"Primer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mr. Osborn, handing a book out of the pulpit. "It's a larger character—'long primer,' as I believe the printers call it. We'll have the lamps directly; but we are all of us rather partial to blind man's holiday—not to mention that oil is oil, and that Brother Spiers doesn't give it away. We know he couldn't afford ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... school three months every year. Samuel Wales carted half a cord of wood to pay for her schooling, and she learned to write and read in the New England Primer. Next to her, on the split log bench, sat a little girl named Hannah French. The two became fast friends. Hannah was an only child, pretty and delicate, and very much petted by her parents. No long hard tasks were set those ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... gush of pride greater than any he had since experienced. She had never used it, but it always hung upon the one nail in the one place, as a symbol of his love and of hers. And there, higher up on the end of the shelf barren enough of ornaments, God wot, were a broken toy and a much-defaced primer, mementos likewise of his childhood; and farther along the wall, on a sort of raised bench, a keg, the spigot of which he was once guilty of turning on in his infantile longing for sweets, only to find he could not turn it back again until all the ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... accuracy he recognized all signs that had to do with cattle. Though cows, half hidden in the brush, melted into the color of the hillside, he picked them out unerringly. Brands, at a distance so great that a tenderfoot could have made of them only a blur, were plain as a primer to him. ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... petites remarques que je fais tous les jours, et je n'en suis pas surprise. Du caractere dont elle est, celui du Marquis doit etre de son gout. La Comtesse est une femme brusque, qui aime a primer, a gouverner, a etre la maitresse. Le Marquis est un homme doux, paisible, aise a conduire; et voila ce qu'il faut a la Comtesse. Aussi ne parle-t-elle de lui qu'avec eloge. Son air de naivete lui plait: c'est, dit-elle, le meilleur homme, le plus complaisant, le plus sociable. D'ailleurs, le Marquis ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... of Pete. All the Primer Class children who attended the country school were afraid of the boy. He used to chase them and threaten to cut off their ears; once he whispered across the aisle to Bessie Saunders that he would like to eat little girls, and ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... December the twenty-fifth, from half after eleven until the following day. Dancing; also a Dragon will be roasted. R. S. V. P." The Disseisin crest with its spirited motto, "Saute qui peult," originated by the venerable Primer Disseisin, followed by his son Tortious Disseisin, and borne with so much renown in and out of a hundred battles by a thousand subsequent Disseisins, ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... lnguido latido, Sentimiento inefable de ternura, [900] Suspiro fiel de amor correspondido, El primer s de la mujer ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... chips. These I whittled into shavings or split into kindling. From my note-book I tore out a page, and from the ammunition box took a shot-gun shell. Removing the wads from the latter with my knife, I emptied the powder on a flat rock. Next I pried the primer, or cap, from the shell, and laid it on the rock, in the midst of the scattered powder. All was ready. Maud still watched from the tent. Holding the paper in my lelf hand, I smashed down upon the cap with a rock held in my right. There was a puff of white smoke, a burst of flame, and the rough ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... Clodd's Childhood of the World, two of that excellent series of History Primers, and The Young Geologist, all carefully selected, in the fulness of Mary's ignorance, for the little pupils of her imagination. She had brought no primer, as Mrs. Yellett's letter had distinctly said that the youngest child was ten and that all were comparatively advanced in their studies. More than ever Mary longed to penetrate the mystery of that Irish ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... at the bedside, bare feet wrapped in a ragged quilt, and a shawl around her shoulders, she picked out the first shell and placed it in the block. With one tap she forced out the old primer, inserted a new one, and drove it in. Next she plunged the rusty measuring-cup into the black powder and poured the glistening grains into the shell, three drams and a half. On this she drove in two wads. Now the shell was ready for an ounce and an eighth of number nine shot, and she measured ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... from the Gallic schools, although his followers no doubt began transcribing as opportunity offered and as material came to hand. Patrick himself wrote alphabets, sometimes called the "elements"; most likely the elements or the A B C of the Christian doctrine, corresponding with the "primer."[5] ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... scholar entered, walked the length of the room, knelt before the cross or picture, recited a prayer, then tremblingly approached the master, saying, "Your hand, Senor Maestro," when with a grunt the hand would be extended to him to be kissed. Little was taught besides the reading of the primer and ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... "poems" to the half-witted children at the Idiot Asylum. The trick of rhyming cannot be more usefully employed than in furnishing a pleasant amusement to the poor feeble-minded children. I should feel that I was well employed in getting up a Primer for the pupils of the Asylum, and other young persons who are incapable of serious thought and connected expression. I would start in the simplest ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... you a little primer this morning," she remarked after a short silence, "and I want you to say ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... within the year, in an almost similar case, another shipload had been drowned through that same blind, helpless, hopeless panic. The pride of race bubbled through the British Daily Press in prosaic long primer and double-leaded bourgeois. There was no saying aloud, "We rejoice that an Englishman has done this thing, after having it proved to us that it was above the foreigner's strength." The newspaper man does not rhapsodize. ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... smile and a sigh he took up the primer, and began heavily to con over the task which had been assigned him. As if banished from the society of the two others, he sat sad and solitary in one of the deep window-recesses, and after in vain struggling with the difficulties ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... drew out of the roar and commotion with a look of dumb terror on his countenance. He was defeated, puzzled, discomfited, frightened. Other cities had been to him as long primer to read; as country maidens quickly to fathom; as send-price-of-subscription-with-answer rebuses to solve; as oyster cocktails to swallow; but here was one as cold, glittering, serene, impossible as a four-carat diamond in a window to ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... written discussion. Students can get much help from good interpretative commentaries, such as: C. M. Lewis, 'The Genesis of Hamlet,' on which the theories here stated are partly based; A. C. Bradley, 'Shakspearean Tragedy,' pp. 89-174; Edward Dowden, 'Shakspere Primer,' 119 ff.; Barrett Wendell, 'William Shakspere,' 250 ff.; Georg Brandes, 'William Shakespeare,' one vol. ed., book II, chaps. xiii-xviii; F. S. Boas, 'Shakespeare and his Predecessors,' 384 ff.; S. T. Coleridge, 'Lectures on Shakspere,' including the last two or three pages of ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... first year embraced the entire range of elementary branches, from the primer to the Latin grammar. About three-fourths of those who attended this first school were children of freedmen; the others, making up the advanced classes, were born free and constituted an aristocracy of ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 2, April, 1900 • Various
... great barons and their followers held their lands. For their tenure was liable to homage and fealty, as understood in the feudal sense, to wardships and impediments to marriage, to fines for alienations, to what English legists call primer seizins, rents, reliefs, escheats, and, finally, forfeitures; this last was at all times more strictly observed in England than in any other feudal country, and by its enactments so many noble families have, in the course of ages, been reduced to beggary, and their chiefs ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... much confusion among writers who have referred to this subject in regard to the "Black Deities" of the codices. Dr Brinton's remarks on this subject in his late work, "A Primer of Mayan Hieroglyphics," does not clear up the confusion. Apparently he has not discovered that quite a number of these are merely black figures of well-recognized deities not thus usually colored. It appears also, judging by his statements, that Dr. Brinton has failed ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... Robert was of proper age, his father sent him over to the road-side school at Long Benton, kept by Rutter, the parish clerk. But the education which Rutter could give was of a very limited kind, scarcely extending beyond the primer and pothooks. While working as a brakesman on the pit-head at Killingworth, the father had often bethought him of the obstructions he had himself encountered in life through his want of schooling; and he formed the noble determination that no labour, nor pains, nor self-denial on his ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... charge of powder in an envelope of serge, and gently drove it home with the rammer, then in like manner introduced the shell, the studs of which creaked faintly in the spirals of the rifling. When the primer was inserted in the vent and all was in readiness, Honore thought he would like to point the gun himself for the first shot, and throwing himself in a semi-recumbent posture on the trail, working with one hand the ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... the right and left on the sides of the road. The artillerymen had turned the gun and loaded it with a solid shot. Instantly a wide lane opened through our ranks; the man with the lanyard drew the fatal cord, fire burst from the primer and the muzzle, the long gun sprang up and recoiled, and there seemed to be a demoniac yell in its ear-splitting crash, as the heavy ball left the mouth, and tore its bloody way through the bodies of the struggling mass of ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... be, to be found in the books over which Una labored—the flat, maroon-covered, dusty, commercial geography, the arid book of phrases and rules-of-the-thumb called "Fish's Commercial English," the manual of touch-typewriting, or the shorthand primer that, with its grotesque symbols and numbered exercises and yellow pages dog-eared by many owners, looked like an old-fashioned Arabic grammar headachily perused ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... Her personal memory included the better part of a hundred years, and she had strangely jumbled her own experience and observation with those of many old people who died in her young days; so that she might have been taken for a contemporary of Queen Elizabeth, or of John Rogers in the Primer. There are a thousand of her traditions lurking in the corners and by-places of my mind, some more marvellous than what is to follow, some less so, and a few not marvellous in the least, all of which ...
— An Old Woman's Tale - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... commercial effort were as they should be. Things were moving slowly, they must of necessity move slowly, and Storri had grown impatient. The Russian's warmth was expected; Mr. Harley had read him long since like a primer book. Storri was excitable, volatile, full of fever and impulse, prone to go off at tangents. In some stress of nerves he had sent for Mr. Harley to urge expedition or ask for explanations. The thing had chanced before. Mr. Harley would cool him into calmness with a dozen words. Storri's ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... was a loaded French hand grenade, fitted with percussion primer; and it lay last at the end of a long row of similar grenades along the shaded ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... My parents let me play about in the open air, and did not put me to school until I had turned my sixth year. One day, playing in the shoemaker's shop, William Farrel asked me if I knew my letters. I answered 'No.' He then took down a primer from a shelf, and began to teach me the alphabet, at the same time amusing me by likening the letters to familiar objects in his shop. I soon learned to read, and in about six weeks I surprised my father by reading from an easy book which ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... reading his proof. And he smiled, and pointed to it (the proof I mean) pathetically, and with a kind of humor, as much as to say: "What can you expect, Pisistratus? My new baby in short clothes—or long primer, which is all the ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the use of pupils in Standard 1 and upwards. These books are intended mainly for recreational reading, both at home and at school. The number sent in each exchange is based on the school roll, exclusive of primer classes, on a scale of not fewer than one per child, while for small schools it is usually possible to increase this to two or three books per child. Exchanges are made at least once a year, with further ...
— Report of the National Library Service for the Year Ended 31 March 1958 • G. T. Alley and National Library Service (New Zealand)
... beyond the mere parade-ground work (and that is all the civilian ever sees) the book brings you to a region where nothing else is considered than the one thing, attack, attack, attack. There is something very grim and inexorable in this primer of war, this A B C of the principles of destruction. And if the innocent little pocket manual contains a codification, so condensed as to be amazing, of the ways to slay your enemy, the officers are ready with ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... adulatory. Do not use too much discretion in profiting of the Landgrave's naturalization of you; but go pretty often and feed with him. Choose the company of your superiors, whenever you can have it; that is the right and true pride. The mistaken and silly pride is, to PRIMER among inferiors. ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... that he would meet me there; and when Cousin Emily Elizabeth sent me word that she had got a loge—which means a little square pen in the gallery, cushioned off like a first-class pew—and wanted me to go with her to hear the great primer-donner, I just got that dress out again, and set the frizzing-pins to work, and did myself up so scrumptiously that I don't believe that a creature on Sprucehill would have known me. Don't say this is extravagant, and flying in the face of Providence. If ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... British Government. Such of them as had been brought up in any faith at all had for the most part originally professed some form of Calvinism; they had very probably learnt their letters from a primer which in one of its rude cuts represented John Rogers at the stake, surrounded by his wife and seven children, and in their after lives they were more familiar with the "Pilgrim's Progress" than with any other book save the Bible; so ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... fairies then wait on repletion? Do our dreams come from below, and not from the skies? Are we angels, or dogs? Oh, Man, Man, Man! thou art harder to solve, than the Integral Calculus—yet plain as a primer; harder to find than the philosopher's-stone—yet ever at hand; a more cunning compound, than an alchemist's—yet a hundred weight of flesh, to a penny weight of spirit; soul and body glued together, firm as atom to atom, seamless as the vestment without joint, warp or woof—yet divided ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... for a year or two to a dame's school as a sort of easy introduction to school life; and in the very same street as that in which the Lloyds lived there was such a school where two rather gaunt and grim old-maid sisters aided one another in the application of primer and taws. To this institution Mrs. Lloyd thought it would be well for Bert to go. His father had no very decided views to the contrary, but on Bert himself being consulted, it became very clear that his mind was quite ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... a cricket by the kitchen fire. He has a primer open before him at the alphabet. His round eyes are fixed upon the page as long as Frank is looking at him, but he requires constant watching. His teacher sits near-by, with a Latin dictionary resting ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... when I was a wee laddie. I was in the 'Third Primer,' and could read pretty big words," and he fumbled in his jacket-pocket for the collection of dog-eared leaves which represented ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... said Mr. Mavering. He seemed to say ma'am to her with a public or official accent, which sent Mrs. Primer's mind fluttering forth to poise briefly at such conjectures as, "Congressman from a country district? judge of the Common Pleas? bank president? railroad superintendent? leading physician in a large town?— no, Mr. Munt said Mister," and then to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... no primer mover in a great industry was better able to leave its helm than Standford Marvin. His lieutenants were able, efficient and contented. The factories would go of their own momentum for a year or two at least, then his son, Harry, just out of college, should be able, perhaps, to help. His lieutenants ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... conversazioni around fires, with a woman for queen of the circle,—her Nubian face, gay headdress, gilt necklace, and white teeth, all resplendent in the glowing light. Sometimes the woman is spelling slow monosyllables out of a primer, a feat which always commands all ears,—they rightly recognizing a mighty spell, equal to the overthrowing of monarchs, in the magic assonance of cat, hat, pat, bat, and the rest of it. Elsewhere, it is some solitary ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... display. Do you think, if a great and honoured statesman dies, sub-editors care two pins about his public services? Not they. All they worry about is whether he is worth double-column headings, a long primer intro., and a line across ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... first edition (1843). A second edition appeared in 1870. Tract 85 of the Tracts for the Times should be read with this Essay. If I were called upon to compile a Primer of "Infidelity," I think I should save myself trouble by making a selection from these works, and from the Essay on ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... translation, 1874) are worth studying. A less ambitious effort of the same kind by Samuel Neil (1861) is seriously injured by the writer's acceptance of Collier's forgeries. Professor Dowden's 'Shakspere Primer' (1877) and his 'Introduction to Shakspere' (1893), and Dr. Furnivall's 'Introduction to the Leopold Shakspere,' are all useful summaries of ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... ser hermano suyo, al fin se concertaron de yr lo a preguntar a las toninas de la mar y a las palomas qe andauan por el ayre y vltimamente lo fueron a preguntar al temblor de la tierra, al qual dixo qe era necesario qe se casasen para qe Vbiese hombres en el mundo y ellos se casaron y El primer hijo que tubieron se llamo sibo, y despues una hija qe se llamo samar y estos dos hermanos Vbieron otra hija que se llamo lupluban y esta se caso con vn hijo de los primeros hombres qe se llamo pandaguan y estos dos tubieron otro hijo llamado anoranor ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various
... Sylvester Primer, Prof. of Modern Languages, College of Charleston, S.C.: I beg leave to say that I consider it an excellent ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... principle of all, viz., that Art is one, is not partial, but includes all times and forms and sorts—is not exclusively aristocratic or democratic, or oriental or occidental. My favorite symbol would be a good font of type, where the impeccable long-primer rejects nothing. Or the old Dutch flour-miller who said, "I never bother myself what road the folks come—I only ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... amused; and thus, with nature for his hornbook, and art for his primer, did the little parlour of Edward Forster ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... its side there sprang up also a higher Latin instruction. We have shown in the previous epoch how Latin elementary instruction raised its character; how the place of the Twelve Tables was taken by the Latin Odyssey as a sort of improved primer, and the Roman boy was now trained to the knowledge and delivery of his mother-tongue by means of this translation, as the Greek by means of the original: how noted teachers of the Greek language and literature, Andronicus, Ennius, and others, who already probably taught not children ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... highest dignitary of a church; pri'macy; prim'ary; primer; prime'val (Lat. n. ae'vum, an age); prim'itive; primogen'itor (Lat. n. gen'itor, a begetter); primogeniture (Lat. n. genitu'ra, a begetting), the exclusive right of inheritance which in English law belongs to the eldest son or daughter; primor'dial (Lat. v. ordi'ri, to begin), existing ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... reverted to the lord again. The services to be performed for the lord were uncertain and unlimited. The copyhold was also subject to a variety of grievous taxes, which the lord had the privilege, upon many occasions, of imposing—such as aids, reliefs, primer seisin, wardship, escheats for felony and want of heirs, and many more, altogether so exorbitant and oppressive as often totally to ruin the tenant and rob him of almost all interest in his property. {56} The difference of the circumstances under which the lands in the manor of Merdon are, and, as ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... work with the more diligence on this book to-be of mine, that you inform me again and again that my penny tracts are still extant; nay, that, beside friendly men, learned and poetic men read and even review them. I am like Scholasticus of the Greek Primer, who was ashamed to bring out so small a dead child before such grand people. Pygmalion shall try if he cannot fashion a better, certainly a bigger.—I am sad to hear that Sterling sails again for ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... an idea," said Robert, "that it would be a good thing to put some pictures in the primer; just enough to make ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... books that come once or twice a month, only. It really seemed when the precious mail bags were opened that their treasures were too sacred to be even handled. We were so hungry and thirsty for news from home, for reading matter in this bookless country, where even a primer ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... post.... Your son at the present writing is mighty well employed in tumbling on the floor of the room and sweeping the sand with a feather. He grows a most delightful child, and very full of play and spirit. He is also a very great scholar: he can read his primer; and I have brought down my Virgil. He makes most shrewd remarks about the pictures. We are very intimate friends and playfellows. He begins to be very ragged; and I hope I shall be pardoned if I equip him ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... lies on the horizon. Here again one is struck by the similarity between a stage in the historic development of racial characteristics and a method employed at the present time to teach the immature minds of children that certain letters represent a particular object; in a kindergarten primer the sentence "see the rat and the cat" is accompanied by pictures of the animals ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... neighbors. Academic authority in the matter of English speech is represented at present by Mr. Henry Sweet, of the University of Oxford, whose Elementarbuch des gesprochenen Engliach, translated into his native language for the use of British islanders as a Primer of Spoken English, is the most accessible standard work on the subject. In such words as plum, come, humbug, up, gum, etc., Mr. Sweet's evidence is conclusive. Ladies and gentlemen in Southern England pronounce them as plam, kam, hambag, ap, gan, etc., exactly as Felix Drinkwater does. I could ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... first to be exercised by our young men who lead that life; and quite in the spirit of that education which would repeat in the child the history of the race, we are scarce out of the swaddling bands of the primer and catechism before we would remove all questions to the court of our own jurisdiction. The mind is not a tabula rasa at birth, we learn, but, so soon as may be, we will remedy that, and erase all records copied there. The treasure ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... Ginn & Co., Boston, a copy of the "Finch Primer." This is another one of those bright little books for our small brothers and sisters; it has colored ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 30, June 3, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... keen-sighted and very imaginative Gruithuisen believed that in some instances they represent roads cut through interminable forests, and in others the dried-up beds of once mighty rivers. His description of the Triesnecker rill-system reads like a page from a geographical primer. A portion of it is compared to the river Po, and he traces its course mile by mile up to the "delta" at its place of disemboguement into the Mare Vaporum. From the position of some rills with respect ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... what was worse they preferred to be imprisoned than to listen to the archbishop's harangues. From Hereford it was announced that "rebellion is rampant, attendance at church is contemptuous, and John Hareley read so loudly on his latin popish primer (that he understands not) that he troubles both minister and people." In Oxford and amongst the lawyers in the Inns of Court and in the Inns of Chancery popery and ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... schoolroom. There were ways, however, of evading inexorable law and circumventing base injustice. He hid the precious thing under a thistle just outside the window. The teacher had sometimes a brief season of apathy on hot afternoons, when she was hearing the primer class read, "I see a pig. The pig is big. The big pig can dig;" which stirring in phrases were always punctuated by the snores of the Hanks baby, who kept sinking down on his fat little legs in the line and giving way to slumber during the lesson. At such a moment Anthony ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... am only a primer to teach you to spel, Which is something that nobody does very wel. A sweet little primer, A dear little primer, Sing hel, bel, tel, fel, sel, nel, ...
— How Doth the Simple Spelling Bee • Owen Wister
... credit, who at this most opportune moment underwent a political conversion, which earned him employment on the one hand, and the charge of apostasy on the other. For this kind of professional arithmetic, Howe felt and expressed just and utter contempt. Two and two make four in a primer, but in the field they may make three, or they may make five. Not to speak of the greater defensive power of heavy ships, nor of the concentration of their fire, the unity of direction under one captain possesses here ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... low-crowned hat on his head. Effi saw it and said: "What is the Chinaman doing here?" Innstetten himself seemed surprised at the picture and assured her that he did not know. "Either Christel or Johanna has pasted it there. Child's play. You can see it is cut out of a primer." Effi agreed with that and was only surprised that Innstetten took everything so seriously, as though it ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... ancestry, and was brought up by Christian parents in the fear of God. An excellent mother, an invalid in his childhood, sat much in her arm-chair with the Bible on her knee. She used it with her little boy as she would a primer. Before he was four years old he had learned to read it, and read through the New Testament; and that particular volume now remains the best part of his estate. He was ever afterwards a diligent student of the Bible, and never ceased to honor the father and mother who had led him in this way ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... the schools—indeed the whole work without these would be unorganized and fruitless—yet for "sowing the seed," for reaching those who are far off, we must depend on street preaching. The English primer has largely lost its power as a bait for the gospel hook. We must do our fishing for ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 49, No. 5, May 1895 • Various
... always desert his primer to follow the hangman's lumbering cart up Tyburn Hill, and, still a mere imp of mischief, he would run the weary way from Kensington to Shoe Lane on the distant chance of a cock-fight. He was present, so he would relate in after years, ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... short, simple sentence in written prose is difficult. In spoken discourse, as well, it is so easy to fall into the First Primer style that while the advantages of the use of the simple sentence are great, the ability to produce good sentences in succession ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... W. Arnett, a Lawrence teacher, writes verse and songs. In addition, she has issued a primer, the Kansas text-book and a primary reading chart for which she has a United States patent. Margaret Lynn, one of the faculty of Kansas University, is a writer of short stories and ...
— Kansas Women in Literature • Nettie Garmer Barker
... Cyrano de Bergerac, which lay on the carpet at my feet. I sat up erect and collected my thoughts as best I could after so strange a journey. And I wondered why it was that no one had ever prepared a primer of imaginary geography, giving to airy nothings a local habitation and a name, and accompanying it with an atlas of maps in the manner of the Carte du Pays ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... a four-page paper; and as it is set in long primer leaded and has a page of advertisements, there is no room for the crimes, disasters, and general sweepings of the outside world—thanks be! Today I find only a single ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... been taught on the sly in their childhood by their white playmates. Others knew their letters, but could not "put them together," as they said. I remember of a summer's afternoon seeing a young married woman, perhaps twenty-five years old, seated on a door-step with her primer before her, trying ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... human spirit, at whatever stage of immaturity, imbibes with such eager interest. Pearl, therefore, so large were the attainments of her three years' lifetime, could have borne a fair examination in the New England Primer, or the first column of the Westminster Catechisms, although unacquainted with the outward form of either of those celebrated works. But that perversity which all children have more or less of, and of which little Pearl had a tenfold portion, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... tendency to sudden floods of tears (apparently for no cause whatever, really from some secret spring of association, such as I remember was touched when I first found myself learning Latin from the same primer over which my mother and I had puzzled together), and these outbursts at first aroused my companions' contempt, ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... with Brady and Tate, And laid the Primer above them all, I've nailed a horseshoe over the grate, And hung a wig to my parlor wall Once worn by a learned Judge, they say, At Salem ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Hampshire, Maine had come a strange company, earnest, patient, determined, unschooled in even the primer of refinement, hungry for something the significance of which, when they had it, they could not even guess, anxious to be called great, determined so to be without ever knowing how. Here came the dreamy gentleman of the South, robbed of his patrimony; the hopeful ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... virulence, and either, for either side, with blithe impartiality. At times, though, the strained analogy between ballots and bullets evidently cracked, and rather floored the editor. For instance, in a pot-pourri of long primer and pica with a dash of Old English lower-case ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... lane, Whistling I wade the knee-deep leaves again, While eager Argus, who has missed all day The sharer of his condescending play, Comes leaping onward with a bark elate And boisterous tail to greet me at the gate; That I was true in absence to our love Let the thick dog's-ears in my primer prove.' ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... am sorry to say that I was disobedient on these occasions, as on many others. I did not go and play; I looked on, I listened, when Fetchke rehearsed her lesson at home. And one evening I stole the Russian primer and repaired to a secret place I knew of. It was a storeroom for broken chairs and rusty utensils and dried apples. Nobody would look for me in that dusty hole. Nobody did look there, but they looked everywhere else, in the house, and in the yard, and in the ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... want," Tom decided, after he had put small quantities in little steel bombs, and exploded them, at a safe distance, and under a bank of earth, by means of an electric primer. ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... y cortesias de que se ve rodeada en la actualidad, fuera de toda lucha directa con el hombre y libre de ser atacada por el como una rival a quien hay que anular y destruir por propia conservacion. En primer lugar, es un error el considerar que la intervencion de la mujer en la vida publica dara por resultado la rivalidad de los dos sexos. La atraccion y simpatia entre el hombre y la mujer nace precisamente de la ...
— The Woman and the Right to Vote • Rafael Palma
... our country education, from the primer to the university, is absolutely free. The state does the whole business and in my state they print the school books, and more than that they give a man a professional education, too, without tuition fees—if ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... the great Public Schools in repute, taught so much of English Literature as might be comprised, at a rough calculation, in two or three plays of Shakespeare, edited by Clark and Aldis Wright; a few of Bacon's Essays, Milton's early poems, Stopford Brooke's little primer, a book of extracts for committal to memory, with perhaps Chaucer's "Prologue" and a Speech of Burke. In the great Public Schools no English Literature was studied, save in those which had invented 'Modern Sides,' to prepare boys specially ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... ever be said to reflect: they are all impulse; and so, instead of expounding dogmas, the missionaries give them the large type, pleasing cuts, and short and easy lessons of the primer. Hence, anything like a permanent religious impression ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... environment of unfavourable conditions Soko preached the cult of bushido, and was the first to embody that philosophy in a written system. His books—the Shi-do (Way of the Warrior) and Bukyo Shogaku (Military Primer)—contain minute instructions as to the practice and the morale of the samurai. Soko rejected the Chutsz interpretation, then in vogue, of the Chinese classics, and insisted on the pure doctrine of the ancient sages, so that he found himself ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... another, the thyroid may be compared to the accelerator of an automobile. That is a rough and superficial comparison because an accelerator lets in more of the fuel to be burned up, while the thyroid makes the fuel more combustible. It thus resembles more the primer, for a rich mixture of gasoline and air burns at a greater velocity than a poor one. But the action of thyroid could really be simulated only by some substance that could be introduced into the best possible of gasoline mixtures, to increase its combustibility ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... of King's College tells me that these prayers also occur in W. de Worde's Primer of 1494 (sig. F 8 b). In this edition the words read "prout tibi placeret," but a copy at Lambeth in which the page has been reset, has "prout tibi placet." The prayers also occur in some Sarum ...
— Henry the Sixth - A Reprint of John Blacman's Memoir with Translation and Notes • John Blacman
... was to get home, and find his family well! Tim brought him his primer, and proudly pointed to the pages he could read. Bella showed her first attempts at sewing; and, as for baby, she showed how well she ...
— The Nursery, June 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 6 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... way us do. Us raises our own victuals. I has 17 chillen through the year and they done scatter to the four winds. Some of them is dead. I ain't what I used to be for workin'. I jus' set 'round. I done plenty work in my primer days. ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... said, in monosyllabic tones, as though he were reading out of a child's primer, - "I shall al-ways be glad to see any of the young friends of my old col-lege friend Lar-kyns; and I do re-joice to be a-ble to serve you, Mis-ter Green; and I hope your son, ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... A primer of information about composing sticks, galleys, leads, brass rules, cutting and mitering machines, etc. 47 pp.; illustrated; 50 review ...
— Punctuation - A Primer of Information about the Marks of Punctuation and - their Use Both Grammatically and Typographically • Frederick W. Hamilton
... that behind every part of the vault of blue reposed the mysteries of the sky would also spur our imaginings. When our Pundit, in illustration of some lesson in our Bengali science primer, told us that the blue sphere was not an enclosure, how thunderstruck we were! "Put ladder upon ladder," said he, "and go on mounting away, but you will never bump your head." He must be sparing of his ladders, I opined, and questioned ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... am ready to go upon; and in Great Primer, and Pica notes, I reckon on sending in half a sheet a day; but the money for that shall likewise lye by in your hands till it is done. With the debates, shall not I have business enough? if I had ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... voyagers of long ago. The coffee habit was one of the signs of her progress in the white man's civilization, also had she emerged from the tepee into a log hut, another achievement. She had learned to read the primer and to write her name. Little Blue-Star attended school unhindered by a fond mother's fears that a foreign teacher might not spare ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... through volumes of verse, while he killed the hour before his appointment. His hand fell upon a small volume bearing the name of G. K. Chesterton, and opening it at random he read those lines descriptive of the illuminated breviary from which Alfred the Great, as a boy, learned his spiritual primer at his mother's knee: ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... the horses had to fall into a walk. He was not sure whether when it came to the pinch he could summon nerve to try a bolt, but he laid himself out to establish friendly relations. Dingwell, reading him like a primer, cocked a merry eye at ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... being the only tongue well understood by his parishioners. Scawen mentions the MSS. of the aforesaid “Anguin,” as he spells him, and laments their destruction. He also speaks of a “Matins” (possibly a Primer, or Hours of our Lady) in Cornish, which had ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner
... remarkable diligence and perseverance, he got ahead of his mother in knowledge. If learning was carried on in secret, there had rarely been found a more ardent pupil. Without inconvenient questions being asked, he succeeded in purchasing a copy-book and spelling primer, which were well used on all possible occasions. He actually went through the whole of the Bible when he could not master more than one in eight of the words. This man afterwards enjoyed the benefit of a college education in England, so that his ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... The people did not set themselves to combat prejudices with words alone, when the time was ripe for deeds; but while the Government was yet hesitating whether to put the musket into his hand for war, Christian men and women hastened to give him the primer for peace. Not waiting for legislative enactments, they took the freedman as he came all panting from the house of bondage; they ministered to his wants, strengthened his heart, and set him rejoicing on his way to manhood. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... of the brass case or shell, the primer, the charge of smokeless powder, and the bullet. The bullet has a sharp point, is composed of a lead core and a jacket of cupro nickel, and weighs 150 grains. The bullet of this cartridge, when fired from the rifle, starts with ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... "I've met 'em bigger than all the colleges up to Brunswick,—great white bears on 'em,—hungry as Time in the Primer. Once we came kersmash on to one of 'em, and if the Flying Betsey hadn't been made of whalebone and injer-rubber, she'd a-been stove all to pieces. Them white bears, they was so hungry, that they stood there with the water jist ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... other two days for his board. He continued in this way for six months. But it was very evident that David was not born for a scholar. At the end of that time he could read a little in the first primer. With difficulty he could make certain hieroglyphics which looked like his name. He could also perform simple sums in addition, subtraction, and multiplication. The mysteries of ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... B.C., when Aristotle and Demosthenes had reached manhood (being then 34), had attained a considerable mass; as one may see at a glance from Jebb's chronology attached to his Primer. There was a splendid poetical library, including all the great tragedians, with the older and the middle Comedy. There were the three great historians—Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon; and the orators—- Lysias, Isocrates, and Isaeus; there were the precursors of Socrates ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... speli[n], the Primer iz masterd within tree m[u]n[t]s at most. The children then proseed tu praktis this fonetik readi[n] for s[u]m teim, til they kan read with fluensi from the jeneral luk ov the w[u]rd, and not from konsideri[n] ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... once, and that was up at Smiffle Show adunnamany years agoo. Prime minister, they told me he was, up at London; a leetle, lear, miserable, skinny-looking chap as ever I see. 'Why,' I says, 'we do{a}nt count our minister to be much, but he's a deal primer-looking than what yourn be.'" (Gurt, great; Smiffle, Smithfield; adunnamany, I don't know how many; lear, thin, ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... hard work," he warned. But he had come prepared for acquiescence. He took a primer from his pocket and, lighting a match, ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... stories and poems as may aid in making and keeping the impressions of their country vivid and lasting. There has been a rising wave of production of primers and first reading books during the past five years. Some libraries have experienced a primer craze and it becomes exceedingly difficult to decide which ones to buy and bow freely to duplicate them. Primers and "easy books" have a use for children who are learning to read but too free a use of them may be one of the influences responsible for that lack of power of sustained attention ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine |
