"Amateur" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... any considerable number of people here who really understand classical music, or who play any instrument or sing really well. On the contrary, as I think I have said in some other connection, there is no part of the world where you hear so much bad music, professional and amateur. But it is also true, that there are few parts where you hear so much music. Almost every working-man has his girls taught to strum the piano. Amateur concerts are exceedingly popular. Most young people think they can sing, and Nature has ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... ball, rowing and skating on the lake, bicycling, or five-mile tramps, studying birds, photographing scenery, or gathering wild flowers. The Vassar girl is also enthusiastic over the "Tree and Trig Ceremonies" and amateur ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... game-wardens, fire-wardens, guides, constables, farmers, lumbermen, sheriffs, can't discover hair or hide of them; but no doubt you can. The wild and dismal state forest is now full of detectives, amateur and professional; it's full of hotel keepers, trout fishermen, and private camps which are provided with elevators, electric light, squash courts, modern plumbing, and footmen in knee-breeches; and all of these dinky ginks are hunting for four young and wealthy men who have, at regular ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... my arm with a charming gesture. "I have been here twenty-five years; I bought all the antique furniture of my predecessor. I said to myself, 'Yes, I shall buy the furniture for five hundred francs, and then, later I shall sell to a wealthy amateur for one thousand francs, perhaps in a year or two.' Twenty-five years ago, and I have it yet. And now it creaks and creaks and snaps in the night. We all creak and creak thus as we grow old; ah, you ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... my best amateur theatrical manner," he responded, as they entered the garden. "This is the arithmetical garden," he said "It's true. Why, it's just like an 'Alice in Wonderland' experience, coming into something I have known in some ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... indescribable elegance, an exceeding grace and beauty, which spoke of a knowledge of art and of refinement of taste far beyond those of a mere military amateur in the one who ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... Refreshmenting, and of Sniff's corkscrew and his servile disposition, it is intentionally fooling, no doubt, but it is—excellent fooling! As was admirably said in the number of Macmillan for January, 1871, by the anonymous writer of a Reminiscence of the Amateur Theatricals at Tavistock House,—the remark following immediately after Charles Dickens's version of the Ghost's Song in Henry Fielding's burlesque of Tom Thumb,—"Nonsense, it may be said, all this; but ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... for his school-days to end, to live independently in the Latin Quarter, to study law, without being hurried, since his mother wished him to do so, and he did not wish to displease her. But he wished also to amuse himself with painting, at least as an amateur; for he was passionately fond of it. All this was said by the handsome, aristocratic young man with a happy smile, which expanded his sensual lips and nostrils; and Amedee admired him without one envious ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... during Dor's apogee in England that a well-known French amateur, also visiting our shores, was thus addressed by an English friend: "Come with me to Bond Street, you will there see the work ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the game," replied Sarah Judd, with a shrug. "You don't know me, Nan, but I know you; and I know your record, too. You're as slick as they make 'em, and the one who calls herself Agatha Lord is just an infantile amateur beside you. But go ahead, Nan; don't ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... no amateur in the business of Grievance Committees. His manner was that of a self-respecting man dealing with a fellow-man on terms of perfect equality. There was a complete absence of Wigglesworth's noisy bluster, as also of Gilby's violent profanity. ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... madam, as you may see—but for scientific purposes. Well, what do I do? I go to the Railway Passengers Assurance Company's Office, 64 Cornhill, London, (I like to be particular, you see, as becomes one who professes to be an amateur student of the exact sciences), and I take out what they call a Short Term Policy of Insurance against accidents of all kinds for a thousand pounds—1000 pounds, observe—for which I pay the paltry sum of 30 shillings—1 pound, 10 shillings. ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... or two of the visiting stage professionals, after being sufficiently urged, would go into the back room and take the places of the regular amateur entertainers, but they were very sparing with these favors, and the patrons regarded them as special treats. There was one man, a minstrel, who, whenever he responded to a request to "do something," never essayed ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... you couldn't afford to use the very largest, so that a mean between large and small would be the natural thing to choose. But we should do nothing to discourage the planting of the finest specimens, with the possibility of getting something unusually good. That is certainly the work for every amateur. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association
... naturally as he could, but his voice sounded to his own ears like an amateur actor's in a ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... careless dignity, when people brought money into the town, but it always relapsed into its own customs with a contented sigh after the jolt of inexplicable requirements and imported ways. This year had been an especially fruitful one. The boarders had given a fancy dress party with amateur vaudeville combined, for the benefit of the old church, and Martha Waterman now, as she toiled up the hill to a meeting of the Circle, held the resultant check in one of her plump freckled hands. Martha was chief mover in all capable deeds, a warm, silent woman who called children "lamb," ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... are like the amateur physicians—they always begin with the question of remedies, and they go at this without any diagnosis or any knowledge of the anatomy or physiology of society. They never have any doubt of the efficacy ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... this to blast mine eyes?" ejaculated Charlie, as he pointed to the glove with a melodramatic start, for, like most accomplished amateur actors, he was fond of introducing private theatricals into his ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... disregard of others' rights to peaceful enjoyment. On a par with this is the incivility of a person who undertakes to accompany a soloist with his (or her) own little pipe, to the annoyance of those who prefer to listen to professional rather than amateur efforts. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... administrative work; but he was wealthy, and at a comparatively early age he abandoned himself to leisure. He travelled, he read, he went much into society, he enjoyed the company of his friends. When he died he was spoken of as an amateur, and praised as a cricketer of some merit. Even his closest friends seemed to find it necessary to explain and make excuses; he was shy, he stammered, he was not suited to parliamentary life; but I can think of few people ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... that General Hankin resigned in order to take the Presidency of the Wellingtonian Defence Association, and almost automatically Paul slipped into his place. With the instinct of the man of affairs he persuaded the Council to change his title. An Honorary Secretary is but a dilettante, an amateur carrying no weight, whereas an Organizing Secretary is a devil of a fellow professedly dynamic. So Paul became Organizing Secretary of the Young England League, and made things hum all the louder. He put fresh life into local ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... by the appearance of the wolf in the second scene, and such a wolf! On few amateur stages do we find so natural an actor for that part, or so good a costume, for Sanch was irresistibly droll in the gray wolf-skin which usually lay beside Miss Celia's bed, now fitted over his back and fastened neatly down underneath, with his own face peeping out at one end, and the ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... to amateur observers who may be disposed to find out for themselves whether or not changes now take place in the moon, the following sentence from the introduction to Professor Pickering's chapter on Plato in the Harvard Observatory Annals, volume xxxii, will prove useful ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... which were, in consequence, seriously exposed to oblique gun fire. Again, no attempt had been made to provide any flooring for the trenches, and the Battalion spent many happy hours working under the August sun as amateur bricklayers, with the material ready to hand from the village, in the hope, which the winter was to bring utterly to naught, of ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... terrible gap, the wild disorder of the fragments cast loose over the earth, the utter desolation of the whole place would be simply impossible. No artist has ever yet done justice to the scene, and certainly no mere amateur can ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... always made Freddie feel as if he were being disembowelled by some clumsy amateur. He wished that he had defied the dictates of his better nature and remained in his snug rooms at the Albany, allowing Derek to go through this business by himself. "I-er-we-er-came to meet ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... said to me afterwards, ruefully looking at the place where his boot-heel had been. "You've got to take your good where you find it. I don't care whether he's a rich amateur or skin-and-grief in a garret as long as he's got the stuff in him. Nobody else could have fetched me up from the East End this afternoon.... So long; see you in a week ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... should not go. I could not conceive my absence from the concert—the concert which I had been anticipating and preparing for during many weeks. We went out but little, Aunt Constance and I. An oratorio, an amateur operatic performance, a ballad concert in the Bursley Town Hall—no more than that; never the Hanbridge Theatre. And now Diaz was coming down to give a pianoforte recital in the Jubilee Hall at Hanbridge; Diaz, the ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... cut Porton out entirely. But the chances are that he'll let Porton have as little of the returns as possible. A professional criminal like this Crapsey isn't going to let an amateur like Porton in on the ground floor ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... corpse of his adversary, and, raising his powerful voice, recalled his men from the pursuit. Then wading into the brook, he began to wash the gore from his head and face: one of his people, who from his official air of bustling alacrity, must have been a professional character, or at least an amateur surgeon, examined the wounds, and dexterously applied an improvised poultice of chewed leaves to his gashed face, using broad ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... the best that you can do in the production of drawing, or of draughtsmanship, must always be nothing in itself, unless the whole life be given to it. An amateur's drawing, or a workman's drawing—anybody's drawing but an artist's, is always valueless in itself. It may be, as you have just heard Mr. Redgrave tell you, most precious as a memorial, or as a gift, or as a means of ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... pleasantest reminiscences were the partly amateur and partly professional entertainments that took place at the celebrated seat of the distinguished author, Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, about ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... drawing made by Morris—who was rather clever at catching likenesses—of her as she appeared singing in the chapel on the night when she had drawn the page-boy, Thomas, from his slumbers; and the third, also a photograph, taken by some local amateur, of her and Morris standing together on the beach and engaged evidently in ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... unmitigated falsehood!" cried Noah, angrily. "This man talks like a professional amateur yachtsman. He has no regard for facts, but simply goes ahead and makes statements with an utter disregard of the truth. The Ark was not stove in. We beached her very successfully. I say this in defence of my seamanship, which was top-notch for ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... selected to give him private lessons. That was how I obtained a footing in the Gilmore family. Later on, when they had found out that I was somewhat of a musician—you may remember, perhaps, that for an amateur I was a tolerable performer on the piano—I went every day to the house to teach Latin and Greek to Francis, and music ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... was in these days that Washington first brooded over the contrasts between the Englishman and the Virginian. With obstinate complacency Braddock had disregarded Washington's counsels of prudence. He showed arrogant confidence in his veteran troops and contempt for the amateur soldiers of whom Washington was one. In a wild country where rapid movement was the condition of success Braddock would halt, as Washington said, "to level every mole hill and to erect bridges over every brook." His ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... exponent of a popular form thereof) the first Book of the Odyssey belongs to "the latest stratum," and is the "copy" of the general "worker-up," whether he was the editor employed by Pisistratus or a laborious amateur. This theory is opposed by Sittl, who makes his point by cutting out, as interpolations, whatever passages do not suit his ideas, and do suit Kirchhoff's—this is the regular method of Homeric criticism. The whole cruise of Telemachus (Book IV.) ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... they appear to any other observer. Permit me to judge for myself." And he bent over the sketch-book. It is often difficult for one who is not himself an artist nor a connoisseur to judge whether the pencilled jottings in an impromptu sketch are by the hand of a professed master or a mere amateur. Kenelm was neither artist nor connoisseur, but the mere pencil-work seemed to him much what might be expected from any man with an accurate eye who had taken a certain number of lessons from a good drawing-master. It was enough ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the custom for gardeners to invest their labors and achievements with a mystery and secrecy which might well have discouraged any amateur from trespassing upon such difficult ground. "Trade secrets" in either flower or vegetable growing were acquired by the apprentice only through practice and observation, and in turn jealously guarded by him until passed on to some younger brother in the profession. ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... rendered such ample justice to the water he so loudly praised, Entre nous,—the excellence of his wine, and the toasts that we had drunk to the health of innumerable loyal and virtuous individuals, rendered me a greater amateur of water-bibbing than usual. ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... indeed every spring, there was a flower show in London at the Temple Gardens. The things exhibited were principally bulb flowers, ixias, iris, narcissus and the like; the event was interesting to growers, both professional and amateur. Joost Van Heigen came over from Holland to attend; he was sent by his father in a purely business capacity, but of course he was expected, and himself expected, to enjoy it, too; there would be many novelties exhibited and many beautiful flowers in which he would ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... his hat off and on was a scientific amateur in a small way, and worshipped the great Warner with a solemn freshness. It was, in fact, at his invitation that the distinguished doctor was present; for Warner lived in no such ramshackle lodging-house, ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... enthusiastic amateur gardener in a land of enthusiastic amateur gardeners. He lived for his garden. The love which other men expend on their nearest and dearest Lord Marshmoreton lavished on seeds, roses and loamy soil. The hatred which some of his order feel for Socialists and Demagogues ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... versions are quite abundant, four or five being found in Italy, and a number in France, the best known of which is La Fontaine's fable of "The Bear and the Amateur Gardener," ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... flower—herald of death. The fatal climax could be delayed if gardeners, in transplanting, would at least take the trouble to set them in their old accustomed exposure so far as the cardinal points are concerned. But your professional gardener knows everything; it is useless for an amateur to offer him advice; worse than useless, of course, to ask him for it. Indeed, the flowers, even the wild ones, might almost reconcile one to a life on the Riviera. Almost.... I recall a comely plant, ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... son who was handsome and popular. He suffered the misfortune of a mental brilliancy that learns too readily and of a personal charm that wins its way too easily. He danced well; he was facile at the piano; and he had so pronounced a gift as an amateur actor that a celebrated professional had advised him to go on ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... removed to the Albany, Piccadilly. In anticipation of his change of residence he determined to part with a portion of his collection of French books, and on the valuation of the late M. Potier, of Paris, he offered it to an eminent French amateur en bloc for four thousand pounds. This offer was declined, and he sent the books to Paris to be sold by auction. The sale took place at the Salle Drouot on the 12th of March 1878, and the four following days, when the ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... Rodney, "and I realized how interested you were, it occurred to me that we'd engage that studio and put Miss Mayo into it. Miss Mayo lives in Richmond, Virginia, and she had been making a big hit in amateur theatricals. She wanted to get on the legitimate stage, as Shaw told you; so Mrs. Ordway suggested that Epstein and I try ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... Schmucke produced one brilliant result. Schmucke being a German, harmony was his strong point; he looked over the instrumentation of Pons' compositions, and Pons provided the airs. Here and there an amateur among the audience admired the new pieces of music which served as accompaniment to two or three great successes, but they attributed the improvement vaguely to "progress." No one cared to know the composer's ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... schoolrooms built, and, as there were no funds for the payment of artisans, the missionaries had to put their own hands to the work; besides which, as money was not forthcoming to meet the cost of the new schoolrooms, a kind of amateur store was opened by the missionaries' wives for the sale of clothing to ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... understanding. 'I, for my part,' said he, 'stipulate to have for comrade no man who fancies himself a born and stamped chieftain, no inveterate student of maps, and no dog with a turn for feeling himself pulled by the collar. And that reminds me you are amateur of dogs. Have you a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... for one week, Mr. Maraton," she suggested softly, "that you could bring your work with you. You could have a study in a quiet corner of the house, and if you did not care to bring a secretary, I would promise you the services of an amateur one." ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... begging us to think. My wife went over our visitors' book—we've kept one of those silly things for years—but there wasn't a name in it which we couldn't account for. I got out all the old albums of snapshots and amateur photos in the house. You know the way those things accumulate; groups of all sorts. But we couldn't find the girl. And yet both my wife and I were sure we'd met her. Then one morning Simcox burst into my wife's little sitting-room—a place none of the convalescents have ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... had seen—not with Miss Lavinia's permission—set Andy fairly wild, and later astonished his playmates with prodigious feats of walking on a barrel, somersaulting, vaulting with a pole, and numerous other amateur gymnastic attainments. ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... devising some new weapon that will render the old ones obsolete. The trouble with the professional man in any walk of life has always been that he sticks to the traditional ways. In consequence he lays himself open to the amateur, who, caring nothing about tradition, beats him with something novel. The inventions that have revolutionized naval warfare have come from men outside the naval profession. Thus the Romans, unable to match the Carthaginians ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... close to the feet of Bud. It was exactly like the angry cry of a fighting rat. But Paul understood instantly that Bobolink must be the cause of all this racket; for he had known his friend on numerous occasions to make good use of his gift as an amateur ventriloquist. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... warrior's chest and back. As he drew back the blood-soaked cloth, he gave a sigh of relief. The bullet had passed clear through the body close to the lungs,—a serious wound, but one which perhaps with proper care need not prove fatal. The amateur surgeon had no antiseptic except common salt, but with that and water he quickly cleansed and sterilized the wounds and tearing up one of his own clean shirts, he first scraped a strip with an old case knife until he had ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... inherited a moderate fortune, and had spent it like other young men of rank, lounging in theatres and amusing himself with dinner-parties. He was a poet, an artist, and a wit, but each and everything with the languor of an amateur. His favorite associates were actresses, and he had neither obtained nor aspired to any higher reputation than that of a cultivated man of fashion. His distinguished birth was not apparent in his person. He had red hair, hard blue eyes, and a complexion white and purple, ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... for the Guild. The comedy has been very much improved, in many respects, since you read it. The scene to which you refer is certainly one of the most telling in the play. And there is a farce to be produced on Tuesday next, wherein a distinguished amateur will sustain a variety of assumption-parts, and in particular, Samuel Weller and Mrs. Gamp, of which I say no more. I am pining for Broadstairs, where the children are at present. I lurk from the sun, during the best part of the day, in a villainous compound of ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... great houses—one of the few that possessed an actual facade, a central court, and a big staircase: it had too its galleries of paintings and of Oriental curios before Oriental curios became too common. Its owner was also, with the rest, a musical amateur. He was a man of forty-five, and like Raymond had a wife too many years younger than himself for his own comfort. This lively lady lived on fiddles and horns—dancing was an inexhaustible pleasure. At her dancing-parties, ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... it that Edwin Abbey did not get along very well at school —instead of getting his lessons he drew pictures, and thirty years ago such conduct was proof of total depravity. Like the amateur blacksmith who started to make a horseshoe and finally contented himself with a fizzle, the Abbeys gave up theology and law, and decided that if Edwin became a good printer it would be enough. And then, how often printers became writers—then editors and finally proprietors! Edwin might yet own ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... requests, the publishers are glad to present the play in separate form, making it more easily accessible to young amateur actors and actresses. ...
— The Rescue of the Princess Winsome - A Fairy Play for Old and Young • Annie Fellows-Johnston and Albion Fellows Bacon
... being of high family. The same day the chevalier had tried his harpsichord. At the first sound of the instrument Bathilde had raised her head. The chevalier, though he did not know that he had a listener, or perhaps because he did not know it, went on with preludes and fantasies, which showed an amateur of no mean talents. At these sounds, which seemed to wake all the musical chords of her own organization, Bathilde had risen and approached the window that she might not lose a note, for such an amusement was unheard ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... mind. His was the temperament of the artist, and America at that time had little to evoke or to satisfy the artistic feeling. There were few pictures and no galleries; there was no music, except the amateur torture of strings which led the country dance, or the martial inflammation of fife and drum, or the sentimental dawdling here and there over the ancient harpsichord, with the songs of love, and the broad or pathetic staves and choruses ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... and, in her surprise, like Galileo, she exclaimed: "But it does turn round!" The book was already "radiant with inborn genius," but it still lacked the "acquired art," and feeling this, she sat down to it regularly, and rewrote it from beginning to end, greatly enriching it. She had no amateur impatience to appear in print and become known; the thought of production induced her to delay and do her utmost rather than to make indiscreet haste; her delight was in the doing essentially; she was not one to glory in public successes, however great, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... which certain lines are to be delivered, as in the case of his comments on gesture, they are almost painfully evident from the context. He cites for instance irony[95], anger[96], exhaustion [97], amazement [98], sympathy[99], pity[100]. He appears as the lineal ancestor of the modern "coach" of amateur theatricals in somewhat naively remarking[101] that upon leaving Thais for two days, Phaedria must pronounce "two days" as if "two years" ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... life as a forefather. Possibly the reader has considered the matter already. Imagine how nervous one may be waiting in the hall and watching with a keen glance for the approach of the physician who is to announce that one is a forefather. The amateur forefather of 1620 must have felt proud yet anxious about the clam-yield also, as each new mouth ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... robbery, extracted what gratification they might from staring at nothing between the railings guarding the windows. Within, Mr. Claridge, a brisk, stout, little old man, was talking earnestly to a burly police-inspector in uniform, and Mr. Cutler, who had seized the opportunity to attempt amateur detective work on his own account, was groveling perseveringly about the floor, among old porcelain and loose pieces of armor, in the futile hope of finding any clue that the thieves ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... but for the most part quietly. The men suffered no serious deprivation. Game was abundant; and one member of the party, who was a good amateur blacksmith, set up a small forge, where he turned out a variety of tools, implements, and trinkets, which were traded to the Indians for corn. Everything went well. The officers were as busy as the men, and their ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... of soft dark hair and beautiful great dark eyes that looked like a frightened fawn's. I have heard my father describe her many times, and I have seen the water-colour sketch he made of her—he was quite an amateur. Ahmed has it locked away somewhere. She nearly died when the baby was born, and she never recovered her strength. She made no complaint and never spoke of herself, and seemed quite content as long as the child was with her. She was ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... people in real life actually wore monocles, something, which I, of course, had known to be true but which had seemed nevertheless an unreality, part of a stage play, a "dress-up" game for children and amateur actors. The "English swell" in the performances of the Bayport Dramatic Society always wore a single eyeglass, but he also wore Dundreary whiskers and clothes which would have won him admittance to the Home for Feeble-Minded Youth without the formality of an examination. His "English accent" ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of H.: He's not all right. No, by the fame of Shakespeare, he's all wrong. A certain convocation of talented amateurs Are e'en at him. Your amateur is your only emperor for talent; There's not a genius in the universe ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... that I could secure an opera engagement made me realize I had within me the making of an artist, if I would really labor for such an end. When I became thoroughly convinced of this, I was transformed from an amateur into a professional in a single day. I now began to take care of myself, learn good habits, and endeavored to cultivate my mind as well as my voice. The conviction gradually grew upon me that if I studied and worked, ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... have been appointed to control the food supplies in Petrograd. English Government officials regard this arrangement as the work of an amateur. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... smile of complete self-satisfaction. In the light of his later conduct, I grew to understand that smile. He had anticipated a rebuff, and he had been received, as he read it, with consideration. The irony of my politeness he had entirely missed. Instead, he read in what I said the admiration of the amateur for the professional. He saw what he believed to be a high agent of the Government treating him as a worthy antagonist. In no other way can I explain his later heaping upon me his confidences. It was the vanity of a ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... arm, and together they made their way out of the crowded room into a smaller apartment where an amateur reciter was hovering disconsolately awaiting ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... professedly "valet" to Le Destin, but really a country gentleman's son. Thus everybody is somebody else, again in the old way. Another, and to some tastes a more serious, blot may be found in the everlasting practical jokes of the knock-about kind, inflicted on the unfortunate Ragotin, a sort of amateur member of the troupe. But again these "low jinks" were an obvious reaction from (just as the ceremonies were followings of) the solemnity of the Heroics; and they continued to be popular for nearly ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... Beatrice exercised all the rights of proprietorship in Carnaby's extensive stables. Her interest in me was from the first undisguised. She found her way to my worksheds and developed rapidly, in spite of the sincere discouragement of Cothope, into a keen amateur of aeronautics. She would come sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, sometimes afoot with an Irish terrier, sometimes riding. She would come for three or four days every day, vanish for a fortnight or three ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... generation of aristocracy may grow up with no taste for the betting ring, the card room, and the night club, or, at any rate, that a certain number of them may find their highest happiness in knowledge and wisdom rather than in amateur theatricals and fancy-dress balls. The human mind, after all, cannot find rest in triviality, and after so long a period of the most sordid and vulgar self-indulgence it is reasonable to hope that our ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... considered among the best available on a problem which required knowledge of engineering. As a military engineer Donatello was a failure. He was sent in 1429 with other artists to construct a huge dam outside the besieged town of Lucca, in order to flood or isolate the city. The amateur and dilettante of the Renaissance found a rare opportunity in warfare; and this passion for war and its preparations occurs frequently among these early artists. Leonardo designed scores of military ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... President Wilson that he backs up his officials and refuses to listen even to widespread popular clamour for their heads. It was the business of von Jagow to conduct the Foreign policy of Germany, but the intriguers demanded his removal because he was too occupied to waste time talking to amateur politicians, and because his voice did ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... one of my boyhood birthdays I received a tool box. It was a peach of a tool box, too; not one of the dime store variety, with a saw the same length as the gimlet, but with a set of tools that no amateur carpenter would despise. I was greatly delighted with that tool box, and immediately began planning the things I would make. Mother wanted a shelf on the back porch and a coop for an old hen just off with her chicks; my dog needed a dog house, and I even aspired to a rowboat ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... copper wire round the outside of the tin. This can be twisted, and when the cake is baked and has got cold can be untwisted, and the tin will then open of its own accord. The tin must be lined with buttered paper, and buttered paper must be placed on a flat piece of tin at the bottom. When an "amateur hoop" is used like we have described, care must be taken that the cake does not come out at the bottom. The cake, especially when it is made with beaten-up eggs, like sponge cake, will rise, and unless ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne
... Confederate Surgeon at Lynchburg, and the young ladies had taken refuge in Rockbridge County. The latter were, from all accounts, pretty and intelligent, and one day, as I examined some parcels of books in the parlors, I found a volume of amateur poems that some laboring bard had dedicated to the youngest of them. Mr. Michie was a fine old Virginia gentleman, who remembered Thomas Jefferson well, as he had been reared in that great statesman's village, Charlottesville. ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... Piffard exhibited in New York to a society of amateur photographers a new method of taking instantaneous photographs by means of a brilliant light made by sprinkling ten or fifteen grains of magnesium powder on about six grains of gun-cotton. When this is flashed in a dark apartment it gives light enough to take ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... to take something, but it was evident that he made the effort to please us. The neighbors—and I am convinced that the advice of neighbors is never good for anything—suggested catnip. He would n't even smell it. We had the attendance of an amateur practitioner of medicine, whose real office was the cure of souls, but nothing touched his case. He took what was offered, but it was with the air of one to whom the time for pellets was passed. He sat or lay day after day almost motionless, never once making a display of those vulgar convulsions ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... is, suffer from the absence of emphasis. His utterance comes in the tone of an intelligent drawl. Spiritually in exile, he lives somewhat unconcerned with the drama of existence surrounding him, as if his gaze were farther off. Yet though deficiency in passion has made Mr. Fuller an amateur, it has allowed him the longest tether in the exercise of a free, penetrating intelligence. He is not lightly jostled out of his equilibrium by petty irritations or swept off his feet by those torrents of ready emotion which sweep ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... subject to the chemical changes which moisture, the atmosphere, and fluids accidentally spilled, and solvents purposely applied, make in the various kinds of ink which are known to us. The writer discovered this in the course of many amateur print- and book-cleaning experiments, and has since found his experience confirmed by the high authority of M. Bonnardot, in his "Essai sur l'Art de Restaurer les Estampes et les Livres." Paris, 1858.[ee] Of the annotations in the "History ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... young corn, and often commits serious depredations on the maize plantation. In the backwood settlements, where clearings are apart from each other, the black bear is still occasionally met with; and the chase of this animal is one of the most favourite pastimes of the backwoods' hunter, whether amateur or professional. Generally there is little peril in the pursuit—unless when the bear is wounded and enraged, and the hunter chooses to risk ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... dull society sinners, Who chatter and bleat and bore, Are sent to hear sermons From mystical Germans Who preach from ten to four: The amateur tenor, whose vocal villainies All desire to shirk, Shall, during off-hours, Exhibit his powers To Madame Tussaud's waxwork: The lady who dyes a chemical yellow, Or stains her grey hair puce, Or pinches her figger, Is blacked like a nigger With permanent walnut juice: ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... consented, for amateur theatricals had always attracted him, and in a few short weeks he was again at Fenmarket. He was obliged to be there for three or four days before the entertainment, in order to attend the rehearsals, which Mrs Martin had put under the control of a professional gentleman from London, ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... convinced the amateur surgeon that the injury was too tightly bound, and after removing the covering he set to work and bathed the wound with the soft cool water till the temperature was reduced, re-bound it tenderly, and soon after had the satisfaction of noting ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... Emsworth's had the amiable dodderingness that marked every branch of his life. In the museum at Blandings Castle you could find every manner of valuable and valueless curio. There was no central motive; the place was simply an amateur junk shop. Side by side with a Gutenberg Bible for which rival collectors would have bidden without a limit, you would come on a bullet from the field of Waterloo, one of a consignment of ten thousand shipped there for the use of tourists ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Presidency. At about the same time he bought a yacht, and heavy bets were pending among his sporting friends whether he would manage to sink first his Review or his yacht. But he was an amiable and excellent fellow through all his eccentricities, and he brought to Mrs. Lee the simple outpourings of the amateur politician. ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... for nothing is the fundamental immorality in the world. But we don't believe it. There will be a revolution before we get it into our heads that trying to trade a sweet disposition or an intelligent appreciation of opera or a proficiency at amateur tennis for three meals a ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... at amateur assistance, my boy," said Mr. Snyder in the benevolently paternal manner which had made a score of criminals refuse to believe him a detective until the moment when the handcuffs snapped on their wrists. "Crime investigation ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... in order to sign her deposition Duchemin saw a blue diamond of such superb water that this amateur of precious stones caught his breath for sheer wonder at its beauty and excellence and worth. Such jewels, he knew, were few and far to seek outside the collections ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... oarsman, a tenor, an amateur actor, a shouting politician, a small landlord, a small investor, a drinker, a good fellow, a story-teller, somebody's secretary, something in a distillery, a tax-gatherer, a bankrupt and at present a praiser of his ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... button, we do the rest." This first kodak was loaded with a roll of sensitized paper long enough for a hundred exposures. Sent to the makers, the roll could itself be developed and pictures could be printed from it. Eastman had been an amateur photographer when the fancy was both expensive and tedious. Inventing a method of making dry plates, he began to manufacture them in a small way as early as 1880. After the first kodak, there came others filled with rolls of sensitized nitro-cellulose film. Priority ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... understand," replied Fred, indifferently; "something of the Indian style of warfare, hey? Well, we are somewhat used to that, and can follow a trail as well as any amateur hunters in the country." ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... schoolgirl like you can do in writing a scenario. It will give you practice so that you may be able to handle something really big about this beautiful old place. You know, now that the most popular writers of the day are turning their hands to movies, the amateur production has to be pretty good to 'get by,' as the ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... surprise. Trinidad is little more than a finca, or rancho, but it has an agente, and quite a population of Chol indians. The agente was a decent-looking fellow, active and ambitious; he talks a little English, and is something of an amateur photographer. His house of poles and mud presented no notable external features, but within, it was supplied with furniture so varied and abundant as is rare in any part of Mexico. Chairs, rockers, ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... interested to find in the Encyclopaedia Britannica how frequently vegetarians have been winners in athletic sports.[1] They won the Berlin to Dresden walking match, a distance of 125 miles, the Carwardine Cup (100 miles) and Dibble Shield (6 hours) cycling races (1901-02), the amateur championship of England in tennis (four successive years up to 1902) and racquets (1902), the cycling championship of India (three years), half-mile running championship of Scotland (1896), world's amateur cycle records for all times from four hours to thirteen ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... around a semicircle of some eight men, the most of whom were quite young, but one or two of whom were gray, sitting with their arms thrown out upon the wash-board, in the dark neglige of amateur fishermen and with that exultant look of expectant deviltry in their handsome faces which characterizes the Creole ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable |
