"First-hand" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a reporter or investigator, go out and get first-hand information on some subject of interest to the public. Arrange the results of your research in the form ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... with guns. Mr. Bucket took this opportunity of entering into a little light conversation, asking me if I were afraid of fire-arms, as most young ladies were; asking Richard if he were a good shot; asking Phil Squod which he considered the best of those rifles and what it might be worth first-hand, telling him in return that it was a pity he ever gave way to his temper, for he was naturally so amiable that he might have been a young woman, and making ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... strange that no one has hitherto thought of tapping this source of information. In and about 1887 the papers teemed with articles that outlined the history of music during the first fifty years of Victoria's reign; but I have not seen one that attempted to derive first-hand information from the sources referred to, nor indeed does the subject of 'Dickens and Music' ever appear to have received the attention which, in my ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... importance. Indeed, it is international. Of course, in view of the fact that we Californians are already on the firing-line, necessarily it follows that we must make some noise and, incidentally, glean some real first-hand knowledge of this so-called problem. I think that when our fellow citizens know what we are fighting, they will sympathize with us and promptly dedicate the United States to the unfaltering principle that ours is a white man's country, that the heritage we have won from the wilderness shall be ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... nothing have I been more fearful throughout than of making Nature parallel with my own or with any creed. The only legitimate questions one dare put to Nature are those which concern universal human good and the Divine interpretation of things. These I conceive may be there actually studied at first-hand, and before their purity is soiled by human touch. We have Truth in Nature as it came from God. And it has to be read with the same unbiased mind, the same open eye, the same faith, and the same reverence as all other Revelation. All that is found ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... people. It is, indeed, very difficult to judge how far an Athenian Assembly was really taken in by sophistical or dishonest arguments: but it is quite certain that such arguments were continually addressed to it; and the main body of the citizens can scarcely have had that first-hand knowledge of facts, which would enable them to criticize the orator's statements. Again, the oration appealed to the people as a performance, no less than as a piece of reasoning. Ancient political oratory resembled the oratory of ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... covers was written as a series of first-hand impressions during the fall and early winter of 1914 while the writer was on staff service for The Saturday Evening Post in the western theatre of the European War. I tried to write of war as I saw it at the time that I saw it, or immediately afterward, when the memory of what I ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... too much afraid of their authorities—Catholic tradition and Aristotle—to probe difficulties to the bottom; and the mystics, who, by making the renewed life of the soul their starting-point, were more independent, were debarred, by their ignorance of Greek, from a first-hand knowledge of their intellectual ancestors. But in the history of Mysticism they hold an important place.[224] Speculation being for them restricted within the limits of Church-dogma, they were obliged to be more psychological ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... although in reality he is not strictly original. Then follows a period, sometimes a long one, sometimes only a very few years, in which his narrative is contemporary and written from his own knowledge or from strictly first-hand materials. This is usually the most valuable portion for the modern writer ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... Matthew, bearing in mind that it does not profess to be the evidence of an eyewitness. It is a chronicle, founded, like other chronicles, on such evidence and records as the chronicler could get hold of. The only one of the evangelists who professes to give first-hand evidence as an eyewitness naturally takes care to say so; and the fact that Matthew makes no such pretension, and writes throughout as a chronicler, makes it clear that he is telling the story of Jesus as Holinshed told the story of Macbeth, except that, for a reason to be given ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... of you. I'm so obviously a marrying man.... Now, darling, will you think the whole thing out from the beginning, after I've gone? Be first-hand; don't take over theories from other people, and don't be sentimental about it. Thrash the whole subject out with yourself and with other people—with your own friends, and with your family too. They're a modern, broad-minded set, your ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... to. Eventually, at a third visit, the rackets were produced. None of them, I was told by my brother, were of any first-class maker, so that was outside the question. The choice was between some good, neat first-hand instruments which suited me, and some seedy-looking second-hand objects with plain deal handles, which would have done at a pinch. I thought that perhaps it would be better to get a good-class racket in London and content myself for the present ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... these accounts at first-hand of our son's unalloyed happiness in the last seven months of his life. Countless brave men, gifted and simple, eminent and obscure, have sacrificed their lives in this War, none with more complete self-surrender than Paul Jones. In War as in Peace, he bore himself like ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... and correctness of his views, the result, as they were, of reflection based upon a mastery of the data involved. With Nelson's consent, he undertook to lay them before the prime minister, as the direct testimony of a singularly competent first-hand observer. ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... it seemed to me that, as an officer and a gentleman, I must intimate it to him at first-hand by invading his retreat, the Colonel's Bed, over there in Strathdee, near his Inverey. Singly, and alone, I would seek the Black Colonel in his den, honourably shake myself clear of his dark overtures, and tell him ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... everything acquire something, and especially they acquire, as the Bishop of Oxford (Dr. Wilberforce), once said, the invaluable power of knowing where, when they wanted first-hand information, they could most easily obtain it. That is the knowledge of the lawyer; and the knowledge of the lawyer, if he is competent, gradually becomes of the kind which qualifies him to be a judge.—Spectator, ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... the crew listened in rapt attention, consumed nearer six than two, or even five hours. These men were hungry for authentic first-hand information—being too old to have sought ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... daily affairs; a power of imagination won from having dwelt upon the things of life with intentness, a power of sympathy obtained from seeing the things of others as you meet them day by day; and a first-hand knowledge of the sights and sounds and beauties of Nature, a knowledge of bird and flower, tree and rock, their names and some of their secrets—knowledge accumulated from actual contact with the real physical world. ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... harvest of the young man's excursion, in the shape of first-hand records of war and government—of intrigue and of sedition, followed by stern retributive chastisement—from that famous soldier, autocratic and ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Aldrovandus, Coiter, and Fabricius. Concerned with description and depiction of the anatomy of the embryo, they established a period of macro-iconography in embryology. The macro-iconographic era was empirical and based upon first-hand observation; it was concerned more with the facts than with the theories of development. This empiricism existed in competition with a declining, richly vitalistic Aristotelian rationalism which had virtually eliminated empiricism ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... to be written by a layman who is also a Christian man of business. It is inserted here mainly to challenge inquiry and to provoke thought. The writer has no first-hand acquaintance either with business life or with business methods. He desires simply to chronicle an impression that the level of morality in the business world has been declining in recent years, and that the more thoughtful and candid ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... treats of Christ and His Mission, Future Development of Man and Initiation, Esoteric Training and a Safe Method of Acquiring First-hand Knowledge. ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... ease, which leads the man who possesses it into fields where he has no sure footing because he has no first-hand knowledge, and therefore no real power; and against this tendency, so prevalent in this country, the need of concentration must continually be urged. The great majority of men lack the abounding vitality which ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... edges. Date and perhaps even place may be forgotten, but the look and the tone of the speaker are indelible memories. In the experience of every man there are such moments, and the reminiscences can be trusted. The Gospels are almost avowedly not first-hand. Peter is said to be behind Mark; Mark and at least one other are behind Matthew and Luke. Luke in his preface explains his methods. They are collectors and transmitters; and the indications—are that they did their work very faithfully. There is a simplicity and a plainness about the stories ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... understand me and why I lay so much stress upon the importance of pushing the doctrine of industrial education for the Negro, it is necessary, first of all, to review the condition of affairs at the present time in the Southern States. For years I have had something of an opportunity to study the Negro at first-hand; and I feel that I know him pretty well,—him and his needs, his failures and his successes, his desires and the likelihood of their fulfilment. I have studied him and his relations with his white neighbours, ...
— The Future of the American Negro • Booker T. Washington
... of friends, hit upon a plan which promises to be less onerous to me and more satisfactory to the reader. This is nothing less than to make use of the various manuscripts which I have by me bearing upon the subject, and to add to them the first-hand evidence contributed by those who had the best opportunities of ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... who inhabit it. By the second year of its existence, that is to say, 1884, the Committee on Haunted Houses of the S. P. R. had selected and made an analysis of some sixty-five cases out of hundreds submitted to it, twenty-eight of which rested upon first-hand and superior evidence.[1] It is worthy of remark, in the first place, that these authentic narratives bear no relation whatever to the legendary and sensational ghost-stories that still linger in many English and American magazines, especially ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... throughout the populous cities of Gaul there sprang up schools that rivaled, in their efficacy and reputation, the most famous institutions of Rome. Rich Romans sent their sons to these schools because of their excellence and the added advantage that they could acquire there a first-hand knowledge of the life and customs of the natives, whom they might be called upon in the future to govern or to have political or other relations with. Thus all urban Gaul traveled Rome-ward—"all roads led ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... poverty and Trade-unionism, and living upon a pound a week. As for Miss Vincent, in her capacity of secretary to a well-known Radical member of Parliament, she had been employed, for his benefit, in gathering information first-hand, very often in the same fields where Mr. Frobisher was at work. This brought them often together—and they were the best ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... am not going to write an essay on the geology of the West, for I really have little first-hand knowledge upon that subject, but I would indicate the kind of interest in the country I was most conscious of during my recent trip to the Pacific Coast and beyond. Indeed, quite a geologic fever raged in me most of the time. The rocks attracted me more than the birds, ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... own accord, rocking to attract my attention. He saw in me a possible purchaser. He wanted to show me that he was still sound in wind and limb. Had I a small son at home? If so, here was the very mount for him. None of your frisky, showy, first-hand young brutes, on which no fond parent ought to risk his offspring's bones; but a sound, steady-going, well-mannered old hack with never a spark of vice in him! Such was the message that I read in the glassy eye fixed on me. The nostril of ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... Francaise au Moyen Age.[71] For it must once more be said that the pre-eminence of French over other literatures in this volume is not due to any crotchet of the writer, or to any desire to speak of what he has known pretty thoroughly, long, and at first-hand, in preference to that which he knows less thoroughly, less of old, and in parts at second-hand. It is the simplest truth to say that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries France kept the literary school of Europe, and that, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... up of social pictures, all (as Mr. LONDON liked to pretend) within his own experience, presented impartially for you to study, and draw, if you choose, your own conclusions. That experience ranges, comprehensively enough, from a first-hand sketch of primeval man attempting rather unhappily to group himself in clans and tribes, to a journalistic note of the Yellow Peril that materialised, we learn, somewhere late in the twentieth century and was overcome by science liberating ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... are not infallible. It is quite right that the accuracy of any statements which they make should be carefully tested by whatever means exist for testing them. For instance, when the Society of Friends[105] say that they are in possession of "first-hand information" to show that "atrocities" are being committed in the Portuguese dominions, the Foreign Office is obviously justified in asking them to state on what evidence this formidable accusation is founded, and when it appears that they cannot produce "exactly the kind of evidence as to ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... they grow, and politics, not less than corn! Oh, my friend, say what you please, argue how you like, this crowding together of men and women in unnatural surroundings, this haste to be rich in material things, this attempt to enjoy without production, this removal from first-hand life, is irrational, and the end of it is ruin. If our cities were not recruited constantly with the fresh, clean blood of the country, with boys who still retain some of the power and the vision drawn from the ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... great European battlefield, I have always tried to remember that it was through the eye of the camera, directed by my own sense of observation, that the millions of people at home would gain their only first-hand knowledge of what ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... Doctor Davison, my dear," he said. "If you are going to live in Cheslow you will hear all about Doctor Davison, and you would better know him at first-hand, to avoid mistakes," and his eyes twinkled more than ever, though ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... reformer, son of Dean Heinrich Bullinger by his wife Anna (Wiederkehr), was born at Bremgarten, Aargau, on the 18th of July 1504. He studied at Emmerich and Cologne, where the teaching of Peter Lombard led him, through Augustine and Chrysostom, to first-hand study of the Bible. Next the writings of Luther and Melanchthon appealed to him. Appointed teacher (1522) in the cloister school of Cappel, he lectured on Melanchthon's Loci Communes (1521). He heard Zwingli at Zuerich in 1527, and next year accompanied him to the disputation ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... a tourist to arrive at a just opinion on this subject as for the average Frenchman. The traveller will not find it easy to acquire the necessary first-hand data, while the other is warped by his ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... Wentworth? If you could only get for a moment into the stream of experience where Joe and the others brought me! A picture is art as long as it's alive—as long as it can give back the fresh, first-hand impulses that were put into it. After that—when life has flowed on and set up new impulses requiring a different expression—then a picture drops back upon a lower ...
— Read-Aloud Plays • Horace Holley
... so highly that he had always his portrait before him while he sat at work. So Schiller looked up to Shakspeare, whom he studied reverently and zealously for years, until he became capable of comprehending nature at first-hand, and then his admiration became ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... sure that the key was not in the study door, for Olga was a student of human nature and wanted to get her information first-hand. ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... gives a collection of historic material, which may be dealt with first-hand, as the pupil deals with the actual substance in chemistry, and with the living plant in botany. Work of this kind stimulates the student's historic sense and judgment. It is especially adapted to help ...
— The Writing of the Short Story • Lewis Worthington Smith
... to analyse. If Mrs. Wix, however, ultimately appalled, had now set her heart on strong measures, Maisie, as I have intimated, could also work round both to the reasons for them and to the quite other reasons for that lady's not, as yet at least, appearing in them at first-hand. ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... factors in the free larval forms of various marine organisms. Moreover, a vigorous fire of mutual criticism was going on now between the Imperial College and the Cambridge Mendelians and echoed in the lectures. From beginning to end it was first-hand stuff. ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... and editing the various essays of which this book is comprised, has not been altogether easy. Some literary defects and absence of unity are, by the nature of the scheme, inevitable: we hope these are counterbalanced by the collection of first-hand evidence from those in a position to speak authoritatively of the professions which they follow. Experientia docet, and those who desire to investigate the conditions of women's public work in various directions, as well as those who are hesitating in their choice ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... and washing the dishes before they went to school. After school they gave up their play hours, and swept and scrubbed, and helped their mother to prepare the evening meal and wash the dishes afterward. It was a curious coincidence that it should fall upon Edward thus to get a first-hand knowledge of woman's housework which was to stand him in such practical stead ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... than the admirable stories of the Gloucester fishermen which first made his reputation. They are told by the wharf-rat in dialect with a casual reportorial air which is tolerably convincing, and it is clear that they are based on a background of first-hand experience. Mr. Connolly's hand is not entirely subdued to the medium in which he has chosen to work, but the result is a certain monotony ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... into our knowledge. It is a very strange thing, as we shall see, that the origin of Home's miracles in broad daylight or artificial light, could never be traced to fraud, or, indeed, to any known cause; while the one case in which imposture is alleged on first-hand evidence occurred under conditions of light so bad as to make detection as difficult as belief in such circumstances, ought to have been impossible. It is not easy to feel sure that we have certainly ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... 1854, Paleontology and administrative work began to claim much of the time he would willingly have bestowed upon distinctly zoological research. His lectures on Natural History of course demanded a good deal of first-hand investigation, and not only occasional notes in his fragmentary journals, but a vast mass of drawings now preserved at South Kensington attest the amount of work he still managed to give to these subjects. But with the exception of the Hunterian Lectures of 1868, he only published one paper on ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... will be interested in the opinions held by a clear-headed, capable English writer of the characters of leaders like Mr. Asquith, Lloyd George, Mr. Balfour, Lord Robert Cecil, Winston Churchill, and others, and they will find in these pages first-hand information and clever and incisive studies of noteworthy men whose influence has counted, and is still to count, in shaping the history of ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... feelings of the camel when his proprietor placed that last straw on his back. The incident happened so long ago. If it had occurred in modern times, he would probably have contributed a first-hand report to the Daily Mail. But it is very likely that he felt on that occasion exactly as Fenn felt when, after a night of unparalleled misadventure, he found that somebody had cut off his retreat by latching the window. After a gruelling ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... of the fact itself, at first-hand, across a whirlwind of distracted rumors new and old about the fact, let us be thankful to Wilhelmina. Seckendorf's hopeless attempts to resuscitate extinct English things, and make the Prussian Majesty break his word, continue to the very ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... know such a lot,' smiled her new friend. 'I must get some first-hand knowledge, too, before I try to ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... simply that I wanted to find out what a "regular war" was like. It looked as though there was going to be a good scrap on and I didn't want to miss it. I had been a conscientious student of the "war-game" for a good many years and was anxious to get some real first-hand information. I got what I was looking ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... returned. "That is the legal right. But I can vouch for my evidence, my lord. I received it, you see, at first-hand. This man Borkins engaged both the lad Dollops and myself as new hands for the factory. We therefore had every opportunity of looking into ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... medium of an art which he seriously studied and deeply loved. It spoke from the very depths of his being, and the poems in which it found utterance, whatever their purely literary qualities, have at least the value of a first-hand human document, the sincere self-portraiture of a vivid and ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... nearly as great a man as the character whose life and achievements held his deepest thought for nearly a quarter of a century. Certainly his services to his country rank close to Washington's. Marshall's sympathetic understanding of his subject, his first-hand knowledge of events with his remarkable powers of expression qualified him to produce the masterpiece that has come ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... of London would be starved in a week if the flywheel of habit were removed, if no signalman or clerk or policeman ever did anything which was not suggested by a first-hand impulse, or if no one were more honest or punctual or industrious than he was led to be by his conscious love, on that particular day, for his master or for his work, or by his religion, or by a conviction of danger from the ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... language (as in a former lecture I tried to preach to you) is your reason, your [Greek: logos]. So long as you prefer abstract words, which express other men's summarised concepts of things, to concrete ones which as near as can be reached to things themselves and are the first-hand material for your thoughts, you will remain, at the best, writers at second-hand. If your language be Jargon, your intellect, if not your whole character, will almost certainly correspond. Where your ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... frame a fairly adequate notion of the home-life of Neanderthal man. I have already alluded to my excavations in Jersey, and need not enter into fuller details here. But I should like to put on record the opinion borne in upon me by such first-hand experience as I have had that cultural advance in Mousterian days was almost as portentously slow as ever it had been before. The human deposits in the Jersey cave are in some places about ten feet thick, and the fact that they fall into ...
— Progress and History • Various
... situation, folklorists and anthropologists will hear gladly about wraiths, ghosts, corpse- candles, hauntings, crystal-gazing, and walking unharmed through fire, as long as these things are part of vague rural tradition, or of savage belief. But, as soon as there is first-hand evidence of honourable men and women for the apparent existence of any of the phenomena enumerated, then Folklore officially refuses to have anything to do with the subject. Folklore will register and compare ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... the dance hall and the poolroom and the vile pictures and the loose conduct of the soft-drink places and Electric Park? Haven't we some sort of duty to see that every young person in Delafield has a chance at first-hand, enjoyable, ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... traceable, e.g. in the immense wealth brought by Ezra's company from Babylon (Ezra viii. 24-27). These reasons do not seem altogether convincing. The Chronicler stood relatively near to Ezra. Records and lists were kept in that period, and he was no doubt in possession of more first-hand documentary information than appears in his book. There is no obvious motive for the writer who so faithfully transcribed the memoirs of Nehemiah, inventing so vivid, coherent and circumstantial a narrative for Ezra in the first person ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... child of the family, or to know why I am to be thus treated, when I offer only to preserve to myself the liberty of refusal, which belongs to my sex; and, to please my parents, would give up my choice. I have contented myself till now to take second-hand messengers, and first-hand insults: you are but my sister: my brother is not my sovereign. And while I have a father and mother living, I will not be thus treated by a brother and sister, and their servants, all setting upon me, as it should seem, to make me desperate, and do a rash thing.—I ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... where my sensibilities hastened forward, now drove him carelessly, onward where I would so gladly have lingered * * He was the object of my reverence and zealous study for years before I could love himself. I was not yet capable of comprehending Nature at first-hand: I had but learned to admire her image, reflected in the understanding, and put in order by rules.' Werke, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... Appointed colonel of the 10th of the Line in February, 1869, he was stationed at Lorient and at Limoges during the eighteen months before the war with Germany. He busied himself during this period with the preparation of his work, soliciting from all sides first-hand information. It was slow in coming in, due certainly to indifference rather than ill-will. He made several trips to Paris for the purpose of opening the eyes of those in authority to the defective state of the army and the perils of the situation. Vain attempts! 'They take all that philosophically,' ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... cover herewith, in neutralized and collapsed state, for the manufacture of simulacra thereof. One regrets to say that they number three thousand eight hundred forty-six, comprising all aboriginals within the quarantined area who had first-hand knowledge of the anachronisms caused by Foraminifera's importation of contemporary ...
— The Day of the Boomer Dukes • Frederik Pohl
... Bernbaum elaborately endeavours to show that this story is pure fiction. His arguments, in many cases advanced with no little subtlety and precision, do not appear (to me at least) to be convincing. We have much to weigh in the contrary balance: Mrs. Behn's manifest first-hand knowledge of, and extraordinary interest in, colonial life; her reiterated asseverations that every experience detailed in this famous novel is substantially true; the assent of all her contemporaries. It must further be remembered that Aphra was writing in 1688, of a girlhood ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... brief and for the most part truthful essay upon Hoffmann (in vol. ii. of his German Romance, 1829) appears to have been based largely upon others' opinions rather than upon first-hand acquaintance with his author, says that in him "there are the materials of a glorious poet, but no poet has been fashioned out of them." And when we seek for poetic elements in Hoffmann's works, we are ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... renewal of purpose, a vitalizing vision either of a personality or an enterprise, to create a fresh enthusiasm, we must turn from the familiar aspects of the subject to a first-hand thought, or view. We need to be freshly introduced, as it were. For this purpose let us renew our thought of the essential task of Home Missions. It is to Christianize our home land-Christianize, shorn of the formal services and forms of activity with which we ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... by The Whirlpool (see p. xvi), and in 1899 and 1903 by two books containing a like infusion of autobiographical experience, The Crown of Life, technically admirable in chosen passages, but sadly lacking in the freshness of first-hand, and The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft, one of the rightest and ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... accordingly shipped a trifle over 1,500 rounds of small bore cartridges. Unfortunately, I never got into the field with any of my numerous advisers on this point, so cannot state their methods from first-hand information. Inductive reasoning leads me to believe that they consider it unsportsmanlike to shoot at a standing animal at all, or at one running nearer than 250 yards. Furthermore, it is etiquette to continue firing until the last ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... month of the war, disturbing rumours began to run about Leesville. Old Abel Granitch had taken on a contract with the Belgian government, and the Empire Machine Shops were going to make shells. Nothing appeared about this in the local papers, but everybody claimed to have first-hand knowledge, and although no two people told the same story, there must be some basis of truth in them all. And then, one day, to Jimmie's consternation, he heard from Lizzie that the agent of the landlord had called and served notice that ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... said, "There's a second reason for secrecy. I think it can better be explained by a man who has the evidence first-hand." ...
— The Judas Valley • Gerald Vance
... fancy he's got an appointment with Cheniston first," explained the younger man importantly. "Boat got in this afternoon, and I expect Cheniston wants to hear the affair at first-hand." ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... effort. In slack ages of poetic inspiration, however, the versifiers have no vision of the world, but only of its pale mirrored reflections in visions dead and gone, and some jolt is needed to bring the poets back to first-hand observation. Such a jolt are the new poets. Spoon River is a medicine, a splendid tonic. But the form of Spoon River is not conditioned by eternal needs, only by temporary ones. Its complete absence of loveliness, of lines that linger, will ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... with their straw-thatched, highly decorated houses, dwell barbarous brown men practising customs so incredibly eerie and fantastic that a sober narration of them is more likely than not to be greeted with a shrug of amused disbelief. One who has no first-hand knowledge of the Sumatran tribes finds it difficult to accept at their face value the accounts of the customs practised by the Bataks of Tapanuli, for example, who, when their relatives become too old and infirm to be of further use, give them a pious interment by eating them. ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... Macduff is fully and satisfactorily resolved by the appearance of Rosse." And his note to a passage in Act V is interesting as showing that, wide and thorough as was Hauge's acquaintance with Shakespearean criticism, he had, besides, a first-hand knowledge of the minor Elizabethan dramatists. I give the note in full. "The way ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... TECHNIQUE is concerned, almost every one now can paint as well as is in the least desirable. The same mutatis mutandis holds good with writing as with painting. We want less word-painting and fine phrases, and more observation at first-hand. Let us have a periodical illustrated by people who cannot draw, and written by people who cannot write (perhaps, however, after all, we have some), but who look and think for themselves, and express themselves just as they please,—and this we certainly have not. Every contributor should ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... well-known works of Luchaire, Voigt, Hefele, Bezold, Janssen, Levasseur, Creighton, Pastor. In some cases, as in the opening of the Renaissance, the Lutheran Revolt, and the French Revolution, I have been able to form my opinions to some extent from first-hand material. ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... of the Historical period, the first-hand information—for it is almost superfluous to remark that none of the Greek authors speak from personal observation—flows from two sources; from the inhabitants of western and southern Gaul, and from the Ph[oe]nicians. The text of Herodotus suggests this. In the passage which has been ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... found the story on every one's lips, especially at the club, and that the governor and his wife were familiar with every detail of it. What is even more remarkable is that the next day, Monday evening, I met Liputin, and he knew every word that had been passed, so that he must have heard it first-hand. Many of the ladies (and some of the leading ones) were very inquisitive about the "mysterious cripple," as they called Marya Timdfyevna. There were some, indeed, who were anxious to see her and make her acquaintance, so the intervention ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... had at last beamed upon him, he laid up his lugger, wound up his affairs, and hurried off to Sydney, secretly, to dispose of his prize first-hand. An expert weighed the treasure, scrutinised it shrewdly through a microscope, and handed it back with a casual remark that it was a pretty curio, but that its market value was about half a crown. "It has been exposed to great heat, and may crumble to pieces at a change of temperature. Get me one ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... fraternities have been closed in his face, so that he can know nothing, and his opinions are consequently indifferent. I have weighed these points carefully, but unless the mystic fraternities are connected with diabolism, which Papus would most rightly deny, the exclusion does not remove the opportunity of first-hand knowledge concerning the practice of Satanism, and, "brilliant imagination" apart, M. Huysman has proved quite recently that he is in mortal earnest by his preface to a historical treatise on "Satanism and Magic," the work ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... ghosts—people seem to have had a general feeling that there might be such things, but they did not at the same time believe in them—because they never saw them, and seldom met anyone who had had first-hand experience of them. But as regards the spies, I can speak with personal knowledge in saying that they do exist, and in very large numbers, not only in England, but ...
— My Adventures as a Spy • Robert Baden-Powell
... you choose to look at it; but why should you? It's not a good drama; it isn't up to date; it has no first-hand knowledge, nor original vision of life. It simply ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... gold. Quartz mining has never had the slightest attraction for me, but to see the gold washed out of the sand, to see it appear bright and shining in the black sand in the bottom of the pan, is really worth while. It is first-hand contact with ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... in her life! With a little shake she roused herself and turned to Fosdick's article that she had brought with her to the table. It was all about the progress of the socialist parties abroad, their aims and accomplishments, showing first-hand observation and knowledge; also a vivaciously critical spirit,—in short what Gossom would call "a smart article." ... There was another "serious" article on the problem of housing the poor, amply illustrated. In the newspapers that she had glanced ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... more demoralized. This is revealed in the pages of congressional reports based upon first-hand investigations. One eloquent passage illustrates all the rest. From Pocahontas to Decatur, Alabama, a distance of 114 miles, we are told, the railroad was "almost entirely destroyed, except the road bed and iron rails, and they were in a very bad condition—every ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... or Welsh Mr Arnold knew at first-hand, I cannot say: he frankly enough confesses that his knowledge was very closely limited. But what is really surprising, is that he does not seem to have taken much trouble to extend it at second-hand. A very few Welsh triads and scraps of Irish are ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... namely, the story that it is the practice of Kayans to torture the captives taken in battle. This evil repute is, we have no doubt, largely due to the fact that very few Europeans have acquired any intimate first-hand acquaintance with the Kayans or Kenyahs; and that too often the stories told by Sea Dayaks have been uncritically accepted; for the Sea Dayaks have been bitterly hostile to the Kayans ever since the tribes have been in contact; and ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... country, among people of my class and kind, I may add the testimony of first-hand information, that a large proportion of them, at the present time, have come to regard passing pleasure and acts of immediate self-interest as the chief object and motive of their lives. It is the pleasure of eating and drinking which concerns them and not ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... place, by those who have ignorantly and without enquiry copied from them. But my chief reason is that the present revival of theosophical enquiry throws a flood of light on Simon's teachings, whenever we can get anything approaching a first-hand statement of them, and shows that it was identical in its fundamentals with the Esoteric Philosophy of all the great ...
— Simon Magus • George Robert Stow Mead
... was saying that the Criminal Investigation Department of New Scotland Yard has become interested in this experiment of yours, so I was sent over to get all the first-hand information I can. Frankly, I volunteered for the job; I was eager to come. There are plenty of skeptics at the Yard, I'll admit, but I'm not one of them. If the thing's workable, I want to see it used ...
— Nor Iron Bars a Cage.... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... descriptive matter—accounts of demonstrations and ceremonies, fashionable weddings and other social functions, interviews, and so forth. The practice upset all his ideas of a foreign correspondent's duties, which should be to obtain first-hand ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... Nohant till the 22nd of May. Dr. Cauviere would not permit Chopin to leave Marseilles before summer; but whether this was the only cause of the long sojourn of the Sand party in the great commercial city, or whether there were others, I have not been able to discover. Happily, we have first-hand information—namely, letters of Chopin and George Sand—to throw a little light on these months of the pianist-composer's life. As to his letters, their main contents consist of business matters—wranglings about terms, abuse of publishers, &c. Here and there, however, we ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... his unyouthful knowledge of life in the raw would be the means of success in literature; therefore he discoursed of imaginary things and persons, lords and ladies, days of chivalry and what not—anything but out of his priceless first-hand lore. At the same time, however, he kept a small diary which, in the days when he had found himself, helped in visualizing his tramp life, ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... judgment. He had been through the experience himself, had tasted too the dregs the bitterness of an unhappy marriage, and how could he take the wide and dispassionate view of those who had never been within sound of the battle? His evidence was too first-hand—like the evidence on military matters of a soldier who has been through much active service, against that of civilians who have not suffered the disadvantage of seeing things too close. Most people would consider such a marriage as that of Soames and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... curling up already in an ugly yellowish brown cloud, spreading in long leaps before the wind. Jack's hand shook when he reached for the telephone to report the fire. The chart and his own first-hand knowledge of the mountainside told him that the fire was sweeping down north of Toll-Gate Creek toward the heavily timbered ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... heard what he said, Mrs. Otway. Of course he is right in stating that an effort is always made to find and bring in the bodies of dead officers. But I fear that this war is not at all like the only war of which Howse has had any first-hand knowledge. This last week has been a very bad business. Still, I quite agree that we must not give up hope. I have been wondering whether you would like me to make inquiries at the War Office, or ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... Washington, D.C., Norfolk and Richmond, Va., Savannah and Augusta, Ga., Chattanooga, Tenn., Birmingham and Mobile, Ala., New Orleans, La., and smaller cities has afforded the author of this essay considerable opportunity to know at first-hand this phase ...
— The Negro at Work in New York City - A Study in Economic Progress • George Edmund Haynes
... contrasted with the [Hebrew: Yosifon la-Romim], or "Latin Josephus." When the genuine works of our worthy became known to the Jews, Yosippon was regarded as the true representative of the Jewish point of view against the paganizing traitor. Its author had not a first-hand acquaintance with our Josephus. He knew him only through the Latin versions, which were mixed with much later material. Possibly he meant to pass off his work as the Hebrew original of the Jewish history, and confused Joseph ben Gorion with Joseph ben Mattathias; for in the introduction ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... couldn't, very well, for its date antedated his own birth-date. But necessarily a number of persons were still alive in Stratford who, in the days of their youth, had seen Shakespeare nearly every day in the last five years of his life, and they would have been able to tell that inquirer some first-hand things about him if he had in those last days been a celebrity and therefore a person of interest to the villagers. Why did not the inquirer hunt them up and interview them? Wasn't it worth while? Wasn't the matter of sufficient consequence? ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... things considered, a singular fact that in all that list there is no translation of parts of the Bible, except of course the fragmentary paraphrases in the catechism and doctrinals. The only item indicating first-hand Biblical study in the Philippines under the old regime that has come to my notice in the bibliographies of Medina and Retana is this, that Juan de la Concepcion the historian left in manuscript a translation of the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... profit for the rest of his life in London and its immediate neighbourhood. After his literary success, he gathered round him a circle of ladies and gentlemen interested in literature: but he never had any first-hand acquaintance with general society of the "gentle" kind, much less with that of the upper classes. Fielding (1707-1754), on the contrary, was a member (though only as the son of a younger son of a younger son) of a family of great antiquity and distinction, which ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... of those who visit Kodikanal I have compiled a list of the birds most commonly seen at altitudes of over 5000 feet in the Palni hills. I must here state that I have no first-hand knowledge of the avifauna of those hills, and the list that follows is based on the observations of Dr. Fairbank, ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... children in the East had been rather unusually good, since she had visited many missionary stations in China and India. Things were languishing just then, and Mrs. Haile looked at Miss Emmeline almost imploringly: would she, could she, give the ladies a little lecture?—tell us things first-hand, so ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... place later in the year. I had written to him urging him to come across so that he might have first-hand knowledge of the state of affairs and of the policy being followed. During his visit the same questions were discussed as with Admiral Mayo, and important action was taken in the direction of closer naval co-operation between ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... receives considerable support from the observed resemblance between the mentality of morons and that of savage peoples, if the observation may be accepted as accurate. I do not understand however that Goddard makes any claim to first-hand familiarity with the mental life of savages, so that no great emphasis should be laid on the point. But the mere fact that RETROGRESSIVE variation in mentality is GRADED favors the view that its PROGRESSIVE evolution has been ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... consented to his going with his father, urged thereto by fears for his health, which was not of the best, and the knowledge that he had reached the "bear and Indian" age, and it was certainly a good thing for him to have his experiences first-hand. ...
— Kalitan, Our Little Alaskan Cousin • Mary F. Nixon-Roulet
... opportunity of comparison, such as the exposition affords. The retrospective aspects of the exhibition are absorbingly interesting, not so much for the presentation of any eminently great works of art as for the splendid chance for first-hand comparison of different periods. Painting is relatively so new an art that the earliest paintings we know of do not differ materially in a technical sense from our present-day work. Archaeology has disinterred ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... of the preliminaries and fundamentals of Civics can omit some consideration of the vast and ever growing literature of cities. But how are we to utilise this? How continue it? How co-ordinate it with the needed independent and first-hand survey of city by city? And how apply this whole knowledge of past ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... the college should do thorough, original, first-hand work, cannot be too strongly emphasized. Miss Conant tells us that, "For all scientific work he planned laboratories where students might make their own investigations, a very unusual step for those times." In 1878, when the Physics laboratory ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... current idioms and often making in them some thoughtful alteration the better to express his exact meaning. His literary training appears to have been almost wholly English. There are few traces in his writings of any classical reading or of any first-hand acquaintance with French, German, or Italian authors. And indeed in the substance of his thought I wonder if he is sufficiently hospitable to foreign ideas, especially to the vast body of comment on the French Revolution. I imagine few Continental authorities ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... for the winter up in Coronation Gulf. After that they started out with dogs and sledge and guides. There's a lot more, but that's the meat of it, Phil. I'm going to leave it to you to learn Celie's language and get the details first-hand from her. But she's a right enough princess, old man. And her Dad's a duke. It's up to you to Americanize 'em. ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... no first-hand knowledge as to whether the disease is so prevalent in the community as to demand urgent measures, but there is an opinion among women social workers and medical practitioners, whom I have consulted, that something should be done, and they are in favour of compulsion ...
— Venereal Diseases in New Zealand (1922) • Committee Of The Board Of Health
... wolves will attack a man; when they are trapped, wounded, or cornered—just as a muskrat will; but of all the wolf stories I have ever heard, in which wolves killed a man, the following is the only one I have any reason to believe, as it was told me first-hand by a gentleman whose word I honour, and whose unusual knowledge of animal life and northern travel places his story ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... oil boom story I heard first-hand the other day. I believe it, but you couldn't get those men around the corner store to ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... flogging, but others were in use, and the barbarous ling ch'ih, 'lingering death' or 'slicing to pieces,' invented about A.D. 1000 and abolished in 1905, was inflicted for high treason, parricide, on women who killed their husbands, and murderers of three persons of one family. In fact, until some first-hand knowledge of Western systems and procedure was obtained, the vindictive as opposed to the reformatory idea of punishments continued to obtain in China down to quite recent years, and has not yet entirely disappeared. ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... experiences and philosophy of the mystics. Such readers are warned that they will find here nothing but the re-statement of elementary and familiar propositions, and invitations to a discipline immemorially old. Far from presuming to instruct those to whom first-hand information is both accessible and palatable, I write only for the larger class which, repelled by the formidable appearance of more elaborate works on the subject, would yet like to know what is meant by mysticism, and what it has to offer to the average man: ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... physical optics, e.g. those of P. K. L. Drude, A. Schuster, R. W. Wood, have been written largely on the basis of the general physics of the aether; while the Collected Papers of Lord Rayleigh should be accessible to all who desire a first-hand knowledge of the development of the optical side of the subject. See also MOLECULE, ELECTRICITY, LIGHT and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... character, and her habits. It was this very inconsistency that charmed and convinced him. We are always on the lookout for these miracles of passion. We may doubt the genuineness of an affection that is first-hand, but never of one ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... just now, but this was only temporary; those firms that could weather the storm for a year or two longer would enter upon a time of brilliant prosperity. Was it to be supposed that the Government would allow a great industry to perish out of mere regard for the fetish of Free Trade? City men with first-hand information declared that "measures" were being prepared; in one way or another, the English trade would be rescued and made triumphant over ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... is no doubt that he would have subjected his essays to revision and brought them into a more harmonious whole; but as they stand, gathered together in this volume, Two Towns—One City (GRANT RICHARDS), by the proud hands of his mother, they have charm and vitality and the authenticity of first-hand knowledge and lively sympathy. The War, as we have just been reminded by an impressive memorial service, has made deep gaps in the ranks of English journalists, and the loss of JOHN F. MACDONALD'S quick eyes, happy choice of words, and intensely human ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 • Various
... speech and characteristic mode of expression of his characters. The Fox Skin (Tfuskinni) first appeared in 1923, in one of his collections of short stories (Strandbar).—He has also been successful as a recorder and editor of the biographies of greatly different people, based on first-hand accounts of their own lives. He is at present continuing with the writing of his autobiography—a long ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... being black and naked, and he was dead set on proving that he had been right. I think, as a matter of fact, that what I said tended to confirm him in his theory. He put it that if there were such spirits on this plane, I must have seen them or have had some quite first-hand evidence of their existence; and when I said that I had seen black people, Indians, and so on, he cross-examined me until I got confused. You see, I had to confess that they weren't, strictly speaking, black, that they wore clothes, and washed, and lived in houses; and he got me involved ...
— The Psychical Researcher's Tale - The Sceptical Poltergeist - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • J. D. Beresford
... and, although he can by careful selection, arrangement, and the regulation of exposure, largely counteract the mechanical tendency, a photograph by its very nature can never take the place of a work of art—the first-hand expression, more or less abstract, of a human mind, or the creative inner vision recorded ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane
... that time the members of the expedition did not understand the conditions of Mercury as they are now known. They had to depend upon the general impression they got from their first-hand investigations; and it is remarkable that the doctor should have guessed so close to ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... prospered, social needs were more closely attended to, and, most important of all, peace was maintained. The House of Commons had opened its doors to men of moderate means, and the Labor party, consisting of working men, miners, and those with first-hand knowledge of industrial conditions, came into existence as an ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... lad marvelled at this intuition into public-school conditions on the part of one who could have no first-hand knowledge of those insular institutions. But this fresh display of understanding only confirmed ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... the French side that one might chiefly draw those vivid and sometimes questionable glimpses at first-hand, that can best add to Lockhart's presentment. One must compare his retreat from Russia with Rapp's and other remembrancers' accounts, and be reminded by Rapp to go on to Jomini's Vie Militaire, and even turn for a single personal reminiscence to a flagrant hero-worshipper like Dumas, in his rapid ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... one time Chief of Police in Calcutta, told me a most curious story. We have all heard of the Indian "rope-trick," but none of us have met a person who actually saw it with his own eyes: the story never reaches us at first-hand, but always at second- or third-hand, exactly like the accounts one heard from credulous people in 1914 of the passage of the 75,000 Russian soldiers through England. No one had actually seen them, but every one knew ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... Scotsmen and Chinamen understand each other better than any other nationalities on the globe do, but this was the first time he had had a first-hand ocular demonstration that the Chinaman appreciated the Doric of Robbie Burns, when delivered with the true ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... Stones and Gems by Edwin W. Streeter; Chapman & Hall, London, 1877. This is a book of 264 pages with nine illustrations. It contains much of value and was unsurpassed in its day. Its first-hand accounts of numerous important, even celebrated diamonds and other precious stones will always make it valuable to the ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... stories. Why has "Felix Holt" been treated by the critics, as a rule, as of comparatively minor value? It is very interesting, contains true characterization, much of picturesque and dramatic worth; it abounds in enjoyable first-hand observation of a period by-gone yet near enough to have been cognizant to the writer. Her favorite types, too, are in it. Holt, a study of the advanced workman of his day, is another Bede, mutatis mutandis, and quite as truly realized. Both Mr. Lyon and his daughter are capitally ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... the influences of German training which so deadened the efforts of former composers, such as Pierson and Bennett. Elgar's music is thoroughly English in its sturdy vigor[341] and wholesome emotion. With something first-hand to say he has acquired such a technique in musical expression that his compositions rank in workmanship with those of the great continental masters. In his use of the modern orchestra Elgar need be considered second to none. His overtures In the South ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... of a case of which I happen to have first-hand knowledge. In Jersey, near the bay of St. Brelade, is a cave, in which we dug down through some twenty feet of accumulated clay and rock-rubbish, presumably the effects of the last throes of the ice-age, and ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... Their further title of "the Knights and Brethren of St. John the Evangelist" suggests Johannite inspiration and was clearly an imposture, since they included Jews, Turks, Persians, and Armenians. De Luchet, who as a contemporary was in a position to acquire first-hand information, thus describes the organization of the Order, which, it will be seen, was entirely Judaic. "The superior direction is called the small and constant Sanhedrim of Europe. The names of those employed by which ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... besides an admirable training. For the artist works entirely upon honour. The public knows little or nothing of those merits in the quest of which you are condemned to spend the bulk of your endeavours. Merits of design, the merit of first-hand energy, the merit of a certain cheap accomplishment which a man of the artistic temper easily acquires - these they can recognise, and these they value. But to those more exquisite refinements of proficiency and finish, which the artist ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... trip into Idumaea. Also, I travelled into Syria in obedience to the command of Sulpicius Quirinius, who, as imperial legate, was curious of my first-hand report of affairs in Jerusalem. Thus, travelling wide and much, I had opportunity to observe the strangeness of the Jews who were so madly interested in God. It was their peculiarity. Not content with leaving such matters to their priests, ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... and records, as well as printed reports of societies, newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, and books. Many of the subjects dealt with, not having been touched upon in any previous historical work, have demanded a first-hand study of records, often difficult to find access to, and even more difficult to summarize in an ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... German Occupation, tells the story of four eventful years. In all that trying time, each night, no matter how weary he was, he forced himself to set down the events of the day. From these records he wrote a book that by virtue of its first-hand information and its literary art ranks among the most important of the books called ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... old chap, and ask your questions first-hand," said Sir Reginald, handing over the instrument to ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Mr. CHARLES WOOD, there are two good most seasonable Ghost Stories, by CHARLES W. WOOD, the "Rev. F.O.W." The first is not new, as there is a similar legend attached to several old Manor Houses, one of a Sussex Family House, the Baron had first-hand, from a witness on the premises. It lacked corroboration at the time, and is likely to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 27, 1890 • Various
... good tight case. Tombstone was startled by the news that Juan Soto had been a member of a bandit band in California. The sheriff was able to give some first-hand testimony concerning the defendant's nocturnal habits. But the community's excitement slumped to sullen anger when the jury brought in its verdict and Juan Soto smiled as he departed from the ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... nourishing her soul. If it is true that the best in poetry, art, literature and oratory, as well as the greatest uplift to character, finds its source in that Book the girl should come into real touch with it that it may feed her expanding soul. It is this sort of first-hand, individual study while she is still a girl which will help her later to turn to the Book for encouragement, comfort and strength, and lead her to great thoughts and the attempting of great things because her own ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... importance in the Rumanian administration. I remained in that country until late in the autumn, motoring more than five thousand kilometres, and touching the Rumanian front at many places. My opinion, then, of the Rumanian cause is based on first-hand ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... only increased his fame. Moreover, his three years' exile in England (1726-1729) had been of untold value, for they had given him a first-hand acquaintance with English rationalism. He had been brought up to discount religious "superstition" but the English thinkers provided him with a well- considered philosophy. Full of enthusiasm for the ideas of his English friends, he wrote Letters on the English—a triumph of deistic philosophy ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... represented as purchasers of girls. Friendly and confidential relations were established with some of the most influential White Slave dealers. By these means valuable first-hand information was obtained regarding the White Slave trade. The agents were told the price of girls, the methods employed in the business, and, in some cases, the corrupt relations existing between ...
— Chicago's Black Traffic in White Girls • Jean Turner-Zimmermann
... evil enough without any rumours. Over various dinner-tables Mr. Britling heard this and that first-hand testimony of harshness and spite. One story that stuck in his memory was of British prisoners on the journey into Germany being put apart at a station from their French companions in misfortune, and forced to "run the gauntlet" back to their train between the fists and bayonets ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... in offices. Thus, in the town of which I speak, several ladies who are very much "in society," support themselves by entertaining "paying guests," while others are stenographers. The former, I was told, by the way, make it a practice to avoid first-hand business contacts with their guests by sending them their bills through the mail, and requiring that response be made by means of ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... institutions as demand his service in accordance with the tradition of his family. The tendency to despise the homely duties of a city councillor or poor law guardian is, however, passing. There are few schools which do not welcome visitors to speak to the boys who have first-hand acquaintance with the life of the poor or who are indeed of that life themselves. In this way boys get to realise, as far as it is possible through sympathy, what it means to be out of work, what it means to ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... sad—most lamentable. But I had, you perceive, the positive statement of a woman who should have known the facts first-hand, if any one did. Owing to her physical state, it was impossible to cross-examine her, and her sudden death made it impossible to refer her to you. I had to ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Plants" is a revised and enlarged edition of a memoir communicated to the Linnaean Society in 1865, and published in the ninth volume of its Journal. There was an extra impression, but, beyond the circle of naturalists, it can hardly have been much known at first-hand. Even now, when it is made a part of the general Darwinian literature, it is unlikely to be as widely read as the companion volume which we have been reviewing; although it is really a more readable book, and well worthy of far ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... who was in command of the small bark de Buys, the undersigned can make Your Honourable Worships no report worth any serious consideration, since his statements and annotations are so misleading that it is evident {Page 100} at first sight that he can never have had any first-hand knowledge or ocular view of the matters referred to by him, seeing that he has hardly ever been nearer to the land than 3 miles off it, at which distance, however, he pretends to have seen a river with a small island before its mouth, together ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... they seem to have little or nothing in common with their surroundings. Now and then a clear, fresh voice is heard from out of the woods and fields, or over the city's din, speaking with the convincing eloquence of immediate knowledge and first-hand observation; but there are so few of these voices that they do not amount to a chorus, and a ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... little opportunity for reading. But he took in much knowledge at first-hand by observation, which was perhaps better; and as he hit against all sorts of minds, he became in time somewhat reflective and philosophical. Through daily view of the yellow water, and perhaps the glare of the bright sun on it, or ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... to have first-hand knowledge of irrigation, I have been impressed with the peculiar advantages which surround the irrigation rancher. The high productiveness of irrigated land, resulting in smaller farm units and denser settlement, as well as the efficiency and alertness of the irrigator, have ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... the almost inevitable incident of educational growth, and leaves the deeper question of the legitimate demand for the higher training of Negroes untouched. And this latter question can be settled in but one way,—by a first-hand study of the facts. If we leave out of view all institutions which have not actually graduated students from a course higher than that of a New England high school, even though they be called colleges; if then we take the thirty-four ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... his own, any officer is expected to have both a comradely feeling and an imaginative interest. Any Army officer is a better man for having studied the works of Admiral Mahan and familiarized himself with the modern Navy from first-hand experience. Those who lead sea-going forces can enlarge their own capacities by knowing more, rather than less, about the nature of the air and ground establishments. The submariner can always learn something useful to his own ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... for his Kaiser; "the only really able man we have," says Eugene sometimes. Snuffles and lisps; and travels in all, as they count, about 25,000 miles, keeping his Majesty in company. Here are some glimpses into the interior, dull but at first-hand, which are worth clipping and condensing ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... So a first-hand knowledge of our own most interesting work among the Esquimaux was not for me on that occasion—and there has arisen no opportunity since. Mr. Knapp, who had planned to spend the rest of the winter at Point Hope, would ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... hero-worship but to present the man exactly as he was; a review of his chief works, which is intended chiefly as a guide to the best reading; and a critical estimate or appreciation of his writings based partly upon first-hand impressions, partly upon the assumption that an author must deal honestly with life as he finds it and that the business of criticism is, as Emerson said, "not to legislate but to raise the dead." This detailed study of the greater writers of a period ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long |
