"Commoner" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nature to form a socket of gristle just in front of each ear, the socket being in relief and carrying a bunch of feathers. A few men had even painted their faces scarlet or yellow. No one seemed to know the significance of this habit (commoner farther north than at Bontok), but the paint was put on much after the fashion prevailing in Manchuria, and, if possibly for the same reason, certainly with the same result. The pigment or color ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... the walk together through the streets, the young man's uncompromising manner of treating him as an equal had become unpleasing to him. In his workshop he saw in Pollux only the artist, and delighted in his original and dashing powers; but out of it, and among men of a commoner stamp, from whom he was accustomed to meet with deference, the young man's speech and demeanor seemed unbecoming, bold, and hard to be endured. In the eating-house the huge eater and drinker, who laughingly pressed him to do his part, so as not to make a present to the landlord, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was, Pitt refused to accept one farthing beyond his salary. His pride never appeared in loftier and nobler form than in his attitude towards the people at large. No leader had ever a wider popularity than "the great commoner," as Pitt was styled, but his air was always that of a man who commands popularity, not that of one who seeks it. He never bent to flatter popular prejudice. When mobs were roaring themselves hoarse for "Wilkes and liberty," he denounced Wilkes as a worthless profligate; and when all ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... doubts; and in any event I am sure that by the time I was old enough to stumble over Mr. Harper's favorite big words I was old enough to tell the difference between an ordinary animal—say, a house cat—and any one of the commoner forms of plant life, such as, for example, the scaly-bark hickory tree, practically at a glance. I'll add this too: Nick Carter never wasted any of the golden moments which he and I spent together in elucidating for me the radical points ...
— A Plea for Old Cap Collier • Irvin S. Cobb
... must have at this moment quite four hundred thousand. These are prodigious numerical changes, that have produced changes of another sort. Although an increase of numbers does not necessarily infer an increase of high civilization, it reasonably leads to the expectation of great melioration in the commoner comforts. Such has been the result, and to those familiar with facts as they now exist, the difference will probably be ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... slavery days were the average overseers. A few were gentlemen, one must admit, but the regular run of them were trash—commoner than the 'poor white trash'—and, if possible, their children were worse than their daddies. The name, 'overseer', was a synonym for 'slave driver', 'cruelty', 'brutishness'. No, sir, a Nigger may be humble and refuse to talk outside of his race—because ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... many words, in Iliad, Book I. The usage occurs in the poem where the incidents of seafaring occur frequently, as is to be expected? It is not worth while to persevere with these tithes of mint and cummin. If "Neglect of Position" be commoner—like "Hiatus in the Bucolic Diaeresis"—in the Odyssey and in Iliad, XXIII., XXIV., why do the failings not beset Iliad, IX., X., these being such extremely "late" books? As to the later use of the Article in the Odyssey and the Odyssean Books of the Iliad, it appears to us that ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... shaking his fist in the direction whence he had come, as if against the enemy who had caused his benefactress so much distress, he pronounced a formal and emphatic curse upon their whole race, "from the head-chief to the commoner, from the whisky-soaking warrior down to the pan-licking squall-a-baby," all of whom he anathematised with as much originality as fervour of expression; after which, he proceeded, with more sedateness, to resume his post at the head ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... democracy. The nobility will never hereafter, I think, assume or be permitted to rule the nation in peace, or command armies in war, on any ground except the individual ability which may appertain to one of their number, as well as to a commoner. And yet the nobles were never positively more noble than now; never, perhaps, so chivalrous, so honorable, so highly cultivated; but, relatively to the rest of the world, they do not maintain their old place. The pressure of the war has tested and proved this fact, at home and abroad. At ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... privileged position. It was considered a law of nature that the noblemen should assist the monarch in the administration of the State and as leaders of the army; the peasant should cultivate the fields and provide food; the commoner should provide ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... no one would better suit their purpose. Political faction loves converts better even than consistent adherents. A man's rise in life generally dates from a well-timed rat. His high reputation, his provincial rank as the representative of the oldest commoner's family in the county, his age, which combined the energy of one period with the experience of another,—all united to accord Maltravers a preference over richer men. Lord Raby had been pointedly courteous and flattering to the master of Burleigh; and he now contrived it so, that the ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was thought that some way could be found to change one element into another, and a great many efforts were made to accomplish this transformation. Most of these efforts were directed toward changing the commoner metals into gold, and many fanciful ways for doing this were described. The chemists of that time were called alchemists, and the art which they practiced was called alchemy. The alchemists gradually became convinced that the only way common metals could be changed into ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... on nut plants the damage above ground is confined to leaf skeletonization. It varies widely, depending on the kind of nut plant. Before visiting Mr. Bernath's planting, I sought out the botanical names of the commoner nut plants in Dr. MacDaniels' Cornell Extension Bulletin No. 701, on "Nut Growing." Of the Juglans species, the black walnut, J. nigra, is sometimes heavily attacked. There are large black walnut trees near one of our peach orchards. I have seen hordes of beetles gather in these trees in ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... queen bore a child by an unknown father, the child was as royal as if the descendant of a long line of kings; but if the father was notoriously a commoner, the child remained a prince, though not so high of rank as if his father had been an Arii. If a king had children by a woman beneath his rank, they had no rights from their father, but held a mixed position proportioned to the power of the father. He established their rank by his personal prestige, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... I was raised in Slickville, Onion County, State of Connecticut, United States of America, which is a free country, and no mistake; and I have a right to my opinion, and a right to speak it, too; and let me see the man, airl or commoner, parliamenterer or sodger officer, that dare to report me, I guess he'd wish he'd been born a week later, that's all. I'd make a caution of him, I know. I'd polish his dial-plate fust, and then I'd feel his short ribs, so as ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... little Greek, only some of Anacreon and Hesiod," the result of which was that when he went up to Oxford, the Master of his College said he was "the best qualified for the University that {90} he had ever known come there." His College was Pembroke, of which he became a Commoner (not a Servitor, as Carlyle said) in 1728. The Oxford of that day was not a place of much discipline and the official order of study was very laxly maintained. It seems not to have meant much to Johnson, and he is described as having spent a good deal of his ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... says Dr. Fuller (i), " a Gentleman- Commoner in Oxford; where, being but fourteen Years old, and yet three Years standing, he was call'd out to dispute ex tempore, before the Earls of Leicester and Warwick, with the matchless ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... path took him in the direction of "Robinson's," in the windows of which the golden brown of sable furs, the silver gray of rare foxes', and the commoner dim blue of long-haired goats', were beginning to enrich the usual display ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... roughs of the city, who could there do pretty much what they pleased without fear of interruption from the police. On the upper side of this square, and over toward the opposite end from Mr. Garrison's, was another school, called the National, and having a large number of scholars, of a somewhat commoner class than those which attended Mr. Garrison's. It need hardly be said that the relations between the two schools were, to use a diplomatic phrase, "chronically strained." They were always at loggerheads. A Garrison boy could hardly encounter a National boy without giving ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... or at Wilmington in Wiltshire. Anthony Wood tells us that he came "of a wealthy family;" Fuller that "his father was a master of music." Of his earlier years next to nothing is known; but in 1579 he was entered as a commoner at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, and left the university three years afterwards without taking a degree. His first book—a translation of Paola Giovio's treatise on Emblems—appeared in 1585, when he was about twenty-two. In 1590 or 1591 he was travelling ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... seemed almost to change its shape: the cheek-bones to become more salient, the nose sharper, the eyes catlike, the large but well-shaped mouth venomous instead of passionate. He looked older and also commoner directly his insouciance departed from him, and one could divine a great deal of primitive savagery beneath his lively ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... subtle, but very sharp and firm and unmistakable. It is not analogous to the commoner, slower-going elements, as heat, air, fire, water, but is nearer akin to that elusive but potent something we call electricity. It is abrupt, freaky, unexpected, and always communicates a little wholesome shock. It darts this way and that, ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... a commoner should thwart a lord! Yet not a commoner. A baronet Is fish and flesh. Nine parts plebeian, and Patrician in the tenth. Sir Thomas Clifford! A man, they say, of brains! I abhor brains As I do tools: they're ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles
... bound him for ten years, Sir William is supposed to have offered no remonstrance when he was asked, long before that term expired, to cancel the engagement and allow Robert to enter Cambridge, which he did as fellow-commoner at St. John's College. At the end of two years he transferred himself to Trinity Hall, with a view to economy and the pursuit of the law—the two frequently go together. He received his degree of B. A. in 1617, and his ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... lodgings, and she rushed out of the theater and up the street in an agony of terror. She got us out of the house all right, took us to the theater, and went on with the next act as if nothing had happened. Such fortitude is commoner in our profession, I think, than in any other. We "go on with the next act" whatever happens, and if we know our business, no one in the audience will ever guess that anything is wrong—that since the curtain last went down some ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... King of Arms stepped forward and in a loud voice recited the earthly titles and honours of the simple little dead man; and, although few qualities are commoner than physical courage, the whole catalogue seemed ridiculous and tawdry until the being came to the two words, "Victoria Cross". The being, having lived his glorious moments, withdrew. The Funeral March of Chopin tramped with its excruciating dragging tread across the ruins of the soul. And finally ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... not applied at all to the female voice, but only to that special modification of the male voice seldom employed now, and almost never except by tenors. With this writer, "falsetto" as applied to female voices replaces "middle," in the commoner usage. ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... shut him off from communion with God. He lies "like a worm in the midst of ants, gnawed by the senses and troubled sore" ejaculating in utter misery "Thou hast forsaken me." But more often he seems on the point of expressing a thought commoner in Christianity than in Indian religion, namely that the troubles of this life are only a preparation for future beatitude. The idea that matter and suffering are not altogether evil is found in the later Sankhya where Prakriti (which in some respects corresponds to Sakti) is represented ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... common blue violet is much more general in its distribution. How fastidious and exclusive is the cypripedium! You will find it in one locality in the woods, usually on high, dry ground, and will look in vain for it elsewhere. It does not go in herds like the commoner plants, but affects privacy and solitude. When I come upon it in my walks, I seem to be intruding upon some very private and exclusive company. The large yellow cypripedium has a peculiar, ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... distinction, and every profession is open to him who is deserving to enter it. In Germany, however, the learned professions, and especially the official positions of the army and navy, are almost the exclusive preserves of those who are born to social rank. The educated commoner, therefore, has to betake himself to manufacture, trade, or commerce. It follows that scientific skill and intelligence are more generally diffused in German commercial industries than in those of all other nations. ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various
... stones represent other forms. Of course, some of your sea-weeds are really what they appear to be—that is to say, they are true plants; but those of which I speak now, though they have a superficial resemblance to plants, are really animals. In fig. 1 you will see some of the commoner forms of these strange animals as ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... is owing to the coincidence of their being also natives of India, whence they have been described; but there has been no recent attempt on the part of colonial or European botanists even to throw into a useful form the already published descriptions of the commoner plants of the island. Such a work would be the first step to a Singhalese Flora. The preparation of such a compendium would seem, to belong to the duties of the colonial botanist, and as such it was an object of ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... daughter of a commoner, the Right Honourable Stephen Poyntz, of Midgham, in Berkshire. This lady was long remembered both by friends and neighbours with veneration. She was sensible and intelligent, polite, agreeable, and of unbounded charity; but Miss Burney, ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... deaf-mutism, clubfoot, and transposition of viscera are also reported as of commoner occurrence in men than in women.[54] Lombroso states that congenital criminals are more frequently male than female.[55] Cunningham noted an eighth (true) rib in 14 of 70 subjects examined. It occurred ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... points which they aim at emphasising are the smallness of the products which the able man can really claim as his own, the consequent diminution of his claims to any exceptional reward on account of them, and the fact that even the highest ability, however rare it may be, is very much commoner than it seems to be, and will, for this reason in addition to those just mentioned, be obtainable in the future at a very ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... accomplishments and serious learning. He was at this time twenty years of age, and had been educated at St. Paul's School, London, and afterwards at Wadham College, Oxford, under the tutorship of Dr. Wilkins, Cromwell's brother-in-law, a learned and philosophical mathematician. He was admitted gentleman commoner in 1650, and it is said "made great proficiency in several branches of learning, being as exact a Latin and Grecian as any in the university of his age or time." He succeeded to his father's title soon after ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... were in preparation, some of which were of a political nature. One, in particular, from General Ireton's regiment, called for "impartial and speedy justice" upon public criminals, and demanded "that the same fault may have the same punishment in the person of King or Lord as in the poorest Commoner." Such petitions to Fairfax appear to have dropped in upon him from regiment after regiment at St. Alban's during the next fortnight. One Petition, however, heard of in London Oct. 30, was from Colonel Ingoldsby's regiment, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... may usually be planted as close as two to three feet apart each way, especially if one gets many of them from the fields, so that he does not have to buy them. If there are not sufficient of the permanent bushes for thick planting, the spaces may be tilled temporarily by cheaper or commoner bushes: but do not forget to remove the fillers as rapidly as the others ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... an English poor devil's the poorest of all poor devils. And then you've fallen from a height. From a gentleman commoner—is that what they called you?—to a propeller of Bath-chairs. Good heavens, man, the fall's enough ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... which science cannot take account of. Science has only truth for its object, and owes its own existence wholly to the reason. If it happens to science to give pain to the heart or to the conscience, no conclusion can thence be drawn against the certainty of its results. "There is no commoner, and at the same time faultier, way of reasoning, than that of objecting to a philosophical hypothesis the injury it may do to morals and to religion. When an opinion leads to absurdity, it is certainly false; but it is not certain that it is false because it entails dangerous ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... The thorax and abdomen are separated by a partition, the diaphragm (Figure 1 dia.). This structure is distinctive of that class of the vertebrata called mammals, and which includes man, most of the larger and commoner land animals, and whales and manatee. We shall find later that it is essentially connected with the perfection of the air breathing to which this group has attained. Another characteristic shared by all mammals, ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... happen that a person may see a picture of the past without recognizing it as such, unless there happens to be in it something which attracts special attention, such as a figure in armor, or in antique costume. It is probable that occasional glimpses of these reflections of the Akashic Records are commoner than the published accounts would lead us to believe. As usual, we find examples of all degrees of the power to see into this 'memory of Nature,' from the trained man who can consult the record for himself at will, ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... When, in 1841, the new Whig Ministry, with Sir Robert Peel at their head, came in, elected as Protectionists, gaunt Famine took its stand by the Royal Mace, like a Banquo. Sir Robert driving along Fleet Street might see those whom this new unwelcome commoner represented grimly gazing of "Punch,"—that of the Premier turning his back on a starving man with half-naked wife and child, and buttoning up his coat with the words, "I'm very sorry, my good man, but I can do nothing for you,—nothing!" But though Peel was the Premier apparent, Cobden ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... you see a singular ethnologic feature. Class distinctions may at times be recognized by the knife or fork. Thus I was informed that you could at once recognize a person of the gentleman class by his use of the knife and fork. "This is infallible," said my young lady companion. If he is a commoner, he eats with his knife; if a gentleman, with his fork. This was a very nice distinction, and I looked carefully for a knife ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... diocese in order to enlist the sympathy of a wider audience. But this connexion dropped out of sight for many years and seems to have had little influence on Patteson's life at Oxford, where he spent four years at Balliol. He went up in 1845 as a commoner, and this fact caused him some disquietude. He felt that he ought to have won a scholarship, and, conscious of his failure, he took to more steady reading. He was also practising self-discipline, giving up his ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... girl's motive, her conduct in the matter reacted on my lord; the fellow was in the way, very much so. How could he himself pay court to her when she frivolously, if only for the moment, preferred this commoner's company? That very afternoon my lord, entering the music-room of the great mansion, had found her at the piano playing for him, her slim fingers moving over the keys to the tune of one of Chopin's nocturnes. He had surprised a steady, eloquent look in the ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... of the English system, possessing Lords of the Manor, and divers other of the fragments of the feudal system. So great was the social equality throughout the interior of the New England provinces, indeed, as almost to remove the commoner distinctions of civilised associations, bringing all classes surprisingly near the same level, with the exceptions of the very low, or some rare instance of an individual who was raised above his neighbours by unusual wealth, aided perhaps by the ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... of the invention consisted in its rendering the commoner sorts of cotton available for fine spinning. The manufacturers were thereby enabled to select the most suitable fibres for high-priced fabrics, and to produce the finer sorts of yarn in much larger quantities. It became possible ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... uncommon privilege is the one granted to me on the present occasion, of introducing a daughter into the literary world; and the feelings of pride and pleasure it calls forth, are certainly not less powerful than those created by the commoner occurrence. It is my comfort also to add that these are not overclouded by any painful anxiety or misgiving. There may be differences of opinion as to the precise amount of literary merit in these tales; but viewed ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... experience of men and things than the studious and sedentary Godwin could have acquired if he had lived the life of the Wandering Jew. Theirs was a friendship of mutual stimulation and intimate exchange which is commoner between a man and a woman than between two men. They met almost daily, and in spite of some violent lovers' quarrels, their affection lasted till Holcroft's death in 1809. It is not hard to understand their quarrels. ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... doubt, be changed; but there seems strong reason to doubt whether a democratic constituency would, in the earlier stages, produce a decisively democratic body of representatives. As regards English opinion upon the American dispute, nothing was commoner than the remark, that the Southerners were "the better gentlemen," or "represented the aristocratic element," and therefore commanded the speaker's good wishes in their struggle; and this not necessarily ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... the girl, and married her for her lands. This, too, was a plain case of abducting an heiress, not indeed by violence, but with consummate art. Setting aside the rare attractions of the lady, in Moodie's estimation the prize was immense. L'Isle, with all his lofty airs, was but a commoner, with perhaps no fortune but his sword, a mere adventurer, and Lord Strathern's broad acres were an irresistible temptation; though, in truth, this coveted domain counted thousands of acres of sheep-walk to the hundreds ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... Mrs. Drummond, in her repressive tones. She was just refilling her teapot from the urn, but she found opportunity to shake her head at Susie. "People do not generally look smart in their travelling-dress; but I think she looks very nice. Had you not a commoner gown, my dear? That looks almost too good for the purpose;" for Mrs. Drummond's sense of economy was a little shocked by perceiving that Mattie's gown ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... while getting together a book of poems for publication. His journalism at first was anything but successful. It was his misfortune to appeal only to the best heads and good heads are not numerous anywhere. His appeal, too, was still academic and laboured. His brother Willie with his commoner sympathies appeared to be better equipped for this work. But Oscar had from the first ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... Executive, less affable but not less honest and sincere than Mr. Lincoln, that the suggestions of Stevens were much regarded. When his disciples and adherents became more partisan and numerous, they, in order to give him power and consequence and reconcile their constituents, denominated him the "Great Commoner." ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... author a great name, as well it might. When in London Ward met Wilkins and formed a lifelong friendship with him. They were both men of learning, moderate, dexterous, and successful. Ward entered Wadham as a Fellow Commoner in October 1649, became Savilian Professor of Astronomy, and in 1659 President of Trinity. Like Wilkins, he was ejected from his Headship at the Restoration, and like him obtained high preferment under the new regime and became a Bishop. Both of them, when in Oxford, "became liable to the persecutions ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... was committed. Who, indeed, among my most abandoned associates, would not rather have disputed the clearest evidence of his senses, than have suspected of such courses, the gay, the frank, the generous William Wilson—the noblest and most commoner at Oxford—him whose follies (said his parasites) were but the follies of youth and unbridled fancy—whose errors but inimitable whim—whose darkest vice but a ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... turned to chess, and found it a little more soothing. He soon mastered the moves and the chief gambits and commoner closing positions, and began to beat the Vicar. But then the cylindrical contours of the opposite king began to resemble Pawkins standing up and gasping ineffectually against check-mate, and Hapley decided ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... only repeat what I have heard. As for me, I don't know any more. I have kept out of the way for more than three months. And besides, it matters little to me whether Micheline be a commoner or a princess, the wife of Delarue or of Panine. I shall be none the richer or the poorer, shall I? Therefore I need not care. The dear child will certainly have millions enough to marry easily. And her adopted ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... distinguished Professor of Logic, that he was, in common with Jeffrey, chiefly indebted for a decided impulse in the path of mental cultivation. In 1804 he proceeded to Oxford, where he entered in Magdalen College as a gentleman-commoner. A leader in every species of recreation, foremost in every sport and merry-making, and famous for his feats of agility and strength, he assiduously continued the prosecution of his classical studies. Of poetical genius he afforded the first public indication by producing ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... meis auribus non cerebrum, sed cor ipsum exhausit lusciniola, &c., &c." He mentions, as the rivals most dreaded by her admirers, Norris, the singer, whose musical talents, it was thought, recommended him to her, and Mr. Watts, a gentleman commoner, of ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... outstep more and more the proper limits of the art, and brought about decadence. The South German bride chests of the century before are decorated a good deal with inlays, Peter Flotner's designs often serving as patterns; a little green and red appear mixed with the commoner colours. The architectural forms project, and would form a tolerable design by themselves, though scarcely suitable to the object to which they are applied. In German work the cabinets are often of the most elaborate architectural design, like ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... acquaintances by name, and never confounded the stately beauties that he worshipped afar off with the 'awfully jolly girls' whom he flirted with quite irresponsibly. She knew, too, all about his male companions, from the flash young fellow-commoner from Downshire, who had a saddle-horse and a mounted groom waiting for him every day after morning lecture, down to that scampish Joe Atlee, with whose scrapes and eccentricities he filled many an ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... immediately sent his son to Oxford. William had been entered as a gentleman-commoner of Christ Church, at the beginning of the Michaelmas term of 1660. It was clearly the paternal intention that the boy should become a successful man of the world and ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... John appeared in the house as the head of the government, Mr. Duncombe, one of the members for Fins-bury, a popular and patriotic commoner, challenged the premier to make a full and explicit statement of the principles upon which he intended to administer the affairs of the country. This appeal met with a noble response in a clear, manful enunciation of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... there was more in it than at first appeared; that the author seemed not entirely unacquainted with the writings of Plato; but he wished he had quoted him sometimes in his margin, that I might be sure (said he) he had read him in the original: for nothing, continued the parson, is commoner than for men now-a-days to pretend to have read Greek authors, who have met with them only in translations, and cannot ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... computing, from past experience, my future possibilities in finance, I saw them fascinating as ever, yet as far from me as though they dashed through some Martian city, and their occupants as removed from my ken as the inhabitants of the farthest planets. Indeed, even in the commoner throng about me I knew no one. It was seldom that I was called on to doff my hat, and then to some of the queer old women who were moulding away in the corners of Miss Minion's boarding-house or to Miss Tucker hurrying ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... the general opinion. "He has better knowledge of foreign affairs than we have; but in English business it is no dishonour to him to be told his relation to us, the nature of it, and what is fit for him to do."—An Honest Commoner's Speech.] ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... this, Virginia aroused the man's sensuality, excited his imagination. It seemed to him that a girl of her impressionable nature, artistic temperament, intellectual aloofness, once her ardor was awakened would love more passionately than a woman of commoner clay; her caresses, it seemed to him, would have greater zest than those of a woman more obviously carnal. Never, in the years during which he had sown his wild oats, having learned how to control his appetites, nor in his career as a rich man about town, learned to respect woman or see ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... he felt accumulating within him, most of the normal objects of ambition were within his grasp. The English aristocratic class, as we all know, is no longer exclusive. It mingles freely with the commoner world on apparently equal terms. But all the while its personal and family cohesion is perhaps greater than ever. The power of mere birth, it seemed to Jacob, was hardly less in the England newly possessed of household ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... honour on his person, bears the truest stamp of dignity on his mind, adorned with greatness, enriched with knowledge, and embellished with genius. I have seen this man relieve with generosity, while he hath conversed with freedom, and be to the same person a patron and a companion. I could name a commoner, raised higher above the multitude by superior talents than is in the power of his prince to exalt him, whose behaviour to those he hath obliged is more amiable than the obligation itself; and who is so great a master of affability, that, if he could ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... happen, fortunately, to be the son of a chief of ancient lineage, the fact that he is of blood royal will not excuse him entering a door before some aged "commoner." Age has more honor than all his patrician line of descent can give him. Those lowly born but richly endowed with years must walk before him; he is not permitted to remain seated if some old employee is standing even at work; his privilege of birth is as nothing compared ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... brother Joseph courts fame from the arena of Buffalo Bill; but for a clear space of a day or two we have learned naught of Daisy of the violet orbs. They are the loveliest eyes in Washington, by contrast with which the commoner grays and blues appeal to the enamoured diplomats but as ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... Ernstein went suddenly to Cannes, where "villa life" might be considered even more aristocratic than at "Monte"; and Dom Ferdinand took himself and his ally out of danger's way when Dodo refused to understand that only flirtation, not marriage, was possible with a "commoner." The price of Dauntrey hospitality had, however, fallen. Those who could be attracted by the bait of their barren title had now to be looked for low in the social scale: and it was difficult to get eligible partis with whom ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... employment, said the present cruise was less important than the one to succeed it, "for the galleons"—the Spanish treasure-ships—"make it a general rule to come home late in the fall or winter." Warren by prize-money and an American marriage was the richest commoner in England, and Anson it was that had captured the great galleon five years before, to his own great increase; but it was Hawke who, acknowledging a letter from Warren, as this cruise was drawing to its triumphant close, wrote, "With respect to the galleons, as it ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... Lewes in Sussex, to be with his grandfather Standsfield, while a plague was raging in London. There he remained, after Standsfield's death in 1627, till 1630, when he was sent to the free school at Southover near Lewes and kept there until he went up to Balliol College, Oxford, as a fellow-commoner in 1637, being then 16 years of age. It was his father's intention to have placed him at Eton 'but I was so terrefied at the report of the severe discipline there that I was sent back to Lewes, which perverseness of mine I have since a thousand ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... for the edification and behoof of more juvenile questioners, he would stand for an hour together, answering deferential questions about Sheridan, and Percival, and Castlereagh, and Heaven knows who beside, with manifest delight, always inserting a 'Mister' before every commoner's name. ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... let a man like that die?" Angelica asked defiantly. "Why did he create such a man at all merely to kill him? Wouldn't a commoner creature ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... anyone, he maintained that it had become her incorporeal spouse. The daintiness with which it fingered a golden sword-hilt, as if fearing contamination, symbolised the aloofness of her spirit. The solitary enjoyment of a great impression of art made her den a sanctuary, absolving her from commoner or shared pleasures. And in a manner the Saint was the type of the ultra-virginal quality she had retained through much contact with books and life. For her to sell the St. Michael, Dennis felt, would be a sort of vending of her ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... Francois Villon to make sport! I have dropped the 'de,' Monsieur La Mothe, there are so many rascals amongst the nobility nowadays that I find it more distinguished to be the simple commoner. Dull at the Chateau! Good Lord! don't I know it!" He paused, lifting his head with a quick, bird-like motion: a cunning smile wrinkled his face and he smote the table with his open hand. "Dull, are they? ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... the air the stimulus could be anything that is normally seen in the air. Balloons, airplanes, and astronomical bodies are the commoner stimuli. Birds and insects are common also, but usually are seen at such close range that they are nearly always recognized. Infrequently observed things, such as sundogs, mirages, huge fireballs, and a host of other unusual flying objects, are also ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... attachment; so fond of peaceful household charities and the quiet of domestic life; so indifferent to pomp and show; so wearied and worried in his patience by formality, parade, and the vulgar strife and noise, glare and blare of the lower, commoner ambitions—it was a sacrifice to forsake his fatherland, his father's house, the brother whom he loved as his own soul, the plain living and high thinking, healthful early hours and refined leisure—busy enough in ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... the rule in your English peerage that when a son becomes a great peer, and the mother is only a commoner, to give her one of the titles. Your Queen does ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... connected with the native religions of the Pacific islands. We have adopted the word and use it in its true meaning of forbidden. If an article were dedicated to a god, or used in his worship, or had been touched by him, or claimed by a chief or a priest, no commoner dared lay finger on it, for it was as sacred as the ark of the covenant. Some canny planters kept boys out of their orchards and palm groves by offering the fruit to certain gods until it was ripe, for a sign ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... However, the commoner form of injury done tendons, is strain or sprain. Because of the sudden tensile strain brought to bear upon tendons in the shocks of concussion, as well as in propulsion of the body, there frequently occurs a rupture of fibers and ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... of raising water, which is commoner in Egypt than in Mesopotamia at the present day, is the shadduf, and is worked by hand. It consists of a beam supported in the centre, at one end of which is tied a rope with a bucket or vessel for raising the water, and at the other end is fixed a counterweight.* On ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... at which I have taken up my quarters is but a few paces from the commoner establishment where Hawkehurst is stopping. He is to call on Goodge for the letters to-day; so his excursion will be of brief duration. I find that the name of Haygarth is not unknown in this town, as there are a family ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... Kimiko. To win any renown in her profession, a geisha must be pretty or very clever; and the famous ones are usually both,—having been selected at a very early age by their trainers according to the promise of such qualities Even the commoner class of singing-girls must have some charm in their best years,—if only that beaute du diable which inspired the Japanese proverb that even a devil is pretty at eighteen(1). But Kimiko was much more than pretty. She was ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... necessity, after having received a certain quantity of buffetings by advance, that we should send a peer of the realm to the scum of the earth to collect the debt to the last farthing, and to receive, with infinite aggravation, the same scorns which had been paid to our supplication through a commoner: but it was proper, I suppose, that the whole of our country, in all its orders, should have a share of the indignity, and, as in reason, that the higher orders should touch ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... better one than one which has been sliced, and there are some young players who are rather inclined to purr with satisfaction when they have pulled, for, though the ball is hopelessly off the line, they have committed an error which is commoner with those whose hair has grown grey on the links than with the beginner whose handicap is reckoned by eighteen or twenty strokes. But after all pulling is not an amusement, and even when it is an accomplishment and not an accident, it ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... which it is intended to exclude. These are such as, for want of a better word, we call ingratiating: the Latin name used by theologians (gratum faciens) denotes that they make a man pleasing to God, grateful to Him, if we understand grateful of that which gives pleasure, and not in its commoner sense, which is nearly the ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... paramount. In Europe, England's position was almost as contemptible. Such was the result of the attempt of the aristocracy to rule England. There was only one man who could save England, and he was an old man, poor, a commoner, and sick almost to death. But in 1757 William Pitt was called to the English helm, accepted the responsibility, and steered the country from her darkest to her most brilliant hour. The campaigns which drove the soldiers ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... married to a Peer, has both her own arms and those of her husband fully blazoned, and the lozenge and the Shield, with all their accessories, are marshalled to form a single united group, the achievement of the husband having precedence to the dexter. If married to a Commoner, aPeeress in her own right bears her own arms on a lozenge as before, and her husband marshals her arms ensigned with her coronet in pretence on his Shield: and this lozenge and Shield are grouped together, ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... are not left to go forgotten to their solitary graves. There was a tax laid on them by the 7th William III., after the twenty-fifth year of their age, which was L12. 10s. for a duke, and 1s. for a commoner. At present they are taxed by an extra duty upon their servants: for a male, L1. 5s.; for a female, 2s. 6d., above the usual duties leviable upon ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various
... the busy characters of his age, both as a politician and a poet, was the eldest son of Sir Thos. May, Knt., of Mayfield, in Sussex, where he was born in 1595. At the usual period of life, he was admitted a fellow-commoner of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge; and having taken the degree of B.A. he entered himself at Gray's Inn, with the intention of studying the law, which, however, it is uncertain whether he ever pursued as a profession. Whilst he was ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... spite of her knowledge of the great world, her heart was neither blinded to the true things of worth nor entirely hardened. If she ever married, it would be for wealth and position, as the world counted such things, but never a man—lord or commoner—who did not come to her with the light of pure witchery in his eyes. She remembered, smiling down at the half-written letter to her New York agent, how that light had shone in the honest eyes of a young officer of the ship in which she had ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... change for the better had come to it. The mistakes on the part of officers, and the rebellions on the part of the people, now made a longer list than ever. Not a man among them, from Bartholomew down to the meanest commoner, appeared to know how to build up a well-ordered, self-respecting community. The spirit of cooperation was entirely lacking. No one thought of the common good, only of his own interests; and those in power had not been trained to handle large groups of men who needed wise directing. In those days, ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... tremulous leaves! No mountains lift their snows, and send their brooks Down babbling with the news of silent things! But love itself is commonest of all, And loveliest of all, in all the worlds! And he that hath not forest, brook, or hill, Must learn to read aright what commoner books Unfold before him. If ocean solitudes— Then darkness dashed with glory, infinite shades, And misty minglings of the sea and sky. If only fields—the humble man of heart Will revel in the grass beneath his foot, And from ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... energy that which he knew to be the real case with Byron. More than any one, Moore experienced the fatal influence which injures independence in aristocratic England. An Irishman by birth, and a commoner, Moore was flattered to find himself elevated by his talents to a position in aristocratic circles which he owed to his talents, but which he was loath to resign. The English aristocracy then formed a kind of clique whose wish it was to govern England on the ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... changes from personal to public, and we get a glimpse of scenes and personages that have become historical. He was present in the House of Commons at the first grand debate on the German war after the Great Commoner's retirement from office—"the pitched battle," as Sterne calls it, "wherein Mr. P. was to have entered and thrown down the gauntlet" in defence of his military policy. ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... explained the girl. "He should marry someone else, so that the family title could follow the family name. His father and mother have practically cast him off because of me. Don't you see? Can't you understand that I am only an untitled commoner to his people? I ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... gold disc or a flower—I say it's oftener like a beer barrel or a cheese. You want a wealth of jolly words and real things ruled out as unfit for poetry. I say there's nothing unfit for poetry. Nothing, Dogson! Poetry's everywhere, and the real thing is commoner among drabs and pot-houses and rubbish-heaps than in your Sunday parlours. The poet's business is to distil it out of rottenness, and show that it is all one spirit, the thing that keeps the stars in their place.... I wanted to call my book 'Drains,' for drains are sheer poetry carrying ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... College in 1752, the ordinary commoners were already excluded. 'As a gentleman commoner,' he writes, 'I was admitted to the society of the fellows, and fondly expected that some questions of literature would be the amusing and instructive topics of their discourse. Their conversation stagnated in a round of college ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... as a fellow-commoner. The fellow-commoners are 'young men of fortune,' who, in consideration of paying twice as much for everything as anybody else, are allowed the privilege of sitting at the fellows' table in hall, and in their seats at chapel; of wearing a gown with gold or silver lace, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... prove itself; that a gentleman can't look like a common man, even in rags. Stan disputes that theory with her, when he isn't too lazy, and wants to bet he could so disguise himself that she would take him for a green grocer or a fishmonger, who have the air of being commoner than other men, I think—at least in our village at Battlemead—because they wear fat tufts of curls frothing out over their foreheads from under their caps, which are always plaid ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... possibilities of situation. These systems, however, reflect the idiosyncrasies of their makers, and have never won wide approbation. Morality must remain largely experimental, individual. Conscience will play a very useful role in spurring us to our recognized duty in the commoner situations, but for all the more delicate decisions we need a more ultimate touchstone. We must grasp the underlying principles of right conduct, and weigh the relative goods attainable by each possible act. A well-balanced and normal conscience will save us ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... most interesting part of the garden, is that devoted to wax dolls. There are other beds for the commoner dolls—for the rag dolls, and the china dolls, and the rubber dolls, but of course wax dolls would look much handsomer growing. Wax dolls have to be planted quite early in the season; for they need a good start before the sun is very high. The seeds are the loveliest bits of ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... his social position as compared with that of others. Accustomed to being a gentleman, he did not want to be more or other than he was. Had he been poor the obligation to struggle might have roused within him the instinct to climb. A forced activity might have bred in him the commoner sort of ambition. But he had enough money and could gratify his inclination toward secrecy and retirement. For several years, since he had left the Royal College of Music and settled down in his little house, he had ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... of George Dandin, a French commoner. She has a liaison with a M. Clitandre, but always contrives to turn the tables on her husband. George Dandin first hears of a rendezvous from one Lubin, a foolish servant of Clitandre, and lays the affair before M. and Mde. Sotenville, his wife's parents. The baron with ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... swiftness on its path about the sun. Usually it was all a living progress that altered under his regard. But now fatigue a little deadened him to that incessancy of life, it seemed now just an eternal circling. He lapsed to the commoner persuasion of the great fixities and recurrencies of the human routine. The remoter past of wandering savagery, the inevitable changes of to-morrow were veiled, and he saw only day and night, seed-time and harvest, loving and begetting, births and deaths, walks in the summer sunlight and ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... the whole, the most valuable and important service rendered by cooking is, that it sterilizes our food and kills any germs, or animal parasites, which may have been in the body of the animal, or in the leaves of the plant, from which it came; or, as is far the commoner and greater danger, may have got on it from dirty or careless handling, or exposure to dust. While it was undoubtedly the great improvement that cooking makes in the taste of food that first led our ancestors—and probably chiefly induces us—to use the process, it is hardly ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... lads, and always you'll do well, Empty every clie of duke, commoner, or swell; [16] But if you stop a game cove, who has little else than pluck, [17] Do not clean him out, and you'll never want for luck. [18] So High-pads drink my toast, Let honour be our boast, And never pluck a poor cull ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... but merely honorary, and every way expensive), and put himself into a port and course of living agreeably thereunto, and having also removed my brother from Thame school to Merton College in Oxford, and entered him there in the highest and most chargeable condition of a Fellow Commoner, he found it needful to retrench his expenses elsewhere, the hurt of which fell upon me. For he thereupon took me from school, to save the charge of maintaining me there; which was somewhat like plucking green fruit from the tree, and laying it by before it was come to its ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... enacted, "in 38 Eliz., that if any Fellow of this House, being a commoner or repaster, should within the precinct of this house wear any cloak, boots and spurs, or long hair, he should pay for every offence five shillings for a fine, and also to be put out of commons." The attempt to put down beards at Lincoln's Inn failed. Dugdale says, in his notes on that Inn, ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... folk, they court their joes At gloamin' on the lea; But they're made of a commoner clay, I suppose, Than a ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... him. It was not addressed to a Home Ruler. By this time, curiosity was keenly excited. But Mr. Gladstone—smiling, holding the House in firm attention and rapt admiration—was determined to play with the subject a little longer. The letter was not directed even to the Commoner. It was directed to a "Peer;" and as he uttered this sacred word, with a delicious affectation of reverence, he raised the index finger of his hand to high heaven, as though only a reference to a region so exalted could ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... promptly forward to meet her new guests, and to show them into a commoner room, below stairs, when her movement was anticipated by the door's opening, and a man's standing on the threshold. It was now too late to prevent the intrusion, and a little surprise at the appearance of the new-comer held all mute and ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... actual contemporary society. Like a modern popular newspaper, Plato's democracy makes it its business to satisfy existing desires and give people a 'good time'. It does not distinguish between higher and lower. Any one man is as good as another, and so is any impulse or any idea. Consequently the commoner have the pull. Even the great democratic statesmen of the past, he now sees, have been ministers to mob desires; they have 'filled the city with harbours and docks and walls and revenues and such-like trash, without Sophrosyne and righteousness'. ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... the means of saving so many lives from premature death by drowning. Never let it be said the days of chivalry were over in England while we have such a nobleman as a Lord Beauclerc[3] of Scarborough, and a commoner called Ellerthorpe at Hull. He believed with those who say that the men who dares the 'tempests' wrath,' and the 'billows' madden'd play' on the errand of saving life, to be as great heroes as those who 'seek for bubble reputation at the cannon's mouth.' He would rather be a bearer of ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... concealment. When she endeavoured, in her own mind, to make excuse for her friend, she felt almost sure that the Duchess, with all her courage, had been afraid to propose to her husband that their daughter should marry a commoner without an income. But in thinking of all that, there could now be nothing gained. What ought she to do—at once? The girl, in telling her, had exacted no promise of secrecy, nor would she have given any such ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... in the etiquette of courtship all flowers have different meanings and many a promising affair has been ruined because a suitor sent his lady a buttercup, meaning "That's the last dance I'll ever take you to, you big cow," instead of a plant with a more tender significance. Some of the commoner flowers and their meaning ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... simple landlord; and the sovereign leige, in whom, according to the fiction of the system, the fee of the whole country vested, has become a constitutional monarch. It may be that another series of changes may convert the tenant into an owner, the lord into a rich commoner, and the monarch into a president. Though these changes have resulted in giving the people the enjoyment of a larger amount of their rights than they formerly possessed, it is not hence to be inferred that they ought centuries ago to have been introduced suddenly ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... thoughtless acts and indifference to admonitions now felt and expressed by many living sons of dead mothers will, in time, be felt and expressed by the living sons of living mothers," says Richard L. Metcalfe, in the "Commoner." "The boys of to-day who do not understand the value of the mother's companionship will yet sing—with those who already know—this song ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... of the insect eggs devoured by us in winter, when most of your pretty insect-eating birds have flown to where the insect is commoner, fatter, and fuller-flavoured? It is we stay-at-home British birds that really keep the insects down. I know that insect eggs do not appear in our poor dissected gizzards. How should they? How would you recognize their remains, ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... watermelon is a boon apart, and not to be mentioned with commoner things. It is chief of this world's luxuries, king by the grace of God over all the fruits of the earth. When one has tasted it, he knows what the angels eat. It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve took: we know it because ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Staniford, with characteristic abruptness, "is a type that is commoner than we imagine in New England. We fair people fancy we are the only genuine Yankees. I guess that's a mistake. There must have been a good many dark Puritans. In fact, we always think of Puritans ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... 'mimic fires,' and make it glow and sparkle as if, like the heavens, it had its galaxies and constellations. These are the jelly-fishes, or sea-nettles (Acalephae), as they are often called, from the stinging properties with which some of them are endowed. The commoner forms are well known, for the beach is often strewn with the carcasses of the larger species. On fine days in summer and autumn, whole fleets of these strange voyagers appear off our coasts. Their umbrella-shaped, ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... hero, but in both cases the recognized or unrecognized merit of oneself is the big fact in the story, so that the mastery motive is evidently finding satisfaction here as well as in other forms of play. Probably the conquering hero dream is the commoner and healthier variety. A classical example is that of the milkmaid who was carrying on her head a pail of milk she had been given. "I'll sell this milk for so much, and with the money buy a hen. The hen will lay so many ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... laughed heartily after his fashion, conscious that the cap fitted, for he was in the habit of expending all his surplus bad temper upon his wives. I have sometimes thought, that if, when a warrior, be he chief or commoner, throws a stick of wood at his wife's head, she were to cast it back at his, he might, perhaps, be taught better behaviour. But I never dared to instil such insubordinate notions into the heads of my Sioux female friends, lest some ultra "brave," ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... disallowed. Even in his grand, careless household, with its large retinue and superb hospitality, there was something worthy of a representative of that time-honoured portion of our true nobility, the untitled gentlemen of the land. The Great Commoner had, indeed, "something to show" for the money he had disdained and squandered. But for Frank Hazeldean's mode of getting rid of the dross, when gone, what would be left to tell the tale? Paltry prints in a bachelor's lodging; ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... does good, and pacifies and unites men. But where a bit of mortality, because it has a genealogical tree and a coat of arms, rears up like an Arabian horse, and prances in the street, and says in the room, 'People out of the street have been here,' when a commoner has been—that is nobility in decay, and become a mere mask—a mask of the kind that Thespis created; and people are glad when such an ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... remarkable resemblance to the snake with raised head aptly symbolises the extraordinarily fatuous attitude of the jealous person, keenly alert to discover signs of that which he least of all wishes to see. The moment that he does see it, or imagines that he sees it, the form will change into the far commoner one shown in Fig. 26, where the jealousy is already mingled with anger. It may be noted that here the jealousy is merely a vague cloud, though interspersed with very definite flashes of anger ready to strike at those by whom it fancies ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... a commoner; he had nothing in the world but his brain and his arm. Fitzgerald, now, possessed a famous title and an ancient name. These kings and princes hereabout could boast of but little more than he; and there were millions to back him. He could dream of ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... old-time devotion to chiefs and reverence for their persons still survive in the native commoner, and in great force. The educated young gentleman who is chief of the tribe that live in the region about the capital dresses in the fashion of high-class European gentlemen, but even his clothes cannot damn him ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... mother's eyes clear shining again; only that gaunt old head raised proudly, owing no man anything but courtesy. The glow deepened, as she thought of it. It was strange, too, that, with the deep, slow-moving nature of this girl, she should have striven so eagerly to throw this light over the future. Commoner natures have done more and hoped less. It was a poor gift, you think, this of the labor of a life for so plain a duty; hardly heroic. She knew it. Yet, if there lay in this coming labor any pain, any wearing effort, she clung to it desperately, as if this should ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... if Terry writes you about this, that his innate delicacy would never permit him to go into these sordid details, too many of which I have perhaps told you. But I am made of rougher stuff than he. I am never quite as unreasonable as he can be at times, but I am commoner." ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... will not deceive him after all. I see she is playing double between him and Lord Lowborough, and while she amuses herself with the lively Huntingdon, she tries her utmost to enslave his moody friend; and should she succeed in bringing both to her feet, the fascinating commoner will have but little chance against the lordly peer. If he observes her artful by-play, it gives him no uneasiness, but rather adds new zest to his diversion by opposing a stimulating check to his otherwise too ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... Pitt was looked upon as a genuine statesman until his son graduated into the Cabinet, and then "the terrible cornet of horse" became known as the father of Pitt. Now that both are dust, and we are getting the proper perspective, we see that "the great commoner" was indeed a great man, and so they move down the corridors of time together, arm in arm, this father and son. That excellent person who carried the gripsacks of greatness so long that he thought the luggage was ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... in Leicestershire, 1584, the son of a chief justice. His name is first mentioned as a gentleman commoner at Broadgate Hall, now Pembroke College, Oxford. At sixteen he was entered a member of the Inner Temple, but the dry facts of the law did not appeal to his romantic imagination. Nowhere in his work does he draw upon his barrister's experience ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... another, without relation or proportion. Their mass is supremely tasteless, almost senseless; that mob of architectural incongruities was not only without collective beauty, but it was without that far commoner and cheaper thing which we call picturesqueness. This has come to it through ruin, and we must give a new meaning to the word vandalism if we would appreciate what the barbarians did for Rome in tumbling her tawdry splendor into the heaps which are now ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... Michaelis, the successor to Hollweg, was the first commoner to be appointed to that high office, without even a "von" ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... then occurred in Italy wears a character of its own, through the great share which the personal hatred and revenge had in it. The impression, indeed, which Italy at this period makes on us is, that even in quiet times great crimes were commoner than in other countries. We may, it is true, be misled by the fact that we have far fuller details on such matters here than elsewhere, and that the same force of imagination, which gives a special character to crimes actually committed, causes much ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... as "ce Vassili"—a term of mingled contempt and distrust—bowed very low. He was a plain commoner, while his interlocutor was a baron. The knowledge of this was subtly conveyed ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... in those days were much less well bred, and the commoner cold-blooded strain can stand bivouacs, cold and wet, much better than our present high-bred material, although the latter stand heat and exertion very much better. The leadership must adapt itself to these conditions. Where circumstances allow the bulk of the horses ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi |
