"Penmanship" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Writing-materials are on the table before her, and a small fan, for it is hot weather; also a dish of peaches. Sunlight suffuses the tent interior, softening the round contours of the face, and caressing pleasantly the small plump hand busy at letter-writing. The even flow of her penmanship is suddenly disturbed; picking up her parasol, she indulgently beats some unseen object, lying concealed against ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... to read, choosing as his text-books Henry the Minstrel's Life and Adventures of Sir William Wallace and the Gentle Shepherd of Allan Ramsay. Not until his twenty-sixth year did he acquire the art of penmanship, which he learned "upon the hillside by copying the Italian alphabet, using his knee as his desk, and having the ink-bottle suspended from his button." During the next fourteen years he followed his shepherd's calling, making it romantic ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... this time sufficiently mastered the art of penmanship to enter the events of the day in my journal with facility, which I seldom failed to do. My notes are, however, far too numerous to be copied. I therefore write out only such as I deem most likely to be interesting to ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... settled myself in my seat, drew the tantalizing letter from my pocket, and proceeded to read and re-read it again and again. A very few perusals sufficed to fix its contents in my memory, so that I could repeat every word with my eyes shut. Still I continued to scrutinize the paper, the penmanship, and even the tint of the ink. For what purpose, do you ask? For no purpose, except that I hoped, in some mysterious manner, to obtain more light on the subject. No light came, however. The more I scrutinized and pondered, the greater ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... Government. There was very little parleying. Each brave loyalist took the paper, and put his name to it. [Footnote *] Dr. O'Donnell was the first to sign his name, and after he had done the rest followed and with much credit to the celerity of their penmanship. Then they all moved out and were escorted up to Fort Garry, where they were held for a considerable period, despite the prayers of prominent persons who had taken no active part on either side, for ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... useful to all who have any thing to do with penmanship—for sale, at No. 34, opposite the ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks
... to write that polite letter, which said nothing, cost Gratian a sleepless night, and two or three hours' penmanship. She was very conscientious. Knowledge of this impending visit increased the anxiety with which she watched her sister, but the only inkling she obtained of Noel's state of mind was when the girl showed her a letter she had received ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... was shewn some curiosities; a Hebrew manuscript of exquisite penmanship, and a Latin translation of Aristotle's Politicks by Leonardus Aretinus, written in the Roman character with nicety and beauty, which, as the art of printing has made them no longer necessary, are not now to be found. This was one of the latest performances of the transcribers, for Aretinus ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... to listen to his reminiscences. He wrote as well as he talked. His pointed and lucid style gave to his printed performances a semblance of cogency which they did not really possess; and his letters—even his shortest notes—were as exquisite in wording as in penmanship. As he grew older, he became increasingly sensible of the charms of "Auld Lang Syne," and he delighted to renew his acquaintance with the scenes ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... took a single turn.[228] This is excessive acuteness. Smith's sentences are not by any means all of one length, or all of the same construction. It need only be added that the habit of dictating would in his case arise naturally from his slow and laboured penmanship. ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... particular case being given, it may then be possible to answer the question; previously it is impossible.——Three chapters therefore remain, viz.—Chap. IV. on Languages; Chap. V. on Elocution; and Chap. VI. on Penmanship. ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... omissions of the government at home, was in many instances the place of trial, and even the sentence of the transports; to save the labour of penmanship, "ditto," was sometimes the sentence found under another name, in the line of which 7, or 14, was written; not at full length, but in numerals. Some "indents" exhibited erasures: in one, a sentence of ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... memory. A person who keeps a journal naturally tries during the day to remember things he sees, until he can write them down. Then the act of writing helps to still further fix the facts in his memory. The journal is a first-class teacher of penmanship. All boys and girls should take pride in having the pages of their journals as neat and handsome as possible. Compare one day's writing with that of the one before, and try to improve every day. Keeping a journal cultivates habits ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... surprised withal, inasmuch as he finds time to say, hastily enough, "Give me of your best; describe, toujours, describe!" To which I can only reply, "Humph!" Mon ami, I do not write for the sake of showing off my penmanship, nor my authorship. When I have time, I lie down, on my stuffed-seaweed bed, and write my thoughts leisurely and enjoyably. A letter is something which would not be set down if the two persons concerned were within speaking distance. The ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... is even stronger. While Froebel had a university education, Pestalozzi was an eminently ignorant man; his penmanship was almost illegible, he could not do simple sums in multiplication, he could not sing, he could not draw, he wore out all his handkerchiefs gathering pebbles and then never looked at them afterward. Froebel was not only a reader but a scientific reader, always seeking first to find out ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... "I am finishing my last line; there, the doctor ought to give me three good marks, and set me up as an example of clever penmanship ...
— Leslie Ross: - or, Fond of a Lark • Charles Bruce
... provides abundant drill in writing words. At the same time it trains pupils to form their copies in accordance with the most modern and popular system of penmanship, and saves much valuable time for ...
— Health Lessons - Book 1 • Alvin Davison
... his home work for the day, twelve sums, four pages of penmanship, and the fable of "The Dog and the Rabbit" to learn by heart. He began with the fable, reciting it in a loud voice, like the hero in the play: "'A dog was roaming about the fields, when from behind a little hill jumped a rabbit, which had ...
— Pinocchio in Africa • Cherubini
... however,—learned writing before reading. Not she herself, meek and yielding by nature, but some peculiar quality of her mind, obstinately refused in reading to harness a vowel alongside of a consonant, or vice versa; in writing, however, she would manage this. For penmanship along slanted rulings she, despite the general wont of beginners, felt a great inclination; she wrote bending low over the paper; blew on the paper from exertion, as though blowing off imaginary dust; licked her lips and stuck out with the tongue, from the inside, now one cheek, now the ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... my delight and great my anxiety to read what was written therein, and all that evening I pored over the manuscript, on which she had bestowed great pains, and crossed all the t's without missing one. But it is never an easy task to decipher a woman's meaning, particularly when not addicted to penmanship; and although my excellent wife had attended a penman's instructions, and had acquired the reputation, in her native place, of being an accomplished clerk, still, since her marriage, she had applied her genius to the making of tarts and other confections, rather than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... which was more lucrative than fishing, and furnished, in time, a hat, pair of shoes, and an overcoat. He then rented a room and slept in a bed. Before long he found employment addressing envelopes for a mailing firm, at which his fine and rapid penmanship secured him steady work; and in a few months he asked his employers to indorse his application for a Civil Service examination. The favor was granted, the examination easily passed, and he addressed envelopes while he waited. Meanwhile he bought new and better clothing and ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... Winslow, was sent from her far away home in Nova Scotia to Boston, the birthplace of her parents, to be "finished" at Boston schools by Boston teachers. She wrote, with evident eagerness and loving care, for the edification of her parents and her own practice in penmanship, this interesting and quaint diary, which forms a most sprightly record, not only of the life of a young girl at that time, but of the prim and narrow round of daily occurrences in provincial Boston. It thus assumes ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... smoking his brier-wood, he noticed that the man next him spent a great deal of time poring over a letter, holding it close to the blaze, now at arm's-length, which was hardly surprising, considering the penmanship of the more common variety of billet-doux. The man was plainly disappointed that Peter would not notice or comment. Finally he folded it up, and with sentimental significance returned it to the left side pocket of his flannel shirt, and remarked ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... able to devote to his penmanship, his reading, and his arithmetic were by no means many; for, save for the short time that he was actually in school, he was, during all these years, laboring hard on his father's farm, or hiring his youthful strength to neighbors who had need of help in the work of field or forest. In pursuit ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... it is so full of bliss ’Twould suit the very niggers, And lads I know a-hawking go Who scarce can make the figures But penmanship’s no requisite, Keep matters square by chalking With pencil or with ruddle, that’s Exact enough ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... I should come to the ground among the figures. But when I got to "The Grand," as we used to call our office in those days, from its site in St. Martin's le Grand, I was seated at a desk without any further reference to my competency. No one condescended even to look at my beautiful penmanship. ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... a magnificent Latin Psalter of the twelfth century, the best period of penmanship. Sir Edward Thompson draws attention to the fact that this volume originated at Westminster, as may be inferred by the prominence given in the calendars and prayers to St. Peter and St. Edward, even without its identification with an entry in the Abbey Inventory.* A further ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... into a habit of taking notes, and learn to write a good hand, for editors and publishers won't care to be bothered with you if you don't, and maybe the time will come when you won't be able to make out your own writing. I've known men of that stamp, whose penmanship suggested the idea that a drunk fly had dipped its legs in the ink-pud an' ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... Public School practised the new Oval Penmanship by filling their Copy-Books with the following popular Catch-Line: "When you have a Chance to Soak the ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... have written worse scrawls than I do," said a boy at Rugby when his teacher remonstrated with him for his bad penmanship; "it is not worth while to worry about so trivial a fault." Ten years later, when he had become an officer in the Crimea, his illegible copy of an order caused the loss ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... forgery there are a dozen methods for detecting it—in the quality of the ink, in the quality of paper, in microscopic examination of the irregularities in penmanship, in "labored" tracings that show exaggerated tracings, in composite photography, and by a dozen little common-sense observations that scarcely can ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... another soldier, a German, who was the post baker, were put in charge of it. This Frenchman had been selected from the ranks of Captain Sully's company and made quartermaster's clerk on account of his superior education, his excellent penmanship and his good character. I always have thought he was some unfortunate young gentleman, serving under an assumed name. The money was all in stout wooden mint boxes, holding each $1,000 in silver, and in gold about $25,000 or more, there being usually one or two boxes ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... that with matter received at a rate of forty words per minute and worked off at twenty-five words per minute a serious congestion or delay would result, and the newspapers were more anxious for the news than they were for fine penmanship. ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... with the letter, yet mystified to think that Balzac should use a secretary in writing a love-letter. And Balzac wrote back that he had written the letter with his left hand, and that was doubtless the reason it seemed a different penmanship. At one stage of their evolution, lovers are often great liars, but at this time Balzac was only playing at love. He could not forget Madame De Berney, dying there alone in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... and a large sheet of heavy paper be put on the table before him. It is urged that the pencil be a heavy one, and the paper tough and coarse, for the first writing of a writing medium is not even a fair specimen of penmanship, being heavy and very difficult to decipher. As his hand wanders here and there, his body may sway and the pencil be brought in contact with the paper. When he begins to write, the strokes are crude and jerky and uncertain. The first notes ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... think of Marguerite (Marguerite's) studying Latin? 3. Have you any doubt of Kathleen (Kathleen's) being happy? 4. We saw the lady (lady's) crossing the street. 5. Do you remember my (me) speaking to you about your penmanship? 6. We saw the old miser (miser's) sitting alone in front of his hut. 7. What is the good of your (you) going now? 8. There was no doubt of him (his) being promoted. 9. Trust to me (my) being on time. 10. Are you surprised at it (its) being him (he)? 11. No doubt ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... prepared, for home study, books on bookkeeping, penmanship and shorthand. Write for price list ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... until every finger of his right hand was sore. He spoke to worried doctors and frantic hospital administrators and hysterical nurses. His firm, fine penmanship deteriorated to a barely legible scrawl as writer's cramp knotted his hand and arm. His voice burned down to a rasping whisper. But columns climbed up his rough chart and broken lines pointed vaguely ...
— The Plague • Teddy Keller
... distinct penmanship, though minute; but, as Nuttie found, her father did not like to avow how little available were his eyes. He could write better than he could read, but he kept her over his correspondence for the rest of the morning, answering some of ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the apple was going to taste. But how absurdly inadequate this sounds! I suppose the truth is that such enthusiasms have become too utterly congealed in our blase minds when at last these minds have grown mature enough to grasp the principles of penmanship. So that whatever has been recorded about the sensations of extreme youth is ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... constitution, law, natural theology, mental philosophy, geometry, trigonometry, algebra, natural philosophy, astronomy, chemistry, botany, mineralogy, geology, natural history, and technology, besides drawing, penmanship, ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... as strict as he ought to been, And never was known to whip, Or even to keep a scholard in At work at his penmanship; 'Stid o' that he'd learn 'em notes, And have 'em every day, Spilin' hymns and ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... day I received a letter addressed in modish, angular penmanship, which, before I opened it, I felt sure had come from Mrs. ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... finished and written in the crabbed disguised penmanship it was part of my business to effect, I folded, sealed and addressed it, and summoning Vincenzo, bade him post it immediately. As soon as he had gone on this errand, I sat down to my as yet untasted breakfast and made some effort ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... "Timothy, or Herd's Grass, from the farm of A. B. Talcott." "Alsike Clover, from the farm of B. B. Hamm." Each lot was in a small cloth bag which had been made by one of the little girls as a sewing exercise; and each card had been written as a lesson in penmanship by one of the younger pupils, and contained, in addition to the data above mentioned, heads under which to enter the number of grains of the seed examined, the number which grew, the percentage of viability, the ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... Sunday's round jacket—to lay the joint production before Mr. Brandling, at Gosforth House. Glancing over the letter, Mr. Brandling said, "George, this will never do." "It is all true, sir," was the reply. "That may be; but it is badly written." Robert blushed, for he thought the penmanship was called in question, and he had written his best. Mr. Brandling, however, revised the letter, which was shortly after published in ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... finished by dinner time, for Marjorie's letters to her sister were not marked by any undue precision of style or penmanship, and as Marjorie laid it on the hall table to be mailed, she told King that she had ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... from the book. Press it between blotting-paper and allow it to dry naturally. When the new back is dry (not before) the label may be pasted on to it. If, however, the label is missing or too tattered to be of service, there is nothing for it but to write another one with your best penmanship, copying the original, if you have it, in facsimile. Such labels should be written with Indian (waterproof) ink upon rather thin paper of a different colour from the back. Light buff is the most useful colour, though pale blue and light green ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... chief accountant, while an expert accountant was put in charge of a moving-picture machine. Professor Brown was given charge in France; Professor Greene in England, and Professor Black in Italy; and their regional directors were professor this and that; a professor of penmanship in Rome, a professor of biology in Genoa, a professor of languages in Brescia, and a professor of something else in Naples, Milan, Venice, Trieste and Palermo. There was as much of school-teacher dictatorship ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... taking Dr. Pierce's Golden Medical Discovery. I took six bottles and it completely restored me to health. The discharge stopped from my side, and the cough has ceased. I am now able to follow my profession, which is a teacher of penmanship. I can walk ten miles any day without the least worry. If any one doubts this statement they can write me and I will verify ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... dark, knotted trunk was fastened a piece of light, delicate bark, stripped from a white-birch tree. On this was scrawled in big letters, by some instrument evidently not intended for penmanship:— ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... old lover, in an uncertain penmanship which suggested a trembling hand, of the trouble she had been put to in ascertaining his address, and then broached the subject which had prompted her to write. Four years ago, she said with the ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... Redmayne received, and supposed had come from his brother at Plymouth, was posted by Jenny on her journey to "Crow's Nest." We had written it together a week earlier and studied her uncle's indifferent penmanship very carefully before doing so. This blind I held valuable, and indeed it proved to be; for it concentrated attention on the port and led to the theory that Robert had escaped to ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... and the similarity of the handwriting to that of {74} Sir George Buc. Now it must be remembered that the MS. dedication was written in 1605, and the history after 1660! Surely an interval of fifty-five years must have made some difference in the penmanship of the worthy Master of the Revels. I think we must receive the comparison of handwritings with considerable caution; and, unless some of your readers can produce "new evidence" in favour of one or other of the claimants, I much fear that your reverend ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... paper, largely and in immaculate vertical penmanship, entitled "Friendship," Lilly, the tourniquet twist at her heart, sitting by. Her name was read later among the honorable five, true to manner, Mr. Lindsley seeming to caress it with ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... her the letter, with its neat, old-fashioned penmanship, its primness a little tremulous from the excitement of the writer at the time she had penned it. Susie read it carefully, and when she had finished she looked up at him with softened, ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... note from him a day or two ago, inviting her to some party or other, and his striking, sprawling penmanship was unmistakable. The letter had been opened, and Dolly remembered that Alicia had had several letters in the ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... a day or two before his death. Like the handwriting of most men, it was at its best between the twenty-fifth and the fortieth years of life; and in some instances it is a remarkably beautiful type of penmanship. But as time went on it deteriorated, and, while of course retaining its elementary characteristics, it became less and less easy to read, especially in those writings which were intended solely for his own perusal. As with other men of sensitive ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... translation. He was a rather shabby little man, a penman employed to do occasional odd jobs about the Foreign Office, such as engrossing documents and the like, by which he earned from eighteenpence to half-a-crown an hour, according to the style of penmanship required, and he was well known in the criminal courts as an expert on ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... hustled back into the drawer, for Miss Thorne was at odds with herself and the world. She was angry with Hepsey, she hated Winfield, and despised herself. She picked up a scrap of paper which lay on a glove, and caught a glimpse of unfamiliar penmanship. ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... Butler, when retired into her own apartment, perused with anxious wonder, was certainly from Effie, although it had no other signature than the letter E.; and although the orthography, style, and penmanship, were very far superior not only to anything which Effie could produce, who, though a lively girl, had been a remarkably careless scholar, but even to her more considerate sister's own powers of composition and expression. The manuscript was a fair Italian hand, though something stiff and constrained—the ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... straight to his rooms in Jermyn street and had gone to bed. He rose about ten o'clock, and after a light breakfast he sat down and wrote a short letter, cleverly disguising his own hand, and imitating the scrawly penmanship and bad spelling of ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... long speech of thanks from Mr. Van der Donk, at the end of which they were presented with an engrossed set of resolutions drawn up by the donor, which he had had copied that very morning, the language being as full of flourishes as the penmanship. ...
— The Hilltop Boys on the River • Cyril Burleigh
... Shepherd in learning was singularly tardy. He was, by a persevering course of reading, sufficiently familiar with the more esteemed writers in English literature, ere he attempted penmanship. He acquired the art upon the hill-side by copying the Italian alphabet, using his knees as his desk, and having his ink-bottle suspended from his button. In his twenty-sixth year he first essayed to write ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... The day of leisurely letter writing seems to have passed by. But she had long hours by herself when she could write out the good and pleasant things she was thinking about. Her letters were lovely, and strong, and helpful, and each was written with such exquisite penmanship, with such easy lines of beauty, that it was like a ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... % 590. Writing. — N. writing &c. v.; chirography, stelography[obs3], cerography[obs3]; penmanship, craftmanship[obs3]; quill driving; typewriting. writing, manuscript, MS., literae scriptae[Lat]; these presents. stroke of the pen, dash of the pen; coupe de plume; line; headline; pen and ink. letter &c. 561; uncial writing, cuneiform character, arrowhead, Ogham, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... in which the members of the professorial body told something about themselves in a great variety of handwriting: among other things, their full names and addresses, and their natures in so far as penmanship might reveal it. Ca; Ce; Cof; Collard, Th. J., who was an instructor in French and lived on Rosemary Place; Copperthwaite, Julian M., Cotton ... No Cope. He looked again, and further. No slightest ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... studying mathematics and practising penmanship most of the time. They will be most useful to me if ever I ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... on one of the laboratory tables a letter, without heading and without signature, written in a disguised hand, with an evident attempt to simulate the cramped script of a foreign penmanship. ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... the following morning at breakfast. In her hand she held the letter which contained the news—written in an old-fashioned, sloping style of penmanship on thin, heavily black-bordered note-paper. No one made any reply unless a sympathetic murmur from Isobel ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... in such material, effects may be produced which no penmanship could rival, most people, I fancy, think that a steel plate half engraves itself; that the workman has no trouble with it, compared to that of ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... and to speak the Arabian language in its purity; not forgetting in the meantime all such exercises as were proper for a prince to understand. But one thing which I was fond of, and succeeded in, was penmanship; wherein I surpassed all the celebrated scribes of ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... which were in such contrast to their sublime ones. That he understood National Economics has now become very certain. His grim semi-articulate Papers and Rescripts, on these subjects, are still almost worth reading, by a lover of genuine human talent in the dumb form. For spelling, grammar, penmanship and composition, they resemble nothing else extant; are as if done by the paw of a bear: indeed the utterance generally sounds more like the growling of a bear than anything that could be handily spelt or parsed. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... could read aloud adverse opinions upon her common sense, her judgment, or her pride, but to impugn her penmanship was to ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... his door again, sat down on the bed and opened the other letter. His hand shook as he unfolded it. He was so scared and excited that he could scarcely decipher the angular, girlish penmanship: ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... attendants attached to me, and was brought up in this grand palace with this [imagined] security. A learned tutor, who was skilled in public affairs, was appointed to [superintend] my education; so that I might acquire every science and art, and the practice of the seven varieties of penmanship; and my father always looked after me; the occurrences of every day and every moment were told to the king. I considered that same place as the whole world, and amused myself with toys and flowers; and I had procured for me every delicacy ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... sa-daijin, there existed acute rivalry. The kwampaku had the knack of composing a deft couplet and tracing a graceful ideograph. The sa-daijin, a profound scholar and an able economist, ridiculed penmanship and poetry as mere ornament. Their father's sympathies were wholly with Yorinaga, and he ultimately went so far as to depose Tadamichi from his hereditary position as o-uji of the Fujiwara. Thus, the enmity between Tadamichi and Yorinaga needed only an opportunity to burst into flame, and that ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... had been carried upon the very day of the capitulation a letter written by Montcalm only a few hours before his death, the feeble penmanship of which showed well how difficult it had been to him to indite it. In effect it was the last thing he ever wrote, and the signature was nothing but a faint initial, as though the failing fingers refused the task ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... When I see you settle down to this big book, then I let go. No 'manana' with me, boy; right here and now you're going to give me an exhibition of rapid penmanship. Savey? Take up your pen; that's the stuff. Now dip deep in the ink and draw a full breath and ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... the bed on which Queen Mary slept in 1566; here also the oaken cradle of the infant King James VI. The library was rich in valuable and rare books and MSS. and service books of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries in beautiful penmanship upon fine vellum. The magnificent avenue was grass-grown, the gates had not been opened for many years, while the pillars of the gateway were adorned with two huge bears standing erect and bearing the motto: "Judge Nocht." ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... a hand as you will, you have always something else to think of, and cannot pause to notice your loops and flourishes; they are beside the mark, and the first law stationer could put you to the blush. Rousseau, indeed, made some account of penmanship, even made it a source of livelihood, when he copied out the "Heloise" for dilettante ladies; and therein showed that strange eccentric prudence which guided him among so many thousand follies and insanities. It would be well for all of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as also a variety of hints for illustration, borrowed from the Greek, Roman, and modern writers. The hand-writing is very difficult to be read, even by those who were best acquainted with Johnson's mode of penmanship, which at all times was very particular. The King having graciously accepted of this manuscript as a literary curiosity, Mr. Langton made a fair and distinct copy of it, which he ordered to be bound up with the original and the printed tragedy; and the volume is deposited in ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... strikes the paleographer, when studying the handwriting of Christopher Columbus, is the boldness of the penmanship. You can see at a glance that he was a very rapid caligrapher, and one accustomed to write a great deal. This certainly was his reputation. The numberless memoirs, petitions, and letters which flew from his pen gave even rise to ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... sympathetic nature, and accept this tribute to your genius? Could I look for a line,—just a word,—in response to this, saying that you are glad of my appreciation? Never before have I written to a stranger. That is why I dare not use my own penmanship. Please do not seek to find out who I am, but send just a line that I may know you do not scorn my praise. Address Miss ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... We went into the fight with thirty-three men. I had sixteen killed, eleven badly wounded, and four slightly. I was wounded slightly on the head, near the right eye, with a bayonet, and had a bayonet run through my right hand, near the forefinger; that will account for this miserable style of penmanship. ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... farmers' boys of New England in the eighteenth century young Joshua diligently improved, and became a close student, and well qualified as a teacher of common schools of his day. His specialties were mathematics, penmanship, bookkeeping, business science and forms, and navigation. And he continued to do more or less in this profession until fifty years of age. He was converted among the first fruits of Methodist labors in that part of ...
— Elizabeth: The Disinherited Daugheter • E. Ben Ez-er
... lawyer, and Jim inclined to the profession of medicine; but being without friends to secure the openings, they were compelled to give them the go-by, for the present at least. Another occupation seemed peculiarly attractive to them; that was one where each could make use of his skill in penmanship, something in the way of clerical work. In the pursuit of this phantom they learned the rather mournful fact that every such situation in the United States has from ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... and Surenne's Dictionary. Spanish...................Josse's Grammar. Morales' Progressive Reader. Ollen- Dorff's Oral Method applied to the Spanish, by Velasquez and Simonne. Seoane's Neuman and Baretti's Dictionary. Drawing...................Topography, etc. Art of Penmanship. Tactics of Infantry,......Practical Instruction in the Artillery, and Cavalry Schools of the Soldier, Company, and Battalion. Practical Instruction ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... call," says Susan, "it's etiquette and it's likely to bring business." She always sees I have plenty of cards in my pocket, but I mostly forget to give them. (Looking at card.) Bosco Blithers, professor of penmanship and author of "Pot-hooks and Hangers." I had better drop a few about. (He places cards on table, mantelpiece, etc., etc., then comes down and sits on edge of chair.) This Mr. Selwyn must be pretty well off to judge by his place here and his hat. He left it ...
— Three Hats - A Farcical Comedy in Three Acts • Alfred Debrun
... The brown ground beneath is left, for the most part; one touch of black is put for the hollow; two delicate lines of dark gray define the outer curve; and one little quivering touch of white draws the inner edge of the mandible. There are just four touches—fine as the finest penmanship—to do that beak; and yet you will find that in the peculiar paroquettish mumbling and nibbling action of it, and all the character in which this nibbling beak differs from the tearing beak of the eagle, it is impossible to go farther or be more precise. And this is only an incident, ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin
... Giovanni Saracinesca. It was the first time he had ever written to her, and she was greatly surprised on finding his name at the foot of the page. He wrote a strong clear handwriting, entirely without adornment of penmanship, close and regular and straight: there was an air of determination about it which was sympathetic, and a conciseness of expression which startled Corona, as though she had heard the man himself speaking ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... pages. Even as manuscripts, I should insist that the letters of Patrick Henry are witnesses to the fact and quality of real intellectual cultivation: these are not the manuscripts of an uneducated person. In penmanship, punctuation, spelling, syntax, they are, upon the whole, rather better than the letters of most of the great actors in our Revolution. But, aside from the mere mechanics of written speech, there is in the diction ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... that coarse yellow paper,—the clear, upright penmanship, the words here and there misused and corrected, the sentence scratched out, the heavy underlining of a command, and his own strangely ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... dreary accounts of battles and bombardments. Beyond these poor newspapers I had, during the sixteen months that I was at home, but scant tidings from without. I had implored Clara Steinmann to write me now and then, and tell me the news of Elberthal, but her penmanship was of the most modest and retiring description, and she was, too, so desperately excited about Karl as to be able to think scarce of anything else. Karl belonged to a Landwehr regiment which had not yet been called out, but to ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... Some compositions were read, and part of a little operetta was sung quite charmingly by the girls. Then there was a large table spread out with specimens of needlework that were really fine; drawing, painting, and penmanship that elicited much praise from ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... who it is! It's the worst writing I ever saw. Now you mustn't think you can impose on us because we are strangers. We are not fools, by a good deal. If you have got any specimens of penmanship of real merit, trot them out!—and if you ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... draw flying birds and bounding deer and floating swans with scrolls in their beaks, all without lifting pen from paper. Some of us learned to do it almost as well as the accomplished Mr. Gaskell himself, and almost all of us showed marked improvement in penmanship. Doubtless Truman Baird did not, he being engrossed with oratory, striving to reproduce, "Hate—the right foot advanced, the face turned to the sky, the gaze directed upward with a fierce expression, the eyes full of a baleful light," or ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... neighbour, had often been employed by her to write her letters to people, to whom she was ashamed of sending her own misspelt scrawl. She remembered the wonderful flourishes she had so much admired in those days, while she sat by dictating, and Jem, in all the pride of newly-acquired penmanship, used to dazzle her eyes by extraordinary ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... this day be able to write. Nor does this mean merely the ability to form letters into words and put them down with a pen so that they are legible. This is a fundamental requisite, but the mastery of penmanship, spelling, and punctuation is, however, only a beginning. One must be able to formulate his thoughts easily, to construct his sentences correctly, and to make his writing effective; he must learn ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts
... having been ringleaders, were both sentenced to death. The sentence was, however, commuted to transportation for life. At Sydney, being of a very different class from the ordinary convict, they prospered greatly, and their letters were very interesting. They were wonderful feats of penmanship, for postage from Australia was ruinously expensive, and they filled sheets of paper with writing that could hardly be read without a microscope. If we had those letters now they would be curious records of the early days of the Colony, but all now recollected is the account of ...
— Old Times at Otterbourne • Charlotte M. Yonge
... write letters and post them. We may—if we be great men—indite despatches and give them into the hands of trusty messengers, and a little twirl of Fortune's wheel will send all our penmanship to ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... (enclosed), which she received with a face of delight as broad and bright as the kitchen fire. Then I read, and re-read, and re-re-read, and quadruply, quintuply, and sextuply re-read my epistle, until I had it all by heart, and then continued to re-read it for the sake of the penmanship. Then I took up the phrase-book again; but could not study, and so bathed and retired, it being now not far from ten o'clock. I lay awake a good deal in the night, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... allowed. But Mr. Job couldn't be sure of this, and I'm fain to admit the old boy was a trial to him, with his easy-going ways. Job, you see, was a stickler for order; kept his accounts like the Bank of England, all in the best penmanship, with black and red ink, and signed his name at the end with a beautiful flourish in the shape of a swan, all done with one stroke—he having been a school-master in his youth, and highly respected at it until his unfortunate temper made him shy a child out of window, ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
