"Primer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... what,' cried Harry Brown, commonly known as 'Carrots' from his fiery hair, 'you could 'a done what the goats did in the primer at school—you ought ter have laid flat down and let her ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre
... algebra, the construing of verbs, or the drawing of figures. If separate hours merely mean that the master is not to have all his classes up at once—here gabbling Latin or Greek, there discussing the primer or reciting from Scott's Collection, yonder repeating the multiplication table or running over the rules of Lindley Murray—we at once say religion must have its separate hour, just as English, the dead tongues, figuring, writing, and the mathematics, have their separate hours; but if it be meant ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... he warned. But he had come prepared for acquiescence. He took a primer from his pocket and, lighting a match, showed ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... diligence on this book to-be of mine, that you inform me again and again that my penny tracts are still extant; nay, that, beside friendly men, learned and poetic men read and even review them. I am like Scholasticus of the Greek Primer, who was ashamed to bring out so small a dead child before such grand people. Pygmalion shall try if he cannot fashion a better, certainly a bigger.—I am sad to hear that Sterling sails again for his health. I am ungrateful not to have written to him, as his letter was very welcome ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... fine passages of this play, the death of Agamemnon, at the hand of Clytemnes'tra, is a scene that the poet paints with terrible effect. Says MR. EUGENE LAWRENCE, [Footnote: "A Primer of Greek Literature," by Eugene Lawrence, p.55.] "Mr. E. C. Stedman's version of the death of Agamemnon is an excellent one. A horror rests upon the palace at Mycenae; there is a scent of blood, the exhalations of the tomb. The queen, Clytemnestra, enters the inner room, terrible ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... later Brant translated into the Mohawk tongue the Liturgy of the Anglican Church as well as a doctrinal primer. Copies of these were sent to Harvard University, and its corporation replied with a cordial vote of thanks to the War Chief for his gift. Brant also planned to write a comprehensive history of the Six Nations, ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... the service, for the use of pupils in Standard 1 and upwards. These books are intended mainly for recreational reading, both at home and at school. The number sent in each exchange is based on the school roll, exclusive of primer classes, on a scale of not fewer than one per child, while for small schools it is usually possible to increase this to two or three books per child. Exchanges are made at least once a year, with further exchanges during the year for smaller schools to ...
— Report of the National Library Service for the Year Ended 31 March 1958 • G. T. Alley and National Library Service (New Zealand)
... she had first heard these words, I learned that she had read them at school, in a book called the primer; to this school she had been sent by her mother, who was a poor widow, who followed the trade of apple-selling in the very spot where her daughter followed it now. It seems that the mother was a very good kind of woman, but quite ignorant of letters, the benefit of which she ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... road was so rough that the horses had to fall into a walk. He was not sure whether when it came to the pinch he could summon nerve to try a bolt, but he laid himself out to establish friendly relations. Dingwell, reading him like a primer, cocked a merry eye at ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... after the first spading; the various messes and mashes to be prepared for cows with calf; the use of the stored vegetables and fruits, and meat dried and salted in such generous quantity that she marvelled at it. All the farm woman's primer she learned, bit by bit, seeing how it supplemented and harmonized with that life of the fields that so ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... to manufacture, handle and transport. There is no more danger of its exploding accidentally than there would be of an explosion of shavings or sawdust; for, unless well confined and set off with a strong primer, it will not explode at all. In the open its combustion is so slow as to in no way resemble or partake of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... head. Effi saw it and said: "What is the Chinaman doing here?" Innstetten himself seemed surprised at the picture and assured her that he did not know. "Either Christel or Johanna has pasted it there. Child's play. You can see it is cut out of a primer." Effi agreed with that and was only surprised that Innstetten took everything so seriously, as though it meant something ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... trial was connected with a visit to a school. I was getting proud of my ability to spell small words. A primer-maker had attempted to help the association of letters with objects by placing them in juxtaposition, but through a mistake he led me to my undoing. I knew my letters and I knew some things. I plainly distinguished the letters P-A-N. Against ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... become two bands. The people did not set themselves to combat prejudices with words alone, when the time was ripe for deeds; but while the Government was yet hesitating whether to put the musket into his hand for war, Christian men and women hastened to give him the primer for peace. Not waiting for legislative enactments, they took the freedman as he came all panting from the house of bondage; they ministered to his wants, strengthened his heart, and set him rejoicing on his way ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... de la noche, creyo percibir un extrano rumor de voces delgadas, dulces y misteriosas que hablaban entre si, reian o cantaban cada cual por su parte y una cosa diferente, formando una algarabia tan ruidosa y confusa como la de los pajaros que despiertan al primer rayo del sol entre las frondas ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... C," said little Lewis to himself, as he bent eagerly over a ragged primer. "Here's anoder A, an' there's anoder, an' there's anoder C, but I can't find anoder B. Missy Katy said I must find just so many as I can. Dear little Missy Katy! an' wont I be just so good as ever I can, an' learn to read, an' when I get ...
— A Child's Anti-Slavery Book - Containing a Few Words About American Slave Children and Stories - of Slave-Life. • Various
... of London and came out to Sydney in 1809. Five years later he was sent to the Bay of Islands as a lay missionary, holding also the first magistrate's commission issued for New Zealand. He soon made friends with the Maoris and learnt their language well enough to compile a primer in pidgin-Maori, 'A Korao no New Zealand; or, the New Zealander's First Book', which George Howe printed for Marsden at Sydney in 1815. In 1820 Thomas Kendall went to England with some Maori chiefs, and while there helped Professor ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... there, peeping round the shoulder of Giant's Cairn; a comfortable little rudiment of a mountain, just enough for a primer-lesson in climbing. Don't you see how the crest drops over on one side, and that scrap of pine—which is really a huge gaunt thing a hundred years old—slants out from it with just a tuft of green at the very tip, like an ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... challenged attention to the group was the tall, straight father, with his earnest face and fine forehead, nervous hands eloquent in gesture, and a voice full of feeling. This foreigner, who brought his children to school as if it were an act of consecration, who regarded the teacher of the primer class with reverence, who spoke of visions, like a man inspired, in a common schoolroom, was not like other aliens, who brought their children in dull obedience to the law; was not like the native fathers, who brought their unmanageable boys, glad to be relieved of their ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... was just nowhere financially. I found out that the cottage could not be sold or mortgaged, nor let either, according to law, though the executor tried it on hard, and came again and again about it, especially after she left it. So I found out everything about the girl. That primer donner took a fancy to her, and adopted her right out of hand because of her voice, and to-morrow night you can both of you see her, for I mean to have a box up among the British arrestocracy that night, and I invite you both ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... voices—passionate powers, Wrath, argument, or praise, or comic leer, or prayer devout, (Not nonpareil, brevier, bourgeois, long primer merely,) These ocean waves arousable to fury and to death, Or sooth'd to ease and sheeny sun and sleep, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... within the year, in an almost similar case, another shipload had been drowned through that same blind, helpless, hopeless panic. The pride of race bubbled through the British Daily Press in prosaic long primer and double-leaded bourgeois. There was no saying aloud, "We rejoice that an Englishman has done this thing, after having it proved to us that it was above the foreigner's strength." The newspaper man does not rhapsodize. But the sentiment was there all the same, ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... is," said Mr. Mavering. He seemed to say ma'am to her with a public or official accent, which sent Mrs. Primer's mind fluttering forth to poise briefly at such conjectures as, "Congressman from a country district? judge of the Common Pleas? bank president? railroad superintendent? leading physician in a large town?— no, Mr. Munt said Mister," and then to return ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the slow movements of Beethoven in the sonatas are binary forms, the dimensions of which may vary extremely. The student desiring to investigate this part of the subject more thoroughly is referred to the "Primer of Musical Forms," by W. S. B. Mathews (Arthur P. Schmidt & Co., Boston), where the principles ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... work (and that is all the civilian ever sees) the book brings you to a region where nothing else is considered than the one thing, attack, attack, attack. There is something very grim and inexorable in this primer of war, this A B C of the principles of destruction. And if the innocent little pocket manual contains a codification, so condensed as to be amazing, of the ways to slay your enemy, the officers are ready with every possible amplification of its dry paragraphs. Get forward, ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... right to sound this warning, as I know whereof I speak, as I have traveled this Romish road of despair for thirty years, and I know her cunning and dastardly deception so well that her history and her teachings are to me like the primer is to the school ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... time a father said to me: "Is there any book written for children about good citizenship—a sort of primer of civics, I mean? I require something of that ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... a firm believer in Confucianism and an ardent follower of military science. Amid an environment of unfavourable conditions Soko preached the cult of bushido, and was the first to embody that philosophy in a written system. His books—the Shi-do (Way of the Warrior) and Bukyo Shogaku (Military Primer)—contain minute instructions as to the practice and the morale of the samurai. Soko rejected the Chutsz interpretation, then in vogue, of the Chinese classics, and insisted on the pure doctrine of the ancient sages, so that ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... furnished the torpedo in transit for its propellers. A gyroscope keeps it on a plane and upright. A striker on the nose of the torpedo is released by a fan which revolves in the water. The nose of the torpedo strikes the side of the battleship and the compact jars the primer of fulminate of mercury. The high explosive of gunpowder forces out a shell and exploded with it after the shell has penetrated the armor. Then the work ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... a little piece of land and us raise a corn crop and that's the way us do. Us raises our own victuals. I has 17 chillen through the year and they done scatter to the four winds. Some of them is dead. I ain't what I used to be for workin'. I jus' set 'round. I done plenty work in my primer days. ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... mentioned), who lived from 1626-1681, and was the first learned man to become tutor to a Tzarevitch. The spirit of the times no longer permitted the heir to the throne to be taught merely to read and write from the primer, the Psalter, and the "Book of Hours"; and Alexei Mikhailovitch appointed Simeon Polotzky instructor to the ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... Primer, for children, combining a series of progressive spelling lessons, commencing with the alphabet, and interspersed with simple rhymes and easy sentences in prose, accompanied with many pictures. The Primer contains ...
— A Narrative of The Life of Rev. Noah Davis, A Colored Man. - Written by Himself, At The Age of Fifty-Four • Noah Davis
... later there was gathered in a young Barbadian who had been living for months in and about Gatun without any visible source of income whatever—not even a wife. The Turk and the camp janitor identified him as the culprit. But the primer lesson the police recruit learns is that it is one thing to believe a man guilty and quite another to convince a judge—the most skeptical being known to zoology—of that perfectly apparent fact. With the suspect behind bars, therefore, I continued my underground ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... who has apparently a somewhat elementary knowledge of ancient history, and who seems to rely for information on a primer such as "Little Willie's First History Book," recommends Communism because "In Sparta there were not only common lands, but also a common table, whilst dogs and horses were practically common property also. ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... flaming desire to learn. By dint of remarkable diligence and perseverance, he got ahead of his mother in knowledge. If learning was carried on in secret, there had rarely been found a more ardent pupil. Without inconvenient questions being asked, he succeeded in purchasing a copy-book and spelling primer, which were well used on all possible occasions. He actually went through the whole of the Bible when he could not master more than one in eight of the words. This man afterwards enjoyed the benefit of a college education in England, so that his case is worthy of being ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... the impossible habit of consistency. She was reported as calling a hat a "hot," a rat a "rot," of teaching her little sister to read from the primer, "Is the cot on the mot?" Pronunciation became a test of character. The soft "r" and the hard "a" were taken as ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... the Rebellion' without feeling that by rights they should contain fine mezzotint portraits of the chief actors in that great drama? But they must be mezzotints, mark you—mere line engravings would be out of place among those bank-note paper leaves with their handsome great-primer type. This question of seemliness, too, must be considered carefully ere we add a single plate to any volume. Not every engraving, however beautiful in design and impression, is at once suitable to every ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... left on the sides of the road. The artillerymen had turned the gun and loaded it with a solid shot. Instantly a wide lane opened through our ranks; the man with the lanyard drew the fatal cord, fire burst from the primer and the muzzle, the long gun sprang up and recoiled, and there seemed to be a demoniac yell in its ear-splitting crash, as the heavy ball left the mouth, and tore its bloody way through the bodies of the struggling mass of ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... publications of the German Shakespeare Society (English translation, 1874) are worth studying. A less ambitious effort of the same kind by Samuel Neil (1861) is seriously injured by the writer's acceptance of Collier's forgeries. Professor Dowden's 'Shakspere Primer' (1877) and his 'Introduction to Shakspere' (1893), and Dr. Furnivall's 'Introduction to the Leopold Shakspere,' are all ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... The School and Family Primer: Introductory to the Series of School and Family Readers. By Marcius Willson, Author of "American History," "Outlines of General History," etc. New York. Harper & Brothers. 12mo. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... Sime talked real grouty to her, he has never had a idee of marryin' anybody since his wife died and he mistrusts wimmen are runnin' after him. You know male widowers do git that idee into their heads, them that are as humbly as Time in the Primer, and a onmarried woman can't ask 'em about the weather, or sheep, or anything but what they mistrust some hidden warmth, and pride themselves on how attractive they be. ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... together, took her Catechism and primer, and went down to the summer-house. She noticed that Polly's expression was sulky, and that she was rolling her eyes at Dilsy. But Polly was always tormenting Dilsy. Dilsy was a little hunchback negro, that everybody but Polly felt sorry for and tried to turn ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea
... without urging. I believe he is right in saying that while we cannot dispense with the schools—indeed the whole work without these would be unorganized and fruitless—yet for "sowing the seed," for reaching those who are far off, we must depend on street preaching. The English primer has largely lost its power as a bait for the gospel hook. We must do our fishing for men ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 49, No. 5, May 1895 • Various
... any other circumstance to her speedy improvement, was some small insight into the primer, which she had acquired at a day-school, during the life of her father, who was a day-labourer in the country. Upon this foundation did Peregrine build a most elegant superstructure; he culled out choice sentences from Shakespeare, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... dared bring it into the schoolroom. There were ways, however, of evading inexorable law and circumventing base injustice. He hid the precious thing under a thistle just outside the window. The teacher had sometimes a brief season of apathy on hot afternoons, when she was hearing the primer class read, "I SEE A PIG. THE PIG IS BIG. THE BIG PIG CAN DIG"; which stirring phrases were always punctuated by the snores of the Hanks baby, who kept sinking down on his fat little legs in the line and giving way to slumber during the lesson. At such a moment Anthony slipped out of ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... spit their duties out, and cold hearts freeze Allegiance in them; their curses now Live where their prayers did; and it's come to pass This tractable obedience is a slave To each incensed will. I would your Highness Would give it quick consideration, for There is no primer business. ...
— The Life of Henry VIII • William Shakespeare [Dunlap edition]
... volume of Cyrano de Bergerac, which lay on the carpet at my feet. I sat up erect and collected my thoughts as best I could after so strange a journey. And I wondered why it was that no one had ever prepared a primer of imaginary geography, giving to airy nothings a local habitation and a name, and accompanying it with an atlas of maps in the manner of the ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... guerdon of new childhood is repose: — Once he has read the primer of right thought, A man may claim between two smithy strokes Beatitude enough to realize God's parallel completeness in the vague And incommensurable excellence That equitably uncreates itself And makes a whirlwind ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... Classics. Prices range from .50 to .25 About 100 volumes covering literature for high school reading. Send for list. Hooker's Study Book in English Literature 1.00 A handbook to accompany the appreciative study of the greater writers. Howes's Primer of American Literature .52 A brief, satisfactory account of the facts of American literary history. Howes's Primer of English Literature .52 The essentials concerning great writers and important periods. Meiklejohn's History of the English ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... was nothing but little pieces of split sticks, like laths, with chalk-marks on them, all as unintelligible as the signs of the zodiac are to an old school-mistress that teaches the horn-book and primer, or as Arabic or Greek is to a ploughman. Every stick had notches on one side for single pounds, on the other side for tens of pounds, and so higher; and the length and breadth also had its signification, and the colour too; for they were painted in ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... lines; and if the most of that bright assurance came out of an old political skit, the "Germania" of Tacitus, who recked at the time? For along followed Mr Stopford Brooke with an admirable little Primer published at one shilling, to instruct the meanest of us in ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... meant to be a novelist; people fascinate me—until I know them thoroughly. Percy and the doctor form a most engaging contrast. You always know at any moment what that nice young man is thinking about; he is written like a primer in big type and one-syllable words. But the doctor! He might as well be written in Chinese so far as legibility goes. You have heard of people with a dual nature; well, Sandy possesses a triple one. Usually he's scientific and as hard as granite, but occasionally I suspect him of being quite ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... the fact," said Bristow in a quiet, calculating way, trying to keep in his mind all the other peculiar circumstances surrounding this crime. "From the way we've put it, the thing reads as plainly as a primer. Now, what are we to do? Even now, we haven't the proof on him—any ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... and chattering individual who turns off the most work. He may imagine he is getting over a lot of track, but he wastes far more than the necessary amount of steam in doing it. The fable of the hare and the tortoise would not be a bad primer for a number of us, and the lesson relearned would not only be beneficial in a business-producing way, but it would help us in the full enjoyment ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton
... very fond of his books: he would study day and night in his little ignorant, primitive fashion. He loved his missal and his primer, and could spell them both out very fairly, and was learning to write of a good priest in Zirl, where he trotted three times a week with his two little brothers. When not at school he was chiefly set to guard the sheep and the cows, which occupation left him very much to himself, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... "desk" copies of Clodd's Childhood of the World, two of that excellent series of History Primers, and The Young Geologist, all carefully selected, in the fulness of Mary's ignorance, for the little pupils of her imagination. She had brought no primer, as Mrs. Yellett's letter had distinctly said that the youngest child was ten and that all were comparatively advanced in their studies. More than ever Mary longed to penetrate the mystery of that Irish linen decoy, for without doubt ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... in the present age, he can do nothing. Another person, less important, nay, even insignificant in the eyes or some persons, has produced this state of things. 'The schoolmaster is abroad,' and I trust more to the schoolmaster, armed with his primer, for upholding the liberties of this country than I fear lest the soldier, in full military array, should destroy them." Mr. Brougham had no occasion to fear the effects of a military premier, even though the schoolmaster had not been abroad; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... inasmuch as I hope I may receive it as a token that he has forgiven me those extremely large letters, which I must say, from the glimpse I caught of them when I arrived in the town, looked like a leaf from the first primer of a ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... again. The services to be performed for the lord were uncertain and unlimited. The copyhold was also subject to a variety of grievous taxes, which the lord had the privilege, upon many occasions, of imposing—such as aids, reliefs, primer seisin, wardship, escheats for felony and want of heirs, and many more, altogether so exorbitant and oppressive as often totally to ruin the tenant and rob him of almost all interest in his property. {56} The difference of the ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... published it on the 14th. It bore date "New York, Saturday evening, November 11, 1854," and was addressed simply to "Governor Seward." Its great length consigned it to nonpareil in strange contrast to the long primer type of the editorial page, but its publication became the sensation of the hour. To this day its fine thought-shading is regarded the best illustration of ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... New Hampshire, Maine had come a strange company, earnest, patient, determined, unschooled in even the primer of refinement, hungry for something the significance of which, when they had it, they could not even guess, anxious to be called great, determined so to be without ever knowing how. Here came the dreamy gentleman of the South, robbed of his patrimony; the hopeful student of Yale and Harvard ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... in the cove, Lahoma dreamed new dreams, peopling the grassy solitude with the figures she had encountered on her travels, likening the rocks to various houses that had caught her fancy. She turned with absorbed interest to the primer and elementary arithmetic with which Brick had supplied himself as the first ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... je fais tous les jours, et je n'en suis pas surprise. Du caractere dont elle est, celui du Marquis doit etre de son gout. La Comtesse est une femme brusque, qui aime a primer, a gouverner, a etre la maitresse. Le Marquis est un homme doux, paisible, aise a conduire; et voila ce qu'il faut a la Comtesse. Aussi ne parle-t-elle de lui qu'avec eloge. Son air de naivete lui plait: c'est, dit-elle, le meilleur homme, le plus complaisant, le plus sociable. D'ailleurs, ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... not use too much discretion in profiting of the Landgrave's naturalization of you; but go pretty often and feed with him. Choose the company of your superiors, whenever you can have it; that is the right and true pride. The mistaken and silly pride is, to PRIMER among inferiors. ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... the afternoon he drew out of the roar and commotion with a look of dumb terror on his countenance. He was defeated, puzzled, discomfited, frightened. Other cities had been to him as long primer to read; as country maidens quickly to fathom; as send-price-of-subscription-with-answer rebuses to solve; as oyster cocktails to swallow; but here was one as cold, glittering, serene, impossible as a four-carat diamond in a window to a lover outside fingering ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... life; to have thought them is to have lived them. Accepting two of them as true in principle, then I say that these are but the threshold. For twelve thousand years no effort has been made to get beyond that threshold. These are but the primer of soul-life; the merest hieroglyphics chipped out, a little shape given ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... wonderful how close a parallel to classical training could be made out of that palaeontology to which I refer. In the first place I could get up an osteological primer so arid, so pedantic in its terminology, so altogether distasteful to the youthful mind, as to beat the recent famous production of the head-masters out of the field in all these excellences. Next, ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... worse they preferred to be imprisoned than to listen to the archbishop's harangues. From Hereford it was announced that "rebellion is rampant, attendance at church is contemptuous, and John Hareley read so loudly on his latin popish primer (that he understands not) that he troubles both minister and people." In Oxford and amongst the lawyers in the Inns of Court and in the Inns of Chancery popery and superstition ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... met 'em bigger than all the colleges up to Brunswick,—great white bears on 'em,—hungry as Time in the Primer. Once we came kersmash on to one of 'em, and if the Flying Betsey hadn't been made of whalebone and injer-rubber, she'd a-been stove all to pieces. Them white bears, they was so hungry, that they stood there with the water jist runnin' ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... supplied by Miss Welsh: "We visited the women in their homes—we had evening prayers in such yards as the owners were willing to allow them. From morning till night 'Ma' was busy—often far into the night. One brought a story of an unjust divorce, another was sick; one brought a primer for a reading-lesson, another was accused of debt and wished 'Ma' to vouch for his innocence; another had, he declared, been cheated in a land case. All found a ready listener, a friendly adviser and helper, though ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... not partial, but includes all times and forms and sorts—is not exclusively aristocratic or democratic, or oriental or occidental. My favorite symbol would be a good font of type, where the impeccable long-primer rejects nothing. Or the old Dutch flour-miller who said, "I never bother myself what road the folks come—I only want good wheat ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... and county town, all submitted to the benign influence of this good woman; and under her eyes they might be seen, for the first time in their lives, striving to hold a pen, or to master the characters in a penny primer. She entered into their confidences—watched, wept, prayed, and felt for all by turns. She strengthened their good resolutions, cheered the hopeless and despairing, and endeavoured to put all, and hold all, in the right road ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... of King's College tells me that these prayers also occur in W. de Worde's Primer of 1494 (sig. F 8 b). In this edition the words read "prout tibi placeret," but a copy at Lambeth in which the page has been reset, has "prout tibi placet." The prayers also occur in some Sarum Horae printed in France, e.g. Jean Jehannot's of 1498, ...
— Henry the Sixth - A Reprint of John Blacman's Memoir with Translation and Notes • John Blacman
... useless except on Sundays. It would be just the place for an evening school for fifty or even a hundred little children, whose parents were too poor to send them to the day-schools of the town. And wouldn't they like to look in and see Josiah with his primer in hand teaching their neighbors' children to read in this way; with his clean smock-frock on, setting copies in the writing-books of the little nailers? Josiah, who was standing between my knees, looking ...
— Jemmy Stubbins, or The Nailer Boy - Illustrations Of The Law Of Kindness • Unknown Author
... thought of Cissie Dildine who did understand him. This thought might have been Cissie's cue to enter the stage of Peter's mind. Her oval, creamy face floated between Peter's eyes and the dog-eared primer. He thought of Cissie wistfully, and of her lonely fight for good English, good manners, and good taste. There was ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... be a seamstress; although her sampler, of fifty years gone by, exhibited some of the most recondite specimens of ornamental needlework. A school for little children had been often in her thoughts; and, at one time, she had begun a review of her early studies in the New England Primer, with a view to prepare herself for the office of instructress. But the love of children had never been quickened in Hepzibah's heart, and was now torpid, if not extinct; she watched the little people of ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... magazines, papers, and books that come once or twice a month, only. It really seemed when the precious mail bags were opened that their treasures were too sacred to be even handled. We were so hungry and thirsty for news from home, for reading matter in this bookless country, where even a primer would have been ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... their curses now Liue where their prayers did: and it's come to passe, This tractable obedience is a Slaue To each incensed Will: I would your Highnesse Would giue it quicke consideration; for There is no primer basenesse ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... of food. She was fond of coffee,-that black drink brought hither by those daring voyagers of long ago. The coffee habit was one of the signs of her progress in the white man's civilization, also had she emerged from the tepee into a log hut, another achievement. She had learned to read the primer and to write her name. Little Blue-Star attended school unhindered by a fond mother's fears that a foreign teacher might not spare ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... long settles beside the fireplace and here the children seated themselves, Peregrine on one side, and Patience on the other, to study their lessons. They were given queer little books, called the New England Primer, in wooden covers, and having funny, tiny pictures for each letter of the alphabet, and beside each, a jingle. There were verses to be learned from the Bible, too. Patience held her primer up close to her ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... irrefragable axiom because a Latin poet had said it, but it exactly met the case in point. He would convince the scorners that poetry might be seriously useful, and show Master Bull his new way of making fine words butter parsnips, in a rhymed moral primer. Allegory, as then practised, was imagination adapted for beginners, in words of one syllable and illustrated with cuts, and would thus serve both his ethical and pictorial purpose. Such a primer, or a first instalment of ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... was of proper age, his father sent him over to the road-side school at Long Benton, kept by Rutter, the parish clerk. But the education which Rutter could give was of a very limited kind, scarcely extending beyond the primer and pothooks. While working as a brakesman on the pit-head at Killingworth, the father had often bethought him of the obstructions he had himself encountered in life through his want of schooling; and he formed the noble ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... song y-made in reverence Of Christe's mother?" said this innocent; Now certes I will do my diligence To conne* it all, ere Christemas be went; *learn; con Though that I for my primer shall be shent,* *disgraced And shall be beaten thries in an hour, I will it ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... The "Primer of Mayan Hieroglyphics" (39) was intended as a summary of what had been achieved up to that time (1895) by students in this branch. It endeavored, moreover, to render to each student the credit of his independent work; and as, unfortunately, some, notably in Germany, had put forward ...
— A Record of Study in Aboriginal American Languages • Daniel G. Brinton
... many volumes. Machiavelli was poor, was idle, was out of favour, and therefore, though a Republican, wrote a devilish hand-book of tyranny to strengthen the Medici and recover his position. Machiavelli, a loyal Republican, wrote a primer of such fiendish principles as might lure the Medici to their ruin. Machiavelli's one idea was to ruin the rich: Machiavelli's one idea was to oppress the poor: he was a Protestant, a Jesuit, an Atheist: a Royalist and a Republican. And the book published by one Pope's ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... ever played truant was under the patronage of Neb, who decoyed me away from my books to go nutting on the mountain stoutly maintaining that chestnuts were just as good as the spelling-book, or any primer that ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... tendency to sudden floods of tears (apparently for no cause whatever, really from some secret spring of association, such as I remember was touched when I first found myself learning Latin from the same primer over which my mother and I had puzzled together), and these outbursts at first aroused my companions' contempt, and finally ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... the books on the table: "Nutting's Grammar," "Adams' Arithmetic," "David's Tears" and the "New England Primer and Catechism"—all useful books undoubtedly, but not calculated long to engross the attention of the traveler. Turning from these prosaic volumes, the occupant of the chamber drew aside the curtain of the ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... said he, "and won't it be primer still when the real time comes? I never guessed it would be so easy. ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... been taught on the sly in their childhood by their white playmates. Others knew their letters, but could not "put them together," as they said. I remember of a summer's afternoon seeing a young married woman, perhaps twenty-five years old, seated on a door-step with her primer before her, trying ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... Lake Valley, to assist in separating the Mormons from the rest of the nation, its preparation having been intrusted to a committee of the board of regents in 1853. It contained thirty-two characters. A primer and two books of the Mormon Bible were printed in the new characters, the legislature in 1855 having voted $2500 to meet the expense; but the alphabet was never practically used, and no attempt is any longer made to remember it. Early in 1849 the High Council voted that ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... I am ready to go upon; and in Great Primer, and Pica notes, I reckon on sending in half a sheet a day; but the money for that shall likewise lye by in your hands till it is done. With the debates, shall not I have business enough? if ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... at the present writing is mighty well employed in tumbling on the floor of the room and sweeping the sand with a feather. He grows a most delightful child, and very full of play and spirit. He is also a very great scholar: he can read his primer; and I have brought down my Virgil. He makes most shrewd remarks about the pictures. We are very intimate friends and playfellows. He begins to be very ragged; and I hope I shall be pardoned if I equip him with new clothes ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Episcopal Church. They long regarded it as merely the persecuting ecclesiastical arm of the British Government. Such of them as had been brought up in any faith at all had for the most part originally professed some form of Calvinism; they had very probably learnt their letters from a primer which in one of its rude cuts represented John Rogers at the stake, surrounded by his wife and seven children, and in their after lives they were more familiar with the "Pilgrim's Progress" than with any other book save the Bible; so ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... to say that all of the Bobbsey twins were promoted, and Freddie and Flossie came home very proud to tell that when they went back again, after the Thanksgiving holidays, they would be in the primer reading book. ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope
... primer of information about composing sticks, galleys, leads, brass rules, cutting and mitering machines, etc. 47 pp.; illustrated; ...
— Compound Words - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #36 • Frederick W. Hamilton
... theories or principles which have been put forward somewhere or sometime in the past, and then to submit each theory or principle to criticism.[68] Or, in other words, no attempt will be made to give a primer of opinions either as to the difficulties to be encountered in any attempt to formulate a policy of wage settlement, or of the suggested means of overcoming ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... Aikin, Sims on Baking, Booth in Cato quoting Plato, Jacob Tonson, Doctor Johnson, Russia binding, touch and try— Nothing bid—who'll buy, who'll buy? Here's Mr. Hayley, Doctor Paley, Arthur Murphy, Tommy Durfey, Mrs. Trimmer's little Primer, Buckram binding, touch and try— Nothing bid—who'll buy, who'll buy? Here's Colley Cibber, Bruce the fibber, Plays of Cherry, ditto Merry, Tickle, Mickle, When I bow and when I wriggle, With a simper and a giggle, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... greatly impressed by the astronomer's enormous brick-red face, round body, turned legs, eyes like marbles, and capacity for drinking port-wine—so much so, in fact that, on leaving the club, he hastened to buy a science primer on astronomy, and devoted himself for several days to a minute investigation of ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... our year Through passing time grow dimmer, We've gathered the choicest bits And put them in a primer. ...
— The 1926 Tatler • Various
... lastly, as a ransomed soul raised up by angels, had always had the most intense interest for August, and he had made, not one history for him, but a thousand; he seldom told them the same tale twice. He had never seen a storybook in his life; his primer and his Mass book were all the volumes he had. But nature had given him Fancy, and she is a good fairy that makes up for the want of very many things! only, alas! her wings are so very soon broken, poor thing! and then she is of no ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... school of art; kindergarten, nursery, creche, reformatory. pulpit, lectern, soap box desk, reading desk, ambo[obs3], lecture room, theater, auditorium, amphitheater, forum, state, rostrum, platform, hustings, tribune. school book, horn book, text book; grammar, primer, abecedary[obs3], rudiments, manual, vade mecum; encyclopedia, cyclopedia; Lindley Murray, Cocker; dictionary, lexicon. professorship, lectureship, readership, fellowship, tutorship; chair. School Board Council ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... taken the matter too hastily. There was no thought that ye should part till you had some purpose in view. Nay, we should be fain for Ambrose to bide on here, so he would leave his portion for me to deal with, and teach little Will his primer and accidence. You are a quiet lad, Ambrose, and can rule ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... insignificant to him, has but reduced himself to the level of the dog upon whom also they make no impression—though even a dog will howl at a great aurora. Of course we know all about them; any schoolboy can pick up a primer of physical geography and explain the laws of refraction, and the ugly and most libellous diagram of circles and angles that shows just how these lustrous splendours happen; but the mystery beyond is not by one hair's breadth impaired nor their influence upon the ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... book, the Eton Latin Grammar, was compelled to remain among the very last of Dr. Swishtail's scholars, and was "taken down" continually by little fellows with pink faces and pinafores when he marched up with the lower form, a giant amongst them, with his downcast, stupefied look, his dog's-eared primer, and his tight corduroys. High and low, all made fun of him. They sewed up those corduroys, tight as they were. They cut his bed-springs. They upset buckets and benches, so that he might break his shins over them, which he never failed to ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... followers held their lands. For their tenure was liable to homage and fealty, as understood in the feudal sense, to wardships and impediments to marriage, to fines for alienations, to what English legists call primer seizins, rents, reliefs, escheats, and, finally, forfeitures; this last was at all times more strictly observed in England than in any other feudal country, and by its enactments so many noble families have, in the course of ages, been reduced to beggary, ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... books and magazine innumerable, even sandwiched in between reports of camp-meetings, political pow-wows and newspaper ads. for patent liver pills. O, that the featherless jaybirds now trying to twitter in long-primer type would apply the soft pedal unto themselves, would add no more to life's dissonance and despair! Most of our modern poets are bowed down with more than Werterean woe. Their sweethearts are cruel or fate unkind; they've ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... and sometimes appropriating and buying, and sometimes receiving them of gift of others, whereby the services that are due of such fee, and which, in the beginning, were provided for the defence of the realm, are wrongfully withdrawn, and the chief lord do lose the escheats of the same (the primer seizin on each life that dropped); it therefore enacts: That any such lands were forfeited to the lord of the fee; and if he did not take it within twelve months, it should be forfeited to the king, who shall enfeoff other therein by certain services to be done for ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher
... published by a Scot, John Campbell (1653-1728), bookseller and postmaster of Boston. John Mein and John Fleming, the founders and publishers of The Boston Chronicle (1767) were both born in Scotland. The paper was printed "on a new and handsome type, a broad faced long primer, from an Edinburgh foundry, and typographically far surpassed any paper that had appeared before it in New England." David Hall (c. 1714-1772), born in Edinburgh, emigrated to America shortly after 1740, became a partner of Benjamin ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black |
