"A B C" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... legally supposed to be defined by the three expressions, "hand, reef, and steer." If he can do those three things, which mean furling or making fast sails, reefing them, and steering the ship, his wages cannot be reduced for incompetency. Yet these things are the A B C of seamanship only. A good SEAMAN is able to make all the various knots, splices, and other arrangements in hempen or wire rope, without which a ship cannot be rigged; he can make a sail, send up or down yards and masts, and do many other things, the sum ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... influence, Columbus, who did not like to play with the A B C boys, was allowed to take the handkerchief and give out the first name. All the rest stood up in a row like a spelling-class, while little Columbus, standing in front of them, held a knotted handkerchief with which to scourge them when the name ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... Newcomb's "recreation," as he called, it,—political economy, we may note that his contributions to it were really voluminous, consisting of papers, popular articles and several books, including "The A B C of Finance" (1877) and "Principles of Political Economy" (1886). Authorities in the science never really took these as seriously as they deserved, possibly because they regarded Professor Newcomb as scarcely orthodox. Some ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... of young folks seized hold of the missionary, with the request, "Oh, teach us the A B C with music." Dragged and pushed, he entered one of the largest native houses, which was instantly crowded. The tune of "Auld Lang Syne" was pitched to A B C, and soon the strains were echoed to the farthest corner of the village. Between two and three o'clock ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... Simple as A B C, fellows. Just be busy, doing God's will—or making an honest effort to do it, and asking Him to help. Anybody can be ready to meet Him when He comes, if he wants to and will try. Just be doing your work and playing your play, as He ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... the Bureau of Longitudes concerning population authorize us again to subtract from the total mentioned two millions of young girls, pretty enough to kill; they are at present in the A B C of life and innocently play with other children, without dreading that these little hobbledehoys, who now make them laugh, will one day ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... the delicately chosen shade of this oath. He also recited to them a new verse about how he took his Looloo girl to the schoolhouse for to learn her A B C; and as it was quite original and unprintable, the camp laughed and swore joyfully, and rolled in its blankets to ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... sea gull heard this awful racket And seized the mole, just like a packet. He carried him across the seas To teach the young gulls A B C's. But the loving mole went blind with rage And they had to put him in a cage, And ever since that fatal night The moles have all been out ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... rigid classification upon the shelves. One good reason for this is that by so doing you are trying to do what can so much better be done by a catalogue. No one who uses books very much but sooner or later becomes grateful for the existence of an alphabet and an arrangement by A B C. Carlyle once said, 'A library is not worth anything without a catalogue; it is a Polyphemus without any eye in his head, and you must confront the difficulties, whatever they may be, ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... errors, which will render him only one of a vile herd who are content to suffer, provided that they live? And yet are not these very errors inculcated at school, and impressed upon their mind inversely by the birch? Do not they there receive their first lesson in slavery with the first lesson in A B C; and are not their minds thereby prostrated, so as never to rise again, but ever to bow to despotism, to cringe to rank, to think and act by the precepts of others, and to tacitly disavow that sacred equality which is our birthright? No, ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... in Margery's village, kept school, and taught little ones their A B C's. She was now old and feeble, and wanted to give up ...
— Goody Two-Shoes • Unknown
... she took common cartilage and mingled the white fibrous tissue with it, to serve the same purpose as the hair in the mortar, the straw in the bricks and in the plaster of the old wall, and the amianthus in the earthen vessels. Thus we have the combination A B C, or fibro-cartilage. Again, the bones were once only gristle or cartilage, A B. To give them solidity they were infiltrated with stone, in the form of salts of lime, an inorganic element, so that bone would be spelt out by the letters A, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... splintered up into lexicons, if we don't learn the language of the world. It is a talk apart, Kitty," cried my father, warming up. "It is an Anaglyph,—a spoken anaglyph, my dear! If all the hieroglyphs of the Egyptians had been A B C to you, still, if you did not know the anaglyph, you would know nothing of the true mysteries of ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... A B C's in the Hebrew language. Instead of A, he showed them how to make a mark like this: [Hebrew: a]. Instead of B, they learned to make this letter: [Hebrew: b]; and so on, through all the alphabet. Then when they knew their letters, ...
— The King Nobody Wanted • Norman F. Langford
... your ladyship this now, because I think from your rank—and still more, if I may say so, for all your kindness to me long ago, down to this very day—you've a right to be first told of anything about me. Change of opinion I can't exactly call it, for I don't see the good of schools and teaching A B C, any more than I did before, only Mr. Gray does, so I'm to shut my eyes, and leap over the ditch to the side of education. I've told Sally already, that if she does not mind her work, but stands gossiping with Nelly Mather, I'll teach her ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... merely to employ the means provided for them. Everything had been literally put into their hands; but what was the result? Why, nothing—in point of fact, nothing. The country at large was still undrained. The very A B C of progress had been neglected. He should be afraid to say what proportion of the land was yet undrained, for he should be contradicted, called ill names, and cried down. But if they would look around them they ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... too much of it for him to divide himself up. Why, take a single specialty; take rheumatism. If I gave my lifetime, or twenty lifetimes, to the study of that one malady, I should not begin to learn the A B C of it." ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... talked about her dull life at home a little more, perhaps, than was discreet to one who was presumably a stranger. She was curious, too, about dining out. Poor little girl, though. Just fancy, John Dory has never taken her anywhere but to Lyons' or an A B C, and the pit ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... never asked me anything about it. You told me what you wanted done, and I did it. How could I believe you were such an ignoramus as not to know the a b c of the thing you were talking about?" He added, in cynical contempt, "But you needn't worry. You can make it right with the managers by spending a little more money than ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... friends, that I may not dwell too long upon the A B C of our belief, let me urge you in one sentence to be on your guard against present-day tendencies which weaken the force of this solemn, tragical conviction as to the realities of heathendom. The new science of comparative religion ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... the type of a cup, the first part of the petal is that in which it expands from the bottom to the rim; the second part, that in which it terminates itself on reaching the rim. Thus let the three circles, A B C, Fig 6., represent the undivided cups of the three great geometrical orders of flowers—trefoil, ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... room through an opening, H, in a shutter. This beam when not interfered with will travel in a straight line to the screen, and there reproduce a bright spot of the same shape as the hole in the shutter. If, however, a prism of glass, A B C, be introduced so that the beam traverse it, then it will be seen at once that the light is deflected from its original track. There is, however, a further and most important change which takes place. The spot of light is not alone removed ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... will never again travel abroad without a man, even if I have to hire one from a Feeble-Minded Asylum. We work like galley slaves, aunt Celia and I, finding out about trains and things. Neither of us can understand Bradshaw, and I can't even grapple with the lesser intricacies of the A B C railway guide. The trains, so far as I can see, always arrive before they go out, and I can never tell whether to read up the page or down. It is certainly very queer that the stupidest man that breathes, ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... chords, the very alphabet of music. If she found this commonplace chord "simply divine," what would she have said could she have been made to realize that the modulations I had played were as superior to her chord in poetic charm as a line of Shakspere is to the letters A B C? And she could have been made to realize this truth in a ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... interest in the person. When a girl likes a man, she thinks she has a right to ill-use him a little bit; he has got her affection to set against a scratch or two; the others have not. So she has not the same right to scratch them. La! listen to me teaching him A B C. Why, David, you know ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... buy. And the man who brought such a love might in truth be all-absorbed therein himself: the poorest of creatures may well be absorbed in the poorest of loves. A heart has to be taught to love, and its first lesson, however well learnt, no more makes it perfect in love, than the A B C makes a savant. The man who loves most will love best. The man who throughly loves God and his neighbour is the only man who will love a woman ideally—who can love her with the love God thought of between them when he made man male and female. The man, I repeat, who loves God with ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... that the A B C of this training is mere sense gratification at the sight of bright colors. Most insects and birds have probably not advanced much beyond this first lesson. Savages have generally stopped there or reverted to it. But any appreciation ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... I, when we was eating breakfast, "it's as plain as A B C that those agents don't want us for tenants, and it isn't because they think we are not to be trusted, for we'd have to pay in advance, and so their money's safe; it is something else, and I think I know what it is. These London men are very sharp, and used to sizing and sorting ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... lines avouch? Think you the road to folly is beaten for you more than another? Oh! how shallow are the wise, and how little able are you to read me, who can read you so well from top to toe, Come, learn thine A B C. Were a stranger to proffer me unchaste love, I should shrink a bit, no doubt, and feel sore, but I should defend myself without making a coil; for men, I know, are so, the best of them sometimes. But ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... have been,'' murmured Lamb's dream babes to him; and for the sake of those dream-journeys, the journeys that might have been, I still hail with a certain affection the call of the engine in the night: even as I love sometimes to turn the enchanted pages of the railway a b c, and pass from one to the other name reminiscent or suggestive of joy and freedom, Devonian maybe, or savouring of Wessex, or bearing me away to some sequestered reach of ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... trouble to learn how to handle a gun, and when "off duty" to Patricia, spent a vast amount of time in the electric plant house, learning the A B C of ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... I thought, I spoke thirty or forty times. I didn't slight anybody. I asked all the First and Second Reader classes, and the little specks of girls in A B C. They all looked very much pleased. Some of them had never been invited to a party before, and didn't know enough to find the way to "my house;" but I thought, while I was about it, I might as well make a clean sweep: it was ...
— Aunt Madge's Story • Sophie May
... importance in that first consideration for setting out a drawing, namely the fixing of salient points, and getting their relative Positions. Fig. Z, on page 87 [Transcribers Note: Diagram IV], will illustrate what is meant. Let A B C D E be assumed to be points of some importance in an object you wish to draw. Unaided, the placing of these points would be a matter of considerable difficulty. But if you assume a vertical line drawn from A, the positions of B, C, D, and E can be observed in ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... Jack and Big Dan perfectly well knew that it only needed the suggestion, the temptation, to arouse the spirit of restlessness. That a taste or so of whiskey will shiver the patience of men oppressed by long monotony is as A B C to the north-country saloon-keeper. Silver Jack resolved to make the rounds of the camps sure that the investment of a few jugs of whiskey would bring down to Beeson Lake at least thirty ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... woodcuts. Colophon on the reverse of sign. i iii. (51^b): "Thus endeth the castell of labour, wherin is rychesse, vertue, and honour. Enprynted at London in Fletestrete in the sygne of the sonne. by Wynkyn de worde. Anno d[n]i M.ccccc.vi." There is no indication of authorship. Signatures: a b c d e f g h, alternately 8s and 4s, i 4; 52 leaves, not numbered. The British Museum and Cambridge University Library copies of this book have been collated, but as the former ends with H 3 and the latter wants the last leaf, that leaf must remain undescribed. Mr Bradshaw, however, says, "it almost ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... really too elementary, Whatson, but I am always willing to oblige a friend. I shall be relieved, however, when you are able to work out the A B C of detection for yourself, although I shall never object to helping you with the words of more than three syllables. Having made up his mind to commit suicide, Kipson naturally intended to do it before he reached Brewster, because ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... do. It's as simple as A B C. It's too simple, really, to be much of a rag. However, as it isn't a rag, but serious, I suppose we oughtn't to grumble. Now, you are ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... the native. "A whole herd of names, honest to God. Most any of 'em has five or six, the way the Denver Post tells it. Me, I can't keep mind of so many fancy brands. I'll give you the A B C of it. The old parties are Lord James and Lady Jim Farquhar, leastways I heard one of the young ladies call her Lady Jim. The dude has Verinder burnt on about eight trunks, s'elp me. Then there's a Miss Dwight and a Miss Joyce Seldon—and, oh, yes! a Captain Kilmeny, ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... him. The sheriff is here, and he's already beginning to understand this affair. He stands to help you. Now, all you 've got to do is to swear out warrants for Farnham's partners, and show up in evidence that tunnel running along your lead. It's simple as A B C, now that you know it's there. They can't beat you, and you don't require a word of testimony from me. But that poor girl needs me,—she's almost crazed by this thing,—and I 'm going with her, if I have to fight my way out from ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... The lines A B C represent parallel rays which pass through the lens, D D, and meet at F; this point being the principal focus, its distance from the lens is called the focal length. Those rays of light which are traversing a parallel course, when ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... by any means easy, or gratifying. I think you had better consider it carefully, and weigh it well in the balance with the 'creations' of Worth, and the magnificence of your diamonds, for somehow the two things won't pull together, and you haven't even learnt the A B C of occult ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... primer suits me so I would not choose a book to know Than that, be sweeter wise; Might some one else so learned be, And leave me just my A B C, ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... suddenly exclaimed the girl, laughing: "giving the children A B C and making them read: 'I see the cat'—when there aren't any cats nowadays—no ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... himself: 'Why should I have to work long and hard for the simple reason that it pleases my neighbors to shove a dozen new members into society?'" It should seem that a critic should first acquaint himself with the A B C of Socialism before presuming to write upon the subject, and such ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... a drawer and took from it a considerable sum of money which he kept there for emergency journeys, also pocketing an automatic pistol. Pouncing on an A B C time table, be looked up the trains for East-bourne. A fast train left Victoria at 1:25 p. m. ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... is no truer saying," remarked the teacher, watching the tyro's eager efforts. "It's as easy as A B C to ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... said Grand Tales there be Still biding in the A B C— If this be true, Quick Jamie! Cast your golden net. Maybe we have the grandest yet In store ...
— The Peter Pan Alphabet • Oliver Herford
... it so that it was impossible to recognise it. Once upon a time, one of those gentlemen who, like the usurers at our yearly fairs, clutch and beg and steal every sort of frippery, and issue mean little volumes, no thicker than an A B C book, every month, or even every week, wormed this same story out of Thoma Grigorovitch, and the latter completely forgot about it. But that same young gentleman, in the pea-green caftan, came from Poltava, bringing with ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... in the same parish a Mrs. Williams, who kept a college for instructing little gentlemen and ladies in the science of A B C, who was at this time very old and infirm, and wanted to decline this important trust. This being told to Sir William Dove, he sent for Mrs. Williams, and desired she would examine little Two-Shoes, and see whether she was qualified ...
— Bo-Peep Story Books • Anonymous
... appear that Steevens claimed the Alphabet; which may have suggested the celebrated squib that appeared in the "New Whig Guide," and was popularly attributed to Mr. Croker. It was headed "The Political Alphabet; or, the Young Member's A B C," and begins: ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... again. I see I don't even know the A B C of this business. In the old days the leech was a physician. You don't mean I'm to drown ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... consists of an external vessel, A B C D. of tinned copper, containing a vessel, I H E F, to the sides of which are fixed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various
... Woolridge's, and to discern variety where variety had not been too apparent. There was the change from Granville to Woolridge's, and from Woolridge's to Granville. There was the dinner hour when he rose from his desk and went out to an A B C shop with Booty or some other man. Sometimes the other man had ideas, views of life and so forth, that interested Ransome; if he hadn't, at any rate he was a man. That is to say, he didn't sulk or nag or snap at you; or nip the words out of your mouth ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... saw the strong panegyric heaped upon my argument here. So true is this, that on the evening after I had concluded it, I wrote to my friend Wickham, telling him if his eye should see anything of it through the newspapers, he would wonder how so much A B C knowledge could be tolerated here, but that I saw it was necessary to state it, and therefore he must not think me so much of a pedant as he might otherwise be disposed to do. Had the thing been suffered to pass unnoticed, I might have hoped at some time or other to gain ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... would better see if we all remember our A B C's," she said dryly. "You, Sammy, after being out so long last term because of the scarlet fever, will have to make up some studies if you wish to ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... although his followers no doubt began transcribing as opportunity offered and as material came to hand. Patrick himself wrote alphabets, sometimes called the "elements"; most likely the elements or the A B C of the Christian doctrine, corresponding ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... inexperienced in world and men, joyfully sinking her own life in that of a man whom, but a few months before, had been only a matter of hearsay to her. Yet she had apparently taken him, as women will, for better, for worse, till death, as trustfully as if he and men generally were as knowable as A B C, instead of as unknown as the algebraic X. Only once had she faltered in her trust of him, and then but for a moment. How far had her love, and the sight of Peter's misery, led her blindly to renew that trust? And would it hold? She had seen how little people thought of that scurrilous article, ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... means, pray God I may never get breakfast more, when I am hungry. Troth, I am of opinion he is one of those hieroglyphical writers, that by the figures of beasts, plants, and of stones, express the mind, as we do in A B C; or one that writes under hair, as I have heard of a certain notary, Histiaesus,[57] who, following Darius in the Persian wars, and desirous to disclose some secrets of import to his friend Aristagoras, that dwelt afar off, found out this means. He had a servant, that had ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... surgeons study anatomy by dissecting a dead body. But the good poet, like the good surgeon, is the man who considers that study merely as the necessary A B C, and not as the all-in-all essential to skill in his practice. I do not give the fame of a good surgeon to a man who fills a book with details, more or less accurate, of fibres and nerves and muscles; and I don't give the fame of a good poet to a man who ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... folks who lived in caves, could not possibly know some things that are like A B C to the fairies of to-day. For the Welsh fairies, King Puck and Queen Mab, know all about what is in the telegraphs, submarine cables and wireless telegraphy of to-day. Puck would laugh if you should say that a telephone ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... had a new horn-book that cost a silver penny. The handle was carven and the horn was clear as honey. The other little boys stood round about in speechless envy, or murmured their A B C's and "ba be bi's" along the chapel steps. The lower-form boys were playing leap-frog past the almshouse, and Geoffrey Gosse and the vicar's son were in the public gravel-pit, throwing stones at the robins in the Great House elms across ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... President Spalding responded in well-chosen words, thanking both the King and the residents of Honolulu for the hospitality shown us, after which, at the King's request, Lincoln entertained the guests with his satire on after-dinner speeches, his "A B C" orations, and his mixing of a soda cocktail, all of which provoked roars of laughter. After the banquet the King and the members of his court and family held a levee beneath his birth-tree, where, just before nine o'clock, we all filed by to bid him ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... university whose name was Gebhart, who was so well acquainted with algebra and geometry that he could tell at a single glance how many drops of water there were in a bottle of wine. As for Latin and Greek—he could patter them off like his A B C's. Nevertheless, he was not satisfied with the things he knew, but was for learning the things that no schools could teach him. So one day he came ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... masculine, potential. Once it had only the knowledge and power to alleviate evil consequences; now it has both the knowledge and the power to deal with evil causes. Now, I say to you, leave this emotional A B C of human charity to nuns and mite societies. It's a good work; let them do it. Give ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... scrutinizing any new-comer in civilian clothes with watchful eyes. Church bells tinkled for early morning Mass or Benediction. Through an open window looking out upon a broad courtyard the voices of school children came chanting their A B C in French, as though no war had taken away their fathers. There was an air of ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... that minute to tip up a form with four children on it, throw their books out of the window, and sprinkle ink all over the floor. Miss Deeble marched her downstairs to an empty kitchen, and left her sitting on a stool in the middle of it with an A B C in her hand. But Beth took no interest in the alphabet in those days, and hunted black-beetles with the bellows instead of learning it. The hearthstone was the place of execution. When she found a beetle, she would blow him along to it with the bellows, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... A B C D E is the work of the enemy to be besieged. The working parties advance by the zigzag paths M N and O to the position chosen for the first parallel, K L. At the proper time they proceed by the zigzag paths to the second parallel, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... building of printer, binder, or seller, for books published contrary to statutes, acts, and proclamations. King James, in the first year of his reign, by letters-patent, granted the Stationers' Company the exclusive privilege of printing Almanacs, Primers, Psalters, the A B C, the "Little ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... pointed out, that, with regard to the manners and customs of the people, everything is reversed, and the surest way to go right is to take pains to go dead wrong! "To speak backward, write backward, read backward, is but the A B C of ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... distress. I will never again travel abroad without a man, even if I have to hire one from a feeble-minded asylum. We work like galley-slaves, Aunt Celia and I, finding out about trains and things. Neither of us can understand Bradshaw, and I can't even grapple with the lesser intricacies of the A B C Railway Guide. The trains, so far as I can see, always arrive before they go out, and I can never tell whether to read up the page or down. It is certainly very queer that the stupidest man that breathes, one that barely escapes idiocy, can disentangle a railway guide when the brightest woman ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to him, "Willie, can you read? can you write? can you spell? Do you understand all about Algebra, Geometry; Hebrew, Latin, and Greek?" "Why, papa," the little fellow would say, "hew funny you talk. I have been all day trying to learn the A B C!" Well; suppose I should reply, "If you have not finished your education, you need not go any more." What would you say? Why, you would say, I had gone mad. There would he just as much reason in that, as in the way that people talk about the Bible. ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... there should be too much of the dragon's tooth in his children's disposition, used to find time from his kingly duties to teach them their A B C—which he invented for their benefit, and for which many little people, I am afraid, are not half so grateful to him as they ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... of the vices of France is the frivolity which substitutes public conventions for truth, and absolutely ignores personal dignity and the majesty of conscience. The French are ignorant of the A B C of individual liberty, and still show an essentially catholic intolerance toward the ideas which have not attained universality or the adhesion of the majority. The nation is an army which can bring to bear mass, number, and force, but not an assembly of free men in ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... M. The thing's really as simple as A B C. Here are we, a country with a gold standard, and we find that gold has appreciated. What's the consequence? Why, silver goes down everyday, and commerce is dislocated,—absolutely dislocated. All we have to do ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 17, 1892 • Various
... A B C, in Fig. 16, represent your blade lying flat on the paper, d o the intersection of a plane at right angles to the plane of the paper and also at right angles to the tangent to the curve at the point ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... know all about it. I was there when he was told of this affair. Upon my word, Sir; upon my word, you could not apply to a more skilful doctor. He is a man who understands medicine thoroughly, as well as I do my A B C;[8] and who, were you to die for it, would not abate one iota of the rules of the ancients. Yes, he always follows the high-road—the high-road, Sir, and doesn't spend his time finding out mares' nests. For all the gold in the world he would not cure anybody with other medicines ...
— Monsieur de Pourceaugnac • Moliere
... declared they were all behindhand and had not a minute to spare—they suggested, not too civilly, that old Mazey had nothing on earth to do, and that he knew the house as well, or better, than he knew his A B C. Magdalen took the hint, with a secret indignation and contempt which it cost her a hard struggle to conceal. She had suspected, on the previous night, and she was certain now, that the women-servants all incomprehensibly resented her presence among them with the same sullen unanimity of distrust. ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... and who returned my beast to his owner in Washington. The aphorism that a Yankee can do anything, was exemplified by this lad; for he worked my snail into a gallop. He was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, and appeared to have taken to speculation at the age when most children are learning A B C. He was now in his fourteenth year, owned two horses, and employed another boy to sell papers for him likewise. His profits upon daily sales of four hundred journals were about thirty-two dollars. He had five hundred dollars in bank, and ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... absurd! I'm not planning to take an intelligent interest in Mr. Davidge's business. I'm planning to take an intelligent interest in my own. I'm going to be a ship-builder myself, and I want to learn the A B C's." ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... at the Alif Bey (A B C) to-day, under the direction of Sheykh Yussuf, a graceful, sweet-looking young man, with a dark brown face and such fine manners, in his fellah dress—a coarse brown woollen shirt, a libdeh, or felt skull-cap, and a common red shawl ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... to maternity, my dearest mother. A brat learns his A B C a shade quicker than other children, or construes Qui fit Maecenas with tolerable correctness; and straightway the doting mother thinks her lad is an embryo Canning. You should never have hoped anything of me, except that I would love you dearly all my life. ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... a fundamental knowledge that every person who would write for the stage must possess. It ranks with the "a b c" course in the old common school education, and yet nearly every novice overlooks it in striving after the laurel wreaths of dramatic success that are impossible without it. And, precisely in the degree that stage scenery is different from nature's scenes, is ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... A B C D, the top lid of the oblong box; G H, the half of it made to fall back, and supported at an angle by the hinges, h h; l, the upper part of the lock of the box; i k, the two gable ends of the roof; i, the ...
— A Description of the Bar-and-Frame-Hive • W. Augustus Munn
... foregoing should be followed with each bird that is studied. With almost all other birds the study will be far more interesting. The English sparrow may be considered as the A B C of birds in his appearance and in the kind of life he leads. He is therefore a good subject to begin with. But even he will be ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... of the Spyttell House; "A thousande fyve hundredth fortye and foure," no printer's name, mark, or date, 4to. Here begynneth a lytell propre Jest, called Cryste Crosse me spede, a b c. 1 ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... 84: "Registro. a b c d e f g h i k l Tutti questi sono quaderni excepto l chie duerno"; audessous le monogramme de l'imprimeur en blanc sur fond noir.—Verso of folio ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... symbols, letters, crossrow; rudiments, elements, a b c. Associated Words: abecedary, alphabetic, alphabetism, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... "It's plain as a b c," she said. "You long to go to school and can't—I don't long to and can! Now here's my idea that I evolved with my thinking-cap—I mean night-cap—on! Let's go to school together. We can pore over the horrid old books on the train, mornings and nights, ...
— Glory and the Other Girl • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... to pay one hundred and eighteen pounds. A year later he conveyed two hundred acres of it by deed to a new purchaser. In this new home the family spent four years more, and while here Abraham and his sister Sarah began going to A B C schools. Their first teacher was Zachariah Riney, who taught near the Lincoln cabin; the next, Caleb Hazel, at a ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... had sent a letter, with a quick-delivery stamp on it, to William Cass, at A B C, East Fourteenth Street, New York, at 3:30 p.m., on June 12. So far as guilt or innocence was concerned there was nothing left to discover; the connection between these two men was demonstrated. Farrell's ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... K L represent a section of a cubical block of lead, about two meters in the edge, and weighing 100,000 kilos. The balance, A B C, is placed in the middle of the upper horizontal surface. It bears the scale-pans, D and E. Under these scale-pans the block is bored vertically through, and two other scale-pans, F and G, are suspended below the block, attached to the balance ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... like she says: 'A woman as brings up twelve children learns something besides her A B C. Children's as good as 'rithmetic to set you findin' ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... those who are fit for nothing else go and drone over A B C with ragged children, if they like. It is just their vocation; but there is an order in everything, Margaret, and minds of a superior kind are intended for higher purposes, not to be wasted ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... by the intellectual drug, and it hinders your heart from following out its best impulses. You have not yet learned more than the A B C of love, or you would know that the greatest happiness in loving lies in sacrifice. To take and not give, to gain something and give up nothing, is not loving. Now I think I hear you saying, "But why should not my lover give this proof of devotion as well as I? Why should not ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... taught his sons many other things good and useful to know. They were of an age to go to school, but the school was many miles away down in the village, out of reach. Isak had himself taught the boys their A B C on Sundays, but 'twas not for him, not for this born tiller of the soil, to give them any manner of higher education; the Catechism and Bible history lay quietly on the shelf with the cheeses. Isak apparently thought it better for men to grow up without book-knowledge, ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... want of water. Nobody had watered them for so long. Clearly Molly had not changed. Was it only I? I looked and wondered, as I saw myself again at ten years old in that very room. Here had been those first cups of tea; those first lessons in A B C; and other lessons in the beginnings of a higher knowledge. What had they all come to? Was Molly the better in anything beyond her flowers? What had eleven years wrought ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... good looking. He has the nicest white teeth and the most cheering grin I ever saw, and he's as 'rich as grease is,' as I heard a housemaid say one day. I'm getting quite resigned to his voice, or it is improving, I don't know which. If he only knew the mere A B C of ordinary people like ourselves, and he committed himself to me, I wouldn't lay my hand on my heart and say that one might not think ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... library. For beauty, feeling and transporting passion there is nothing like them in Magyar literature till we come to the age of Michael Csokonai and Alexander Petofi. Balassa was also the inventor of the strophe which goes by his name. It consists of nine lines—a a b c c b d d b, or three rhyming pairs alternating with the rhyming third, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... is,' sez I. 'I haven't waited till I'm old enough to have gran'children to l'arn my a b c's.' ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... briefly. There is no call for the Negro "to get out of politics;" as the term is popularly used. The fact is the Negro should begin "to get into politics" in the truest sense of the word—that is, to begin at the a b c of political power and come up by the usual processes of individual development. The suffrage is a privilege conferred by the state. States make certain restrictions for their own protection as sovereign commonwealths. Although it ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... in a chair and held a book in her lap. We stood in front of her. She would point out the letters with her knitting-needle and ask, "What is that letter? And that? And that?" Then she would ask us what the word was. In this way, we learned our A B C's. Then one-syllable, and two-syllable words, and finally to read a book held upside down. I can do it now; and occasionally, if I find a friend reading, I surprise him by glancing over the top of the page and repeating a few lines of ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... one would certainly believe I was a great painter, if he could but first persuade himself that thou dost know thy A B C.' ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... again turned on the war, on Bonaparte, and the generals and statesmen of the day. The old prince seemed convinced not only that all the men of the day were mere babies who did not know the A B C of war or of politics, and that Bonaparte was an insignificant little Frenchy, successful only because there were no longer any Potemkins or Suvorovs left to oppose him; but he was also convinced that there were no political difficulties in Europe and no real war, but only ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... would be better to purchase from some dealer. He may sell you a very weak colony, but after the first year these ought to be as strong as any. Start in the spring; when you have your bees, read good literature on the subject. A. I. Root's "A B C of Bee Culture" is good for beginners; subscribe for the American Bee Journal, of Chicago, or Gleanings in Bee Culture, Medina, Ohio. They are full of the latest ideas on ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... obtain anything at all worth while he must be fully prepared to pay its price, and that he desired above all else to become a rich man—a truly rich man, and marry a fairy-princess sort of person. And as far as education was concerned he felt that if he was not quite so brushed up on his A B C's as he was on minding his P's and Q's the result would not be half bad. Unconsciously his attitude toward the world was a composite of the philosophy of Marcus Aurelius, the cynical wisdom of Omar Khayyam, and plain and not ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... March, 1851. I was acquainted several years before that with that pastor and exhorted him to study my books and then to proclaim our message of Peace. But my message was not popular and it teaches, that the belief of the close connexion of men in mortal bodies with congenial departed spirits is the A B C, to arrive gradually to a deep knowledge of true religion and to the true freedom and deliverance from lying destroying spirits. But pastors who became materialists, were scared when they perceived, that my message ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... schoolhouse on the hill was a typical country school of Lancaster County. It had one large room with four rows of double desks and seats facing the teacher's desk and a long blackboard with its border of A B C. A stove stood in one of the corners in the front of the room. In the rear numerous hooks in the wall waited for the children's wraps and a low bench stood ready to receive their lunch baskets and ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... Lewis. "Where did you get your education? By education I don't mean a knowledge of knives, forks, and fish-eaters. That's from Ann Leighton, of course. Nor do I mean the power of adding two to two or reciting A B C D, etc. By education a gentleman means skill in ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... all but the essentials of simple living. Her clothes, even at a minimum, are more elaborate, which increases the difficulty of laundering, always a problem in camping. She is infinitely more dependent upon her elders for direction in the veriest A B C's of daily existence. "Even the matter of tying a hair-ribbon or cleaning a pair of white canvas shoes is a mountain to a good many of my girls," said the successful ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... forget it! To be sure, what does one not forget over Justinian and Gaius? Small boys who persistently resist their A B C's know very well why they do it; they have a presentiment that if they do not apply themselves too hard to the primer they will never have to struggle with the Bible. But it is a downright shame! People deceive the innocent souls! They are shown the red rooster with the basket ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... necessary he should be assisted. The first of these only is before us. The direction of youth seems one of the greatest concerns in moral life, and one that is the least understood: to form the generation to come, is of the last importance. If an ingenious master hath flogged the a b c into an innocent child, he thinks himself worthy of praise. A lad is too much terrified to march that path, which is marked out by the rod. If the way to learning abounds with punishment, he will quickly detest it; if we make his duty a task, we ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... tried the same treatment upon Clara, whose singing-teacher, Carl Banck, had been deceived by her friendship into thinking that he could persuade her to love him. His ambition suited eminently the family politics of Father Wieck. He made his first mistake by slandering Schumann, not knowing the A B C of a woman's heart. For a lover slandered is twice recommended. As Clara wrote later: "I was astounded at his black heart. He wanted to betray you, and he only ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... is, I was beginning to see what small praise there is in doing many things ill and nothing well. I wish you would take my Cremona. I could teach you the A B C of it well enough. How you would make it talk! That would be something to live for, to hear you play the violin! ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... I offered as a prize a red shirt for the first Chief who knew the whole Alphabet without a mistake. It was won by an Inikahi Chief, who was once a terror to the whole community. Afterwards, when trying to teach the A B C to others, he proceeded in something like this graphic style: "A is a man's legs with the body cut off; B is like two eyes; C is a three-quarters moon; D is like one eye; E is a man with one club under his feet ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... Commandments; and "that hymn you sung below (Evening Hymn), she knows he, but she lips (lisps), so she's ashamed before strangers." Another woman, after surveying with, much admiration a large alphabet-sheet (as I should Egyptian hieroglyphics), said, "I suppose, sir, that's the A B C." I gave little books to all who desired them. Though most of them had a considerable distance to return, they seemed unwilling to leave me and the vessel, and I was in no hurry to dismiss them. It was very sad indeed to think that the meeting and intercourse, after so long ...
— Extracts from a Journal of a Voyage of Visitation in the "Hawk," 1859 • Edward Feild
... people, I am sure, will not take in the blackness of this transaction at this stage of my story, but before it is ended I will lay this and many more of an equally hellish nature before them in such A B C simplicity that all can read the portent as clearly as the Prophet Daniel read the writing on the wall in the ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... I braved it out, and continued to learn the A B C of agriculture on an unmade farm with great ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... predicated of that which is thus coextensive." The fact of this coextensiveness must be ascertained by [Greek: nous], in other words, by the Inductive Faculty. We will take Aldrich's instance. All Magnets attract iron A B C are Magnets | Presupposed Syllogism reasoning A B C attract iron. / from ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... have done so if she would have given him plenty of time, and been willing to begin with A B C, as Rita had done ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... odd," said Sergeant Channell to Thessiger, "that Tindal should have decided against me on that point of law which, to me, seemed as plain as A B C." "Yes," replied Thessiger, "but of what use is it that it should have been A B C to you, if the judge was determined to be D E ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 21, 1841 • Various
... of this generation shall be the great thinkers and inventors of the next. There are amazing powers just waiting to be revealed. Draw aside the curtain. We have not yet learned the A B C of science. We have not yet grasped the scepters of provided dominion. Those who are most in the image and likeness of the Cause of these forces are most ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... essential it is, where there are free institutions, that the bulk of the people should be enlightened, we must see what a great public end is to be served by this simple means. A place in the apparatus is, we think, rightly claimed by the small local newspaper, as a kind of A B C, or first form, where the young and untutored mind may be entered by way ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... Snell connected together all the measurements executed up to his time, is this: Let A B C D (fig. 5) represent the outline of our circular vessel, A C being the water-line. When the beam is incident along B E, which is perpendicular to A C, there is no refraction. When it is incident along m E, there is refraction: ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... everything, and could teach me. Well, he is just as happy, and just as rich, and everybody likes him just as well, as if he knew the whole world full; and why can't I do so, too? Rebecca Dingham, indeed! Mercy! I hope I never shall be like her; I would rather not know my A B C! What shall I do? There's Mr. Brownslow might teach me; he knows enough. But, dear me! he is as busy as he can be, all day long; and Squire Merrill goes out of town every day; and there's Dr. Mix, to be sure, but he smells so strong of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... know how to read; she rejects neither the science nor even the teacher. It is the method of instruction that makes her uneasy. She is afraid lest this young professor, whose knowledge is so extensive, should turn over the pages of the book too quickly and neglect the A B C. ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... came, and found that you had left Uncle Guy, and were teaching little ragged, dirty children their A B C's. What possessed you to do such ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... has yet been engaged. Besides this, I am unwilling—after having been endeavouring for four or five years to qualify myself, in some degree, for almost any other line of public service—that my first ostensible debut should be in one where I should have the first A B C ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... Well, I should say so! That's another little thing that's as simple as A B C, but it saves lives and broken bones just the same. Sometimes I think we get to thinking too much about the big things, Colonel, and not enough about these little, everyday ideas that spell Safety to all these thousands of men who look to us for ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... dwarfs the portion of the diagram C D E, representing the luminous radiation. Indeed the idea forced upon the mind by this diagram is that the light rays are a mere insignificant appendage to the heat-rays represented by the area A B C D, thrown in as it were by nature for the ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... rural extravaganzas. Why I mention him is, that your "Power of Music" reminded me of his poem of "The Ballad-singer in the Seven Dials," Do you remember his epigram on the old woman who taught Newton the A B C, which, after all, he says, he hesitates not to call Newton's "Principia"? I was lately fatiguing myself with going through a volume of fine words by Lord Thurlow,—excellent words; and if the heart could live by words alone, it could desire no better regales. But what an aching vacuum of ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... tugendbund and Italian Carbonarism; but here and there there were dark underminings, which were in process of throwing off shoots. The Cougourde was being outlined at Aix; there existed at Paris, among other affiliations of that nature, the society of the Friends of the A B C. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... her tormentor, "it was as plain as A B C to me that night, and I chuckled right smart to myself when I saw you innocently pin them, on your breast. It was simply delicious! But"—suddenly laying her hands on the pretty brown head—"bless you, my children! you have my unqualified sanction and I'll put my ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... pupil were assigned a room near Ki Pak's library, where Yung Pak would spend several hours each day trying his best to learn the Korean A B C's. ...
— Our Little Korean Cousin • H. Lee M. Pike
... to school if I could help it. What's the use of so much learning? I'm going to a trade as soon as I get old enough; and Pete Elder says that a boy who don't know A B C, can learn a trade just as well ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... The boys, who had sat down to breakfast rather wanting in appetite—from the fact that their consciences were not very clear regarding studies in English and French or certain algebraic solutions or arrangements in angles specified by "A B C" and "D E F," according to the declarations of a well-known gentleman named Euclid—felt in their great relief as if they would like another cup of coffee and two slices more, for the holiday ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... a bright day in the life of Uncle John Owens, then, when Ollie's lawyer called at the poorhouse and placed under his hands some slender slips of cardboard bearing raised letters, the A B C ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... pleasant time, born in Middlesex County, his favorite walks, his gifted pen, born and bred in the country, feels his sap start in spring, is at times unsocial, the school-house where he learned his a b c, falls asleep, his ancestor a Cromwellian colonel, finds it harder to make up his mind as he grows older, wishes he could write a song or two, liable to moods, loves nature and is loved in return, describes some favorite haunts of his, his slain kindred, his speech in March meeting, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... early housekeeping days, when as yet I was ignorant of the A B C's of floriculture. I bought an Agapanthus. No pains were taken with it, but it grew right along and blossomed freely. I was much astonished afterwards to learn that the Agapanthus is considered an obstinate plant that can neither be coaxed nor driven to bloom. Poor Agapanthus! It has been unjustly ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... and baser necessities of daily life, the pots and kettles and brooms and pails, into the narrowest compass, and hiding them from the aesthetic eye. Mary thought that if she began by learning the homely devices of the villagers—the very A B C of cookery and housewifery—she might gradually enlarge upon this simple basis to suit an income of from five to seven hundred a year. The house-mothers from whom she sought information were puzzled at this sudden curiosity about domestic matters. They ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... "A blind man's wife needs no paint," which he defended as "Proverbs, sir, Proverbs." Giving up part of his business to his nephew, he still sat up at night baking, for the nephew, he said, was only in the A B C book of baking, and he also had other troubles: there was insanity in his family, and he was much harassed. His kindness and simplicity were sometimes abused. He never had the heart to refuse to lend money, or to deny bread on credit to hopeless debtors; and ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... no Sunday schools in those days, Mrs. Carroll gathered her children around her on Sunday afternoons and drilled them in the church catechism until it was as familiar to them as their A B C; but Anna Ella always inclined to the Westminster Confession and the tenets in which her father's childhood had been ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... for ever. Yet no, the germ has life; it works in my veins, never to leave them again. It finds nourishment everywhere, down to the cover of my penny alphabet, embellished with a crude picture of a pigeon which I study and contemplate much more zealously than the A B C. Its round eye, with its circlet of dots, seems to smile upon me. Its wing, of which I count the feathers one by one, tells me of flights on high, among the beautiful clouds; it carries me to the beeches raising their smooth trunks ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... Hawaii are brought up. They live in the open, and they know how to ride and swim before they know what six- times-six is. As for me, I can't remember when I first got on a horse nor when I learned to swim. That came before my A B C's. Dad owned cattle ranches on Hawaii and Maui—big ones, for the islands. Hokuna had two hundred thousand acres alone. It extended in between Mauna Koa and Mauna Loa, and it was there I learned to shoot goats and wild ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... boy began to go to an "A B C" school. His first teacher was Zachariah Riney. Of course, there were no regular schools in the backwoods then. When a man who "knew enough" happened to come along, especially if he had nothing else ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... hopeful heart as to the result of that summer's teaching he bade her go. So it was all arranged, and the next letter which went from Maude to J.C. carried the intelligence that his betrothed was going "to turn country school-ma'am, and teach the Hampton brats their A B C's," so at last he said to Mrs. Kelsey and her niece, between whom and himself there was a perfectly good understanding, and to whom he talked of his future prospects without reserve. Mrs. Kelsey was secretly delighted, for matters were shaping themselves much as she would ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... that of any other statesman who ever lived—for such, surely, would have been the meed of the man who abolished war. That mind of his, honest as the day, but far from great; strong but not broad, sees everything as simple, not as complex. Is there a wrong? Why, then, abolish it; it is as simple as A B C. War is wrong; therefore let us stop it. How? Why, get everybody to agree not to fight without taking a year to look into the thing. And he busied himself drafting and negotiating treaties with all the world to get it to agree to this simple but certain remedy. The "glorified circuit ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... turned up and she sniffed some. She wuz a foreigner, how could she know what I said? But Dorothy and Robert seemed to understand my language, though they couldn't speak it yet. And good land! I hain't learnt its A B C's yet, and don't spoze I shall till I git promoted to ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... waste of time to elaborate these A B C's of commerce," Mr. Calvin said tartly. "We all ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... mean time, Philip grew to manhood and received the same education that was given to the other young men of his tribe. It was very different from the education received by us to-day. The Indians had no schools. Philip did not learn his A B C's or the multiplication table. He never learned how to read or write. He knew nothing about science, and could not even count, or keep track ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... creeds with the narrowness of Little Bethel, importing into thought and aesthetics the zealotry they had lost in religion. The book of Experience, thought I, is not an Encyclopaedia, with every possible topic neatly ranged in alphabetical order; 'tis no A B C Time Table, with the trains docketed for the enlightenment of the simple,'t is rather an Encyclopaedia torn into a million million fragments by kittens and pasted together again by infants, so that all ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... imitate Snowden, and not himself; 'you'll find a pure mouth there, boys, because the heart is pure; you'll see no letters of introduction to the devil,' as the chaplain called cards, 'in his knapsack.' By the way, he was so hard on cards, that even the boatmen, who knew them better than their A B C's, were ashamed to play them. He would say, 'Snowden is brave as man can be; he has a right to be, he is prepared for every fate. A christian, boys, makes all the better soldier for his being a Christian,' and he would tell us of Washington, Col. ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... schoolma'am?" Happy Jack's distaste for schoolma'ams dated from his tempestuous introduction to the A B C's, with their daily accompaniment of ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... ignorance of the very first elements of moral science could shield our minds against the force of their irresistible arguments. In the overflowing exuberance of their philanthropy, they take pity of our most lamentable moral darkness, and graciously condescend to teach us the very A B C of ethical philosophy! Hence, if we have deemed it a duty to lay bare their pompous inanities, showing them to be no oracles, and to strip their pitiful sophisms of the guise of a profound philosophy, we trust that no impartial ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... as constructed, with sections, A B C, in combination with the foot block, I, provided with a flange or boss, K, when arranged in the manner as and for the purpose ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various |
