"Uninitiated" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the pasture, Melindy presently detected those faint indications of a trail which the uninitiated eye finds it so impossible to see. Slight bendings and bruises of the blueberry and laurel scrub caught her notice. Then she found, in a bare spot, the unmistakable print of a cow's hoof. The trail was now quite clear to her; and it was clearly that of old ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... coast-watcher, up soon after dawn, take a stroll along the beach, even when he is not supposed to be on duty and before he has tasted his morning tea. The family telescope is at his eye, as he wants to get a good look at what the sea has been doing, and what is there. To the uninitiated, it seems to have the same paucity of interest as any other shipless stretch of water; but to this expert it has a story. He notes the clouds, the sun, the very rocks; and they say that his gaze is so sharp that it would spot a champagne-cork floating ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... every symbolic detail in architecture, in sculpture, in painting, in glass-colouring, to be found at Chartres; to which is added a careful elaboration of the symbolism of beasts, flowers, colours, perfumes, all very dreary reading for the uninitiated, and to be ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... expectancy. His white apron merely accentuated the obvious fact that he had come in a limousine. I have since decided that he mistook me for an eccentric peer. It seems that eccentric peers and struggling journalists are apt to provide the same air of sartorial abandon to the eye of the uninitiated. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... it either—unless the stranger is properly vouched for. The best theaters in Vienna are small, exclusive affairs, privately supported, and with seating capacity for a few chosen patrons. Once he has quit the public cafe with its fine music and its bad waiters the uninitiated traveler has a pretty lonesome time of it in Vienna. Until all hours he may roam the principal streets seeking that fillip of wickedness which will give zest to life and provide him with something to brag about when he gets back among the home folks again. He does not ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... understood it at once; and we had another laugh together. I began to wonder whether every one that wore a uniform of grey and white with gilt buttons made it his amusement to play upon the ignorance of uninitiated people; but on reflection I could not think Mr. Thorold had done so. I resolved to be careful how I trusted the rest of the cadets, even Preston; and indeed my companion remarked that I had better not believe anything I heard without asking him. We ran down and inspected the casemates; ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... by their ardor in crayoning. They covered canvas with the expedition of scene-painters, had classes, lectures, receptions, and exhibitions, made models of each other, and rendered their walls hideous with bad likenesses of all their friends. Their conversation ceased to be intelligible to the uninitiated, and they prattled prettily of "chiaro oscuro, French sauce, refraction of the angle of the eye, seventh spinus process, depth and juiciness of color, tender touch, and a good tone." Even in dress the artistic disorder ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... from one made by men is quite important. It is easy to be led astray by animal trails, for they are often well defined and, in some cases, well beaten. To the uninitiated the trails will appear the same, but there is a difference which, in a recent number of Field and Stream, Mr. Arthur Rice defines very clearly in this way: "Men step on things. Animals step over or around things." Then ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... he had foreseen, even to the markedly prompt dispersal of the guests, two of whom were "local" men, earnest and distinct, though not particularly distinguished. The third was a young, slim, uninitiated gentleman whom Lord Bottomley brought with him and concerning whom Nick was informed beforehand that he was engaged to be married to the Honourable Jane, his lordship's second daughter. There were recurrent allusions to Nick's victory, ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... unlike adults, he is never afraid to face his own limitations. How refreshing to converse with folks who have no bile to vent, no axe to grind, no prejudices to air; who are pagans to the core; who, uninitiated into the false value of externals, never fail to size you up from a more spiritual point of view than do their elders; who are not oozing politics and sexuality, nor afflicted with some stupid ailment or other which prevents them doing this and that. To ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... stated by Miss G. serves to unravel what, to one uninitiated, seems quite a mystery: i.e. the frequency with which, in the advertisements of runaway slaves published in southern papers, they are described as having one or two front teeth out. Scores of such advertisements are in southern papers now on our table. We ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... with whom so often I discovered the North Pole, probed the problem of the sources of the Nile, (Have you forgotten, Tubby, our secret camping ground beside the lonely waters of the Regent's Park canal, where discussing our frugal meal of toasted elephant's tongue—by the uninitiated mistakable for jumbles—there would break upon our trained hunters' ear the hungry lion or tiger's distant roar, mingled with the melancholy, long-drawn growling of the Polar Bear, growing ever in volume and impatience until half-past four precisely; and we would ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... is not opposed to vivisection may deceive the uninitiated. Either vivisection is a good thing and hence should not be interfered with, or it is a nefarious business and should be stopped.... You and your society are either honestly misinformed, suffer from delusions, or are lying bigots. ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... moments after her first night's rest, uninitiated Jill had in imagination gone through and ardently disliked the frightful hour in which she would help collect, and clean, and pack a litter of soiled pots and pans, and other such abominations, which collecting, etc., seems to constitute one of the chief ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... to constituents; and in the fall campaign of 1845, the party fell back upon the old issues of the year before. To the astonishment of the Hunkers, however, the legislative session opened in January, 1846, with two Radicals to one Conservative. It looked to the uninitiated as if the policy of canal improvement had fallen into disfavour; but Croswell, and other Hunkers in the inner political circle, understood that a change, long foreseen by them, was rapidly approaching. The people of New York felt profound interest in the conflict ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... there was a standing supper of oysters,—the "institution" of oysters as they justly call it,—hot quails, ham, ices, and most copious supplies of their beloved Catawba champagne, which we do not love, for it tastes, to our uninitiated palates, little better than cider. It was served in a large red punch-bowl of Bohemian glass in the form of Catawba cobbler, which I thought improved it; but between the wine and the quails, which, from over hospitable kindness, were forced on poor papa, he awoke the next morning ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... such a feeling is observable in his writings, which show throughout a sturdy vein of republicanism, social and political. In truth, the party classification of American literary men is apt to puzzle the uninitiated. Thus Washington Irving is said to belong to the Democrats; but it would be hard to find in his writings anything countenancing their claim upon him. His sketches of English society are a panegyric of old institutions; and the fourth book of his ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... foreign potentate, which, with his accumulated earnings, somewhat dilapidated by gambling, he bequeathed to his only son. Paganini was the founder of his school, and the original inventor of those extraordinary tours de force with which all his successors and imitators are accustomed to astonish the uninitiated. But he still stands at the head of the list, although eminent names are included in it, and is not likely to ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... present. Indeed, it had been said of her that in past, present, and future there had ever been but the one picture to interest her eyes—the one she was looking at now. This, however, was the remark of the uninitiated, for the true passion of a beautiful woman is never so much for her beauty as for its booty; as the passion of a gamester is for his game, not ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... has ever held an allurement for the lay reader, the general public, and the uninitiated, so to speak, and Mr. Brebner has chosen this background for the setting of his story, and has woven around Olive Vaughan, scenes and incidents showing the temptations to which every aspirant for theatrical fame and fortune is subject, and showing too, how, through right decisions and ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... did), but rather as a sudden emotional conversion. The missionary is always the light-bringer. "Some eminent in virtue shall start up," he prophesies in Queen Mab. The Revolt of Islam, so puzzling to the uninitiated reader by the wilful inversions of its mythology, and its history which seems to belong to no conceivable race of men, becomes, when one grasps its underlying ideas, a luminous epic of revolutionary faith, precious if only because it is ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... therewith, the saltire of Nevil and the three scallops of Dacre, and each connected with ramifications of the forget-me-not flower shaped like the turquoises of her pouncet box, and with the letter G to be traced by ingenious eyes, though the uninitiated might ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... guiding the frail bark through the more unbroken places in the fierce current, which hisses and foams around, as if eager to swallow us up. Now we rush with lightning force towards a rock, against which the water dashes in fury; and to an uninitiated traveller we appear to be on the point of destruction. But one vigorous stroke from the bowsman and steersman (for they always act in concert) sends the light craft at a sharp angle from the impending danger; and away we plunge again over the surging waters—sometimes ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... exceedingly interesting remains, perhaps the most interesting—at any rate, to the uninitiated—is Grimspound. The boundary wall, which is double, encloses four acres; it is from ten to twelve feet thick, but not above five and a half feet in height. Within the circle are twenty-four hut-circles, ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... commercial district, lying south of Washington Square, a little to the west of Broadway's great artery of traffic. A decorous and unbetraying door, bearing only the modest sign, "The Neptune Club," and a narrow stairway leading to an equally decorous and uncompromising hall, gave no hint, to the uninitiated, of what the great gloomy walls of the building ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... books have been evil-entreated, when they have become soiled by dirty hands, or spoiled by water stains, or injured by grease spots, nothing is more astonishing to the uninitiated than the transformation they undergo in the hands of a skilful restorer. The covers are first carefully dissected, the eye of the operator keeping a careful outlook for any fragments of old MSS. or early printed books, ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... a matter of classification into "arches," "loops," "whorls," and "composites." It is intricate to describe, but simple to carry out. To the uninitiated it inevitably suggests the old problem "think of a ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... waves; less rapid than one per second. This flattening of the fifth is called tempering, and from it comes the word "temperament." The fact that the fifth must always be tuned a little flatter than perfect, is a matter which always causes some astonishment when first learned. It seems, to the uninitiated, that every interval should be made perfect; but it is impossible to make them so, and get a correct scale, as we ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer
... headdresses of wickerwork shaped like candle extinguishers, which descend to the shoulders of the wearers, completely concealing their faces. Thus disguised they dance about to the awe and terror, real or assumed, of the women and uninitiated, who take, or pretend to take, them for spirits. When lads are being initiated into the secrets of this august society, the adepts cut down some very large and heavy bamboos, one for each lad, and the novices carry them, carefully wrapt up in ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... the remainder of the afternoon, nothing occurred in the settlement which need here be mentioned, except the secret and cautiously-made preparations for the proposed action of the night, that, though imperceptible to the uninitiated, were yet actively going on at the village. About sunset, however, the hunter returned from his visit to the chief's; but in a state of no little perplexity and concern, at an event which he unexpectedly ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... a splendid case of close reasoning, and long substantial argument throughout so many pages; the condensation immense, too great perhaps for the uninitiated, but an effective and important preliminary statement, which will admit, even before your detailed proofs appear, of some occasional useful exemplification, such as your pigeons and cirripedes, of which ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... To the uninitiated, words are powerless to reveal the torments of the imprisoned in a modern steel inquisition, rocking and pitching at the mercy of mighty torrents in a mid-ocean cyclone. Mephistopheles, seeking severest ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... holy mystery of motherhood. She had not looked forward to the child's coming with any supreme pleasure, or supposed that her life would be altered by his advent. But from the moment she held him in her arms, a helpless morsel of humanity, hardly visible to the uninitiated amidst his voluminous draperies, she felt herself on the threshold of a new existence. With him was born her future—it was a most complete realization of those sweet wise ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... Daniels had ushered him into the auditorium. He stooped as he turned, to elude any outstretched hands, drove himself like a wedge through the compacted mass of frightened spectators and, spite of the gloom, the deeper because of the glare preceding it, he reached the egress. The uninitiated would never have suspected its existence, for the actors and staff of the establishment alone had the right and knowledge ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... kept quiet as we know, by superstition of a lower grade, the dread of having money of the murdered, a thought she never breathed to any but her husband; and to poor uninitiated Grace (who had not heard a word of Ben's adventure), her answer about Mrs. Quarles and Mr. Jennings in the dawn of the crock's first blessing, had been entirely unintelligible: Mary, then, said never a word, but looked on dreadingly ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... overthrown. Professor Eugene Duehring, Privat Docent of Berlin University, loudly proclaimed himself a convert to Socialism. When this great figure from the bourgeois intellectual world stepped boldly and somewhat noisily into the arena, there was not wanting a considerable group of young and uninitiated members in the party who flocked to his standard and found in ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... two old sovereigns, Alpenstock in hand, and short, stocky rifles slung over the shoulder, go toiling up and down the mountains, along the edges of great precipices, tracing their steps along paths that to the uninitiated would seem to afford no foothold to any living thing, save a goat or a chamois. Sometimes they are overtaken by snowstorms while up in the mountains, and are unable to see their way, or to move either backwards ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... boy was gone, Tresco weighed the gold that lay on the bench. It came to 111 ounces, and this, valued at the current price of gold from Bush Robin Creek—the uninitiated are possibly unaware that as one star differeth from another star in glory, so the gold from one locality differs in price from that found in another—came to L430 ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... acrimony which is so curiously inseparable from any collection of the world's great song-birds. Ever since Music, heavenly maid, was young, she has been so notoriously at variance with her fellow-musicians as to force the uninitiated into all sorts of cynical conclusions! Such as the necessity for some kind of handicap for all these harmonies, some make-weight for these unnaturally perfect chords. And it is but due to the various artists to admit that ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... from their seats, arms, hands, excitable faces, rapid vociferations, all come in play, and the element of pantomime performs its part in assisting the human voice as naturally as among the Italians of Syracuse. To the uninitiated the biddings here are as unintelligible as elsewhere, sounding to ordinary ears like the gibberish of Victor Hugo's Compachinos. But the comparative quietude of this Board renders it easier to follow the course of the market, to detect the shades of difference in ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... colonial expression, which may convey to the uninitiated the idea that knives, forks, plates, etc., are unknown in the bush; such was formerly the case, but the march of improvement has banished ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... a few hints as to the pronunciation of Polish words, which otherwise might puzzle the reader uninitiated in the mysteries of that rarely-learned language. Aiming more at simplicity than at accuracy, one may say that the vowels are pronounced somewhat like this: a as in "arm," aL like the nasal French "on," e as in ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... essentials and cannot deal with far-reaching and controversial questions. In cases where difference of opinion exists, I adopt my own view for which I hold myself responsible. I hope to succeed in making myself intelligible even without the aid of illustrations: in order to convey to the uninitiated an adequate idea of the phenomena connected with the life of a cell, a greater number of figures would be required than could be included within ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... my company, but later in command of Company G, Third Battalion, writes a very entertaining sketch of prison life, which I very willingly give space to, so that the uninitiated may have some idea of prison life, and the pleasure of being called "fresh fish" by the old prison "rats." Lieutenant Whites was a gallant soldier and a splendid officer. He was what is called in common parlance "dead game" in battle and out. He is a commercial man, and at present a member of ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... much followed by the men and much complimented by the women. Her triumph, however, did not culminate until the next appearance of "The Firefly," containing a song "To the Evening Star," which everybody knew to stand for Mrs. Redmain. The chaos of the uninitiated, indeed, exoteric and despicable, remained in ignorance, nor dreamed that the verses meant anybody of note; to them they seemed but the calf-sigh of some young writer so deep in his first devotion that he jumbled up his lady-love, Hesper, and Aphrodite, in the same poetic bundle—of ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... we again reached the steamer. We found her prepared for action, having been much annoyed during the night by the continued Dyak war-yells—sounds, to uninitiated ears, as unpleasant as those of musketry. Having driven away the two principal instigators and abettors of all the piracies committed along the coast of Borneo and elsewhere, and destroyed their strongholds, it now remained ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... By the uninitiated it may be regarded simply as fun and pastime to climb a mountain whose summit soars into cloudland; in reality it is serious business, not necessarily accompanied with great danger, but always accomplished by laborious effort. However, it is better for ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... each factor may affect the entire body, is less likely to do harm than to state that each factor affects only a particular character. The reckless use of the phrase "unit character" has done much to mislead the uninitiated as to the effects that a single change in the germ plasm may produce on the organism. Fortunately, the expression "unit character" is being less used by those students of genetics who are more careful in regard to ...
— A Critique of the Theory of Evolution • Thomas Hunt Morgan
... week in Brigade Reserve. Though the Battalion only got into billets at 1 a.m., after a four mile march, a working party had to be found at 8-30 a.m. for work on a Divisional show ground, which was a place where model trenches were dug to show the uninitiated how things ought to be done. Tasks like these were regarded as onerous by the men, who were led to expect some period of rest when not in the ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... code we are bound by an oath of so deadly—so dreadful a nature, that bold and reckless as we are, we could not forget that. And I should alike break our laws and depart from my oath, were I to conduct an uninitiated stranger to our stronghold ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... Allies, had a disastrous effect upon the situation throughout Siberia. If Semianoff and Kalmakoff could, with Allied help and encouragement, openly deride the Omsk Government's orders, then it was clear to the uninitiated that the Allies were hostile to the supreme Russian authority. If Semianoff and Kalmakoff can wage successful hired resistance to orderly government at the bidding of a foreign Power, why cannot we do so, to retain the land ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... caught a terrible sound which to the uninitiated would have seemed like the roaring of a dozen lions in combat, but the dreadful notes that vibrated through the forest were only those of the howling monkey. I always had a great desire to see one of this species in the act of performing this uncanny forest-concert, therefore I ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... sashes thrown wide open, and chilly linoleum to replace warm carpets, were rather a trial to the uninitiated, early in January, with deep snow on the ground and fires none too plentiful. In addition to these drawbacks I had another personal one. Coming in the middle of the winter, it was naturally Hobson's choice as regarded the bedrooms. All the best and warmest aspects ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... sharp wrestling-match far down among the seaweeds, the Pup's observant eyes caught sight of a small, black triangular object cutting swiftly the smooth surface of the swells. He stared at it curiously. It was coming towards him, but it did not, to his uninitiated eyes, look dangerous. Then he became conscious of a scurrying of alarm all about him; and cries of sharp warning reached him from the sentinels on the ledge. Like a flash he dived, at an acute angle to the line of approach of the mysterious black ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... don't deny it: still you understand that, never having seen it, we, the uninitiated, have some ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... even the clerks, and still they have not the courage to tell the whole truth. These publications teem generally with falsehoods, perversions, crooked statements, with calculations of averages, that prove a great deal for the uninitiated reader and nothing for the initiated, and with suppressions of facts bearing on the most important points; and they prove only the selfish blindness and want of uprightness of the manufacturers concerned. Let us take some of the ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... of throwing young people together. Middle-aged people, too. But the observer receives no impression of moral disorder. High spirits are the rule, and impropriety is the exception. Even in the auditorium at Steeplechase Park, where the cognoscenti assemble to witness the discomfiture of the uninitiated, there is nothing but harmless laughter as the skirts fly up before the unsuspected blast. Such a performance in England, were it permitted, would degenerate into ugliness; in France, too, it would make the alien ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... is certainly the strangest creature among the terrestrial fauna of Provence: a slim, swaying thing of so fantastic an appearance that uninitiated fingers dare not lay hold of it. The children of my neighbourhood, impressed by its startling shape, call it "the Devilkin." In their imaginations, the queer little creature savours of witchcraft. One comes across it, though always ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... another byway of book-collecting which we must study before we may graduate in book-lore. To the uninitiated the word 'bibliography' conveys little more than a mere writing about books. But it is a vast study, and, if we are to become proficient in it, one that will ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... gathered during a couple of days' stay at Aldershot, and I have delayed much too long to attempt a rapid and grateful report of them. But I reflect that such a report, however friendly, coming from a visitor profoundly uninitiated into the military mystery, can have but a relative value. I may lay myself open to contempt, for instance, in making the simple remark that the big parade held in honor of the queen's birthday, and which I went down more particularly to see, struck me, as the young ladies say, as perfectly lovely. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... have seen that a community or social group sustains itself through continuous self-renewal, and that this renewal takes place by means of the educational growth of the immature members of the group. By various agencies, unintentional and designed, a society transforms uninitiated and seemingly alien beings into robust trustees of its own resources and ideals. Education is thus a fostering, a nurturing, a cultivating, process. All of these words mean that it implies attention to the conditions of growth. We also speak of rearing, raising, bringing ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... more fertile disease distributor, particularly in a new country, than water. The uninitiated generally take it for granted that so long as water looks clear it is necessarily pure and wholesome; as a matter of fact the contrary is more usually the case, except in very well watered countries, ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... of John Sewell's epic history sit lightly on paper; easy words for Sewell, once the collection of data was over, to write; not very significant words for the uninitiated and casual reader who does not see the irresistible forces beneath them. But consider the full meaning of these words, and glance for a moment at the two figures conjured up by them. We see Hawk Carse, a man ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... vaguely of the "grape cure" for diseases arising from over-feeding, and the lemon cure for rheumatism, but for the most part these "cures" remain mere names. Nevertheless it is almost incredible to the uninitiated what may be accomplished by the abandonment for a time of every kind of food in favour of fruit. Of course, such a proceeding should not be entered upon in a careless or random fashion. Too sudden changes of habit are apt to be attended with disturbances that discourage ...
— Food Remedies - Facts About Foods And Their Medicinal Uses • Florence Daniel
... Raymond," said he, "I am not in the habit of talking much about the secrets of my profession, but in this case everything depends upon getting the right clue at the start. We have no common villainy to deal with here; genius has been at work. Now sometimes an absolutely uninitiated mind will intuitively catch at something which the most highly trained intellect will miss. If such a thing should occur, remember that I am your man. Don't go round talking, but come to me. For this is going to be a great case, mind you, a great ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... intermissions for two hasty meals, the operatives will be confined to their tasks. The proverbial facility of the Yankees in despatching their dinners in the least possible time seems to have been taken advantage of and reduced to a system on the Lowell corporations. Strange as it may seem to the uninitiated, the working-men and women here contrive to repair to their lodgings, make the necessary preliminary ablutions, devour their beef and pudding, and hurry back to their looms and jacks in the brief space of half an hour. In this way the working-day in Lowell is eked out to an average throughout ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... were over and the girls found themselves liking the gay young strangers immensely. Their English accent and the way they said, "Bah Jove!" and "Beastly hot weather, what?" fascinated the uninitiated girls, and they were soon imitating their ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... a young soldier more than the whizzing of a distant fire. The slower a bullet or a shot approaches, the more noise it makes; and, the sound continuing longer than is generally imagined, the uninitiated are apt to imagine that the dangerous missile is travelling on an errand directly towards themselves. Space appears annihilated, and raw hands are often seen to duck at a round shot that is possibly flying a ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... the shed behind him, where two or three life-size idol horses stood and said how childish he knew it was, foolish and vain. But then, what else could be done? Idols are not objects of worship, and never were intended so to be; their only use is to help the uninitiated to worship Something. If nothing were shown them, they would worship nothing; and a non-worshipping human being is an animal, ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... pack in place—adjusting the saddle with careful hand; accurately dividing the weight, with the blankets on top, and, over all, the canvas tarpaulin folded the proper size and neatly tucked in around the ends; and finally securing the whole with the, to the uninitiated, intricate and complicated diamond hitch. The order of their march, also, would place Croesus first; which position—the novelist, again, gravely explained, as he drew the cinches tight—is held by all who value good form, to be the ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... contraband SPIRITS, the deceit is more successfully manoeuvred in Town than in the country.— The facility of smuggling on the coast frequently supplies the maritime visitant with a cheap and genuine beverage. In Town the same opportunity does not occur, and on the uninitiated in the cheats of London, the system of this species of imposition is more frequently practised. Professing to exhibit Real Life in London, we shall not trouble our readers with an apology for the introduction of the following ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... the elementary study of bird life nothing has ever been published more satisfactory than this most successful of Nature Books. This book makes the identification of our birds simple and positive, even to the uninitiated, through certain unique features. I. All the birds are grouped according to color, in the belief that a bird's coloring is the first and often the only characteristic noticed. II. By another classification, the birds are grouped according to their season. III. All ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... looked over the mystic hieroglyphics of the art, inscribed on a paper that was placed before the visionary, with deep and scrutinising attention. Without bewildering the reader with those words and figures of weird sound and import which perplex the uninitiated, and entangle the disciple of astrology, I shall merely observe that there was one point in which the judgment appeared to admit doubt as to the signification. The Englishman insisted on the doubt; and a very learned and edifying debate was carried on between pupil and ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and effective mode of terminating a money trick is to pass the marked coin into the center of a large ball of Berlin wool or worsted, the whole of which has to be unwound before the coin can be reached. The modus operandi, though perplexing to the uninitiated, is absurdly simple when the secret is revealed. The only apparatus necessary over and above the wool (of which you must have enough for a good-sized ball), is a flat tin tube, three to four inches in length, and just large enough to allow a quarter or ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... the infant mollusc where a seeming resemblance to an operculum forms, possibly for the protection of vital organs during nascency. This plaque of frail armour is, however, soon dismantled, and of course much more happens in the never-ceasing process than is revealed to the uninitiated. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... palace of Baaltis rolled open before Elissa. Now, too, the priestesses bore her to the golden throne shaped like a crescent moon, and threw over her a black veil spangled with stars, symbol of the night. Then having shut out the uninitiated, they worshipped her after their secret fashion till she sank down upon the throne overcome with fear and weariness. Then at last they carried her to that wonder of workmanship and allegorical art, the ivory bed of Baaltis, and laid her down ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... started in a race it is vigorously exercised, "warmed up.'' To the uninitiated this process seems so strenuous as to defeat its purpose by wearing out the strength of the horse. Every horseman knows, however, that the animal cannot attain top speed till after it has ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... supplied him with one. It was astonishing how he made his way in society, and though, of course, he never touched the empyrean regions in which Endymion now breathed, he gradually, and at last rapidly, planted himself in a world which to the uninitiated figures as the very realm of nobility and fashion, and where doubtless is found a great fund of splendour, refinement, and amusement. Seymour Hicks was not ill-favoured, and was always well dressed, and he was very civil, but what ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... setting under that massive brow. His manner is very quiet, but he speaks as one tremendously convinced of what he utters, and who had much, very much, in him that was quite unutterable, quite unfit to be uttered to the uninitiated ear; and when the Englishman's sense of beauty or truth exhibited itself in vociferous cheers, he would impatiently, almost contemptuously, wave his hand, as if that were not the kind of homage which ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... most interesting country to the professor of the natural sciences. Great mineral treasures will certainly be one day discovered here; the number and diversity of its stones is striking even to the most uninitiated. It abounds in hot and salutary springs. To the botanist it offers great varieties of plants, little if at all known; and the zoologist would find here, amongst the animal tribes deserving his attention, besides several kinds of bears, wolves and foxes, the celebrated sable whose ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... Over this, in winter, is worn a sealskin sacque, cloth cloak, fur circular, or other garment, according to the means of the wearer. In summer she wears a light shawl, which completely hides the slit in the dress from view. She now takes her muff, which, to the uninitiated eye, has nothing to distinguish it, outwardly, from thousands of other muffs, but which is a master-piece of ingenious contrivance. It is covered with any kind of fur, just as honest muffs are, with the significant exception that, instead of ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... knots, ties, bends, hitches, splices, and shortenings in use is almost unlimited and they are most confusing and bewildering to the uninitiated. The most useful and ornamental, as well as the most reliable, are comparatively few in number, and in reality each knot learned leads readily to another; in the following pages I have endeavored to describe them in such a manner that their ...
— Knots, Splices and Rope Work • A. Hyatt Verrill
... do but half the work. Either regular courses of instruction or occasional lectures upon topics connected with the theory or history of art are necessary in order to make the Museum anything more than a collection of curiosities to the uninitiated, and such lectures are given during the winter at the ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... signal-men waving their red flags, and then plunging down the mountain-side out of danger, as the earth rumbled and shook and vomited out a shower of stones and rubbish into the calm hot air. It was a spectacle of desperate activity and puzzling to the uninitiated, for it seemed to be scattered over an unlimited extent, with no head nor direction, and with each man, or each group of men, working alone, like rag-pickers on a heap ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... district head-quarters for instructions. Each messenger had nearly ninety miles to go, so the race was about even, despite the fact that the sheriff's couriers were mounted and Stannard's runner went afoot. The uninitiated would have backed the riders to win, but Stannard backed the runner. The former were deputies and white; the latter was Apache-Mohave and brown. The former had a road and a roadside ranch or two, whereat they might and ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... "does it need the Necromancer to convince us that the soul does not perish when the breath leaves the lips? If I judge the burthen of thy song aright, thou art not, O singer, uninitiated in the divine and consoling doctrines which, emanating, it is said, from the schools of Miletus, establish the immortality of the soul, not for Demigods and Heroes only, but for us all; which imply the soul's purification from earthly sins, in some regions less ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... quote from books as easily accessible as Green Bays; but is there a branch of the famous "Omar Khayyam Club" in Manchester? If there be, to it I offer this delicious morsel, only apologizing to the uninitiated reader for the pregnant allusiveness, which none but a sworn Khayyamite ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... 3rd most of the naval guns fired off a large amount of shell, and there was considerable guessing amongst the uninitiated as to what was or were the targets. Shells fell at the foot of Bulwana, near the searchlight on the top, and also near the big gun. It was afterwards learnt that all the shells were meant for one particular spot on ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... secret agent at Sebastopol that a serious expedition was being organised, that the Turkish ships at Batoum were to be destroyed or frightened away at any cost. Frightened away, indeed! To the uninitiated a torpedo is a thing to frighten any one away. We had heard of magnificent results of torpedo trials in peace, how ships (I fancy only hulks) had been blown up, columns of water half a mile high being sent into the air, &c. ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... of trapping for beaver is no child's play. A person unaccustomed to it may possibly look upon it as no very difficult task. A single trial is usually sufficient to satisfy the uninitiated on this point; for, the beaver, above all other wild animals of America is endowed with an extraordinary amount of instinct. His handiwork ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... and circumspect art of the lawyer, sifting the testimony of the unconscious witness, and worming from his custody those minor details which seem to the uninitiated so perfectly unimportant to the great matter immediately in hand—Stevens now propounded his direct inquiry, and now dropped his seemingly unconsidered insinuation, by which he drew from the preacher as much as he cared to know of the rustic lads ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... the Parisian pins his faith for public pleasures—and his nostrils were assailed by a penetrating smell of scent and smoke. Dazed and a little frightened he drew back against a wall, overwhelmed by the atmosphere. Superficially there was little astonishing in the Bal Tabarin; but to the uninitiated being with wide eyes it seemed in very truth the gay world, with its stirring music, its walls flaunting their mirrors and their paintings, its galleries with their palms and railed-in boxes, and beneath—subtly suggestive adjunct—- ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... map which is always puzzling to the uninitiated is a series of small pins with streamers attached. These streamers are marked with green dots. One streamer will have one green dot, another two green dots, another three, etc., while others will have different spaces between the dots. These pins mark the position of what is called the "Hun ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece
... The entire history of the chain-gang system corroborates these statements—a system that helps to increase the reported number of criminals; and although race riots, lynchings and massacres may seem to indicate the opposite to the uninitiated, the Negro is not a lawless element of society. In the United States a natural restlessness has possessed him since emancipation, and it requires time to work out and adjust conditions under which he ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... market. Sometimes, as matters of very dubious value turned up, great laughter was the result. In this very national pastime, a Mr. Miles Bodkin, a noted fire-eater of the west, was a great proficient; and it is said he once so completely succeeded in despoiling an uninitiated hand, that after winning in succession his horse, gig, harness, etc., he proceeded seriatim to his watch, ring, clothes, and portmanteau, and actually concluded by winning all he possessed, and kindly lent him a card-cloth to cover him on his way to the hotel. His success on the ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... my man ask for one, to the intense surprise of the others; how could I have known of the existence of these secret and sacred utensils? The men called me aside, and begged me never to speak of this to the women, as these objects are used, like many others, to frighten away the women and the uninitiated from the assemblies of the secret societies. The noise they make is supposed to be the voice of a mighty and dangerous demon, ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... society; and at these times I have been struck with frequent surprise by the general untidiness which appeared to have come over the heads of all my female friends. I know, of course, that I am only a poor, ignorant, bewildered man creature; but to my uninitiated eyes they looked as if they had all, after a very restless and perturbed sleep, come out of bed without smoothing their tumbled and disordered locks. Then, every young lady, without exception, seemed to have one kind of hair, and that the kind which was rather ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... experienced the intoxication of color which seizes the uninitiated at the door of a picture-gallery? So many staring hues impinge upon the eyes, so many ideas take confused shape and struggle together in the brain, that the eyes grow weary and the brain harassed. It hovers undecided like an insect in a meadow full of flowers. The ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... thrown into the market by the mercenary scions of the great, a considerable value; and perhaps it is only in the North that it is properly cooked and appreciated. A moor bird requires a particular sagacity in carving, which is a secret to the uninitiated. You may carve it like a common fowl; but the epicure alone knows that it is in the back that the true flavour of the heath is found, and in the North the back is recognized as the chief delicacy, and must be carefully proportioned ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... moreover he treated her as one who knew well that the smallest slight would doubly hurt one who was not in a position to complain. He was kind and attentive to the woman, who, beneath the appearance of happiness, was wretched, though innocent. To the uninitiated, she was the lady of the house; to the better informed, she was the favorite of her master, and that was nought but a maiden in the disguise of wife, and Lorand was able to read ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... can learn to read with the fingers seems very wonderful to the uninitiated, and, indeed, it is a long step forward, but the ability to substitute fingers for eyes is only one of the marvels wrought. Helen Keller has truly said that "idleness is the greatest burden of the blind," and this is why our work with them is so acceptable, though the reading ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... the uninitiated I must explain that under the Boer regime no black or coloured person was allowed on the pavements, nor to be out at night, nor to walk about without a registered pass. There was no ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... which he had expended in the gratification of what the uninitiated would call a whim, seemed to him the paltriest detail, quite unworthy of consideration. When he thought of it at all it was to recall the story of the gaunt customer who paid so handsomely for his whisky, and to note the confirmation ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... He had shot two—one inside the enclosure, where the brute had jumped in a vain effort to reach the frantic donkeys. We stumbled over the carcass of the other as we made our way toward the gate-gap, and dragged it in ignominiously by the tail (not such an easy task as the uninitiated might imagine.) ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... silly maidens, in moments of vanity, deemed they could have gained heaven if they were possessed of Madeleine's wealth, her jewels, her carriages, her dresses; but were the veils that shroud the hypocrisy of human joy raised for the warning of the uninitiated, many a noble heart like Madeleine's would show the blight of disappointment, with the thorns thick and sharp under the flowers that are strewn on their path. The sympathy of manhood, ever flung over ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... figures on wall and curtain, and gave nervous women the megrims. But nothing more is known of Belmonts or night-lights; their birthplace, and the manner of their making, are alike hidden from the outer world; the uninitiated accept the arcana of tallow only in the positive form. It is generally presumed that candles, in the abstract, come from some unknown place in 'the City;' but how they are made, or who is employed in their making, or how the workmen live in the grease-laden steam of the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... credit generally follows access to the market, it was inevitable that the beneficiary of the banking system should not be the master or journeyman but the merchant for whom both worked.[4] To the uninitiated, however, this arrangement could only appear in the light of a huge conspiracy entered into by the chartered monopolies, the banks, and the unchartered monopolist, the merchant, to shut out the possible competition by the master and journeyman. The grievance appeared all ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... of the war some, especially the uninitiated, dreaded nothing more than a war council. To such it was a body of men invested with unlimited power, a council that could pronounce sentence of death on whomsoever they wished. To appear before this august assembly meant almost certain death. Now sometimes it meant that, ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... attention the condition of affairs at some of our universities, colleges, and larger schools. The secret societies and student-organizations, with their initiations, feasts, and extravagant demonstrations, their harassing of the uninitiated, their despisal of municipal, collegiate, even parental authority, and their oftentime contempt and disregard of all social order, their not infrequent excesses and debauches, carry us back to their analogues in the institutions of barbarism ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... still remain as a particular species of dreams with painful content, dreams of anxiety, the inclusion of which under dreams of wishing will find least acceptance with the uninitiated. But I can settle the problem of anxiety dreams in very short order; for what they may reveal is not a new aspect of the dream problem; it is a question in their case of understanding neurotic anxiety in general. The fear which we ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... smaller instruments, followed cautiously in his master's footsteps, and a young lad, Tharald Ormgrass's son, who had been engaged as a guide, ran nimbly over the glazed surface, at every step thrusting his steel-shod heels vindictively into the ice. But it would be futile for one of the uninitiated to attempt to follow Maurice in his scientific investigations; on such occasions he would have been extremely uninteresting to outside humanity, simply because outside humanity was the last thing ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... flirt. It was quite out of his power to address any woman (sister or niece or cookmaid) without an air and expression of sentimental courtesy and tender chivalrous devotion, that must have been puzzling and perplexing in the extreme to the uninitiated; and I am persuaded that until some familiarity bred—if not contempt, at least comprehension—every woman of his acquaintance (his cook included) must have felt convinced that he was struggling against a respectful ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... unanimous opposition, because Mr. McNanly's unheralded advent at any one's house resulted frequently in the discovery that some favorite child had been playing "hookey," which means (I will say to the uninitiated, if any such there be) absenting one's self from school without permission, to go on a fishing or a swimming frolic. Such at least was my experience more than once, for Mr. McNanly particularly favored my mother's house, because of a former ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan |
