe, are we not cutting ourselves off from the means of returning light for light, while we have neither observatory nor observer upon our half of the globe, and the earth revolves in perpetual ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... short, he was aware of the whole sequence of events preceding Robert Turold's violent and mysterious death, with the exception of the revelation of his life's secret, which Mrs. Pendleton had withheld from Inspector Dawfield. Barrant had heard all he wanted to know at second hand at that stage of his investigations, and he now preferred to be guided by his ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees

... that a man so opulent as you represent M. Dantes to be, should adopt his magnificence at second hand," ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg

... us start down stream. Janet talks of coming up the Nile with me next year, which would be pleasant. I am a little better than I have been the last two months. I was best in Nubia but I got a cold at Esneh, second hand from Maurice, which made me very seedy. I cannot go about at all for want of breath. Could you send me a chair such as people are carried in by two men? A common chair is awkward for the men when the banks are steep, and I am nervous, so I never go out. I wish you could see your ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... limited use in many of the best managed shops. A number of managers have seen the practical good that arises from allowing two or three men especially trained in their particular lines to deal directly with the men instead of at second hand through the old style gang boss as a mouthpiece. So deep rooted, however, is the conviction that the very foundation of management rests in the military type as represented by the principle that no workman can work under two bosses at the ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor

... 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 ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... incontinently dished, and to my huge astonishment they turned out to be three couple of our woodcock, which that indefatigable varlet had picked, and baked under the ashes, according to some strange idea, whether original, or borrowed at second hand from his master, I ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)

... the ornaments of the Church and Minister, and the use thereof, are conformed to the English, usage in the early years of the reign of Edward VI., the better; as marking the continuity of the English Church, and avoiding the imputation of adopting at second hand the ornaments and usages of foreign communions, whether Belgian, French, ...
— Ritual Conformity - Interpretations of the Rubrics of the Prayer-Book • Unknown

... Germany's invincibility, prophecies that "the war will end in a draw," and so forth. If he is saying such things on his own account, he is a German propagandist, a spy, a paid liar, and should be reported and punished as such. If he is repeating them second hand, he is nothing but an ass, a dupe of some real propagandist, and he should be reported ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces

... 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 ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday

... were opera. They may not care to see the play so much as to be seen at it; that happens in every country; but no doubt the plays have a charm which did not impart itself from the printed page. The companies are reported very good: but the reader must take this from me at second hand, as he must take the general society fact. I only know that people ask you to dinner at nine, and if they go to the theater afterward they cannot well come away till toward one o'clock. It is after this hour that the tertulia, that peculiarly Spanish function, begins, but ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells

... 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

... you have had more practice at this thing you learn to wait for the signal before plunging the second hand into the suds, but being green on this occasion, you are apt to mistake the moving of the crock of suds over from the right hand side to the left hand side as a notice and to poke your untouched hand right in without further orders, hoping to get it softened up well so as to save her trouble in ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb

... regime became famous in later years; even now he prescribed a strict rule, 'a cloak, a pair of shoes, two flannel shirts, and a piece of soap—these, wrapped up in an oil-skin, must go in the right holster, and a pistol in the left.' He took no opinions at second hand, but studied the best authorities and thought for himself; he was as thorough in self-education as the famous Confederate general 'Stonewall' Jackson, who every evening sat for an hour, facing a blank wall and reviewing in his mind ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... more than a great 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 panegyricks 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 Mecaenas, but little of his liberality. They are for persecuting ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden

... 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 ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... peered through the bushes. A belt of pale 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 taken. Reaching ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson

... 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 ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... and nodded in appreciation of the cadets' smooth efficient work. They strapped themselves into acceleration cushions and watched the red second hand of the astral chronometer sweep around, and then heard Tom counting ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell

... 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 but barren ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck

... can never possess an acre, more or less, and who must obtain Nature's products at second hand. This is not so great a misfortune as to have no desire for her companionship, or wish to work under her direction in dewy mornings and shadowy evenings. We may therefore reasonably suppose that the man who has exchanged his city shelter for a rural ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe

... and after that every scout for himself. This is called a hunter's stew because you have to hunt for the meat in it, but it's got plenty of e-pluribus unions in it. The potatoes and dumplings go to the patrol leaders, carrots to first and second hand scouts; tenderfeet get nothing because the stew ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... aspiration that grows with self respect. Sometimes I see it in a geranium flowering in a tomato can, set in a window; oftentimes in a cheap lace curtain; occasionally in a struggling, stunted yellow rose bush in the hard-beaten earth of a dooryard; or in a second hand wheezy cabinet organ in some front bedroom—in a thousand little signs of aspiration, I find America asserting itself among these poor people, and as I cherish these things I find happiness asserting ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... Louisiana. I am ignorant what view the Indians may have in that commerce: but I well know, that notwithstanding the fatigues of the journey, these cattle, one with another, did not come, after deducting all expenses, and even from the second hand, but to about two pistoles a head; whence I ought to presume, that they have them cheap in New Mexico. By means of this nation we have in Louisiana very beautiful horses, of the species of those of Old Spain, which, if managed or trained, people of the first rank might ride. As to the oxen ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz

... converting clergymen to Christianity, or with how much more than she knows a desirable mother will tell her children—finds the book's tentative explorer, just now, amply equipped with prejudices, whether acquired by second thought or second hand, concerning the book's topic. As endurability goes, reading the book rises forthwith almost to the level of an afternoon-call where there is gossip about the neighbors and Germany's future. We average-novel-readers ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... most human beings, the imagination is a heavy bird of feeble wing; it flies low, seeing only the things of the earth. When they describe heaven, it has houses of marble and streets of gold. Their pretense to sight of higher things is either sheer pretense or sight at second hand. Susan was of the few whose fancy can soar. She saw the earthy things; she saw the things of the upper regions also. And she saw the lower region from the altitudes of the higher—and in ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... also can be had on application his Catalogues of Second Hand Books in all languages and subjects, viz. Classics and Philology, Divinity, English ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 4, Saturday, November 24, 1849 • Various

... and I'm going to Montrose in August to help Anne with her quilts. I don't think anything will happen to prevent this time—no quarrelling, anyhow. Those two young creatures have learned their lesson. You'd better take it to heart too, Nora May. It's less trouble to learn it at second hand. Don't you ever quarrel with your real beau—it don't matter about the sham ones, of course. Don't take offence at trifles or listen to what other people tell you about him—outsiders, that is, that want to make mischief. What you ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... her hand deep into the hollow trunk, and flushed with triumph as her fingers came in contact with something loose and soft. It was not a paper parcel, it felt more like cloth—cloth with knotted ends all ready to pull. Darsie pulled with a will, found an unexpected weight, put up a second hand to aid the first, and with a tug and a cloud of dust brought to light nothing more exciting than a workman's handkerchief, knotted round a lumpy parcel which seemed obviously ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... 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, ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... 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 not spoken ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... constituency in Parliament in the Radical interest. He was returned by a large majority; and, having a loud voice and an easy manner, he soon acquired some reputation both in and out of the House of Commons by the popularity of his own views, and the extent of his wife's information, which he retailed at second hand. He made his maiden speech in the House unabashed the first night he sat there. Indeed, he was afraid of nothing except burglars, big dogs, doctors, dentists, and street-crossings. Whenever any accident occurred through any of these he preserved the ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... yet never be shocked, disgusted, or contemptuously amused in 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," and talks about driving ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... the library, and, closing the door, turned up the electric light a little—for the maids had not yet been to the room, and the shutters were still closed. The morning was a wet and chilly one, and Nell shuddered slightly as she sat and watched the second hand of the clock, which at one moment seemed to move slowly and at the next appeared to fly. She had not decided upon the words she would use; she would be guided by those which Sir Archie might speak; but she was resolved to fight as long as possible, to hide every ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice

... n't git so flighty, Case you got dat suit. Dem cloes ain't so mighty,— Second hand to boot, I 's a-tryin' to spite you! Full of jealousy! Look hyeah, man, I 'll fight you, Don't you fool ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... intimating that stains of blood were on my undershirts (second hand), I was amused to see Mrs. J. lifting them with the tongs. They have been thoroughly washed, and prove to be a first-rate article. I am proud of them, for they are truly ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... SECOND HAND BOOKS.—A List of valuable Second-hand Books in Theology, Political Economy, History, and Miscellaneous and Classical Literature, selected from his very Extensive Stock, Gratis, on Receipt of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various

... 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! She's beaten ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... the line. 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 birth and ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... is here, I think, certainly at second hand, though no doubt he had seen the negroes whom he describes with such disgust, and apparently ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... great thoughts of the past were the achievements of men who trusted themselves before custom or law. The sun shines to-day; the constellations hang there in the heavens the same as of old. God is as near us as ever He was—why should we take our revelations at second hand? No other writer who has used the English language has ever preached such a heroic doctrine of self-trust, or set the present moment so high in the circle of the years, in the diadem ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... these days were apt to be accompanied by the stories, which Jewel related to him with much enthusiasm while they cantered through wood-roads, and it is safe to say that the tales furnished full as much entertainment at second hand ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham

... shall conquer worlds. For, to fix the pure thought and to identify it with the true and holy, we must first divide it from the base clogs of matter; and how can we effect this disjunction, save, as it hath ever been done, by passion,—not simulate nor taken at second hand, cold,'bis coctum quasi,' but rather presently and in our very selves reiterate? So Naaman dipt in Jordan,—a task unto him, a sin in the eyes of his gods, and painful exceedingly to his pride-gorged humor, that would only have Abana and Pharpar,—yet only so was his skin made whole ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... gone by, never to return, the numbers and variety of wild fowls frequenting the Witham, with its “sykes and meres,” was something extraordinary. Charles Kingsley doubtless wrote, if not of his own knowledge, yet, at furthest, at second hand, when he gave the following description: “Grand it was, while dark green alders and pale green reeds stretched for miles . . . where the coot clanked, and the bittern boomed, and the sedgebird, not content with its own sweet song, mocked the notes of all the birds around . . . far off upon ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... Marmion, 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 any the Old World ever ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... attribute which distinguishes him above all others 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. To be able to read at first ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... purge. He never knows when he is well or sick, but is always tampering with his health till he has spoiled it, like a foolish musician that breaks his strings with striving to put them in tune; for Nature, which is physic, understands better how to do her own work than those that take it from her at second hand. Hippocrates says, Ars longa, vita brevis, and it is the truest of all ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... various forms, which are comparatively rare in Greek, as @, or unknown, as @. Except possibly Faliscan, the other dialects of Italy did not borrow their alphabet directly from the western Greeks as the Romans did, but received it at second hand through the Etruscans. In Oscan, where the writing of early inscriptions is no less careful than in Latin, the A takes the form @, to which the nearest parallels are found in north Greece (Boeotia, Locris and Thessaly, and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... by no means enough, where the debt is so large. The great merit of Dr. Richardson's Dictionary being the number of illustrative passages he has brought together, it is hardly fair in Mr. Swinton so often to make a show of learning with what he has got at second hand from the lexicographer. Dr. Trench could also make large reclamations, and several others. There is beside an unpleasant assumption of superiority in the book. An author who says that paganus means village, who makes ocula the plural of oculus, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... lumber trade, and kept the various plantations in communication with the rest of the world by their coasting craft plying to Boston. Dissatisfied companies from Barbadoes seeking a less torrid climate next arrived. Thus the region was settled in the first instance at second hand from older colonies. To these came settlers direct from England, such emigrants as the proprietors could persuade to the undertaking, and such as were impelled by the evil state of England in the last days of the Stuarts, or drawn by the promise ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... and virtuous Simplicia, was, the other day, visiting with an old aunt of her's, that I verily believe has read the Atalantis; she took a story out there, and dressed up an old honest neighbour in the second hand clothes of scandal. The young creature hid her face with her fan at every burst and peal of laughter, and blushed for her guilty parent; by which she atoned, methought, for every scandal that ran round the ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... than twenty years the husband showed her loving reverence. As we stand in the Hackleton shed, over which Carey placed the rude signboard prepared by his own hands, and now in the library of Regent's Park College, "Second Hand Shoes Bought and—,"[2] we can realise the low estate to which Carey fell, even below his father's loom and schoolhouse, and from which he was called to become the apostle of North India as Schwartz ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith

... as dress, we must ascend to the abstract principles of ethics and metaphysics which Dr. Clarke so lightly sets on one side; for all dress is only an index of education, and all education, to be education at all, must deduce every one of its principles at second hand from ethics and metaphysics. Again, Huxley and Agassiz may, as Dr. Clarke assumes (page 12), represent physiology; but will "Kant and Calvin, the Church and the Pope" all four of whom Dr. Clarke assumes to be of no importance in settling ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... the Trusty, the 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 her ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... life and records of the family. He himself collected the statistics that are given above and which are identical with those given by Dr Chapple's authority, Prof. Pellman, and therefore one must conclude that Prof. Pellman has studied the case at second hand and, in this important ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll

... when she was eighteen. In all these years she had not seen Rule Rothsay. She only heard from him through his letters to her Uncle Clarence, reported second hand to herself. She knew that in these five years Rule had risen, step by step, in the office where he had begun his apprenticeship; that he had risen to be foreman, then sub-editor, and now he was ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... broad-shouldered man. The grip which he gave me assured me that he had been brought up hard, but I utterly failed to place him. With a broad grin he relieved the situation by saying: "The last time that we met, Doctor, was on the deck of a fishing vessel in the North Sea. I was second hand aboard, sailing out from Grimsby." The tough surroundings of that life were such a contrast to his present apparently ample means that I could only say, "How on earth did you get ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... God does not care to have you know it at second hand? What if there would be no good in that? There is some testimony on record, and perhaps there might be much were it not that, having to do with things so immediately personal, and generally so delicate, answers to prayer would naturally not often be talked ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... this self-consciousness, which so continually besets us, is in itself a misery and a galling chain. We are never happy till by imagination we are taken out of the pales and limits of self. We receive happiness at second hand: the spring of it may be in ourselves, but we do not know it to be happiness, till, like the sun's light from the moon, it is reflected on us from an object outside. The admixture of a foreign element sweetens and unfamiliarises it. Sheridan prepared his good things in solitude, ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... have been 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 on as his ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... Villon's mother conceived of heaven and hell and took all her scanty stock of theology from the stained glass that threw its light upon her as she prayed. And there is scarcely a detail of external effect in the chronicles and romances of the time, but might have been borrowed at second hand from a piece of tapestry. It was a stage in the history of mankind which we may see paralleled to some extent in the first infant school, where the representations of lions and elephants alternate round the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... "It is nothing at second hand," said Erica. "He is a shoe maker, as grand-looking a fellow as you ever saw, fond of reading, and very thoughtful, and with more quiet common sense than almost any I ever met. He had been brought up to believe in verbal inspiration that had been thoroughly crammed down his throat; but no one ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... dial the clock strikes that number of times. Let this clock be connected with the second in such a manner that by each stroke of the first the hand of the second is moved from one number to the next, but can only strike when the first comes to rest. If the second hand stands at 5 and the first strikes 3, then when this is done the second will strike 8; the second will act similarly on the third, and so on. Let there be four such clocks with hands set to the numbers 6, 6, 1, 0 respectively. Now set the third clock striking 1, this ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... 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

... darkest point on the street the two boys had to pass a collection of shanty like buildings, which contained a contractor's offices, a junk-shop, a second hand dealer's storehouse and a big stable in which ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock

... 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 Path of the Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

... had had a second hand in to help on that stormy night when Jan made his first appearance at the mill; but as a rule he only kept one man, whom he hired for a year at a time, at the mop or hiring fair held ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... sake no," she declared. "I would rather put up with your own efforts, however clumsy. Love-making at first hand is dull enough. At second hand it would ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... been so interesting to talk with your sister and Mrs. Jimmie about Paris fashions. We see so little here that is not second hand, and your journey is so fascinating. It seems incredible that you can be travelling simply for pleasure and over such a number of countries! Where do you ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell

... going to react on the individual missioner who depends on himself. Looking back now at the work done by my father, and by Rowley at Chatsea, I'm beginning to understand how dangerous it is for one man to make himself the pivot of an enterprise. I only really know about my father's work at second hand, but look at Chatsea. I hear now that already the work is falling to pieces. Although that may not justify the Bishop of Silchester, I'm beginning to see that he might argue that if Rowley had shown ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... there—who knows. Besides, it's directly on my way to the Globe, and the curtain is not until eight-thirty. Tell you what, old man; come along with me and see the thing to a finish. Fate leads a card—Mr. Esper Indiman's—and we'll play the second hand; what do ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen



Words linked to "Second hand" :   intercessor, secondhand, go-between, mediator, sweep-second, intermediary, sweep hand, hand, intermediator



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