"Unpractised" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the darkest corner of the music-room with her guitar, striking the bass strings, and trying to make an accompaniment to an air from an opera that she and Prince Andre had once heard together at St. Petersburg. The uncertain chords which her unpractised fingers sketched out would have struck the least experienced ear as wanting in harmony and musical accuracy, while to her excited imagination they brought a whole train of memories. Leaning against the wall and half hidden by a cabinet, with her eyes ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... content to talk onward without saying anything. My speech was not more than two or three inches long; and, considering that I did not know a soul there, except the Mayor himself, and that I am wholly unpractised in all sorts of oratory, and that I had nothing to say, it was quite successful. I hardly thought it was in me, but, being once started, I felt no embarrassment, and went through it as coolly as if I were going to ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... made me glance apprehensively towards Sergeant Wilkins. "Yes," grumbled that gruff personage, shoving a decanter of Port towards me, "it is your turn next"; and seeing in my face, I suppose, the consternation of a wholly unpractised orator, he kindly added,—"It is nothing. A mere acknowledgment will answer the purpose. The less you say, the better they will like it." That being the case, I suggested that perhaps they would like it best, if I said nothing at all. But the Sergeant shook his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... which have no significance for the mere outsider are pregnant with meaning to him. He can determine with absolute certainty whether the mischief has been done by skilled or unskilled hands, and he can gather up and link together evidences which entirely escape the unpractised eye. He rejects nothing as unimportant until he has tested it, and is able to conduct his search in a systematic manner, which in the majority of cases ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... nearer the woods with a stunted growth of brush and small dwarf birches. Gold Creek itself spread out to nearly twice its former width, with innumerable little sandbars and a few boulders protruding from the bottom. Even Jack's unpractised eye could see that the current had no depth ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... directing the eyes to some other thing, a card may be laid on the lap, thrust into the sleeve, taken from the pocket, and God knows what else. Now who can say in such a case whether the sensory glance or the intellectual apprehension was unskilful or unpractised? According to some authorities the chief source of error is the senses, but whether something must not be attributed to that mysterious, inexplicable moment in which sensory perception becomes intellectual perception, ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... drift-wood warns the most unpractised eye of the direction which a current takes, so the light, ephemeral brochures of any epoch give a plain hint of the tendency of its thought. The librarian and historian know the value of newspapers and pamphlets, for in them ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... genius and instinct of the investigator which in such men as Faraday close hand to hand with phenomena. His weapons and instruments wanted precision; they were powerful up to a certain point, but they had the clumsiness of an unpractised time. Cowley compared him to Moses on Pisgah surveying the promised land; it was but a distant survey, and Newton was the Joshua who began to ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... commencement of a new system of plunder, and that too by a system of plunder not characterised by the straightforward course which bold offenders followed, but marked with that timidity, that want of dexterity, which led to the failure of the unpractised shoplifter. He believed that government was committing great injustice, and would yet fail in its aim; that the country was against this injustice, and that Ireland after it had been perpetrated would not be more tranquil; and therefore he ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... me to say that you are. But your imagination is unpractised, and asks to be fed with a spoon. We English are more imaginative than ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... low price, are specially used for clinical purposes. Both instruments give the percentage of the haemoglobin of normal blood which the blood examined contains, and are sufficiently exact in their results for practical purposes and for relative values; although errors up to 10% and over occur with unpractised observers. (Cp. K. H. Mayer.) Quite recently Biernacki has raised the objection to the colorimetric methods of the quantitative estimation of haemoglobin, that the depth of colour of the blood is dependent ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... quoits with horse-shoes. They had come up from Brattleboro to try a case, which had suffered the usual "law's delay" of a continuance, and were whiling away the hours in the bucolic sport of their ancestors, while the idle villagers enjoyed their unpractised awkwardness. They all boasted how they could ring the peg ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... geological scale naturally divides into three great parts. There are many lesser divisions,—divisions into systems, formations, deposits, beds, strata; but the master divisions, in each of which we find a type of life so unlike that of the others, that even the unpractised eye can detect the difference, are simply three,—the Palaeozoic, or oldest fossiliferous division; the Secondary, or middle fossiliferous division; and the Tertiary, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... ends wi' a kiss and a smile— Wae 's me! can I tak' it amiss? My laddie 's unpractised in guile, He 's free aye to daut and to kiss! Ye lasses wha lo'e to torment Your wooers wi' fause scorn and strife, Play your pranks—I hae gi'en my consent, And this nicht I 'm ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... singly and together, to make trial of their valour and learn what fortune can effect, it will always happen, that at all times, and whether circumstances be adverse or favourable, they will remain of unaltered courage and preserve the same noble bearing. But when its citizens are unpractised in arms, and trust not to their own valour but wholly to the arbitration of Fortune, they will change their temper as she changes, and offer always the same example of behaviour as was ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... for the unpractised eye to read inscriptions on brasses, owing to the contractions and omissions of letters. Thus m and n are often omitted, and a line is placed over the adjoining letter to indicate the omission. Thus aia stands for anima, legu for legum. The letter r is also left out. Z stands ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... to mail a letter, and none of them for receiving one. Unpractised in writing, his epistolary compositions were crude in the extreme, being wholly confined to bald statements of fact. Had he been as tender on paper as he was in his words and accents when he kissed away her tears at parting, her regard for him would have had fuel to feed on and might have ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... of the ironstone boulders, made a rude temporary cross out of a spare waggon-pole, working quite methodically with saw and hammer and nails, and set it up, under the curious eyes he hated so, and wedged it fast and sure. Then he knelt down stiffly, and made, with rusty, long unpractised fingers, the sacred sign upon his face and breast. He heard her still, asking him in that nearly extinguished voice of hers, to ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... partly for the sake of concealing their enormity, by diverting the eye from observing the awful proportions of then individual offences, and partly to acquire encouragement and support in the commission of yet unpractised crimes. Hence "one sinner destroyeth much good." According to his capacity or opportunity he becomes the centre of a large circle of impious association, he sways inferior minds, and forms them into so many satellites round his person, who individually acquire a ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... painted fish upon the sign-board, and a hostess in a high hat and a stiff-bustled dress at the door. Then there were small wood-cuts which one might have framed for a doll's house; portraits of fish of all kinds, not easily distinguishable by the unpractised eye; and nicer wood-cuts still of country scenes, and country towns, and almost all of these with a river in them. By the time that my father and mother returned, I had come to the conclusion that the bank of a river was, of all situations, the most desirable for one's home, and had built ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... to the sun. De Quincey[50] incidentally mentions this characteristic in narrating a conversation which occurred while he was at Carnarvon, a little town in Wales. "It was on this occasion," he says, "that I learned how vague are the ideas of number in unpractised minds. 'What number of people do you think,' I said to an elderly person, 'will be assembled this day at Carnarvon?' 'What number?' rejoined the person addressed; 'what number? Well, really, now, I should reckon—perhaps a matter of four million.' ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant
... nearer route to Netley had been discovered during my absence, and our unpractised Americans had done little else than admire ruins for the past week. The European who comes to America plunges into the virgin forest with wonder and delight; while the American who goes to Europe finds his greatest ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... time, had been anticipated long before by satirists. But even the logical fribble, even the logical jargonist, was bound to be exact. Now exactness was the very thing which languages, mostly young in actual age, and in all cases what we may call uneducated, unpractised in literary exercises, wanted most of all. And it was impossible that they should have better teachers in it than the few famous, and even than most of the numerous unknown or almost unknown, philosophers of the ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... so in so many words, we may reasonably conclude that athletic sports were not unpractised by Cain and Abel prior to the death of ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... advantage or preeminence to the perfect and excellent motions of the spirit. That to draw a straight line or to make a circle perfect round by aim of hand only, there must be a great difference between an unsteady and unpractised hand and a steady and practised, but to do it by rule or compass it ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... moment, General, for as Master of the Palace it will be your duty to receive certain guests to-day of whom I wish to speak with you. Bide you also, Martina, that you may remember my words in case this unpractised officer ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... visited together the chief objects of interest in the capital of Piedmont. The churches we saw of course. And though we had been carried blindfolded across the Alps, and set down in the cathedral of Turin, the statuary alone would have told us that we were in Italy. The most unpractised eye could see at once the difference betwixt these statues and those of the Transalpine churches. The Italian sculptors seemed to possess some secret by which they could make the marble live. Some half-dozen of priests, with red copes (I ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... accomplish it? To one unpractised in actual deeds of wickedness, it was a question not easy to be answered, and a thousand frightful forms of evil, stalking shapes of death came and went before her imagination, and she clutched first at one, then at another ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... 1637, "Christopher Beeston, His Majesty's servant, by petition to the Board, showed that he hath many young actors lying unpractised by reason of the restraint occasioned by infection of the plague, whereby they are much disabled to perform their service, and besought that they might have leave to practise. It was ordered that Beeston should be at liberty to practise his actors at Michaelmas next [September 29], if there ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... above, made the huddled women shudder in face of the desperate fear that a fire upon the sea always awakens. But it had to be borne in inaction, for to move about in this furious pitching and swaying was utterly impossible to the unpractised. ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... a stranger, as yet, to my soul; I, still, am unpractised to varnish the truth: Then, why should I live in a hateful controul? Why waste, upon folly, the days of ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... round of festivities common to an Indian Hill season had passed her by; and she was content to have it so. Between her canvas and her unpractised needle, between the companionship of Michael, and of the Desmonds—while they were 'up'—her days had gone softly, yet pleasantly and profitably in more respects than one. For it is in the pauses between times of activity and stress that the ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... having entertain'd the least previous Design or Thought for that Purpose: No Art used to inflame him, no Coquetry practised to tempt or intice him, and no Prudery or Affectation to tamper with his Passions; but, on the contrary, artless and unpractised in the Wiles of the World, all her Endeavours, and even all her Wishes, tended only to render herself as un-amiable as she could in his Eyes: Tho' at the same time she is so far from having any Aversion to his ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... scholar was not enough for Fra Bartolommeo's new energies. He pined for his old friend, Mariotto, who could follow out his designs in his own style so closely, that an unpractised eye could not see the difference of hand; and such was his influence on the rulers of the order, that they allowed a most unique partnership to ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... jacket and indifferent shoes. He noted too the assumption of ease and suavity with which the other was entertaining a little knot of ladies. It was this person, then, an out-and-out man of the world, against whom he, uncouth and unpractised boy, had presumed ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... entrance of the State House, and Wetherell followed Mr. Duncan in, to have a look at the woodchuck session himself. Several members hurried by and up the stairs, some of them in their Sunday black; and the lobby above seemed, even to the storekeeper's unpractised eye, a trifle active for a woodchuck session. Mr. Duncan muttered something, and quickened his gait a little on the steps that led to the gallery. This place was almost empty. They went down to the rail, and the railroad president cast ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... on the simple and unpractised offspring of the Puritans, its impression both of good and evil. The inhabitants of the country, while they derived, from the intercourse, a portion of that bland and graceful courtesy for which the gentry of the southern British ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... inferior interest, except what results from a less felicitous choice of situation! 'Roxana.' 'Singleton,' 'Moll Flanders,' 'Colonel Jack,' are all genuine offspring of the same father. They bear the veritable impress of De Foe. An unpractised midwife that would not swear to the nose, lip, forehead, and eye of every one of them! They are in their way as full of incident, and some of them every bit as romantic; only they want the uninhabited island, and the charm that has bewitched the world, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... Marsh, "of a surety He must have ate and drank Himself!—Nay," continued he, seeing the priest turn pale with rage and vexation, "I can find none other alternative. For, unlearned and unpractised as I am; the absurdity of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... for the reason that the colours changed too much to please him; nevertheless, there may be seen over the Church of Murello a Pieta with two little naked Angels by his hand, executed passing well. Finally, after having lived like a man of good judgment and one not unpractised in the ways of the world, he fell sick of a most violent fever at the age of sixty, in the year 1552, ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... others of our rival's service. I saw at once it would be difficult to have access to Hamilton. He was lying on a stretcher within talking range of the table and had one arm in a sling. Now, I hold it is harder for the unpractised man to play the spy with everything in his favor, than for the adept to act that role against the impossible. One is without the art that foils detection. The other can defy detection. So I stood inside with my hand on the door lest the click of the closing latch should rouse attention, but ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... timid and unpractised in public speaking. But indignation gave him eloquence. He rose with a pale face and said in ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... hide, that the broadsides of the Yankee had done the hull no damage to speak of. The superstructure, however, was completely shattered; the masts and rigging hung like sweeps over the sides; and, to the unpractised eye, the ship was a complete wreck. A few days, however, sufficed to put everything to rights again so far as regards external appearance; but how this impromptu carpentry would stand a storm ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... fearing that I had not understood, he winked still broader; then, moving his back toward his two companions, he directed full upon me a wink so vast and expressive that I endeavored at once to signify my enlightenment by replying in kind; but, unpractised as I was in the art, I could only infer what the unlovely aspect of my features must have been from the look of sorrowful disgust which immediately ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... but Mrs. Lapham had her doubts whether it would not be a servile imitation to say "Dear Mrs. Corey" in return; and she was tormented as to the proper phrasing throughout and the precise temperature which she should impart to her politeness. She wrote an unpractised, uncharacteristic round hand, the same in which she used to set the children's copies at school, and she subscribed herself, after some hesitation between her husband's given name and her own, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... a materialized thought-form—that is, an artificial elemental created by the energy with which a man thinks of himself as present at that particular spot. These varieties would be easily distinguishable one from the other by any one accustomed to use astral vision, but an unpractised person would be quite likely to ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... the State-physician, or legislator, must get rid of them, just as the bee-master keeps the drones out of the hive. Now in a democracy, too, there are drones, but they are more numerous and more dangerous than in the oligarchy; there they are inert and unpractised, here they are full of life and animation; and the keener sort speak and act, while the others buzz about the bema and prevent their opponents from being heard. And there is another class in democratic States, of respectable, thriving individuals, ...
— The Republic • Plato
... saved, where stall I appear? How do my vain thoughts, and unprofitable conversation, swell heaven's register? Where is my watchfulness! Where are my humility, purity, and hatred of sin? Where is my zeal? Alas! alas! they are things unpractised, unfelt, almost unknown to me. How little do I share in the toils, the labours, or the sorrows of the righteous, and consequently how little do I participate in their confidence, their joys, their ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... so this time. The master was a fencer, and something of a boxer; he had played at singlestick, and was used to watching an adversary's eye and coming down on him without any of those premonitory symptoms by which unpractised persons show long ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... billows, rose alone, By one high peak scarce master of the waves, Parting the crest of waters from the stars. There, to avenge his mother, from her home Chased by the angered goddess while as yet She bore him quick within her, Paean came (When Themis ruled the tripods and the spot) (8) And with unpractised darts the Python slew. But when he saw how from the yawning cave A godlike knowledge breathed, and all the air Was full of voices murmured from the depths, He took the shrine and filled the deep recess; ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... the letter. Inside was an ordinary sheet of paper written over in a bold, firm, yet slightly unpractised writing that she knew well enough, and the sight of which filled her with a presentiment of evil. It ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... yet their hearts were hardly with the cause. Both had long been loyal, and had earned many laurels against the rebels, while Champagny was still devoutly a Papist, and wavered painfully between his hatred to heresy and to Spain. Egmont and De Heze were raw, unpractised lads, in whom genius did not come to supply the place of experience. The Commander, De Goignies, was a veteran, but a veteran who had never gained much glory, and the chiefs of the cavalry, infantry, and artillery, were absent at the Brussels wedding. The news of this additional massacre ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... theatres are therefore in a position to select the men who are to represent the spirit and dignity of German music. Perhaps those who have been thus advanced to posts of honour, are themselves cognizant of how they got there—to an unpractised observer it is rather difficult to discern their particular merits. The so-called "good berths" are reached step by step: men move on and push upwards. I believe the Court orchestra at Berlin has got the majority of its conductors in this way. Now and then, however, things ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... sisters, end with Zeus, When ye would sing the sovereign of the skies: But first among mankind rank Ptolemy; First, last, and midmost; being past compare. Those mighty ones of old, half men half gods, Wrought deeds that shine in many a subtle strain; I, no unpractised minstrel, sing but him; Divinest ears disdain not minstrelsy. But as a woodman sees green Ida rise Pine above pine, and ponders which to fell First of those myriads; even so I pause Where to begin the chapter of his praise: For thousand ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... movement that followed he had presence of mind enough to seize a chair next to Kathleen. He saw Falstaff's burly figure enter, habited as the conventional "black beetle" of the church, and in the sharpened state of his wits noticed that the unpractised curate had put on his clerical collar the wrong way round. He rejoiced in Carter's look of dismay on finding his fellow-Scorpion already on ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... the members of Mr. Morris's family. He was literally her only friend at the North. Through his influence she had been brought into the Quaker religion, and encouraged to leave her mother and native land. She was entirely unpractised in the ways of the world, and was besides in very narrow circumstances, her only available income being the interest on $10,000, the sum left by Judge Grimke to each of his children. The estate had not yet been settled up. Add to all this the virtue ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... five of our modern time, the noon of the following day fell at 'half-past eighteen o'clock' by the mediaeval clocks. In summer, it might fall as early as three quarters past fifteen; and this manner of reckoning time was common in Rome thirty-five years ago, and is not wholly unpractised in some ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... speech, the negro, with a not unpractised hand, and conscious doubtless of the persuasion there was in the sound and sparkle of the beverage, especially to one not yet dismounted from a long ride on the desert, filled the cups, and held them up ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... savage religions of Supreme Beings, as in Australia, among the Bushmen, the Andamanese, and so on. I therefore suggest that in an advanced polytheism, such as that of Polynesia, the evil sacrificial rites unpractised by low savages come to be attached to the worship even of the Supreme Being. Ghosts and ghost-gods demanded food, and food was therefore also ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... She had gravely heard the words as "a brown dress," and she silently bore the poet a grudge for having been the accessory of Providence in the mandate that she should wear the loathed corduroy. The unpractised ear played another little girl a like turn. She had a phrase for snubbing any anecdote that sounded improbable. "That," she said more or less after Sterne, ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... indefinable dread with which, despite their feline beauty, her eyes always affected him, Jenner Brading listened in silence to the story told by Irene Marlowe. In deference to the reader's possible prejudice against the artless method of an unpractised historian the author ventures to substitute ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... the old man began, so nervously, that Balbus put in a gentle "Hear, hear!" while Hugh drummed on the table with his fists. This disconcerted the unpractised orator. "Sister—" he began again, then paused a moment, moved the bag to the other side, and went on with a rush, "I mean—this being—a critical occasion—more or less—being the year when one of my sons comes of age—" he paused again in some confusion, ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... but her teacher hurried her along, holding her by the hand and checking her when they came to any obstacle which the girl's unpractised eyes might not have seen in time. To the older woman it was all as familiar as her own sitting-room, for her life had been spent in the midst of it; to Margaret it was all strange, and awe-inspiring, and a little frightening. It was to be her own life, too, before long. In a few months, or ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... for a War the Parliament would squeeze, And fix to the revenue such a sum Should Goodricke silence and make Paston dumb. ... Meantime through all the yards their orders were To lay the ships up, cease the keels begun. The timber rots, the useless axe does rust, The unpractised saw lies buried in the dust, The busy hammer sleeps, the ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... pursued him, when his government had expired, with a list of grievances of the usual kind. Young Caesar took up their cause, and prosecuted him. Dolabella was a favorite of the Senate; he had been allowed a triumph for his services, and the aristocracy adopted his cause as their own. The unpractised orator was opposed at the trial by his kinsman Aurelius Cotta and the most celebrated pleaders in Rome. To have crossed swords with such opponents was a dangerous honor for him; success against them was not to be expected, and Caesar was not yet master of his ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... hear more. Music was no mere accomplishment to her, but a simple necessity of life; and this man possessed that rare gift of touch, which no master in the world can impart, because it is a produce neither of hand nor brain, but of the player's individual soul. Desmond's fingers were unpractised, but he gave every note its true value; and he played slowly, as though composing each chord as it came, or building it up from memory. It was almost as if he were thinking aloud; and Honor had just decided that she really had ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... said Bob Stephens. "In France and Italy, the greatest national festivals pass off without fatal accident, or danger to any one. The fact is, in our country we have not learned how to be amused. Amusement has been made of so small account in our philosophy of life, that we are raw and unpractised in being amused. Our diversions, compared with those of the politer nations of Europe, are coarse and savage,—and consist mainly in making disagreeable noises and disturbing the peace of the community by rude uproar. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... beginning to the end of "Hester," there is one unerring indication of an uncultivated mind and an unpractised pen. This is the writer's fondness for well-worn phrases, which authors of a severer taste have long discarded as suited only to the newspapers, but which Mr. Beckett has picked up with eager delight, and, having ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... no choice in it—read that,' said Paula, handing Havill's letter, as if she felt that Providence had stepped in to shape ends that she was too undecided or unpractised ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... commanded by an experienced general, and accustomed to vanquish the barbarians on the frozen Danube. [32] They quitted, with a sigh, the pleasures of the baths and theatres, to put on arms, whose use they had almost forgotten, and beneath the weight of which they were oppressed. The unpractised elephants, whose uncouth appearance, it was hoped, would strike terror into the army of the north, threw their unskilful riders; and the awkward evolutions of the marines, drawn from the fleet of Misenum, were an object of ridicule to the populace; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... with a graceful modesty, that she would wish herself a thousand times more fair, and ten thousand times more rich, to be more worthy of him; and then the accomplished Portia prettily dispraised herself, and said she was an unlessoned girl, unschooled, unpractised, yet not so old but that she could learn, and that she would commit her gentle spirit to be directed and governed by him in all things; and she said: 'Myself and what is mine, to you and yours is now converted. But yesterday, Bassanio, I was the lady of this fair mansion, queen of myself, and mistress ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... An unpractised writer is generally anxious to bespeak public attention, and to solicit public indulgence. Except on professional subjects, military men are, perhaps, too fearful of critical censure. For the present ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench
... to her, but between excitement and his usual odd penmanship Tom's epistle was quite a puzzle to unpractised eyes, and Elsie ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... changes of opinion take place in consequence of experience, but that those changes are from variation of opinion to unity of opinion; and that whatever may be the differences of estimate among unpractised or uncultivated tastes, there will be unity of taste among the experienced. And that therefore the operation of repeated trial and experience is to arrive at principles of preference in some sort common to all, and which are ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... kind of ode 'to the Daisy,'—very flat, feeble, and affected; and in a diction as artificial, and as much encumbered with heavy expletives, as the theme of an unpractised schoolboy. The two following stanzas will serve ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... affected horror that the queen here displayed. Though at a subsequent period of her life, if history speaks true, her imagination had grown familiar with deeds of this very nature, and she had become skilful in the art of poisoning, she was at this time young, and unpractised in crime, and received its first suggestions with the horror which it naturally inspires. She had sought for pleasure only in the society of Glinski; it was a cruel disappointment, it was a frightful surprise, to find herself thrust ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... confidence in your own steadiness, which so much disdained my fears that the change of your residence might produce a change in your sentiments, is still as unshaken as when we parted in Suffolk? Or whether experience, that foe to unpractised refinement, has already taught you the ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... likely indeed, that, for a short period, while his gills were decrepit, and his lungs infantile, he might have breathed air and water alternately and at will. Now, however, his gills were, for all practical purposes, useless; his lungs, ready but unpractised. The necessity of air-breathing was forced on him ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... and constant asistance from the practised to the unpractised hand, and Graeme omitted none of the necessary precautions. Whereby Margaret's throbbing hand was much in his,—so, indeed, was Miss Penny's, but that was quite another matter,—and every convulsive grip of the little hand, ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... Views the young ruffians who around him dance; And, by the sadness in his face, appears To trace the progress of their future years: Through what strange course of misery, vice, deceit, Must wildly wander each unpractised cheat! What shame and grief, what punishment and pain, Sport of fierce passions, must each child sustain— Ere they like him approach their latter end, Without a hope, a comfort, or ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... circles doth about her wind, Hoping now here, now there, to spy some trace: But nought in the beginning can he find, With whatsoever care he sifts the case. For she, as not unpractised in that kind, Denies, and fronts him with untroubled face; And, as well taught, above a month stands out, Holding the judge 'twixt certainty ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... discord, the quick ear of the Virginian, now painfully on the stretch, caught the same sound that had first attracted his attention. It was exactly at the angle of the roof, and only a pace or two from him. The peculiar noise was not to be mistaken even by an unpractised ear. It was, evidently, that of a knife, not very sharp, cautiously cutting through a tough and ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... approaching danger. Notwithstanding the fatal effects of the bite of these serpents, the Indian jugglers are not deterred from capturing and taming them for exhibition, which they do with singular adroitness, and with fearful interest to the unpractised observer. They carry the reptiles from house to house in a small round basket, from which they issue at the sound of a sort of flute, and execute certain movements in ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... between reason and experience is maintained in all our deliberations concerning the conduct of life; while the experienced statesman, general, physician, or merchant is trusted and followed; and the unpractised novice, with whatever natural talents endowed, neglected and despised. Though it be allowed, that reason may form very plausible conjectures with regard to the consequences of such a particular conduct in such particular circumstances; it is still supposed imperfect, without the ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... more surprising to one who crosses a country inhabited by savages than the few marks of their presence which strike the eye, or at least an unpractised eye. The little plot of ground the Kafirs have cultivated is in a few years scarcely distinguishable from the untouched surface of the surrounding land, while the mud-built hut quickly disappears under the summer rains and the scarcely less destructive ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... nowhere, but designed by this holy stone poet to the glory of God. The pierced tympanum has a quatrefoil for the four cardinal virtues, or a trefoil for faith, hope, and charity. Compared with the lovely Angel Choir which flowered seventy years later, under our great King Edward, it may look all unpractised, austere; but Hugh built with sweet care, and sense, and honesty, never rioting in the disordered emotion of lovely form which owed no obedience to the spirit, and which expressed with great elaboration—almost nothing. He may ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... some object ahead. "Courage, courage, friends! God will find us a way to escape," he cried out, at length. "An opening appears in the reef; yes, yes, the boat is heading in for it." As he spoke, I observed a dark spot in the wall of foam which an unpractised eye would not have discovered. As we rushed on towards the breakers, it increased in width till I felt assured that it was indeed an opening, and now beyond it appeared the tops of palm, pandanus, and other trees ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... handwriting perfectly legible; from the difference of the character at the period in question, and owing to the abbreviations, somewhat difficult to decipher; not so much so, however, but that even an unpractised person, with sufficient time and leisure, might make them out without much difficulty. Visitors are relieved from the labor of the experiment; and fair copies, made in a clear round hand, are placed, each copy side by side with the original, and all are ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... may justly quarrel with such unlooked-for difficulties, the important question, after all, is not of their obscurity but of their truth. Many things in all the sciences are obscure to an unpractised understanding, which are true enough and clear enough to people acquainted with the subjects, and may be fairly laid as foundations of a scientific system, although rudimentary students must be contented to accept ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... subject still fresh in my own and every pitying memory, it is natural that, after having made up my mind to assent to its publication, in which much time and thought has been expended in considering the responsibility of so doing, from so unpractised a pen, I should feel an increase of ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... bloated features. He was abrupt in his language, had an exalted opinion of his merits and capacity, was always the hero of his own story; and, although he subsequently proved to be a man of generous feelings, to my unpractised optics he looked more like a bully than ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... imagine. I must repeat, that it cannot be acquired without persevering practice. The best time to set vigorously about such practice would be when you have but just listened with dismay to the injuries inflicted on some favourite poet by the laboured or tasteless reading of an unpractised performer. ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... occult language, almost unintelligible to the unpractised ear of the disciple. Indeed, the old man delighted in the mystic phrases and symbolical jargon in which the writers that have treated of alchymy have wrapped their communications; rendering them ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... eat buns. I was never, from a kitten, fond of such things. I got very hungry. Again and again the mice rushed through the straw, and I, heavily, helplessly, in my unpractised way, rushed after them. At first the elephant laughed heartily at my inexpertness; but when he saw how hungry and wretched I was, ...
— Pussy and Doggy Tales • Edith Nesbit
... work, this speechifying, especially to an unpractised orator. I never conceived till now what toil the temperance lecturers undergo for my sake; hereafter they shall have the business to themselves.—Do, some kind Christian, pump a stroke or two, just to wet my whistle.—Thank you, sir!—My dear hearers, when the world shall ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... by her to Charles XI. of Sweden. Denmark was to obtain Holstein and Sleswick. But Denmark and Poland very soon withdrew, and left Russia to encounter Sweden single-handed. To this she was entirely unequal; her army, the bulk of it undisciplined, and even the disciplined part unpractised in the field, was no match for the veteran troops of Sweden, the terror of Germany. In the battle of Narva, a town on the river which runs out of the Peipus Lake, fought November 30, 1700, 9,000 Swedes defeated signally near forty ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... friends. But if you think of Cooper as a helpless victim you are sadly mistaken. There is an elaborate scheme behind it all, a scheme of such transcendent ingenuity as only simple-hearted, sweet-natured, unpractised, purblind visionaries like Cooper ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... and confusions which delighted the eye by their quaintness, and in a measure reasonableness, in this rare old market-town, were metropolitan novelties to the unpractised eyes of Elizabeth-Jane, fresh from netting fish-seines in a seaside cottage. Very little inquiry was necessary to guide her footsteps. Henchard's house was one of the best, faced with dull red-and-grey old brick. The front door was open, and, as in other houses, she could see ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... which the voice of my country called me, being sufficient to awaken in the wisest and most experienced of her citizens a distrustful scrutiny into his qualifications, could not but overwhelm with despondence, one, who, inheriting inferior endowments from nature, and unpractised in the duties of civil administration, ought to be peculiarly conscious of his own deficiencies. In this conflict of emotions, all I dare aver is, that it has been my faithful study to collect my duty from a just ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... takes training to spend money, and Kedzie was now unpractised. Her wisher was so undeveloped that she could only wish for things available to people of moderate affluence. She could not wish for a yacht, because Jim had a yacht. She could not wish for a balloon because she would not go up in it. She could wish ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... force to sever or unite, And trained alike to vanquish or endure. Nor skilful less, cheap conquest to ensure, Discord to breathe, and jealousy to sow, To quell by boasting, and by bribes to lure; While nought against them bring the unpractised foe, Save hearts for Freedom's cause, and hands for ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... eternal new romances could save the lords, the ladies, and the dependents from ennui. But to supply these in a style of proper and antique dignity was beyond the power of the poets. In the wild forests of the mind they could rarely capture a mature idea, and they were as yet unpractised artists. Yet contemplative leisure called eagerly for constant titbits of romance to tickle the palate and furnish a diversion, while the genius of Christian poetry was yet in infantile weakness. The dilemma lasted but a moment, and was solved ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... wielded it were untrained to its use. There the election of a majority of the trustees of the public money is controlled by the most ignorant and vicious of a population which has come to us from abroad, wholly unpractised in self-government and incapable of assimilation by American habits and methods. But the finances of our towns, where the native tradition is still dominant and whose affairs are discussed and settled in a public assembly ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... his untidy, noisy home, he entered the house, and standing by his son's bedside gazed curiously at him. The boy was evidently growing worse each minute, as even the unpractised eye of the miner could see. He was tossing in a high fever, calling constantly for the water which in her ignorance his mother would not give him, nor did he appear to recognize any of those who ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... customs should not sleep When merry Christmas revelries we keep. He loves old ways, old faces, and old friends, Nor to new-fangled fancies condescends; Besides, we need your kindly hearts to move Our faults to pardon and our freaks approve, For this our sport has been in haste begun, Unpractised actors and impromptu fun; So on our own deserts we dare not stand, But beg the favour that we can't command. Most flat would fall our "cranks and wanton wiles," Reft of your favouring "nods and wreathed smiles," As some tame landscape desolately bare Is charmed by sunshine into seeming fair; So, ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... reached them. About thirty persons were captured, chiefly women and children. After the slight resistance which was made by the Indians had ceased, captain Logan's men were both annoyed and endangered by some arrows, shot among them by an invisible but not unpractised hand. After considerable search, in the tall grass around the camp, an Indian youth was discovered, who with his bow and a quiver of arrows, had concealed himself in a position from which he could successfully ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... of the prisoners? Fifteen of them, including La Saussaye and the Jesuit Masse, were turned adrift in an open boat, at the mercy of the wilderness and the sea. Nearly all were lands-men; but while their unpractised hands were struggling with the oars, they were joined among the islands by the fugitive pilot and his boat's crew. Worn and half starved, the united bands made their perilous way eastward, stopping from time ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... important thing about the salutation is that it should never be omitted. To begin to speak without having first recognized some presiding officer and the audience stamps one immediately as thoughtless, unpractised, or worse still—discourteous. ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... previous disposition, and such that they were in a position to meet in superiority the combined forces of Brest and Ferrol," and for that reason, he explained, he had given up the game as lost. But to Napoleon's unpractised eye it was impossible to see what it was he had to deal with. Measuring the elasticity of the British naval distribution by the comparatively cumbrous and restricted mobility of armies, he saw it as a rash and unwarlike dispersal. Its looseness seemed to indicate so ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... no time for Nelly to go to church on that Sunday, at any rate. She could not get through her work with her comparatively unpractised hands, and it was with a very weary body and mind that she read her evening verse, and repeated her favourite hymn, "I lay my sins on Jesus," as a sort of substitute for her usual Sunday school lessons, and then lay down to think of the kind friends ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... is not so much the sentiments and images that are new as the modulation of the verses in which they float. The cold obstruction of two centuries' thaws, and the stream of speech, once more let loose, seeks out its old windings, or overflows musically in unpractised channels. The service which Spenser did to our literature by this exquisite sense of harmony is incalculable. His fine ear, abhorrent of barbarous dissonance, his dainty tongue that loves to prolong ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... consists altogether in the possession of mental qualities, USEFUL or AGREEABLE to the PERSON HIMSELF or to OTHERS. It might be expected that this principle would have occurred even to the first rude, unpractised enquirers concerning morals, and been received from its own evidence, without any argument or disputation. Whatever is valuable in any kind, so naturally classes itself under the division of USEFUL or AGREEABLE, the UTILE or the DULCE, that it is not ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... spake not.—'Wherefore dost thou smile At what I say? Laon, I am not weak, 1010 And, though my cheek might become pale the while, With thee, if thou desirest, will I seek Through their array of banded slaves to wreak Ruin upon the tyrants. I had thought It was more hard to turn my unpractised cheek 1015 To scorn and shame, and this beloved spot And thee, O dearest friend, to leave and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... bramble so near together that the area covered by the buzzing sound measured about two hundred yards across. This most singular sound (for a warbler to make) is certainly not ventriloquial, although if one comes to it with the sense of hearing disorganized by town noises or unpractised, one is at a loss to determine the exact spot it comes from, or even to know from which side it comes. While emitting its prolonged sound the bird is so absorbed in its own performance that it is not easily alarmed, ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... he stooped down to pat the dog. Mrs. Lynch looked at her son—youngest of her five. Not the hardness of her heart but the hardness of her life had made her unpractised in moments of tenderness. Something in the way Stubby was patting the dog suggested to her that Stubby was a "queer one." He was kind of little to be carrying papers ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... extinguished in infancy. At this epoch any disease is formidable, and must be met most promptly. It is either sudden and active in its assaults, or comes with slow and insidious approach. The first signs of its coming on are not always visible to an unpractised eye: it may have made dangerous advances before the mother's mind is awakened to its presence; and medical aid may be solicited when remedies and advice are no longer ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... hand; the power of an unblemished heart and a brave spirit is shewn, in the events of war, not only among unpractised citizens and peasants; but among troops in the most perfect discipline. Large bodies of the British army have been several times broken—that is, technically vanquished—in Egypt, and elsewhere. Yet they, who were conquered as formal soldiers, stood their ground ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... magniloquently, as was his wont; and yet his declamations always flowed with such a graceful ease,—a simple, smiling earnestness,—an unpractised melody of voice, that what would have been rant from other lips, from his showed only as the healthy enthusiasm of the ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... two side by side, and whilst you feel that a total change has been effected, you shall not always easily assign the secret of the change wrought. There then comes into view, it must be owned, something like an unpractised awkwardness in the gait of the great elder bard, which you less willingly believe, or to which you shut your eyes, when you have him by himself to yourself. The step of Dryden is rapid, and has perfect decision. He knows, with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... the city bells when he reached home. When he entered the kitchen, a strange scene met his view. His master was propped up by pillows, and evidently suffering painfully from his breathing, and over his pinched features had crept that grey shadow which even the unpractised eye can discern and comprehend. The young doctor stood sympathetically by, conscious that he had given his last aid and must stand aside. Gladys knelt by the bed with folded hands, her golden head bowed in deep and ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... all others; by Human or Poetic Truth, that which may be said to exist exclusively in and for the mind, and as contradistinguished from the truth of things in the natural or external world; by Invention, any unpractised mode of presenting a subject, whether by the combination of entire objects already known, or by the union and modification of known but fragmentary parts into new and consistent forms; and, lastly, by Unity, such an agreement and interdependence ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... At this time, no unpractised eyes would have detected any change in him. But, as the minutes of the new morning wore away, the swiftly-subtle progress of the influence began to show itself more plainly. The sublime intoxication of opium gleamed in his eyes; the dew of a stealthy perspiration began to glisten on his face. ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... left smoking on the wharf, consisted of the military commandant, or governor, of St. Blas, Don Gaspar de Luna, Don Diego Pinto, the commander of a guarda-costa of eighteen guns, that lay in the offing, and which, to the most unpractised eye, bore about the same resemblance to an English or American man of war of the same class, as an old, worn-out jackass does to a handsome, high spirited, well groomed race-horse. The rest of the group ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... than two thousand. Some were grazing, some gambolled, whisking their white tails into the air, while all round the old bulls stood upon hillocks sniffing suspiciously at the breeze. There, in front, a hundred yards away, though to the unpractised eye they looked much closer, because of the dazzling clearness of the atmosphere, was a great herd of springbok trekking along in single file. Ah, they have come to the waggon-track and do not like the look of it. What will they do?—go back? Not a bit of it. It is nearly ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... me? canst thou go from me, To woo the fair that love the gaudy day? Yet, e'en among those joys, thou'lt find that she, Who dwells in darkness, loves thee more than they. For these poor hands, and these unpractised eyes, And this poor heart ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... Brahmanas shaking their deer-skins raised a loud clamour. And while some were displeased, there were others that were well-pleased. And some there were, possessed of intelligence and foresight, who addressing one another said, 'Ye Brahmanas, how can a Brahmana stripling unpractised in arms and weak in strength, string that bow which such celebrated Kshatriyas as Salya and others endued with might and accomplished in the science and practice of arms could not? If he doth not achieve ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... the three-hundredth parts of a second were indicated by it. It was a kind of watch, with a pin for stopping one of the hands. I proposed that we should each endeavour to stop it twenty times in succession, at the same point. We were both equally unpractised, and our first endeavours showed that we could not be confident of the twentieth part of a second. In fact, both the time occupied in causing the extremities of the fingers to obey the volition, as well as the time employed in compressing the flesh before the fingers ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... the net result? To an unpractised eye, if no indication of the source of these hymns had been given, could anything about them have suggested their source? To the unpractised eye, nothing. But no one who knows the Greek Offices will travel far before he overtakes well-known landmarks. This is just as it should ...
— Hymns from the East - Being Centos and Suggestions from the Office Books of the - Holy Eastern Church • John Brownlie |
