"Second hand" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his distinguished contemporaries. As a writer he possessed a finished style, clear, measured, and stately, which carried his well-arranged narrative as on a full and steady stream; he was also cool and sagacious but, like Hume, he was apt to take his facts at second hand, and the vast additional material which has been in course of accumulation since his day has rendered the value of his work more and more literary, ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... made that enemy an abstract incarnation of his tenets. A man, too, who knows that he formed his opinions originally by a genuine and intellectual process is but little aware of the undue energy those ideas may obtain from the concurrence of those around. Persons who first acquired their ideas at second hand are more open to a knowledge of their own weakness, and better acquainted with the strange force which there is in the sympathy of others. The isolated mind, when it acts with the popular feeling, is apt to exaggerate that feeling for the most ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... his one outlook towards the universal in the person of George James Fox, and the Whig policy of 1802. I am under some disadvantage in telling this part of my story, because I was far away from home, and only knew afterwards at second hand what the course of events had been; but I learned them from one who was intimately concerned, and I do not think I can be mistaken on any essential point. I imagine that by this time Mrs. Butts must have become changed into what she was in later years. ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... stationed in them, shall we doubt of their usefulness to every nation? And while scarcely a year passes over our heads without bringing some new astronomical discovery to light, which we must fain receive at second hand from Europe, are we not cutting ourselves off from the means of returning light for light while we have neither observatory nor observer upon our half of the globe and the earth revolves in perpetual ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Quincy Adams • John Quincy Adams
... the northern part of Europe and Flanders, which had become wealthy and powerful by their own industry, and a participation of the trade to India with the Italians, (though at second hand,) were on the decline, ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... to wage, or the public must suffer through the employer of labour by being forced to pay higher prices. The staff of this particular establishment consisted of four men at the following wages: A foreman at 28s. and a second hand at 20s. a week, both of whom were outsiders; while, sleeping on the premises, and, at the time of my arrival, buried in the arms of Morpheus, were a third hand, at 16s., and a fourth, at 12s. Besides these wages ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... or three days I count on drawing them," replied Schaunard. "I do not conceal from you that on doing so I intend to give a free rein to some of my passions. There is, above all, at the second hand clothes shop close by a nankeen jacket and a hunting horn, that have for a long time caught my eye. I shall ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... he, with a gleam of his teeth and a toss of his curls, while his second hand, like Mr. Rassendyll's, rested in the pocket ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... at the wristwatch, fingered it a moment, held it to his ear. It ticked and the second hand moved. "Tracy?" he said. ...
— Revolution • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... at Balaklava, each of these poets might possibly have pictured what he said as faithfully and as fearfully as Mr. Brownell has painted the sea-fights in which he took part as a combatant. But no man can tell a story at second hand with the truth of incident which belongs to an eye-witness who was part of what he saw. As a mere relator, therefore, of the sights and sounds of great naval battles, Mr. Brownell has a fresh story to tell. Not only so, but these ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... exact time at which the train will reach the next station. The one who guesses nearest becomes the holder of the watch until the next guess is decided. Other things can be done with a watch, particularly if it has a second hand. Guessing the length of a minute is rather interesting, or timing the speed of the train by noting how long it takes to go between the telegraph-poles at ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... matter to be judged of you or of man's judgment.' That new life ought to make men original, in the deep and true sense of the word, as drawing their conceptions of duty and their methods of life, not at second hand from other men, but straight from God Himself. If the Christian Church was fuller of that divine life than it is, it would be fuller of all varieties of Christian beauty and excellence, and all these would be the work of 'that one and the selfsame Spirit dividing to every ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... suddenly solidified to another hand. The second hand joined the first, and fell to work on the bar, and pulled. The bar stretched finally under an enormous load. One hand let go, and the thud of the highly elastic lux metal bar's return to its original shape echoed through the soundless room. These men of the twenty-second century ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... little sympathy for Buddhism but a wondrous resemblance both in thought and language to the Vedanta. This is the more remarkable because there is no trace in his works of Sanskrit learning or even of Indian influence at second hand. A peculiarly original and independent mind seems to have worked its way to many of the doctrines of the Advaita, without entirely adopting its general conclusions, for I doubt if Sankara would have said "the positive relation of every appearance as an adjective to ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... any of the teachers offered to show Josef the principles of composition, he was thrown upon his own resources. With much self denial he scraped together enough money to buy two books which he had seen at the second hand bookseller's and which he had longed to possess. One was Fox's "Gradus ad Parnassum," a treatise on composition and counterpoint; the other Matheson's "The Complete Capellmeister." Happy in the possession of these books, Josef used every moment outside of school and choir practise ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... lighting the candles, he said calmly, and to my great surprise, that he was not qualified to maintain such a discussion, for he was alike ignorant of Italian and German, and had only read the works of the Germans in translations, and but little of Italian poetry, even at second hand. For my part, I confessed, with an equal ingenuousness, that I knew nothing of German, and but little of Italian! that I had spoken only through others, and like him, had hitherto seen by the glimmering light of translations. It is upon such scanty data that young men reason; upon ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 528, Saturday, January 7, 1832 • Various
... a version, whether of an ancient or of a modern classic, which is thoroughly appreciative and satisfactory. The majority are utterly disappointing and deceptive. It is in the transfer of the idiom and costume that the difficulty and consequent failure lie. No one who merely knows at second hand Homer, Herodotus, Plautus, Terence, Horace, Virgil, Montaigne, Le Sage (a metonym for Gil Blas), Cervantes, La Fontaine, Dumas, Maupassant, Balzac, can have had an opportunity of forming an adequate and just estimate of those authors. You might nearly as ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... volume of Harris's Hermes caught his fancy, and after having pondered for some time on the alternative, whether he should postpone legs in favour of head, or vice versa, he concluded on the former, saying to himself that Hermes would be snatched up by the first person who saw it; but that the second hand silk stockings could be got at any time. The volume was eighteen pence; yet so restricted was our hero's finances, that this little sum deranged his stocking ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... the rest. The only sort of competition known to the agricultural class is that of rents; and it cannot be denied that in France, and for instance in Beauce, it has led to useful results. But as the principle of this competition takes effect only at second hand, so to speak, as it does not emanate directly from the liberty and property of the cultivators, it disappears with the cause that produces it, so that, to insure the decline of agricultural industry in many localities, or at least to arrest its progress, perhaps it would suffice to make ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... part of the world all new-comers have to take walking-lessons; unless, indeed, they have already served an apprenticeship on Cape Cod, or in some other place equally arenarious. My own lesson I got at second hand, and on a Sunday. It was at New Smyrna, in the village. Two women were behind me, on their way home from church, and one of them was complaining of the sand, to which she was not yet used. "Yes," said the other, "I found it pretty hard ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... of the culture and idiosyncrasies of the first two centuries as tending to throw light on those records; of the earliest growth of dogma, as, thanks mainly to German labour, it may now fee exhibited within the New Testament itself. In a Church of private judgment, he takes all this at second hand, after having vowed at his ordination "to be diligent in such studies as help to the knowledge ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... feeble wing; it flies low, seeing only the things of the earth. When they describe heaven, it has houses of marble and streets of gold. Their pretense to sight of higher things is either sheer pretense or sight at second hand. Susan was of the few whose fancy can soar. She saw the earthy things; she saw the things of the upper regions also. And she saw the lower region from the altitudes of the ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... says Hamilton, would afford the best philosophic designation of these two faculties; the knowledge attained by the former is an "intuitive principle"—a truth at first hand; that obtained by the latter is a "demonstrative proposition"—a truth at second hand. ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... others is love of truth. A love of truth, as the phrase characterizes Huxley, would necessarily produce a scholarly habit of mind. It was the zealous search for truth which determined his method of work. In science, Huxley would "take at second hand nothing for which he vouched in teaching." Some one reproached him for wasting time verifying what another had already done. "If that is his practice," he commented, "his work will never live." The same motive made ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... current intelligence the case of the speaker of the small language is still worse. His newspaper will need to be cheaply served, his home intelligence will be cut and restricted, his foreign news belated and second hand. Moreover, to travel even a little distance or to conduct anything but the smallest business enterprise will be exceptionally inconvenient to him. The Englishman who knows no language but his own may travel ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... roots of self-respect, and the aspiration that grows with self respect. Sometimes I see it in a geranium flowering in a tomato can, set in a window; oftentimes in a cheap lace curtain; occasionally in a struggling, stunted yellow rose bush in the hard-beaten earth of a dooryard; or in a second hand wheezy cabinet organ in some front bedroom—in a thousand little signs of aspiration, I find America asserting itself among these poor people, and as I cherish these things I find happiness asserting itself in my life. So it's my job, my consecrated job ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... settlement on the Mississippi, where the chief branch of his business had consisted in furnishing Indian traders with goods and equipments. In this way, he had acquired much knowledge of the trade at second hand, and of the various tribes, and the interior country over ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... beginning of the month of September, 1916, there appeared in the Cornhill Magazine a story entitled "The Lost Naval Papers." I had told this story at second hand, for the incidents had not occurred within my personal experience. One of the principals—to whom I had allotted the temporary name of Richard Cary—was an intimate friend, but I had never met the ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... When he had leased this paltry building for the purpose of converting it into a tavern, he had found this chamber decorated in just this manner, and had purchased the furniture and obtained the orange flowers at second hand, with the idea that this would cast a graceful shadow on "his spouse," and would result in what the English call ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... breathe more freely in the medium, literally the midway space, of some collective ritual. Moreover, for those of us who are not artists or original thinkers the life of the imagination, and even of the emotions, has been perhaps too long lived at second hand, received from the artist ready made and felt. To-day, owing largely to the progress of science, and a host of other causes social and economic, life grows daily fuller and freer, and every manifestation of life ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... perhaps, into taking a definite part in a dispute impossible of decision if one had to be fair to all the phantoms in possession—to the reputable that had its claims and to the disreputable that had its exigencies. I can't explain to you who haven't seen him and who hear his words only at second hand the mixed nature of my feelings. It seemed to me I was being made to comprehend the Inconceivable—and I know of nothing to compare with the discomfort of such a sensation. I was made to look at ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... rope was second hand, and the block creaked for want of grease—that last fault was speedily rectified; and having fastened one end of the line to a tree on the opposite side of the creek, the boys secured a purchase and then exerted themselves ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... for the sake of this moment. Then, finding a willing listener in the black-eyed little girl who sat before him, he began to talk, to relate his travels, giving, in particular, a vivid account of some months he had once spent in Japan. Laura, who liked nothing better than travelling at second hand—since any other way was out of the question—Laura spent a delightful ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... good, you can probably sell it. In that case, I can get for you here, one made as perfect as human art can make it, for about twenty-four louis. I have had such a one made, by the best and most faithful hand in Paris. It has a second hand, but no repeating, no day of the month, nor other useless thing to impede and injure the movements which are necessary. For twelve louis more, you can have in the same cover, but on the back, and absolutely unconnected with the movements ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... should eat me," I suggested, "you might mark him to avoid becoming a cannibal at second hand. I should hate to think of you, Aunt Jane, as the ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... unfortunately it came to an end after little more than one year by my mother's lamentably premature death. I happen to possess a letter from my father's sister to her sister Anne in which she gives an account of this event, and print it because it conveys the reality more vividly than a narrative at second hand. The reader will pardon the reference to myself. It matters nothing to a dead man—as I shall be when this page is printed—whether at the age of fourteen days he was considered a fine-looking child ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... Kazmah has been described to me, at first hand and at second hand. All descriptions tally in one respect: Kazmah has remarkably large eyes. In Miss Halley's evidence you will note that she refers to them as 'larger than any human eyes I have ever seen.' Now, Mareno has eyes like ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... the heart of a boy and a man. It is strange that they should glow there, and all memory of the runaway slaves who were sheltered in the cave by the sycamore tree should fade, and be only as a tale that is told. Yet, so memory served the boy, and he knew only at second hand how his mother gave her widow's mite to the cause for which she had crossed the prairies as of old her "fathers ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... wisdom and insight we must have absolute confidence in the Divine guiding us, but not through the channel of some one else. And why should we go to another for knowledge and wisdom? With God is no respect of persons. Why should we seek these things second hand? Why should we thus stultify our own innate powers? Why should we not go direct to the Infinite Source itself? "If any man lack wisdom let him ask of God." "Before they call I will answer, and while they are yet speaking, ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... second hand," said Erica. "He is a shoe maker, as grand-looking a fellow as you ever saw, fond of reading, and very thoughtful, and with more quiet common sense than almost any I ever met. He had been brought up to believe in verbal inspiration that had been thoroughly crammed down his throat; but no one had ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... some bankrupt Pasha, Marchetto?" I inquired. Everything offered for sale in the bazaar at second hand is said to come from the establishment of a Pasha; the statement ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... bearskin coat, looked at his watch by the light of a fire. It lacked a minute of midnight. "Make ready," he said, as he raised a revolver in his right hand and watched the second hand tick. Lieutenant Pollock, in a big bearskin coat, looked at his watch by the light of a fire. It lacked a minute of midnight. "Make ready," he said, as he raised a revolver in his right hand and watched the ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... not wicked, certainly frivolous and nonsensical. So the boy remained at home, but, in spite of the parental order, he practiced some of the figures of the quadrilles and the contra dances in his comrades' barns, learning them at second hand, so to speak. ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of great value—a true outline of the general situation, and some stirring narratives of the clash and wrestling of armed men, compiled either at first hand from the recollections of those who were actually on the field, or else taken at second hand from others who made notes of what had been told them by those present at the battles. This, then, is what I meant when I said that in early times history was an art. Its method ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... book has met in the world so many people possessed by a fanatic passion for a knowledge of the mean time, for watches with a second hand, and for exactness in the details of their existence, that he has considered this Meditation too necessary for the tranquillity of a great number of husbands, to be omitted. It would have been cruel to leave men, who are ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... you've paid will be rent," the collector told Saxon. "And the furniture's second hand now, too. The deal will be a loss to Salinger's' and they didn't have to do it, either; you know that. So just remember they've been pretty square with you, and if you start ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... highness of such difficulties, straits, and annoyance, as did not appear therein to her eyes, nor, I found, could be brought to her ear; for her choler did outrun all reason, though I did meet it at a second hand. For what show she gave at first to my lord deputy at his return, was far more grievous, as will ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... tongue," said Reginald fiercely, "if we are to hear what my father says at second hand ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... fair gifts of poetry; it abounds in natural and well-proportioned sentiment; thoughts and images seem to rise up fresh from the writer's observation, and not merely gathered at second hand; a considerable portion is in blank-verse, but the author uses various measures, in all which his versification is graceful ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... met here before, you and I." His Excellency the Hon. Amory W. Barker, M.D., stood laughing, familiar and genial, his sound white teeth shining. But behind his round spectacles he scrutinized McLean. For in this second hand-shaking was a fervor that seemed a grasp, a reaching out, for comfort. Barker had passed through Separ. Though an older acquaintance than Billy, he had asked Jessamine fewer and different questions. But he knew what he knew. "Well, Drybone's the same old Drybone," said he. "Sweet-scented ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... will come mighty convenient just now. It will buy me a better-looking suit, second hand, and make a different man of me. With it I can get a place and set up for a respectable ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger
... stayed home and helped me fix up the nursery. Yes, I was expecting in the spring. That's why he was so for keeping things from me. We painted the woodwork white and gave a couple of coats to a little brown crib I had picked up second hand. He was for buying an enameled one on casters—he loved the best. Next night—next night—he—didn't come home—and at eight o'clock the following morning the extras were on the street—about the killing. Even then I didn't tie up—Lon ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... and curious truths, either with the objections by which religion is assailed or the arguments by which it is defended, imparts to his cause all the interest which naturally attaches to these truths, and leaves to his opponent, who passes over them after him as at second hand, a subject divested of the fire-edge of novelty, I can deem Mr. Longmuir well and not unprofessionally employed, in connecting with a sound creed the picturesque marvels of one of the most popular of the sciences, and by this means introducing them to his ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... corresponds to consciousness, distinct in kind from what it always had, it can only derive this from one cause. That cause is a second cue, tampering with the balls and interfering with them, or even more than this—a second hand taking them up and arranging ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... small, not handsome, and a quarrelsome female who thinks she has a mission. The people of this country had rather see Fanny Davenport without any wardrobe to speak of than to see Dickinson with clothes enough to start a second hand store. ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... reasonable and they approved in chorus. Possibility of pardon and reinstatement, though only heard of at second hand, had brought unity into being. And unity ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... by the experience of centuries, that there should always be in the churches a body of men able to go behind the current versions of Scripture to the original tongues from which these versions were executed. The commentator, at least, must not take his expositions at second hand; and a healthy tone of feeling in regard to the sacredness and supreme authority of the inspired word will always demand that there should be a goodly number of scholars scattered through the churches who can judge from the primitive sources of the ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... boys moved carefully to the center of the improvised ring, their guards up, while Astro stood off the edge of the mat and watched the sweeping second hand of his ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... that men who are not scholars venture to pronounce on Shakespeare's scholarship, and that men who take absurd statements at second hand dare to constitute themselves judges of a question of evidence and ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... and method soon set their mark on the Golden Dustman's affairs. His earnestness in determining to understand the length and breadth and depth of every piece of work submitted to him by his employer, was as special as his despatch in transacting it. He accepted no information or explanation at second hand, but made himself the master of everything ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... an annual payment in money I regard as a good one, because the recipient is enabled to purchase just what he requires when he can get it most cheaply, and it also enables him to buy articles at second hand, from settlers and others, that are quite as useful to him as are the same things when new. The sum of three dollars does not appear to be large enough to enable an Indian to provide himself with many of his winter necessaries; but as he receives the same amount for his ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris
... a widow who held the position of "second hand" in the dress department of "The Ladies' Paradise." ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... Arthur, 'I know your kind offices at second hand, but on the best authority; through Little Dorrit.—I mean,' he ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... would be possible to meet outside a gaol. One day a pretty girl, whom he had been following in the street, unwittingly enticed him into a revivalist meeting. He described that meeting so vividly that had my stupefied mind been capable of fresh emotions, I too might have been converted at second hand by the revivalist preacher. He repeated parts of the sermon, rose to his feet, waved his arms, thundered out the commonplaces of Salvation Army Christianity, as if he had made an amazing theological discovery. It was pathetic. It was ludicrous. It was also inconceivably painful. At last ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... SECOND HAND BOOKS.—A List of valuable Second-hand Books in Theology, Political Economy, History, and Miscellaneous and Classical Literature, selected from his very Extensive Stock, Gratis, on Receipt ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... The sweep second hand and the minute register hand are attached to heart-shaped cams friction driven from their respective staffs. They are reset by a bar pivoted beneath the dial and actuated by the stem through pressure on the crown. An original instruction tag as sent from the factory with these timers ...
— The Auburndale Watch Company - First American Attempt Toward the Dollar Watch • Edwin A. Battison
... woman is a great error which cannot be too often noticed and condemned. Not only is the mother injured, instead of being benefited by such a practice, but great injury, sometimes life-long in its consequences, is inflicted upon the babe at her breast who takes the intoxicating poison at second hand, and is influenced in a fourfold degree from its ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... her sex precluded this silent spirit of the Girondists from taking part in these counsels, if, instead of acting second hand through her husband, she could have taken the lead, as her genius, perception, honesty, and courage entitled her to do, who knows that she might not have averted the disasters which befell the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... graduated when she was eighteen. In all these years she had not seen Rule Rothsay. She only heard from him through his letters to her Uncle Clarence, reported second hand to herself. She knew that in these five years Rule had risen, step by step, in the office where he had begun his apprenticeship; that he had risen to be foreman, then sub-editor, and now he was part proprietor and ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... instructed Marbo to remain close to Carruthers at all times. So the young scientist left the cavern and ascended the path leading to the top of the plateau. He looked at his watch and compared the second hand with the nucleus atom sailing across the heavens to estimate ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... front, from the Lago di Garda to the Stelvio and the frontier of Switzerland, is not at present the scene of important operations, so I contented myself by ascertaining at second hand how matters stand between the Valtellina and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... news of the world for the last quarter of a century to an intelligent and once well-educated man who has known nothing of what has happened in all that time except what he might learn from ignorant natives, who had obtained their knowledge second hand from Spanish tax collectors only a trifle less ignorant ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... at second hand, if he had read it, or if it had related to someone other than himself, he would have detected the sophistry of it. But, exhilarated by wine and intoxicated by ambition, he saw nothing but a pledge to deal squarely by ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... of correction. Either have the witness determine the time in terms of some familiar form, i. e., a paternoster, etc., or give him the watch and let him observe the second hand. In the latter case he will assert that his ten, or his five, or his twenty minutes were, at most, no more than a half or a ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... 'With a second hand on board to steer while I conned I should have felt less of an ass. As it was, I knew I ought to be facing the music in the offing, and cursed myself for having broken my rule and gone blundering into this confounded short cut. It was giving myself away, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... sorceress, or me for a conjurer, which is no joke in Scotland, I must tell you that Frank Stanley, your friend, who has been seized with a tartan fever ever since he heard Edward's tales of old Scottish manners, happened to describe to us at second hand this remarkable cup. My servant, Spontoon, who, like a true old soldier, observes everything and says little, gave me afterwards to understand that he thought he had seen the piece of plate Mr. Stanley mentioned, in the possession of a certain Mrs. Nosebag, who, having been originally the helpmate ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... botany all hold honoured positions in it; but the most important part of this encyclopaedic work is that relating to American man. In it the author embodies all the documents he himself collected, and analyzes and criticizes those which came to him at second hand, on physiological types, and on the manners, languages, and religions of South America. A work of such value ought to immortalize the name of the French scholar, and reflect the greatest honour on the ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... you must do this, dear Edmund,' she said, between decision and entreaty. 'She knows that I dislike the man, and may fancy it my doing it she only hears it at second hand. If you speak, there will be no appeal, and besides there are moments when the really nearest should have ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... visited you, that the reality was infinitely worse than I know it to be ... for at, and after the writing of that first letter, on my first visit, I believed—through some silly or misapprehended talk, collected at second hand too—that your complaint was of quite another nature—a spinal injury irremediable in the nature of it. Had it been so—now speak for me, for what you hope I am, and say how that should affect or neutralize ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... chattering, whispering and gossiping among her different ideals—Kristofa and Gunda, active Swedish Lena, and pert Jakobina. If she could not be with them herself, she might at any rate hear what fun they had had, and all that had happened. In this way she could live their life at second hand. ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... Hammon-Lynn affair was already notorious; Lorelei's part in it led the stage-broken wiseacres to doubt her innocence, and their altered attitude soon became apparent to her. There was a difference also in the bearing of certain members of the company. She heard conversations retailed at second hand by envious chorus- mates; in her hearing detached remarks were dropped that offended her. Bergman's advances had been only another disquieting symptom of what she had to expect—an indication of the new color ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... be sure of that. He's probably bought up some second hand food stuff that he plans to work off on the ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... to that latent mental disease which in India carried her off; but for more than twenty years the husband showed her loving reverence. As we stand in the Hackleton shed, over which Carey placed the rude signboard prepared by his own hands, and now in the library of Regent's Park College, "Second Hand Shoes Bought and—,"[2] we can realise the low estate to which Carey fell, even below his father's loom and schoolhouse, and from which he was called to become the apostle of North India as Schwartz was ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... the other went on calmly. "But your objection only brings one nearer the goal. How many who care only for applause content themselves to-day, unfortunately, with Nature at second hand! Without returning to her eternally fresh, inexhaustible spring, they draw from the conveniently accessible wells which the great ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... she prefers legitimate to illegitimate business; she is never an outlaw until her proper sources of supply fail; she will not touch honey as long as honey-yielding flowers can be found; she always prefers to go to the fountain-head, and dislikes to take her sweets at second hand. But in the fall, after the flowers have failed, she can be tempted. The bee-hunter takes advantage of this fact; he betrays her with a little honey. He wants to steal her stores, and he first encourages her to steal his, then follows the thief home ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... about that. And about the room. And I can get what you want in furniture, at a second hand place, where the articles will ...
— Trading • Susan Warner
... train, load, run out, and mimic fire. Suddenly he shouts through the trumpet: 'Boarders and pikemen at port quarter! First boarders advance! Second boarders advance! Repel boarders! Retreat boarders! Pikemen cover cutlass division! Fire! Repel boarders!' The second hand scarcely sweeps over a quarter of its dial before the men have crowded around the port bulwarks, and are slashing the air with a most Quixotic fury—then crouch on bent knee, to make ready their pistols, while in their rear, marines and pikemen, musket and ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... have been bought at a second hand dealer's for a very moderate sum—for they were rent in various places, and no attempt had been made to patch them—was the first speaker, and he howled in the most approved manner, and even our political friends might have taken a lesson from him. He had not ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... me, O auspicious King, that the Wazir Dandan said to Zau al-Makan, "Thus spake the second hand maid to the King who hath found mercy, Omar bin al-Nu'uman. 'Quoth a man to Mohammed bin Abdillah, Exhort thou me!' 'I exhort thee,' replied he, 'to be a self ruler, an abstainer in this world, and in the next a greedy slave.' 'How so?' asked the other and Mohammed ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... which recalls the work of the Alexandrian school. This was, indeed, to be expected, seeing that in both cases there was a mingling of Hebraism and Hellenism. In Spain, however, the Jews acquired Hellenism at second hand, and through the somewhat distorted medium of Arabic translations or scholastic misunderstanding, and hence the harmony is neither complete nor pure. They endeavored to show that the teachings of Aristotle are implicit in the written and the oral law, but the interpretation is hardly ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... to work on the river, for a few months at any rate, until he got to know the place. Now I know you have a dozen tugs and a score of barges, and I thought you might set him on at once. He would make a good second hand on one of your large boats. If it's but to oblige me, I wish you would put him on board one with a sober, steady chap of a decent kind; as soon as he gets to know the work and the river, I will guarantee that he will be ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... where the Duke of Wellington gives a grand entertainment to the King of Prussia. We were asked too, but, though rather tempted by the fine show, it was finally concluded that we should not go, so we shall only have it at second hand. This is all my news for the present, dear Harriet. God bless you. Good-bye. If you ever wish to hear from me, drop me a line ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... a scholar and a gentleman, and, what is better than either, like a Christian. Those who accuse him of having written bitterly against the Calvinists cannot, one would imagine, have read his writings, but must have taken at second hand the cruelly unjust representation of them given by his opponents.[789] 'If ever,' wrote Southey, with perfect truth, 'true Christian charity was manifested in polemical writing, it was by Fletcher of Madeley.' There is but one passage[790] ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... Alexandrians knew human anatomy. What their knowledge was we know at second hand, but the evidence is plain that they knew a great deal. Galen's anatomy was first-class and was based on the Alexandrians and on his studies of the ape and the pig. We have already noted how much superior was his osteology to that of Mundinus. ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... as to the interrupted narrative, even in despite of the evident frivolity of the narrator. The arrangement of the party in the coach compelled me to hear it at second hand, and I found it less frivolous than I had anticipated: it was an amour between the King and a peasant's daughter, in which the King conducted himself in a manner as little excusable in a monarch, as ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... deal—at second hand. Didn't the object of his deepest aversions persist in almost nightly calls upon the object of his deepest affections? Paying such calls, didn't the enemy spend hours—hours upon hours doubtless—pouring into Ophelia's ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... her fingers came in contact with something loose and soft. It was not a paper parcel, it felt more like cloth—cloth with knotted ends all ready to pull. Darsie pulled with a will, found an unexpected weight, put up a second hand to aid the first, and with a tug and a cloud of dust brought to light nothing more exciting than a workman's handkerchief, knotted round a lumpy parcel which ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... but it is fairly certain that he did not know the works at first hand, since the era he refers to runs from Moses to the tenth year of Antoninus,[5] i.e. till the better part of a century after the death of Josephus. Origen likewise probably knew Josephus only at second hand, and the inference is that both the Alexandrian ecclesiastics derived their citations and their interpolation in the text of Josephus from a pious Christian abstract and improvement. The uncompromisingly Christian character of the text, the discrepancy between Origen ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... exercise and pure air of the fore-castle deck. For as in this world, head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it. But wherefore ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... it. He can only give money to an impersonal organization, or to a personification which he calls Mr. Hoover. His money does not reach that child. It goes to a general pool from which a mass of children are fed. And so just as the idea is second hand, so are the effects of the action second hand. The cognition is indirect, the conation is indirect, only the effect is immediate. Of the three parts of the process, the stimulus comes from somewhere out of sight, the response reaches somewhere out of sight, only the emotion ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... Two days later, John B. Baldwin, representing the Virginia Unionists, had a confidential talk with Lincoln. Only fragments of their talk, drawn forth out of memory long afterward—some of the reporting being at second hand, the recollections of the recollections of the participants—are known to exist. The one fact clearly discernible is that Baldwin stated fully the Virginia position: that her Unionists were not nationalists; that the coercion of any State, by impugning the sovereignty of all, would automatically ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... praise for Sutter. He had sent out such and such expeditions to rescue snow-bound immigrants in the mountains; he had received hospitably the travel-worn transcontinentals; he had given freely to the indigent; and so on without end. I am very glad that even at second hand I had the chance to know this great-hearted old soldier of Charles X while in the glory of his possessions and the esteem of men. Acre by acre his lands were filched from him; and he died in Washington vainly petitioning Congress ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... though he were master of the circumstances around him, and was entirely free from internal embarrassment. When his father spoke to him about his legal studies, he did not exactly laugh at his father's ignorance, but he recapitulated to his father so much of Mr. Monk's wisdom at second hand,—showing plainly that it was his business to study the arts of speech and the technicalities of the House, and not to study law,—that his father had nothing further to say. He had become a man of such dimensions that an ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... now the fray is over, a man may appear again with safety.—Oh, the rogues are caught, I see, and the damsels delivered. This was the effect of my valour at the second hand. ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... ingratitude. In preference to communicating to you by way of letter concerning transactions of so long standing as the year 1776, I desired the enclosed certificates, which the gentlemen freely gave, in order to prevent any misconstruction by passing through a second hand, by which you will have more correct information than possibly in my ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... has three things to do. It must send the "short hand," or hour hand, around the dial or face of the watch, once in twelve hours; it must send the "long hand," or minute hand, around once an hour; and it must also send the little "second hand" around its own tiny circle once a minute. To do this work requires four wheels. The first or main wheel is connected with the winding arrangements, and sets in motion the second, or center wheel, so called because ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... peaceably homeward through unfrequented streets or down suburban roads at night were suddenly seized from behind by nefarious hands, and found arms pressed under their chins against their windpipe, with a second hand drawing their heads back until they collapsed insensible, and could be despoiled leisurely of any valuables they might happen to have about them. Those familiar with John Leech's Punch Albums will recollect how many of his drawings turned on this outbreak ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... spoiled it, like a foolish musician that breaks his strings with striving to put them in tune; for Nature, which is physic, understands better how to do her own work than those that take it from her at second hand. Hippocrates says, Ars longa, vita brevis, and it is the ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... botherin' nah, its too lat, you should ha' spokken afoor—an' aw think he's fittest to be wi' his mother." But he roar'd like a bull, an' begged th' parson to do it ovver, an' do it reight; but Lucy said, "He'd noa cashion, for shoo'd live an' dee an owd maid for iver afoor shoo'd have ony chap second hand." But her heart worn't as hard as shoo thowt, soa, shoo gave in, an' th' next time ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, First Series - To Which Is Added The Cream Of Wit And Humour From His Popular Writings • John Hartley
... each member of the class take a sheet of paper and a pencil, and make as many strokes as possible in a half-minute, as shown in Figure I. The instructor can keep the time with a stop watch, or less accurately with the second hand of an ordinary watch. Before beginning the experiment, the instructor should have each student taking the test try it for a second or two. This is to make sure that all understand what they are ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... approached him, but Disraeli raised his hand as if to deprecate their interference, and they stole back to their places conscious that they were forbidden to interrupt. Then, at last, when the second hand of the clock had passed three times round its course, the most remarkable silence which the House had ever experienced within living memory was broken as the Tory leader slowly ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... exposed to the most drying action of winds and sun, and are not conveniently watered. The last two disadvantages can be to some extent overcome by placing them in situations at least partially sheltered and shaded, and by running a half-inch or three-quarter inch pipe (which may be bought second hand for two to four cents a foot, while good hose costs sixteen to eighteen), a few inches under the sod and up to the top of the vase. Such a pipe should be detached and drained in the fall and will last many years; the few feet running up to the vase will be ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell
... with that vision of the blooming peach is a glimpse of a pet deer in the kitchen of the same little house, with its head up and its antlers erect, as if he meditated offence. My boy might never have seen him so; he may have had the vision at second hand; but it is certain that there was a pet deer in the family, and that he was as likely to have come into the kitchen by the window as by the door. One of the boy's uncles had seen this deer swimming the Mississippi, far to the southward, and ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... These would be legitimate models for the potter and we may therefore expect to find them repeated in earthenware. In this way the art has acquired a multitude of new forms, some of which may be natural forms at second hand, that is to say, with modifications imposed upon them by the material in which they were first shaped. But all materials other than clay are exceedingly intractable, and impress their own characters so decidedly upon forms produced in them that ultimate ...
— Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in Ceramic Art. • William Henry Holmes
... the higher safety really arrive. As a concrete example let me read a page from the biography of Antoinette Bourignon, a good woman, much persecuted in her day by both Protestants and Catholics, because she would not take her religion at second hand. When a young ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... &c. as also closer, closely, closenesse, glosingly, hourely, majesticall, majestically. In like sort we grasse upon French words those Buds, to which that soile affordeth no growth; as, chiefly, faultie, slavish, precisenesse. Divers words we derive also out of the Latine at second hand by the French, and make good English, tho' both Latine and French haue their hands closed in that behalfe, as in these verbes, pray, point, paze, prest, rent, &c. and also in the adverbes, carpingly, currantly, colourably, ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew |
