"Alphabet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wire ended in a stalk mounted with a little ball of elder-wood suspended by a silk thread. When a stream of electricity, no matter how slight., was sent through the wire, the elder-ball at the opposite end was repelled, such movement designating some letter of the alphabet. A few years later we find Arthur Young, in his Travels in France, describing a similar machine invented by a M. Lomond of Paris, the action of which he also describes.[12] In these and similar cases, though the ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... adieu!" Another wall bears the following warning: "This is no place for idlers; go away, good-for-nothing." It is curious to read the names Sodom and Gomorrah, evidently scribbled by a Jew. Low down on the walls small schoolboys have practised writing the Greek alphabet, showing that Greek was included in their curriculum. And once were found written in charcoal, and only partly legible, the words, "Enjoy the fire, Christian," a scoff at the martyrs who, soaked in tar, were burned as torches in ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... which was the bane of both our lives. I believe I was kept at home for that purpose. I had been apt enough to learn, and willing enough, when my mother and I had lived alone together. I can faintly remember learning the alphabet at her knee. To this day, when I look upon the fat black letters in the primer, the puzzling novelty of their shapes, and the easy good-nature of O and Q and S, seem to present themselves again before me as they used to do. But they recall no feeling of disgust or reluctance. On the contrary, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... to be imparted to a child by conversation than by any other means (for by this system education is divested of its drudgery), during the first six years of her life Amber knew little more than the letters of the alphabet. It was not until her desire of information was excited to such a degree as to render her anxious to obtain her own means of acquiring it that Amber was taught to read; and then it was at her own request. Edward Forster was aware that a child of six years ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... land of ours, I have wondered continually what some of the Christian converts of China would think could they visit our shores and go into the mountains in our Southern land and see the women there, how perfectly ignorant they are, some of them not even knowing their alphabet, and, what is sadder still, not even knowing that they are hundreds of years behind the women living but a few miles from their mountain home. If these Chinese converts could go down from the mountains into the ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 1, January, 1896 • Various
... long." Leigh could not master the V of the alphabet yet. "'Cause I'm going away pretty soon, Miss Jane say. You know my mamma's dead." The little face was very grave now. "And my Uncle Jim out in Kansas wants me. I'm ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... learned my call in a flash. I must teach her the whole alphabet, and then will have some tall fun and circumvent that ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... rows of little dolls in their brilliantly gay garments, tied up with their big sashes. They are sitting on the floor and laboriously making strokes with a paint-brush. That is to say, they are learning to write. The Chinese writing is not an alphabet like ours, but each complicated symbol stands for an idea, and there are thousands and thousands of them. It takes a child seven years even to learn fairly what will be ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... After a time they stayed at certain profitable places a twelvemonth, still trading from their ships. Then came the fixed factory, and about it grew the trading colony.[2] The Phoenician trading post wove together the fabric of oriental civilization, brought arts and the alphabet to Greece, brought the elements of civilization to northern Africa, and disseminated eastern culture through the Mediterranean system of lands. It blended races and customs, developed commercial confidence, fostered the custom of depending on outside nations ...
— The Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wisconsin • Frederick Jackson Turner
... church porch I found a school of dirty ragged children reading the Psalms from the small English printed edition; not, however, learning to read by means of the alphabet or spelling, but learning to know the forms of words by rote; boys and girls together, all very slightly dressed, and one of ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... this time and of other times; if I chose I could answer a summons before their tribunals. I could silence the beliefs which are the mother-tongue of my soul and speak with the rote-learned language of a system, that gives you the spelling of all things, sure of its alphabet covering them all. I could silence them: may not a man silence his awe or his love, and take to finding reasons, which others demand? But if his love lies deeper than any reasons to be found? Man finds his pathways: at first ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... ideas of her mimetic art, her religious notions, her legal forms, and a vast number of her customs and usages. But Babylonia herself, so far as we know, drew her stores from no foreign country. Hers was apparently the genius which excogitated an alphabet—worked out the simpler problems of arithmetic—invented implements for measuring the lapse of time—conceived the idea of raising enormous structures with the poorest of all materials, clay—discovered the art of polishing, boring, and engraving gems—reproduced with ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... it's them Greek classics, as they call them. You see, it's such unchristian-like looking stuff. I have looked at them sometimes in the Doctor's study. Such heathen-looking letters; not a bit like a decent alphabet. But there, I must be off, gentlemen. I have all my work waiting, and I am going away—only think of it!—ten pounds richer than when I first began to turn that there handle this morning, if—if I stop here—I mean, if we stop here till ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... accustomed to be spoken to after that fashion," cried the dwarf angrily; "my name is not 'little chap,' but 'Mr. Alphabet,' though some dare to call me A B C. I ought to be treated with respect, for I am ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... morning was secured, Theodose felt the necessity of beginning his courtship of Celeste. It was high time, he thought, to bring about a quarrel between the lovers. He did not, therefore, hesitate to apply his ear to the door of the salon before entering it, in order to discover what letters of the alphabet of love they were spelling; he was even invited to commit this domestic treachery by sounds from within, which seemed to say that they were disputing. Love, according to one of our poets, is a privilege which two persons mutually take advantage of to cause each other, reciprocally, a great ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... whatever in arranging them correctly without referring to the book. It will then be well to clear the board of all but a single Piece, and practise with that until perfect in its movements; another, and then another, may be added, until the action of every one is as familiar as the alphabet. ...
— The Blue Book of Chess - Teaching the Rudiments of the Game, and Giving an Analysis - of All the Recognized Openings • Howard Staunton and "Modern Authorities"
... afterwards in things, to the very foundations. Guttemberg; without knowing it, was the mechanist of the New World. In creating the communication of ideas, he had assured the independence of reason. Every letter of this alphabet which left his fingers, contained in it, more power than the armies of kings, and the thunders of pontiffs. It was mind which he furnished with language. These two powers were the mistresses of man, as they were hereafter of mankind. The intellectual world was born of a material ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... to her mind, she repeated them aloud, then,—finding that all her efforts elicited nothing but a constant "No,"—she said, "Come, since this plan does not answer, I will have recourse to another." She then recited all the letters of the alphabet from A down to N. When she arrived at that letter the paralytic made her understand that she had spoken the initial letter of the thing he wanted. "Ah," said Valentine, "the thing you desire begins with the letter N; it is with N that we have to do, then. ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Koster) of Haarlem. The book said that he went on a picnic with his family, and while idly carving his name on the trunk of a beech tree he conceived the idea that he might in the same way make individual letters of the alphabet on wooden blocks, ink them ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... celebrated heroes of antiquity; if they will not be reduced to a consistency, lay them all in a heap upon him. But be sure they are qualities which your patron would be thought to have; and, to prevent any mistake which the world may be subject to, select from the alphabet those capital letters that compose his name, and set them at the head of a dedication before your poem. However, do not absolutely observe the exact quantity of these virtues, it not being determined whether or no it be ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... the curate of a village church, about five miles from Amwell. I was born in the parsonage-house, which joins the church-yard. The first thing I can remember was my father teaching me the alphabet from the letters on a tombstone that stood at the head of my mother's grave. I used to tap at my father's study-door; I think I now hear him say, "Who is there?—What do you want, little girl?" "Go and see mamma. Go and learn pretty ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... primitive letters of the old northern alphabet. In a few passages Cynewulf uses each rune to represent not only a letter but a word beginning with that letter. Thus the rune-equivalent of C stands for cene (keen, courageous), Y for yfel (evil, in the sense of wretched), N for nyd (need), W ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... sat in my Philadelphia church I was more embarrassed at her presence than by all the audience, because I felt that in religion I had got no further than the A B C, while she had learned the whole alphabet, and for many years had finished the Y and Z. When she went out of this life into the next, what a shout there must have been in heaven, from the front door clear up to the back seat in the highest ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... hardly hope, in four short years, to surmount the disadvantages of my youth, and gain academical distinction. To him, who in his 20th year, learnt his Greek alphabet, a first class at College must be a hopless aim; while an University prize must be beyond the reach of one who merely began to speak English about his twentieth year. Aware of these circumstances, the friends whom I consult have advised me to collect (should necessary studies ...
— Gwaith Alun • Alun
... this, but either he selected a stupid subject, or his mode of teaching was not good, for he made wonderfully little progress. For a week he was trying to teach his pupil Tommy Toad, as he called him, three letters of the alphabet, and at the end of the time he could not tell B from C. Mr Talbot took care also that we should not be idle, and kept us knotting and splicing and doing all sorts of work aloft. We were approaching our port, and were congratulating ourselves ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... Oh, yes, we know," interrupted Allen; "Janet does not think anyone worth listening to that hasn't got a whole alphabet tacked behind ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... liked to confess. Mme. de Cambremer cast a furtive glance behind her. She knew that her young daughter-in-law (full of respect for her new and noble family, except in such matters as related to the intellect, upon which, having 'got as far' as Harmony and the Greek alphabet, she was specially enlightened) despised Chopin, and fell quite ill when she heard him played. But finding herself free from the scrutiny of this Wagnerian, who was sitting, at some distance, in a group of her own contemporaries, Mme. de Cambremer let herself drift upon a stream of exquisite ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... cripple came to the sick man, and received his first lesson; and every day, at an appointed hour, he was in Mr. Croft's room, eager for the instruction he received. Quickly he mastered the alphabet, and as quickly learned to construct small words, preparatory to combining them in ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... same kind of garment, suited for war. The women wear the toga below the knee, but the men above. And both sexes are instructed in all the arts together. When this has been done as a start, and before their third year, the boys learn the language and the alphabet on the walls by walking round them. They have four leaders, and four elders, the first to direct them, the second to teach them, and these are men approved beyond all others. After some time they exercise themselves with gymnastics, running, ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... to bear to a person to whom it was directed and so charmed was he with the beautiful inscription drawn upon it that he was seized with an unconquerable desire to learn the mystery it contained. To this end he persuaded a little boy of his master's to teach him the letters of the alphabet. He was discovered in the act and whipped. His curiosity, however, to learn the secret, which was locked up in those mysterious characters, was only increased, and he was detected in another attempt, and accordingly chastised. By this time he had ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... and she held out her hand. He smiled and took it, and, as it lay in his, looked at it for a moment musingly. She drew it back slowly. He was then thinking that it was the most intelligent hand he had ever seen. . . . He determined to play a bold and surprising game. He had learned from her the alphabet of the fingers—that is, how to spell words. He knew little gesture-language. He, therefore, spelled slowly: "Hawley is angry, because you love Hilton." The statement was so matter-of-fact, so sudden, that the girl had no chance. She ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... thoughts which from time to time had come to this woman during her seventeen years' occupancy of the chair in which she sat. Upon the flyleaf was inscribed "Aphorisms: by Eugenie Ram." It was her intent to publish this darling work when beneath each letter of the alphabet ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... name only a few more. The invention of chairs, though adding to human convenience, has tended to produce wrong posture, from which spinal, nervous and digestive disturbances follow. The invention of the alphabet and of printing has made possible the accumulation of knowledge, but has promoted eye-strain with a great train of attendant evils. The device of division of labor has created much wealth, but destroyed the normal balance of mental and physical work, recreation ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... the teachers of science, the makers of inventions, have passed to their last rewards, but their works have survived. The Phoenician galleys and the civilization which was born of their commerce have perished, but the alphabet which that people perfected remains. The shepherd kings of Israel, the temple and empire of Solomon, have gone the way of all the earth, but the Old Testament has been preserved for the inspiration of mankind. The ark of the covenant and the seven-pronged candlestick ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... into the life of the land farmer because it gives obviously a mere hint of learning. It has been the boast of its advocates that it taught only the "three Rs." Its training for life is rudimentary only: it gives but an alphabet. The land farmer expected to live in his group. Secure in his own acres and believing himself "as good as anybody," he relied for his son and daughter not upon trained skill, but upon native abilities, sterling character, independence and industry. Of ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... laid out a plan for teaching others more ignorant than herself. She cut out of thin pieces of wood ten sets of large and small letters of the alphabet, and carried these with her when she went from house to house. When she came to Billy Wilson's she threw down the letters all in a heap, and Billy picked them out and sorted them ...
— Goody Two-Shoes • Unknown
... side by side with their conquerors. There was a dragoonist flavor about the dust; a military flourish about the tombstones. A., of His Majesty's regiment; B., officer of such a battalion of His Majesty's so-and-so regiment; C., D., and all the rest of the alphabet, once grand officers in His Majesty's service, now dust here as the royal majesties they served are dust elsewhere. Went over to the ancient grave-digger, who was shovelling out in a weakly manner decayed coffin, skull, ribs, bones, fat earth—so fat and greasy-looking, ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... grow up a nidiot," said she, drawing her mouth down as she had seen Prudy do when beseeching her to learn the alphabet. "Don't he know all the letters, ...
— Little Prudy's Dotty Dimple • Sophie May
... made extraordinary progress in attempting bits of conversation and in reducing their speech for the first time to a written form—for the New Hebrideans had no literature, and not even the rudiments of an alphabet. I used to hire some of the more intelligent lads and men to sit and talk with us, and answer our questions about names and sounds; but they so often deceived us, and we, doubtless, misunderstood them so often, that this course was not satisfactory, till after we had gained some knowledge of ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... Ban) is considered by his countrymen the most extraordinary genius that the Highlands in modern times have produced. Without having learned a letter of any alphabet, he was enabled to pour forth melodies that charmed every ear to which they were intelligible. And he is understood to have had the published specimens of his poetry committed to writing by no mean judge of their merit,—the late Dr Stewart of Luss,—who, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Sayce considers Zuzim and Zamzummim to be two readings of the same word Zamzum, written in cuneiform characters on the original document. The sounds represented, in the Hebrew alphabet, by the letters m and w, are expressed in the Chaldaean syllabary by the same character, and a Hebrew or Babylonian scribe, who had no other means of telling the true pronunciation of a race-name mentioned ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... "The alphabet belongs equally to the whole human race; no one can deny that. I have taken eight letters and combined them in such a way as to produce the word Seingalt. It pleased me, and I have adopted it as my surname, being firmly persuaded that as no one had borne it before no one could deprive ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... which is not very likely, as not all the words could possibly consist of four letters each; but they might be the initial letters of certain words, giving sufficient of the word to enable one to guess the rest. Now there are 26 letters in the alphabet. Taking A as being 1, B as 2, C as 3, and so on up to Z as 26, let us ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... been taught a number of tricks. We could sneeze and cough, and be dead dogs, and say our prayers, and stand on our heads, and mount a ladder and say the alphabet,—this was the hardest of all, and it took Miss Laura a long time to teach us. We never began till a book was laid before us. Then we stared at it, and Miss Laura said, "Begin, Joe ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... Huc, in his journey to Thibet, gives an account of a singular tree, bearing this title, and of which the peculiarity is that its leaves and bark are covered with well-defined characters of the Thibetian alphabet. The tree seen by MM. Huc and Gabet appeared to them to be of great {385} age, and is said by the inhabitants to be the only one of its kind known in the country. According to the account given by these travellers, the letters would appear to be formed by the veins of the leaves; the resemblance ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... day-school in the suburb. Here Fanny, for a considerable time, justified the harshest assertions of her stupidity. She could not even keep her eyes two minutes together on the page from which she was to learn the mysteries of reading; months passed before she mastered the alphabet, and, a month after, she had again forgot it, and the labour was renewed. The only thing in which she showed ability, if so it might be called, was in the use of the needle. The sisters of the convent had already taught her many pretty devices in this art; and when she found that at the school they ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the transliteration of Arabic words I deliberately reject the artful and complicated system, ugly and clumsy withal, affected by scientific modern Orientalists. Nor is my sympathy with their prime object, namely to fit the Roman alphabet for supplanting all others. Those who learn languages, and many do so, by the eye as well as by the ear, well know the advantages of a special character to distinguish, for instance, Syriac from ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... created during the twilight of the first Sabbath-eve. These were:—The well that followed Israel in the wilderness, the manna, the rainbow, the letters of the alphabet, the stylus, the tables of the law, the grave of Moses, the cave in which Moses and Elijah stood, the opening of the mouth of Balaam's ass, the opening of the earth to swallow the wicked (Korah and his clique). Rav Nechemiah said, in his father's name, also fire and ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... bawmz a mather should, eed now bettern to spawl a pore gel's flahrzn than ran awy atbaht pyin. Will ye-oo py me f'them? [Here, with apologies, this desperate attempt to represent her dialect without a phonetic alphabet must be abandoned as ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... them under drivers, yet careful that they are not hard-pushed? Too humane forsooth to stint the stomachs of their slaves, yet force their minds to starve, and brandish over them pains and penalties, if they dare to reach forth for the smallest crumb of knowledge, even a letter of the alphabet! ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... describes himself here in the very words which in the 4th verse are descriptive of the eternal subsistence of the person of the Father. "Alpha and Omega," the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, are explained in the words,—"the beginning and the ending." This language is not to be understood as expressing or defining the duration of the Godhead only; but it points also to the divine purpose and providence. To the same purpose speaks our Redeemer under the name of ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... to hear their alphabet. They knew it and they did not know it. What they knew was not very much. Ruster grew eager; he lifted the little boys up, each on one of his knees, and began to teach them. Liljekrona's wife went out and in and ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... a little to one side and took a critical survey of the alphabet before him. His eye passed once down and once up the procession, then looking up at Jack with a grin, he said, "He's 'iding, I reckon, governor. That there dorg'll have to start with a B ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... for his messages. He chose to live with them in their suffering and out of his weeping pointed them to a star of hope. There are five independent poems in as many chapters. Chapters 1, 2, 4 and 5 have each 22 verses or just the number of the Hebrew alphabet. Chapter 3 has 66 verses or just three times the number of the alphabet. The first four chapters are acrostic, that is each verse begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In chapter three, each letter is used in order and is three times repeated as ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... occupied with her sewing; and near them, on a stool, sat Angela, the wife of Agricola, nursing her last-born child, while the gentle Magdalen, with the eldest boy in her lap, was occupied in teaching him the letters of the alphabet. Agricola had just returned from the fields, and was beginning to unyoke his cattle, when, struck, like me, no doubt, with this picture, he stood gazing on it for a moment, with his hand still leaning on the yoke, beneath which bent submissive the broad foreheads of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... these, our times, with daily wonders big, A Lettered peer is like a lettered pig; Both know their Alphabet, but who, from thence, Infers that peers or pigs have manly sense? Still less that such should woo the graceful nine; Parnassus was not ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... Latin, French and Greek when he was ten year old, And knew the Spanish alphabet as soon as he was told. He never, never thought of play until his work was done, He labored hard from break of day until the set of sun. He never scraped his muddy shoes upon the parlor floor, And never answered, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... deal sometimes," chuckled Agnes, who did not much mind having her name shortened. "Wait till I look up in my scrap book the name of that special cheese which is made by the Swiss for use in Passion Play week. It's got all the letters of the alphabet in it twice." ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... books of Anticatones, and a poem called Iter; and many other works. Julius and Augustus devised means of writing one letter for another, and so concealing what they wrote. For Julius put the fourth letter for the first, and so on through the alphabet; whilst Augustus used the second for the first, the third for the second, and so throughout. He is said in the greatest difficulties of affairs during the Mutinensian War to have read and written and even declaimed every day. Tiberius ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... exact repetition of their plaint. Harrowing as it was, the sounds were almost like a recitation of the alphabet. A woman who had adopted me as her nephew said they called it the "Ue haaneinei" That, literally, is "to make a weeping on the side." The etiquette of it was intricate and precise. Each vowel was memorized with exactness. It ran, as my adopted aunt ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... proposals in recent decades to do away with the Chinese characters and to introduce an alphabet in their place. They have all proved to be unsatisfactory so far, because the character of the Chinese language, as it is at this moment, is unsuited to an alphabetical script. They would also destroy China's cultural unity: there are many dialects in China that ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... now," said the teacher to the class which had witnessed the experiment, "that this boy knows his Alphabet, in a different sense, from that in which he knows his Multiplication table. In the latter, his knowledge is only imperfectly his own; he can make use of it only under favorable circumstances. In the former it is entirely his own; circumstances have ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... country where the merry haymakers were. Of course, there were worse names than Ben Holt. It was surely better than Eygji Watts, whose sanguine parents were said to have named him with the first five letters they drew from a hat containing the alphabet; Ben Holt was assuredly better than Eygji, even had this not been rendered into "Hedge-hog" by careless companions. His last confusion of ideas was a wondering if Bernal Linford was as good a name as Ben Holt, and ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... down. In the afternoon the first plenary sitting took place, the proceedings being opened by the Prince of Bavaria and then led by Dr. Kuehlmann. It was decided that the Powers should take it in turns to preside, in order of the Latin alphabet as to their names, i.e. Allemagne, Autriche, etc. Dr. Kuehlmann requested Hr. Joffe to tell us the principles on which he considered a future peace should be based, and the Russian delegate then went through the six main tenets already ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... author, my claim to enter upon this self-contained symposium which I am about to present is somewhat stronger. Authors, of course, read all the reviews of their books, even that common American variety which runs like the telegraphic alphabet: quote— summarize—quote—quote—summarize—quote, and so on up to five dollars' worth, space rates. I have read all the reviews of my books except those which clipping bureaus seeking a subscription or kind friends wishing ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... language-learning. The skeleton outline of grammatical theory with concrete examples afforded by Esperanto would shield against vitiating initial mistakes, in much the same way as the use of a scientific phonetic alphabet, when a foreign language is presented for the first time to the English beginner in written form, shields him against carrying over his native mixed vowel system to languages which use the same letters as English, but give quite ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... beginning, the groundwork for something more than a mere guess. The general use which may be made of the table is obvious—but, in this particular cipher, we shall only very partially require its aid. As our predominant character is 8, we will commence by assuming it as the e of the natural alphabet. To verify the supposition, let us observe if the 8 be seen often in couples—for e is doubled with great frequency in English—in such words, for example, as 'meet,' '.fleet,' 'speed,' 'seen,' been,' 'agree,' &c. In the present instance we see it doubled no less ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Chinese and Japanese are two very different languages, yet the Japanese, Coreans and Chinese use the same letters to write with, just as English, Germans, French and Spaniards all employ one and the same alphabet. ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... that could be crammed into him. Has it brought him into our temple, in the spirit? No. Have we had any ignorant brothers and sisters that didn't know round O from crooked S, come in among us meanwhile? Many. Then the angels are NOT learned; then they don't so much as know their alphabet. And now, my friends and fellow-sinners, having brought it to that, perhaps some brother present - perhaps you, Brother Gimblet - will pray ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens
... wonderful in that," said I; "we are at the commencement of a philological age, every one studies languages: that is, every one who is fit for nothing else; philology being the last resource of dulness and ennui, I have got a little in advance of the throng, by mastering the Armenian alphabet; but I foresee the time when every unmarriageable miss, and desperate blockhead, will likewise have acquired the letters of Mesroub, and will know the term for bread, in Armenian, and perhaps that ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... messages by running through the alphabet till the spirit interpreter knocked at the ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... the account is given is what is called the language of symbols. Just as here we have words which stand for things—as the word "table" is a symbol for a recognised article of a certain kind—so do symbols stand for objects on higher planes. They are a pictorial alphabet, used by all myth-writers, and each has its recognised meaning. A symbol is used to signify a certain object just as words are used down here to distinguish one thing from another, and so a knowledge of symbols is necessary for the reading of a myth. For the original ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... been to school, and so she didn't even know the alphabet; but Genevieve sat down patiently to teach her, and found truly that much patience was necessary to accomplish the work she had undertaken. Hepsa would soon grow discouraged when she found so much to learn, and saw her little ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins
... when this truth dawned upon her mind. I saw that the great obstacle was overcome, and that henceforward nothing but plain and straightforward efforts were to be used. The next step was to procure a set of metal types, with the different letters of the alphabet cast upon their ends: also a board in which were square holes, into which holes she could set the types, so that the letters on their ends could alone be felt above the surface. She was exercised for several weeks in ...
— Journal of a Voyage across the Atlantic • George Moore
... the Dewey's serious dilemma. No spoken word was necessary to impress upon the men the critical situation. Sleep was out of the question. Jack rambled into the wireless room, where he tried to calm his restless spirits by rattling away on the key at the code alphabet. Lately he had been giving much attention to mastering the operation of the wireless apparatus and under the direction of Sammy Smith had ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... was variously estimated. Josephus gives twenty-two, which was the usual number among Christian writers in the second, third, and fourth centuries, having been derived perhaps from the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Origen, Jerome, and others have it. It continued longest among the teachers of the Greek Church, and is even in Nicephorus's stichometry.(83) The enumeration in question has Ruth with Judges, and Lamentations with Jeremiah. In Epiphanius(84) the number twenty-seven ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... is my transliteration of Greek text into English using an Oxford English Dictionary alphabet table. The ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... incivilities I should be visited. Besides, what business has a mere boarder to be talking about such things at a breakfast-table? Let him make puns. To be sure, he was brought up among the Christian fathers, and learned his alphabet out of a quarto "Concilium Tridentinum." He has also heard many thousand theological lectures by men of various denominations; and it is not at all to the credit of these teachers, if he is not fit by this time to express an ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... I had to interrupt my lessons from illness, but Sheykh Yussuf came again last night. I have mastered Abba shedda o mus beteen—ibbi shedda o heftedeen, etc. Oh dear, what must poor Arab children suffer in learning ABC! It is a terrible alphabet, and the shekel (points) are desesperants; but now I stick for want of ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... tenant had moved out, alarmed by mysterious rappings. The Foxes did not hear these sounds until 1848, and then Kate, hardly more than a child, began questioning the rappings, and having opened what seemed to be intelligent communication, suggested the use of the alphabet. That was the beginning of what spiritualists call the "science of materialization." The exhibitions consisted of the usual phenomena, table turning, spirit rapping and the moving of large bodies by invisible means. The two young women gave public s['e]ances throughout the country, arousing ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... G., H., I., and J. And why is this precious knowledge imparted to us? Why are we not also taught what else they did during the day? Why do we learn nothing of Mr. and Mrs. Y. and Z., at the other end of the alphabet, in Baxter Street? For these good folks who are mentioned are in no way distinguished except for riches. If, indeed, they had done or said or written anything memorable, if they had painted fine pictures, or carved ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... matters Europe owes a balance of indebtedness to Asia, and by far the greater part of it to the Semites. The Phoenician alphabet and Arabian numerals are capital borrowed and yielding how enormous a usufruct! Above all, Asiatic religions—albeit the greatest of them was the child of Hellas as well as of Judaea—have conquered the whole world save a few savage tribes. Ever since the cry of "There ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... the private Members got their own back when the first amendment to the Address was moved by Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS. The Member for Brentford, who knows the alphabet of aviation from Aeroplane to Zeppelin, complained that the air-service, like his own constituency in legendary times, was under Dual Control, and urged that it should be placed under ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various
... dumb action, will I be as perfect As begging Hermits in their holy prayers. Thou shalt not sighe nor hold thy stumps to heauen, Nor winke, nor nod, nor kneele, nor make a signe; But I (of these) will wrest an Alphabet, And by still practice, learne to know ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... old Nursery favourites are here offered to our Young Friends—Nursery Alphabet, Sing-a-Song of Sixpence, The Frog's Wooing, The Three Little Pigs, Puss in Boots, have for many generations delighted the Nurseries of Great Britain. We trust that they and their worthy new companion, The Ugly Duckling, which has come to us from over the Sea, will still ...
— Aunt Friendly's Picture Book. - Containing Thirty-six Pages in Colour by Kronheim • Anonymous
... out of the realm of popular knowledge, and information of this class sought only in a clandestine manner. The people have suffered by deplorable ignorance on those topics, which should be as familiar to us as the alphabet. Dr. Napheys, by his scientific handling of the physiological points which relate to health, training, and development, has rendered a great service to the world. This, the press, and public men, have not been ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... recalled the pleasant reading-lessons that the eldest of the Gerards had given him—that good Louise, so wise and serious and only ten years old, pointing out his letters to him in a picture alphabet with a knitting-needle, always so patient and kind. The child was overcome at the very first with a disgust for school, and gazed through the window which lighted the room at the noiselessly moving, large, indented leaves ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... in a corner of the room, where the ivy from the ceiling nearly touched their heads. The small round table was produced; the saucer, with an arrow pencilled on its edge, was carefully placed upon the big sheet of paper which bore the letters of the alphabet and the words oui and non in the corners. The light behind them was half veiled by ivy; the rest of the old room lay in comparative darkness; through the half-opened door a lamp shone upon the oil-cloth in the hall, showing the stains and the worn, streaked patches where ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... pounds, and specimens that are larger may be worth many times that amount. Figures of men, horses, bears, dogs, and various animals, including dragons, are to be seen, as well as letters of the alphabet, triangles, or other inanimate objects, some trees being cleverly made to look like jugs, bottles, and bowls. Occasionally, a singular change has been made in a tree; thus, what was a boy with a rake, by a little alteration becomes a soldier ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... primer of information about the invention of the alphabet and the history of bookmaking up to the invention of movable types. 62pp.; illustrated; ...
— The Uses of Italic - A Primer of Information Regarding the Origin and Uses of Italic Letters • Frederick W. Hamilton
... hurl its anathemas against those who opposed that revision. The share taken in this excommunication by the Oriental patriarchs rather lessened than added to its weight, since the dissenters denied to Greek and Syrian bishops, who knew not a letter of the Slavonic alphabet, the right of passing judgment ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... with many intricate and elaborate stitches; those known as the "herring-bone" and "fox and geese" were great favorites. By the use of curious stitches initials could be knit into mittens; and it is said that one young New Hampshire girl, using fine flaxen yarn, knit the whole alphabet and a verse of poetry into a pair of mittens; which I think must have been long-armed mitts for ladies' wear, to have space enough for ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... was placed in the middle of a building, carefully purified on all sides by Arabian perfumes; and a plain round dish was placed upon it, made of different metals. On the outer side of which the four-and-twenty letters of the alphabet were engraved with great skill, being separated from one another by distances measured with ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... Megatherion, Ichthyosaurus, were to begin to speak from amid its rock-swathings, never so indistinctly! The most extinct fossil species of Men or Monks can do, and does, this miracle,—thanks to the Letters of the Alphabet, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... Moses Ansell read out that night to his Kinder, after tea-supper, by the light of the one candle, was prefaced with a note of pathos. "These stories have we gathered together from the Gemorah and the Midrash, wonderful stories, and we have translated the beautiful stories, using the Hebrew alphabet so that every one, little or big, shall be able to read them, and shall know that there is a God in the world who forsaketh not His people Israel and who even for us will likewise work miracles and wonders and will send us the righteous Redeemer speedily ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Chicago and turned over to the department of anthropology. The learned expounders of this science were not long in devising a simple means of communication. The twelve unfortunates were seated upon a recitation bench and a doctor of philosophy wrote out an alphabet upon ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... of Templeton was startled by an incident, which had it come to the ears of our heroes, as they sat and groaned over their "Select Dialogues of the Dead," would have effectually driven every letter of the Greek alphabet out of their heads for the ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... the world. The purpose of all the Divine activity as regards us men is not merely to make us happy, but to make us happy in order that we may be good. He whom what he calls his religion has only saved from the wrath of God and the fear of hell has not learned the alphabet of religion. Unless God's promises evoke men's goodness it will be of little avail that they seem to quicken their hope. Joyful confidence in our sonship is only warranted in the measure in which we are like our ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... he pored over the alphabet, proudly said A and B, and thought that he knew them, but on the morrow they were gone, and all the work was to be done over again. Mr. Bhaer had infinite patience with him, and kept on in spite of the apparent hopelessness of the task, not caring for ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... of Mrs. Crabtree's on the large arm-chair, to look as like herself as possible, that you may be reminded how soon she will come back, and you must not behave like the mice when the cat is out. Good-bye! Say the alphabet backwards, and count your fingers for half an hour; but when Mrs. Crabtree appears again, pray do not jump out of the window ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... my dear Cousin Leo is in the Senate, but he is in the heraldry department, and I don't know any of the real ones. They are all some kind of Germans—Gay, Fay, Day—tout l'alphabet, or else all sorts of Ivanoffs, Simenoffs, Nikitines, or else Ivanenkos, Simonenkos, Nikitenkos, pour varier. Des gens de l'autre monde. Well, it is all the same. I'll tell my husband, he knows them. He ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... and elaborate; for it was the bent of the Chancellor's mind to trace the law to its sources in the ancient world, and fortify his positions by citations from Greek and Latin authors. The Greek passages were a plague to the copyist, who knew not the alphabet of that language, but copied it, so to ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... forgotten to bring a reading book, and now put Hephzibah through the alphabet, which she seemed to know perfectly, calling each letter by its right name. Daisy then asked if she could read words; and getting an assenting nod again, she tried her in that. But here Hephzibah's education was defective; she ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... wonder, then, that the soul has the same uncertainty about the alphabet of things, and sometimes and in some cases is firmly fixed by the truth in each particular, and then, again, in other cases is altogether at sea; having somehow or other a correct notion of combinations; but when the elements are transferred into the long ...
— Statesman • Plato
... children came to Sinai, they accepted thee, and they honored thee. And now, on the day of their distress, thou standest up against them?" Hearing this, the Torah stepped aside, and did not testify. "Let the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet in which Torah is written come and testify against Israel," said God. They appeared without delay, and Alef, the first letter, was about to testify against Israel, when Abraham interrupted it with the words: "Thou chief ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... rusks, constituted Miss Granger's notion of infant food. She would have excluded milk, as bilious, and would have forbidden sugar, as a creator of acidity; and then, when the little victim was about one and a half, she would have seated it before the most dry-as-dust edition of the alphabet, and driven it triumphantly upon the first stage on the high-road to ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... enormous output of Brick, Cheddar and Swiss. To attempt to classify and describe all of these would be impossible, so we will content ourselves by picking a few of the cold and hot, the plain and the fancy, the familiar and the exotic. Let's use the alphabet ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... the inventor of the Cherokee alphabet, is the only red man admitted to the nation's Hall of Fame in the Capitol at Washington. The Indian languages, more than fifty in number, are better appreciated and more studied to-day than ever before. Half our states have Indian names, and more than ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... important point, perhaps, concerning the names of cultivars is that they should not be in Latin, but in any modern language using the so-called Roman alphabet (i.e. the alphabet in which English, French, German, etc., are written). The reason for this is, of course, to distinguish, at a glance, names of cultivars from names of wild varieties, which are in Latin. In the future, Latin names for cultivars ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... make amends. My wife well home in the evening from the play; which I was glad of, it being cold and dark, and she having her necklace of pearl on, and none but Mercer with her. Spent the evening in fitting my books, to have the number set upon each, in order to my having an alphabet of my whole, which will be of great ease to me. This day Captain Batters come from sea in his fireship and come to see me, poor man, as his patron, and a poor painful wretch he is as can be. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... souls, and recognize no other person whomsoever as commander. They all affixed their seals to this covenant; but some of them, to show their superior learning, put their initials, or what they used as such, for some of these learned Thebans knew only two or three letters of the alphabet, which they put down, though they happened not to be their real initials. An officer on the part of Sindhia, who was to have commanded these troops, was present at this reinstallation of the Begam, and glad to take, as a compensation ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... stitches in it. She likewise set up housekeeping in the sideboard, and managed a microscopic cooking stove with a skill that brought tears of pride to Hannah's eyes, while Demi learned his letters with his grandfather, who invented a new mode of teaching the alphabet by forming letters with his arms and legs, thus uniting gymnastics for head and heels. The boy early developed a mechanical genius which delighted his father and distracted his mother, for he tried to imitate every machine he saw, and kept the nursery ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... the difficulty of drawing them, which takes time and patience, I would almost say that they are more suitable than the Latin alphabet. The ancient Egyptian had our vowels; our o, which is only final and is not like that of the Spanish, which is a vowel between o and u. Like us, the Egyptians lacked the true sound of e, and in ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... (in the Less-Read Poets) cuts down the extracts almost to nothing, and in some cases excises objectionabilities, which is unpardonable. Much better leave the whole out. Also, the edition includes the usual array of nobodies—Addison, Akenside, and the whole alphabet down to Zany and Zero; whereas a great many of the less-read would have been much-read by every worthy reader if they had only been printed in full. So well printed an edition of Donne (for instance) ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... Buddha had learnt to write, as we find by a book translated into Chinese A.D. 76. In this book Buddha instructs his teacher; as in the "Gospel of the Infancy" Jesus explains to his teacher the meaning of the Hebrew alphabet. So Buddha tells his teacher the names of sixty-four alphabets. The first authentic inscription in India is of Buddhist origin, belonging to the third ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... several sizes, a number were constructed of several pieces of board nailed together—and split in the process—no two were shaped alike, except for generalities, and no one was straight. However, they were larger than a man's two fists, they were gaudily painted, and the alphabet was sprinkled upon them with prodigal generosity. There were even hieroglyphics upon them, which the carpenter described as birds and animals. They were certainly more than any timid child could ever ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... Phoenicians, far more enterprising than either, must have been fully acquainted with their means of written communication—and indeed we are assured that they were so. Now, if a Phoenician had imparted so much of the art to Greece as the knowledge of a written alphabet, is it probable that he would have suffered the communication to cease there! The Phoenicians were a commercial people—their colonies in Greece were for commercial purposes,—would they have wilfully and voluntarily neglected the most convenient mode of commercial correspondence?—importing ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... until he had attained the ripe age of twelve. It may even have been that specific rumors of the signs, symbols, and hieroglyphics used in educational institutions had reached him in the obscurity of his cranberry meadows. At all events, when confronted by the alphabet chart, whose huge black capitals were intended to capture the wandering eyes of the infant class, Alcestis exhibited unusual, almost unnatural, excitement. "That is 'A,' my boy," said the teacher genially, as she pointed to the first character on the chart. "Good God, is ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... frequently to Josephine. The first he admired impersonally for her housewifely skill, and smiled at secretly for her purely feminine outlook upon life and her positive views upon subjects of which she knew not half the alphabet. He had discovered that Mason did indeed refrain from smoking in the house because she discountenanced tobacco; and since she had a talent for making a man uncomfortably aware of her disapproval by certain wordless manifestations of scorn for his weaknesses, Ford also took to throwing ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... Every street breeds creatures. They swarm gabbling, and walk like ants in the sun. Their faces are fierce and wary, with malevolent lips. Each mouths to each, and points and stares. On I walk, imperturbable and stark. But I know, oh, my boy, I know the alphabet of their vile whisperings and gapings and gesticulations. The air quivers with the flight of black winged shapes. Each foot-tap of that sure figure upon the granite is ticking his hour away." My uncle turned and took my hand. "And this, Edmond, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... Christianity the Latin alphabet, from which our modern English alphabet is derived, took the place of the runic characters, which bore some resemblance to Greek, and English literature began with the ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... the printed page, for example—does not seem to be a picture of the reality with which it is concerned. But neither do written notes seem at first sight to be a picture of a piece of music, nor our phonetic notation (the alphabet) to be a picture of our speech. And yet these sign-languages prove to be pictures, even in the ordinary sense, of what ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein
... monopolizes the conversation is by common consent insufferable, and a man who regulates his choice of topics by reference to what interests not his hearers but himself has yet to learn the alphabet of the art. Conversation is like lawn-tennis, and requires alacrity in return at least as much as vigour in service. A happy phrase, an unexpected collocation of words, a habitual precision in the choice of terms, ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... Preface, that everybody may find his way, and I shall turn in future to it, and see that all transliterations in the book accord with it. I must ask for it therefore by return. You understand what we want. "A transliteration alphabet, for explaining the signs employed," would be a good precursor to yours and Lepsius' scientific work. We shall do well to employ in the text as ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... The Esperanto alphabet contains 28 characters. These are the characters of English, but with "q", "w", "x", and "y" removed, and six diacritical letters added. The diacritical letters are "c", "g", "h", "j" and "s" with circumflexes (or "hats", as Esperantists fondly call them), and "u" with a breve. Zamenhof ...
— A Complete Grammar of Esperanto • Ivy Kellerman
... and myself are right in the conclusion that the figures are neither of the Runic, Phoenician, Canaanite, Hebrew, Lybian, Celtic, or any other alphabet-language, its ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... this, as the aged minister's prolonged meditations were the laughing-stock of the country, he being the clog on the wheels of the car of state. Instantly raps were heard in the spirit-cabinet, and, the alphabet being consulted, the ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... Monte, plenty humble and prompt. 'What I urges is only to 'licit information. I still thinks, however, that onder the gen'ral wellfare clause of the constitootion, an' with an onfenced alphabet to pick an' choose from, a sport ought to have the inalienable right to spell things the way he likes. Otherwise, whatever is the use of callin' this a free country? If a gent's to be compelled to spell scenery with a fool "c," I asks you why was ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... "But she is a dear good girl; she is a charming species of girl. She is not in the least a flirt; that isn't at all her line; she doesn't know the alphabet of that sort of thing. She is very simple, very serious. She has lived a great deal in Boston, with another sister of mine—the eldest of us—who married a Bostonian. She is very cultivated, not at all like me; I ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... Assinaboins, of which tribe the Black Snake is (if living) a distinguished ornament, were visited more than a hundred years since by an English clergyman named Wolsey, who devised an alphabet for their use. The alphabet is still used by them, and they keep their memoranda on dressed skins. With the exception of the Cherokees, they are, perhaps, the only tribe possessing a written language. They ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... natural corruption of the pure Sanskrit word, it was changed by the old Persians into Chatrang; but the Arabs, who soon after took possession of their country, had neither the initial or final letter of that word in their alphabet, and consequently altered it further into Shatranj, which found its way presently into the modern Persian, and at length into the dialects of India, where the true derivation of the name is known only to the learned. Thus has a very significant word in the sacred language of the Brahmans been ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... to tint and gradate tenderly with the pencil point, get a good large alphabet, and try to tint the letters into shape with the pencil point. Do not outline them first, but measure their height and extreme breadth with the compasses, as a b, a c, Fig. 3, and then scratch in their shapes gradually; the letter A, inclosed ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... symptoms of her father's irritability. However often she told herself that she must not get irritable when teaching her nephew, almost every time that, pointer in hand, she sat down to show him the French alphabet, she so longed to pour her own knowledge quickly and easily into the child—who was already afraid that Auntie might at any moment get angry—that at his slightest inattention she trembled, became flustered and heated, raised her voice, and sometimes pulled ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... the people did not. It seems probable that writing was not in general use among the Greeks until long after Homer; but, to me, certain that Homer used it himself, or could command the services to those who did. But there was writing in Crete long before the Greco-Phoenician alphabet was invented; from the time of the first Egyptian Dynasties, for example. And here is a point to remember: alphabets are invented; systems of writing are lost and reintroduced; but it is idle to talk of the invention of writing. Humanity has been writing, in one way or another, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... seek, they will, of course, show special attention to those to whose good opinions they are indifferent, and whose good offices they can compel—that as they honor the literary and scientific, they must treat with high consideration those to whom they deny the alphabet—that as they are courteous to certain persons, they must be so to "property"—eager to anticipate the wishes of visitors, they cannot but gratify those of their vassals—jealous for the rights of the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... bang, and pull, and tear to pieces—it develops creative power, the inventive genius that lies hid within him. It takes the pure love of noise, and trains it to pitches, harmonies, intervals, and makes a musician of the boy who used to whack his spoon. It takes the alphabet and the early pothooks, and the boy by and by combines them into literature. The apples and the peaches which he is taught to exchange justly are by and by transmuted into trade and commerce. He brings ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... the letters altogether and to learn to read by the looks of the words; but the master assured him that he must learn the alphabet first if he wished to learn to write later, and finally he prevailed with the stubborn ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... unintentionally—the cause. He felt no resentment for his misguided assailant—he would willingly have exposed himself to a second attack, could he have thus restored her reason. The memento of the crucifixion—that Catholic alphabet, the crucifix—held up unto his soul the wondrous truth that God had voluntarily suffered, for the sake of man, all that humanity can endure; and the youth interiorly acknowledged that the errors of his life were but imperfectly balanced by the ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... design the fount of type which, in the list of December, 1892, he named the Golden type, from The Golden Legend, which was to have been the first book printed with it. This fount consists of eighty-one designs, including stops, figures, and tied letters. The lower case alphabet was finished in a few months. The first letter having been cut in Great Primer size by Mr. Prince, was thought too large, and 'English' was the size resolved upon. By the middle of August, 1890, ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... is soothing. To people wholly weary or partly drunk in a dimly lighted train, it is a simplification and a comfort to have things presented in this vast and obvious manner. The editors use this gigantic alphabet in dealing with their readers, for exactly the same reason that parents and governesses use a similar gigantic alphabet in teaching children to spell. The nursery authorities do not use an A as big as ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... behind Ripton's chair, and introduced between him and his book the Latin initial letter, large and illuminated, of the theme she supposed to be absorbing him, as it did herself. The unexpected vision of this accusing Captain of the Alphabet, this resplendent and haunting A. fronting him bodily, threw Ripton straight back in his chair, while Guilt, with her ancient indecision what colours to assume on detection, flew from red to white, from white to red, across his fallen chaps. Letty laughed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... few nephews, and two was his special favourites: this one and his brother, young Lawrence Champernowne. They were the sons of General Sir Arthur Champernowne, a famous fighter who'd got the Victoria Cross in India, and carried half the alphabet after ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... with all its follies, in that populous mart; and his exquisite sensibility to the beautiful and magnificent in nature, was abundantly ministered to by the surrounding country. We are told that he had been by some odd chance taught his alphabet, and his first lesson in "reading made easy," out of a black-letter Bible! That accident may have had its share in forming his taste for old-fashioned literature. But he was an attorney's clerk! The very name of a lawyer's office seems to suggest a writ of ejectment against all poetical influences ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... number of ciphers," Allen explained, when several copies had been made of the original. "The simplest is to change the letters of the alphabet about, using Z for A, and so on. Another simple one is to make figures stand for letters, as No. 1 is A, and so on. But those are so simple that only ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Ocean View - Or, The Box That Was Found in the Sand • Laura Lee Hope
... were so many oracular statements, and he no more thought of questioning them than a child thinks of questioning its teacher about the names of the strange marks that constitute the alphabet. ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... of dim sensation, play is all in all. "Making believe" is the gist of his whole life, and he cannot so much as take a walk except in character. I could not learn my alphabet without some suitable MISE-EN-SCENE, and had to act a business man in an office before I could sit down to my book. Will you kindly question your memory, and find out how much you did, work or pleasure, ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson |
