"Second hand" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... myself in reading matter by filching the complete works of Sterne (in one volume) and the poetry of Milton—from an outside stand of a second hand book store.... ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... with Arbuthnot, described at second hand the Solomon Islands, the beauties of reef and palm, the delights of a new, free life and laid before her the guarantee of a competence and the possibilities of a fortune. As he talked, Elodie's dark face grew sullen and her eyes hardened. ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... stories were current of such an awful result having happened. One such story was told me by a person who had received the story from a person who was present at the wake where the occurrence happened. I thus got it at second hand. The story ran as follows:—The corpse was laid out in a room, and the watchers had retired to another apartment to partake of refreshments, having shut the door of the room where the corpse lay. While they were eating there was heard a great noise, as of a struggle ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... head of the table, Mary by Lazarus and Martha by Joel, the meal began. Eli passed bowls of water for the washing of hands. Grace was said and then after a second hand cleansing, wine was poured and thanks said over the cups, after which came the meat, and ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... her sex precluded this silent spirit of the Girondists from taking part in these counsels, if, instead of acting second hand through her husband, she could have taken the lead, as her genius, perception, honesty, and courage entitled her to do, who knows that she might not have averted the disasters which befell ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... whole reading of standard authors on general science, religion, or morality, in ordinary duodecimo, equals not the years of their unfinished, or just completed minority, imagine that they have got far in advance of the vulgar herd, and are both philosophers and gentlemen if they have learned at second hand, a few scoffs and sneers at the Bible, from Paine, Voltaire, Bolingbroke, or Hume. One would think, could he listen to their impudence, that Bacon, Newton, Locke, and all the great masters of science, were very pigmies, and that they themselves were sturdy giants of extraordinary ...
— The Christian Foundation, May, 1880
... me."—Pilgrim's Progress, p. 162. The latter ellipsis may occur after but or than, and it is also sometimes allowed in poetry; as, [There is] "No person of reflection but [who] must be sensible, that an incident makes a stronger impression on an eye-witness, than when heard at second hand."—Kames, El. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... you," said Valentin. "Heaven forbid! I wouldn't for the world have missed knowing her. She is really extraordinary. The way she has already spread her wings is amazing. I don't know when a woman has amused me more. But excuse me," he added in an instant; "she doesn't amuse you, at second hand, and the subject is an impure one. Let us talk of something else." Valentin introduced another topic, but within five minutes Newman observed that, by a bold transition, he had reverted to Mademoiselle Nioche, and was giving pictures of ...
— The American • Henry James
... the Chingulays; also they bring Salt and Salt Fish, and brass Basons, and other Commodities, which they get of the Hollander: because the King permits not his People to have any manner of Trade with the Hollander; so they receive the Dutch Commodities at the second hand. ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... gunroom, Rand looked at his watch. It was a very precise instrument; a Swiss military watch, with a sweep second hand, and two timing dials. It had formerly been the property of an Obergruppenfuehrer of the S.S., and Rand had appropriated it to replace his own, broken while choking the Obergruppenfuehrer to death in an alley in Palermo. He zeroed ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... another hand. The second hand joined the first, and fell to work on the bar, and pulled. The bar stretched finally under an enormous load. One hand let go, and the thud of the highly elastic lux metal bar's return to its original shape echoed through the soundless room. These men of the twenty-second century knew what relux ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... at second hand. You'll see through my eyes, hang upon my lips, take sides, feel passions, all sorts of sympathies and indignations. I've an idea," I further developed, "that your young lady's the person on board ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... exceptions, perhaps, than would be readily believed, they are merely simulators of the part they sustain; speaking not out of the abundance of their own hearts, but by skill and artifice assuming or personating emotions at second hand; and the whole is a business of talent, (sometimes even of great talent,) but not of original power, of ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... that you escaped death been cried aloud in the streets, my lad, 'twould never have got to your grandfather's ear," he said, in lower tones. "I will tell you what happened, tho' I have it at second hand, being in the North, as you may remember. Grafton came in from Kent and invested Marlboro' Street. He himself broke the news to Mr. Carvel, who took to his bed. Leiden was not in attendance, you may be sure, but that quack-doctor ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... fore-castle deck. For as in this world, head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it. But wherefore it was that after having repeatedly ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... of rebellion!" said Cunningham aghast at the notion of hearing news like that a second hand, ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... as bona fide, if it had been written by Bonnet, but it is impossible to accept it from Buffon. It is only those who judge him at second hand, or by isolated passages, who can hold that he failed to see the consequences of his own premises. No one could have seen more clearly, nor have said more lucidly, what should suffice to show a sympathetic reader the ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... a campaign, to cook the meat in the fashion described by Froissart, between themselves and the saddle. These were the squirearchy; Malcolm's late persecutors did not aspire to the benches around these boards, or only at second hand, and for the most part had no seat but the unclean straw and rushes that strewed ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... else, to look as though he were master of the circumstances around him, and was entirely free from internal embarrassment. When his father spoke to him about his legal studies, he did not exactly laugh at his father's ignorance, but he recapitulated to his father so much of Mr. Monk's wisdom at second hand,—showing plainly that it was his business to study the arts of speech and the technicalities of the House, and not to study law,—that his father had nothing further to say. He had become a man of such dimensions that an ordinary father could hardly ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... go on with her story, though only at second hand, before I proceed with my own, which for a time took me from the scene of my friend's troubles. This is written for her grandchildren as much as my own and my sister's, and it is well they ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... experiment and observation, and was at pains to verify experimentally the observations of others which came within his field. Without verification he would not rely upon them. Indeed, he was so careful to give nothing at second hand that one of his scientific friends gently reproached him for wasting his time in re-investigating matters already worked over by competent observers. "Poor ——," he remarked afterwards, "if that is his own practice, his work will never live." Of his most important public addresses, two ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... interesting to talk with your sister and Mrs. Jimmie about Paris fashions. We see so little here that is not second hand, and your journey is so fascinating. It seems incredible that you can be travelling simply for pleasure and over such a number of countries! Where do ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... light on those records; of the earliest growth of dogma, as, thanks mainly to German labour, it may now fee exhibited within the New Testament itself. In a Church of private judgment, he takes all this at second hand, after having vowed at his ordination "to be diligent in such studies as help to the ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to sweep beneath his feet and over his head; and though it was a slow pattern, only twice as fast as the crawl of a second hand around the face of a clock, ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... August to help Anne with her quilts. I don't think anything will happen to prevent this time—no quarrelling, anyhow. Those two young creatures have learned their lesson. You'd better take it to heart too, Nora May. It's less trouble to learn it at second hand. Don't you ever quarrel with your real beau—it don't matter about the sham ones, of course. Don't take offence at trifles or listen to what other people tell you about him—outsiders, that is, that want to make mischief. What you ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... day, happily, is long since past when conversation between men and women was confined to unmixed flattery on the one side and blushing acceptance on the other. That "the best flattery is that which comes at second hand," no one can deny, yet, judicious praise is not only acceptable but useful many times in giving the needed incentive, without which the flagging footsteps might ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... and said good-morning, as if they knew each other. Their hostess found them talking over the length of the table in a sort of mutual fright, and introduced them. But it's rather difficult reporting a lady verbatim at second hand. I really had the facts from Welkin, who had them from his wife. The sum of her impressions was that Braybridge and Miss Hazelwood were getting a kind of comfort out of their mutual terror because one was as badly frightened as the other. It was ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... Coffin was not a man accustomed to take truth at second hand. His own judgment was singularly sane, and he was not accustomed to receive statements and to devour them unflavored by the salt of criticism. Four years of the pursuit of letters amid arms, while passion was hottest, and men were too excited to care for the exact truth, had trained this cool-headed ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... readers could not give an undivided attention to their contents. He foresaw that in the end he should have to rely upon the taste of mercenaries in his warfare against rubbish, and more and more he found it necessary to expend himself in it, to read at second hand as well as at first. His greatest relief was in returning to town and watching the magical changes which the decorator was working in his store. This was consolation, this was inspiration, but he longed for the return of Margaret Green, that she might ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... had a Bijoux, nor the slightest notice from Pickering about omitting 4 out of 5 of my things. The best thing is never to hear of such a thing as a bookseller again, or to think there are publishers: second hand Stationers and Old Book Stalls for me. Authorship should be an ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... information is here, I think, certainly at second hand, though no doubt he had seen the negroes whom he describes with such disgust, and apparently the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... supreme nerve to ask me what I meant by leading diamonds when he had signalled that he had none. I couldn't help asking him, as politely as I could, why he had disregarded my signal for spades. He had the gall to ask in reply why I had overlooked his signal for clubs in the second hand round; the very time, mind you, when I had led a three spot as a sign to him to let me play the whole game. I couldn't help saying to him, at the end of the evening, in a tone of such evident satire that anyone but an ass would have recognised it, that ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... took coffee with them after dinner in the drawing-room, while Jewel caressed her watch, never tiring of looking at its clear face and the little second hand which traveled ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... returned to my post. As I neared the door, I saw two figures in white working over the guns. It was Dorothy and her mother, helping the negroes reload. I sent them back to the stair with affected sternness, but I got a second hand-clasp from Dorothy ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... by letters from Durie in May 1654 that Morus was disowning—the book, been entitled to remember these motives? For what other evidence had been produced besides Morus's own word? His friend Hotton's only; and that was no independent testimony, but only Morus's at second hand. And even now, after Morus's repeated and studiously-worded denials in his Fides Publica, how ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... will come mighty convenient just now. It will buy me a better-looking suit, second hand, and make a different man of me. With it I can get a place and set up for ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger
... palace. Your Grace will probably agree with me that these records could be better given by one empowered by yourself to give them, by one who had been present, and who would write in your Grace's interest, than by some interloper who would receive his tale only at second hand. ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... go to the desk. She could take a hint at second hand. She would have been glad of a place to sit down, but all the divans were filled with gossipers very much at home and somewhat contemptuous of the vulgar herd trying to break into their select and long-established circle. She heard a man saying, with amiable anger: "Ah'm mahty sah'y Ah can't ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... very well on tradesmen, usurers, apothecaries, cheats, coiners, and adulterers of wares. Now and then, when he is on the merry pin, his second supper is of serving-wenches who, after they have by stealth soaked their faces with their master's good liquor, fill up the vessel with it at second hand, or with other ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... deepened playfully, and Mrs. Morris's dimple did the same, as Godfrey thrust his hand in upon Ruth's, unasked. The matron laughed very tenderly on the key of O while she added her hand, and received Leonard's heavy palm above it. Then Arthur clapped a second hand upon Leonard's, and Leonard was about to lay a second quietly upon Arthur's, when Isabel, rose-red from brow to throat, gayly broke the heap ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... there appears a woman's hand, adorned with beautiful gems. What! a second hand? [He examines it with the greatest care.] It seems to me, I recognize this hand. Yes, there is no doubt about it. Surely, this is the hand that saved me. But I must see for myself. [He uncovers the body, looks at it, and recognizes it.] It is my sister in Buddha. [Vasantasena ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... be so much the more gratifying to myself, as the stories appear to be an attempt to render the fables of classical antiquity into the idiom of modern fancy and feeling. At least, so I judge from a few of the incidents, which have come to me at second hand." ...
— The Three Golden Apples - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with the material to be found in the accounts written in after years and commonly utilized—as it has been utilized here—to form the narrative of the haunting. Not only this, but a rigorous division of the contemporary evidence into first hand and second hand still further eliminates the element of the marvelous. Admitting as evidence only the fact set forth as having been observed by the relators themselves, the haunting is reduced to a matter of knocks, groans, tinglings, ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... year by my mother's lamentably premature death. I happen to possess a letter from my father's sister to her sister Anne in which she gives an account of this event, and print it because it conveys the reality more vividly than a narrative at second hand. The reader will pardon the reference to myself. It matters nothing to a dead man—as I shall be when this page is printed—whether at the age of fourteen days he was considered a ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the Wazir Dandan said to Zau al-Makan, "Thus spake the second hand maid to the King who hath found mercy, Omar bin al-Nu'uman. 'Quoth a man to Mohammed bin Abdillah, Exhort thou me!' 'I exhort thee,' replied he, 'to be a self ruler, an abstainer in this world, and in the next a greedy slave.' 'How so?' asked the other and Mohammed answered, 'The abstinent ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... in the Atlantic, and Leopold, now the second hand, explains to the Margate trippers the wonders ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... get access to the original reports of the British commanders, the logs of the British ships, or their muster-rolls, and so have been obliged to take them at second hand from the "Gazette," or "Naval Chronicle," or some standard history. The American official letters, log-books, original contracts, muster-rolls, etc., however, being preserved in the Archives at Washington, ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... that Byron, who read everything he could lay his hands upon, and spared no trouble to master his "period," had not, either at first or second hand, acquainted himself with specimens of this popular literature. (For La Presa e Lamento di Roma, Romae Lamentatio, etc., see Lamenti Storici dei Secoli xiv., xv. (Medin e Fratri), Scelta di Curiosita, etc., 235, 236, 237, Bologna, 1890, vol. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... month of September, 1916, there appeared in the Cornhill Magazine a story entitled "The Lost Naval Papers." I had told this story at second hand, for the incidents had not occurred within my personal experience. One of the principals—to whom I had allotted the temporary name of Richard Cary—was an intimate friend, but I had never met ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... mused. "But all their trappings are second hand. They have bought them up from some show that has discarded them. That's one thing the Sparling outfit never does. All their stuff is new nearly every season. Sully may have some of our old trappings, for ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... carefully to the center of the improvised ring, their guards up, while Astro stood off the edge of the mat and watched the sweeping second hand of his wrist chronograph. ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... regular roads that were used all the year round. But gradually they were all changed, and the rails were made the same on railroads all over the country, and then these people were able to get their cars and the other things they needed second hand. And it's plenty good enough, of course, for all the use anyone wants ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart
... to take the place of socks for tramping, vaseline to rub on the same—it would be madness to attempt a complete inventory, but he would be inventive indeed who could name anything that Teutonic pack did not contain in some abbreviated form, purchased somewhere second hand at a fourth its original cost. The German had learned that the parish priest of Tzintzuntzan wore glasses, and we parted agreed to make ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... the one attribute which distinguishes him above all others is love of truth. A love of truth, as the phrase characterizes Huxley, would necessarily produce a scholarly habit of mind. It was the zealous search for truth which determined his method of work. In science, Huxley would "take at second hand nothing for which he vouched in teaching." Some one reproached him for wasting time verifying what another had already done. "If that is his practice," he commented, "his work will never live." The same motive made him a master of languages. ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... how I've furnished my room? It's a symphony in brown and yellow. The wall was tinted buff, and I've bought yellow denim curtains and cushions and a mahogany desk (second hand for three dollars) and a rattan chair and a brown rug with an ink spot in the middle. I stand ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... but did not tire his companions by quite as voluble a tongue as did his mother. He was one of those fine gentlemen who would, or could neither plod nor dash at his studies, and who was quite willing to take all his knowledge second hand from any one ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... you get your kicks at second hand, you old peeper," Alice put in but, "Quit lying, Pop," I said. "About having quit killing, for one thing. In my books, which happen to be the old books in this case, the accomplice is every bit as guilty as the man with the slicer. You ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... had gained in the last two years—there were now three of Henry Galleon's novels there. Bobby had given him one, "Henry Lessingham," shining bravely in its red and gold; he had bought another, "The Downs," second hand, and it was rather tattered and well thumbed. Another, "The Roads," was a shilling paper copy. He had read these three again and again until he knew them by heart, almost word by word. He took down "Henry Lessingham" now and opened it at a page that was turned down. It is Book III, ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... emphasis, in monarch after monarch of the line. Nor is it surprising that monarchs should take pleasure in the stage, since the theatre is one of the places which brings them and their subjects together in the enjoyment of common emotions, and shows them, if only at second hand, the domestic lives of millions, from personal acquaintance with which their royal birth and ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... folds of the Inspired Book an inexhaustible store, which the industry of man, piously directed, ought to elicit; but which if men neglect it, the Lord will not force upon their notice? It is this hidden treasure which should animate the ambition of vigorous and devout minds. From such at second hand, the body of the faithful are to receive it, if at all; and if not so obtained for them, and dealt out by their teachers, nothing will be more meager, unfixed, almost infantile, ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... a writer he possessed a finished style, clear, measured, and stately, which carried his well-arranged narrative as on a full and steady stream; he was also cool and sagacious but, like Hume, he was apt to take his facts at second hand, and the vast additional material which has been in course of accumulation since his day has rendered the value of his work more and more literary, and less and ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... multitudes who can never possess an acre, more or less, and who must obtain Nature's products at second hand. This is not so great a misfortune as to have no desire for her companionship, or wish to work under her direction in dewy mornings and shadowy evenings. We may therefore reasonably suppose that the man who has exchanged his city shelter for a rural home looks forward to the garden with the ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... Fig. 2. It is based upon the simultaneous working of two pith-ball electrometers, combined with the synchronous running of two clock-work movements. At the two stations there were identical clocks for whose second hand there had been substituted a cardboard disk (Fig. 3), divided into twenty sectors. Each of these latter contained one figure, one letter, and a conventional word. Before each movable disk there was a screen, A (Fig. 2), containing an ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... to faithful gentlemen vowed to the Reform, and I owe my American birthright to the honourable fact that they fought on the losing side. As I myself am endowed with a fair allowance of stubbornness, and with a strong distaste to taking my opinions at second hand, I certainly should have been with my kinsfolk in that fight had I lived in their day; and since my destiny was theirs to determine I am strongly grateful to them for ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... opinion and friendship of the capital persons at Nantes. I am thus particular on this subject, as I am well convinced it has been represented to you very differently. How it has been represented I know not, nor am I likely to be informed but from second hand, from your brother's showing your letter directed to me to Mr Ross, and telling some others what were its contents, and that you not only justified his conduct, but had obtained for him more ample appointments, with severe reprimands to me, and even oblique censure on Dr ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... development of Jewish ideas, which recalls the work of the Alexandrian school. This was, indeed, to be expected, seeing that in both cases there was a mingling of Hebraism and Hellenism. In Spain, however, the Jews acquired Hellenism at second hand, and through the somewhat distorted medium of Arabic translations or scholastic misunderstanding, and hence the harmony is neither complete nor pure. They endeavored to show that the teachings of Aristotle are implicit in the written and the oral law, but the interpretation is ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... on the impulse of the moment, Carey placed a second hand to the bucket and gave it a quick swing round, discharging its contents in an arc, with the intention of dowsing the savages; but they were too quick for him, bounding back, grinning with delight at their cleverness, but coming forward again, ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... throbs about seventy-five times in a minute when you are well. Look at the second hand of a watch, while you count the beats in your ...
— The Child's Day • Woods Hutchinson
... fifteen years ago, but he had never gone back. Never sought the second hand-clasp that would have been his. Never unfolded to those interested ears his personal experiences with the pioneer column that led the way to do the path-finding in Rhodesia. In the hush of the afternoon, with his head bowed ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... WANT the time to go fast, I'd just look at the hour hand, and I'd feel as if I had lots of time—it went so slow. Then, other days, when I had to keep something that hurt on for an hour, maybe, I'd watch the little second hand; and you see then I felt as if Old Time was just humping himself to help me out by going as fast as ever he could. Now I'm watching the hour hand to-day, 'cause I don't want Time to go fast. See?" she twinkled mischievously, as ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... see the play so much as to be seen at it; that happens in every country; but no doubt the plays have a charm which did not impart itself from the printed page. The companies are reported very good: but the reader must take this from me at second hand, as he must take the general society fact. I only know that people ask you to dinner at nine, and if they go to the theater afterward they cannot well come away till toward one o'clock. It is after this hour that the tertulia, that peculiarly Spanish function, begins, but how long it lasts ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... vision of the blooming peach is a glimpse of a pet deer in the kitchen of the same little house, with its head up and its antlers erect, as if he meditated offence. My boy might never have seen him so; he may have had the vision at second hand; but it is certain that there was a pet deer in the family, and that he was as likely to have come into the kitchen by the window as by the door. One of the boy's uncles had seen this deer swimming the Mississippi, far to the ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... Hoboken are terribly long on trousers, and generally bring 'em over by the trunk-load. They all passed right through, at any rate. Instead of a whale coming along, the next to bite were a lot of old skates—a regular lot of tramps. They had come into the trousers second hand, usually got for the asking, when preparing to start into New York for the slumming season; but, of course, they had to make for Mary's house just as soon as they put 'em on and the charm got to working. So she has been spending the balance ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... they approved in chorus. Possibility of pardon and reinstatement, though only heard of at second hand, had brought unity into being. And ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... said Dr. O'Grady, "it's perfectly new. At this moment it isn't even finished; I wouldn't ask this committee to buy anything second hand. But you can surely see, Major—you do see, for you raised the point yourself, that with the very short time at our disposal we must, if we are to have a statue at all, get one that's more ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... teach the boys to atrophy their independence. We teach them to take their patriotism at second hand; to shout with the largest crowd without examining into the right or wrong of the matter —exactly as boys under monarchies are taught, and ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... never knows when he is well or sick, but is always tampering with his health till he has spoiled it, like a foolish musician that breaks his strings with striving to put them in tune; for Nature, which is physic, understands better how to do her own work than those that take it from her at second hand. Hippocrates says, Ars longa, vita brevis, and it is the truest of all ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... front, from the Lago di Garda to the Stelvio and the frontier of Switzerland, is not at present the scene of important operations, so I contented myself by ascertaining at second hand how matters stand between the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... will it be to supply copies of the desired work. In the matter of current intelligence the case of the speaker of the small language is still worse. His newspaper will need to be cheaply served, his home intelligence will be cut and restricted, his foreign news belated and second hand. Moreover, to travel even a little distance or to conduct anything but the smallest business enterprise will be exceptionally inconvenient to him. The Englishman who knows no language but his own may travel well-nigh all over the world and everywhere meet some ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... 'With a second hand on board to steer while I conned I should have felt less of an ass. As it was, I knew I ought to be facing the music in the offing, and cursed myself for having broken my rule and gone blundering into this confounded short cut. It was ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... to the interrupted narrative, even in despite of the evident frivolity of the narrator. The arrangement of the party in the coach compelled me to hear it at second hand, and I found it less frivolous than I had anticipated: it was an amour between the King and a peasant's daughter, in which the King conducted himself in a manner as little excusable in a monarch, as in a more humble individual. The ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... tenth, at noon. It is of interest to note that his account of the Cave agrees fully with that of Conder. It is now quite certain that he was really there in person, and his narrative was not made up at second hand. The visit of Reubeni, as well as Sabbatai Zebi's, gave new vogue to the place. When Sabbatai was there, a little before the year 1666, the Jews were awake and up all night, so as not to lose an instant of the sacred intercourse ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... seasons, as trees, when he cannot blossom Book that they are content to know at second hand Business to take advantage of his necessity Competition has deformed human nature Conditions of hucksters imposed upon poets Fate of a book is in the hands of the women God of chance leads them into temptation and ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of William Dean Howells • David Widger
... temper; I have no doubt at one time of his life Henry James said, I will write the moral history of America, as Tourgueneff wrote the moral history of Russia—he borrowed at first hand, understanding what he was borrowing. W.D. Howells borrowed at second hand, and without understanding what he was borrowing. Altogether Mr. James's instincts are more scholarly. Although his reserve irritates me, and I often regret his concessions to the prudery of the age,—no, not of the age but of librarians,—I cannot but feel that his concessions, for ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... painted bright red—the red ear is the inevitable badge of the French clown—and he had as a foil for his funning a comic countryman known on the program as Auguste, which is the customary name of all comic countrymen in France; and, though I knew only at second hand of his sketch-making abilities, I am willing to concede that he was the drollest master of pantomime I ever saw. On leaving the circus, very naturally we went to the cafe—where the first part of the ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... snow by the daily rains which had begun to fall, and sometimes he read aloud to her a little, but in spite of Pearl's intelligence she had never cared much for books. She craved no record of another's emotions and struggles and passions. No life at second hand for her. She was ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... much into clerks, because there's only one Jaggers, and people won't have him at second hand. There are only four of us. Would you like to see 'em? You are one of us, as ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... her head, but was too wary to be drawn into an argument with the man of books. She could air her father's opinions second hand with an assumption of great assurance, but she was no hand at argument or fence, and had no desire for ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... sat in state near Yasmini's great window and received, one after another, liars by the dozen from the hills where lies are current coin. Some of them had listened to his lectures, and some had learned of them at second hand; every man of them had received his cue from Yasmini. There was too much unanimity among them; they wanted too little and agreed too readily to what the German had to say; he was growing almost suspicious toward half-past ten, when Ranjoor ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... W Reeve an bos dear sir I like to git me a par [pair] second hand pance dont a fail or elce I will be dout [without] a pare to go eny where so send me something. Dont a fail an send me a par of youre pance [or] i will hafter go to work for somebody to git some. I don't think ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... a remarkable woman," Mrs. Tully said proudly, her eyes fluttering between the second hand of the watch and the unbroken surface of the pool. "Women never swim so well as men. But she does.— Three minutes and forty seconds! ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... some 50 pages filled with the titles of books of characters, has this one among them, in 17th century hand-writing (pasted on to the page). When this was acquired he does not say. "An Atturney is a Broker at Law for hee sels wordes and counsell at the second hand, studies but one language that hee may not bee thought double tonged, and when vpon necessitie hee reades Latin, 'tis with a quaking hast soe feare fully you wold thinke him a fellon at his miserere. Hee speakes nothing but reports, statutes and obligations, and 'tis to bee ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... the Mind being often pleased with those Perfections which are new to it, and which it does not find among its own Accomplishments. Besides that a Man in some measure supplies his own Defects, and fancies himself at second hand possessed of those good Qualities and Endowments, which are in the possession of him who in the Eye of the World is looked on ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... end in a draw," and so forth. If he is saying such things on his own account, he is a German propagandist, a spy, a paid liar, and should be reported and punished as such. If he is repeating them second hand, he is nothing but an ass, a dupe of some real propagandist, and he should be reported and punished ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... watch again. The minute hand was moving with the speed at which the second hand usually traveled. ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West
... is honorably commemorated among the worthies consigned to immortality in that precious and entertaining medley of fact and fancy, enlivened by a wilderness of quotations at first or second hand, the Magnolia Christi Americana, of the Reverend Cotton Mather. The old chronicler tells his story so much better than any one can tell it for him that he must be allowed to speak for himself in a few extracts, transferred with all their typographical idiosyncrasies from the London-printed, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... of this size without servants," said Lady Arabel. "The fourth footman was the last to go. He said even the Army would be better than this. He liked spooks, he said, at second hand, but not otherwise. Too funny how people take dear Rrchud seriously. I'm glad to say the orchestra has stayed with us. Come into Rrchud's study, won't you, while I just go and help the first violin ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... called him, who was also a sculptor, though of far less merit than John Gibson himself. Mr. Ben came to Rome younger than John, and he learned to be a great classical scholar, and to read those Greek and Latin books which John only knew at second hand, but from whose beautiful fanciful stories of gods and heroes he derived all the subjects for his works of statuary. His other brother, Solomon, a strange, wild, odd man, in whom the family genius had degenerated into ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... my dear child, you are worrying yourself over trifles. [His second hand joins the first in holding her hands.] Women do it every day. Because you have changed your mind, or did not know you mind, because you have—to use an ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... winter his wife receives once a fortnight, and he regularly attends the famous weekly dinners of the Princess Mathilde, and occasionally dines informally with some intimate friend; but beyond this he goes but little into society, and takes his opinions of it at second hand; with regard to which fact Sainte-Beuve once kindly remonstrated with him in an admirable letter printed in the second volume of the Correspondance. He is fifty years old, and made, some sixteen years ago, what, in respect to the rank and wealth and amiable and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... apparatus has the great advantage that six photographs of a single cardiac pulsation, or of any muscular contraction, may be easily taken in less than one second, or, by simply turning the crank slower, they may be taken at any desired rate to keep pace with the rhythm of the heart. The second hand of a watch may be placed in the field of view and simultaneously photographed with the heart, so that there can be no question about the series of photographs all ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various
... briskly up the aisle of the briefing room, and took his customary stance on the platform in front. His face looked stern, and he held his hands clasped behind his back. His royal blue uniform was neat and trim. Over his head, the second hand of the big clock whirled endlessly. In the silence of the briefing room, it seemed to ...
— The Judas Valley • Gerald Vance
... solemnest of Shakespeare's tragedies were exhibited in this way. There is no possibility of doubt that Bunyan must have often stood agape at these exhibitions, and thus have received much of the highest literature at second hand. ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... say here once for all, that I cannot keep the tales I tell in this volume from partaking of my own peculiarities of style, any more than I could keep the sermon free of such; for of course I give them all at second hand; and sometimes, where a joint was missing, I have had to supply facts as well as words. But I have kept as near to the originals as these necessities and a certain preparation for the press would ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... minister who prays without ceasing, and eats codfish and buys clothes at a second hand store, it looks pretty rough to see Bob Inger-soll steered onto a million dollar silver mine. But it may be all right, and we presume it is. Maybe God has got the hook in Bob's mouth, and is letting ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... on his hands. The clock on the mantel struck. Could it be that when the second hand had circled its ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... he, and he alone, is above the law. But a judge, a person exercising a judicial capacity, is neither to apply to original justice nor to a discretionary application of it. He goes to justice and discretion only at second hand, and through the medium of some superiors. He is to work neither upon his opinion of the one nor of the other, but upon a fixed rule, of which he has not the making, but singly and solely the application ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Josephus as to chronology, but it is fairly certain that he did not know the works at first hand, since the era he refers to runs from Moses to the tenth year of Antoninus,[5] i.e. till the better part of a century after the death of Josephus. Origen likewise probably knew Josephus only at second hand, and the inference is that both the Alexandrian ecclesiastics derived their citations and their interpolation in the text of Josephus from a pious Christian abstract and improvement. The uncompromisingly Christian ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... extremely prosperous. New hats, blouses, and entire costumes of the most fashionable kind were to be seen in the streets every Sunday. Large sums of money were lost and won at coursing matches. Nearly everyone had a bicycle, and old Malone bought, second hand, a rather dilapidated motor-car. Work of almost every kind ceased entirely, except in the big house, and nobody got out of bed before ten o'clock. In mere gratitude, rents of houses were paid to Sir Tony which had not been paid for ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... "What is this thou sayest?" Quoth Al-Danaf, "As thy head liveth I say sooth; for I ransomed him with another, of those who deserved death; and carried him to Alexandria, where I opened for him a shop and set him up as a dealer in second hand goods." Then said the Prince of True Believers,—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... the imagination is a heavy bird of feeble wing; it flies low, seeing only the things of the earth. When they describe heaven, it has houses of marble and streets of gold. Their pretense to sight of higher things is either sheer pretense or sight at second hand. Susan was of the few whose fancy can soar. She saw the earthy things; she saw the things of the upper regions also. And she saw the lower region from the altitudes of the higher—and ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... should always be in the churches a body of men able to go behind the current versions of Scripture to the original tongues from which these versions were executed. The commentator, at least, must not take his expositions at second hand; and a healthy tone of feeling in regard to the sacredness and supreme authority of the inspired word will always demand that there should be a goodly number of scholars scattered through the churches who can judge from the primitive sources of the correctness ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... said. "Upon my word, and a very good thing you must make of it; for I see you dressed like a gentleman from top to toe. Are you not ashamed to go about the world in such a trim, with honest folk, I dare say, glad to buy your cast-off finery second hand? Speak up, you dog," the man went on; "you can understand English, I suppose; and I mean to have a bit of talk with you before I march ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a tin plate and after that every scout for himself. This is called a hunter's stew because you have to hunt for the meat in it, but it's got plenty of e-pluribus unions in it. The potatoes and dumplings go to the patrol leaders, carrots to first and second hand scouts; tenderfeet get nothing because the ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... second hand. Didn't the object of his deepest aversions persist in almost nightly calls upon the object of his deepest affections? Paying such calls, didn't the enemy spend hours—hours upon hours doubtless—pouring into Ophelia's ear accounts ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... wise and shrewd old fellow pulled his silver time-piece from his pocket and placed it in the hollow of his hand. Then he fixed his eyes upon its white face and stood motionless, watching the second hand make its little circuit. When the sixty seconds had been counted, he held up his hand ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... that a man so opulent as you represent M. Dantes to be, should adopt his magnificence at second hand," ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... of the solemn black clock above the mantelpiece struck quite painfully upon his ears. Yet in spite of it, and in spite also of the thick, old-fashioned wooden partition, he could hear voices of men talking in the next room, and could even catch scraps of their conversation. "Second hand was bound to take it." "Why, you drew the last ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sure that, though you may hate bigotry in others, you are not somewhat of a bigot yourself? That you do not look at only one side of a question, and that the one which pleases you? That you do not take up your opinions at second hand, from some book or some newspaper, which after all only reflects your own feelings, your own opinions? You should ask yourselves that question, seriously and often: "Are my thoughts really free?" No one values more highly than I do the advantage of a free press. But you must remember ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... of time and, if not wicked, certainly frivolous and nonsensical. So the boy remained at home, but, in spite of the parental order, he practiced some of the figures of the quadrilles and the contra dances in his comrades' barns, learning them at second hand, so ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... rides in these days were apt to be accompanied by the stories, which Jewel related to him with much enthusiasm while they cantered through wood-roads, and it is safe to say that the tales furnished full as much entertainment at second hand as ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... Buckram was a small horse-dealer—small, at least, when he was buying, though great when he was selling. It would do a youngster good to see Ben filling the two capacities. He dealt in second hand, that is to say, past mark of mouth horses; but on the present occasion, Mr. Sponge sought his services in the capacity of a letter rather than a seller of horses. Mr. Sponge wanted to job a couple of plausible-looking horses, with the option of buying them, provided he (Mr. Sponge) could sell ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... who held the position of "second hand" in the dress department of "The Ladies' Paradise." Au Bonheur ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... and mimic fire. Suddenly he shouts through the trumpet: 'Boarders and pikemen at port quarter! First boarders advance! Second boarders advance! Repel boarders! Retreat boarders! Pikemen cover cutlass division! Fire! Repel boarders!' The second hand scarcely sweeps over a quarter of its dial before the men have crowded around the port bulwarks, and are slashing the air with a most Quixotic fury—then crouch on bent knee, to make ready their pistols, while ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... call my mind was fixed upon my own affairs, not because they were in a bad posture, but because of their fascinating holiday-promising aspect. I had been obtaining my information as to Europe at second hand, from friends good enough to come down now and then to see us. They arrived with their pockets full of crumpled newspapers, and answered my queries casually, with gentle smiles of scepticism as to the reality of my interest. And yet ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... has three things to do. It must send the "short hand," or hour hand, around the dial or face of the watch, once in twelve hours; it must send the "long hand," or minute hand, around once an hour; and it must also send the little "second hand" around its own tiny circle once a minute. To do this work requires four wheels. The first or main wheel is connected with the winding arrangements, and sets in motion the second, or center wheel, so called because it is usually in ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... never dwells solitary; it readily finds boon companions. And at one period of the night she began to look back upon her experience with a curious sense of prior familiarity—to see it as a story already known to her at second hand. She viewed it as the first stage of one of those tragedies that later find their way into the care of family physicians, into the briefs of lawyers, into the confidence of clergymen, into the papers and divorce courts, ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... mestizos, an industrious race, and also possessed of the largest portion of the specie. This consists in the anticipated purchase of the crops of indigo, sugar, rice, etc., with a view to fix their own prices on the produce thus contracted for, when resold to the second hand. A propensity to barter and traffic, in all kinds of ways, is indeed universal among the natives, and as the principal springs which urge on internal circulation are already in motion, nothing more is wanting than ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... Bradley's philosophy as a whole shows little sympathy for Buddhism but a wondrous resemblance both in thought and language to the Vedanta. This is the more remarkable because there is no trace in his works of Sanskrit learning or even of Indian influence at second hand. A peculiarly original and independent mind seems to have worked its way to many of the doctrines of the Advaita, without entirely adopting its general conclusions, for I doubt if Sankara would have said "the positive relation of every appearance as an adjective to reality ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... what Dr. Coutras related to me in his words, but in my own, for I cannot hope to give at second hand any impression of his vivacious delivery. He had a deep, resonant voice, fitted to his massive frame, and a keen sense of the dramatic. To listen to him was, as the phrase goes, as good as a play; and much ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... wish to make out a case of unlawful affiliation, they cut out book after book, passage after passage, till the author is reduced to a collection of fragments, or till those, who fancied they possessed the works of some great man, find that they have been put off with a vile counterfeit got up at second hand. If we compare the theories of Knight, Wolf, Lachmann, and others, we shall feel better satisfied of the utter uncertainty of criticism than of the apocryphal position of Homer. One rejects what another considers the turning-point of his theory. One cuts a supposed knot by expunging what another ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... general situation, and some stirring narratives of the clash and wrestling of armed men, compiled either at first hand from the recollections of those who were actually on the field, or else taken at second hand from others who made notes of what had been told them by those present at the battles. This, then, is what I meant when I said that in early times history was an art. Its method ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... kept in exercise. Our speech, therefore, was of tithes and creeds, of beeves and grain, of commodities wet and dry, and the solvency of the retail dealers, occasionally varied by the description of a siege, or battle, in Flanders, which, perhaps, the narrator only gave me at second hand. Robbers, a fertile and alarming theme, filled up every vacancy; and the names of the Golden Farmer, the Flying Highwayman, Jack Needham, and other Beggars' Opera heroes, were familiar in our mouths as household words. At such tales, like children closing their circle round the fire when ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... appears to me, now that I have got it up so as to give the heads in a page. Depend on it, my saying is a true one—viz. that a compiler is a great man, and an original man a commonplace man. Any fool can generalise and speculate; but oh, my heavens, to get up at second hand a New Zealand Flora, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... call life. And this one—the whole abject meaning of it lies simply in the fact that it has pierced down and shown us up. I had no courage. I couldn't see how feeble a hold I had on life—just one's friends' opinions. It was all at second hand. What I want to know now is—leave me out; don't think, or care, or regard my living-on one shadow of an iota—all I ask is, What am I to do for you?' He turned away and stood staring down at the ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare |
