"Pastime" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my dear Frank?" said the dowager Lady Aveleyn, one day, when a thick fog debarred her son of his usual pastime. ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... darker. Hunting, if indulged in regularly over a period of years, is a pastime that seldom fails to lend a fairly deepish tinge to the patient's complexion, and her best friends could not have denied that even at normal times the relative's map tended a little toward the crushed strawberry. But never had I seen it take on so pronounced a richness ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... source of danger. The drama and the essay appear so full of difficulties that the student regards their study seriously, as a task, and finds it necessary to apply himself vigorously in order to master them. On the other hand, the novel is so delightful, so easy, that he looks upon it as a pastime. A superficial reading often gives him knowledge of many of the main facts, and a mistaken idea that he knows the story. It is the task of the teacher to get him to read with careful attention and with imagination ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... which are found in the comedies of our time, and which are their meat rather than the spice, are the reasons why he who says 'Comedy' seems to speak of a buffoon's pastime. They wrong themselves who give to such gracious poesy a sense so unworthy. True comedy, properly regarded, has for its object the representation in divers personages of almost all the actions of familiar life. To hold the mirror up to human life it bestows attention no less upon ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... By moonshine do the greensour ringlets make, Whereof the ewe not bites, and you whose pastime Is to ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... Sir, long ago," answered the damsel; "though that they lived here once is true enough. There's Bonza's Chair, you must have passed before the fog came on, and could not but have noticed; and the hurling-stones he used to throw for pastime with his brother, they are to be seen still; but all that about his having such long arms that he could snatch the sailors from the decks of ships as they went by, is, in my judgment, but an old wife's tale, and I don't credit it. There, see, Sir; the fog is thinning; that is ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... safeguard to her, jumped at the invitation, and expressed her gratification and thanks for so kind a consideration on my aunt's part. I have not alluded to Harry all this time, but of course, whenever his mother and I were occupied in amorous alliance, he was equally engaged in the same delicious pastime with Ellen. And, I may add, that once or twice I had seized a favourable opportunity of gratifying the little lecherous creature with what she called a feast of my noble prick. She, of course, was delighted at my aunt's proposition as she at once foresaw how she would have me all to herself for ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... dynamite, slaughter of fingerlings, and unholy baits devastate the fish, so that 'Free Fishing' spells no fishing at all. This presses most hardly on the artisan who fishes fair, a member of a large class with whose pastime only a churl would wish to interfere. We are now compelled, if we would catch fish, to seek Tarpon in Florida, Mahseer in India: it does not suffice to 'stretch ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang
... are not attracted by pebbly streams? Wading in the water and skating flat stones on its surface was a joyous pastime for them. The banks of the river were strewn with stones of various colors and sizes such as would naturally attract ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... treaty with many of the tribes, held at Deerfield in 1735, the St. Francis Indians were represented, and agreed to the arrangement for perpetual peace; but a few years elapsed before they were again engaged in their bloody pastime. War was declared against France in 1744, and the Abenakis were soon hovering on the frontiers. In 1746, Keene and Concord, in New Hampshire, felt their power, and many captives were carried to Canada. In 1752 Capt. Phineas Stevens proceeded to Canada, as a delegate from the governor of ...
— The Abenaki Indians - Their Treaties of 1713 & 1717, and a Vocabulary • Frederic Kidder
... which the reader is already acquainted with, and of which a few words will suffice to remind him. The Puritans who founded the American republics were not only enemies to amusements, but they professed an especial abhorrence for the stage. They considered it as an abominable pastime; and as long as their principles prevailed with undivided sway, scenic performances were wholly unknown amongst them. These opinions of the first fathers of the colony have left very deep marks on the minds of their descendants. The extreme regularity ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... tenants of the flood, With grace of motion that might scarcely seem Inferior to angelical, prolong Their curious pastime! shaping in mid air (And sometimes with ambitious wing that soars High as the level of the mountain tops,) A circuit ampler than the lake beneath, Their own domain;—-but ever, while intent On tracing and retracing that large round, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... their watery way, And, 'O my sire!' did Ellen say, 'Why urge thy chase so far astray? And why so late returned? And why '— The rest was in her speaking eye. 'My child, the chase I follow far, 'Tis mimicry of noble war; And with that gallant pastime reft Were all of Douglas I have left. I met young Malcolm as I strayed Far eastward, in Glenfinlas' shade Nor strayed I safe, for all around Hunters and horsemen scoured the ground. This youth, though ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... read Matthew Hale and became a master in thought. Benjamin Franklin would sit up all night at his books. Thomas Jefferson read fifteen hour a day. Patrick Henry read for employment, and kept store for pastime. Daniel Webster was a devouring reader, and retained all that he read. At the age of fourteen he could repeat from memory all of Watt's Hymns and Pope's "Essay on Man." When but a youth, Henry Clay read books of history and science and practiced giving their contents ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... walking carefully with his toes turned in, breaking off twigs to mark a place, guessing at the time by the sun, and grunting "Ugh" or "Wagh" when anything surprised him. Disparaging remarks about White-men, delivered in supposed Indian dialect, were an important part of his pastime. "Ugh, White-men heap no good" and "Wagh, paleface—pale fool in woods," ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... trouble to obtain one's necessary food, even in this latitude; that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals, and yet retain health and strength.... I am convinced both by faith and experience that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship, but a pastime." This book has, directly or indirectly, caused more to desire the simple life and a return to nature than any other ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... sat on the seashore, repeating to myself the lines of Mr. Watson's poem, and breathing the fresh air, which an official of the bath-house told me was made in Germany (meaning thereby that the wind was blowing from the east), the thought struck me that it would be a pardonable pastime to employ the spare time I had before the boat started for Lerwick, in writing a Sonnet to Mr. William Watson. In such exercitations it is necessary to ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... side of nature, I was soon promoted to the post of night nurse, with every facility for indulging in my favorite pastime of "owling." My colleague, a black-eyed widow, relieved me at dawn, we two taking care of the ward between us, like regular nurses, turn and turn about. I usually found my boys in the jolliest state of mind their condition allowed; for it was a known fact that Nurse Periwinkle ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... they are come of age and fit to do for themselves; so that they may not be under the power or jurisdiction of any other woman. Neglect not to give them education suitable to their birth, and let them be trained up to every exercise and pastime requisite for king's sons to learn. This is all I have ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... mouth would grow neither larger nor smaller for it." But I stood still and wept, and looked on the ground. "Why should I weep?" she asked. Her cousin Clas had a bride of his own already, and only took a little pastime with her, and so she must cure me now with another ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... appearance to his mode of life. Consequently one observes that they have altogether withdrawn, in public at any rate, from every sort of pleasures. One sees no longer Cardinals in masquerade or on horseback, nor driving with women about Rome for pastime, as the custom was of late; but the utmost they do is to go alone in close coaches. Banquets, diversions, hunting parties, splendid liveries and all the other signs of outward luxury have been abolished; ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... frolics he of course well knew, Rare pastime for the ragamuffin crew! Who welcome with the crowing of a cock, This hero ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... and manoeuvring of airships is not a pastime within the reach of a private purse. The British Government had taken advantage of the enterprise and rivalry of private makers of aeroplanes, whom it wisely permitted to run the risks and show the way. No such policy was possible in the manufacture of airships, which is ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... fiendish mischief. When by this means the belief in a league between witch and demon had become firmly established, witchcraft grew into a well-defined crime, hateful enough in itself to furnish pastime for the torturer and food for the fagot. In the fifteenth century, witches were burned by thousands, and it may well be doubted if all paganism together was ever guilty of so many human sacrifices in the same space of time. In the sixteenth, these holocausts were appealed to as conclusive ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... all last year's single-trigger double-barrel hammer-less ejectors are as flintlocks! "Murderous weapon, and bloodthirsty shooter"—some old-fashioned gunners of to-day will say, just as our grandfathers spoke when breechloaders came in, and that delightful pastime with ramrod and wads, powder flask and shot belt went out. So it ever has been! Since the day some horrid fellow used a bronze sword instead of a stone on a stick, and since Richard of the Lion Heart took to that "infernal instrument," the cross bow, because of its ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... sufferers being ourselves, and the 8th and 52nd Regiments. To cheer the soldiers, the bands played in camp of an evening, while some officers and men engaged in sport of various kinds; but the angel of Death was hovering over my poor regiment, and few of us had the heart to join in pastime while our comrades lay stricken and ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... lead and of wood already hold her; cold earth must have her soon. But it is not my Charlotte, it is not the bride of my youth, the mother of my children, that will be laid among the ruins of Dryburgh, which we have so often visited in gaiety and pastime. No, no. She is sentient and conscious of my emotions somewhere—somehow; where we cannot tell; how we cannot tell; yet would I not at this moment renounce the mysterious yet certain hope that ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... reply. Was not what Woodell was saying but the truth? Did he really care for Jenny or she for him? What had it been but pastime? He could give her up. It would be a little hard, of course. It is always so when a man has to surrender those close relations with a woman which are so fascinating, and which come only when there has been established that sympathy between them which, if not love, is involuntarily considered by each ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... bonne, who had taken care of my mother in her infancy and had never left her, now took charge of me. She watched over me faithfully and filled up my childhood with affectionate attention and innocent pastime. My uncle, the Count, who had never been married, loved, petted, and indulged me in every wish. When I grew old enough, he secured a governess well qualified to teach and discipline me. Under her care, with the aid of masters ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... important part of the study, the one which becomes increasingly interesting as readers grow older and the stories they study become more and more complex and difficult. The study of the characters of Shakespeare's heroes and heroines is more than interesting pastime for men and women—it ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... For it was this experience which threw him back on his own peculiar talents for a livelihood, and drove him into the police force. Had he been able to enter any other profession, his genius might have been stunted to a mere pastime, instead of being, as now, utilised for the ...
— The Case of The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner
... suspicious oysters, and dog's meat. Beneath its stalls at night, many a 'lodger' often slumbered; and every Sunday morning it was the theatre of a lively and amusing scene, wherein was performed the renowned pastime of 'niggers dancing for eels.' All the unsavory fish that had been accumulated during the week, was thus disposed of, being given to such darkies as won the most applause in the science of the 'heel and toe.' The sport used to attract hundreds of spectators, and the rum ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... about angling is that it is just the pastime for an idle man. "The lazy young vagabond cares for nothing but fishing!" exclaims the despairing mother to her sympathetic neighbour of the next cottage listening to the family troubles. Even those who ought ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... observed. These same flowers also varied much in the number of the petals, and occasionally in the number of the stamens and pistils; so that they were semi-monstrous in structure, yet they produced plenty of fruit. Mr. Thompson remarks that in the Pastime gooseberry "extra bracts are often attached to the sides of the fruit." (10/124. 'Catalogue of Fruits of Hort. ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... who formed the nucleus of the philosophical salons was airing its theories and enjoying its increasing vogue, there was another circle which played with the new ideas more or less as a sort of intellectual pastime, but was aristocratic au fond, and carefully preserved all the traditions of the old noblesse. One met here the philosophers and men of letters, but they did not dominate; they simply flavored these coteries of rank and fashion. In this age of esprit no salon was complete without its sprinkling ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... May-green hedges. As there was not room for three abreast, the colonel made up the rear-guard, and was consoled by having Miss Middleton's figure to contemplate; but the readiness of her joining in Crossjay's pastime of the nest-hunt was not so pleasing to a man that she had wound to a pitch of excitement. Her scornful accent on "Marriage" rang through him. Apparently she was beginning to do with him just as she liked, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... greater part of two years. He found it, he says, "a barbarous country, where chemical spirits were so misunderstood, and chemical instruments so unprocurable, that it was hard to have any Hermetic thoughts in it;" and he had betaken himself to "anatomical dissections" as the only kind of scientific pastime that Irish conditions favoured. On returning to England, in 1654, he had settled in Oxford, to be in the society of Wilkins, Wallis, Goddard, Ward, Petty, Bathurst, Willis, and other kindred scientific spirits, most of them recently ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... conclusion was an orthodox belief of celestial mechanics until 1853, when Professor Adams of Neptunian fame, with whom complex analyses were a pastime, reviewed Laplace's calculation, and discovered an error which, when corrected, left about half the moon's acceleration unaccounted for. This was a momentous discrepancy, which at first no one could explain. But presently Professor Helmholtz, the great German physicist, suggested that a key might ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... her shoulder, with the little frown of displeasure that always greeted such ignorance on Norma's part, had but one reply: "Tante," she would declare, and continue her measured walk about the floor. So, for pastime, Norma began teaching her the figures of a dance then on the boards at the Opera House, to which her little ladyship lent herself with readiness. The motions, sometimes approaching the grotesque in the lean and elderly chorus-lady as she bobbed about the ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin
... in the morning, his delight and pleasure of an afternoon was to come and sit with the sick man's company in the sunny autumn evenings; and he had the honour more than once of giving Miss Bell his arm for a walk in the Temple Gardens; to take which pastime, when the frank Laura asked of Helen permission, the Major eagerly said, "Yes, yes, begad—of course you go out with him—it's like the country, you know; everybody goes out with everybody in the Gardens, and there are beadles, you know, and that sort of thing—everybody walks ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... roaming about our lovely lochs—Highland or Lowland—and have the excitement of landing fish, coupled with our enjoyment of fresh air and grand scenery. For this reason, if for no other, cultivate as often as you can, without entrenching on the nobler pastime of fly-fishing, the art of trolling—for we must confess that there is an art in this as in everything else; and should my reader be sceptical on the point, he has only to try conclusions, when he gets the chance, with some old troller, and he will ...
— Scotch Loch-Fishing • AKA Black Palmer, William Senior
... men of the South engaged, at first, in politics as an elegant pastime. They had plenty of leisure and plenty of money. They did not take to literature and science, because these pursuits require severe work and more or less of a strong bias, for a thorough exposition of their profound penetralia. It may be, too, ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... he was privately relishing life with enviable gusto. In those days he could and did: being alive was the most satisfying pastime he could imagine, or cared to, who was a thundering success in his own conceit and in fact as well; since all the world for whose regard he cared a twopenny-bit admired, respected, and esteemed him in his public status, and admired, respected, ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... to write anything for publication. At the age of nearly sixty-two I received an injury from a fall, which confined me closely to the house while it did not apparently affect my general health. This made study a pleasant pastime. Shortly after, the rascality of a business partner developed itself by the announcement of a failure. This was followed soon after by universal depression of all securities, which seemed to threaten the extinction of a good part ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... nuisance; while, if he succeeded, they would gain an immense advantage over their enemies. Such, at least, is the comment of the historian; but he makes no remark on the incredible levity of the Athenians, to whom the gravest interests of state were matter for mirth and pastime; and he has not a word of censure for Nicias and his "sober-minded" partisans, who, in their eagerness to ruin a political opponent, showed a criminal disregard for the ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... refuse to cultivate Chrisoganus and the Arts, preferring a life of dalliance and pleasure, and to patronise plays and players instead. Other characters are introduced representing the Law, the Army, and Merchandise, who also neglect the Arts and live for pastime ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... tormentors. A massacre at the Bicetre, in which six thousand had perished, had warned these unhappy people that neither the prison wall, nor night, was to be security against the rage of the bloodhounds with whom murder seemed to have grown into a pastime; and after having seen several of their number shot down within their dungeon, they determined to attack them, and, if they must die, at least die in manly defence. Their rush was perfectly successful; it had the effect of a complete surprise; and though their only weapons were fragments of their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... honour of knighthood, as did General Carlton for similar success in Canada—the one becoming Sir William Howe, and the other Sir Guy Carlton; but neither did much afterwards to merit the honour. The English officers seemed to have anticipated a pastime in America instead of hard fighting and severe service, and the German mercenaries anticipated rich ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... probably few Presidents have kept since then. He strove to care for his health by daily exercise. In the morning he swam in the Potomac, often for a long (p. 207) time; and more than once he encountered no small risk in this pastime. During the latter part of his Presidential term he tried riding on horseback. At times when the weather compelled him to walk, and business was pressing, he used to get his daily modicum of fresh air before the sun was up. A life of this kind ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... not the Head. What I refer to is the pursuit and collection of decapitated human heads, belonging generally to personal enemies of the collector; it is a sport common in Borneo, and among other interesting, if primitive, nationalities. This pastime is, I understand, a favourite one with some students of the college. It is practised, I need hardly say, under the very strictest supervision; there must be a certificate signed by the British Resident, and a special written recommendation from the Director of ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... with them. Back in the seventies, in the time of the trail herds, Dodge was a howling cow-town. There was a period of its existence when the punchers used to indulge in the pastime of shooting up the place; but there were a great many of these frolicsome riders, and too much wanton revolver shooting is sure to breed trouble if it is combined with hard liquor, gambling, and a tough floating population. The prominent business men of Dodge watched the hectic ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... although she is like me." Then the matter dropped, and she slopped her cunt clean. I used to like a woman whom I knew not to wash it, when I was going to fuck her again, Camille had humored me in this, and as my lust came on for my second poke, used to bring my amatory pastime by looking at the cunt with my pleasure signs on it. So Camille washing astonished me. "I am going to be married, and ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... and stimulating to his taste. Such work holds a man together, braced at all points; it does not suffer him to doze or wander; it keeps him actively conscious of himself, yet raised among superior interests; it gives him the profit of industry with the pleasures of a pastime. This is what his art should be to the true artist, and that to a degree unknown in other and less intimate pursuits. For other professions stand apart from the human business of life; but an art has its seat at the centre of the artist's doings and sufferings, deals directly with his experiences, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and season. Our pent-up energies required a vent, and we rushed round like caged animals suddenly loosened. "Gently," cried our good-natured custodian; but we paid little heed to his admonition; our blood was up, and we raced each other until we were wearied of the pastime. ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... were piled up, a hideous mound, in the corners of the court. The priests, without delay, met with the same fate. A moment sufficed for trial, and verdict, and execution. Night came. Brandy and excitement had roused the demon in the human heart. Life was a plaything, murder a pastime. Torches were lighted, refreshments introduced, songs of mirth and joviality rose upon the night air, and still the horrid carnage continued unabated. Now and then, from caprice, one was liberated; but the innocent and ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... Almost as soon as Uncle Moses could have done so he had landed his first catch and left it floundering on the bank. Katharine had never thought about the cruel side of angling. It was left for this forlorn creature to teach her that of this pretty pastime there is something else than lounging beside charming waterways and beneath green boughs. Angleworms might not suffer much, might even get used to being tortured, as Montgomery averred; but how about that beautiful shining thing done to slow death on the sward beside her? A new pity ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... experience, even if the history of the world had not furnished many examples to prove it, that prophecy is risky. It is a fascinating pastime inasmuch as it affords the imaginative faculties full scope, but at the same time it is a mistake to let the imagination run riot. I have no intention, in considering the future of Japan, of depicting an Arcadia or a Utopia ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... empty houses, and through empty hearts. I know Francesca will be proud of you. Women admire you heroes. Rusty sages, Pale poets, and scarred warriors, have been Their idols ever; while we fair plump fools Are elbowed to the wall, or only used For vacant pastime. ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... time, when leaves grow green, And blossoms bedeck the tree, King Edward would a hunting ride, Some pastime for to see. ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... attic I clambered one day, When the roof was resounding with rain. And there, among relics long hidden away, I rummaged with heart-ache and pain. A hope long surrendered and covered with dust, A pastime, out-grown, and forgot, And a fragment of love, all corroded with rust, Were lying ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Hollister at the house of his friend Pinney, whose wife was her sister. She had soft gray eyes, a pretty color in her cheeks, rosy lips, and a charming figure. In the course of the evening somebody suggested mind-reading as a pastime, and Lansing, who had some powers, or supposed powers, in that direction, although he laughed at them himself, experimented in turn with the ladies. He failed with nearly every subject until it came Mary Hollister's turn. As ...
— At Pinney's Ranch - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... broken spirit. But the political atmosphere there was the sort he liked, and that was something. He came to a region of comparative quiet; he left behind him a region peopled with furies, madmen, devils, where slaughter was a daily pastime and no man's life safe for a moment. In Paris, mobs roared through the streets nightly, sacking, burning, killing, unmolested, uninterrupted. The sun rose upon wrecked and smoking buildings, and upon mutilated corpses lying here, there, and yonder about the streets, just as they ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 'it is the first time that I have seen the pastime, and I would fain practise it ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... leisurely ascended—imaginary papers were glanced at, imaginary scandal was discussed with elderly shakings of the head, and—regrettable to say—imaginary glasses were lifted lipwards. Heaven only knows how the germ of this dreary pastime first found way into his small-boyish being. It was his own invention, and he was proportionately proud of it. Meanwhile, Charlotte and I, crouched in the window-seat, watched, spell-stricken, the whirl and eddy and drive of the innumerable snow-flakes, wrapping our cheery little world in an uncanny ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... strip of dark blue firmament visible above the admirably proportioned cornice he caught sight of two planets flaming high in the west, and in close juxtaposition. Necessity had made him somewhat of an astronomer, and he had studied Chinese astrology as a pastime. He recognized these lamps of the empyrean as Mars and Venus, and, up-to-date American though he was, drew comfort from that favoring augury. Then, in stepping from the roadway to the sidewalk, he stumbled over a heavy curb, and laughed at the reminder ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... geological features was called: Bowers had a scheme for returning from the Pole by the Plateau instead of the Barrier: Oates might be heard saying that he thought he could do with another chupattie. A favourite pastime was the making of knots. Could you make a ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... young men having been making merry with their sweethearts, were at their coming home to come over a heath. Robin Good-fellow, knowing of it, met them, and to make some pastime, he led them up and down the heath a whole night, so that they could not get out of it; for he went before them in the shape of a walking fire, which they all saw and followed till the day did appear: then Robin left them, and at his ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... wondering whether she would recognize his back. He hoped that it was not because of her mishap that she was not in a habit. He could hardly be expected to divine the true reason. This was, shortly, that the lady, who had expected to see him, could not enjoy a pastime from participation in which footmen are for a variety of reasons so rigorously debarred. Incidentally, she had seen Anthony before he had seen her, and the smile with which he had credited her companion's ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... been a study and a pastime. Every cleric is familiar with the prose translations which aided his boyhood's labours in rendering the poetry of Horace and Euripides into modern speech. But prose efforts are one thing, and poetical efforts are another, and just as many have laboured to present Virgil and Homer in modern ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... permitted to carry arms, but compelled by law to practice from childhood the use of the bow, and accustomed to consider sword-play and quarter-staff as a necessary part and parcel of education, and the pastime of every leisure hour. The "fiercest nation upon earth," as they were then called, and the freest also, each man of them fought for himself with the self-help and self-respect of a Yankee ranger, and once bidden to do his work, was trusted to carry it out by his own wit as best he could. ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... suffering because therapeutics will have overtaken every disease that the flesh is heir to, or better still, that some new discovery will have made it possible to heal all sicknesses without the tedious work of surgeons and nurses. Healing will become a pastime like table-turning. Neither will there be any criminals because the whole social state will be so happy, contented, and knit together that inducement to crime will cease. Others will treat the ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... that is, Or how could I have written this? And, should it ever cross your mind That, now and then, you were unkind. You never, never, were at all! Remember that! It's natural For one like Mr. Vaughan to come, From a morning's useful pastime, home, And greet, with such a courteous zest His handsome wife, still newly dress'd, As if the Bird of Paradise Should daily change her plumage thrice. He's always well, she's always gay. Of course! But he who toils all day, And comes home hungry, tired, or cold, ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... my fun!' said Esther hastily, and gave him the ring back, but his cordiality was gone. He felt no inclination to renew the idle-word pastime, said it was time to go, and, swinging his cane vexedly, struck off the heads of the flowers and the weeds as he went. Esther walked by his side in complete silence, a phenomenon of which he presently became conscious. He felt rather ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... mentioned before, the strictness of Batavian etiquette is likely to be modified by the introduction of a pastime so essentially English as lawn-tennis. The courts of the Bataviasche Lawn-tennis Club are in the Zoological Gardens, south of the King's Plain. The club holds numerous tournaments in the course of the year, and competitions are established for both a ladies' and gentlemen's ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... inhabited this bothy, and the rain had driven them all indoors. In better weather they spend the leisure of the evening at the game of quoits, which is the standard pastime among Scottish ploughmen. They fish the neighboring streams, too, and have burn-trout for supper several times a week. When I entered, two of them were sitting by the fire playing draughts, or, as they called it, "the dam-brod." The dam-brod is the Scottish laborer's billiards; and he ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... and his somewhat self-conscious and pedantic manner did not encourage effusion.[192] Like certain other poets he affected the tone of a man of the world and deliberately avoided topics relative to his own art. The two themes on which he expanded were riding and skating—of which latter pastime he had indeed made himself the laureate. Goethe himself was passionately fond of both exercises, but from "the patriarch of German poetry" he might have expected discourse on higher themes. Apparently, however, their relations remained sufficiently ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... thee, Prince Leviathan; and I promise thee that thou shalt long continue with me among the sweet vapours of this place, and scourge the shades of the great princes of the earth for thy pastime. Hem! a fine fellow, and seems to have had quite enough of men and things. Despair, audacity, hate, rancour, agony, and pride, have torn deep furrows in his soul. He looks even at us and hell without trembling. Faustus, art thou become ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... dear sister, to speak to you as a brother. Whatever may be the force of a custom preserved during nineteen years, I shall know how, in sharing the fatigues of my troops, to deprive myself of what is a pastime to them. Other occupations will but too easily absorb me entirely. Cease to see by any other vision than your own. Trust to the evidence of your own senses, and no other. I have learned, through a long series of misfortunes, how to be a man, and to be upon my guard against ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... performing duties for which they were scarcely better paid than the commonest soldier—these were the men whom our city fathers were so blandly and pleasantly removing from their field of duty. Was it wonderful, then, that the whole affair seemed quite like pastime to those engaged in it; or that they made themselves jocosely eloquent upon the subject, whenever one of the grave minority ventured to lift his voice against ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... This amiable pastime of throwing stones at each other was just then interrupted by the entrance of Maggie for an appointed sitting, before going to her business of carrying a tray of cigarettes about the Ritzmore. She gave Hunt a pleasant "good-morning," the pleasantness purposely stressed in order ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... rely on yourself for that. You must say, 'I will not,' and it will be very easy. Besides," she added, with another laugh, in which there was a rather nervous ring,—"besides, you know all this is only a comedy, or a pastime. You are ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... sex played its part. Bold advances of the man, with internal fear to offend, mock retreats of the girl, with internal throbs of complacency, and life invested with a new and growing charm to both. Leaving this pretty little pastime to glide along the flowery path that beautifies young lives to its inevitable climax, we go to a matter more prosaic, yet one that proved a source of strange ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... favorite pastime, and many a time the prairie rang with the yelping of the twenty or twenty-five dogs which he kept under the care of a special negro servant at the fort. His deadly aim was known to all. An army officer who insulted him was severely wounded in a duel; he often ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen
... one pastime which could be practiced without making a noise of any sort to attract undesirable attentions, the boy took to it in self-defence. But before long it had become his passion. He read, by stealth, everything that ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... popular pastime among the machine men of Zor was the exploration of the Universe. This afforded them a never ending source of interest in the discovery of the variegated inhabitants and conditions of the various planets on which they came to rest. Hundreds of space ships were sent out in all ...
— The Jameson Satellite • Neil Ronald Jones
... before the mob of gentlemen who read with ease. There has been much prate lately of as innocent a foible as ever served to make men self-forgetful for a few seconds of time—the collecting of first editions. Somebody hard up for 'copy' denounced this pastime, and made merry over a virtuoso's whim. Somebody else—Mr. Slater, I think it was—thought fit to put in a defence, and thereupon a dispute arose as to why men bought first editions dear when they could buy last editions cheap. Brutal, domineering fellows bellowed their complete indifference ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... protect ours. The main lines were, generally, in easy cannon range, in most places within musket range, and the pickets of the two armies were, for the most part, in speaking distance, and the men often indulged in talking, for pastime. Except in rare instances the sentinels did not fire on each other by day, but sometimes at night firing was kept up by the Confederates at intervals to prevent desertion. During the last months of ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... Then the old man struck back. The pain in the colonel's arm was excruciating. His saber rattled to the stone flooring. Before he could recover the weapon the victor had put his foot upon it. He was still smiling, as if the whole affair was a bit of pastime. ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... and certain fact is that Bannockburn was fought on a point of chivalry, on a rule in a game. England must "touch bar," relieve Stirling, as in some child's pastime. To the securing of the castle, the central gate of Scotland, north and south, England put forth her full strength. Bruce had no choice but to concentrate all the power of a now, at last, united realm, and stand just where he did stand. His ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... not often, in these days, when the pastime of bibliography is reduced to a science, that one is rewarded, as one so often was a quarter of a century ago, by picking up an unregarded treasure on the bookstalls. But the other day I really had a pleasant little "find," and ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... shrieking of the western wood-pewees—a vocal performance that they, in their innocence, seriously mistake for melody—and continued until night had again settled on the vale. In this place I spent three or four days, giving myself up to my favorite study and pastime, and a list of all the birds that I saw in the neighborhood would surprise the reader. However, a mere catalogue would be of slight interest, I apprehend, and therefore mention will be made only of those species which I had not seen elsewhere, passing by such familiar feathered folk ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... hasty gesture, which she did not see, and then, ashamed at his feeling of impatience, went and sat beside her, and arranged the silks in her basket. Engaged in this light pastime, he did not hear a low rap ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... related the story as told by a cavalry lieutenant, who with a party reconnoitered a distance from camp. The thick growth of grass and vines made ambuscading a favorite pastime with the Spaniards. With smokeless powder they lay concealed in the grass. As the party rode along the sharp eye of a colored cavalryman noticed the movement of grass ahead. Leaning over his horse with sword in hand he plucked up an enemy whose gun was levelled at ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... Of me you shall not win renown; You thought to break a country heart For pastime, ere you went to town. At me you smiled, but unbeguiled I saw the snare, and I retired: The daughter of a hundred Earls, You are not one ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... making the tour of his town according to his laudable official habit, Beauvisage from the top of the bridge chanced to catch sight of the fair Parisian who with outstretched arms and gracefully bent body was pursuing her favorite pastime. A slight movement, the charming impatience with which the pretty fisher twitched her line from the water when the fish had not bitten, was perhaps the electric shock which struck upon the heart of the magistrate, hitherto irreproachable. ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... upon the lifeless body of the otter and cried out, "This creature which you mistook for an otter, and which you have robbed and killed, is my son, Oddar, who for mere pastime had taken the form of the furry beast. You are ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... perhaps even serenade. This looks as if they were furiously in love, and has therefore been included among the rules of the game. Youth must keep up the poetic tradition of "fiery." Besides, it is an inexpensive pastime—the cinematograph costs forty centimes—and you really cannot sit in ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... with it in the hard outer light; but his own oblivions were too brief, too vain, to hurt any one but himself, and he had a vague and fanciful kindness for certain persons whom he met, figures of mystery and anxiety, and whom, with observation for his pastime, he ranked as those who were fleeing from justice. Justice was outside, in the hard light, and injustice too; but one was as absent as the other from the air of the long aisles and the ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... cruel, and untamable, digs its food out of graves," cachinnating the while like a thousand or fifteen hundred of brick. There are other ravenous beasts in the world; but this one is peculiar in that he laughs over his work, which is also his pastime. Now, if you wish to hear a Boy laugh—a horse-laugh, a giant-laugh—just put some other animal, human or otherwise, through a course of torture. Twist a pig's tail until it comes out; or, if you don't like the occupation, ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... to discuss details. About the middle of October he had two interviews with the Earl of Clare, Lord Chancellor of Ireland. These important conferences took place at Holwood, where he was then occupied in marking out a new road; for his pastime every autumn was to indulge his favourite pursuit of planting trees and otherwise improving his grounds. The two ablest men in the sister kingdoms must have regarded one another with interest. They were not unlike in figure except that Clare was short. His frame was as slight as Pitt's; ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... the art and in any width or form, and it may be produced in many textures, although really intended for heavy effects. The making of such lace possesses a great charm for womankind in general, and will undoubtedly retain favor as long as needlecraft remains a pastime and employment with ...
— The Art of Modern Lace Making • The Butterick Publishing Co.
... really was a very dangerous pastime, for although sometimes the drift tunnel led us to a sunlit opening on the hillside, more often we reached a blind end and were forced to return to the main shaft and to "shin" up the rope, with from ten to ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... character deficient neither in courage nor backbone, were united to much good nature. Believing at last that I had sent for him in a fit of the vapours, he devoted himself to amusing me and abusing Bruhl—a very favourite pastime with him. And in this way he made out a call of ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... talked not of that. It was for France. So he went, not to return. Ah, yes! At Ypres, after only three months in the trenches. Then I say to the little mother, 'Courage! I, Leon Battou, am still a painter. The art which has been as a pastime shall be made to yield us bread. You shall see.' ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... eyes feasted on the scarlet hue of German blood, his ears were ravished with the sounds of German groans and sighs; and oftentimes, when the poor hunted fugitives were flying from his presence, he made a pastime of their misery for himself, by aiming at them with his own musket, to see how many he could bring down before they passed out ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... systematically, to write "finis" for Dickebusch. The church had already been pretty well shot up, as well as the surrounding graveyard where many of the tombs and monuments were smashed and the dead thrown from their graves. This blowing up of the dead seems to be a favorite pastime with the gentle Hun. They, the Germans, were now engaged in the demolition of the buildings along the principal streets and were doing it in a very thorough manner. We had here many demonstrations of a matter about which I have ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... dear sir. I did but own to Mrs. Braefield that I had paid a visit to Oxford in order to confer with a learned man on a question that puzzled me, and as abstract as that feminine pastime, theology, is now-a-days. I cannot convince Mrs. Braefield that Oxford admits other puzzles in life than those which amuse the ladies." Here Kenelm dropped into a chair ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... attached, still he prefers war; when he may live at home at ease, he insists on toil, if only it may end in fighting; when it is given to him to keep his riches without risk, he would rather lessen his fortune by the pastime of battle. To put it briefly, war was his mistress; just as another man will spend his fortune on a favourite, or to gratify some pleasure, so he chose to ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... come with me, thou wight yeman, And Robin thou soone shalt see; But first let us some pastime ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards
... temporarily deprives such a country and its few misguided prophets whose monomania is dread of that chimera, the "Colossus of the North," of the pastime of nestling up to Europe in the hope of annoying us. It postpones, too, the hope of the morbid ones that we shall come to war with a powerful enemy. Now, perhaps, even these will appreciate the remark of a diplomatist of a certain weak country in ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... not know where it was all leading to, or what it was leading up to as a final denouement, but he was inured to the taking of desperate chances. Peril was a pastime to him. He was ever watchful and ...
— Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist - Dudie Dunne Again in the Field • Harlan Page Halsey
... "and go take thy pastime in yonder forest, there wilt thou see the good flowers and grass, and hear the sweet birds sing. Perchance thou shalt hear some word, whereby ...
— Aucassin and Nicolete • Andrew Lang
... admitted, that Joachim's popularity began a little to decrease; for, though a boy has no objection to see his neighbour laughed at, he does not like quite so well to be laughed at himself, and there are very few who can bear it with good humour. And now Joachim had given such way to the pastime, that he was always hunting up absurdities in his friends and neighbours, and no one ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... prohibited by law the sportsmen of the period turned their attention to dog-fighting, and for this pastime the Bulldogs were specially trained. The chief centres in London where these exhibitions took place were the Westminster Pit, the Bear Garden at Bankside, and the Old Conduit Fields in Bayswater. In order to obtain greater quickness of movement many of ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... only by about two weeks when he joined me—to appreciate what I endeavored to instil into him, that while winning a boat-race was all very well, to take part in a victorious fight, in a real battle, was a good deal better. Sport is a fine thing as a pastime, and indeed it is more than a mere pastime; but it is a very poor business if it is permitted to become the one serious occupation ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... years ago I passed the winter in the wilderness of northern Maine. I was passionately fond of skating, and the numerous lakes and rivers, frozen by the intense cold, offered an ample field to the lover of this pastime. ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... pastime, diversion, fun, sport, entertainment. Gather, accumulate, amass, collect, levy, muster, hoard. Ghost, spirit, specter, phantom, apparition, shade, phantasm. Gift, present, donation, grant, gratuity, bequest, boon, bounty, largess, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor |
