"Americanism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... regions. Too apt. We don't get our perspectives. We think the whole blessed world is one everlasting boom. It hit me first down in Yucatan that that wasn't so. Why! the world's littered with the remains of booms and swaggering beginnings. Americanism!—there's always been Americanism. This Mediterranean is just a Museum of old Americas. I guess Tyre and Sidon thought they were licking creation all the time. It's set me thinking. What's really going on? Why—anywhere,—you're ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... journeys. Boss is in English a comparatively modern Americanism. But, like many American words, it belongs to the language of the Dutch settlers who founded New Amsterdam (New York). It is Du. baas, master, which has thus crossed the Atlantic twice on its way from Holland to England. A number ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... Confederate States had no hesitation in electing its choice in this alternative. Frankly and unreservedly, seeking the good of the people who had intrusted them with power, in the spirit of humanity, of the Christian civilization of the age, and of that Americanism which regards the true welfare and happiness of the people, the Government of the Confederate States, among its first acts, commissioned the undersigned to approach the Government of the United States with the olive-branch of peace, and to offer to adjust the great questions pending ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... use an Americanism," Mr. Hennibul interposed, "must be founded upon domestic questions. Medchester is a manufacturing town, and I am given to understand is suffering severely. Has your man any original views on the present depression ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... house as I saw it persists in my recollection as being among the most characteristic and comfortable of "real" American phenomena. And one reason why I insisted, in a previous chapter, on the special Americanism of Indianapolis is that Indianapolis is full of a modified variety of these houses which is even more characteristically American—to my mind—than the Cambridge style itself. Indianapolis being by general consent the present chief center of letters in the United States, ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... the place Fort Defiance, and was resolved to defend it." This decision distressed Houston, for Fannin's men were of the finest material—young men from Georgia and Alabama, fired with the idea of freedom and the spread of Americanism, or perhaps with the fanaticism of religious liberty of conscience. After reading Fannin's letter, Houston turned to Major Hockley, and said, as he pointed to the little band of men around him, "Those men are the last hope of Texas; with them we must achieve our independence, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... "There's an Americanism which I didn't learn from him," Palliser added, "and I remembered it when he was talking her over. It's this: when you dispose of a person finally and forever, you 'wipe up the earth with him.' Lady Joan will 'wipe up the ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... born in New England, he exhibited no trace of her character. He was frank, bluff, companionable as a Pagan, convivial, a Roman, hearty as a harvest. His spirit was essentially Western; and herein is his peculiar Americanism; for the Western spirit is, or will yet be (for no other is, or can be), the ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... long discussion, but one can test any book or newspaper editorial at his leisure and see whether the writer puts you off with abstractions—Americanism, Bolshevism, public welfare, liberty, national honor, religion, morality, good taste, rights of man, science, reason, error—or, on the other hand, casts some light on actual human complications. I do not mean, of course, that we can get along without ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... be to do him injustice. The American ideas to which he appealed he knew to be God's will for all civilized peoples of our time. If fundamentally American they were not for that reason exclusively American. His Americanism is so broad that by a change of place it can be made Spanish, or German; and a slight change of terms makes it religious and Catholic. Nor had form of government essentially to do with it; human equality cannot be monopolized by republics; it can be rightly understood in a monarchy, though ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... Mr. Oldfield is a respectable solicitor, and Wheeler is a sharp country practitioner; and—to use my favorite Americanism—you feel like fighting with a blunt knife ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... officially countenance any preparation which, so far as the public was allowed to know his reasons, might be taken by the Germans as an unfriendly act. Finally, Roosevelt labored unceasingly to revive and make militant the ideals of true Americanism. ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... our district, but all three were there on the night we voted for the addition. They are Polish. Each has a farm where the whole family works—and puts on a little more Americanism each year. They're good people. It is surprising how much all these Poles, Italians, Germans and others, are like us, how perfectly human they are, when we know them personally! One Pole here, named Kausky, I have come to know pretty well, and I declare I ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... Sometimes they would assume to be serious and ply him with questions, and he would fall into their trap and proudly tell about poor old Uncle Job and of how his father had licked him, by way of proving the stanch Americanism of the Slades. ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... said that Chicago is "the second largest Bohemian city in the world, the third Swedish, the fourth Norwegian, the fifth Polish and the fifth German (New York being the fourth)." This ought not to be construed, however, as a reflection on the fundamental Americanism ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... effected by universal blind submission to the Pope; not a peace by mutual understanding and concessions; least of all a peace by political religious tolerance, such as Luther desired, and which in our days is generally regarded as the outstanding feature of modern civilization, notably of Americanism. To force the Lutherans into submission and obedience to the Pope, that was the real object of the Emperor. And the political situation demanded that this be accomplished by ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... patriotic sentiments of our countrymen and tempts them to pitiful calculation of the sordid gain to be derived from their Government's maintenance. It undermines the self-reliance of our people and substitutes in its place dependence upon governmental favoritism. It stifles the spirit of true Americanism and stupefies every ennobling trait of ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... States would, after a while, have returned to the Union like repentant prodigal sons. His proposal to Lincoln to seek a quarrel with four European nations, who had done us no harm, in order to arouse a feeling of Americanism in the Confederate States, was an outgrowth of this conviction. It was an indefensible proposition, akin to that which prompted Bismarck to make use of France as an anvil on which to hammer and weld Germany together, but it was not an unpatriotic one, since it was bottomed ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... Absolute, are ably, though far too briefly treated. Entertainment is not overlooked in the plan of the editors, and there are some articles, like those on Almacks, Actors, and Adventures, which contain information at once curious and amusing. The article "Americanism" might have been made much more valuable and pleasing, had the subject been treated at greater length, with more insight into the reasons which led to the establishment of an American verbal mint, and with a more complete ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... love of his fellow-men rather than for fame and distinction. Probably that which most endears him to his countrymen is the quality he attributes to others in these words of admiration: "I am sure that both the President (Hayes) and his wife have in them that excellent new thing we call Americanism, which, I suppose, is that 'dignity of human nature' which the philosophers of the last century were always seeking and never finding, and which, after all, consists, perhaps, in not thinking yourself either better or worse than your neighbors by reason of any artificial distinction. As ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... before the Revolution of class and sectional conflict within the colonies was no more incompatible then than it has been since with a growing sense of solidarity against the outside world. And in developing this sense of Americanism, this national consciousness, the frontier was itself an important influence. Physiographically separated from the coast region, untouched by its social traditions, often hostile to its political activities, the people of the back country had but little of that pride of colony which made ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... cash value of the terrapin, or the turtle's mock brother; he wears a beard, but it is the beard of the bearded lady who up-to-date appears to be a useless appanage of the strenuous life; and when you try to get at his Americanism, if he has any, he flies off into stilted periods having to do with the superior virtues of the Cingalese. And Margaret Perkins that was hangs on his utterances as though he were ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... beginnings of great movements in small things. Those children got more real Americanism out of that corrupted ball game than they did from singing "My Country, 'tis of ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... see him to anything, will scoff. It is his privilege; and he can make capital out of it, too; he will seem, even to himself, to be different from other Americans, and better. As his opinion of his superior Americanism grows, and swells, and concentrates and coagulates, he will go further and try to belittle the distinction of those that saw the Prince do things, and will spoil their pleasure in it if he can. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... amiability and atrocity in the brigands themselves—all these provide excellent opportunities, by no means always missed, for the display of a sort of anticipated and Gallicised Gilbertianism. Nor need the addition of stage Englishness in Mrs. Simons and her brother and Mary Ann, of stage Americanism in Captain John Harris and his nephew Lobster, spoil ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... do so, especially by our monoglot brethren. There are those who go so far as to say that the use of any language other than the English impairs the Americanism of the user. ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner
... said Mrs. Milbrey. "Truly the West is the place of unspoiled Americanism and the great unspent forces; you are quite right, ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... the fear that the most profound and serious types of this disease are not to be found in the wildcat regions is the fact that so much of it is transplanted to Europe, among those who have the money to travel. It is there described broadly as "Americanism;" and, so surely as any peculiarly shrill group is heard coming through a European picture-gallery, it is straightway classed by all observers as belonging to the great Republic. If the observers are enamoured at sight with the beauty of ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... This is usually called an Americanism, but is a very old sea-term. In the Book for Boys and Girls, 1686, it is ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... of the tradition-grayed old towns that are rooted deep in the Harpeth Valley since the days of the Colonies, and in it can be found perhaps the purest Americanism on the American continent. The Poplars, under whose broad roof I made the seventh generation nested and fledged, spreads out its wings and gables upon a low hill which is the first swell of the Harpeth hills, and the rest of the old ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... flattered complacency. It sufficed merely to simmer in a sense of equality with the silver-haired gentleman at the desk. The Boss! He had heard that the great man loathed the homely title his leadership entailed. It was not pretty; but its rough forceful Americanism had never struck Shelby as inept till this moment. Applied to this suave yet virile creature it fell grotesquely short, missing the key-note of his supremacy. Set back some centuries, this Boss would have been his Eminence ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... the farmer, grimly relapsing into an Americanism that was just beginning to leaven the whole country. "I guess I'll take care on him, and as for gettin' him out at the Inn, there's plenty there. Good-night Miss Dexter, take care ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... German origin emphasizes the contention which every good American should make, namely, that the Americans who are in whole or in part of German blood should eagerly take the front places in this war for Americanism against the attempt of the Prussianized Germany of the Hohenzollerns to establish a ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... more faded to impersonality, as he rejoined, just a shade on the defensive: "If it's merely our Americanism you enjoyed—I've no doubt we can give you all you want ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton
... fine fellow, is it you?" he said, with a dash of young Americanism that was only frank, not ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... who, now that a serious mood was upon him, had entirely dropped his Americanism of speech, "not at all; I have taken care to give orders that they shall not have sufficient to make them noisy. You will find them perfectly quiet and orderly, and I confess I should like to see the effect of a little genuine good music ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... cradle born and cradle bred; my Americanism, second to none except that of wolves an' rattlesnakes an' Injuns an' sim'lar cattle, comes in the front door an' down the middle aisle; an' yet, son, I'm free to reemark that thar's one day in the year, an' sometimes ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... of thing is not saving the old native strain in the population. It moves people, no doubt, but inadequately. And here is a passage that is quite the quintessence of Americanism, of all its deep moral feeling and sentimental untruthfulness. I wonder if any man but an American or a British nonconformist in a state of rhetorical excitement ever believed that Shakespeare wrote his plays or Michael Angelo painted in a mood of humanitarian exaltation, ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... utilitarian, broad-minded, inventive, shrewd, versatile, Franklin's sturdy figure became typical of his time and his people. He was the first and the only man of letters in colonial America who acquired a cosmopolitan fame and impressed his characteristic Americanism upon the mind of Europe. He was the embodiment of common sense and of the useful virtues, with the enterprise but without the nervousness of his modern compatriots, uniting the philosopher's openness of mind to the sagacity and quickness ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... falling into Americanism, is the true task that is set before the native artist in literature, the accomplishment of which awaits the reward of the best approval in these times, and the promise of an enduring name. Some of our authors, fascinated very excusably with the faultless models of another age, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... heroic efforts are made to assimilate the foreign population by education and instruction in Americanism. In the South, in the city and on plantation, the same effort is necessary for the negro, but it must be more radical and fundamental. The common school must be as fully sustained and as far reaching as it is in the North, reaching the lowest in ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... based on the actual doings of High School boys, teems with incidents in athletics and school-boy fun. The real Americanism of Dick Prescott and his chums will excite the ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... hardly expects to find this otiose Americanism (first used by J. Adams in 1759) in the work of a verbal purist, when 'longish' or the old 'longsome' were at hand. No one, as yet, has ventured on 'strengthy' or 'breadthy' ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... Roosevelt holds a unique position. Although he had no great trial to undergo in the term of his office—no trial similar to what Washington and Lincoln were forced to endure,—he endeared himself to his fellow countrymen almost equally with these two for his splendid Americanism, his vitality, his kindness and the force of his personality. After his term of office ended and when he was a simple citizen once more, the bare word of Roosevelt's opinion had more influence on the country than the utterance of any public man who still held office. For the power of Roosevelt ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... existence. When Barbicane proposed to send a projectile to the moon every one thought the enterprise natural and practicable—a simple affair of ballistics. But that a reasonable being should offer to go the journey inside the projectile was a farce, or, to use a familiar Americanism, it ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... or Gravel. A most disagreeable Americanism, discredited by general (and Presidential) use. "Make the dirt ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... The Americanism of the phrase "law business" struck oddly on British ears, as lacking in dignity. Philip thought of "doctor business," "artist business," and wondered if Americans spoke thus of all professions. ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... not touched at all upon the cost of government in France. Yet he was charged with having overstepped the reserve imposed upon (p. 115) foreigners, and of having attacked the administration of a friendly country. The accusation was constantly made against him that he went about "flouting his Americanism throughout Europe," and in this particular case that he had overrated the importance of the controversy, and also the importance of the part he had taken in it. He had, in fact, aroused the hostility of that section ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... r at all, or with such excessive emphasis upon the r as to make up for the deficiency of their fellow-seekers. In other words, these people are really American, as opposed to cosmopolitan; and to live among them is—for a world-wandering adventurer—to learn a lesson in Americanism. Mr. Roosevelt once stated that Chautauqua is the most American institution in America; and this statement—like many others of his inspired platitudes—begins to seem ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... lumber trust still sleeping in the womb of the Future. So passed the not unhappy period when opportunity was open to everyone, when freedom was dear to the hearts of all. It was at this time that the spirit of real Americanism was born, when the clean, sturdy name "America" spelled freedom, justice and independence. Patriotism in these days was not a mask for profiteers and murderers were not permitted to hide their bloody hands in the folds ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... have a civilization and a national temperament in many ways superior to those of white men. A few Europeans ultimately discover this, but Americans never do. They remain always missionaries—not of Christianity, though they often think that is what they are preaching, but of Americanism. What is Americanism? "Clean living, clean thinking, and pep," I think an American would reply. This means, in practice, the substitution of tidiness for art, cleanliness for beauty, moralizing for philosophy, prostitutes for concubines (as being easier to conceal), and a general air of being ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... New York, you shall feel a strange sensation. The stomach is not so what we should call 'Rise up William Riley,' to use an Americanism which will not bear translation. I ride along the Rue de Twenty-three, and want to eat everything my eyes ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... hold upon the popular mind was to be found in his thorough Americanism of training and sympathy. Surcharged with European learning, he yet remained at heart the Lexington farmer's-boy, and his whole atmosphere was indigenous, not exotic. Not haunted by any of the distrust and over-criticism ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... supernatural religion and categorical morality; while the method of appealing to the optimistic prejudices of shallow minds by the use of colloquial and mystical images has of recent years been introducing into European thought what might be called "Metaphysical Americanism." ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... personification. The use of party in "to the party herself" is now reckoned an Americanism (!) "Engaged in this subject" is ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... governed me in the compilation of this work. But in delineating this "general map" of the Masonic Law, I have sought, if I may continue the metaphor, so to define boundaries, and to describe countries, as to give the inspector no difficulty in "locating" (to use an Americanism) any subordinate point. I have treated, it is true, of principles, but I have not ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... call, some imperative necessity must beckon, some divine authority must be invoked. The campaign for "100 percent Americanism," carefully thought out, generously financed and carried to every nook and corner of the United States aims to prove this necessity. The war waged by the Department of Justice and by other public officers against the "Reds" is intended to arouse in the ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... good an American as ever lived, and his heart flamed against cruelty and injustice. His writings form a text-book of Americanism which all our people would do well to read at the ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... kindness, generosity, hospitality, laughter, trips down the Mississippi, making cities beautiful and clean, having fun,—all these things are spirituality and goodness. They are religion—they are the religion of the Savior. They will make America; and they ought to be Americanism." ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... flaunted before him, or the glittering clauses of the Declaration of Independence were quoted to him, his indignation forgot all discretion. He was soon bandying hot words with the Aurora, and marking with his scorn every new phase of Americanism. Speaking in his ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... full of Americanism. We walk out to take photographs, and at almost every street corner some young man who has been in the United States or Canada salutes us with: "How are you to-day? You fellows come from America? What's the news there? Is Bryan elected yet? ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... visible products of art. Watchwords, catchwords, phrases, and epithets are the modern instrumentalities. There are words which are used currently as if their meaning was perfectly simple, clear, and unambiguous, which are not defined at all. "Democracy," the "People," "Wall Street," "Slave," "Americanism," are examples. These words have been called "symbols." They might better be called "tokens." They are like token coins. They "pass"; that is their most noteworthy characteristic. They are familiar, unquestioned, popular, and they are ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... handicap race for sixpenny pieces, is at once an insult and a disenchantment for those who do. A fine fellow (as we see so many) takes his determination, votes for the sixpences, and in the emphatic Americanism, it "goes for" them. And while such an one is ploughing distressfully up the road, it is not hard to understand his resentment, when he perceives cool persons in the meadows by the wayside, lying with a handkerchief over their ears and a glass at their ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that I am impatient of merely naming authors and books that each tempt me to an expansion far beyond the limits of this essay; for, if I may be so personal, I have watched the growth of our literature in Americanism with intense sympathy. In my poor way I have always liked the truth, and in times past I am afraid that I have helped to make it odious to those who believed beauty was something different; but I hope that I shall not now be doing ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... This gives—to the foreigner at least—a somewhat farcical impression of the life of the community, but, at any rate, it may be conceded that the Republican method gives nearly all good citizens "a show," to use an Americanism, in the State or ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... thus achieved a greater degree of political solidarity, both as within itself and with the nation as a whole, than ever before. Its wishes were more powerful with the East. The pioneers stood for an extreme Americanism, in social, political, and religious matters alike. The trend of American thought was toward them, not away from them. More than ever before, the Westerners were able to make their demands felt at home, and to make their force felt in the event of a struggle ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... suggestive; he could hardly be wrong in explaining it by the fact that her nephew, about to be enriched by marriage, might henceforth be depended upon for all the assistance she needed. This, in the Americanism which came naturally to Crewe's lips, was 'playing it rather low down,' ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... the Pan-American Exposition. The President Shot. His Illness and Death. The Funeral Ceremony. In Washington. At Canton. Commemorative Services. Mr. McKinley's Career. Political Insight. Americanism. His Administration as President. Leon Czolgosz, the Murderer of President McKinley. Anarchists. Anti-Anarchist Law. Vice-President Theodore Roosevelt Succeeds ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... painfully broken by a protracted illness. It will be remembered that in the correspondence between General Harrison as President-elect and Mr. Blaine, when the Secretaryship of State was offered and accepted, there appeared harmony of views concerning Pan-Americanism; that Mr. Blaine enjoyed the office and that his official labors during the Harrison Administration were of the highest distinction, showing his happiest characteristics. The difference as to duties that arose between the President and the Secretary ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... reach them. If I do any serious writing hereafter, it will be in that field. In the United States I am commonly held suspect as a foreigner, and during the war I was variously denounced. Abroad, especially in England, I am sometimes put to the torture for my intolerable Americanism. The two views are less far apart than they seem to be. The fact is that I am superficially so American, in ways of speech and thought, that the foreigner is deceived, whereas the native, more familiar with the true signs, sees that under the surface there is incurable antagonism ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... God." It is a point of view which people like Mr. Shaw can never understand; any more than he or his like can comprehend that there are areas of human feeling over which for him and other such bulls in china-shops should be posted the delicate Americanism—KEEP OUT. ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... commencement of the siege, and he alone of his colleagues appears to me to be the right man in the right place. I do not take my views of the working men from the nonsense which is printed about them in official and semi-official organs. They are the only class here which, to use an Americanism, is not "played out." The Government dreads them as much as the Empire did; but although they are too much carried away by their enthusiasm and their impulsiveness, they are the only persons in Paris who appear to have a grain of common sense. "As for the Army of the Loire," said ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... fascinations, have I ever mentioned her wonderful waltzing? She was as untiring as an Alme; and when once fairly launched with a steerer who could do her justice, had a sway with her—to use an Americanism—like that of a clipper three ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... now approaching St. Andrew's church and the rectory, with its glebe, the latter lying contiguous to the church-yard, or, as it is an Americanism to say, the "graveyard." There had been an evident improvement around the rectory since I had last seen it. Shrubbery had been planted, care was taken of the fences, the garden was neatly and well worked, ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... style of architecture, though designed (or, at least, extensively restored) by Sir Christopher Wren; but I thought it very striking, with its wide, high, and elaborate windows, its tall tower, its immense length, and (for it was long before I outgrew this Americanism, the love of an old thing merely for the sake of its age) the tinge of gray antiquity over the whole. Once, while I stood gazing up at the tower, the clock struck twelve with a very deep intonation, and immediately some chimes began to play, and kept up their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... Grieg the Norwegian writes Arabian music; and, to cap the climax, we have here in America been offered a pattern for an 'American' national musical costume by the Bohemian Dvorak—though what the Negro melodies have to do with Americanism in art still remains a mystery. Music that can be made by 'recipe' is not music, but 'tailoring.' To be sure, this tailoring may serve to cover a beautiful thought; but—why cover it? and, worst of all, why cover it (if covered it must be: if the trademark of nationality is indispensable, ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... /n./ 1. The practice of sifting refuse from an office or technical installation to extract confidential data, especially security-compromising information ('dumpster' is an Americanism for what is elsewhere called a 'skip'). Back in AT&T's monopoly days, before paper shredders became common office equipment, phone phreaks (see {phreaking}) used to organize regular dumpster runs against phone company plants and offices. ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... because their relative importance and interest impress him as greater than those of women in the lands of the Old World, because they seem to him to embody in so eminent a measure that intangible quality of Americanism, the existence, or indeed the possibility, of which is so hotly denied by ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... the love of his children render those years the most blissful of an eventful lifetime. Everywhere throughout the Pacific border of the Sierra Nevada, the indomitable spirit of enterprise and the unchecked perseverance of Americanism are busy at work, and the golden results bid fair, in a few years to convert that auriferous region into a granary of wealth ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... HASTINGS goes out into the garden. He returns with MORRIS CARLEON, a very young man: hardly more than a boy, but with very grown-up American dress and manners. He is dark, smallish, and active; and the racial type under his Americanism is Irish. ...
— Magic - A Fantastic Comedy • G.K. Chesterton
... (ambiguity) 520[Fr]; palindrome, paragram[obs3], anagram, clinch; abuse of language, abuse of terms. dialect, brogue, idiom, accent, patois; provincialism, regionalism, localism; broken English, lingua franca; Anglicism, Briticism, Gallicism, Scotticism, Hibernicism; Americanism[obs3]; Gypsy lingo, Romany; pidgin, pidgin English, pigeon English; Volapuk, Chinook, Esperanto, Hindustani, kitchen Kaffir. dog Latin, macaronics[obs3], gibberish; confusion of tongues, Babel; babu English[obs3], chi-chi. figure of speech &c. (metaphor) 521; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... gave it up. He fled to veiled and ripened and cushioned England—not to the country, but to smoky London; and there his hypersensitive soul found peace and ease. He became a British subject, washed himself completely of every vestige of Americanism. This predilection of his probably accounts for the obscurity or tantalizing indirectness of his writings. The last story I read of his was called "One More Turn of the Screw," but what the screw was, or what ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... insoluble problems, his recurrent Philistinism, his impatience of restraints, his fascinated suspicion of messiahs, his passion for physical beauty, his relish for the gaudy drama of big cities; his incurable Americanism. The panorama that he enrols runs the whole scale of the colours; it is a series of extraordinarily vivid pictures. The sombre gloom of the Pennsylvania hills, with Wilkes-Barre lying among them like a gem; the procession of little country towns, sleepy and a bit hoggish; ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... Sick, ill. At the present time the English restrict the use of the word "sick" to nausea, and regard it in its original and broader signification as an "Americanism." ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... more effective at seventy than he had been at thirty. He was one of the men who die learning and who therefore are scarcely thought of as dying at all. I am not sure that we may not say of him to-day, as Thoreau said of John Brown, "He is more alive than ever he was." Certainly the type of Americanism which Lowell represented has grown steadily more interesting to the European world, and has revealed itself increasingly as a factor to be reckoned with in the world of the future. Always responsive ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... ashamed of my countryman, and so afraid of my nationality being discovered, that, if any one spoke to me, I adopted every Americanism which I could think of in reply. The country within fifty miles of Detroit is a pretty alternation of prairie, wood, corn- fields, peach and apple orchards. The maize is the staple of the country; you see it in the fields; you have corn-cobs for breakfast; corncobs, mush, and ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... districts leave their parents about the age of puberty, and live with such men as Monina for the sake of instruction. When I asked the nature of the instruction, I was told "Bonyai", which I suppose may be understood as indicating manhood, for it sounds as if we should say, "to teach an American Americanism," or "an Englishman to be English." While here they are kept in subjection to rather stringent regulations. They must salute carefully by clapping their hands on approaching a superior, and when any cooked food is brought, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... and Bebel, the spirit of the American millionaire and the enthusiasm for poverty that was the glory of St. Francis of Assisi. I am the maddest progressive of my time and the maddest reactionary. I despise Americanism, and yet I see in the great American world-invasion, the dominion of the exploiter, something similar to one of the biggest works that Hercules performed in ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... Opposition. That Jefferson was able in the face of this victorious and discouraging army to form a great party out of the rag-tag and bobtail element, animating his policy of decentralization into a virile and indelible Americanism, proved him to be a man of genius. History shows us few men so contemptible in character, so low in tone; and no man has given his biographers so difficult a task. But those who despise him most who oppose the ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... ideals as well, perhaps even better, than in isolation. Here, it seems to me, is the reading of the riddle that puzzles so many of us. We are Americans, not only by birth and by citizenship, but by our political ideals, our language, our religion. Farther than that, our Americanism does not go. At that point, we are Negroes, members of a vast historic race that from the very dawn of creation has slept, but half awakening in the dark forests of its African fatherland. We are the ...
— The Conservation of Races • W.E. Burghardt Du Bois
... or another left their chirography upon the face of St. Louis. But all that is effaced now under the hot lava of Americanism that is covering the major cities in more or less even layers. Now it stands atop its Indian mounds, a metropolis of almost a million souls, a twenty-story office-building upon the site of an old trading-post, ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... There is none that stands for more notable success in his chosen line, none that recalls more memories of wholesome entertainment, none that is more invested with the fragrance of kindliness and true humanity. His career was, in a large sense, typical of genuine Americanism, of its enterprise and pluck, of its indomitable will and unfailing courage, of its shrewdness, audacity and unerring instinct ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... virtues. He was chosen rather for what he wasn't than for what he was,—the inconspicuousness of his achievements. The "just folks" level of his mind, his small town man's caution, his sense of the security of the past, his average hopes and fears and practicality, his standardized Americanism which would enable a people who wanted for a season to do so to take themselves politically ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... that Hathaway showed the stuff he was made of, to use an Americanism. He insisted on shielding his daughter, to whom he was devotedly attached, and in taking all the responsibility on his own shoulders. The penalty of this crime is imprisonment for life and he would not allow Mrs. Burrows to endure it. Being again ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... favorable than Lincoln's. In each case success has been worthily won, and we Americans of the present generation should rejoice that our country has produced so many great men. True patriotism does not consist in the recognition of only one type of Americanism, but rather in the grateful acceptance of every service that advances the fortunes and raises the reputation of the republic. Peculiar interest attaches to the character of Lincoln's early reading ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... were widening with misery, there was no doubt about it. "Game, clean through," he said to himself. Aloud he continued. "Well, you know, Eleanor.—Never say 'Well,' if you can possibly avoid it, because it's a flagrant Americanism, and when you travel in foreign parts you're sure to regret it,—well, you know, if you are to be in a measure my ward—and you are, my dear, as well as the ward of your Aunts Beulah and Margaret and Gertrude, and your ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... sight of the group of eager little children craning their necks to see him pass; and he smiled and put out one fragile, delicate hand towards us, and lo! the late scoffer who, in spite of the ardent Americanism that burned in his eleven-year-old soul, had as much reverence as militant patriotism in his nature, fell upon his knees, and kissed the delicate hand, which for a brief moment was laid upon his hair. Whenever I think ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... a fact that goes to the core of the secular struggle for human freedom that whole-hearted Americanism finds no jarring note in the sentiment of the Scot, be that sentiment ever so intense. In the sedulous cultivation of the Scottish spirit there is nothing alien, and, still more emphatically, nothing harmful, ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... charmed and attracted me, at others she tormented and irritated me. She argued with me one moment and disagreed the next. She laughed at Hephzy's and my American accent and idioms, but when Bayliss, Junior, or one of the curates ventured to criticize an "Americanism" she was quite as likely to declare that she thought it "jolly" and "so expressive." Against my will I was obliged to join in conversations, to take sides in arguments, to be present when callers came, to ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of its subsequent development as is also the chapters on French intervention in Mexico. The two Venezuelan episodes, the difficulties of the United States in the Caribbean, tendencies toward Pan-Americanism and the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... "It's an Americanism," observed his wife, surveying her cards with masked displeasure and making it spades. "Louis, I never held such hands in all my life," she ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... this phrase to be a recent Americanism. It occurs, however, in the Memoirs of James Lackington, published in 1791. Speaking of certain ranting preachers, he says—"These devil-dodgers happened to be so very powerful that they soon sent John home, crying out, that he should ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... as easily as not. Well!" said Mrs. Erwin, interrupting herself, "I'm glad Henshaw wasn't by to hear that speech. He'd have had it down among his Americanisms instantly. I don't know whether it is an Americanism; but he puts down all the outlandish sayings he gets hold of to Americans; he has no end of English slang in his book. Everything has opened beautifully, Lydia, and I intend you shall have the best time!" She looked fondly at her brother's child. "You've ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... in which I was born. It wore the same honest expression, which a great many ill-natured people, especially in our Southern States, have regarded as covering a dishonest and untruthful mind, or a bad memory of the hours. Still it is the most ubiquitous Americanism in the world, and it is pleasant to see its face in so many cottages of laboring men from ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... such a lubberly expression, my dear Rose, if you respect your father's profession. On a vessel, is a new-fangled Americanism, that is neither fish, flesh, nor red-herring, as we sailors say—neither English ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... Stowe's Uncle Tom, Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus, and Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. He has been called un-American, and so he is, and so Irving plainly intended him to be. If one insists on finding a bit of distinctive Americanism somewhere in the story, he will find it not in Rip but in the number and rapidity of the changes that American life underwent during the twenty years that serve as background to the story. George William Curtis calls Rip "the constant and unconscious satirist of American life," but surely Irving ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... these words the preservation in the ordinary course of nature of favourable variations that are supposed to be mainly matters of pure good luck and in no way arising out of function) has been, to use an Americanism than which I can find nothing apter, the biggest biological boom of the last quarter of a century; it is not, therefore, to be wondered at that Professor Ray Lankester, Mr. Romanes, Mr. Grant Allen, and others, should show some impatience ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... countries then?" said Hugo, pursuing the subject with a wicked delight. His sturdy Americanism resented this bigamous citizenship. ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... has been most active in the movement for a community theatre in the United States and for the revival of pageantry. He contends rightly that this development might be one of the strongest possible influences for true Americanism, and his dramatic work has all been directed toward such a theatre. Most notable are his pageants and masques, particularly Caliban by the Yellow Sands, for the Shakespeare Tercentenary; his play The Scarecrow, a lively dramatization ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... a war for humanity, not for conquest. But simply because it suddenly closed and left us in possession of large tracts of new territory, is no reason why these spoils of war should be given up. I hold this to be true Americanism: that wherever the old flag is established through sacrifice of American blood, whether it be on the barren sands of the desert, at the frigid extremes of the earth, or on the rich and fertile islands ...
— The Woman with a Stone Heart - A Romance of the Philippine War • Oscar William Coursey
... from about 1 to 5 lb., the largest fruits being produced on a sub-species. The fruit consists of an outer pulpy covering, which can be used for cooking if desired, which surrounds a cavity filled with seeds which are encased in a jelly-like mass. This is the portion eaten, and to use an Americanism, "It is not at all hard to take." It is either eaten by itself, or is used in conjunction with papaw and other fruits to make a fruit salad, a dish that is fit for the food of the gods, and ...
— Fruits of Queensland • Albert Benson
... way, it would be difficult, to say the least of it, to prove that the slang phrase "shut up" and the Americanism "say" were never used in A.D. 1642, in the sense in which they are used in 1890, but they are scarcely characteristic of the modes of expression at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various |
