"Sporting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stranger, the knight does keep house of late. Grim told me that last week he was a-sporting once only by way of the higher park; and he appears something more soured and moody than usual. If thou crave speech with him though, to-morrow being almonsday at the hall, the poor have free admission, and thou mayest have a sight of him there: peradventure, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... determine that largely. There are many machines which cannot be looped. The large naval flying-boats, for instance, describe a circle two thousand feet in diameter for each turnover—it is almost obvious that not much stunting is done on these boats. A small scout or sporting plane can loop and come out higher ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... Phoebus, like some wanton urchin sporting on the side of a green hill, began to roll down the declivity of the heavens; and now, the tide having once more turned in their favor, the Pavonians again committed themselves to its discretion, and coasting along ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... an exciting day on the monotonous Napo. We fell in with numerous sea-cows sporting in the middle of the stream. They were greatly disturbed by the sight of our huge craft, and, lifting their ugly heads high out of the water, gave a peculiar snort, as if in defiance, but always dived out of sight when fired upon. The sea-cow is called vaca marina by the Spaniards, peixe boy ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... black-and-tan English terrier, though I regret to say he is decidedly not, of the breed of that Billy indeed, who used to kill rats for a bet; I forget how many one morning he ate, but you'll find it in sporting books yet. It was very late when we reached our old bough gunyah camp; there was no water. I intended going up farther, but, being behind, Mr. Tietkens and Jimmy had began to unload, and some of the ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... the beardless school-boy leap ditches and over posts at the risk of his neck, and boast that he'll do another's dags'—or the sporting man turn good horses into filthy dog's meat, in riding so many miles in so ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... interruption was disagreeable in proportion. The extensive domain that surrounded the Hall, which, far exceeding the dimensions of a park, was usually termed Waverley-Chase, had originally been forest ground, and still, though broken by extensive glades, in which the young deer were sporting, retained its pristine and savage character. It was traversed by broad avenues, in many places half grown up with brushwood, where the beauties of former days used to take their stand to see the stag course with greyhounds, or to gain an aim at him with the crossbow. In one spot, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... with steel lower masts, bowsprit, and lower and topsail yards; and even if she had not been sporting the ensign of the New York Yacht Club at her ensign staff and its burgee at her main royal-mast-head, I should still have known her for a yacht from the perfection of her lines, the dainty and exquisite beauty of her shape, ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... immense sums of money spent on all kinds of sport, the size and wealth of the athletic associations, the swollen salaries of baseball players, the prominence afforded to sporting events in the newspapers, the number of "world's records" made in the United States, and the tremendous excitement over inter-university football matches and international yacht-races, it may seem wanton to assert that the love ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... it is well known, a fine collection of sporting books. There is no sport but what has its literature, and if there is one subject more than another, upon which the English mind is unchanging, it is sport, and this being so, sporting books will always offer a fine field for collectors. As the coaching age ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... Rubber used in cushioning billiard tables, balls often rebound from it without producing a score. This difficulty may, however, be obviated—according to Sir SAMUEL BAKER—by firing half-pound shells from the shoulder, with a rifle of proportionate size, and if the Sporting Bulletins of that enterprising traveller are not shots with the long bow, he carried the war into Africa to some purpose, not unfrequently bagging his Baker's dozen of Rhinoceroses in the course of forty-eight hours. The African and the Asiatic species bear a general ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... that my best course is to wait, and to prepare for some expedition which shall be more deliberate and better thought out than the last. As a first step I have been to Castleton and obtained a few essentials—a large acetylene lantern for one thing, and a good double-barrelled sporting rifle for another. The latter I have hired, but I have bought a dozen heavy game cartridges, which would bring down a rhinoceros. Now I am ready for my troglodyte friend. Give me better health and a little ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... more flagrant of these had been discontinued as he advanced in age, there was no reason to hope that he had so much 'left off his sins, as that his sins had left him off.' His great-nephew, who lived with him and assisted in his business, was a dashing sporting young man of no good character, known to be often intoxicated, and concerned in much low dissipation, and as dangerous an associate as could be conceived for a high-spirited lad like Leonard. Dr. May could not believe that any provocation of temper, any motive of economy, any desire to be ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... where the ice was solid, a great number of seals lying in the sun, as if asleep, on the ice; and when I came around on the west side, where the sea was open, great schools of walruses, with their long tusks and ugly heads, were sporting about in the water as if at play, and an equally large number of the narwhal, with their long horns, were also playing there. Only that they are larger, and have these hideous-looking tusks, walruses are much ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... pity," said Miss Skeat, sternly clutching the twisted wire shroud. "I would like to see you turn pirate; it would be so picturesque—you and Mr. Barker." The others laughed, not at the idea of Claudius sporting the black flag—for he looked gloomy enough to do murder in the first degree this morning—but the picture of the exquisite and comfort-loving Mr. Barker, with his patent-leather shoes and his elaborate travelling apparatus, leading ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... Charles answered. "Know them! Oh, of course, I know them. They're old favourites of mine—in fact, I adore Wordsworth." (I doubt whether Charles has ever in his life read a line of poetry, except Doss Chiderdoss in the Sporting Times.) He took the book and glanced at them. "Ah, charming, charming!" he said, in his most ecstatic tone. But his eyes were on the lady, and not ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... tickets again, for the man will sell them to the next party of victims. Then there is a Belgian, also a couple of lively pleasant French people, and two Germans, a sister and brother, who dress in clothes intended to be very sporting. ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... copy or of any substitute for copy, and to have to construct war articles out of your inner consciousness, would be purgatory for a journalist. But to have a mad dream in your soul and a pair of breeches in your hold-all, and to see no possibility of "sporting" either, is the very refinement of hell. And your tortures will be unbearable if, at the same time, you have to hold your tongue about them and pretend that you are a genuine reporter and that all you want is copy and your utmost aim the ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... of the sporting-field, born at Mount Melville, near St. Andrews; entered the army, and for a time served in it; met his death while ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... round were terrified out of their wits. This was something to hear; but the old man went on to say, that a bait, consisting of a dead horse, had been laid, and he doubted not, but that in a day or two a shot might be had at the brute. After this narrative our sporting curiosity had reached its zenith; and mutually promising to meet at a certain hour on the morrow, we parted with ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... all attention now; the several exhibits were coming into view. One fat, red-faced juror, who had a dyed mustache and looked like a sporting man, would have laughed outright had not the Judge checked ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... back almost to the time of the conquest of Quebec. Great men dead and gone long ago—near a hundred and fifty years ago-had put down their bets in the book, for Thwaite's was then what it is now, the highest and best sporting club ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... just taken employment for the school vacation in a large sporting goods store not far from the hotel. A few minutes later Ned walked leisurely into this store and sought out the fire-arms department, where Alan was ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler
... portray. And though there is nothing of an ideal character about its situations, though it seems to be all head, with a minimum of apparent heart, it none the less is universal in the sense that Restoration comedy is universal. It presents a type of vulgarity, of sporting spirit, that is common in every generation, whether in the time of Congreve and Wycherley, whether in the period of Sheridan or Oscar Wilde. Its wit is not dependent on local colour, though ostensibly it is written about New York. On its first ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... to general admiration He acquitted both himself and horse: the squires Marvell'd at merit of another nation; The boors cried 'Dang it? who 'd have thought it?'—Sires, The Nestors of the sporting generation, Swore praises, and recall'd their former fires; The huntsman's self relented to a grin, And rated ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... that butterfly, Without a thought or care; Sporting my pretty, brilliant wings, Like a ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... will squeeze you, rely upon it." I demanded how they could injure me? "Oh!" said my father, "you know but very little of mankind; they that seek an opportunity will seldom want an occasion to do a malicious act. You have been a great sporting crony of Astley's, and have frequently hunted with him; he keeps a pack of hounds, and has hunted over my property, and my farms, for many years, and we have sometimes, though sparingly, sported in return over his. Depend ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... the royal bed stood upon an estrade of several steps, covered with purple drapery. Columns of chased silver supported the entablature, all ornamented with foliage wrought in relief, amid which Loves were sporting with dolphins, and heavy curtains embroidered with gold surrounded it like the ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... bill, shouldered their baggage, and wearing their complete miner's costumes (Charley sporting his knife and his belt) they proceeded down to Long Wharf and the Mary Ann. On their way they collected their ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... flowers that skirt the eternal frost! Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest! 65 Ye eagles, play-mates of the mountain-storm! Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds! Ye signs and wonders of the element! Utter forth God, and fill the hills ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... night; one of the kind that wears a yellow diamond and a checked suit with a white stove-pipe hat; and the only part of the speech that he understood was that somebody wanted to make a bet. That raised his sporting blood, and he climbed up to the platform and pulled out a roll of yellow boys that would choke a dog and peeled off ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... evening at the dinner-table. So amiable was this generally irritable individual that he positively listened with equanimity to the plans which Fortescue and Evelin—the latter with a broad patch of plaster across his brow— were discussing relative to a properly organised sporting excursion into the Cordilleras—or Andes, as they indifferently termed them, much to the perplexity of Brook—nor did he allow himself to show any signs of annoyance when the last-named individual sought to ruffle his (Dale's) ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... astern of the first. From the boats, your eye wanders to the spot where the whale was last seen to blow. For some time you can discern nothing, and fancy he must be gone off to sea again. At last a thin white column of vapour is perceptible; the animal is carelessly sporting about, unconscious of danger. The first boat draws rapidly down upon him; it approaches nearer and nearer. The fish has disappeared, but his enemies seem to know the direction in which he is going, and are ready awaiting him when he returns to the surface. ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... with the letter of his college on his sweater, another may have his class numerals, another may wear a gold football. These are not ordinary things to be purchased at sporting goods stores; they are a reward of merit. The college custom has made it so, and if in some college town the traditions of the university are such that a man, as he passes the Ma Newell gateway at Cambridge raises his hat in honor of this great Harvard hero, it ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... that colour), and I think that at that moment he almost found it in his heart to dislike me. Mrs. Babwold put on a first-aid-to-the-injured expression, and asked him why he didn't publish a book of his sporting reminiscences; it would be so interesting. She didn't remember till afterwards that he had given her two fat volumes on the subject, with his portrait and autograph as a frontispiece and an appendix on the habits of ...
— Reginald • Saki
... on earth, judging by the way she looked at him when she thought I wasn't noticing. And Bobbie seemed to think the same about her. So that I came to the conclusion that, if only dear old Bobbie didn't forget to go to the wedding, they had a sporting chance ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... old sapper instinct asserting itself in Mac when he tried to tunnel out of that bunker at the seventh," said Denny after tea in the golf club-house. "He'd have found some opportunities on a really sporting course like ours at Villers-Vereux. Remember ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... were indeed the father and daughter who had applied at the Northern for shelter. It seemed incredible that a young woman of such apparent refinement could be a gambler's daughter, but if it were true she was not only the daughter of a "sporting man," but a very notorious one, judging from general comment. Prompted by curiosity, Pierce dropped in at the Ophir on his way back to work. He found the place crowded, as usual, but especially so at the rear, where the games were running. When he had edged his way close enough to command ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... eyes wi' gert surprise, To see the fahnten sporting; An' on the top, stuck on a prop, The British flags ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... BECOME A BOWLER.—A complete manual of bowling. Containing full instructions for playing all the standard American and German games; together with rules and systems of sporting in use by the principal bowling clubs in the United States. By ...
— The Bradys Beyond Their Depth - The Great Swamp Mystery • Anonymous
... once he passed through Dallam Park, To see its deer, and other objects mark. These lovely creatures to his mind did seem Most unfit objects of man's sporting dream. He greatly wondered how some men could be E'er guilty of, such wanton cruelty, As to pursue, with horses and with hounds, Such harmless creature over all their grounds; Hunt him o'er swamps and fields, and mountain slopes, Through pebbly streams, or shady hazel copse, Till they have driven ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... displayed a wonderful collection of fashionably impossible hats and gowns. She was dressed all in rusty black, was the little old lady, and she had a quaint cast in her left eye that gave her the oddest, most sporting look. The cast was working overtime as she gazed at the gowns, and the ridiculous old sprigs on her rusty black bonnet trembled with her silent mirth. She looked like one of those clever, epigrammatic, ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... lives were five in number, of Hooker, Wotton, Donne, Herbert, and Sanderson. Several of these were personal friends of the author, and Sir Henry Wotton was a brother of the angle. The Compleat Angler, though not the first piece of sporting literature in English, is unquestionably the most popular, and still remains a favorite with "all that are lovers of virtue, and dare trust in providence, and be quiet, and go a-angling." As in Ascham's Toxophilus, the instruction is conveyed in dialogue ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... men waiting for jobs. The chairs was all pretty much alike and looked very comfortable, but the men was as different as if they had been horses. Some looked gay and spirited, and others tired and worn out, as if they had belonged to sporting men and had been driven half to death. And then again there was some that looked fat and lazy, like the old horses on a farm, that the women ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... President of the Republic faced the entrance; while on another wall a general bedizened with gold lace, sporting a hat decorated with ostrich plumes, and wearing red cloth breeches, hung in pleasant proximity to some naked nymphs under a willow-tree, and near by was a vessel in distress almost engulfed by a great wave. A bishop of ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... is so constantly visited by my compatriots, that it may be well, while we are on this subject, to say a few words about the sporting ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... believed, to the councils of the Olympian gods; but they usually remained in their particular spheres, in secluded grottoes and peaceful valleys, occupied in spinning, weaving, bathing, singing sweet songs, dancing, sporting, or accompanying deities who passed through their territories—hunting with Artemis (Diana), rushing about with Dionysos (Bacchus), making merry with Apollo or Hermes (Mercury), but always in a hostile attitude toward the ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... said about the prowess of Nimrod, in connection with the chase, from the days of him of Babylon to those of the late Mr. Apperley of Shropshire; but we question whether, among all the sporting characters mentioned in ancient or modern story, there ever was so mighty a hunter as the gentleman whose sporting calendar now lies before us.[4] The annals of the chase, so far as we are acquainted with them, supply no such instances of familiar intimacy ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... has never been put up to him as a game, a sporting proposition in which you can either win or lose out," says Mr. Robert. "He thinks it's merely a life sentence that you get for not watching your step. Just as well, perhaps, for Babe isn't what you would call domestic in his tastes. Give him a 'Home, Sweet Home' motto and he'd tack it inside ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... had caused her momentarily to swerve from the narrow path of rectitude, and it would be no compliment to her if he were to scamp his job. Antagonists they might be in this contest of wits, but she was too sporting ever to want him to do aught but play the game for all that ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... she having named my car Apollo, and the Sun God being her favourite mythological deity at the moment. Apropos of mythology, by the way, she was rather amusing this morning on the subject of Icarus, who, she contends, was the pioneer of sporting travel. If he didn't have "tire trouble," said she, he had the nearest equivalent when his ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... most trifling occurrences:—The tavern called the Queen's Head, in Duke's-court, Bow-street, was once kept by a facetious individual of the name of Jupp. Two celebrated characters, Annesley Spay and Bob Todrington, a sporting man, meeting one evening at the above place, went to the bar, and each asked for half a quartern of spirits, with a little cold water. In the course of time, they drank four-and-twenty, when Spay ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 470 - Volume XVII, No. 470, Saturday, January 8, 1831 • Various
... or infectious vapours which crowd about the night, and obscure with a still paler light that pale luminary. The sun-stroke seems to be well-authenticated; many cases of Europeans going hunting and sporting in the open country of Barbary, then and there receiving a stroke of the sun, and dying with fever, are ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... tooke it nothing offensiuely: for indeed as the case fell out it was not vndecently spoken by Sir Andrew Flamock, for it was the cleaneliest excuse he could make, and a merry implicatiue in termes nothing odious, and therefore a sporting satisfaction to the kings mind, in a matter which without some such merry answere could not haue bene well taken. So was Flamocks action most vncomely, but his speech ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... Primates, although it looks exactly like a large barrel elongated at the two ends. It suckles its young at the breast like man and the monkey; and if Linnaeus flinched from this rather too absurd parentage, old navigators were less scrupulous. Observing this creature in the distance, sporting on the waves, the upper part of its body quite out of the sea, the sailors, whose eye is not of the most refined, and who have no objections generally to the marvellous, imagined they saw a new species of human beings; and hence arose those stories of mermaids and sirens which have been ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... man on the divan, got up slowly and stretched his long athletic limbs with a lazy enjoyment in the action. He was a sporting person with unhampered means and large estates in Scotland and Ireland; he lived a joyous, "don't-care" life of wandering about the world in search of adventures, and he had a scorn of civilized conventionalities—newspapers and their editors ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... wrote out in correct window-ticket style, and Grubb put in the window this inscription, "Aeroplanes made and repaired." It quite upset Tom—it seemed taking one's shop so lightly; but most of the neighbours, and all the sporting ones, approved of it as being very ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... probable, and as it was the only solution of the mystery, he accepted it as the real one, and returned to the letter, learning that the bracelet was purchased, that it could not be told from the lost one, that she was sporting it on Broadway every day, that she did not go to the prince's ball just for the doctor's meanness in not procuring a ticket when he had one offered to ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... last in my scale of the perceptions of taste, and which borders upon every thing that is contrary to its laws, is properly the sphere of Fancy, who seems an undisciplined offspring of Taste; sometimes sporting within the bounds of parental authority, and sometimes beyond them. Fancy seems to bear the same affinity to Taste as ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste, and of the Origin of - our Ideas of Beauty, etc. • Frances Reynolds
... the little dory that raced behind. Grace thought such a feat would be a genuine lark, but Captain Mae reminded her that the Sandy Hook Bay was not the placid little Glimmer Lake she had been accustomed to sporting upon. ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... which her anticipated proximity was held, Mrs. Fairchild, in high spirits, bought the most beautiful of white satin Opera cloaks, and ordered the most expensive paraphernalia she could think of to make it all complete, and determined on sporting diamonds that would dazzle old acquaintances, (if any presumed to be there,) and make ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... impatience that marked her speech was not without reason, for a gale was to Adam as the sound of a gun to a sporting-dog. It invariably aroused him, even from the deepest slumber, to a state of alert expectation that to a woman as hard-working as Mrs. Peck was most exceptionally trying. When Adam scented disaster at sea there was no peace for either. As she was wont to remark, being the wife of the lifeboat ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... abundant excuse in his beautiful home, "Redstone," at Knollwood, N.J., where he is one of the most popular residents of that charming suburb and where he has a particular claim to distinction in the fine stable which he maintains, his chief hobby being horse flesh, though not on the sporting side, with which we are most likely to associate such a passion. In short, the [name of paper] has every reason to be proud of its parentage, and like all good children delights in doing filial honor and wishing its founder ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... destinies of men and nations; and hard at hand that day-star, waning into space, looked with impartial eye on the church tower and the guillotine. Up springs the blithesome morn. In yon gardens the birds renew their familiar song. The fishes are sporting through the freshening waters of the Seine. The gladness of divine nature, the roar and dissonance of mortal life, awake again: the trader unbars his windows; the flower-girls troop gayly to their haunts; busy feet are tramping to the daily drudgeries that ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... is a discriminating portrait—a portrait which really helps you to see that which the writer sets out to describe. After reading it one can understand why even in reminiscent sporting descriptions of those old days, amid all the Tonis and Bills and Jacks, it is always Mr. John Jackson. He was the friend and instructor of Byron and of half the bloods in town. Jackson it was who, in the heat of combat, seized the Jew Mendoza by the hair, and so ensured that the pugs ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... attacks of the four gentlemen who were now doing their best to convert it into a divan; and the consumption of tobacco on that day between Birmingham and Oxford must have materially benefited the revenue. The passengers were not limited to the two-legged ones, there were four-footed ones also. Sporting dogs, fancy dogs, ugly dogs, rat-killing dogs, short-haired dogs, long-haired dogs, dogs like muffs, dogs like mops, dogs of all colours and of all breeds and sizes, appeared thrusting out their black noses from all parts of the coach. Portmanteaus were piled upon the roof; gun-boxes peeped out ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... of sponsor, and was looked up to by them as a devil of a fellow, for I swore picturesquely and had a belligerently unpleasant manner that was regarded as something quite out of the ordinary and distinguished. These youthful spendthrifts I patronized and taught the mysteries of a sporting life, and for a time it became quite smart for a fellow to have gone on one of "Quib's" notes. These notes, however, increased rapidly in number, and before long amounted to such a prodigious sum that they gave me ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... damnation which was the chief article of their devout religious belief. And in the Market Square not even the late edition of the Staffordshire Signal was cried, though it was discreetly on sale with its excellent sporting news in a few shops. In the hot and malodorous candle-lit factories, where the real strenuous life of the town would remain cooped up for another half-hour of the evening, men and women had yet scarcely taken to horse-racing; they would gamble upon rabbits, cocks, pigeons, and ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... the Passage is a grill-room and restaurant, and ladies can lunch there, though the sporting British element is rather too prominent. In the evening it is frequented by the theatrical world and is practically open all night. One can enjoy a peaceable supper there without having to pay the bill and leave ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... varied hue flew around her, and an eagle, sporting in the air and clapping its wings, swooped down and sailed from right to left, fairest of omens the gods could give. This she saw, and recognised its import, but the flowers and murmuring pines ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... periodicals, literary, religious, scientific, political, technical, philosophical, social, medical, legal, educational, agricultural, bibliographical, commercial, financial, historical, mechanical, nautical, military, artistic, musical, dramatic, typographical, sanitary, sporting, economic, and miscellaneous, is it any wonder that specialists and writers for the press seek and find ready aid ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... things short with the curt statement that he wished to see him urgently, and would come round at once. Then remembering that Francis had been playing cricket for the Guards yesterday, he turned briskly over to the last page of sporting news, and found that his cousin had distinguished himself by making no runs at all, but by missing two expensive catches in the deep field. From there, after a slight inspection of a couple of advertisement columns, he worked back to the middle leaf, ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... or rifle with him—then decided on the rifle, for the lamp might blow out in some unexpected night gust, whereas if he left it where it was it would go on burning and show him the way back to bed again. Besides, he was too unaccustomed to the joy of owning the last new thing in sporting rifles to hesitate for long about what to keep ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... own. They show him what he himself is doing and preparing—all that he finds in the manifold experience of his own higher life. They have, all, their gambols; all, their sober cares and labors. The lambs are sporting on the green knoll; the anxious dams are bleating to recall them to their side. The citizen beaver is building his house by a laborious carpentry; the squirrel is lifting his sail to the wind on the swinging top of the tree. In the music of the morning, he hears the birds playing ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... divination, he was pleas'd to pitch on the Cardinal de Noailles and myself, among many other eminent and illustrious persons, that were to die within the compass of the ensuing year; and peremptorily fixes the month, day, and hour of our deaths: This, I think, is sporting with great men, and publick spirits, to the scandal of religion, and reproach of power; and if sovereign princes and astrologers must make diversion for the vulgar—— why then farewel, say I, to all governments, ecclesiastical and ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... from Endymion's gaze, Who brooded o'er the water in amaze: The dashing fount pour'd on, and where its pool Lay, half asleep, in grass and rushes cool, Quick waterflies and gnats were sporting still, And fish were dimpling, as if good nor ill Had fallen out that hour. The wanderer, Holding his forehead, to keep off the burr Of smothering fancies, patiently sat down; 140 And, while beneath the evening's sleepy frown Glow-worms began to trim their starry lamps, Thus ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... O'Malley was twenty-three; but even if a person is a cad or a cat, he (or she) is often too lazy to go through the dull pages of Debrett or Burke; and besides, there is seldom one of the books handy. Therefore, Di had a sporting chance of being taken for eighteen, the sweet conventional age of a debutante on her presentation. Every one did know, however, that Father had married twice, and that there must be a difference of five or six years between Diana and the ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Norway a pleasant custom, which is called Tura-jul, or Christmas-turns. In Christmas week, namely, people go out to visit one another by turns, and then in the hospitable houses is there feasting, sporting, and dancing. That is called ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... in leaving Smith's, having no suspicion of being shadowed, and quite indifferent to it if attempted, I suspected at once that our Hibernian guest was on my track. He brought with him an old army carbine, but as it was the close season for the deer, and the arm was rusty and unfit for sporting uses, I was confirmed in my suspicions that his business was with any person who might come to hold a conference with me. Finding that no one came to meet me, he grew friendly and, under the influence of the good whiskey ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... only too probable that a later generation has forgotten "Nicholas," the sporting Prophet of "Fun," in the reign of Mr. Hood the younger. The little work, "Nicholas's Notes," in which Mr. W. J. Prowse collected the papers of the old Prophet, is, indeed, not an "edition de looks," as the aged Seer says, with his simple humour. From the Paradise of Fiction, however ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... last day of fox-hunting, which was an unusually exciting one, had been got though charmingly without any fox at all. It is even said that Queeker, descending from poetry,—his proper sphere,— to prose, wrote an elaborate and interesting paper on that subject, which was refused by all the sporting papers and journals to which he sent it;—but, this not being certified, we do not ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... our wives spent a large part of their time overboard, sporting about the ship like porpoises, ever and anon diving deep under our counter only to appear on the other side decked with polyp buds as if crowned by Neptune himself. At this game Babai-Alova-Babai excelled. Never shall I forget the day she ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... of the Duc d'Aumale. Some talk of him as President of the Republic, others suggest that he should be elected King. The Bonapartists are very busy, but as regards Paris there is no chance either for the Emperor or the Empress Regent. As for Henri V., he is, in sporting phraseology, a dark horse. Among politicians, the general opinion is that a moderate Republic will be tried for a short time, and that then we shall gravitate into a ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... the ante-rooms where sat the mayor's court in; He found a pack of drunken grooms a-dicing and a-sporting; The horrid wine and 'bacco fumes, they set the prior a-snorting! The prior thought he'd speak about their sins before he went hence, And lustily began to shout of sin and of repentance; The rogues, they kicked the prior out ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... people, who are well known and well received in society, and obtained for him, what he prizes much more, the admission into several clubs where high play is carried on. In this mixed assemblage, which sporting habits and gambling, (that grand leveller of all distinctions,) have brought together, this man and your cousin Guy met frequently, and, from the constant allusion to the wonderful resemblance between them, your eccentric cousin, who, I must say, was never too select in his acquaintances, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... who have told of them best have not been mountaineers, but lowlanders who carried up to the mountain the taste and knowledge which they had gained below. Let them remember that the great Sutherlandshire sportsman and sporting writer, the late Mr. St. John, was once a fine gentleman about town; that Christopher North was an Edinburgh Professor, a man of city learning and city cultivation; and, as one more plea for our cockney chalk-streams of ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... dashing along a coach and six, the four leading horses ridden by postilions, while a sporting Baboo drove the wheelers, and two more sporting friends sat inside, and outriders vociferously cleared the way. Here two of the King's eunuchs jogged along in great style on camels with gaudy trappings; after them came prancing ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... thread of sound, a mere crystalline tremor, and once more follow this transient lure. As the stream came down a gorge at a swifter pace and in a succession of leaps—a glassy cataract visible here and there, airily sporting with rainbows, affiliating with ferns and moss and marshy growths, the bounding spray glittering in the sunshine—it flung forth continuously tinkling harmonies in clear crystal tones, so penetrating, so definitely melodic, that more than once, as he paced along on his jaded ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... children crooked and twisted and deformed Through want of care, or her whose winking eye And slumbering oscitancy mars the brood? The nurse no doubt. Regardless of her charge, She needs herself correction; needs to learn That it is dangerous sporting with the world, With things so sacred as a nation's trust; The nurture of ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... virtues, we are dependent upon these middling rich. It has been frequently remarked that a lord and a working man are likely to agree, as against a bourgeois, in generosity, spontaneous fellowship, and all that goes to make sporting spirit. The right measure of these qualities makes for charm and genuine fraternity; the excess of these qualities produces an enormous amount of human waste among the wage earners and the aristocrats impartially. The great body of self-controlled, that is of reasonably socialized ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... good deal of drinking and boasting at the hotels that night, Utie and Tiltock telling everybody, as a particular secret, that there was to be "an 'fah honah," otherwise a "juel," at "Bladensburg, sah!" The gin-drinking, cock-fighting, sporting element of the town was aroused, and Utie and Tiltock were invited on all sides to imbibe to the significant toast of "The Field." Very noisy, very insolent, nuisances indeed, these two mere lads—the offspring of a vain and ignorant social period of which some elements yet remain—borrowed ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... that I will put a better dinner by his table this day than ever was on it." So he went on to Drumlanrig, and left the whole property to Douglas of Queensberry. Such, however, was not the reception of some young gentlemen who arrived about this time at the castle of Closeburn, on a sporting expedition, with dogs and guns, and a suitable accompaniment of gamekeepers and other servants. These strangers were manifestly Englishmen, but from what quarter of England nobody knew, and, indeed, nobody inquired. They were only birds of passage, and would, in a month or so, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... extensive estate to the Crown. In addition to the Red Hose, there was a substantial money prize. To win the race was looked upon as the greatest achievement of the year, for it was one of the oldest sporting events and had been run for so many years that its origin seemed lost in the mists of antiquity. Robert made up his mind to win the Red Hose in this particular year. Mrs. Graydon, of Graydon House, had intimated that she herself would be present ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... country. Mr. Disraeli, however, pays in many respects a tribute that is no more than just to the memory of Lord George, and his book affords material for an impartial judgment. At that period the noble lord was a distinguished patron of the turf: all England knew him as a sporting gentleman, a first-rate judge of horses, and an extensive winner on the course. In allusion to his habits in these respects, it became a popular sneer that the Conservatives required "a stable mind," after the versatile performances of Sir Robert Peel, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... to the succeeding lines of the poem, and their startling harmony with the present situation suggested the fancy that he was 'sporting' with her, and brought an awkward contemplativeness to ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... had in that of Dudley. Even of Dudley's identity with the Church Scarsdale man, I had daily grown less confident; and, indeed, had it been proposed to bring it to the test of a wager, I do not think I should, in the language of sporting gentlemen, have cared to 'back' my original opinion. There was, however, a sufficient uncertainty to make me uncomfortable; and there was another uncertainty to enhance the unpleasant sense ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... the train moved off on the ninety-mile spin to Philadelphia. I wondered if I had displayed a genuine sporting interest. I was very tired, and the four-mile journey in the trolley-car was tedious. As I passed the dark house next door, Mrs. Carville's voice came back to me as she caught the meaning of my words that evening. ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... pitch with the rising sea. The ladies came on deck, but were unable to read and work as they had previously done, but Edda declared that she enjoyed the change, and found amusement in looking at the dancing seas, and in watching a shoal of porpoises which went careering along, sporting and rolling and keeping way with ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... in the property. In consequence of difficulties between the proprietors there were at one time three Dispatches in the field—Bell's, Kent's, and Duckett's; but the two last-mentioned were short-lived, and Mr. Bell maintained his position. Bell's was a sporting paper, with many columns devoted to pugilism, and a woodcut exhibiting two boxers ready for an encounter. But the editor (says a story more or less authentic), Mr. Samuel Smith, who had obtained his post by cleverly reporting a fight near Canterbury, one day received a severe ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... jargon. Some are arranging their little clothing, washing, "brightening up" their faces to make the property show off in the market. Others are preparing homony for breakfast; children, in ragged garments, are toddling, running, playing, and sporting about the brick pavement; the smallest are crouched at the feet of their mothers, as if sharing the gloom or nonchalance of their feeling. Men are gathering together the remnants of some cherished memento of the ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... accepted theory said it should be, to be several feet above the line joining the tops of the two outer masts, then Mr. Hampden was to lose the five hundred pounds he had so rashly ventured. Everything was conducted in accordance with the arrangements agreed upon. The editor of a well-known sporting paper acted as stakeholder, and unprejudiced umpires were to decide as to what actually was seen through the telescope. It need scarcely be said that the accepted theory held its own, and that Mr. Hampden lost his money. He scarcely ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... the spirit, the effect and the triumph of monarchical culture. In an elegantly furnished house, the drawing room is the principal room; and never was one more dazzling than this. Suspended from the sculptured ceiling peopled with sporting cupids, descend, by garlands of flowers and foliage, blazing chandeliers, whose splendor is enhanced by the tail mirrors; the light streams down in floods on gilding, diamonds, and beaming, arch physiognomies, on fine busts, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... give him one between the eyes; but I soon thought of a plan to make him contribute a part of what he had kept me from winning, so I said to him, "I was surprised to see you back- capping my game, for I could see you were a sporting man. I tried to give you the wink, and have you come up and win out something, so the suckers would take hold, but I could not get your eye." He said, "I did not understand it, or I would have been glad ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol |
