"Smattering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stooping to the frolic." "They are but faces and smiles, teasing and trumpery," says one of their critics, yet they are declared to be wideawake, natural and charming, making the most of their smattering of letters. Love was the great game; every woman had lovers, every married woman openly flaunted her cicisbeo ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... been early excited; it had persisted; it had increased steadily, though the possibility of its realization had seemed remote. Stark poverty demanded that he remain to coax a scant living from the soil for his mother. Yet, his determination was fixed. He got some smattering of education, along with Plutina, from a kindly Quaker who came among the "Boomers" of the Blue Ridge as a missionary school-teacher. Thus, Zeke learned surprisingly much. His thirsty brain took up knowledge as a sponge takes up water. So great was his gratitude to this instructor that, ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... moon was entirely obscured. In explanation we were told that the "Great Dragon" was endeavoring to swallow up the moon, and that the loudest possible noise must be made to frighten him away. Shouts hailed the reappearance of the moon. Although our boatmen had a smattering of pidjin, or business, English, we were unable to get a very clear idea of Chinese astronomy. In journeying across the empire we found sufficient analogy in the various provincial dialects to enable us to acquire a smattering of one from another as we proceeded, ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... anything about rare butterflies appreciates the peril of the pursuit; one never picks the going and often stumbles. He was a hunter of butterflies by nature; but he possessed a something more than a mere smattering of other odd crafts. He was familiar with precious gems, marbles he knew and cameos; he could point out the weakness in a drawing, the false effort in a symphony; he was something of mutual interest to every ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... chief of his clan, is answerable for all outrages committed on the way, and is the recognised go-between in all questions of dispute or barter, and in every other fashion. The second man was also a Warsingali,[8] by name Ahmed, who knew a slight smattering of Hindustani, and acted as interpreter between us. I then engaged two other men, a Hindustani butler named Imam, and a Seedi called Farhan. This latter man was a perfect Hercules in stature, with huge arms and limbs, knit together with largely ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... language and literature of his country, and speaks up for each and all when there is occasion to do so. Now, what is the case with nine out of ten amongst those of the English who study foreign languages? No sooner have they picked up a smattering of this or that speech than they begin to abuse their own country and everything connected with it, more especially its language. This is particularly the case with those who call themselves German students. It is said, and the writer believes with truth, that when a woman falls ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... whether they have been achieving much in the way of tutelage. With the best will in the world, a boy will profit but little by three or four lessons a week (which are the utmost that our system allows him). What he wants, or at any rate will want, is to be able to cope with Mme. Chose. A smattering of the irregular verbs will not much avail him in that emprise. Not in the dark by-ways of conjugation, but on the sunny field of frank social intercourse, must he prove his knighthood. I would recommend that every boy, on reaching the age of sixteen, should be ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... master here these records of the world's life. We'll seek wisdom in the history and experience of man. What do you know of the treasures buried in those big volumes? Our young men go to school and plunge into life with a mere smattering. Do you know the history of your own country, how it was discovered, how its colonies grew, how its battles were fought against overwhelming and impossible odds? How its great Constitution grew in the ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... sought to turn off the main-traveled streets into a byway but our path was barred by a guard seeking to know our business. And always, as we noted, for this duty those in command had chosen soldiers who knew a smattering of French, in order that the sentries might be able to speak with the citizens. If we passed along a sidewalk the chances were that it would be lined thick with soldiers lying against the walls resting, or sitting on the curbs, with their shoes off, easing ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... were. They were all willing to learn the right thing as soon as it was shown them what was right. I was determined to start them off on a solid and thorough foundation, so far as their books were concerned. I soon learned that most of them had the merest smattering of the high-sounding things that they had studied. While they could locate the Desert of Sahara or the capital of China on an artificial globe, I found out that the girls could not locate the proper places for the knives and forks on an actual dinner-table, ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... no indignities, such as would have been our fortune in olden days. But did you notice how that old warrior examined the knots himself? He seems to be a sort of head-man. I can remember a smattering of a few dialects, and I am sure I heard him say to the braves: 'Not too tight. Do not hurt the pale-faces, but ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... food: dried chestnuts and chickpeas. The principal, a man of broad views, soon came to trust his new assistant. He left me practically a free hand, so long as I satisfied the school curriculum, which was very modest in those days. Possessing a smattering of Latin and grammar, I was a little ahead of my fellow pupils. I took advantage of this to get some order into my vague knowledge of plants and animals. While a dictation lesson was being corrected around me, with generous assistance ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... the controversy which, he says, consolidated his powers of verbal expression. Leigh Hunt he describes as a fine specimen of a London editor, with his bushy hair, black eyes, pale face, and 'nose of taste.' He was assuming yet moderate, sarcastic yet genial, with a smattering of everything and mastery of nothing; affecting the dictator, the poet, the politician, the critic, and the sceptic, whichever would, at the moment, give him the air, to inferior minds, of a very superior man.' Although Haydon disliked Hunt's ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... by the studied impertinence of his answers to the Proctor, he eventually went down with a pass degree and a mixed reputation, and, after the orthodox number of dinners, and the regulation examination, had the satisfaction of seeing his name published in the list of those who, having acquired a smattering of Roman and English law, were entitled, for a consideration, to aid litigants with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... might tend to their edification, my foolish interpreter would say: you shall not make me become a Preacher now: I tell you, I cannot nor I will not rehearse any such wordes. And true it was which he saide, For I perceiued afterward, when I began to haue a little smattering in the language, that when I spake one thing, he would say quite another, whatsoeuer came next vnto his witlesse tongues end. [Sidenote: Tanaia.] Then seeing the danger I might incurre in speaking by such an interpreter, I resolued much ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... there were more factories, more masters; more men were wanted. The power of masters and men became more evenly balanced; and now the battle is pretty fairly waged between us. We will hardly submit to the decision of an umpire, much less to the interference of a meddler with only a smattering of the knowledge of the real facts of the case, even though that meddler be called the High ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... family never go on south far enough to become good servants, workmen or artists. The young people get a smattering and squeeze into the bottom position and never go on south to efficiency and promotion. They wonder why their genius is not recognized. They do ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... maintained a great deal of authority, and was not only himself an admirable scholar, but was always deeply interested in the progress of his students. But here lay the villainy. Almost {p.034} all my companions who had left the High School at the same time with myself had acquired a smattering of Greek before they came to College. I, alas, had none; and finding myself far inferior to all my fellow-students, I could hit upon no better mode of vindicating my equality than by professing my contempt for the language, and my resolution not to learn it. A youth who died ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... and cared for at the school. As the days shortened and the nights grew longer, the girl realized, with bitterness in her heart, that almost the only thing she had accomplished along educational lines was the imperfect smattering of the Indian tongue that she ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... narrowed with sudden, painful emotion as she peered at the Master. With some smattering of Arabic, she may have caught something of the sense of this offer. But the Master, unmoved by this second offer of Olema's, merely shook his ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... command of all the little parties of her own age. This forwardness her parents mistook for mental superiority, and thought they could not bestow too much pains in the cultivation of her extraordinary talents. They accordingly provided her numerous masters, and Clelia attained a smattering in many things. She could draw tolerably, play tolerably, speak French tolerably, and write tolerably pretty verses. Her parents thought her a prodigy of genius; and her brothers and sisters were early taught to pay a ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... vocations. Whatever interests are selected should be carried to efficiency. Better a reasonable number of carefully selected interests well developed and resulting in efficiency than a multitude of interests which lead us into so many fields that we can at best get but a smattering of each, and that by neglecting the things which should mean the most to us. Our interests should lead us to live what Wagner calls a "simple life," but not ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... education. In no country perhaps in the world is the law so general a study. The profession itself is numerous and powerful; and in most provinces it takes the lead. The greater number of the deputies sent to the Congress were lawyers. But all who read, and most do read, endeavor to obtain some smattering in that science. I have been told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business, after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those on the law exported to the Plantations. The Colonists have now fallen into the way of printing them ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... to himself mainly, and following the bent of his mind, even at that early period, he abandoned the exact sciences for the perusal of such controversial and metaphysical writings of the schoolmen as his master's library afforded. The smattering of Latin which he acquired only served in after years to deform his treatises with barbarous, ill-adapted, and erroneous citations. "As to myself," said he, in his letter written in old age to Anthony Wood, who had inquired whether he was an Oxonian graduate, "my faults are no disgrace to a university, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the smattering we pick up at the Point and what 'broncho' Spanish I have added to it out here. Where did you learn it, sergeant? They tell me you ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... the learner, as frequently occurred in the old happy-go-lucky fashion of schooling. Australian children have all now the chance of learning the three R's according to the latest and most approved fashion, and if their parents choose they can also get a smattering of history, geography, and one or two other ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... pounds, and of late the school boards have shown how efficiency can be combined with low prices. This last development has put the great educational establishments upon their mettle, and induced them to consider whether a smattering of Greek obtained in twenty years, and forgotten in the twenty-first, is, after all, the highest form of intellectual culture. The head-masters of Harrow, Winchester and Marlbro' have come at last ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... fast gaining knowledge; every evening I read surgical and medical books, put into my hands by Mr Cophagus, who explained whenever I applied to him, and I soon obtained a very fair smattering of my profession. He also taught me how to bleed, by making me, in the first instance, puncture very scientifically, all the larger veins of a cabbage-leaf, until well satisfied with the delicacy of my hand, and the precision of ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... veux-tu des macacques?" But the jargon is not our S'a Leone and West-coast "English;" the superior facility of pronouncing the neo-Latin tongues became at once apparent. It is evident that European languages have been a mistake in Africa: the natives learn a smattering sufficient for business purposes and foreigners remain without the key to knowledge; hence our small progress in understanding negro human nature. Had we so acted in British India, we should probably have held the proud position which now contents us in China as in Western Africa, with ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... give you a smattering of the French and Italian, I know not but I may take you on a little tour into France and Italy; at least, to Bath, Tunbridge, Oxford, York, and the principal places of England. Wherefore, as I love to look upon you as the companion of my pleasures, I advise ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... leaving all my family and friends for so long a time, and the weather seemed to me inexpressibly gloomy. I was also troubled with palpitation and pain about the heart, and like many a young ignorant man, especially one with a smattering of medical knowledge, was convinced that I had heart disease. I did not consult any doctor, as I fully expected to hear the verdict that I was not fit for the voyage, and I was resolved ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... With very few exceptions, our children gain their livelihood with their hands and eyes and ears, and not solely with their brains; they therefore require title most practical education imaginable. They need intellectual tools to work with, and not a smattering of science, botany, drawing and political philosophy to forget as soon as possible. Pure culture studies are not a practical gain for them, while the time consumed in pursuing these is so much taken away from a thorough training in the essentials. ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... up in all large, continental towns. Foreigners were not excluded—Maurice discovered two or three of his German friends, awkwardly balancing their cups on their knees. In order, however, to gain access to the circle, it was necessary for them to have a smattering of English; they had also to be flint against any open or covert fun that might be made of them or their country; and above all, to be skilled in the art of looking amiable, while these visitors from other lands heatedly readjusted, to their own satisfaction, all that did ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... we are constrained by all our knowledge concerning Shakspere, as well as by the abstract principles of proof, to regard him in general as a reader of his own language only, albeit not without a smattering of others; and among the books in his own language which we know him to have read in, and can prove him to have been influenced by, we come back to Montaigne's Essays, as by far the most important and the most ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... Byron learnt to read French with fluency, as he certainly made himself familiar with the great works of the eighteenth century; but he spoke it with so little ease or accuracy that the fact was always a stumbling-block to his meeting Frenchmen abroad. Of German he had a mere smattering. Italian was the only language, besides his own, of which he was ever a master. But the extent and variety of his general reading was remarkable. His list of books, drawn up in 1807, includes more ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... were several gentlemen of Siam and Laos, who had acquired such a smattering of English as qualified them to assist the prince in his scientific diversions. Opposite the armory stood a pretty little cottage, quite English-looking, lighted with glass windows, and equipped with European furniture. Over the entrance to this quaint tenement hung ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... as my recollection goes, the teachers were generally of a very inferior order, and rarely possessed more than a smattering of the rudiments of grammar and arithmetic. As the Governor points out, they were poorly paid, and "boarded around" the neighbourhood. But it is not improbable that they generally received all their services were worth. In those days most of the country youth who ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... teach anything so old-fashioned as writing, I see. Now look at this memorandum Aunt Plenty gave me, and see what a handsome plain hand that is. She went to a dame-school and learnt a few useful things well; that is better than a smattering of half a dozen so-called higher branches, I ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... to relish the accounts of the religious condition of the West, which the missionaries from the East spread through the older States in their letters home. "They would come," says he, "with a tolerable education, and a smattering knowledge of the old Calvinistic system of theology. They were generally tolerably well furnished with old manuscript sermons, that had been preached, or written, perhaps a hundred years before. Some of ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... contemptuously. Presently he had the pleasure of expressing his mind more freely to a French signaler of artillery who was on duty at an observing post in this forward fire trench. The Frenchman had a sufficient smattering of English to ask awkward questions as to why men were allowed to strike in England in war time, but unfortunately not enough to follow Robinson's lengthy and agonized explanations that these men were not English but—a very different thing—Welsh, ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... imagine," replied Palgrave, not unpleased to play Baedeker to a girl who was becoming more and more attractive to him. "I mean people who live by their wits—writers, illustrators, actors, newspaper men, with a smattering of Wall Street brokers seeking a little mild diversion as we are, and foreigners to whom this place has a sentimental interest because it reminds them of home. Sophisticated children, most of them, optimists with moments of hideous pessimism, enthusiasts at various stages of Parnassus, ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... had picked up a smattering of the bastard language in which our guards addressed us, as well as making good headway in the rather charming tongue of our co-captives. Directly ahead of me in the chain gang was a young woman. Three feet of chain linked us ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... had to suffer amputation; but his luck stood to him, and at the time we met he was getting on fairly towards recovery, thanks to youth, a good constitution, and the healthy air of St. Jean de Luz. I could not understand the ardour of Leader's partisanship for the Carlists. He spoke the merest smattering of Spanish, and had no profound intimacy with the vexed question of Spanish politics or the rights of the rival Spanish houses. The ill-natured whispered that he was crying "Viva la Republica" when he was knocked over. It is possible, ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... Parracombe; and by that scapegrace hangs a tale. He was an old schoolfellow of his at Bideford, and son of a merchant in that town—one of those unlucky members who are "nobody's enemy but their own"—a handsome, idle, clever fellow, who used his scholarship, of which he had picked up some smattering, chiefly to justify his own escapades, and to string songs together. Having drunk all that he was worth at home, he had in a penitent fit forsworn liquor, and tormented Amyas into taking him to sea, where he afterwards made as good ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... Three days hence the Red hordes may be sweeping across Western Europe in an irresistible flood. At the present moment Trotsky has less than one thousand one hundred and thirty-five trustworthy troops all told, mostly Chinese, with a smattering of Army Service Corps. In a month's time he will have a million and a half of well-trained soldiers at his beck. Don't ask me how he does it. He has plenty of money and his Army is well paid. Only yesterday I saw a private of the Red Guards ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various
... would never run counter to her dictates without ample reason for doing so: in such cases they would override her with due self-reliance, and the goddess seldom punished them; for they are brave, and Ydgrun is not. They had most of them a smattering of the hypothetical language, and some few more than this, but only a few. I do not think that this language has had much hand in making them what they are; but rather that the fact of their being generally possessed of its rudiments ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... which comprised the name of the storekeeper who sold the material used for preparing the coffin in 1836, and who had books to sustain the statement, he demanded a promise in writing to pay him a large sum of money. Having a smattering of "legal lore" I drew up a bond to pay the required amount, in event of success. I kept a copy of the bond to show Mr. Sterling. It was signed by "George Comings." It was satisfactory to Mr. "Veritas," and he in an impressive manner wrote on a piece of paper, in large bold letters, the storekeeper's ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... the United States condemned to become proficient in French or Spanish or German. Say we take the easiest of them, Spanish: does anyone dream the thing possible? Only an infinitesimal fraction of our young people could attain even a smattering, and that at the cost of from two to three years' study; and even then it is quite unlikely that other nations would adopt the same language. But if they all did this impossible thing the Spanish speaking ...
— Esperanto: Hearings before the Committee on Education • Richard Bartholdt and A. Christen
... industrious a woman as ever broke bread, till such time as she took to drinking, which you very well know; but everybody has failings—Humanum est errare. Now myself, I am a poor journeyman barber, tolerably well made and understand some Latin, and have a smattering of Greek; but what of that? Perhaps I might also say, that I know a little of the world; but that is to no purpose,—though you be gentle, and I simple, it does not follow, but that I who am simple may do a good ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... looked like the captain, standing near the deserted wheel, looked at us intently for a few seconds, and then, observing that we were all ready to give him our starboard broadside, answered in the affirmative; whereupon our people, several of whom had a smattering of French, gave three hearty cheers as they dropped the lanyards of their locks to the deck, and laid down their rammers, ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... scholar in the college. He was not only not deficient but he showed excellence at recitation in every branch of study. He could learn anything if he tried. But with all this he never gained more than a smattering of Greek and still less of mathematics, because those studies require, for anything more than a fair proficiency, a love of knowledge for its own sake, a zeal for learning incompatible with indolence, and a close, steady, ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... their intellectual pursuits, one should make sure that he is himself so well-grounded in learning that he can find the way in which to guide them. To do this, he must indispensably have something more than a smattering of the knowledge that lies at the foundation of his profession. He must be, if not widely read, at least carefully grounded in history, science, literature, and art. While he may not, like Lord Bacon, take all knowledge to be his province, because he is not a Lord ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... It was her love I wanted, Fred, and—that—no use hoping for that, or she would have trusted me. After all I was half a madman ever to have expected it—a rough, coarse chap like me, with only a smattering of polite ways! It was madness! Some day I shall get over it! We'll chuck work for a bit, soon, Fred, and go for some lions. That'll give us something to think about ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... but Pierre Squirrel, the head chief, seemed to harbour a more kindly spirit. He now suddenly acquired a smattering of English and a fair knowledge of French. He even agreed to lead us through his own hunting grounds to the big Buffalo range, stipulating that we be back by July 1, as that was Treaty Day, when all the tribe assembled to receive their treaty money, and his presence as ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... of priests of Celtic day, Ancient Druids, holding sway By smattering of Occult law And man's eternal sense of awe. Stonehenge They used Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain Reputed Prehistoric Fane; Note each megalithic boulder; ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... troubled with learning, but very diligent, and teaches more than he knows himself: He comes to our house on holidays, and whatever you give him he's contented; I therefore bought the boy some ruled books, because I will have him get a smattering in accounts and the law; it will be his own another day: He has learning enough already, but if he takes back to it again, I design him for a trade, a barber, a parson, or a lawyer, which nothing but the devil can take from him: How oft have I told him, Thou art (Sirrah) my first begotten, and ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... few minor rebellions, had settled down in his father's office and was learning to forget the call of the open road and the half-formed dreams of his youth. David, on the other hand, was wandering over the Continent nominally studying languages for the Consular Service, really picking up a smattering of poetry, a number of friends, and a deep knowledge of music. From Jonathan, he had learned to hide his sentiments in the presence of those who would not understand, and to make his reason conquer the wilder of the whims that ran through his brain. Jonathan, in turn, had gained a power, which ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... Leona; where the inhabitants are bred from a mixture of the first Portuguese discoverers with the natives, and are now become in their complexion, and in the woolly quality of their hair, perfect negroes, retaining however a smattering of the Portuguese language. ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... well as "increased sweetness, increased light, increased life." The other common charge of dilettanteism, brought by such opponents as Professor Huxley and Mr. Frederic Harrison, deserves hardly more consideration. Arnold has made it sufficiently clear that he does not mean by culture "a smattering of Greek and Latin," but a deepening and strengthening of our whole spiritual nature by all the means at our command. No other ideal of the century is so satisfactory as this of Arnold's. The ideal of ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... he might dissipate his energies in hunting, gambling, and cockfighting. He would almost certainly make the grand tour of Europe, and, if he had little Latin and less Greek, he was pretty certain to have some familiarity with Paris and a smattering of French. The eighteenth century was a period of magnificent living in England. The great landowner, then, as now, the magnate of his neighborhood, was likely to rear, if he did not inherit, one of those vast palaces which are today burdens ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... see now that my smattering of culture was neither deep nor broad. I acquired no definite knowledge of underlying principles, of general history, of economics, of languages, of mathematics, of physics or of chemistry. To ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... late, been more attended to than formerly; yet they are still reckoned a frivolous sex, and ridiculed or pitied by the writers who endeavour by satire or instruction to improve them. It is acknowledged that they spend many of the first years of their lives in acquiring a smattering of accomplishments: meanwhile, strength of body and mind are sacrificed to libertine notions of beauty, to the desire of establishing themselves, the only way women can rise in the world—by marriage. And this desire ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... such it could be called—was like no control room I'd ever seen before. Just an acceleration couch and observation instruments. Midguard explained that it wasn't necessary to be a pilot to run the ship; any person who knew a smattering of astronavigation could get to his destination by simply telling the ship what he wanted ...
— A Spaceship Named McGuire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... to be adopted among the Caughnawagas, who dwelt on the St. Lawrence, not far from Montreal. With these Indians he lived for several years, and having a natural taste for languages, acquired, during this time, a fair knowledge of the tongues of most of the Northern tribes, as well as a smattering of French. He also became well versed in woodcraft, and so thoroughly Indian in appearance and habit that when he was again captured by a marauding party of Maquas, or Mohawks, it was not detected that he was of white blood until he was stripped for the ordeal ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... translators responded to its stimulus with an enthusiasm denied to later times. It was work that appealed to persons of varying ranks and of varying degrees of learning. In the early part of the century, according to Nash, "every private scholar, William Turner and who not, began to vaunt their smattering of Latin in English impressions."[250] Thomas Nicholls, the goldsmith, translated Thucydides; Queen Elizabeth translated Boethius. The mention of women in this connection suggests how widely the impulse was diffused. Richard Hyrde says of the translation ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... sir," she said, with a malicious smile, "includes, I presume, a smattering of medicine ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... student in physic and astrology; he had formerly been a merchant in Yarmouth, and Mayor of the town, but failing in estate, went into the Low-Countries, and at Franecker took the degree, of doctor in Physick; he had some little smattering in astrology; could resolve a question of theft, or love-question, something of sickness; a very grave person, laborious and honest, of tall stature and comely feature; he died of late years, almost in the very street near Tower-Hill: he had a design ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... teachers. When it came to assimilating Spanish, however, he did not appear to be so apt a pupil. He managed, after many trials, to acquire "buenos dias" and "buenos tardes," and "senorita" and "gracias," and a few other short terms. Dick was indeed eager to get a little smattering of Spanish, and perhaps he was not really quite so stupid as he pretended to be. It was delightful to be taught by a beautiful Spaniard who was so gracious and intense and magnetic of personality, and by ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... publicly as a liar. Upon this, the superior had a fresh attack of convulsions, and as all present knew that these attacks usually indicated that the performance was about to end, they withdrew, making very merry over a devil who knew neither Hebrew nor Gaelic, and whose smattering ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... little of affairs of moment but by hearsay and by what he had learned in the cabal of "The Importants," of whose jargon he had retained some smattering, which, together with some expressions he had perfectly acquired from Madame de Vendome, formed a language that would have puzzled a Cato. His speech was short and stupidly dull, and the more so because he obscured ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... the boys had half expected, there came a smattering volley from amid the cars on the sidings behind them. The body of their assailants had reached the surface ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... jack of them was trying to unload his stock-in-trade. The most thriving of them were naturally the nostrum-mongers, the philosophical lecturers who ladled out general ideas, leavened with a few facts, a scientific smattering, and ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... few smart blasphemies and syllogistic impertinences, this is of less consequence than at first sight appears, since these are attempted after-justifications, and no real causes of their unbelief. For they love the parade of formal reason, as they love big words or technical terms, or a smattering of French or Latin, with all the delight of a child in the mysterious and unfamiliar; but their pretence to be ruled by it is mere affectation, and the tenacity with which they cling to their arguments is rather ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... not higher than the average, some rhetorical affluence and great glibness of speech, what is the career in which, without the aid of birth or money, he may most easily attain power and reputation in English society? Where is that Goshen of mediocrity in which a smattering of science and learning will pass for profound instruction, where platitudes will be accepted as wisdom, bigoted narrowness as holy zeal, unctuous egoism as God-given piety? Let such a man become an evangelical preacher; he will then find it possible to reconcile ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... but not in complement and perfection, till we have once more cast our secondine, that is, this slough of flesh, and are delivered into the last world, that ineffable place of Paul, that proper ubi of spirits. The smattering I have [in the knowledge] of the Philosophers stone ... hath taught me a great deale of Divinity, and instructed my beliefe, how the immortall spirit and incorruptible substance of my soule may lye obscure, and sleepe a while within this house of flesh. Those strange ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... Oxford Local Examinations has been the first, as far as we know, to set a paper in domestic science to senior candidates. There has been a demand for it in the London Matriculation, but objection has been raised on the score of its being a smattering and a soft option. The Oxford Delegacy has introduced two new headings—Domestic Science and Hygiene—and sets two papers under each, without any practical work. The first paper is the same under both headings—Elementary Physics and Chemistry, and the ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... issue at stake and it's feasible and would be provocative of friendlier intercourse between man and man. At least that's my idea for what it's worth. I call that patriotism. Ubi patria, as we learned a smattering of in our classical days in Alma Mater, vita bene. Where you can live well, the sense is, if ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... horse, but contrary to the nature of a man. What is culture? This is a question on whose solution man's eternal destiny is largely suspended. Our age prides itself on being an age of culture; but do we know in what true culture really consists? As a whole, I think not. A smattering of sentimental literature, a superficial refinement of manners, a few borrowed phrases and appropriated customs of "society," the rendering of a few pieces by rote, and fashionable dress, constitute with, alas! too many the standard of culture. ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... shotgun and rod, with bat and racquet, with the gloves and Indian clubs, the nimblest quarter-back and dodger, the swiftest runner of his school, it must be owned that Mr. Sanford Ray was a most indifferent scholar. Of geography, history, and languages he had rather more than a smattering because of occasional tours abroad when still at an impressionable age. Yet Sandy "took more stock," as he expressed it, and "stawk," as he called it, in Sioux and the sign language than he did in French or German, knew far more of the Rockies and Sierras than he did of the Alps, studied ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... of the secondary European monarchies. Voltaire, however, was not the man to turn up his nose at royalty, in whatever form it might present itself; and it was moreover clear that the young prince had picked up at least a smattering of French culture, that he was genuinely anxious to become acquainted with the tendencies of modern thought, and, above all, that his admiration for the author of the ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... of papers as a regular habit by those who work with their hands. The papers were still in the main written for those who had leisure; those who for the most part had some travel, and those who had a smattering, at least, ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... the memory of the student with a mass of undigested knowledge, but to force upon him so much that he has rejected all. It has been the error of distracting and enfeebling the mind by an unmeaning profusion of subjects; of implying that a smattering in a dozen branches of study is not shallowness, which it really is, but enlargement, which it is not; of considering an acquaintance with the learned names of things and persons and the possession ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... the funeral Squire Tisdale called at the house, invited by Mrs. Preston. The squire had a smattering of law, and often acted as ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... usual smattering," said Miss Verney carelessly. "I think I know why I admire his work; but then I am sure I see more in it when some one like Mr. Darrow tells me how remarkable ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... a thousand other girls could not accomplish equally well? She could play fairly well, sing fairly well, paint fairly well, trim a hat so that it did not look obviously home-made, make a trifle or creams, though she was densely ignorant about boiling a potato. She possessed, in fact, a smattering of many things, but had not really mastered one which, if needs be, would be a ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... went on, had dropped the word charity. Had the tribe of Israel cultivated a smattering of respect for physiology or any other useful science instead of fussing about supernatural pedigrees, they would have been more cautious as to their diet. Had they been careful in the matter of dietary, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... values for she had lived her twenty-two years wholly shielded from the human maelstrom, fed, clothed, taught, an untried product of home and schools. Her head was full of university lore, things she had read, a smattering of the arts and philosophy, liberal portions of academic knowledge, all tagged and sorted like parcels on a shelf to be reached when called for. Buried under these externalities the ego of her lay unaroused, ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... on my way not only good parsonage houses, but comfortable dwellings, with glebe land for the clerk, always a consequential man in every country, a being proud of a little smattering of learning, to use the appropriate epithet, and vain of the stiff good-breeding reflected from the vicar, though the servility practised in his company gives it a ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... imprisonment, and habitual indigestion. I hate everybody, and, with the exception of gin-and-water, everything. I know every language, both in the known and unknown worlds; I am profoundly ignorant of history, or indeed of any other useful science, but have a smattering of all. I am excellently qualified to judge and lash the vices of the age, having experienced, I may almost say, every one of them in my own person. The immortal and immoral Goethe, that celebrated sage of Germany, has ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari. Vol. 1, July 31, 1841 • Various
... did try, but I only got insulted. He is a godless animal, and has not been inside a church for years. He seems to have got a smattering of such vile learning as may be found in infidel publications, and I doubt if he ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of law; three years of electronics and jet and air-drive engine mechanics and engineering; pre-med, psychology, math, English, Spanish and a smattering of Portuguese, to say nothing of dozens of other subjects. You graduated in the upper tenth of your class with a B.S. in both Transportation and Criminology which is why you're riding patrol and ...
— Code Three • Rick Raphael
... "Haven't a smattering of what they mean!" laughed Leslie. "The 'istics' scare me completely. Just social ideas are all I have; thinking home better than any other place on earth, the way you can afford to have it. Merely being human, kind and interested in what my men are doing and enjoying, and helping ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... some little smattering of Italian, and I plume myself on singing some of Ariosto's stanzas; but tell me, senor—I do not say this to test your ability, but merely out of curiosity—have you ever met with the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... to renew the fuel and provisions, to set the stores in order, to mend many broken utensils, to patch the coverings, to work over the shoes for the long excursions of the summer. There was no lack of things to do, but the boatswain worked with the ease of a sailor, who has generally a smattering of all trades. While thus employed he began to think of the talk of the evening before; he thought of the captain, and especially of his obstinacy, which, after all, had something very heroic and very honorable about it, in his unwillingness that any American man or ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... slapped me on the back with a hearty good will, in a way nearly to deprive me of my breath, welcomed me anew, and invited us all to stay with him while the vessel remained there. Jessie replied in Gaelic, but so rapidly I could only follow her with great difficulty, for I had but a smattering of it, though I understood it better than I could speak it, having acquired it in a very singular manner, as I will tell you by and by. Offering her a chair, she took it and sat down after some hesitation, as if it was not her usual habit to ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... to look at the man in the fit. I found, lying on the ground, in the centre of the crowd, a man who, but for the tattered remnants of what had apparently once been a cloak, would have been stark naked. He was covered with dust, and dirt, and blood,—a dreadful sight. As you know, I have had my smattering of instruction in First Aid to the Injured, and that kind of thing, so, as no one else seemed to have any sense, and the man seemed as good as dead, I thought I would try my hand. Directly I knelt down beside him, what do you ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... have a good deal to say about these agents of humanity presently. I will only say here that no prisoner who cares whether he lives or dies, or who possesses common sense or the smallest smattering of experience of prison affairs, ever is so reckless as to impart any facts to the persons in question. If he accuses any guard or other official of cruelty, the entire force of prison keepers can and will be at need marshaled to ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... quizzical, his smile mischievous, but I flushed hotly. He had touched a sore spot. The butcher had brought me a huge slab of meat for my first dinner when I had timidly ordered "rib roast," and with the aid of my mother's cook book and my own smattering of cooking, my sole housewifely accomplishment, I had been trying to disguise it for ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... card as I spoke, and suddenly addressing him in "pidgin," of which, fortunately, I had a smattering: ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... the great Jewish labor leader. Most of his cronies were rampant atheists, disgusted with the commercialism of the believers. They were clever young artisans from Russia and Poland with a smattering of education, a feverish receptiveness for all the iconoclastic ideas that were in the London air, a hatred of capitalism and strong social sympathies. They wrote vigorous jargon for the Friend of Labor and compassed the extreme proverbial ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... a smattering; therefore are ready to pit yourself against the organized plantation system without capital or experience. Robert, you may succeed; you may find your landlord honest and the way clear; but my advice ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... these things would let such an one as he was rest content to apprehend them as a yokel. From either the honest dominie of the Signboard or some other, we may be sure he sought the means to read and digest them for himself. And if he learnt some smattering of the geography of the earth and the heavens after the crude notions of an older day, he could have done no other, at that time, in the most enlightened Universities. Ptolemy's Geographia was still the text-book, and the so-called ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... among my female acquaintance either, and the species of ignorance one encounters occasionally is so absolute and profound as to be almost amusing, and quite curious; while there is, also, quite enough native shrewdness, worldly acuteness, and smattering of shallow superficial reading, to produce a result which is worthless and vulgar to a pitiable degree. Of course there are exceptions to this narrowness and aridity of intellectual culture, but either they are really rare exceptions, or I have been ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... Jacob's academy, his knowledge was strictly correct, but it went no farther than the fact that they were "in the New Testament"; and Mr. Stelling was not the man to enfeeble and emasculate his pupil's mind by simplifying and explaining, or to reduce the tonic effect of etymology by mixing it with smattering, extraneous information, such ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... confined. The gaol was one of the many ramshackle buildings which the village was comprised of. As the little party slowly made their way through the unpaved streets, they were intently watched by crowds of men, women, and children; the men were principally rebel soldiers, mixed with a smattering of insurgent townspeople, the women and children—creatures of all sorts—from the village folk to the common ruck which follows a native army. Many were picturesque, but others looked like the drainings of the slums of larger cities. There was no doubt as to the sentiments they ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... along the crowded sidewalks, the boys took in all the sights that were so new to their American eyes. Only Rob had a small smattering of French, while his companions could not speak a word of the language. All of them were utterly ignorant of Flemish, current in half ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... he says that in old times, when a company of slaves was offered for sale by any person, it was not customary, without good reason, to describe either of them in the catalogue as a literati, but only as a literator, meaning that he was not a proficient in letters, but had a smattering of knowledge. ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... was enough by way of salary, I soon found myself standing for introductory approval before Bishop Burgess at his hotel in Waterloo Place, a candidate for orders by Examination. The good Bishop being a Hebrew scholar was glad enough to hear that I (with however slight a smattering) had studied that primitive tongue under Pusey and Pauli,—and I began to hope before his awful presence. But, when he told me to read, and soon perceived my only half-cured infirmity, he faithfully enough assured me with sorrow that I could ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... under the auspices of the two sisters, was a 'finishing establishment for young ladies,' where some twenty girls of the ages of from thirteen to nineteen inclusive, acquired a smattering of everything, and a knowledge of nothing; instruction in French and Italian, dancing lessons twice a-week; and other necessaries of life. The house was a white one, a little removed from the roadside, with close palings in ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... and a pair of trousers; it would have been more exciting if I had. But what a place! Napoleon couldn't stand it, you remember, but he held on longer than I did. I put in a few weeks in their infernal mines, simply to pick up a smattering of Italian; then got across to the mainland in a little wooden timber-tramp; and ungratefully glad I was to leave Elba blazing in just such another sunset as the ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... opinion, classical education is a mistake; and it is for this reason that I am glad to see "mere literary education and instruction" shut out from the curriculum of Sir Josiah Mason's college, seeing that its inclusion would probably lead to the introduction of the ordinary smattering ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... practical use. In Russia it is otherwise. Few students confine themselves to their speciality. The majority of them dislike the laborious work of mastering dry details, and, with the presumption which is often found in conjunction with youth and a smattering of knowledge, they aspire to become social reformers and imagine themselves specially qualified ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... woman? Where is the Englishman? Tell me." I sang the words boldly, but in bastard French with clipped accents. I feared that among all these Senecas there might be one or more who had some smattering of the ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... work, and I should make a pretty mess of my life; it would be poor Mrs. Trafford's experience over again." And he shook his head when Fay suggested that Hugh should let him have one of his farms. He knew nothing about farming; a little Latin and Greek, a smattering of French and German, were his chief acquirements. "I should have to turn boatman, or starve. No, no, Fay; I must not swamp my own prospects for a mere sentimental idea; and after all, Miss Selby is ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... play was pretty, interesting, and elicited universal applause. All the month of February we were by day preparing for our long stay in the country, and at night making the most of the balls and parties of the most primitive kind, picking up a smattering of Spanish, and extending our acquaintance with the people and the costumbrea del pais. I can well recall that Ord and I, impatient to look inland, got permission and started for the Mission of San Juan Bautista. Mounted on horses, ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... because he thought the man was a fool, whereas he himself was ignorant of what was going on. The message the coolie was bringing was misunderstood by the conceited assistant, and as a result of having just this smattering of the vernacular, he ran his firm in for a loss of ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... differ in many of the precepts and ceremonies of their religion. Physic and philosophy are cultivated among the Indians, and the Chinese have some skill in medicine; but that almost entirely consists in the art of applying hot irons or cauteries. They have some smattering of astronomy; but in this likewise the Indians surpass the Chinese. I know not that even so much as one man of either nation has embraced Mahomedism, or has learned to speak the Arabic language. The Indians have few horses, and there are more in China; but the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... little short of a real gale, was not to be undertaken with twenty men, the extent of Daly's command; and he had recourse to the assistance of his enemies. A good natured, facetious Irishman, himself, with a smattering of French, he soon got forty or fifty of the prisoners in a sufficient humour to lend their aid, and the sail was set, though not without great risk of its splitting. From this moment, la Victoire was better off, as respected the gale and keeping a weatherly ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... As extensive business relations exist between the two countries, especially near the frontier, a knowledge of both French and German is really necessary to all classes. Even tourists in Alsace-Lorraine nowadays fare badly without some smattering of the latter language. Hotel-keepers especially look to the winning side, and do their very utmost to Germanise their establishments. Shopkeepers must live, and find it not only advantageous but necessary to follow the same course. Sad indeed ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... was not exactly in line with his idea of the unearthly. How to explain it? He had to go back to Holcomb again. The doctor had accepted without question Avec's naturalness, his body, his appetite. Reasonably enough, Geos, with some smattering of his superior's wisdom, should accept Watson in the ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... better than the founding of a People's College could be thought of. Lamentable ignorance of the world and all therein was and yet is the direct curse of the land. The natives have had no opportunity of learning anything beyond the parrot-smattering of the Koran, the one book of Moslem schools. The rudimentary knowledge common to British schoolboys transcends all the learning of the wise in the Soudan. The people, Arabs and blacks, are docile and capable ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... that Kit had a smattering knowledge of Horace, gleaned from Billie. In the old days back home, when they had studied together, they had seemed to always get the personal side of the old heroes and people of fame. And just now the only thing she could remember about Horace popped ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... Mr. Edgeworth's many ingenious inventions. There were strange locks to the rooms and telegraphic despatches to the kitchen; clocks at the one side of the house were wound up by simply opening certain doors at the other end. It has been remarked that all Miss Edgeworth's heroes had a smattering of science. Several of her brothers inherited her father's turn for it. We hear of them raising steeples and establishing telegraphs in partnership with him. Maria shared of the family labours and used to help her father in the business connected with the estate, to assist him, also, ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... could speak little more English than sufficed to enable him to say "yes" and "no"; Barney could speak about as much Portuguese as enabled him to say "no" and "yes"; while Martin, by means of a slight smattering of that language, which he had picked up by ear during the last few months, mixed now and then with a word or two of Latin, and helped out by a clever use of the language of signs, succeeded in becoming the link of communication between ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... vacated, and looking at Lettice with interest, although he did not abandon the slight affectation of tone and manner that she had noted from the beginning of her talk with him. "How nice that must be! I often wish I knew something more than my schoolboy's smattering of ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... purer or more graceful English than that which accomplished women now speak and write. But, during the latter part of the seventeenth century, the culture of the female mind seems to have been almost entirely neglected. If a damsel had the least smattering of literature she was regarded as a prodigy. Ladies highly born, highly bred, and naturally quick witted, were unable to write a line in their mother tongue without solecisms and faults of spelling such as a charity girl would now ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... bit his lips. He had only a smattering of law, but he knew that the witness was right, and that he had been betrayed by temper into making a discreditable exhibition ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... day to note that in Knickerbocker's History of New York, Washington Irving turns aside from the ostensible object of a humorous sketch of early New York to ridicule President Jefferson. William the Testy, a dreamer, a speculative philosopher, an impractical inventor, with a smattering of all knowledge, was easily recognised as the President of the United States. His suggestion of windmills as a means of defence was a burlesque on Jefferson's little gunboats, and his government by proclamation a parody on the embargo ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... education worthy of the very best and most expensive schools in England. It was founded some hundred years ago, by those who thought much and in advance of their time. In an age when girls were almost uneducated, when nothing further was required from them than a smattering of reading and writing, these wise and far-seeing people said that they would give the girls of the future a chance. So they left money for the purpose, and that money, wisely invested, has borne fruit. The great school was built, and has for generations helped many girls who otherwise might ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... amongst them who will ask, What do you mean to offer us? We are of a class who neither care to bind books nor draw patterns. We are your equals—if we were not distinctively modest, we might say something more than your equals—in acquirement and information. We have our smattering of physical-science humbug, as you have; we are read up in theological disputation, and are as ready as you to stand by Colenso against Moses; in modern languages we are more than your match. What have you to offer us if we are too proud, or too poor, or too anything else, to stand waiting ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... His satisfaction at observing this was heightened by its being unexpected. "Eternal Father!" exclaimed he in a holy rapture, when he had glanced his eye over all the folios of my copy, "was ever anything seen so correct? You are too good a transcriber not to have some little smattering of the grammarian. Now tell me with the freedom of a friend: in writing it over, have you been struck with nothing that grated upon your feelings? Some little careless idiom, or some word used in an improper sense?" "Oh, may it please your ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... all the English that he knew. Beresford tried him in French and discovered he had a smattering of it. After a good many attempts, the soldier found that he had seen no white man with a dog-train in many moons. The Cree lived there alone, it appeared, and trapped for a living. Why he was separated from all his kin and tribal ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... followed him, acquired the rudiments of knowledge in that town, and then proceeded to study philosophy alone at Rimini. There was no man-servant or academy in his case. He was far too plebeian and too free. The boy lodged with a merchant, and got some smattering of Thomas Aquinas and the Peripatetics into his small brain, while he contrived to form a friendship with an acting company. They were on the wing for Venice in a coasting boat, which would touch at Chiozza, where Goldoni's mother then resided. The boy pleased them. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... the fine words Beatrice and San Miniato used. If he had never been away from the coast, the probability is that he would have understood nothing at all; but in his long voyages he had been thrown with men of other parts of Italy and had picked up a smattering of what Neapolitans call Italian, to distinguish it from their own speech. Even as it was, the most part of what they said escaped him, because they seemed to think so very differently from him about simple matters, and to be so heartily amused at what seemed ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... of culture, [says Mr. Arnold], make its motive curiosity; sometimes, indeed, they make its motive mere exclusiveness and vanity. The culture which is supposed to plume itself on a smattering of Greek and Latin is a culture which is begotten by nothing so intellectual as curiosity; it is valued either out of sheer vanity and ignorance, or else as an engine of social and class distinction, ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... number—have experienced few of those restrictions which hedge about the lives of most people. All cannot be great linguists any more than all can be great inventors, and it were just as valuable and reasonable an expenditure of time to teach a child to be one as the other. Of what benefit is a smattering of foreign language, except to make people ridiculous? and that class is already sufficiently large; far better that they learned to speak and spell their mother tongue with a commendable degree of accuracy, or that they learn to train future families in consonance with the laws of nature, and ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... here omit the particular Whim of an Impudent Libertine, that had a little Smattering of Heraldry; and observing how the Genealogies of great Families were often drawn up in the Shape of Trees, had taken a Fancy to dispose of his own illegitimate Issue in a Figure ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... him to the conveyer room. There was something odd about the list of time line designations. They were expressed numerically, in First Level notation; extremely short groups of symbols capable of exact expression of almost inconceivably enormous numbers. Vall had only a general-education smattering of mathematics—enough to qualify him for the chair of Higher Mathematics at any university on, say, the Fourth Level Europo-American Sector—and he could not identify the peculiarity, but he could recognize that there existed some sort of pattern. Shoving in the starting lever, ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... worthy forerunners of Jehan Frollo in the romance of "Notre Dame de Paris." Villon tells us himself that he was among the truants, but we hardly needed his avowal. The burlesque erudition in which he sometimes indulged implies no more than the merest smattering of knowledge; whereas his acquaintance with blackguard haunts and industries could only have been acquired by early and consistent impiety and idleness. He passed his degrees, it is true; but some of us who have been to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I do not," said Florence. "I know French fairly well for a girl of my age, and I have a smattering of German, and am fairly fond of music. I don't care for English History nor English Literature, and I have not studied either of them; and my grammar is very weak, and my spelling—well, Aunt Susan, I can't spell properly. I am sorry, but I inherit bad ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... to a very select young ladies' school, where only the daughters of the first families ever entered. What or how they were taught, her aunt never inquired. She felt quite sure that the lady principal would resent, as indeed she ought, any such inquiry. Hence Maimie came to have a smattering of the English poets, could talk in conversation-book French, and could dash off most of the notes of a few waltzes and marches from the best composers, her piece de resistance, however, being "La Priere d'une Vierge." She carried with her from ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... this round world of ours—tossing it up, catching it again—easily as a child plays with its party-coloured ball. His mere book-knowledge was not much to boast of, though early in life he must have received a fair education. He had a smattering of the ancient classics, sufficient, perhaps, to startle the unlearned. If he had not read them, he had read about them; and at various odds and ends of his life he had picked up acquaintance with the popular standard modern writers. But literature ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... task, one that in the United States of America, with its cosmopolitan population, and its multitude of people with a smattering only of education or culture but with economic ability to gratify their undeveloped tastes, is more vast and more pressing than any nation has yet tried to accomplish. While we are working at it we may well comfort ourselves by remembering that each generation has ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... scum of their countries, careless of Italian sights and deeds, thinking only of torturing for hidden treasure, or swilling southern wines; and they returned to Spain and to Germany, to persecutions of Moriscos and plundering of abbeys, as savage and as dull as they had arrived. A smattering of Italian literature, art, and manners was carried back to Spain and Germany by Spanish and German princes and governors, to be transmitted to a few courtiers and humanists; but the imagination of the ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... of all sorts of Utopian ideas, of impracticable theories, and notions absolutely without method. His studies had been too desultory to amount to anything. He had mastered a few Latin phrases, and covered his real ignorance by a smattering of the science of medicine as practised among the Indians and the Chinese. He even had a strong leaning toward the magic arts, and when a human life was intrusted to his care he took that opportunity to try some experiments. Madame Moronval ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... affairs as SORTIES and surprises I'm more wary at, And when I know precisely what is meant by Commissariat, When I have learnt what progress has been made in modern gunnery, When I know more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery, In short, when I've a smattering of elementary strategy, You'll say a better Major-GenerAL has never SAT a gee - For my military knowledge, though I'm plucky and adventury, Has only been brought down to the beginning of the century. But still in learning vegetable, animal, and mineral, ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... greatest admiration for the moral and social idealism which is advocated. I agree that the atheological moral idea is superior to the mere performance of religious ceremonial. But I cannot admire the reasoning or the intelligence of those who use a smattering of science as evidence of the decay of religion. There is something almost comical in the solemnity with which they contrast the commonplaces of scientific observation with the vast mysteries of religion, to the detriment of the latter. "These marvellous researches of the ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... lyre and awoke a louder and loftier strain on the splendour of its proportions and symmetry—"heaps of room here to swing a cat"—and her rapture and inspiration swelled as she turned herself to the smattering price charged for it. On this theme she chanted long and lovingly and a hundred coloured, senescent imageries leaped from ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... Johnson said, with some illiberality, of our brethren across the Tweed, that though "every man may have a mouthful, no one has a belly full;" but it still marks a degree of national refinement, that any attention whatever is bestowed upon such subjects. This smattering of knowledge, accompanied with the constant readiness to communicate it, is also agreeable to a stranger. Except in a few instances at Rouen, I never failed to find civility and attention among the French. To the ladies of our nation they are uniformly polite though ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... creations on which later critics delight to dwell—Farinata lifting his haughty and tranquil brow from his couch of everlasting fire—the lion-like repose of Sordello—or the light which shone from the celestial smile of Beatrice. They extolled their great poet for his smattering of ancient literature and history; for his logic and his divinity; for his absurd physics, and his most absurd metaphysics; for everything but that in which he pre-eminently excelled. Like the fool in the story, who ruined his dwelling by digging for gold, which, as he had dreamed, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to certain ladies (I did not mention men, since they have a smattering of the science), will still seem an untruth. The writer has taken care here to give the mute reasons for this strange antipathy; I mean the distastes of Bertha, because I love the ladies above all things, knowing that for want of the pleasure of love, my face would grow old and my heart torment ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... indirectly by creating new interests, and as an intellectual stimulus. There seems to have been little or no method about her early education. The study of her own language was neglected, and the time spent less profitably, she considered in acquiring a smattering of Latin with Deschartres. She took to some studies with avidity, while others remained wholly distasteful to her. For mere head-work she cared little. Arithmetic she detested; versification, no less. Her imagination rebelled ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas |
