"Ken" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sheep are almost like fine ladies in their ways: they have megrims, it appears. I found one the other day lying on the hill more or less dead to the world, and I went a mile or two out of my way to tell the shepherd. All he said was, 'I ken that yowe. She aye comes ower dwamy in an east wind.' ... But tell me, Jean, how is Miss Reston ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... the Mortimers, even when the contract was matter of policy. Would I have taken my sweet Isabel to abide her royal scorn, it might be incredulity of our marriage? Though for that matter it is more unimpeachable than her own! Nay, nay, out of ken and out of reach was our only security from our kin on either side, unless we desired that my head should follow my hand as a dainty dish for ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rumor of applause from contemporary mankind. Concerning which we are to give some indications, were it only dates in their order: though, as the affair turned out not to be completed, but had to be taken up again long after, and is an affair lying wide of British ken,—there need not, and indeed cannot, be much said of it just now. SECONDLY, there is eager Furthering of the Husbandries, the Commerces, Practical Arts,—especially at present, that of Foreign Commerce, and Shipping from the Port ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... laughed a trifle at this commentary upon the botanical Latin nomenclature, and once more he was leaning from his saddle, peering down the aisles of the forest with a smiling, expectant interest, as if they held for him some enchantment of which duller mortals have no ken. A brown geode, picked up in the channel of a summer-dried stream, showed an interior of sparkling quartz crystal, when a blow had shattered it, which Hite had never suspected, often as he had seen the rugged spherical stones lying along the banks. All the rocks ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... the redoubtable Ben. "'E said I was to give you this an' tell you, 'Life an' death!'" As he spoke he held out a roll of paper tied about the middle with a boot lace; which done, the round head grinned, nodded, and disappeared from my ken. Unwinding the boot lace, I spread out the paper and read the ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... Christianity, for "it is suicidal to make one part of an organic system the instrument for attacking the other part." It is the beauty and torment of Protestantism that it leads to something ever beyond its ken, finally landing its adherent in a pious skepticism. Under the solvent of self-criticism {735} German religion and philosophy have dropped, one by one, all supernaturalism and comforting private hopes and have ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... "Ony man," he announced darkly, "that's so licht in his heid that he doesna ken ony better than to liken the land o' Burns to a few miles o' barren stones, is no a fit person to expound ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... strive to enter without delay. Full soon was the sail spread and the anchor of the barque weighed. Those on land, who were sore at heart for the lads whom they see departing, follow them with their eyes' ken as far as they can; and so that they may watch them the better and the further, they go off and climb together a high peak by the shore. Thence they watch their sorrow as far as they can see them. They gaze at their own sorrow in sooth; for great is their sorrow for the lads: may God lead ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... Helen, soft Helen, is it indeed in thee that the wild and brilliant "lord of wantonness and ease" is to find the regeneration of his life, the rebaptism of his soul? Of what avail thy meek prudent household virtues to one whom Fortune screens from rough trial; whose sorrows lie remote from thy ken; whose spirit, erratic and perturbed, now rising, now falling, needs a vision more subtle than thine to pursue, and a strength that can sustain the reason, when it droops, on the wings of enthusiasm ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... become indispensable to her progress. She takes in at one view the indefinitely great and the indefinitely little. The mutual revolutions of the stellar multitude during tracts of time which seem to lengthen out to eternity as the mind attempts to traverse them, she does not admit to be beyond her ken; nor is she indifferent to the constitution of the minutest atom of matter that thrills the ether into light. How she entered upon this vastly expanded inheritance, and how, so far, she has dealt with it, is attempted to be set ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... Mildred, with prophetic ken, Saw in the long and rainy day The dreaded host of friendly men And friendly women, kept away, And time for love, and book, ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... far north, and the shape of Scotland has little resemblance to the original.[2] He realised that there were lands to the south of Africa, to the east of Africa, and to the north of Europe, all stretching far away beyond his ken. He agrees with Pliny about the four islands in the neighbourhood of Scandinavia, and draws the Volga correctly, He realises, too, that the Caspian is an inland sea, and unconnected with the ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... feel I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific—and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon a peak ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... the worl' ken you do, Cove Mills, ole an' puny as you is, an' got the rheumatiz all the ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... in—bushels of bones gnawed as by wild beasts, and here and there a grinning skull that looked like a hyaena's! Do we not see how this bears on our coming argument? Such a deposit was very unlikely to be found there in the eyes of the unenlightened: but very likely to the wise man's ken. The real probabilities were in favour of a strange fact, though the seeming probabilities were ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... S., I've no tangible charge to make against Carter, save that his influence has been consistently bad for Jimsy since the first day he limped into our ken. Consistently and—persistently bad, T. S. You know—since we're not dealing in persiflage this morning—that Carter is quite madly, crazily, desperately in love ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... same crankiness as the horse, and always runs better toward night (this is curious, but it is a fact), which a horse seldom does. All the same an automobile is like David Balfour's Scotch advocate: hard at times to ken rightly—most of the time, one may say without undue exaggeration. Often an automobile is as fickle as a stage fairy, or appears to be, but it may be that only your own blind stupidity accounts for the lack ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... the Craddock ladies, Rufus appalled me by offering me for the third time since my arrival at Elmnest roasted ribs of the hog, muffins and coffee. Only my training in the social customs of a world beyond the ken of Rufus kept me from exclaiming with protest, but I came to myself to discover that Matthew was devouring huge slabs of the roasted bones and half a dozen batches of the corn bread in a manner ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... jewels of Lady Diana, would accept the dignity and social obligations that hedge a peer's daughter, even on a voyage to South Africa. On arrival at the Cape, each to assume her identity and disappear from the ken of their fellow-travellers: April to be swallowed up by a Cape suburb, where she was engaged to teach music and French to the four daughters of a rich wine-grower; Diana to proceed to her destination—the farm of an eccentric woman painter, ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... His favorite epithet for it is "dogmatic." "Surely," he cries, "the boasted enlightenment of this century will never tolerate the gross ignorance and arrogant self-conceit which presumes to dogmatise as to things confessedly beyond its ken." Quite so; but that is what the theologians are perpetually doing. To use Matthew Arnold's happy expression, they talk familiarly about God as though he were a man living in the next street. The Atheist and the Agnostic confess their inability ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... their purchases of freshly ground Mocha-and-Java coffee and chocolate. The tea they had been warned against by the Marquise d'Ochte. "Never get tea from a French shop or let a French person make it for you. Tea is beyond the ken of the French." ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... Dueidar Trench, and that we were required to keep an eye on them. The 6th H.L.I. were already across and the Argylls, followed by the 7th and ourselves, again negotiated Kurd Valley, getting slightly mixed up with a battalion of the 74th Division on the way. The 7th and Argylls now vanished from our ken, being used to support the shattered remnants of the 155th Brigade, who succeeded at dusk in getting a footing on Outpost Hill only to be counter-attacked and driven out in the dark. We came to anchor in a big hollow, peaceful ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... arm and shouted in her ear. She might have been dead for all the impression that I could make. Her body was there on the velvet chair. Her organs were acting—her heart, her lungs. But her soul! It had slipped from beyond our ken. Whither had it gone? What power had dispossessed it? ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... he is our kimmander, There's the bos'n and all the ship's crew, There's the married men as well as the single, Ken-ows what we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... have given way long ere this. Ye have need to pray yet for succour; we are aye in a mickle mess, shortened in our hands, with work for twenty men, it is not to be expected as nature 'll stand it out. The men are fairly done, and, but for that likely Smart, I ken we should be in a far worse state. I am thinking, leddies, a spell at the pump will no harm you, and gie us a better chance of our lives, while the men get a bit snack. Another six hours will make or mar ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... problems and tragedies of the world deeply. He grieved for his friends, he helped the distresses he saw, but his imagination rested closely in the concrete. He was incapable of weltschmerz; even for things just beyond his personal ken he had little vision or fancy. His treatment of the perpetual problem of sex-temptations and lapses is a good example: he never seems to be conscious of the tragedy they envelop. To him they are always good jokes, to wink over or smile at ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... we have come by divers ways To keep this merry tryst, But few of us have kept within The Narrow Way, I wist; For we are those whose ampler wits And hearts have proved our curse— Foredoomed to ken the better things And aye to ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... and she has rather forgotten hersel in speaking to my Leddy, that canna weel bide to be contradickit, (as I ken nobody likes it, if ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... then, at about the hour of ten on a stuffy autumn night, in the crowded bar of that Wapping public-house, these two made a compact; and of its outcome and of the next appearance of Cohen, the Jewish-American cracksman, within the ken of man, I ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... 'Ye ken,' he said, pausing temporarily and looking at Selwyn, 'yon should be rendered wi' proper deegnity.' With which explanatory comment he finished the last six notes, and solemnly replaced the chart on the ledge behind him, as if it were a ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... dock and all through the journey to London the Russian had his hands full with Ajax. Each new face of the thousands that came within the anthropoid's ken must be carefully scrutinized, much to the horror of many of his victims; but at last, failing, apparently, to discover whom he sought, the great ape relapsed into morbid indifference, only occasionally evincing interest ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... ever. Sometimes she cried because of Kenneth, in her room at night, and Ella braced her with kindly, unsympathetic, well-meant, uncomprehending remarks, and made very light of his weakness; but Emily walked her own room nervously, raging at Ken for being such a beast, and Mama for being such ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... keen. A voice called her through it, and she answered the long-drawn "Maggie" with three cheerful words, "I'm coming, Davie." Very soon Davie loomed through the fog, and throwing a plaid about her, said, "What for did you go near the boat, Maggie? When you ken where ill luck is, you should ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... old Fraser's house duenna—I will still call him Fraser, you see—the other is the mystery of Delhi. Popularly supposed to be the old boy's daughter, and his sole heiress, Miss Nadine," concluded the young aid-de-camp. "The old curmudgeon keeps her judiciously veiled from mortal ken. No man but General Willoughby has ever exchanged a word with her. The dear old boy—his memory does not go back beyond his last B. and S.—he can't even sketch her beauty in words. And she is as hazy, even to the Madam-General—our ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... Carlotta still. I gently opened the window and pushed back the shutters. A young woman, tall, with a superb bust, clothed in blue, was sweeping the footpath in long, dignified strokes of a broom. She went slowly from my ken. Nothing could have been more prosaic, more sane, more astringent. And yet only a few hours—and it had been night, strange, voluptuous night! And even now a thousand thousand pillows were warm and crushed under their burden of unconscious dreaming ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... I've telt ye, I'm booked to ship wi' the black,—'sheik' I've heerd them ca' him. Well: from what I ha'e seed and heerd, there's nae doot they're gaein' to separate an' tak different roads. I did na ken muckle o' what they sayed, but I could mak oot two words I hae often heerd while cruisin' in the Gulf o' Guinea. They are the names o' two great toons, a lang way up the kintry,—Timbuctoo and Sockatoo. They are negro toons; an' for that reezun I ha'e a suspeshun my master's bound to one or ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... sump'n gwine ter happen. See dese bosses yere; see ole Brune dar. He darsn't stay in de ken'l an' he darsn't stay out. Heah how oder dogs is howlin. Dey is sump'n gwine ter—O good ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... from whom Sir Walter Scott derived many of the traditionary stories and anecdotes wrought up in his novels, taxed him one day with the authorship, which he, as usual, stoutly denied. "What!" exclaimed the old lady, "d'ye think I dinna ken my ain groats among ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... waning fortunes of the Confederacy as did Hector those of Troy. Last scene of all, at his surrender, his greatness and dignity made of his adversary but a humble accessory; and if departed intelligences be permitted to take ken of the affairs of this world, the soul of Light Horse Harry rejoices that his own eulogy of Washington, "First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen," is now, by the united voice of the South, applied to his ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... out at the door, she hit the gilly a bilf on the back, saying it was a ne'er-do-weel trade he had ta'en up, and that he wasna blate to wile awa' her customers, crying after him, "I redde ye warn your madam that gin she sends you here again, I'll maybe let his Grace ken that her cauldron needs clouting." However, the graceless gilly but laughed at the vintner's wife, winking as he patted the side of his nose with his fore-finger, which testified that he held her vows of vengeance in very little reverence; ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... third-story front room of the house of the shrine dwelt a Scotch artist named MacGuilp, who was a grand amateur of these pipes, and who declared that no sound in the world was so sweet to his ear as the bagpipes: they recalled the heather, haggis, and the Lothians, and the mountain dew, ye ken, and all ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... The seasons range the country roads, But here in London streets I ken No such helpmates, only men; And these are not in plight to bear, If they would, another's care. They have enough as 'tis: I see In many an eye that measures me The mortal sickness of a mind Too unhappy to be kind. Undone with misery, all they can Is to hate their fellow man; ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... that," cried the girl, with a deeper blush, and a saucy toss of her head. "It is a fine country, but it's no' Scotland, ye ken, as my Aunt would say. My! but ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... may be genuinely a process of redemption. Lying on his back on the board there he may be performing a function incalculably higher than any that prosperous canine life admits of; and yet, of the whole performance, this function is the one portion that must remain absolutely beyond his ken. ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... and storm-trappings were gone; his feet, in carpet slippers, rested on a hassock; while he lay back in the big leather chair smoking dreamily, his eyes wide open, absorbed, non-seeing—or, if they saw, seeing things beyond the reeling cabin walls and beyond my ken. I have developed an immense respect for Captain West, though now I know him less than the little I thought ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... Nancy Dawson, honey? The wife who sells the barley, honey? She won't get up to feed her swine, And do ye ken ...
— The Real Mother Goose • (Illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright)
... the boys had a good start, and plunged into narrow ways where horses could not follow; and doubling, twisting, following paths but recently beaten by Anastacio in pursuit of deer, Roldan and Adan were soon far beyond the reach or ken of the men of war. It was an hour, however, before they thought it wise to arrest their flight and pause to recuperate in a redwood tree hollowed by fire. Two weeks of exposure and unwonted exertions had hardened Adan's superfluous flesh, and he was scarcely more spent than his clean-limbed friend, ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... "Why, Ken," said Walter, more quietly, "here's a history of my life: Greek grammar, lines, detention, caning—caning, detention, lines, Greek grammar. I'm sick of it; I can't and I ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... just like himself. Seeing Mr. Carew, he crossed the way, came up to him, and in the cant language, asked where he lay last night, what road he was going, and several other questions; then, whether he would brush into a boozing-ken and be his thrums; to this he consented, and away they went; where, in the course of their conversation, they asked each other various questions concerning the country, the charitable and uncharitable families, the moderate and severe justices, ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... from vulgar ken, Shall the pure gushing of her soul rejoice, And we stand silent, as to hear the voice Of waters falling ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... lyrically) for this sort of thing, now, had she? She had to come to New York to seek her fortune, not to—to—whatever it was that Michael Daragh wanted her to do. And yet, she was always being drawn, willynilly, into any woe within her ken. Herself a contained creature of radiant health and placid nerves with a positively masculine aversion to scenes and applied emotion of any sort, people were always coming and confiding in her. ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... yet the thin braided-leather bridle with its hair frontlet band and its mighty bit; nor again the great spurs with jingling rowel bells. This rider's mount and trappings spoke the far and new Southwest, just then coming into our national ken. ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... but only intimated to the servant that an old acquaintance desired to see Mr. Thomson. Mr. Thomson came forward to receive him, and looking stedfastly at him (for they had not seen one another for many years) said, Troth Sir, I cannot say I ken your countenance well—Let me therefore crave your name. Which the gentleman no sooner mentioned but the tears gushed from Mr. Thomson's eyes. He could only reply, good God! are you the son of my dear friend, my old benefactor; ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... white blaze of her realization. From the instant that she had looked up into Jean Isbel's dark face she had loved him. Only she had not known. She bowed now, and bent, and humbly quivered under the mastery of something beyond her ken. Thought clung to the beginnings of her romance—to the three times she had seen him. Every look, every word, every act of his returned to her now in the light of the truth. Love at first sight! He had sworn it, bitterly, eloquently, ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... major role in the development of at least one design, tool, or game used by or known to more than half of the hacker community. To qualify as a genuine demigod, the person must recognizably identify with the hacker community and have helped shape it. Major demigods include Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie (co-inventors of {{UNIX}} and {C}) and Richard M. Stallman (inventor of {EMACS}). In their hearts of hearts, most hackers dream of someday becoming demigods themselves, and more than one major software project has been driven to completion by ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... their earlier power is to be merged in the more gratifying system,of deportation and the guillotine. Being now hors de combat myself, I resign to others these cares. A long attack of rheumatism has greatly enfeebled me, and warns me, that they will not very long be within my ken. But you may have to meet the trial, and in the focus of its fury. God send you a safe deliverance, a happy issue out of all afflictions, personal and public, with long life, long health, and friends as sincerely attached, as ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... I ever know a man as was cussed, I ken say I did, onct. He was a powerful mean man—a nigger-driver down in Tennessee. He was orful to swear, and cruel to the niggers, an' his wife besides. One day she died an' left a mite of a baby; an' he was so mad he swore he 'wouldn't bury her; ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... this about it, Monkbarnsand what profit have I for telling ye a lie?l just ken this about it, that about twenty years syne, I, and a wheen hallenshakers like mysell, and the mason-lads that built the lang dike that gaes down the loaning, and twa or three herds maybe, just set to wark, and built this bit thing ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... Bancroft! I'll jest learn all they know—pianner and all. I ken, and I will. I'll begin right now. You'll see!" And her blue eyes flashed with the glitter of steel, while her chin was thrown up in defiant vanity ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... glanced up and laughed, and he realized with a singular sense of loneliness that she knew many things which were beyond his ken. Some one touched his arm, and a ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... transaction took place in the little town of Clinton, Hickman co. Ken. The circumstances are briefly as follows: A special canvass for a representative from the county of Hickman, had for some time been in progress. A gentleman by the name of Binford was a candidate. The State Senator from the district, Judge James, took some exceptions ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... however, it had got so dark that he could see some of them only a part at a time, and every now and then, as the company wandered on, he would be startled by some extraordinary limb or feature, undreamed of by him before, thrusting itself out of the darkness into the range of his ken. Probably there were some of his old acquaintances among them, although such had been the conditions of semi-darkness, in which alone he had ever seen any of them, that it was not like he would be able to ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... XIXth century, the son of an extensive coal-proprietor was examining with a friend the pits of another proprietor, and finding a collier whose speech resembled that of the colliers of his own district, he inquired where he came from. 'Oh!' exclaimed the man with surprise, 'd'ye no' ken me? Do ye no' ken that your faither sell't ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... said McNish, a little sullenly. "A dinna ken—I don't know saws of this sort. I'm a joiner. He put me off ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... views of death father Huddleston was brought to administer the popish sacraments of the host and extreme unction, absolution and the eucharist. The host sticking in his throat, water was brought instead of wine to wash it down. Afterward bishop Ken came and pronounced another absolution upon him; and here observe, that he who was justly excommunicated by a lawful minister of the church of Scotland for his gross perjury, contempt of God and religion, lechery, treachery, covenant ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... gentle nature, not many years older than himself. The boy had stood his friend in more than one difficulty, and Richard heartily loved him. But he had suddenly disappeared from the school, and so from Richard's ken: for years he had not seen him. One evening, as he was carrying home a book, he met this Arthur Manson, looking worn and sad. He would have avoided Richard, but he stopped him, and presently the old friendship was dominant. Arthur told him his story. He had had to leave school ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... the life of Alexander Gordon, of Earlstoun in Galloway. Earlstoun is a bonny place, sitting above the waterside of the Ken in the fair strath of the Glenkens, in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright. The grey tower stands ruinous and empty to-day, but once it was a pleasant dwelling, and dear to the hearts of those that had dwelt in it when they ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... Graeme!" said the old man, with his grizzled old face tuned to befitting concern. "Her leddyship's awa' to Inverstrife at a moment's notice. She had a tailegram late last night saying the little leddy—the Countess, ye ken—was very bad, and would she go at once. And she and Jannet were off by the first train this morning. They aye send for us, ye ken, when anything by-ordinar's to the fore. It's the little leddy's first, ye understand, and ye'll mind ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... o' ye, noo, Granny Whitemutch!" she said, speaking in the coaxing tones to which the Scots' language lends itself so easily, "an' it's just because I hae been sae lang at the blanket-washin', seein' till that hizzy Meg. An' ken ye what I saw!-ane o' the black dragoons in full retreat, grannie; but he left his camp equipage ahint him, as the sergeant said when—Ye ken the story, grannie. Ye maun hae been terrible bonny ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... infinite spirit. That is, we cannot understand Him fully. He is very close to us. The relationship is most intimate, and tender, yet His fulness is ever beyond our grasp and our ken. Man is infinite in that he knows that God is infinite. Only like can appreciate like. He can appreciate that he cannot appreciate God, except in part. He understands that he does not understand God save in smaller part. He knows enough ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... of an old Scotch servant meeting his master unexpectedly in Australia after many years' absence: "I was quite dung down donnerit when I saw the laird, I canna' conceit what dooned me—I was raal glad to see him, but I dinna ken hoo ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... pardon, Sirs—but I guess frae your manner that ye are no unacquainted wi' the movements o' high life—do you ken how lang the King means to prolong his abode amang our neebors owre the water, his hair-brain'd Irish subjects, whase notions o' loyalty hae excited sae mony preposterously antic exhibitions by that volatile ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... spake to those wood-dwellers: 'Ye are like to men, And I learn a lesson from ye With my spirit's ken. Like to us in low beginning, Children of the patient earth; Born, like us, to rise on high, Ever nearer to the sky, And, like us, by slow advances from the minute ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... interaction should always produce the same result; that this rigidly exact system of energizing should be found to present all the appearances of universality and of eternity, so that, e.g., the motion of the solar system in space is being determined by some causes beyond human ken, and that we are indebted to billions of cellular unions, each involving billions of separate causes, for our hereditary passage from an invertebrate ancestry,—that such things should be, would surely strike us as the most wonderful fact ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... to them, and this time the female peregrine or true falcon is sent on her way. Away she soars upwards, "waiting on and towering in her pride of place." Then the birds, lying like stones beneath her savage ken, are flushed by the dog, and the cruel peregrine, after selecting her bird, with her characteristic "swoop" brings it to the ground. If she is unsuccessful in her first attempt, she will tower again, and renew the attack. The riders have to gallop as fast as their nags can go, if they ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... enterprise, too, though they scarcely knew the nature of it or how much was at stake. That a human mind was tottering to its fall, and that Mistress Mary was engaged in preventing it, was beyond their ken. They could see certain details, however, for they were all one great family of little people, and it was no unaccustomed thing for them to watch a moral conquest, though they had no conception of ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... with which she was now concerned. Gray and morose with its poverty stricken notion of duty, the past lay behind her. Bright and smiling a new world floated into her ken. ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... waxed hot The wild king hearkened, hearing not, Through storm of spears and arrow-shot, For succour toward him from King Lot And all his host of sea-born men, Strong as the strong storm-baffling bird Whose cry round Orkney's headlands heard Is as the sea's own sovereign word That mocks our mortal ken. ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... two ships lay close together, the schooner riding jauntily astern. But not until morning illumined the world of waters did the Wolverine's people feel confident that the Laughing Lass would not vanish away from their ken like a ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... hae aneugh to do if I am to stand up for a' my friends' wives," said the old gentleman. "But, however, Archie, you are to blame: Leddy Maclaughlan is a very decent woman—at least, as far as I ken—though she is a little free in the gab; and out of respect to my auld friend Sir Sampson, it is my desire that you should remain here to receive him, and that you trait baith ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... the Scotchman as he watched him go. "Tom Pollard, man, I hinna prayed for years, but I am praying to-nicht. I ought to be a different man, for I ken the fundamentals of releegion, but I'm giving my heart to God ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... in Stafford; settled as a linen-draper, first in Fleet Street and then in Chancery Lane, London; married a lady, a grand-niece of Cranmer, and on her death a sister of Bishop Ken, by whom he had several children; he associated with some of the best clergymen of the Church of England, among the number Dr. Donne, and was much beloved by them; on the death of his second wife he went to Winchester and stayed with his ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... kam, wie ein reissender Strom mit sich fortris, wr es nur unter den Jungen geblieben, so htte es noch sein mgen; aber unglcklicherweise fanden auch Mnner Geschmack an dem artigen Spielchen, sprangen vom ihrem Weg ab und ritten mit Stok und Degen und Amtsperken unter den Knaben einher. Freilich erreichte keiner seinen Meister, den sie sehr bald aus dem Gesicht verloren, und nun die possirlichsten Sprnge von der Welt machen und doch bildet sich jeder der Affen ein, er reite so ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... requiring tickets. We were ushered into a dingy little office, where we found the only occupant was a cat! Our conductor was extremely ignorant, and unable to supply us with any information, his answer to every question being, 'I dinna ken,' ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... the regions where he is less at home than in his ordinary style. Take, for instance, a passage from 'Rob Roy,' where our dear friend, the Bailie, Nicol Jarvie, is taken prisoner by Rob Roy's amiable wife, and appeals to her feelings of kinship. '"I dinna ken," said the undaunted Bailie, "if the kindred has ever been weel redd out to you yet, cousin—but it's kenned, and can be proved. My mother, Elspeth Macfarlane (otherwise Macgregor), was the wife of my father, Denison Nicol Jarvie (peace be with ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... officials returned and reported, "We have found in the empire nor ruined site nor rotten brick," the Just King thanked his God and said, "Verily the affairs of the realm are best-conditioned and its ordinance is excellent and its populousness hath reached the pink of perfection." And ken thou, O King, continued Shahrazad, that these olden Kings strave not and toiled not for the peopling of their possessions, but because they knew that the more populous a country is, the more abundant ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... Great Seas where no ship goes, the silent sea of Coleridge and the Ancient One, the unplumbed, untracked, uncharted Dreadfulness, primordial, hushed, and we were as much alone as a grain of star-dust whirling in the empty space beyond Uranus and the ken ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... Burro Ken Ward in the Jungle The Young Pitcher The Young Lion Hunter Roping Lions in the Grand Canyon The Last of the Plainsmen The ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... you seen my bonny lad, And ken ye if he's weel, O! It's owre the land and owre the sea He's gyen to moor the ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... Wilson. From a depth seventy-two feet down in the earth photographs have been taken of new stars. On the first of these plates many new worlds—I believe sixteen—were discovered. On the second I think it was sixty new worlds which had come into our ken, and on the third plate there were estimated to be more than a hundred—several of them said to be twenty times the size of our sun. Some of them were so distant as to require eight years for their light to reach us, which inclines us to bow our heads whispering to ourselves, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... triangular fins above the water, and turtles of several species floated on the surface; while ospreys and other sea-birds flew above our heads, darting down ever and anon to pick up a luckless fish which came within their ken. As the breeze fell light, our skipper determined to obtain a supply of turtle to feed us and his crew, and to dispose of at the first port we might touch at. He had been a turtle-hunter from his youth, and knew their ways, he told us, as well as any man. There are four different ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... attempted surprise must have occasioned. Perhaps something of the stunned astonishment of his Oxford Street experiences may have returned to him, for he had evidently counted on Kemp's co-operation in his brutal dream of a terrorised world. At any rate he vanished from human ken about midday, and no living witness can tell what he did until about half-past two. It was a fortunate thing, perhaps, for humanity, but for him it was a ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... him they had crossed long before; but away beyond, in the solemn depths of the Kentucky wilderness, burned a camp-fire, whose faint smoke could be traced as it rose above the tree-tops. A careful study of the vapor led Deerfoot to suspect that it had served as a signal, but it was beyond his ken to determine its nature. ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... no dark secret in my Camille's life. If the little head held pictures beyond the ken of us simple women, the angels painted them of a certainty. Moreover, it is that I willingly recount this grief to the wise friend that ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... morning, the morning of the great St. Leger, it becomes apparent that there has been a great influx since yesterday, both of Lunatics and Keepers. The families of the tradesmen over the way are no longer within human ken; their places know them no more; ten, fifteen, and twenty guinea-lodgers fill them. At the pastry-cook's second-floor window, a Keeper is brushing Mr. Thurtell's hair—thinking it his own. In the wax- chandler's ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... bow-wow-wowed so fiercely, that he fairly took the lead in the discussion. Dr. Barclay eyed the hairy dialectician, and thinking it high time to close the debate, gave the animal a hearty push with his foot, and exclaimed in broad Scotch—"Lie still, ye brute; for I am sure ye ken just as little about it as ony o'them." We need hardly add, that this sally was followed by a hearty burst of laughter, in which even the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... any attempt on the part of the ruling powers to instill a different point of view with regard to these matters. On the contrary, there has been a determined effort to convince men that social changes were beyond their ken. The air of mystery has been blown away from natural phenomena, but it is encouraged and permitted to surround social changes. While it endures, an intelligent direction of social life is, of course, ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing
... there came both mist and snow, And it grew wondrous cold; And ice, mast high, came floating by, As green as emerald. And through the drifts and snowy clifts Did send a dismal sheen: Nor shape of men, nor beasts we ken— The ice was all between— The ice was here, the ice was there— The ice was all around: It crack'd and growl'd, and roar'd and howl'd, Like noises ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... Injines crawlin' around ob dis house dis very minute, 'cause I can hear dar knees and hands on de ground.' I couldn't make Big Mose keep quiet. Bimeby, he says, 'Cato, let's git up and be ready for 'em, for dey're comin'. I knows it, I ken feel it in my bones. Let's wake up Missis Mary and de niggers and fight 'em, for dey'll be here afore morning, sure.' Wal, dat nigger worrid me awful. I told him I wouldn't git up, but was going to sleep, and turned ober in bed, but I ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... been consumed, and the village worthies had, with considerable ceremony, taken leave, that the merchant again spoke to Arthur. 'I'll see ye the morn; I hae tell'd the sheyk we are frae the same parts. Maybe I can serve you, if ye ken what's for your guid, but I ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... countless ages of the past, or at the present hour in some foreign clime which is far away and beyond our ken, the perfected philosopher is or has been or hereafter shall be compelled by a superior power to have the charge of the State, we are ready to assert to the death, that this our constitution has been, and is—yea, and will be whenever the Muse ...
— The Republic • Plato
... only cease to suppose that all that happens to them happens solely for the attainment of their sheepish aims; they need only admit that what happens to them may also have purposes beyond their ken, and they will at once perceive a unity and coherence in what happened to the ram that was fattened. Even if they do not know for what purpose they are fattened, they will at least know that all that happened to the ram did not happen accidentally, and will no ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... intellect has not yet explored. Look, gentlemen! Does a week pass without the announcement of the discovery of a new comet in the sky, a new star in the heaven, twinkling dimly out of a yet farther distance, and only now becoming visible to human ken though existent for ever and ever? So let us hope divine truths may be shining, and regions of light and love extant, which Geneva glasses cannot yet perceive, and are beyond ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... some answering rhymester full of local names and things. There was no evening paper in those days, and had there been it was very unlikely it would have penetrated into all the common stairs and crowded tenements. But Allan's songs, of which Jean or Peggy would "ken the tune," and the stories that would delight the bairns, were better worth the penny than news from distant London, which was altogether foreign and unknown to ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... my father, "and all tramped down with game. I hear that Daniel Boone and others have gone into it and come back with marvellous tales. They tell me Boone was there alone three months. He's saething of a man. D'ye ken him?" ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... "I know," said Ken, nodding. "I've seen Beth shoot before, and she's our main reliance in this conspiracy. For my part, I can hit a mark sometimes, and sometimes I can't. See here." He exhibited a beautiful pearl and silver-mounted weapon ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... rolled the tide of sudden war. The booming guns pealed forth their dreadful knell; Musketry rattled; shouts, cries, groans, were heard; Men met as foes, and deadly strife ensued. From side to side the surging combat rolled, And as it rolled, passed from my ken. A silence! On the hill an alien flag Flies flaunting in the wind, mocking the gun. Dark forms pour o'er the heights, and Britain's day Broods dark. But hark! a ringing cheer peals up the height Once more the battle's tide bursts on my view. Brock to ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... would find ample compensation, in the rout of their most powerful foe, for the enforced rapidity of their retreat from Winchester. But to fight two battles in one day, to disappear completely from Fremont's ken, and to recross the rivers before he had time to seize the bridge, were manoeuvres of the utmost delicacy, and ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... she provided herself, therefore, with a strong escort, consisting of three Europeans and forty-seven Arabs, well armed. On the 29th of January, 1869, she set out from Tripoli, and on the 1st of March arrived at Sokna, in Fezzan. There she engaged the services of a Towareg chief, Ik-nu-ken, to whom she had been recommended, and agreed with him to attend her as far as Ghat; but at the last moment he was unable to fulfil his engagement, and Miss Tinne accepted the proffered assistance of two other chiefs, who professed to have been sent by him for that purpose; it is known, ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... bearing upon true, effective, heart-moving oratory. Though his spoken language is to us as a sealed book, his is a mobility of countenance that will translate into, and expound by, a language shared by universal humanity, diverse mental emotions; and assure, to the grasp of universal human ken, the import of those emotions; that will express, in turn, fervor, pathos, humor; that, to find its completest purpose of unerringly revealing each passion, alternately, and for the nonce, swaying the human breast, will traverse, as it were, and compass, ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... ken about that," she replied, lapsing into the speech of her girlhood. "But that doesna matter. Paul, I must see thy lass. You must find out when next she comes to Brunford, and I must see her. And you shall have her, too; whatever stands in ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... our Emmanuel, the Virgin's Child. This hatred is then in the very nature of things, for this is but another name for God. It is, like others of the deepest facts in the experience of man, fundamental and inevitable, the outcome of mysteries which lie beyond the ken ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... he said to himself, as he walked up the street toward home, "verra kin', but it's no' sic a care as the lad's ane mither s'ould ha' ower 'im, an' he awa' fra hame i' the darkness o' the nicht so. But she dinna ken, she dinna ken as he be her son. Coom a day when that's plain to her, an' she'd spare naught to save 'im fra the ghost ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... Secretary till he was convinced that there was sufficient evidence for their prosecution. It was not much to him that Caldigate should spend another week in prison. The condition of Hester did not even come beneath his ken. When he found allusion to it in the papers before him, he treated it as a matter which should not have been adduced,—in bringing which under his notice there had been something akin to contempt of court, as though an endeavour had been made to talk him over in private. He knew his ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... o' the art o' gerdening. Dinna ye ken that the founder o' the hail human race was a gerdener?-Hout awa, moil; speak o' it ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... and soon every officer and man in the old fortification was waiting breathlessly for information as to what intelligence regarding the movements of the enemy the two stern-looking men up on the wall were gathering into their brains through their glasses—intelligence far beyond the ken of the sentries, whose duty it was to keep strict watch upon the great circle which was formed ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... would she fain have had him go on. "Lack a day, good man!" she rejoined, fondling closer to her bosom the little suckling; "get ye the wee bairn and bring it hither, and I'll mak it t'uther twin-na body'll kno't! and da ye ken hoo ye may mak the bonny wife sik a body that nane but foxes wad ken her. Just mak her a brae young sailor, and the Maggy Bell 'll do the rest on't." Hardweather here interrupted Molly's suggestion which was, indeed, most fortunate, and albeit supplied the initiative to the strategy afterwards ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... tell of lore They taught him underground in shrines all dim, And of the live tame reptile gods that wore Gold anklets on their feet. And after him, With fairest eyes ere met of mortal ken, Glorious, forgiven, might ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... was the man who first brought the Caledonians within the ken of distinct history. He came to Britain in 78 A.D. His first campaign was on the Welsh border, his second in the territory of some outlying Brigantian tribes along the northern shores of the Solway. These were the Selgovae, who occupied what is now the county of Dumfries, ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... space with backward step I fell, my ken discern'd the form one of one, Whose voice seem'd faint through long disuse of speech. When him in that great desert I espied, "Have mercy on me!" cried I out aloud, "Spirit! or living ...
— The Vision of Hell, Part 1, Illustrated by Gustave Dore - The Inferno • Dante Alighieri, Translated By The Rev. H. F. Cary
... remarkable degree, but it was only in the Afghan War of 1880 that he had an opportunity of proving that he had rarer and more valuable gifts, the power of swift resolution and determined execution. At the crisis of the war he and his army disappeared entirely from the public ken only to emerge dramatically as victors at a point three hundred miles distant ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and fairly," exclaimed Tim, "'at Ay rammed an Eley's patent cartridge into 't single goon this morning; and yonder is 't i' t' birk tree, and Ay ken a load o' shot ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... old Bill. "But he's a-goin' to marry her. But I'll tell you both right here, she'll never set foot in my house, ner I in her'n. Sam ken keep her, but what on, I don't know. He gits right out of this here farm the day he marries her, and he don't come ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... spoke: "Oh, noble is the knotted oak, And sweet the gush of sylvan streams, And good the great sun's gladding beams, The blush of life upon the field, The silent might that mountains wield. Still more I love to mix with men, Meeting the kindly human ken; To feel the force of faithful friends— The thirst for ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... were full; and the coal-box—for it looked very like one—was full also, of loafers and luggage; so I despaired of quitting the Falls almost as much, by way of balance, as I rejoiced when they once again met my ken. ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... summons, and flew high into the air. Balaam, however, surpassed him, and took a path in the air on which Zaliah could not follow, and after the former had soared through five different layers of air, he had quite vanished from Zaliah's ken, who knew not what to do. Phinehas, however, came to his aid. By means of a magical invocation he dispelled the clouds that covered Balaam, and then Zaliah forced Balaam to descend to earth and appear before Phinehas. [854] He began to implore Phinehas to spare his life, ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... of this pretty child; for she was little more at the time. I wrote a letter of condolence and sympathy, which was at once answered by the aunt in very kind fashion; and since then I have seen nothing to remind me of Lily until this last year has brought her once more within my ken. I am only too thankful to realise that any influence so pure and beautiful as hers, may be around me sometimes in ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... McNeil, ye ken Now waits for me to come; He canna mak his Crowdy, Till t'watter it goes home. I canna tak him watter, And that I ken full weel, And so I'm sure to catch it,— For ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... pocket-money he would have taken a carriage for a long drive in the country, along by the farm-ditches shaded by beech and elm trees; but he had to think twice of the cost of a glass of beer or a postage-stamp, and such an indulgence was out of his ken. It suddenly struck him how hard it was for a man of past thirty to be reduced to ask his mother, with a blush, for a twenty-franc piece every now and then; and he muttered, as he scored the gravel with ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... died; and Lady Castlewood appointed Thomas Tusher to the vacant living; about the filling of which she had a thousand times fondly talked to Harry Esmond: how they never should part; how he should educate her boy; how to be a country clergyman, like saintly George Herbert or pious Dr. Ken, was the happiest and greatest lot in life; how (if he were obstinately bent on it, though, for her part, she owned rather to holding Queen Bess's opinion, that a bishop should have no wife, and if not a bishop why a clergyman?) she would find ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... ken and Hokkaido. Ken and fu are made up of the former sixty-six provinces. Sometimes the name of the ken and the name of the capital of the ken are the same: example, Shidzuoka-ken, ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... Masters" (in the progress of which the unexpected never happens), as well as by similar collections of the same kind. And the special connexion of this device with a company of pilgrims might, as has been well remarked, have been suggested to Chaucer by an English book certainly within his ken, the "Vision concerning Piers Plowman," where in the "fair field full of folk" are assembled among others "pilgrims and palmers who went forth on their way" to St. James of Compostella and to saints at Rome "with ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... library can rival the sublime and beautiful images that crowd the creased and folded labyrinth of the human brain; as far beyond the ken and analysis of the biologist's microscope, as some remote nebulae shining in blue gulfs of interstellar space, that no telescopic Jense can ever discover, even as a faint blur of silvery mist upon the black velvet vault that suns ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... ye, laddie, I ken fine what ye'ra ettlin' at, but yon's a braw leddy, no like thae English folk, but a woman o' understandin', an' mair by token I'm thinkin' she'll be gleg aneugh to ken a body that'll serve her weel, an' see to the guidin' o' thae feckless queens o' servant lasses, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a disappointment! While getting-out, I had made up my mind to track them home, and find out where they lived; and now, they might be beyond my ken for ever. ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... "You ken bet I'll not," said the matronly female, who stood half hidden in the humble doorway, from which Dr. Belford had just made his exit. "Lawks, doctor dear, I'll have an eye to him, jest as if he was my very own. ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... another way. A party of natives proceed to a lagoon, or lake of still water, each carrying in his hand a small net (ken-de-ran-ko) of a semi-oval shape, about twenty inches long, from seven to nine inches across, and from five to seven inches deep. This net is kept in shape by a thin hoop of wood running round it in the upper part. With this the native dives to the bottom, ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... this was the occasion on which my brother discovered a good many things in connection with the fair sex which had hitherto been beyond his ken; more especially that the mass of petticoats and clothes which envelop the female form were not, as he expressed it to me, "all solid woman," but that women were not in reality more substantially built than men, and had legs as much as he had—a ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... important transactions passing under her eye; but I lift the curtain from a larger picture. The distracted state amidst which the queen lived, the vexations, the secret sorrows, the agonies and the despair of Mary in the absence of William, nowhere appear in history! and as we see, escaped the ken of the Scotch bishop! They were reserved for the curiosity and instruction of posterity; and were found by Dalrymple, in the letters of Mary to her husband, in King William's cabinet. It will be well to place under the eye of the reader the suppressed ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... niggle, or mill a bowzing Ken, Or nip a boung that has but a win, Or dup the giger of a Gentry cores ken, To the quier cuffing we bing; And then to the quier Ken, to scowre the Cramp-ring, And then to the Trin'de on the chates, in the light-mans, The Bube &. Ruffian ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... has been regarded as more important than that of Neptune, the outermost known planet of the solar system. It was a rich reward to the watchers of the sky when this new planet swam into their ken. This discovery was hailed by astronomers as "the most conspicuous triumph of the theory of gravitation." Long after Copernicus even, the genius of philosophers was slow to grasp the full conception of a spherical earth and its relations with the heavenly bodies as presented by him. So it ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... the fancy seemed to be mutual. Diogenes, sick, was no longer an "imp of the devil", but a normal, appealing little child. It occurred to me that possibly the care of a sick Polydore might develop Silvia's tiny germ of child-ken. ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... arm's-length, that I might think of Shira Glen. Whatever they may say of me or mine, they can never deny but I had the right fond heart for my own countryside, and I have fought men for speaking of its pride and poverty—their ignorance, their folly!—for what did they ken of the Highland spirit? I would be lying in the lap of the night, and my Ferrara sword rolled in my plaid as a pillow for my head, fancying myself—all those long wars over, march, siege, and sack—riding on a good horse down the pass of ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... the Colleges. It, one suspects, must have had much to do with the evocation of what is called the Oxford spirit—that gentlest spirit, so lingering and searching, so dear to them who as youths were brought into ken of it, so exasperating to them who were not. Yes, certainly, it is this mild, miasmal air, not less than the grey beauty and gravity of the buildings, that has helped Oxford to produce, and foster eternally, ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... them talking there In an open boat, and the speech is fair. And the boy is learning the ways of men From the finest man in his youthful ken. Kings, to the youngster, cannot compare With the gentle father who's with him there. And the greatest mind of the human race Not for one minute could ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest
... come again. "I will name neither day nor hour. I have nothing to take me away. If I am not at the castle I shall be at this spot. Good-bye, Frank." He took her in his arms and kissed her,—of course as a brother; and then he clambered up, got on his pony, and rode away. "I dinna ken just what to mak' o' him," said Gowran to his wife. "May be he is her coosin; but coosins are nae that sib that a weedow is to be hailed aboot jist ane as though she were ony quean at a fair." From which it may be inferred that Mr. Gowran had watched the pair ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... thought in a public address that, as all mankind are brothers, the school should stand for the principle of universal brotherhood and universal goodwill to men. This expression of universalism was so obnoxious to the patriotic spirit of so large a number of the people of Kumamoto Ken, or Province, that the governor required the school to dismiss that teacher. There is to-day a strong party in Japan which makes "Japanism" their cry; they denounce all expressions of universal good-will as proofs of deficiency of patriotism. There are not wanting those who see ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... like a ray of the halo that rises up on the low horizon of the Libyan desert, when the dawn has crimsoned all the eastern heavens, might thus well be selected as the most suitable object to bring the invisible sun-god within the ken of human vision and the range of human worship. The poetical imagination may detect a significance even in the difference between the material used in the construction of the obelisk, and that used in the construction of the pyramid, ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan |
