"A B C" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not himself; 'you'll find a pure mouth there, boys, because the heart is pure; you'll see no letters of introduction to the devil,' as the chaplain called cards, 'in his knapsack.' By the way, he was so hard on cards, that even the boatmen, who knew them better than their A B C's, were ashamed to play them. He would say, 'Snowden is brave as man can be; he has a right to be, he is prepared for every fate. A christian, boys, makes all the better soldier for his being a Christian,' and he would tell us of Washington, Col. ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... we would better see if we all remember our A B C's," she said dryly. "You, Sammy, after being out so long last term because of the scarlet fever, will have to make up some studies if you wish to keep ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... A B C D, the top lid of the oblong box; G H, the half of it made to fall back, and supported at an angle by the hinges, h h; l, the upper part of the lock of the box; i k, the two gable ends of the roof; i, the perforated zinc shown as secured in a triangular frame; and ...
— A Description of the Bar-and-Frame-Hive • W. Augustus Munn
... should be too much of the dragon's tooth in his children's disposition, used to find time from his kingly duties to teach them their A B C—which he invented for their benefit, and for which many little people, I am afraid, are not half so grateful to him as ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... may not dwell too long upon the A B C of our belief, let me urge you in one sentence to be on your guard against present-day tendencies which weaken the force of this solemn, tragical conviction as to the realities of heathendom. The new science of comparative religion has done much for us. I am not saying ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... Cause of any event is an Immediate Antecedent follows from its being an unconditional one. For if there are three events, A B C, causally connected, it is plain that A is not the unconditional antecedent of C, but requires the further condition of first giving rise to B. But that is not all; for the B that gives rise to C is never merely the effect of A; it involves ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... final couplet, and Surrey used a rhyme-scheme which was later adopted by Shakspere and is known to-day as the "Shaksperean" form of sonnet: namely, three quatrains made up of alternate rhymes—a separate rhyme-scheme for each quatrain—and a closing couplet. The rhymes consequently run thus: a b a b c d c d e f e f g g. To the Petrarchan purist this is clearly no sonnet at all, in spite of its fourteen five-beat, rhyming lines. For the distinction between octave and sestet has disappeared, there is a threefold division of ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... very odd," said Sergeant Channell to Thessiger, "that Tindal should have decided against me on that point of law which, to me, seemed as plain as A B C." "Yes," replied Thessiger, "but of what use is it that it should have been A B C to you, if the judge was determined to be D E F ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 21, 1841 • Various
... had to go over the whole proposal twice, and word it as plainly as A B C, before she would fully take it in. And then, what did she do? Instead of faltering a sweet Yes, or maintaining a soft, confused silence (which would have been as good), she started up, walked twice fast through the room, in the ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... Your duty? Curse your impudence, sir. Your duty was to keep off my grounds. Talk of duty to me! Why—why—why, ye misbegotten poacher, ye'll be teaching me my A B C next! Roarin' like a bull in the bushes down there! Boys? Boys? Boys? Keep your boys at home, then! I'm not responsible for your boys! But I don't believe it—I don't believe a word of it. Ye've a furtive look in your eye—a furtive, sneakin', poachin' look in ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... not know that we can add anything to this explanation; the difficulty lies in the audacious sweep of the speculation itself; we will however attempt an illustration, although we fear it will be to illustrate obscurum tier obscurius. Let A B C D be four out of the Infinite number of the Divine attributes. A the attribute of mind; B the attribute of extension; C and D other attributes, the nature of which is not known to us. Now A, as the attribute of mind, is that which perceives all which takes ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... with infinite astonishment I first saw the strong panegyric heaped upon my argument here. So true is this, that on the evening after I had concluded it, I wrote to my friend Wickham, telling him if his eye should see anything of it through the newspapers, he would wonder how so much A B C knowledge could be tolerated here, but that I saw it was necessary to state it, and therefore he must not think me so much of a pedant as he might otherwise be disposed to do. Had the thing been suffered to pass unnoticed, I might have hoped at some time or other to gain some credit ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... threw themselves between her and the door. 'Are you insane, Cilly? What do you mean should become of you? Are you going to join the menage, and teach the A B C?' ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was Gebhart, who was so well acquainted with algebra and geometry that he could tell at a single glance how many drops of water there were in a bottle of wine. As for Latin and Greek—he could patter them off like his A B C's. Nevertheless, he was not satisfied with the things he knew, but was for learning the things that no schools could teach him. So one day he came knocking ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... to her. She used to laugh like baby, and was like her altogether, only prettier, and very brown; and when I told her she was like my own little child, she danced about, and laughed like mad at the idea that she could look like 'pretty white Missy'. She was mighty proud of her needlework and A B C performances. ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... only one of a vile herd who are content to suffer, provided that they live? And yet are not these very errors inculcated at school, and impressed upon their mind inversely by the birch? Do not they there receive their first lesson in slavery with the first lesson in A B C; and are not their minds thereby prostrated, so as never to rise again, but ever to bow to despotism, to cringe to rank, to think and act by the precepts of others, and to tacitly disavow that sacred equality ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... moment, I had been compelled to prepare for an entrance examination. I suppose I should have been put with the backward pupils whose early education had been neglected, and should have had to learn the A B C's of charity. School of Philanthropy! Ugh! And ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... Byron. I tried to say a few words at opening, but soon curled up like a sensitive plant. It is a terrible martyrdom for me to speak.... Very many Abolitionists have yet to learn the A B C of woman's rights.... The Boston Congregationalist has a scurrilous article. Shall write the editor.... It is discouraging that no man does right for right's sake, but everything to serve party.... I find such comfort in Aurora Leigh when I am sorely pressed.... Heard Stephen ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Drake, and referred her to the under-house-maids. The under-house-maids declared they were all behindhand and had not a minute to spare—they suggested, not too civilly, that old Mazey had nothing on earth to do, and that he knew the house as well, or better, than he knew his A B C. Magdalen took the hint, with a secret indignation and contempt which it cost her a hard struggle to conceal. She had suspected, on the previous night, and she was certain now, that the women-servants all incomprehensibly resented her presence among ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... parts of a mechanism self-sustained. Suppose those parts to be called by the names of our English alphabet, and to stand in the order of our alphabet, then A is through B C D, etc., to pass down with its total power upon Z, which reciprocally is to come round undiminished upon A B C, etc., for ever. Never was a nominal definition of what you want more simple and luminous. But coming to the real definition, and finding that every letter in succession must still give something less than is received—that O, for instance, cannot give to P all ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... But oh, hinny, hae ye it weel aff? I hope there's nae fears o' ye stickin' or using notes!" "Dinna fret, mother—dinna fret," replied the young divine; "stickin' and notes are out o' the question. I hae every word o' it as clink as the A B C." The appointed hour arrived. She was first at the kirk. Her heart felt too big for her bosom. She could not sit—she walked again to the air—she trembled back—she gazed restless on the pulpit. The parish minister gave out the psalm—the book shook while she held it. The minister ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... heard this awful racket And seized the mole, just like a packet. He carried him across the seas To teach the young gulls A B C's. But the loving mole went blind with rage And they had to put him in a cage, And ever since that fatal night The moles have all ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... 143 A B C D is the fixed coil; E F G H is the movable coil; S is the spiral spring attached at K to the movable coil. The arrows show the course of the current as it goes ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... pencil point and in a husky voice repeated the letters. I could see Tillie Baher laughing at me from behind her geography, and every one else had stopped what they were doing to watch and listen, so I forgot to be thankful that I even knew my a b c's. I spelled through the sentence, pronounced the words and repeated them without much thought as to the meaning; at that moment it didn't occur to me that she had chosen the lesson because father had told her how I made friends with the birds. The night ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... a bag were a more feasible protector than He who made all things, and told them that one day they would laugh heartily at their own follies in bothering me so much for gun medicine. A man who has never had to do with a raw heathen tribe has yet to learn the Missionary A B C." ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... disregarded 'from above,' and will not be disregarded. If ever our circumstances take on an absolute, a Caesarian, form, it will be as the consequence of revolution, of convulsion. For on revolution follows Caesarism as W follows U—that is the rule in the A B C ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... these bokes Called Welth and helthe/the treatise of the ffrere and the boye / stans puer ad mensam another of youghte charyte and humylyte an a b c for cheldren in englesshe with syllabes also a boke called an hundreth mery tayles ij^s [Arber's Transcript, ...
— The Interlude of Wealth and Health • Anonymous
... not appear that Steevens claimed the Alphabet; which may have suggested the celebrated squib that appeared in the "New Whig Guide," and was popularly attributed to Mr. Croker. It was headed "The Political Alphabet; or, the Young Member's A B C," ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... that grim flood's ebb and flow—the every-day people, I am sure, will not take in the blackness of this transaction at this stage of my story, but before it is ended I will lay this and many more of an equally hellish nature before them in such A B C simplicity that all can read the portent as clearly as the Prophet Daniel read the writing on the wall in the banquet-hall ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... electrician who handles the motor could just as well end his own existence by that mysterious current as he could make use of it for the good of humanity. He spends years of conscientious study and masters the knowledge of it so that its uses are as simple as his A B C's. There is no doubt in the world but that he had to learn by experience. He had to go into the shop and climb up from the bottom. There was no other way by which he could come to know how to turn a deadly force into ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... sadness. He was now getting a big fellow, and his mother was anxious that he should receive some little education. He had not yet been taught to read; he had not even learnt his A B C. The word school frightened him. He could not bear to be shut up in a close room—he who had been accustomed to enjoy a sort of vagabond life in the open air. He could not give up his comrades, his playing at ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... her prattle immensely, and they were on the best terms. She told Tom she should like to go to school to Mr. Stelling, as he did, and learn just the same things. She knew she could do Euclid, for she had looked into it again, and she saw what A B C meant; they were the names of ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... night with raff-raff of the rumming of Elinor.[56] If I can tell what it means, pray God I may never get breakfast more, when I am hungry. Troth, I am of opinion he is one of those hieroglyphical writers, that by the figures of beasts, plants, and of stones, express the mind, as we do in A B C; or one that writes under hair, as I have heard of a certain notary, Histiaesus,[57] who, following Darius in the Persian wars, and desirous to disclose some secrets of import to his friend Aristagoras, that dwelt afar off, found out this means. He had a servant, that had been ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... were no Sunday schools in those days, Mrs. Carroll gathered her children around her on Sunday afternoons and drilled them in the church catechism until it was as familiar to them as their A B C; but Anna Ella always inclined to the Westminster Confession and the tenets in which her father's childhood had been ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... It's as simple as A B C. It's too simple, really, to be much of a rag. However, as it isn't a rag, but serious, I suppose we oughtn't to grumble. Now, ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... traveled over many rough roads, seemed to be enjoying the scenery in much the same manner as a drowning man might enjoy the Rhine. Whenever the machine skidded dangerously near a steep ravine, he was seen to cling in alarm to the seat. He was informed, however, that this was not even A B C of what the rest of the party were used to, ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... maternity, my dearest mother. A brat learns his A B C a shade quicker than other children, or construes Qui fit Maecenas with tolerable correctness; and straightway the doting mother thinks her lad is an embryo Canning. You should never have hoped anything of me, except that I would love you dearly all my life. You ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... and grandeur have alternate reign'd; Thither, in latter days, have genius fled From yonder city, to respire and die. There the sweet bard of Auburn sat, and tuned The plaintive moanings of his village dirge. There learned Chambers treasured lore for men, And Newbery there his A B C's for babes.] ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... know; I know all about it. I was there when he was told of this affair. Upon my word, Sir; upon my word, you could not apply to a more skilful doctor. He is a man who understands medicine thoroughly, as well as I do my A B C;[8] and who, were you to die for it, would not abate one iota of the rules of the ancients. Yes, he always follows the high-road—the high-road, Sir, and doesn't spend his time finding out mares' ...
— Monsieur de Pourceaugnac • Moliere
... up and she sniffed some. She wuz a foreigner, how could she know what I said? But Dorothy and Robert seemed to understand my language, though they couldn't speak it yet. And good land! I hain't learnt its A B C's yet, and don't spoze I shall till I git promoted to ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... don't want to give no credit to God—not a bit—no, sir! Science has done everything. I've noticed it time an' ag'in. T'other Sunday he said that an angel spoke to Moses, an' the Bible says, as plain as A B C, that God spoke to him. How can he expect that God is going to bless his ministry, an' he never givin' Him ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... 84: "Registro. a b c d e f g h i k l Tutti questi sono quaderni excepto l chie duerno"; audessous le monogramme de l'imprimeur en blanc sur fond noir.—Verso ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... flower under the type of a cup, the first part of the petal is that in which it expands from the bottom to the rim; the second part, that in which it terminates itself on reaching the rim. Thus let the three circles, A B C, Fig 6., represent the undivided cups of the three great geometrical orders ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... Sancho, "the squire must be unmarried, and must know, at any rate, how to help at mass, and if that be so, woe is me, for I am married already and I don't know the first letter of the A B C. What will become of me if my master takes a fancy to be an archbishop and not an emperor, as is usual ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... also of the utmost importance in that first consideration for setting out a drawing, namely the fixing of salient points, and getting their relative Positions. Fig. Z, on page 87 [Transcribers Note: Diagram IV], will illustrate what is meant. Let A B C D E be assumed to be points of some importance in an object you wish to draw. Unaided, the placing of these points would be a matter of considerable difficulty. But if you assume a vertical line drawn from A, the ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... other's characteristics. Thus an adult of simple structure being taken as the starting-point which we will call a, another species which was a in its young stage and became b in the adult was placed above it in the zoological series. By this process I presently found that a, then a b and a b c, c representing the adult stage, were very often found; but that practically after passing these two or three stages it did not often happen that a species was found which was a b c in the young and then became d in the adult. But on the other hand I ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... school-teacher. While much can be done through mothers' meetings and through individual instruction of parents, the most effective means of improving the general attitude towards sex health is to give the simple truth to the millions of children who have not yet left school. Armed with the A B C's of sex hygiene at school, boys and girls will be prepared to select employment, associates, and newspapers that will permit normal, healthy sex development. Men and women who are leading normal lives, who have plenty ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... of Matterhorn of heat, which dwarfs the portion of the diagram C D E, representing the luminous radiation. Indeed the idea forced upon the mind by this diagram is that the light rays are a mere insignificant appendage to the heat-rays represented by the area A B C D, thrown in as it were by nature ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... vagaries of Dark Circles, or even the doings of young ladies with "doubles." The flight of Mrs. Guppy through the air, the elongation of Mr. Home's braces, the insertion of live coals among the intricacies of Mr. S. C. Hall's exuberant locks, are but the A B C which have led them to their present advanced position. These physical "manifestations" may do for the neophytes. They are the initiated. I am the initiated; or I ought to be, if patience and perseverance constitute serving an apprenticeship. I have devoted a good portion of ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... round, with his tools of trade, and did the dominie in brown and red, and the squire's daughter in vermilion and flake white, and set the whole village agog with his marvellous achievements. Julian cultivated his acquaintance, received some secret instructions in the A B C of art, and bargained for some drawing and painting materials. His aspirations had at length found an object. Long and painfully he labored in secret; but his advances were rapid, for he took nature as a model. At last he ventured to display ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... we have said, this simple law is the beginning and end of ordinary calculations as to electric current, and it should be thoroughly understood by any farmer who essays to be his own electrical engineer. Once understood and applied, the problem of the control of the electric current becomes simple a b c. ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson
... learning," replied Sancho, "I have not much of that, for I hardly know my A B C; but to be a good governor, it will be enough that I am able to make my Christ-cross; and as to arms, I shall handle such as are given me till I fall, and so ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... be out for sixty days yet, but Silver Jack and Big Dan perfectly well knew that it only needed the suggestion, the temptation, to arouse the spirit of restlessness. That a taste or so of whiskey will shiver the patience of men oppressed by long monotony is as A B C to the north-country saloon-keeper. Silver Jack resolved to make the rounds of the camps sure that the investment of a few jugs of whiskey would bring down to Beeson Lake at least thirty ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... ask you, I ask any dog, what would you have done in my place? Ever since I was old enough to listen, mother had told me over and over again what I must do in a case like this. It is the A B C of a dog's education. 'If you are in a room and you hear anyone trying to get in,' mother used to say, 'bark. It may be someone who has business there, or it may not. Bark first, and inquire afterwards. Dogs were made to be ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... description, and although the Governor could speak German he could not read it, so the two volumes he possessed in that language were closed to him. Therefore John was compelled to begin at the very A B C of ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... the same, the other may be predicated of that which is thus coextensive." The fact of this coextensiveness must be ascertained by [Greek: nous], in other words, by the Inductive Faculty. We will take Aldrich's instance. All Magnets attract iron A B C are Magnets | Presupposed Syllogism reasoning A B C attract iron. / from ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... of young folks seized hold of the missionary, with the request, "Oh, teach us the A B C with music." Dragged and pushed, he entered one of the largest native houses, which was instantly crowded. The tune of "Auld Lang Syne" was pitched to A B C, and soon the strains were echoed to the farthest corner of the village. Between two and three o'clock on the following morning, ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... ends of each member may, if desired, be slightly (1/32") greater than the thickness of the other member. Divide this line, d e, on the member to be dovetailed, X, into as many equal spaces as there are to be tails (dovetails). From the division points of these spaces, a b c, to the right and left lay off one-half of the greatest width of the mortises to be cut out, and also the same distance from d and from e, as at f f f f ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... of all polar matters seem so widespread and comprehensive that it appears advisable to introduce here a few a b c paragraphs. Anyone interested can supplement these by reading the introductory parts of any good elementary school geography ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... all the others, Huneker disdains writing for the kindergarten. There is no stooping in his discourse; he frankly addresses himself to an audience that has gone through the forms, and so he avoids the tediousness of the A B C expositors. He is the only American musical critic, save Van Vechten, who thus assumes invariably that a musical audience exists, and the only one who constantly measures up to its probable interests, supposing it to be there. Such a book as "Old Fogy," for all its ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... "but she is simply fading away for want of the love which was her life. Go back to her; go back at once, and she will revive. Come, there is not a moment to be lost. I'll run out and send a telegram to Little Staunton. I'll tell them to expect you this evening. Where's an A B C? Have you ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... be sure not to find. The people are civil and thriving, and frugal withal; they have let the upper part of their house to two young women (one of them is a pretty blue-eyed girl) who teach little children their A B C, and make caps and gowns for their mammas,—parcel schoolmistress, parcel mantua-maker. I believe they find adorning the body a more profitable vocation than ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... on a space of two dimensions. Let us start as far back as we can: with a point. This point, a, [Figure 14] is conceived to move in a direction w, developing the line a b. This line next moves in a direction at right angles to w, namely, x, a distance equal to its length, forming the square a b c d. Now for the square to develop into a cube by a movement into the third dimension it would have to move in a direction at right angles to both w and x, that is, out of the plane of the paper—away from it altogether, either up or down. This is not possible, of course, but the third direction ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... laugh and said:—"Giotto, would e'er a stranger that met us, and had not seen thee before, believe, thinkst thou, that thou wert, as thou art, the greatest painter in the world." Whereto Giotto answered promptly:—"Methinks, Sir, he might, if, scanning you, he gave you credit for knowing the A B C." Which hearing, Messer Forese recognized his error, and perceived that he had gotten as good ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... probably not unheard of) in Norway at the end of the ninth century, and long after that; so that Erling, although a gentleman of the period, and a Sea-king to boot, had not up to the time we write of, learned his A B C! ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... time in ma life, in 1933, for Hoover. I don't know nothing about voting. I can read. I reads ma Bible. Ma young mistress learnt me to read. I never got to go to school much. Whut my young mistress learnt me was ma A B C's and how to call words. Yes maam I can write ma name but I forgot how to write, been so long since I ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... Lewis. "Where did you get your education? By education I don't mean a knowledge of knives, forks, and fish-eaters. That's from Ann Leighton, of course. Nor do I mean the power of adding two to two or reciting A B C D, etc. By education a gentleman means ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... again. I see I don't even know the A B C of this business. In the old days the leech was a physician. You don't mean I'm to ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... he could speak like a native, and he had dabbled in the humanities; but he would drag forth my smattering of learning with so much glee that one might have thought him ignorant of the plainest A B C of the matter. More than once I have known him blunder in a Latin quotation that I might correct him. Aileen and he had a hundred topics in common from which I was excluded by reason of my ignorance of the Highlands, but the Macdonald was as ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... and exhorted him to study my books and then to proclaim our message of Peace. But my message was not popular and it teaches, that the belief of the close connexion of men in mortal bodies with congenial departed spirits is the A B C, to arrive gradually to a deep knowledge of true religion and to the true freedom and deliverance from lying destroying spirits. But pastors who became materialists, were scared when they perceived, that my message presupposes the close connexion with congenial departed. ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... of Guildford appeared to be the junction of an extraordinary number of railway-lines, and before again setting out in the afternoon, when the wind had lulled, having got an A B C guide, and a railway-map, I decided upon my line, and upon a new engine, feeling pretty sure now of making London, only thirty miles away. I then set out, and about five o'clock was at Surbiton, near ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... made at the Bureau of Longitudes concerning population authorize us again to subtract from the total mentioned two millions of young girls, pretty enough to kill; they are at present in the A B C of life and innocently play with other children, without dreading that these little hobbledehoys, who now make them laugh, will one day ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... person. When a girl likes a man, she thinks she has a right to ill-use him a little bit; he has got her affection to set against a scratch or two; the others have not. So she has not the same right to scratch them. La! listen to me teaching him A B C. Why, David, you know nothing; ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... is not right to trouble about them, or to have business with them, saying, in the first book of Physics, that against him who denies the first postulate it is not right to dispute. And of such men as these are many idiots, who may not know their A B C, and who would wish to dispute in Geometry, in Astrology, and ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... Let those who are fit for nothing else go and drone over A B C with ragged children, if they like. It is just their vocation; but there is an order in everything, Margaret, and minds of a superior kind are intended for higher purposes, not to ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... her tormentor, "it was as plain as A B C to me that night, and I chuckled right smart to myself when I saw you innocently pin them, on your breast. It was simply delicious! But"—suddenly laying her hands on the pretty brown head—"bless you, my children! you have my unqualified sanction and I'll put my whole heart ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... were as weak as an infant's, while the dead weight of his helpless legs dragged on him like lead. The only result of his struggle was a dreadful access of pain. Reaction followed, for he had learnt in his A B C days not to whimper when he was hurt, and by the time the nurse returned Clowes had scourged himself back to his usual savage tranquillity. "Can I have that window shut, please?" he asked, cynically frank. "I ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... us. The direction of youth seems one of the greatest concerns in moral life, and one that is the least understood: to form the generation to come, is of the last importance. If an ingenious master hath flogged the a b c into an innocent child, he thinks himself worthy of praise. A lad is too much terrified to march that path, which is marked out by the rod. If the way to learning abounds with punishment, he will quickly detest it; if we make his ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... minute to tip up a form with four children on it, throw their books out of the window, and sprinkle ink all over the floor. Miss Deeble marched her downstairs to an empty kitchen, and left her sitting on a stool in the middle of it with an A B C in her hand. But Beth took no interest in the alphabet in those days, and hunted black-beetles with the bellows instead of learning it. The hearthstone was the place of execution. When she found a beetle, she would blow him along to it with the ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... power,' there is no truer saying," remarked the teacher, watching the tyro's eager efforts. "It's as easy as A B C to you, apparently." ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... Newcomb's "recreation," as he called, it,—political economy, we may note that his contributions to it were really voluminous, consisting of papers, popular articles and several books, including "The A B C of Finance" (1877) and "Principles of Political Economy" (1886). Authorities in the science never really took these as seriously as they deserved, possibly because they regarded Professor Newcomb as scarcely orthodox. Some of his distinctions, however, are ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... right there—you think so yourself, do you not Carrie?" I asked anxiously, for this seemed to me the A B C of common sense. ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... consists of an external vessel, A B C D. of tinned copper, containing a vessel, I H E F, to the sides of which are fixed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various
... his brother. "Let's go in and learn our A B C's and then we can go home and tell mamma all about it. This is an ...
— Curly and Floppy Twistytail - The Funny Piggie Boys • Howard R. Garis
... of labour, wherin is rychesse, vertue, and honour. Enprynted at London in Fletestrete in the sygne of the sonne. by Wynkyn de worde. Anno d[n]i M.ccccc.vi." There is no indication of authorship. Signatures: a b c d e f g h, alternately 8s and 4s, i 4; 52 leaves, not numbered. The British Museum and Cambridge University Library copies of this book have been collated, but as the former ends with H 3 and the latter wants the last leaf, that leaf must remain undescribed. Mr Bradshaw, however, ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... may say so, for all your kindness to me long ago, down to this very day—you've a right to be first told of anything about me. Change of opinion I can't exactly call it, for I don't see the good of schools and teaching A B C, any more than I did before, only Mr. Gray does, so I'm to shut my eyes, and leap over the ditch to the side of education. I've told Sally already, that if she does not mind her work, but stands gossiping with Nelly Mather, I'll teach her her ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Cass had sent a letter, with a quick-delivery stamp on it, to William Cass, at A B C, East Fourteenth Street, New York, at 3:30 p.m., on June 12. So far as guilt or innocence was concerned there was nothing left to discover; the connection between these two men was demonstrated. Farrell's misidentification established another ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... "It's like she says: 'A woman as brings up twelve children learns something besides her A B C. Children's as good as 'rithmetic to set you findin' ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... sake, I braved it out, and continued to learn the A B C of agriculture on an unmade farm with great ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... question passionately. He had no answer ready. Platitudes would not do for this child, he reflected, and to lecture her then even on the A B C's of the social code would be ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... and when she said nay, he offered to teach her that lore, and she yeasaid that joyously; and thenceforth would she have him with her every day a good while; and an apt scholar she was, and he no ill master, and she learned her A B C speedily. ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... too elementary, Whatson, but I am always willing to oblige a friend. I shall be relieved, however, when you are able to work out the A B C of detection for yourself, although I shall never object to helping you with the words of more than three syllables. Having made up his mind to commit suicide, Kipson naturally intended to do it before he reached Brewster, ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... Percival Lowell has pointed out, that, with regard to the manners and customs of the people, everything is reversed, and the surest way to go right is to take pains to go dead wrong! "To speak backward, write backward, read backward, is but the A B C of Oriental contrariety." ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... the meed of the man who abolished war. That mind of his, honest as the day, but far from great; strong but not broad, sees everything as simple, not as complex. Is there a wrong? Why, then, abolish it; it is as simple as A B C. War is wrong; therefore let us stop it. How? Why, get everybody to agree not to fight without taking a year to look into the thing. And he busied himself drafting and negotiating treaties with all the world to get it to agree to this ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... spoken to after that fashion," cried the dwarf angrily; "my name is not 'little chap,' but 'Mr. Alphabet,' though some dare to call me A B C. I ought to be treated with respect, for I ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... the Doctor, "how much trouble some women would escape if they kept on saying A B C like that—for the A B C is usually lovely—and when it was time to X Y Z—often terrible, they just slipped out through ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... published contrary to statutes, acts, and proclamations. King James, in the first year of his reign, by letters-patent, granted the Stationers' Company the exclusive privilege of printing Almanacs, Primers, Psalters, the A B C, the "Little Catechism," and ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... science nor even the teacher. It is the method of instruction that makes her uneasy. She is afraid lest this young professor, whose knowledge is so extensive, should turn over the pages of the book too quickly and neglect the A B C. ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... period is the "Dethe of Blanche the Duchesse," better known, as the "Boke of the Duchesse," a poem of considerable dramatic and emotional power, written after the death of Blanche, wife of Chaucer's patron, John of Gaunt. Additional poems are the "Compleynte to Pite," a graceful love poem; the "A B C," a prayer to the Virgin, translated from the French of a Cistercian monk, its verses beginning with the successive letters of the alphabet; and a number of what Chaucer calls "ballads, roundels, and virelays," with which, says his friend Gower, "the land ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... neck, it 'ud be next to empossible for the turkey-cock lying thataway to see what he was about, by rason ov his djollars and other accouthrements hanging back over his eyes? The one about as big a bounce as the other! O you misfortunate crethur! if you had ever larned your A B C in theology, you'd have known that there's a differ betuxt them two lies so great, that, begad, I wouldn't wondher if it 'ud make a balance ov five years in purgathory to the sowl that 'ud be in it. Ay, and if it wasn't ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... about that,' continued the priest. 'In Lyons, among the lower orders, there are witch doctors who know a little about the witchcraft practised in the country. But be reassured. These people are not powerful. They know little more than the A B C's of the art. Then, mademoiselle, you ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... deal that would be useful to him to know later: history, studying dates unweariedly, but mistaking the lesson to be learned from facts and the elementary notions of political economy necessary to a deputy, the A B C of sociology for the use ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... Burnamy. "You never asked me anything about it. You told me what you wanted done, and I did it. How could I believe you were such an ignoramus as not to know the a b c of the thing you were talking about?" He added, in cynical contempt, "But you needn't worry. You can make it right with the managers by spending a little more money than you ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... pilgrims and this smartly appointed youth, we find them striving hard, but without any sign of success, to convince him of some of the things from which he gets his somewhat severe name. For one thing, they at last bluntly told him that he evidently did not know the very A B C about himself. Till, when too hard pressed by the more ruthless of the two old men, the exasperated youth at last frankly burst out: "I will never believe that my heart is thus bad!" There is a warm touch of Bunyan's own experience here, mixed up with his ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... thing afresh, he would interpolate new matter, or alter it so that it was impossible to recognise it. Once upon a time, one of those gentlemen who, like the usurers at our yearly fairs, clutch and beg and steal every sort of frippery, and issue mean little volumes, no thicker than an A B C book, every month, or even every week, wormed this same story out of Thoma Grigorovitch, and the latter completely forgot about it. But that same young gentleman, in the pea-green caftan, came from ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... the window-sill, drooping their heads for want of water. Nobody had watered them for so long. Clearly Molly had not changed. Was it only I? I looked and wondered, as I saw myself again at ten years old in that very room. Here had been those first cups of tea; those first lessons in A B C; and other lessons in the beginnings of a higher knowledge. What had they all come to? Was Molly the better in anything beyond her flowers? What had eleven years ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... used to laugh at—I am sure I don't know why; but her teaching could not have amounted to much, for I went into the schoolroom one day, and found Tommy riding defiantly on the rocking-horse, while poor Miss Feechim stood by him with an A B C in one hand and a long pointer in the other, with which she showed him the letters. When he said them correctly, Miss Feechim gave him a sugar-plum out of the bag on her arm, but when he refused to look ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... shooting with freedom." Half this blessed Sunday at this country house I have been ramming the idea down the throat of the Lord Chancellor[37]. He sees it, too, being a Scotchman. I take the members of the Government, as I get the chance or can make it, and go over with them the A B C of the President's principle: no territorial annexation; no trafficking with tyrants; no stealing of American governments by concession or financial thimble-rigging. They'll not recognize another Huerta—they're sick of that. And they'll not endanger our friendship. They didn't see the idea ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... say to himself: 'Why should I have to work long and hard for the simple reason that it pleases my neighbors to shove a dozen new members into society?'" It should seem that a critic should first acquaint himself with the A B C of Socialism before presuming to write upon the subject, and such ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... civilian ever sees) the book brings you to a region where nothing else is considered than the one thing, attack, attack, attack. There is something very grim and inexorable in this primer of war, this A B C of the principles of destruction. And if the innocent little pocket manual contains a codification, so condensed as to be amazing, of the ways to slay your enemy, the officers are ready with every possible ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... in his own purposes to think about the peculiar claims to respect of age, sex, or condition. Almost from the time he could toddle about the carpeted floor, had Aunt Grace been trying to teach him what she called manners. But he was never an apt scholar in her school. If he mastered the A B C to-day, most probably on her attempt to advance him to-morrow into his a-b ab's, he had wholly forgotten the previous lesson. Poor Aunt Grace! She saw no hope for the boy. All her labour was ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... gratifying. I think you had better consider it carefully, and weigh it well in the balance with the 'creations' of Worth, and the magnificence of your diamonds, for somehow the two things won't pull together, and you haven't even learnt the A B C of ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... variety where variety had not been too apparent. There was the change from Granville to Woolridge's, and from Woolridge's to Granville. There was the dinner hour when he rose from his desk and went out to an A B C shop with Booty or some other man. Sometimes the other man had ideas, views of life and so forth, that interested Ransome; if he hadn't, at any rate he was a man. That is to say, he didn't sulk or nag or snap at you; or nip the words out of your mouth and twist them; he wasn't perverse; he ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... Wood the trees had worn thin under showers of shrapnel, but the long avenues between the trenches were cool and pleasant in the heat of the day. It was one of the elementary schools where many of our soldiers learned the A B C of actual warfare after their training in camps behind the lines. Here one might sport with Amaryllis in the shade, but for the fact that country wenches were not allowed in the dugouts and trenches, where ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... 'Metamorphoses,' is apparent in many of the details. But the theme was doubtless first suggested to Shakespeare by a contemporary effort. Lodge's 'Scillaes Metamorphosis,' which appeared in 1589, is not only written in the same metre (six-line stanzas rhyming a b a b c c), but narrates in the exordium the same incidents in the same spirit. There is little doubt that Shakespeare drew from Lodge some ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... face—and I never remember one—unnecessarily," he answered. "It is the A B C of my profession. To-day I believe that it is Mr. Guest, and his friend Mr. Courage, whom I have the pleasure ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 1871, "the spectacle of Bismarck teaching the A B C of Liberal politics to the hapless French. His last mot, they tell me, is this. Speaking of the extent to which the French Emperor had destroyed his own reputation and put an end to the worship of the old Napoleon, he said: 'He has killed himself and buried his ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... tubular arch, as constructed, with sections, A B C, in combination with the foot block, I, provided with a flange or boss, K, when arranged in the manner as and ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... come, us stays right on with massa and missus. Massa teach school for us at night. Us learn A B C and how spell cat and dog and nigger. Den one day he git cross and scold us and us didn't go back to school no more. Us didn't have sense 'nough to know he tryin' do ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration |
