"Callow" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... some callow, check-shirted, bare-legged lad on horseback, or a shrewd-faced farmer in a cart, who nodded and called out cheerily, "Howdy, Master?" A young girl, with a rosy, oval face, dimpled cheeks, and pretty dark eyes filled with shy coquetry, passed him, looking as if she would not be at all ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... fair and sweet and tender, Dear brown-eyed little sweetheart mine! As when, a callow youth and slender, I asked to ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... ingenuous lad, with the callow simplicity of a theological college still untouched, and had arrived on the preceding Monday at the Free Kirk manse with four cartloads of furniture and a maiden aunt. For three days he roamed from room to room in the excitement of householding, and ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... struck him, he could thus afford to be amused at the ebullitions of jealousy that rolled so ominously into the young hearts of the chums. "Black as thunderclouds were their faces," he said, "as they saw these sweet young ladies, whom they in their callow affections would already wholly monopolise, kissed by a dozen ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... preachers of all religions and denominations cease abusing the callow mind of childhood; let them refrain from teaching their fanciful conjectures about "the unseen"; let them desist from a peopling the air with the wild creations of their own lawless imagination; let them tell no more than they know, and confine ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... whose temples whiten this the world. Through heaven I roll my lucid moon along; I shed in hell o'er my pale people peace; On earth I, caring for the creatures, guard Each pregnant yellow wolf and fox-bitch sleek, And every feathered mother's callow brood, And all that love green haunts and loneliness. Of men, the chaste adore me, hanging crowns 10 Of poppies red to blackness, bell and stem, Upon my image at Athenai here; And this dead Youth, Asclepios bends above, Was dearest to me. He, my buskined step To follow through the wild-wood ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... excessive use of scent. She had merely played with him, without thinking or caring what the result to him might be. She was bent on as much enjoyment as possible without exposing herself to awkward consequences; common scandal told him that he was not the first callow youth that she had entangled with her provoking glances and her witty tongue. The epithet by which his brother officers qualified her was expressive, though impolite. James repeated these things a hundred times: he said that Mrs. Wallace ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... wrote my friend to a correspondent; "if I live, I shall be buried there—so help me God!" "I mean, after Tennyson's death," I myself wrote to Philip Hamerton, "to be Poet-laureate!" From these samples of our callow speech, the modesty of our ambition may be inferred. Well, it all happened just as we planned, only otherwise! Through some blunder of arrangement we two started for London on the same day, but from different railway stations, and, until some weeks afterwards, one knew ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... never seen Henry so amiable. In fact he seemed hard put to it to keep from unrestrained merriment, and Tom, who found the affair more alarming as it progressed, would have preferred avoiding him altogether. He knew that Henry was calling him callow, a lightweight, charges well-nigh proved by his present undertaking, and to save himself from rout he had to remember that Henry was a heavy Grave man and that his own participation was only a question of common courtesy to a lady, anyway. ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... laughed Nora, "and proud of it. Our green and callow days are over, and we have entered into the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... months the body of Richard Acanthus a young person of unblemished character. He was taken in his callow infancy from the wing of a tender parent by the rough and pitiless hand of a ...
— Quaint Epitaphs • Various
... take leave of each other in our own tongue. As the English quit Rome, the swallows arrive, and may be seen in great muster flitting up and down the streets, looking at the affiches of vacancies before fixing on a lodging. Unlike us, these callow tourists—though many of them on their first visit to Rome—are no sooner within the walls, than they find, without assistance, their way to the Forum, and proceed to build and twitter in that very Temple of Concord where Juvenal's storks of old made their nidus ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... bright eyes. Then he settled himself more firmly in the driving seat, and with numbed fingers sought a tighter grip of the reins as the memory of the girl's soft answer to a question he had asked brought his callow ambitions back. ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... each other somewhat distantly; and with feelings which it would be hard to describe, Ben recognized the tall, rather callow youth as the Rutherford who stoned him several years before, when he was floating down the river on a log, and to whom Ben in turn had given a most ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... boy of twenty-two, convalescing in country lodgings after an illness that seemed to have taken the marrow out of my bones. Hilaire was in Japan, and I—a callow fledgling from the nest—was very sick and sorry for myself. There were some people living in rather a large house at the other end of the village who took notice of me. They were the only ones, and I have thought ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... a way, Philip's inspiration ever since the days when they quarreled and made up on the banks of the Deer field. And a fortunate thing for him it was that in his callow years there was a woman in whom he could confide. Her sympathy was everything, even if her advice was not always followed. In the years of student life and preparation they had not often met, but they were constant and painstaking correspondents. It was to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Cuchulain, [6]to drive him off from them on the ford[6] [7]at the early morning-hour[7] [8]on the morrow,[8] for that the men of Erin had failed her [9]to go and do battle with him.[9] "Ill would it befit me," quoth Fergus, "to fight with a callow young lad without any beard, and mine own disciple, [10]the fosterling of Ulster,[10] [11]the foster-child that sat on Conchobar's knee, the lad from Craeb Ruad ('Red Branch')."[11] Howbeit Medb [W.2861.] murmured sore that Fergus foreswore her combat and battle. [1]They ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... at that," returned the musician; "for with the callow poets of our day the way is for every one to write as he pleases and pilfer where he chooses, whether it be germane to the matter or not, and now-a-days there is no piece of silliness they can sing or write that is not set down to ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... said, laying a cool hand on my forehead when I drew her down beside me. "The sun has darkened you to the color of a Blackfoot. You are thin, and there are too many wrinkles on your brow—put them away immediately. I wonder whether any one would recognize in you the fresh-faced and somewhat callow stripling with whom I talked about the Dominion that day on Starcross Moor. It is not so very long ago, and yet life has greatly changed and taught us much since then. You must not be vain about it, but I really think I ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... seems to be it is not; and although it is getting to be what it never was, it must always remain what it now is. It might be called a city, if it were not alternately populous and uninhabited; and it would be a wide-spread village, if it were not a collection of hospitals for decayed or callow politicians. It is the hybernating-place of fashion, of intelligence, of vice,—a resort without the attractions of waters either mineral or salt, where there is no bathing and no springs, but drinking in abundance and gambling in ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... music teacher at the Boston Conservatory, somewhere back in the latter sixties. One summer, while visiting in the little village among the Green Mountains where her ancestors had dwelt for generations, she had kindled the callow fancy of the most idle and shiftless of all the village lads, and had conceived for this Howard Carpenter one of those extravagant passions which a handsome country boy of twenty-one sometimes inspires in an angular, spectacled woman of ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... in the neighbourhood of Gideon, might not be losers by the change, cars were provided, at the expense of the church, to convey them to the meeting for the breaking of bread at Bethesda; and a Chapel was rented in Callow-hill Street, near Gideon, in which, on the Lord's day and Thursday evenings the Word was ministered, It was very kind of the Lord to order it so that this chapel was at once to be had! Two years and a half afterwards, in October, 1842, we rented a still more suitable Chapel, ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself. Second Part • George Mueller
... this exaggerated tyranny, by reason of its evil effect upon his moral nature, we cannot but feel glad that it existed, to afford a piquant contrast to the life awaiting him. Had he passed through the callow dissipations of Eton and Oxford, like other young men of his age, he would assuredly have lacked much of that splendid, pent vigour with which he rushed headlong into London life. He was so young and so handsome and so strong, that can we wonder if all the women fell at his feet? 'The ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... that we have edified her a pedestal and perform impossible rites in celebration of her altitude and distinction. It does not suffice that with never a smile we assure her that she is the superior sex—a whopper by the repetition whereof certain callow youth among us have incurred the divine vengeance of belief. It does not satisfy her that she is indubitably gifted with pulchritude and an unquestionable genius for its embellishing; that Nature has endowed her with a prodigious knack at accroachment, whereby the male of her ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... hev the leadin' part to-day," she thought disappointedly, as a callow youth, whose hair was pompadoured and whose chin receded, began to read the lessons for the day. Amarilly was kept in action by her effort to follow the lead of the man in front ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... novels," retorted Marchmont, "that are neither indecent nor political, and expect 'em to succeed. Callow youth! Well, I must be off to the office. I've some copy up my sleeve, and if it's a go it'll give your book the biggest ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... ranks upon ranks of the enemy, and crushing or scattering them from the path of his swift and victorious despair, the Emperor at last is at home,—where are the great dignitaries and the lieutenant-generals of the empire? Where is Maria Louisa, the Empress Eagle, with her little callow king of Rome? Is she going to defend her nest and her eaglet? Not she. Empress-queen, lieutenant-general, and court dignitaries, are off on the wings of all the winds—profligati sunt, they are away with the money-bags, and Louis Stanislas ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... barn-yard, Where muster daily the prime cocks o' the game, Ruffle their pinions, crow till they are hoarse, And spar about a barleycorn. Here too chickens, The callow, unfledged brood of forward folly, Learn first to rear the crest, and aim the spur, And tune their note like full-plumed Chanticleer. ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... tenderness, reverence possessed him; self descended from its throne of egoism and yielded its scepter to another; the hot blood of the primitive, untamed Viking raced in his veins. Soul, mind, heart, body were all awakened. He was a dolt who confused genuine passion with the milder preferences of callow youth. ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... company who rents offices, the cigar man, the lunch man, and the telegraph operators, and the commission men who get one-eighth of a cent a bushel either way the market goes. Some of these commission men get the speculation bug and go broke, and yet there are callow youths and business men and clerks and other outsiders who believe they are smart enough to speculate on the Board of Trade. That belief helps fatten ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... could no more understand than an eagle can comprehend the quiet affection of the cooing ring-dove for its partner: the one would glory in sailing with his mate in the light of the tropical sun, would scream with her over the agonies of a dying fawn, and dip the beaks of their callow young in blood; the other, nested in some gentle dell, the green turf beneath watered by a brook, rippling its cadences to his sweet, though monotonous, melody—would peel for his companion the husk from the ripening corn, and shadow his ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... a robin, flew down from a tree beneath which we were passing, and after circling several times around Olla's head, alighted on her finger, which she held out for it to perch upon. It was a young wood-pigeon, which she had found in the grove, when a callow half-fledged thing, the old bird having been captured or killed by some juvenile depredators. Taking pity on its orphan state, Olla had adopted and made a pet of it: it was now perfectly tame, and would ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... whip is intended to supply the place of a man's right leg and spur; it should therefore, however ornamental and thin, be stiff and real. Messrs. Callow, of Park Lane, make some very pretty ones, pink, green and amber, from the skin of the hippopotamus, light but severe. A loop to hang it from the wrist may be made ornamental in colours and gold, and ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... California Street. Every one is mad. Servants, lawyers, hod carriers, merchants, old maids, widows, mechanics, sly wives, thieving clerks, and the "demi-monde," all throng to the portals of the "Big Board." It is a money-mania. Beauty, old age, callow boyhood, fading manhood, all chase the bubble values ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... portent; From Jove himself the dreadful sign was sent. Straight to the tree his sanguine spires he roll'd, And curl'd around in many a winding fold; The topmost branch a mother-bird possess'd; Eight callow infants fill'd the mossy nest; Herself the ninth; the serpent, as he hung, Stretch'd his black jaws and crush'd the crying young; While hovering near, with miserable moan, The drooping mother wail'd her children gone. The mother last, as round the nest ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... highly than ever to respect the forefathers who got to sea, and fought the sea, and held the sea, without them. This remembrance putting me in the best of tempers with an old hulk, very green as to her copper, and generally dim and patched, I pull off my hat to her. Which salutation a callow and downy-faced young officer of Engineers, going by at the moment, perceiving, appropriates—and to which he is most heartily welcome, I ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... to give and crave affection. Only—I was different. I had never really cared about a girl before, and my life had been singularly loveless. I had fought a lonely battle always. Once before, in college, we had both laid ourselves and our callow devotions at the feet of the same girl. Her name was Dorothy—I had forgotten the rest—but I remembered the sequel. In a spirit of quixotic youth I had relinquished my claim in favor of Richey and had gone cheerfully on my way, elevated by my heroic sacrifice to a somber, white-hot ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... which its vagaries astonished no one so much as its owner, but he joined in the singing. "Let all the people praise Thee" was a command not to be lightly set aside for worldly considerations of harmony and fitness, and so Laban sang, his callow and ill-adjusted soul divided between fears that the people would hear him and that the Lord ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... these last regarded him at least as one who neglected his opportunities, but his great laugh at their callow jests and their advice to him was so frank and indifferent a thing that they found it singularly baffling. 'Twas indeed as if a man of ripe years and wisdom had laughed at them with good-nature, because he knew they could not understand the thing experience ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of a lady who reared these little birds from the nest; they would suck honey from her lips, and fly in and out of her chamber. Only think of seeing these callow fledglings! It is as if the winged thought could be domesticated, could learn to make its nest with us and rear ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... a florid girl of twenty, or, perhaps, of twenty-one or two. Her eyes were the obtrusive feature of her face, and she used them with a freedom which held callow youth spellbound. Her gown was more pretentious than that of her more elderly companion. This, of course, was justified by the difference between their ages; but there seemed to be, beyond this, a flaunting gayety about ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... two Should for a moment stand unministered By a mutual presence. Ah, keep near and close, Thou dove-like help! and when my fears would rise, With thy broad heart serenely interpose: Brood down with thy divine sufficiencies These thoughts which tremble when bereft of those, Like callow birds left desert ...
— Sonnets from the Portuguese • Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
... No longer could the spear be counted as the thing with which to do most grievous hurt at a safe distance from whatever might be dangerous. With the better bow and straighter shaft the marksmanship improved; even for these two callow archers it was not difficult to hit at a distance of a double spear's cast the bole of the huge tree, two yards in width at least. And the arrow whistled as if it were a living thing, a hawk seeking its prey, and the flint head was buried so deeply in the wood that both Mok and Ab knew ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... deviltry and daring of the sharp-winged pirate of the sky, a sudden assertion of over-mastering energy and power, and a very slight offence compared with that of the crow when he carries off and devours his callow little cousins of ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... the instruction of others, leaving none for his own purposes. He would take callow youths to his chambers ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... was supposed to extend, as it did in Rome, during the adult as during the callow years. Especially did public opinion insist on children marrying according to the wishes of their parents. Among the nobility child-marriage was common, a mere form, of course, not at once followed by cohabitation. A betrothal was a very solemn ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... object of showing real boyhood with all the charm of its imperfections. The head is shown in profile, thus enabling us to judge the precise nature of all the features, each one of which bears the imprint of callow morbidezza. Even the hair has the dainty qualities of childhood: it has the texture of silk. It is a striking contrast to the life-sized Baptist who has just reached manhood. We see a St. John walking out into the desert. He looks downward to the scroll in his hand, trudging forward with ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... same; and the erring ones, predestined to sin by their own unrestrained passions, wait only for the overmastering circumstances to yield and fall. When any of these solemn warnings are held up to the yet callow sinner, what does he propose to do? To stop and repent? No,—to be a little more careful and not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... wrinkles in the softness of her throat, the slack flesh beneath her chin. The taut muscles of her youth were loose and drooping. Between dances she sat in the largest chair, waving her cigarette, summoning her callow admirers to come and talk to her. ("She thinks she's a blooming queen!" growled Babbitt.) She chanted to Miss Sonntag, "Isn't my little studio sweet?" ("Studio, rats! It's a plain old-maid-and-chow-dog flat! Oh, God, I wish I was home! I wonder if I ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... watch. "Your monument up there is fast. I'll be here with a cab at eight. I'm anxious to meet him. You've given me the strangest idea of his callow ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... himself. He had not the Dickens aptitude for depicting the ways of life of his adopted friends. When with refined judgment he wanted a figure for a novel, he went back to the Bar he scorned in his callow days and then drew in Weir ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... fierce March weather White waves break tether, And whirled together At either hand, Like weeds uplifted, The tree-trunks rifted In spars are drifted, Like foam or sand, Past swamp and sallow And reed-beds callow, Through pool and shallow, To wind and lee, Till, no more tongue-tied, Full flood and young tide Roar down the ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... other disgusting and indecent Jenkinsism of the initials, together with fulsome laudations of the table and even the laundry of the hotel, leading to the impression that the correspondent is upon free board and even free washing! Our cosmopolitan had outlived that phase of callow journalism, long before; and the managing-editor would have been a bold one who should now have proposed to him to re-enter that most contemptible of all literary harness. What he was to write and what he did write, catching up the prevailing topics of conversation and tones ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... heard something of the sort before," was Gilder's caustic comment. But his smile was still wholly sympathetic. He took a curious vicarious delight in the escapades of his son, probably because he himself had committed no follies in his callow days. "Why didn't you cable me?" he asked, puzzled at such restraint on ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... recognize him. He had been married fifty-four years. He had many children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and also even posterity, they all said— thousands—yet the boy to whom I had told the cat story when we were callow juveniles was still present in that cheerful little ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... that I became a Socialist in a fashion somewhat similar to the way in which the Teutonic pagans became Christians—it was hammered into me. Not only was I not looking for Socialism at the time of my conversion, but I was fighting it. I was very young and callow, did not know much of anything, and though I had never even heard of a school called "Individualism," I sang the paean of the strong ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... easy to remember this Red Light o'casion, for jest prior to Dave alarmin' us by becomin' melodious, furtive—melody bein' wholly onnacheral to Dave, that a-way—thar's a callow pin-feather party comes caperin' in an' takin' Old Man Enright one side, asks can he yootilise Wolfville as a strategic p'int in a elopement he's ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... very Fiend, but bore us no malice; for we always treated them with civility, and not rarely gave them the Umbles and other inferior parts of the Deer, against their poor Christenings and Lyings-in. And through these means, and some small money presents our Captain would make to their wives and callow brats, it came to pass that Mother Drum had seldom cause to brew aught but the smallest beer, for morning Drinking; for though we had to pay for our Wine and Ardent Drinks, the cellar of the Stag o' Tyne was always handsomely furnished with barrels of strong ale, which Lobbin Clout or Colin Mayfly, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... pangs of laughter or despair he may have felt as he sat behind the old desk in Chase Hall and watched us file in, year after year! Callow, juvenile, ignorant, and cocksure—grotesquely confident of our own manly fulness of worldly savoir—an absurd rabble of youths, miserable flint-heads indeed for such a steel! We were the most unpromising of all material for the scholar's eye; comfortable, ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... I kept thinking it would all soon be over, that more men were in now than were needed, and that it was a confounded disagreeable business, and all that. But my mind wasn't at rest; I wasn't satisfied with the ambitions of my callow youth; and, as usual when one is in trouble and in doubt about a step, I exaggerated my old folly to disguise my feelings. But this Richmond campaign, and the way Stonewall Jackson has been whacking our fellows in the Shenandoah, made me feel that I was standing back too long, and the battle described ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... few banal questions and answers. Langham had only allowed himself one look at the dazzling face and eyes framed in fur cap and boa. Afterwards he stood making a study of the ground, and answering her remarks in his usual stumbling fashion. What was it had gone out of her voice—simply the soft callow sounds of first youth? And what a personage she had grown in these twelve months—how formidably, consciously brilliant in look and dress ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... follow that because I can sell hundreds of thousands of... you know what... that I can sell anything I've a mind to sign." I said it, confident that she had not lived all those years with her brother without having learned the axiomatic nature of it. To my discomfiture, she began to talk like a callow student. ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... who for his other sins Had liv'd amongst the Jacobins; Though like a kitten amid rats, Or callow tit in nest of bats, He much abhorr'd all democrats; 5 Yet nathless stood in ill report Of wishing ill to Church and Court, Tho' he'd nor claw, nor tooth, nor sting, And learnt to pipe God save the King; Tho' each day did new feathers bring, 10 All swore he had a leathern wing; Nor polish'd ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... love of card tricks and that species of entertainment which is known as parlour magic. He found the three other members of the little house-party—to wit: Mrs. Somerby-Miles, Lieutenant Forshay, and Mr. Robert Murdock—respectively, a silly, flirtatious, little gadfly of a widow; a callow, love-struck, lap-dog, young naval officer, with a budding moustache and a full-blown idea of his own importance; a dour Scotchman of middle age, with a passion for chess, a glowering scorn of frivolities, ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... to me," Ross replied. "I don't see anything particularly interesting or unusual about her that should make you want to own her, or any other callow young thing her age. However, if you say she is adorable, I suppose ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... first attempts at original poetry to an established critic. What would this master cracksman, this polished wielder of the oxy-acetylene blow-pipe, this expert in toxicology, microscopy and physics think of his callow outpourings! ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... liked his nieces to make friends, and encouraged young men generally to meet them; but there was something in the appearance of this callow Italian nobleman that stamped his character as artificial and insincere. He resolved to find out something about his antecedents before he permitted the young fellow to establish ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... the old gentleman's lap, and to hear him talk about old times. Marvellous tales he told them, too; for his career of nine and a half centuries had been well stocked with incident, as one would naturally suppose. Howbeit, the admiration which these callow youths had for Methuselah was not shared by a large majority of the people then on earth. On the contrary, we blush to admit it, Methuselah was held in very trifling esteem by his frivolous fellow-citizens, who habitually ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... can by a single magic incantation divert our ideals to the higher life? Were there such a man, with what tears, with what affection, would not the grateful sons of Russia repay him! Yet age succeeds to age, and our callow youth still lies wrapped in shameful sloth, or strives and struggles to no purpose. God has not yet given us the man ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... all the hardness of thy callow youth, and nought's more hard. Wait some fifteen years till thou comest to my age, and thou 'lt pity the poor heathen maid as I do to-day. Well, my armorer took the sword and played it some forty years or more, and then, too old to wield arms, he ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... seeing no encouragement in her expression, for Clare was fighting a hard battle. His blunt simplicity made a strong appeal. She had liked and trusted him when he had with callow but honest chivalry offered her his protection one night in England and he had developed fast since then. Hardship had strengthened and in a sense refined him. He looked resolute and soldierlike as he waited. Still, for his sake as well as hers, she ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... came to pass that the pick of the men were posted, because, as fast as a callow youth gets worth marrying, somebody promptly marries him. The Fast Young Married Crowd was a closed corporation and played exclusively within itself; the female of the species had to compete only with females of equal tonnage. The only sylph-like temptation ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... boometh Athwart the thicket lone: At noon the wild bee [1] hummeth About the moss'd headstone: At midnight the moon cometh, And looketh down alone. Her song the lintwhite swelleth, The clear-voiced mavis dwelleth, The callow throstle [2] lispeth, The slumbrous wave outwelleth, The babbling runnel crispeth, The hollow grot ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... Young Lollypop had the callow and awkward ways of a young giraffe, but, though only a three-year-old, he was sedate as an old maid and had the dignity of a churchwarden. His behaviour was an example to his ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... hitherto, with no great prospect or hopes of success. As for what you mention of entering into Holy Orders, it is indeed a great work; and I am pleased to find you think it so, as well as that you do not admire a callow clergyman ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... rarely a debate of importance in the House of Lords during which some one of the Chesterton family does not contribute his morsel of pompous imbecility, or unfold his budget of obsolete and exploded prejudices, or add his mite of curious misinformation. That such painful exhibitions of callow and contracted bigotry should so frequently be made in a body claiming for itself the finest culture and the highest civilization in Christendom is certainly a most mortifying circumstance, and serves to show that narrow views and unstatesmanlike opinions are not confined to democratic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... people more than the critics. He gave freely what he had, and the gift was beautiful. Those who have looked in his poetry for something else than poetry, or for poetry of some other kind, have not been slow to assert that he was a lady's poet; one who satisfied callow youths and school-girls by uttering commonplaces in graceful and musical shape, but who offered no strong meat for men. Miss Fuller called his poetry thin and the poet himself a "dandy Pindar." This is not true of his ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... my callow meditations. My course of reasoning was perhaps faulty, but then there are, at twenty-one, many processes more interesting and desirable than the perfecting of a mathematical demonstration. And so, for a little, my blood rejoiced with a strange fervour in the summer moonlight, ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... Boston Conservatory, somewhere back in the latter sixties. One summer, while visiting in the little village among the Green Mountains where her ancestors had dwelt for generations, she had kindled the callow fancy of my uncle, Howard Carpenter, then an idle, shiftless boy of twenty-one. When she returned to her duties in Boston, Howard followed her, and the upshot of this infatuation was that she eloped with him, eluding the reproaches of her family and ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... often justified as a means of noble ends. Youth has an instinct which is wholesome for viewing moral situations as wholes. Callow casualists are fond of declaring that it would be a duty to state that their mother was out when she was in, if it would save her life, although they perhaps would not lie to save their own. A doctor, many suggested, might tell an overanxious ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... stormed. But Sully the uncompromising gravely shook his head. "At least," Henry amended, "they are gross exaggerations. Oh, I confess to you, my friend, that I am sick with love of her. Day and night I see nothing but her gracious image. I sigh and fret and fume like any callow lad of twenty. I suffer the tortures of the damned. And yet... and yet, I swear to you, Sully, that I will curb this passion though it kill me. I will stifle these fires, though they consume my soul to ashes. No harm shall come to her from me. No harm has come yet. ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... And seems a moving Land, and at his Gilles Draws in, and at his Trunck spouts out a Sea. Mean while the tepid Caves, and Fens and shoares Thir Brood as numerous hatch, from the Egg that soon Bursting with kindly rupture forth disclos'd Thir callow young, but featherd soon and fledge 420 They summ'd thir Penns, and soaring th' air sublime With clang despis'd the ground, under a cloud In prospect; there the Eagle and the Stork On Cliffs and Cedar tops thir Eyries build: Part ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... not be expected to tolerate a tyro from the backwoods. Stephanie was too well brought up to allow herself to be often openly rude; her taunts were generally ingeniously veiled, but they were none the less aggravating for that. The Cuckoo might be callow in some respects, but in others she was very much up-to-date. Though she would look obtuse, and pretend not to understand, as a matter of fact not a gibe was lost upon her, and she kept an ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... forgetting to cross her fingers before saying, "Until death do us part." The Proprietor drew the Stranger's attention to the group before the cage, a mischievous smile on his face as he looked over the half dozen of callow youths who are always in the train of ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... One wintry afternoon I read the few chapters then written to a friend in whose literary taste I had much confidence, and had her verdict been adverse they probably would have perished as surely as a callow germ exposed to the bitter storm then raging without. I am not sure, however, but that the impulse to write would have carried me forward, and that I would have found ample return for all the labor in the free play of my fancy, even though editors and ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... o'er my cheeks the callow down had crept, With wondering awe I viewed the Trojan train, And gazed at Priam. But Anchises stepped The tallest. Boyish ardour made me fain To greet the hero, and his hand to strain. I ventured, and to Pheneus brought my guest. A Lycian ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... and upon the form which subsequent Christian apologetics adopted. As a nickname the term "agnostic'' was soon misused to cover any and every variation of scepticism, and just as popular preachers confused it with atheism (q.v.) in their denunciations, so the callow freethinker—following Tennyson's path of "honest doubt''—classed himself with the agnostics, even while he combined an instinctively Christian theism with a facile rejection of the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of almost awe came into Wesson's face, the look of one who sees a miracle performed before his eyes. For years he had been using all the large stock of diplomacy at his command to induce callow youths to play picquet with him and here was this admirable young man, this pearl among young men, positively offering to teach him. It was too much happiness. What had he done to deserve this? He ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... had been strewed with the callow young, which were now cherished in the aprons and bosoms of the maid-servants, and the little ladies of the family. I was pleased with this touch of nature; this feminine sympathy in the sufferings of the offspring, and the maternal anxiety ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... ordered seats for him and his party at his own table, and the young ladies, finding their appetites rather an uncertain quantity, had plenty of opportunity for observing their fellow-passengers, particularly an Anglomaniac of the most pronounced type, in the person of a callow youth seated opposite them, whose monocle, exaggerated collar, and affected drawl afforded ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... ideal of the Church, that man and no other, whatever be the consequence in the way of offending well-to-do supporters whose dream it has been that son of theirs shall "wag his head in a pu'pit," whatever be the disappointment caused to the uninspired ambitions of callow youth or the conceit of later years. The pulpit is not for sale! The honour of standing there is not to be dispensed as a reward or allowed as a compliment. Wealth has no rights and poverty no disabilities as to the occupancy of this high place. ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... mischief bent, he marked, with ravenous eyes, Where wrapped in down the callow songsters lay; Then rushing, rudely seized the glittering prize. And bore it in his impious ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... together and were at once pounced on by Leopold Lincoln Bunn, the local reporter, a callow youth aflame with the chance for a big story ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... in callow college days, it had stuck burr-like for many a weary year. Of late, however, its use had lapsed among his acquaintances; he had begun to congratulate himself upon having lived it down. And now it was resurrected, flung at him in sincerest mockery by a woman whom, ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... honey fed, Chirping warbler, bear'st away, Thou the busy buzzing bee, To thy callow brood a prey? Warbler, thou a warbler seize? Winged, one with lovely wings? Guest thyself, by Summer brought, Yellow guest whom Summer brings? Wilt not quickly let it drop? 'Tis not fair, indeed 'tis wrong, That the ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... can bear. Since hearty beef and mutton will not do, Here's julep-dance, ptisan of song and show: Give you strong sense, the liquor is too heady: You're come to farce,—that's asses' milk,—already. Some hopeful youths there are, of callow wit, Who one day may be men, if Heaven think fit: 20 Sound may serve such, ere they to sense are grown, Like leading-strings till they can walk alone. But yet, to keep our friends in countenance, know, The wise Italians ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... afternoon. The vigour and freshness, which should have been stored up for the purposes of the hard struggle for existence in practical life, have been washed out of them by precocious mental debauchery—by book gluttony and lesson bibbing. Their faculties are worn out by the strain put upon their callow brains, and they are demoralised by worthless childish triumphs before the real work of life begins. I have no compassion for sloth, but youth has more need for intellectual rest than age; and the cheerfulness, the tenacity of purpose, the power ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... Francis Goosequill, William Meanwell, Edward Callow, Esqrs., standing in a Row, fell all four at the same time, by an ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... work from the poop, where I remained all the time, I detected in it some of the languor of the six weeks spent in the steaming heat of the river. The first breeze would blow that away. Now the calm was complete. I judged that the second officer—a callow youth with an unpromising face—was not, to put it mildly, of that invaluable stuff from which a commander's right hand is made. But I was glad to catch along the main deck a few smiles on those seamen's faces at which I had hardly had time ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... rapid succession; an 'aiery of children,' embryo actors, artists, poets, or philosophers. Like unfledged birds, they are hatched, nursed, and fed by hand: this gives room for a vast deal of management, meddling, care, and condescending solicitude; but the instant the callow brood are fledged, they are driven from the nest, and forced to shift for themselves in the wide world. One sterling production decides the question between them and their patrons, and from that time they become the property of the public. Thus a succession of importunate, hungry, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... call the willing winds; Then ply their oars, and cut their liquid way In larger compass on the roomy sea. As, when the dove her rocky hold forsakes, Rous'd in a fright, her sounding wings she shakes; The cavern rings with clatt'ring; out she flies, And leaves her callow care, and cleaves the skies: At first she flutters; but at length she springs To smoother flight, and shoots upon her wings: So Mnestheus in the Dolphin cuts the sea; And, flying with a force, that force assists his way. Sergesthus in the ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... 'O callow innocence!' exclaimed the other. 'Is it possible you do not know, or do not suspect, the intrigue in which you move? I find it in my heart to pity you! We are both women after all - poor girl, poor girl! ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fifteen,' thought Sister Constance, as she drove up to the station in the omnibus with Cherry, who was too miserable and bewildered to cry now; not that she was afraid of either the Sister or the Sisterhood, but only because she had never left home in her life, and felt exactly like a callow nestling shoved out on the ground ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... worm! A foreigner must long to ask the consequential youths to "kindly excuse him while he continues to breathe"; for few strangers can sympathize with the contempt we English have, while still in callow youth, for everyone we don't know. But, let a newcomer blossom into an acquaintance, or mention a relative at Eton, and all is changed. The Winchester boys turn into the most delightful chaps in ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... her breeziness, her virile, alluring womanhood—by the appeal she made to the love of the good and the true in his character. His affection for Hester Keyes, he had long known, had been merely the vanity-tickling regard of the callow youth—the sex attraction of adolescence, the "puppy" love that smites all youth alike. For Rosalind Benham a deeper note had been struck. Its force rocked him, intoxicated him; his head rang with the ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Valley Coal Company,—that is, he was its necessary physiognomy,—but really the coal company was an incorporated private farm of the officers and friends of the A. and P.,—an immensely profitable farm. Lane in his callow youth did not know this fact; but he learned it after he had been in Torso a few weeks. He was quick to learn, a typical Beals man, thoroughly "efficient," one who could keep his eyes where they belonged, his tongue in his mouth, and his ears open. As he told Isabelle that Sunday ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... but Sarai—my Princess!" His voice was hoarse and faltering. This strange new sense of romance that, like a callow-bird, had been stirring in his breast ever since he had heard of her quest of him, spread its wings and soared heavenwards. She had been impure—but her impurity swathed her in mystic seductiveness. The world's law bound ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... this extraordinary document to be a stupid practical joke, invented by some half-fledged cousin to tease her. She had a good many cousins, among whom were several beardless undergraduates and callow subalterns in smart regiments, who would think it no end of fun to scare 'Cousin Maud.' There was no mistaking the official paper on which the document was written, and it bore the seal of the Chancery of the Russian ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... she wished to see whether I was watching. And when she had noted me it I wot well that she became much more animated, and laughed and spoke quickly, with color in her cheeks and a flash of defiance on her countenance, which were manifestly wasted on such a boastful, callow ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... aurora borealis, then tells him that she can only be a kind of Christmas-present, opera-ticket sister to him; who steals his unripe affections and allows 'em to get frost-bitten— carries him into the empyrean of puppy-love, only to drop him with a dull plunk that fills his callow heart with compound fractures—well, she cannot be prosecuted for petit larceny nor indicted for malicious mischief; but the unfortunate fellow who finally gets her will be glad to go to heaven, where there's neither marrying nor ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... resooms Cherokee, 'let me onbosom myse'f as to what happens a party back in Posey County, Injeanny. I'm plumb callow at the time, bein' only about the size an' valyoo of a pa'r of fives. but I'm plenty impressed by them events I'm about to recount, an' the mem'ry is fresh enough for yesterday. But to come flutterin' from my perch. Thar's a sport who makes his home- camp in that hamlet which fosters ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... "O callow innocence!" exclaimed the other. "Is it possible you do not know, or do not suspect, the intrigue in which you move? I find it in my heart to pity you! We are both women after all—poor girl, poor girl!—and who is born ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Chirping, in the cold and rain, Their impatient sweet complaining, Sing out from their hearts again; Bid them set themselves to mating, Cooing love in softest words, Crowd their nests, all cold and empty, Full of little callow birds. ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... The notary soon arranged whatever there was to arrange; and, after some charmingly spoken words of farewell from the gentle lady, we took our departure. Again the mummified negro hobbled before us, to open the gate,—followed by all his callow rabble of chickens. As we resumed our places in the carriage we could still hear the chippering of the creatures, pursuing after ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... Sense leaves that to callow youth And callous age; plain picturing of the truth Seems cynical,—to folly. Friend, the true cynic is the shallow mime Who paints humanity devoid of crime, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... sweet the hours of springtime When the heart inclines to woo, And it's deemed all right for the callow wight To do what he ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... vigorous a manhood. Tall, well-formed, muscular as his faultless clothes half revealed, half hid, his bronzed face bearing the clear eyes and steady lips of a man much out of doors, this thoughtful Englishman was indeed a man to catch and hold attention. No callow youth, was he, but in the prime of life—strong, clean, distinguished in appearance, with hair slightly silvered at the temples; a man who had lived fully, women would have said, but who was now a bit weary of ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... made this assertion in his callow days, before he had learned the value of a good digestion. To a young and fervid youth, love's young dream is, no doubt, very charming, lovers, as a rule, having a small appetite; but to a man who has seen ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... last days at the plough, and they made that field memorable to me. I never cross it now but I see myself there—a callow youth being jerked by the plough-handles but with my head in a cloud of alluring day-dreams. This, I think, was in the fall of 1853. I went to school that winter with a view to leaving home in the spring to try my luck at school-teaching ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... "Is there anything so grand in a man as force? In my estimation those firemen and the chief who so splendidly controlled them are as far superior to the dancing youth, we meet at parties and hops, as meat is better than foam." Put that into your pipe, you callow striplings, who aim to be lady-killers! It is not your tennis suits, nor your small feet, nor your ability to dance and lead the german that makes a woman's heart kindle at your approach. It is your response to an emergency, ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... reaction. Never before had a man's hand, even on her bare flesh, produced such thrill and excitement. Desperately, her common sense struggled with this new thing. She dismissed with annoyance the callow, schoolgirl thought that this was the way love finally came—in the door, unannounced, to take over a woman's heart and soul ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... completely with water, by the intervention of vegetable mucilage, as in melting butter, by means of flour, the butter and water are united into a homogeneous fluid.'"—From Practical Economy, by a Physician. Callow, 1801. ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... Then, as an eagle, who, with pious care Was beating widely on the wing for prey, To her now silent eyrie does repair, And finds her callow infants forced away: ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... The callow pair saw something more of each other during the morning; for Pocket hotly resented being distrusted, and showed it by making up to the young girl under the doctor's nose. He talked to her about books in the other room. He had the impertinence to invite her into ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... be all very well," the doctor had written, "but if he is worth having he will keep! He must have the advantage of extreme youth, to be taken with a callow chick like yourself, but that shall not injure him in my eyes. Tell him to wait a while, and then come and show himself. Two heads are better than one in most of the exigencies of life, and when he comes, you and I can make up our minds about ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... anxious to interview them. With some there thus arrives a third period, in which they are anxious not to be interviewed, but this is rare. Doubtless there are superior persons who never craved for fame even in their callow youth, and possibly Ouida herself may have taken to authorship as an elaborate means of diverting attention from herself. But the majority of mortals, being fools by edict of Puck and Carlyle, are pleased ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... used to confess how, in the fire of his callow youth and fine flower of his lustie springal days, he had been stung with murderous frenzie at view of a certaine picture of Apelles, the which in those times was showed in a temple. And the said picture did present Alexander the Great laying on right shrewdly at Darius, king of the Indians, ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... "Your callow attitude towards life, my poor boy," said I, "is a matter of profound indifference to me. But I shall give orders that you are no longer admitted to ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... unnoticed, amongst the rest is a Spanish artist named Villa amil, whose interiors are far above mediocrity, and who has given us some rich specimens of Spanish monuments, which are now admirably illustrated in a periodical lithographic work. Our countrymen, Messrs. Callow and Barker, have also sent several pieces, which do them and their country credit, the former, some beautiful subjects in water colours, and the latter of varied descriptions, in some of which the ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve |
