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More "Prodigy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of that debt which has since become the greatest prodigy that ever perplexed the sagacity and confounded the pride of statesmen and philosophers. At every stage in the growth of that debt the nation has set up the same cry of anguish and despair. At every stage in the growth of that debt it has been ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the princes, and exciting the people to declare against them. The suitors endeavour to justify their stay, at least till he shall send the queen to the court of Icarius her father; which he refuses. There appears a prodigy of two eagles in the sky, which an augur expounds to the ruin of the suitors. Telemachus the demands a vessel to carry him to Pylos and Sparta, there to inquire of his father's fortunes. Pallas, in the shape of Mentor (an ancient friend of Ulysses), helps him to a ship, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... the sufferers in the carriage became intensely interested. They no longer took their eyes off this little girl on whom a miracle had been performed, but scanned her from head to foot as though seeking for some sign of the prodigy. Those who were able to stand rose up in order that they might the better see her, and the others, the infirm ones, stretched on their mattresses, strove to raise themselves and turn their heads. Amidst the suffering which had again come upon them on leaving Poitiers, the terror which ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... not only a musical genius, but was also one of the pre-eminent geniuses of the Western world. He defined in his music a system of musical thought and an entire state of mind that were unlike any previously experienced. A true child prodigy, he began composing at age 5 and rapidly developed his unmistakable style; by 18 he was composing works capable of altering the mind-states of entire civilizations. Indeed, he and his predecessor Bach accomplished ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... any hurry for them to run, or to walk, or to cut their first teeth. Tom is a fine little chap, and I am very fond of him, in his way—principally, perhaps, because he is your Tom—but I cannot see that he is a prodigy." ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... our spiritual life on earth and to make us strong for our daily conflicts, our heavenly Shepherd has left us a food which is none other than His own body and blood. What a prodigy of love! What could He do for us that He has not done? But, besides giving us strength, He had another purpose in becoming our food. Since He has chosen us for Himself, and has provided, in another ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... I not there to behold this prodigy? But for your friend De Pontbriand and that eagle-eyed seaman who comes to visit your uncle, I have not seen a man ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... have misunderstood each other. I said that your answering in Latin at so early an age was a prodigy, that is, a thing that is wonderful; that does ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... 1658, heavy sorrow fell upon Evelyn by the death of his younger son, an infant prodigy, and a sad and wonderful example of a young brain being terribly overtaxed. 'After six fits of a quartan ague with which it pleased God to visite him, died my dear Son Richard, to our inexpressible grief and affliction, 5 yeares and 3 days ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... cool hand! And verily, but that Cilly takes it so easily, I should imagine it was her singing prodigy—eh? ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a few Months in this Country, but my search after the Prodigy of humane Knowledge the People abounds with, led me into Acquaintance with some of their principal Artists, Engineers, and Men of Letters; and I was astonish'd at every Day's Discovery of new and of unheard-of Worlds of Learning; but I Improv'd in the Superficial Knowledge ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... beyond the Tiber matters were carried much further. The profound Etruscan read off to the believer his future fortunes in detail from the lightning and from the entrails of animals offered in sacrifice; and the more singular the language of the gods, the more startling the portent or prodigy, the more confidently did he declare what they foretold and the means by which it was possible to avert the mischief. Thus arose the lore of lightning, the art of inspecting entrails, the interpretation of prodigies—all of them, and the science of lightning especially, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... he should not be otherwise accompanied. The Dominie loved his young charge, and was enraptured with his own success, in having already brought him so far in his learning as to spell words of three syllables. The idea of this early prodigy of erudition being carried off by the gipsies, like a second Adam Smith, [* The father of Economical Philosophy was, when a child, carried off by gipsies, and remained some hours in their possession.] was not to be tolerated; ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... so many revolutions, so many legislative reforms, so many great men, so many events, tragic and glorious, this vast history that for so many centuries holds the interest of all cultured nations, and that, considered as a whole, seems almost a prodigy, you can, on the track of the old idea of "corruption," explain in its profoundest origins by one small fact, universal, common, of the very simplest—something that every one may observe in the ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... of dinner! Hark ye, landlord; how far is it to young Melnotte's cottage? I should like to see such a prodigy. ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... respect to climate, fall to the ground. It is not the vigour of natural propensities, as he has supposed, that destroys the moral ones; it is not the effect of climate that makes it to be considered among these people "as a prodigy of virtue for a man to meet a fine woman in a retired chamber without offering violence to her,"—it is the effect of studiously pampering the appetite, nurturing vicious notions, considering women as entirely subservient to the pleasures of man; and, in short, by fancying those pleasures in ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... rarity stupidity verify epitaph retinue nutriment vestige medicine impediment prodigy serenity ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... fallen! We may now pause before that splendid prodigy, which towered amongst us like some ancient ruin, whose frown terrified the glance its magnificence attracted. Grand, gloomy, and peculiar, he sat upon the throne a sceptered hermit, wrapped in the solitude of his own originality. A ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... Greece was one of his correspondents. He shook hands with more ministers of all denominations, and of all nationalities than any man of this age. He was as cordially treated by Archbishop Canterbury as he was by Bismarck at Berlin or the old Russian Archpriest Brashenski. Dr. Schaff was a prodigy of industry. During half a century he was the foremost church historian of this country; he led the work of the Sabbath Committee, and was the master spirit of the Evangelical Alliance. He edited a volume of hymnology, and wrote catechisms for children; he filled professors' chairs in two ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... due conception of what is to be held for this sort of personage in fiction would make him almost as much of a prodigy there, as in real history is a new law-giver, a revolutionizing philosopher, or the ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... literature. The four successive sovereigns, Henry, Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth, may, on one account or other, be admitted into the class of authors. Queen Catharine Parr translated a book: Lady Jane Gray, considering her age, and her sex, and her station, may be regarded as a prodigy of literature. Sir Thomas Smith was raised from being professor in Cambridge, first to be ambassador to France, then secretary of state. The despatches of those times, and among others those of Burleigh ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... horror down, } And general grief overwhelms th' unhappy town: } The old deplore their late remains of light; And mothers lead their infants from the sight. The ghosts of Cadmus' race, an impious crew, This prodigy of kindred guilt to view, Sent from the mansion of eternal hills, (A dark assembly) crowd Baeotia's hills; O'er day's fair face a gloomy twilight cast, And smile with joy to ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... all beer and skittles with us, and therefore apt to pall, my cousins and I had to work pretty hard. In the first place, my dear mother did all she could to make me an infant prodigy of learning. She tried to teach me Italian, which she spoke as fluently as English or French (for she had lived much in Italy), and I had to translate the "Gierusalemme Liberata" into both those latter languages—a task which has remained unfinished—and to render the "Allegro" and the ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... corrupted, that you will hardly find a young person of quality with the least tincture of knowledge, at the same time that many of the clergy were never more learned, or so scurvily treated. Here among us, at least, a man of letters out of the three professions, is almost a prodigy. And those few who have preserved any rudiments of learning are (except perhaps one or two smatterers) the clergy's friends to a man: and I dare appeal to any clergyman in this kingdom, whether the greatest dunce in the parish ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... would fain believe that Toussaint Washington Johnson, who ran away to sea so many years ago, has found some fortunate zone where his hair and skin keep the same sunny and rosy tints they wore to his mother's eyes in infancy. But I have no means of knowing this, or of telling whether he was the prodigy of intellect that he was declared to be. Naomi could no more be taken in proof of the one assertion than of the other. When she came to us, it was agreed that she should go to school; but she overruled her mother in this as in everything else, and never went. Except Sunday-school lessons, she ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... alas! that a fire at our tent door, as we had had hitherto, was rather too hot to be pleasant. We were here visited by the local prodigy, a rustic carpenter, who insisted upon making something for us with his rather primitive-looking turning lathe. His shop I found completely AL FRESCO, between a couple of cows in the centre of a farm-yard, and here he set to ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... tradition with them was that they were the youngest of all nations, being descended from Targitaus, one of the numerous sons of Jove. The three children of Targitaus for a time ruled the land, but their joint rule was changed by a prodigy. There fell from the skies four implements of gold,—a plough, a yoke, a battle-axe, and a drinking-cup. The oldest brother hastened eagerly to seize this treasure, but it burst into flame at his approach. The second then made the attempt, but was in his turn driven back by the scorching flames. ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... reason to think the hour is ripe. The hour may not last long, and while it continues you may safely let all the child's other occupations take a second place. In this way you economize time and deepen skill; for many an infant prodigy, artistic or mathematical, has a flowering epoch ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... came to the help of the convert, and received all the outpourings of that soul, as it stripped itself of the evil which had been corroding it. Then, curious to know what argument had touched the heart of this man, he asked him what part of the sermon had specially borne upon the prodigy. "Ah!" answered the convert, "I never heard a single word of what you were saying; I entered the church without knowing why; at that moment you pointed your finger at me emphatically. Yes, it is true, I cried, I am a sinner, and I felt ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... individual believes that he has been restored to health by means of the Milagro, it is customary for him to deposit, in the chapel of the image he venerates, a small model or representation of that member or part of the body restored to health by the prodigy. These objects in great abundance adorn the walls of such edifices, where may be seen innumerable arms, legs, eyes, mouths, and so on, of silver or of wax, according to the circumstances of the persons so favoured. People, who have been cured of their lameness, ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... intelligence of humanity and the world's Press! The machiavelism of Bismarck was bad enough, with its constant demands on our vigilance, but this new omniscient German Emperor is worse; he reminds one of some infant prodigy, the pride of the family. Yet his ways are anything but kingly; they resemble rather those of a shopkeeper. He literally fills the earth with his circulars on the art of government, spreads before us the wealth of his ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... Miss Ferrars saying, 'By-the-by, Albinia, how was it that you never told us of the development of the Infant prodigy? ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... annihilation until the fit be passed; and at last amid the whirl of woe he feels, a deep stupor steals over him, as over the man who bleeds to death, for conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it; so, after sore wrestlings in his berth, Jonah's prodigy of ponderous misery drags him drowning down ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... groan, craven, and wipe my hand across my forehead to brush away the frenzy. The fingers came free, damp with cold sticky sweat—a prodigy of a parchment skin ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... had walked till he was very warm, took off his wig to cool and refresh himself: A sudden exclamation of one of the Indians who saw it, drew the attention of the rest, and in a moment every eye was fixed upon the prodigy, and every operation was suspended: the whole assembly stood some time motionless, in silent astonishment, which could not have been more strongly expressed if they had discovered that our friend's limbs had been screwed on to the trunk; in a short time, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... costume. In vain Jarwin begged and protested and sang. The Big Chief's blood was up, and his commands must be obeyed, therefore Jarwin did as he was bid; went out to battle in this remarkable costume—if we may so style it— and proved himself such a prodigy of valour that his prowess went far to turn the tide of victory wherever he appeared during the fight. But we pass over all this. Suffice it to say, that the pugnacious tribe was severely chastised and reduced to a state of ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... the tempests of Tiberias, or the demoniac of Gadara, to have hurled the incumbent stone into fragments? Might not He who has "the keys of the grave and of death" have Himself unlocked the portals preparatory to the vaster prodigy ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... celestial strokes of her own brush; I mean by her other writings, in which she has so well expressed the sincerity of her doctrines, the vivacity of her faith, and the uprightness of her morals, that the most learned men who reigned in her time were not ashamed to call her a prodigy and miracle of nature. And albeit that Heaven, jealous of our welfare, has snatched her from this mortal habitation, yet her virtues rendered her so admirable and so engraved her in the memory of every one, that the injury and lapse of time ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... joy in the hearts of the Natchez. A child is born to them of the race of their Suns. A boy is born with a beard on his chin. The prodigy still works on from generation to generation.' So sang the warriors of my tribe when I sprang from my mother's womb, and the shrill cry of the eagle, in the heavens, was heard in joyful response. Hardly fifteen summers had passed over my head when my beard had grown long and glossy. I ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... ignorance of the real situation of her father and son. The violet silk dressing-gown of Monsieur Bernard, the flowers, his remarks to Cartier, had already roused some suspicion of this in Godefroid's mind. The young man stood still where he was, bewildered by this prodigy of paternal love. The contrast, such as he imagined it, between the invalid's room and the rest of that squalid place,—yes, it ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... days previously, about all that I knew of Ceylon's isle being contained in one of the verses of that hymn, which I used to sing at missionary meetings, when a minister who had seen the heathen was stared at as a prodigy. ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... of the great learned musical school of the Bachs, which may almost be called the algebra or geometry of musical composition, at any rate its higher mathematics, had certainly challenged a spirit of the most daring contrast in the young Hungarian prodigy, who electrified Paris, and carried its severe body of classical critics by storm, with the triumphant audacity of his brilliant and powerful style. Liszt became, at the very opening of his career, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... die. For if the signs of the times mean anything, they portend, I humbly submit, a somewhat mysterious and mythical denouement to this very age, and to those struggles of it which I have herein attempted, clumsily enough, to sketch. We are entering fast, I both hope and fear, into the region of prodigy, true and false; and our great-grandchildren will look back on the latter half of this century, and ask, if it were possible that such things could happen in an organised planet? The Benthamites will receive this announcement, ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... does not strike all as a system of truth. If it did, it would be a prodigy. Neither does the Christian faith produce the same impressions upon all. Freedom to believe or to dissent is a great privilege in these days. So when a number of conscientious followers apply themselves to a matter like Christian Science, they are enjoying ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... brought the purple prodigy, partly to please her father, partly with a view of subjecting it to violent radical changes. But after trying it on before the tiny mirror in the galley once or twice, her thoughts wandered away, and she fell into one of her habitual reveries seated on a little ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... reply, furiously attacks the fools who, calling reason to their aid, dare call for an account from God why he condemns or predestines to damnation innocent beings before they have even seen the light. Truly, Luther, in the eyes of all God's creatures, must appear a prodigy of daring when he ventures to maintain that no one can reach heaven unless he adopts the slavery of the human will. And it is not merely by the spirit of disputation, but by settled conviction, that he defends this most odious of all ideas. He lived ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... military school at Brienne in April 1779, and from there sent letters which might well have warned his parents that they had hatched a prodigy. All the bitterness of a proud humiliated spirit inspired them, whether the boy, despised by richer students, begged his father to remove him, or urged, with utter disregard of filial piety, the repayment by some means of a sum of ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... doctor, himself one of the academicians, introduced me to his family. His parents, who were in easy circumstances, received me very kindly. One of his sisters was very amiable, but the other, a professed nun, appeared to me a prodigy of beauty. I might have enjoyed myself in a very agreeable way in the midst of that charming family during my stay in Chiozza, but I suppose that it was my destiny to meet in that place with nothing but sorrows. The young doctor forewarned me that the monk ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... avons une idee trop vaste, they trap petite ). 'There is, for instance, Lord Chesterfield, passes here for a fair-enough kind of man (BON HOMME), and is a favorite with the King [not with Walpole or the Queen, if Nosti knew it]; but nobody thinks him such a prodigy as you all do in Germany,'—which latter bit of Germanism is an undoubted fact; curious enough to the English, and to the Germans that now ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... in letters of black a foot high: LONG HORN SALOON. While beneath the legend was depicted a fat, vermilion clad cowboy mounted upon a tarantula-bodied, ass-eared horse of pink, in the act of hurling a cable-like rope which by some prodigy of dexterity was made to describe three double-bows and a latigo knot before its loop managed to poise in mid-air above the head of a rabbit-sized baby-blue steer whose horns exceeded in length the pair of Texas monstrosities that graced ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... saying, 'Lend an ear,' To something marvellous or witty. To disappoint your friends who hear, Is possible, and were a pity. But now a clear exception see, Which I maintain a prodigy— A thing which with the air of fable, Is true as is the interest-table. A pine was by a woodman fell'd, Which ancient, huge, and hollow tree An owl had for his palace held— A bird the Fates[14] had kept in fee, Interpreter to such ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... Shall a Creature be permitted to live, conceived in guilt so monstrous? Abandoned Woman, speak for him no more! Better that the Wretch should perish than live: Begotten in perjury, incontinence, and pollution, It cannot fail to prove a Prodigy of vice. Hear me, thou Guilty! Expect no mercy from me either for yourself, or Brat. Rather pray that Death may seize you before you produce it; Or if it must see the light, that its eyes may immediately be closed again ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... faith in its destiny. When again, in 1906, earthquake and fire devastated the city its phoenix spirit came to life. The Argonauts lived once more, magnificent in their resolution. The renaissance was a prodigy that made onlookers exclamatory. Jules Jusserand, Ambassador of France to the United States, phrased the wonder ...
— Fascinating San Francisco • Fred Brandt and Andrew Y. Wood
... a mental prodigy, for he taught himself to read when four years old, and at five he had devoured hundreds of books and was already writing poems and plays. At ten, when he had his first tutor, his knowledge was wide and he had become a passionate ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... Liverpool) made a sensational debut in the House on the Tory side, Sheridan remarked that the Whigs would soon provide an antidote in the person of young Canning. Great, then, was their annoyance when the prodigy showed signs of breaking away from the society of the Crewes and Sheridan, in order to ally himself with Pitt. So little is known respecting the youth of Canning that the motives which prompted his breach with Sheridan are involved in uncertainty. It is clear, however, from his own ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... over sandy wastes, through pine woods, was intolerable. I was glad enough to reach Tennessee and old Kentucky. The people of Frankfort treated me very handsomely, as did those of Lexington. I paid my respects to the local idol, the young Virginia orator and rising lawyer, Henry Clay. That man is a prodigy—he will make his mark. I wish he were hand in hand with us, like Jackson, and ready to embark his ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... beginning of course with the boldest warriors. But, horror of horrors, each man's porridge swelled before his eyes, grew hot, smoked, boiled over. They turned and fled, man, woman, and child, from before that supernatural prodigy; and the settlers coming back to look for the dropped sack, saw a sight which told the whole tale. For the poor creatures, in their terror, had thrown away their pans and calabashes, each filled with that which it was likely to contain, seeing that the sack itself had contained, not flour, ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley
... the Boy Conductor? A musical prodigy, seven years old, who will order the fifth oboe out of the Albert Hall as soon as look at him. Well, he ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... Jonah's face changed instantly. It wore the adoring gaze of the fond parent, who thinks his child is a marvel and a prodigy. ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... consequently found it an extremely laborious task to restore the sense of corrupt passages, and have sometimes abandoned the attempt in despair. Not a few of the pieces in the last edition of Dodsley come within this category; and we may signalise the unique tragedy of Appius and Virginia, 1575, as a prodigy of negligent and ignorant execution on the part of the original compositor. But to the same cause is due our still remaining uncertainty as to the true reading of numerous places in ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... some years since I have shut up my books and closed my accounts; but you have kindled a desire in me of opening them once more before I die: which I now do: so go home and dine with me.' This nobleman, I say, is a prodigy, for he has all the wit and promptness of a man of thirty; a disposition to be pleased, and a power to please others, beyond whatever I knew: added to which a man ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... everything of discovery the most penetrating, everything of observation on human life the most distinguishing and refined? All these must be instantly recognized, for they are all inseparably associated with the name of Lord Verulam. Yet, when this prodigy was brought before your Lordships by the Commons of Great Britain for having permitted his menial servant to receive presents, what was his demeanor? Did he require his counsel not "to let down the dignity ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... mistake an ordinary human gift for a special and extraordinary endowment. The mechanism of breathing and that of swallowing are very wonderful, and if one had seen and studied them in his own person only, he might well think himself a prodigy. Everybody knows these and other bodily faculties are common gifts; but nobody except editors and school-teachers and here and there a literary than knows how common is the capacity of rhyming and prattling in readable prose, especially among young women of a certain degree of education. In my ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and admire this promise of royal offspring, and she was surprised into genuine admiration when she saw the prodigy. Her nose had to lower its scornful turn, her lips to relax their skeptical twist. It was an egg indeed! Ben was nobly justified in his purchase. His step was light that day. Kate heard him singing, over and over ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... fair of this world, and, although your noble body has rested for four years, six feet underground, thanks to me you still live. I always have had a most sincere admiration for you. I considered you a phenomenon, a prodigy. You were courageous, devoted, generosity itself; you esteemed honour above all the gold deposits in California; you detested all coarse thoughts and doubtful actions; your mother had nourished you in all sublime follies. You were a true chevalier, a true ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... the window, in pleasant excitement, to see what new and wonderful performance had been attempted by my little prodigy—my first born—my year old bud of beauty, the folded leaves in whose bosom were just beginning to loosen themselves, and send out upon the air sweet intimations of an abounding fragrance. He had escaped from his nurse, and was running off ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... only shew me for a man: Afric is stored with monsters; man's a prodigy Thy subjects ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... was invited to Wittemberg, as professor of ancient languages, at the age of twenty-one. He arrived there in 1518, and immediately fell under the influence of Luther, who, however, acknowledged his classical attainments. He was considered a prodigy; was remarkably young looking, and so boyish, that the grave professors conceived but little hope of him at first. But, when he delivered his inaugural oration in Latin, all were astonished; and their prejudices were removed. Luther himself was enthusiastic in his praises, and a friendship ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... is man! what a novelty, what a monster, what a chaos, what a subject of contradiction, what a prodigy! A judge of all things, feeble worm of the earth, depositary of the truth, cloaca of uncertainty and error, the glory and the shame of ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... realized that this attitude of ours would turn poetic success into a question of the survival of that paradox, the commercially shrewd poet, or of the poet who by some happy accident of birth or marriage has been given an income, or of that prodigy of versatility who, in our present stage of civilization, besides being mentally and spiritually fit for the poet's calling, is also physically fit to bear the strain of doing two men's work; or, perhaps ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... isn't a sensible woman or an original idea, so far, on the block. I wouldn't budge an inch farther, but for Quigg's promise to introduce me to a young widow who lives next door—a regular prodigy of science and art, according to his story. I think you said she was ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... remarked the Queen, 'that birds of taste are rare in the Metropolis, and that, on the Embankment especially, a rook would be regarded as a kind of prodigy. Nowhere has the manufacture of permanent scarecrows been conducted with more ingenious success. But tell me, my accomplished fowl, have Britons any other arts? Long ago the men used to paint themselves blue, but, as far as I have remarked, ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... his arm with a more vehement will; he struck, and at the same instant every horror disappeared. The sky was cloudless; the forest was neither terrible nor beautiful, but heavy and sombre as of old—a natural gloomy wood, but no prodigy. ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... the days to come Edison will not only be recognized as an intellectual prodigy, but as a prodigy of industry—of hard work. In his field as inventor and man of science he stands as clear-cut and secure as the lighthouse on a rock, and as indifferent to the tumult around. But as the ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... "He will give me a second life; I have one into the bargain. This will be a prodigy indeed!" and he filled the jug again and put it to ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... plainly regarded her as a prodigy of knowledge. His whole attitude suggested at once the mind of an alert, interested boy asking his teacher for information on a subject near to his heart. It was ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... but His judges, was attributed to witchcraft, Such was his influence:—I have no great faith 250 In any magic save that of the mine— I therefore deemed him wealthy.—But my soul Was roused with various feelings to seek out This prodigy, if ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... civilization are generally subjected, being compelled to sit by the hour upon a bench and breathe the unwholesome air of an over-heated school-room, very likely after having passed, during a brief season, for a youthful prodigy in the eyes of an admiring, but inconsiderate circle of friends, he would have closed his earthly career and been lamented as a genius for this world too brilliant and too good. But in this comparative ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... of the recent prodigy, the bottom of the Mediterranean just at this point had formed a sudden ridge across the Straits of Libya. The sides of the ridge had shelved to so great an extent that, while the depth of water on the summit had been little more than ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... child of romance, a wonderful prodigy of a strange and weird fate, and he could not but picture to himself what a ravishingly lovely creature she would be under different auspices; and he wondered not that the Cuban villain, Garcia, was anxious to ...
— The Dock Rats of New York • "Old Sleuth"
... attention. He was very fond of monopolizing the conversation and suffering himself to be admired. For he called many a young, highly promising musician his pupil, and had, besides, the certain consciousness of having moulded his daughter Clara, at that time a girl of fourteen, into a prodigy, whose first appearance delighted the whole world, and whose subsequent artist-activity became the pride of her native city, Leipsic. By his side sat a quiet, thoughtful young man of twenty-three, with melancholy eyes. But lately a student in Heidelberg, he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... accomplishments, and three happy years had passed under protection, when her only son, who was an officer in the Saxon service, obtained permission to come home. I had never seen him before—he was a handsome young man—in my eyes a prodigy; for he talked of love, and promised me marriage. He was the first man who ever spoken to me on such a subject.—His flattery made me vain, and his repeated vows—Don't look at me, dear Frederick!—I ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald
... the boy of eleven years was soon recognized as a prodigy. There he met two Italian composers of established reputation, Bononcini and Attilio Ariosti, both of whom he was to encounter in after-life, though under very different circumstances, in London. Bononcini, who was of a sour and jealous disposition, soon conceived a dislike for the gifted ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... distance all competitors in the strife of political ambition. It was this power of work that astonished Cicero as the most prodigious of Caesar's gifts, as it astonished later observers in Napoleon before it wore him out. How if Caesar were nothing but a Nelson and a Gladstone combined! A prodigy of vitality without any special quality of mind! Nay, with ideas that were worn out before he was born, as Nelson's and Gladstone's were! I have considered that possibility too, and rejected it. I cannot cite ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... transform'd to stone. We wondering stood, to see that strange portent Intrude itself into our holy rites, When Calchas, instant, thus the sign explain'd. 390 Why stand ye, Greeks, astonish'd? Ye behold A prodigy by Jove himself produced, An omen, whose accomplishment indeed Is distant, but whose fame shall never die.[12] E'en as this serpent in your sight devour'd 395 Eight youngling sparrows, with their dam, the ninth, So we nine years must ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... Barsetshire, but of all England. On this occasion it was found that one pearl was very big, very rare, and worthy of great attention; but it was a black pearl, and was regarded by many as an abominable prodigy. "The period of our history is one in which it becomes essential for us to renew those inquiries which have prevailed since man first woke to his destiny, as to the amount of connection which exists and which must exist between spiritual and simply human forms of government,—between our daily ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... the Glen,'" was the reply. "She is a prodigy for her age. Her history is a little singular. She was found not far from here in a wild glen, or ravine, when about three years old, and has never been able to tell who or where her parents are. But I will relate the circumstances to you at another time. At present the trustees ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... in attempting a second voyage against the advice of all my friends and relations. In this terrible agitation of mind, I could not forbear thinking of Lilliput, whose inhabitants looked upon me as the greatest prodigy that ever appeared in the world; where I was able to draw an imperial fleet in my hand, and perform those other actions which will be recorded forever in the chronicles of that empire, while posterity shall hardly believe them, although attested by millions. ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... men's reach the thoughts and experiences of the inspired fisher-folk of Galilee. In the Dark Ages, when to read was a sign of distinction, and to write a schoolboy history like "Eginhard's Charlemagne" was a prodigy; when to lead clean lives, and to labor as hosts are doing now for their fellows made a man a saint; the literary and spiritual power of the apostles was nothing ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... and sister joined hands to make the pale, handsome boy a prodigy of learning: one that would surprise the world and leave his impress ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... what is the meaning of this strange prodigy? Once the difficulty was to find the guilty, to search them out in their lair, to drag the confession of their crime from reluctant lips. Now, there is no hunting with a great pack of sleuth-hounds, no pursuing a timid prey; lo! from all sides come the victims to ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... "Time and Tide," the great writer gives us the following exquisite passage about a little dancer who especially pleased him—"She did it beautifully and simply, as a child ought to dance. She was not an infant prodigy; there was no evidence in the finish and strength of her motion that she had been put to continual torture during half of her eight or nine years. She did nothing more than any child—well taught, but painlessly—might ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... in their husband's company, even on the most ordinary subjects. So that once when a woman had the confidence to plead her own cause in a court of judicature, the senate, it is said, sent to inquire of the oracle what the prodigy did portend; and, indeed, their general good behavior and submissiveness is justly proved by the record of those that were otherwise; for as the Greek historians record in their annals the names of those who first unsheathed the sword of civil war, or murdered their brothers, or were parricides, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... story, passing prodigy; * By Love I swear, my ways wax strait on me! An ye desire to hear me, listen, and * Let all in this assembly silent be. Heed ye my words which are of meaning deep, * Nor lies my speech; 'tis truest verity. I'm slain[FN196] by longing and by ardent love; * My slayer's the pearl of fair virginity. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... profitless, to speculate on the subtle hereditary influences that underlay their attraction for each other. One can imagine that their state presented an example of the way in which people of abnormal instincts tend to drift together: Arthur, the a-moral prodigy, and Gabrielle, the last offshoot of the decayed house of Hewish, daughter of the definitely degenerate Sir Jocelyn. But I do not think that there was anything abnormal or decadent in Gabrielle's composition. Her nature was gay and uncomplicated, in singular ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... her in her belief that I was the dog Montiel whom she had been long looking for, as she afterwards told me. I remained bewildered with surprise, longing for the night to see what might be the meaning of this mystery or prodigy, and as I had heard her called a witch, I expected wonderful things from the interview. At last the time came, and I entered the room, which was small, and low, and dimly lighted by an earthenware lamp. The ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... His satisfaction found vent in a mark of favor which not a little disconcerted the recipient. Removing the sculpel which the artist had permission to wear in the royal presence, he kissed him on the crown of the head, pronounced him a prodigy, and desired him to execute in the same digital style, a picture of St. Francis of Assisi for the Queen." Charles, on another occasion, complimented the artist, by saying, "If, as a King I am greater than ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... with the lofty wind Of Fortune, and Ambition, unconfin'd In act or thought, doth but increase his height, That he may loose it with more force and weight; Scorning a base, low ruin, as if he Would of misfortune make a prodigy. Tell, mighty Pompey, Crassus, and O thou That mad'st Rome kneel to thy victorious brow, What but the weight of honours, and large fame After your worthy acts, and height of name, Destroy'd you in the end? The ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... impulse of Faith among Nations. Till now, behold, once more this French Nation believes! Herein, we say, in that astonishing Faith of theirs, lies the miracle. It is a Faith undoubtedly of the more prodigious sort, even among Faiths; and will embody itself in prodigies. It is the soul of that world-prodigy named French Revolution; whereat the world still gazes ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... is a combination of colours. In Nature colours are separate; they act and react one on the other, and so create in the eye the illusion of a mixture of various colours-in other words, of a tone. But if the human eye can perform this prodigy when looking on colour as evolved through the spectacle of the world, why should not the eye be able to perform the same prodigy when looking on colour as displayed over the surface of a canvas? Nature does not mix her colours to produce a tone; and ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... physically and mentally, and became the juicy and unsuspecting victim of a horde of parasites and flatterers who swarmed eagerly upon her, as soon as the rough and contemptuous protection of her husband was removed by the hand of a medical prodigy who advertised himself as the discoverer of a new and infallible cure for cancer, and whom Mrs. Marrineal, with an instinctive leaning toward quackery, had forced upon her spouse. Appraising his prospective widow with an accurate eye, the dying man left a testament bestowing ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... ingenuous, but there came at last a high dim August dawn when she couldn't sleep and when, creeping restlessly about and breathing at her window the coolness of wooded acres, she found the faint flush of the east march with the perception of that other almost equal prodigy. It rosily coloured her vision that—even such as he was, yes—her husband could on occasion sin by excess of candour. He wouldn't otherwise have given as his reason for going up to Portland Place in the ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... in a comfortable chair; and then there was a burst of music around me, which gave me leisure to look about and take stock. It was all very nice. There was a great group of fine ladies in front, and they were all staring at me as if I were a dime-museum prodigy. I was "Gorgonized from head to foot with a stony, British stare"; a cool, unblushing, calculating stare, that made me feel as if I were turning into stone. I did not know what to do. I tried to cross my legs ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... do I." "I am most emphatically of the same opinion." "I stand here, a true temperance man, to express my indignation at that Kansas prodigy," were some of the expressions which came from temperance men who were not willing to be classed with the ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... weather, the garden, the vicar's last sermon. When they talked about anything else, they spoke of books, of which the squire lent Mrs. Goddard a great number. But this was a subject which did not interest Nellie very much; she was not by any means a prodigy in the way of learning, and though she was now nearly eleven years old was only just beginning to read the Waverley novels. On one occasion she remarked to her mother that she did not believe a word of them and did not think they were a bit like real life, but the momentary ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... should it be forgotten that the general who has always fought his battles at the right time, in the right place, with the proper arms, and pursued his victories to their utmost attainable results, has yet to appear. He would, indeed, be an intellectual prodigy. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... movement, impulse, thought, of his mind was kept from me, and if I have not formed a right judgment of him, I must suppose it to be from my own want of scope. Indeed, without exaggeration, he was so nearly a prodigy, that I am afraid of not being credited when I speak of him, even though I should keep much within the mark of my own actual knowledge. And for this time, Monsieur, I shall content myself with praying you, for the honour and respect we owe ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... imposing air in the world and the finest eyes, was forgotten by everybody but the Duchess of Lackland and her daughters, who had just returned to Devereux Court to observe how amazingly the Count had grown! Oh! what a prodigy wisdom would be, if it were but blest with a memory as keen and constant as ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... if your prodigy plays cards; that is, such as we ladies play?" asked Mary. "You say he has lived much in France, where the game was invented, but I have no doubt he would scorn to waste his time at so frivolous a pursuit, when he might be slaughtering ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... in a foreign tongue. With his genius in his eyes, his manners on his lips, his long career behind him and his honours and rewards all round, the great artist, in the course of a single sustained look and a few words of delight at receiving him, affected our friend as a dazzling prodigy of type. Strether had seen in museums—in the Luxembourg as well as, more reverently, later on, in the New York of the billionaires—the work of his hand; knowing too that after an earlier time in his native Rome he had migrated, in mid-career, to Paris, ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... coming softness in their roots. They nursed the life they carried—insects, larvae, chrysalis—and when the skies above them melted, he spoke of them standing "motionless in an ecstasy of rain," or in the noon of sunshine "self-poised upon their prodigy of shade." ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... character and purposes became known that the rulers of Western Europe were forced to the conclusion that a change of policy was inevitable. But for the occurrence of the French Revolution, that Anglo-French Alliance which has been regarded as one of the prodigies of our prodigy-creating age would have been anticipated by more than sixty years. By destroying Poland and humiliating Turkey, Catharine forever settled the character of the Russian Empire; and her successors were enabled to solidify her work in consequence of the course which events took ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... this to her husband when he came to take his seat at her bedside; but to her utter astonishment she found that he had been indulging a similar train of thought, and had already destined the infant prodigy for the army. She, however, could not give up her predilection for literature, and the Colonel, who could not bear to be contradicted in his own house, as he used to say, was getting every minute louder and more flushed, when, happily, the ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... of light, Ere Rome shook earth with her tremendous tread, Ere yon blue-feasting sun-god burst blood-red, Beneath thee slept thy prodigy, O Night! Aeons have ta'en like dreams their strange, slow flight, And vastest, tiniest, creatures paved her bed, E'en cities sapped by the usurping spread Of her imperious waves have sunk from sight Since she first chanted her colossal psalms That swell and sink beneath ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... doing: for God dwells therein. I should have to come back to this at every turn, if I wanted to fathom everything I have to tell you about. Each tip of hair which you grow, is an incomprehensible prodigy which would puzzle us for ever, if we did not call to our aid those eternal laws which have made us what we are, and to which it is very just our spirits should submit, since we could not exist for one second were they to cease from making themselves ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... opinion. He was again engaged for nearly a year in Switzerland, and soon after, poor fellow, though with a jovial robustness of look and breadth of chest that promised unusual length of days, was killed by heart-disease. "The brave C continues to be a prodigy. He puts out my clothes at every inn as if I were going to stay there twelve months; calls me to the instant every morning; lights the fire before I get up; gets hold of roast fowls and produces them in coaches at a distance from ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Eugene Aram.[146] The name of the "Admirable Crichton" was suddenly started as a splendid example of waste talents, so different from the generality of his countrymen. This choice was mightily approved by a North-Briton present, who declared himself descended from that prodigy of learning and accomplishment, and said he had family-plate in his possession as vouchers for the fact, with the initials A. C.—Admirable Crichton! H—— laughed or rather roared as heartily at this as I should think he has done ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... wind from astern. por prep. for, on account of, by, to, through, over, across, for the sake of, on, at; conj. —— qu why. porfa f. obstinacy, persistence. porque conj. because, in order that. portento m. prodigy, miracle, portent. porvenir m. future. pos adv. prep.: en —— behind, after. positivamente adv. positively, certainly. postrado, -a prostrate, kneeling. postrero, -a last. precipitado, -a precipitate, headlong, rash, abrupt. precipitar(se) precipitate, hasten, rush headlong, ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... take orders from this escaped convict—it was so evident that the escaped convict knew better than he. Sylvia began to look upon Dawes as a second Bates. He was, moreover, all her own. She had an interest in him, for she had nursed and protected him. If it had not been for her, this prodigy would not have lived. He felt for her an absorbing affection that was almost a passion. She was his good angel, his protectress, his glimpse of Heaven. She had given him food when he was starving, and had believed ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... "that prodigy of learning en pure perte" (Villebrune), concludes from the words of the text "the heavens shall pass away," that the universe will be dissolved; but that it will undergo mutation only, not annihilation.—Cf. Steuches de Perenni Philosophia, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 52, October 26, 1850 • Various
... Villeneuve was a skilled seaman who was not likely to allow any amateur navigators in his service, and we shall see that in the plan of defence this great French Admiral showed that he was fertile in naval skill when the time came for him to fight for existence against the greatest naval prodigy in the world. ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... civilities. Alas! no one was found any longer to cut it voluntarily. The new comers seemed to decline the honor. The "old favorites" reappeared one by one like dethroned princes who have been replaced for a brief spell in power. Then, the chosen ones became few, very few. For a month (O, prodigy!) M. Anserre cut open the cake; then he looked as if he were getting tired of it; and one evening Madame Anserre, the beautiful Madame Anserre, was seen cutting it herself. But this appeared to be very wearisome to her, and, next day, she urged one of her guests ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... adulation. It failed to perceive the dangerous path that leads to anarchy and despotism—the worship of one man. It had unfortunately selected one who was cautious and undemonstrative, and who had become convinced that he really was the greatest prodigy that the ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... Blagrove was a musical prodigy, who began the study of the violin at the age of four, and appeared in public a year later. He was born at Nottingham in 1811, and at six years of age played at Drury Lane. He studied abroad with Spohr, and appeared in Vienna in 1836, but the greater part of his life was spent in England, where ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... played no part in Doctor Bicknell's interest when he paused in the office to have a parting word with his patient. He, the Doctor, had performed a prodigy in the matter of this man, done what was virtually unprecedented in the annals of surgery. He did not care who or what the man was, and it was highly improbable that he should ever see him again; but, like the artist gazing ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... silently. He wanted to reign through wonder and awe, by the grandeur and terror of his name, by displays of power which would rivet on him every eye, and make him the theme of every tongue. Power was his supreme object; but power which should be gazed at as well as felt, which should strike men as a prodigy, which should shake old thrones as an earthquake, and, by the suddenness of its new creations, should awaken something of the submissive wonder ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... cheek of some holy statue have been analysed into the moisture which certain temperatures produce on wood and marble, it yet by no means follows that they were not a sign of grief and mourning set there by God Himself.' When Lampon saw in the prodigy of the one-horned ram the omen of the supreme rule of Pericles, and when Anaxagoras showed that the abnormal development was the rational resultant of the peculiar formation of the skull, the dreamer and the man of science were both right; it was the business of the ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... daughter the Latin tongue, I answered that I had heard much from a cousin at Cologne of Maria Schurman, [Footnote: Anna Maria Schurman, born at Cologne on the 5th Nov. 1607, died at Wiewardin the 5th May 1678, was, according to the unanimous testimony of her contemporaries, a prodigy of learning, and perhaps the most learned woman that ever lived. The Frenchman Naud says of her, "You find in her alone all that the hand can fashion or the mind conceive. No one paints better, no one works better in brass, wax, and wood. In needlework she excels all women past or present. It is ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... added; "but I didn't know you chaps would be interested in our infant prodigy. I never cared ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... come Edison will not only be recognized as an intellectual prodigy, but as a prodigy of industry—of hard work. In his field as inventor and man of science he stands as clear-cut and secure as the lighthouse on a rock, and as indifferent to the tumult around. But as the "old man"—and before he was thirty years old he was ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... political ambition. It was this power of work that astonished Cicero as the most prodigious of Caesar's gifts, as it astonished later observers in Napoleon before it wore him out. How if Caesar were nothing but a Nelson and a Gladstone combined! A prodigy of vitality without any special quality of mind! Nay, with ideas that were worn out before he was born, as Nelson's and Gladstone's were! I have considered that possibility too, and rejected it. I cannot cite all the stories about ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... moan, The drooping mother wail'd her children gone. The mother last, as round the nest she flew, Seized by the beating wing, the monster slew; Nor long survived: to marble turn'd, he stands A lasting prodigy on Aulis' sands. Such was the will of Jove; and hence we dare Trust in his omen, and support the war. For while around we gazed with wondering eyes, And trembling sought the powers with sacrifice, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... "While the prodigy was before them, the spectators stirred not; nor was there one brave enough to speak; most of them with their eyes devoured it all, King and throne, birds, men and spirits; though afterwards there ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... Henry, Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth, may, on one account or other, be admitted into the class of authors. Queen Catharine Parr translated a book: Lady Jane Gray, considering her age, and her sex, and her station, may be regarded as a prodigy of literature. Sir Thomas Smith was raised from being professor in Cambridge, first to be ambassador to France, then secretary of state. The despatches of those times, and among others those of Burleigh himself, are frequently ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... not yourself that she is going to be a good girl and marry in meeting; not she! If there's a wild, scatter-brained, handsome, dissipated, godless youth in all Slepington, it is on him that testy little heart will fix,—and think him not only a hero, but a prodigy of genius. Friend Allis will break her heart over Letty; but I'd bet you a pack of gloves, that in three years you'll see that juvenile Quakeress in a scarlet satin hat and feather, with a blue shawl, and green ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... "I have taken your place, and almost your form; I play your part in the great fair of this world, and, although your noble body has rested for four years, six feet underground, thanks to me you still live. I always have had a most sincere admiration for you. I considered you a phenomenon, a prodigy. You were courageous, devoted, generosity itself; you esteemed honour above all the gold deposits in California; you detested all coarse thoughts and doubtful actions; your mother had nourished you in all sublime follies. You were a true ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... in facts and figures, He's a prodigy, in sooth; He can tell the smoothest story, But he shies away from truth; So we gladly lose the glory, (It was never worth two bits!) When the ballots all are counted And the ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... how Billy was lost in astonishment at the Lightning Calculator—wanted me to beg the secret of that prodigy for him to do his sums by—finally thought he had discovered it, and resolved to keep his arm whirling all the time he studied his arithmetic lesson the next morning. Equally inadequate is it to relate in full how he became so confused among the wax-works that he pinched ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... Johnson, who ran away to sea so many years ago, has found some fortunate zone where his hair and skin keep the same sunny and rosy tints they wore to his mother's eyes in infancy. But I have no means of knowing this, or of telling whether he was the prodigy of intellect that he was declared to be. Naomi could no more be taken in proof of the one assertion than of the other. When she came to us, it was agreed that she should go to school; but she overruled her mother in ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... Methodists, as a strict and extreme believer in the doctrines of that sect. During her attendance upon the Wesleyan rites, she became intimate with one Sanderson, who, whether a designing rogue, or only a very fanatical believer, pretended that he had discovered in the good washerwoman a Bible prodigy; and it was not long before the poor creature began literally, to "see sights" and dream dreams of the most preternatural description, for which Sanderson always had ready some very telling interpretation. Her visions were of the ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... not before named; but that only brother was a second self. Not that he resembled me in any respect, for he was beautiful to a prodigy, and I an ordinary child; he was wholly free from any predilection for learning, being mirthful and volatile in the highest degree; and though he listened when I read to him the mysterious marvels of my favorite nursery books, I doubt whether he ever bestowed ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... monster, prodigy! Or nothing is, or Jove, from thee. Whether various Nature's play, Or she, renversed, thy will obey, And to rebel man declare Famine, plague or wasteful war . . . No evil can from Thee proceed; 'Tis only suffered, not decreed. . ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... great Liberal, the two facts were probably not unconnected in the line of causation. Francis went to the High School when he was eight, and to the College at Glasgow when he was fourteen. He does not appear to have been a prodigy at either; but he has an almost unequalled record for early work of the self-undertaken kind. He seems from his boyhood to have been addicted to filling reams of paper, and shelves full of note-books, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... leader. The Thebans willingly granted their desire; and now when all things were prepared, and the general beginning to march, the sun was eclipsed, and darkness spread over the city at noonday. Now when Pelopidas saw them startled at the prodigy, he did not think it fit to force on men who were afraid and out of heart, nor to hazard seven thousand of his citizens; and therefore with only three hundred horse volunteers, set forward himself to Thessaly, much against the will of the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... upon them: on no account must they quit the isle assigned them. And to the surrounding islanders, so unpleasant the sight of a distorted mortal, that a stranger landing at Hooloomooloo, was deemed a prodigy. Wherefore, respecting any knowledge of aught beyond them, the cripples were well nigh as isolated, as if Hooloomooloo was the ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... upon a special course at Harvard because the ordinary course in college was far below the abilities of this boy of eleven years. Professor James, of Harvard, the famous psychologist, has pronounced him the greatest mental marvel he ever knew. It is said the young prodigy could recite pages of Shakespeare from memory at an age when the ordinary boy is learning ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... be joy in the hearts of the Natchez. A child is born to them of the race of their Suns. A boy is born with a beard on his chin. The prodigy still works on from generation to generation.' So sang the warriors of my tribe when I sprang from my mother's womb, and the shrill cry of the eagle, in the heavens, was heard in joyful response. Hardly fifteen ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... Willy Ferrero, the Boy Conductor? A musical prodigy, seven years old, who will order the fifth oboe out of the Albert Hall as soon as look at him. Well, he has ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... wonder,' remarked the Queen, 'that birds of taste are rare in the Metropolis, and that, on the Embankment especially, a rook would be regarded as a kind of prodigy. Nowhere has the manufacture of permanent scarecrows been conducted with more ingenious success. But tell me, my accomplished fowl, have Britons any other arts? Long ago the men used to paint themselves blue, but, as far as I ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... it's remarkable," agreed Wayne meekly, "but I don't know anything about it. He might sleep twenty-three hours out of twenty-four—I shouldn't understand whether to call him a prodigy or an idiot." ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... may be certainly drawn from Kalidasa's writing is this, that he was a man of sound and rather extensive education. He was not indeed a prodigy of learning, like Bhavabhuti in his own country or Milton in England, yet no man could write as he did without hard and intelligent study. To begin with, he had a minutely accurate knowledge of the Sanskrit language, at a time when Sanskrit ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... cheek-bones, a depressed nose, and a black skin, admire these peculiarities when strongly marked. No doubt characters of all kinds may be too much developed for beauty. Hence a perfect beauty, which implies many characters modified in a particular manner, will be in every race a prodigy. As the great anatomist Bichat long ago said, if every one were cast in the same mould, there would be no such thing as beauty. If all our women were to become as beautiful as the Venus de' Medici, we should for a time be charmed; but we should soon wish for variety; and as soon as we ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... female literature and accomplishments, and three happy years had passed under protection, when her only son, who was an officer in the Saxon service, obtained permission to come home. I had never seen him before—he was a handsome young man—in my eyes a prodigy; for he talked of love, and promised me marriage. He was the first man who ever spoken to me on such a subject.—His flattery made me vain, and his repeated vows—Don't look at me, dear Frederick!—I ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald
... of all human moods is the mood which will suddenly strike us perhaps in a garden at night, or deep in sloping meadows, the feeling that every flower and leaf has just uttered something stupendously direct and important, and that we have by a prodigy of imbecility not heard or understood it. There is a certain poetic value, and that a genuine one, in this sense of having missed the full meaning of things. There is beauty, not only in wisdom, but in this ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... Greeks. There were Suetonius and Plutarch; the one natural, simple, and pure in his style, far beyond his age, but without much depth or vigor of thought; the other involved and affected in his manner, but in his matter of surpassing richness and incalculable worth. There was the elder Pliny, a prodigy of learning and industry, whose researches in Natural History cost him his life, in that fatal eruption of Vesuvius which buried Herculaneum and Pompeii. There was also the judicious Quintilian, at once neat and nervous in ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... crudities, may undoubtedly be attributed to the age which he adorned. The tide of public approbation has of late set strongly in his favour; and could the fulsome panegyrics, of which he has been the object, be implicitly received, Purcell would be considered as nothing less than a prodigy of genius. Several attempts at dramatic music had been made before Purcell's time. Matthew Lock had already set the songs of Macbeth and the Tempest, and had also given to the world "The English Opera, or the vocal music in Psyche," in close imitation of Lulli, the long ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... astronomer, though Apian's pupil, was an avowed Copernican and the destined master and friend of Kepler. Yet, in the treatise embodying his observations, he felt it necessary to save his reputation for orthodoxy by calling the comet a "new and horrible prodigy," and by giving a chapter of "conjectures on the signification of the present comet," in which he proves from history that this variety of comet betokens peace, but peace purchased by a bloody victory. That he really believed in this theological theory seems impossible; the very fact that ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... at service, of a slave, at once free and a prisoner; a collision between these two principles which frequently occurred, produced odd situations by the thousand. And then, woman was physically little understood, and what was actually sickness in her, was considered a prodigy, witchcraft or monstrous turpitude. In those days these creatures, treated by the law as reckless children, and put under guardianship, were by the manners of the time deified and adored. Like the freedmen of emperors, they disposed of crowns, they decided battles, they ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... are on various themes, and comprise quite a pretty little poem, written when he was eleven, on Tintern Abbey. But perhaps the most remarkable circumstance of all is that this youthful prodigy lived to amply fulfill the promise of his youth, and proved as sagacious and moderate in the use of knowledge as he was marvelous in his powers of acquiring it. There is a remarkable tribute to these powers in John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, where he says: "The speaker with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... his head. "Your reasons are not valid, Herr Professor," he said and held up a corpulent forefinger to enforce Grossmann's further attention. "They seemed convincing at the time, I admit, but this new prodigy completely ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... military spirit, ardent and heroic, but simple and unskilful, against the same spirit disciplined and persevering. Few nations show in their annals so beautiful a page as that last Gaulish war, written nevertheless by an enemy. Every effort of heroism, every prodigy of valour, which the love of liberty and of country ever produced, there displayed themselves in spite of a thousand contrary and fatal passions: discords between the cities, discords in the cities, enterprises of the nobles against the people, licentiousness of democracy, hereditary enmities ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... dawn when she couldn't sleep and when, creeping restlessly about and breathing at her window the coolness of wooded acres, she found the faint flush of the east march with the perception of that other almost equal prodigy. It rosily coloured her vision that—even such as he was, yes—her husband could on occasion sin by excess of candour. He wouldn't otherwise have given as his reason for going up to Portland Place in the August days that he was arranging books there. ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... loathe yourselves. Observe my meditation now. What thing is in this outward form of man To be belov'd? We account it ominous, If nature do produce a colt, or lamb, A fawn, or goat, in any limb resembling A man, and fly from 't as a prodigy: Man stands amaz'd to see his deformity In any other creature but himself. But in our own flesh though we bear diseases Which have their true names only ta'en from beasts,— As the most ulcerous wolf and swinish measle,— Though we are eaten up of lice and worms, ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... startled by Miss Ferrars saying, 'By-the-by, Albinia, how was it that you never told us of the development of the Infant prodigy? ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that is to say, five ages, during which the two kings and their family scarcely found time to breathe after so terrible a shock. D'Artagnan, leaning against the wall, in front of Fouquet, with his hand to his brow, asked himself the cause of such a wonderful prodigy. He could not have said at once why he doubted, but he knew assuredly that he had reason to doubt, and that in this meeting of the two Louis XIV.'s lay all the difficulty which during late days had rendered the conduct of ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... of both these committees. He was then forty years old and one of the most remarkable men in the country. Born on the frontier—his father from the upper middle class, his mother "a Randolph"—he had been trained to an outdoor life; but he was also a prodigy in his studies and entered William and Mary College with advanced standing at the age of eighteen. Many stories are told of his precocity and ability, all of which tend to forecast the later man of catholic tastes, omnivorous interest, and extensive ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... service rendered to a man in mortal distress may be counted as a kind of riches of the soul. Or, if you shall so prefer to choose, a new province of knowledge and new avenues to fame and power shall be laid open to you, here, in this room, upon the instant; and your sight shall be blasted by a prodigy to stagger the unbelief ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... steps of whom, Master Payne has, in our opinion, wronged himself. It is evident that in choosing characters for the infant Roscius of England, his instructors had it more in view to exhibit the boy as a prodigy, than the characters well acted. The people were to be treated to an anomalous exhibition, and the greater the anomaly the better the treat. What but a determination to inflame public curiosity to the highest pitch by a contrast as absurd as unnatural, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... protested and sang. The Big Chief's blood was up, and his commands must be obeyed, therefore Jarwin did as he was bid; went out to battle in this remarkable costume—if we may so style it— and proved himself such a prodigy of valour that his prowess went far to turn the tide of victory wherever he appeared during the fight. But we pass over all this. Suffice it to say, that the pugnacious tribe was severely chastised and reduced to a state of quiet—for ...
— Jarwin and Cuffy • R.M. Ballantyne
... Hermione van der Moen, the leggy, breasty, platinum-blonde twins—both of whom were Cowper medalists in physics. There was Etienne de Vaux, the mathematical wizard; and Rebecca Eisenstein, the black-haired, flashing-eyed ex-infant-prodigy theoretical astronomer. There was Beverly Bell, who made mathematically impossible chemical syntheses—who swam channels for days on end and computed planetary orbits ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... death of his father, first by his uncle, a priest, and then by Capella, a Servite monk, in something better than the usual priestly fashion, he became known, while yet in his boyhood, as a theological prodigy. Disputations in his youth, especially one at Mantua, where, after the manner of the time, he successfully defended several hundred theses against all comers, attracted wide attention, so that the Bishop gave him a professorship, and the Duke, who, like some other crowned heads of ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... strike all as a system of truth. If it did, it would be a prodigy. Neither does the Christian faith produce the same impressions upon all. Freedom to believe or to dissent is a great privilege in these days. So when a number of conscientious followers apply themselves to a matter like Christian Science, they are enjoying that liberty which ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... volcanoes pouring streams of lava down into the plain even after the foundation of the Eternal City. Livy mentions that under the third king of Rome, a shower of stones, accompanied by a loud noise, was thrown up from the Alban Mount—a prodigy which gave rise to a nine days' festival annually celebrated long after by the people of Latium. The remarkable funereal urns found buried under a bed of volcanic matter between Marino and Castel Gandolfo ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... We won't never be called on ter depart from Buck Hill 'til we's good an' ready—not whilst Marse Bob Bucknor's prodigy is livin', an' Mr. Jeff the spitin' image of his gran'dad. I's sho Miss Milly done put you in this pretty lil' room kase she thought you'd like it, bein' so handy to the stairs an' all, an' the windy right over the baid so's you kin lay ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... remained; but in its place came trooping the sweet angels that Father Faber says continually hover over the good-humored man. I declare that the metamorphosis was so complete that I almost needed an introduction to my new self. And this prodigy was created by one grand, complete and unusual slumber, when wearing a nightcap! Subsequent experiments have been relatively successful; so I am getting to be an enthusiast on the subject. Some folks say that it is a delusion, a mere ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... forgotten me. Of the different appearance of the hills and valleys an account may, perhaps, be given, without the supposition of any prodigy! If she had been out, and the evening was breezy, the exhalations would rise from the low grounds very copiously; and the wind that swept and cleared the hills, would only, by its cold, condense the vapours ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... astonishing that a purely technical sketch like this, whose humours might be relished only by such specialists as Barristers and Attorneys, who would understand the jokes levelled at the Profession, should be so well understanded of the people. All see the point of the legal satire. It is a quite a prodigy. Boz had the art, in an extraordinary degree, of thus vividly commending trade processes, professional allusions, and methods to outsiders, and making them humourous and intelligible. Witness Jackson, when he came ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... to get all the meetings over with at once, and had asked his sister to invite Marion in for afternoon tea and to meet his "protege and prodigy"—as Ethel had phrased it in her invitation. He had, however, purposely refrained from mentioning the fact to Rose, and when Miss Treville entered, stately as a goddess, very beautiful and a trifle condescending ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... no gold-mines like his neighbor the King of Spain; but he has more wealth than the latter, for he draws it from the vanity of his subjects, more inexhaustible than mines. He has been known to undertake and carry on great wars, with no other resource than titles of honor to sell; and by a prodigy of human pride, his troops were paid, his forts furnished, ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... it was at court under Henry VIII. One of the chaplains of the Bishop of Exeter has found a line of Rowley in Hudibras-the monk might foresee that too! The prematurity of Chatterton's genius is, however, full as wonderful, as that such a prodigy as Rowley should never have been heard of till the eighteenth century. The youth and industry of the former are miracles, too, yet still more' credible. There is not a symptom in the poems, but the old words, that savours of ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... book she remembered reading was the Old and New Testament. Her early religious teaching was most sufficient, and was submitted to by a mind which, although practical and realistic, was always devout and somewhat affected by mystical, vague, and enthusiastic tendencies. She was a prodigy in the catechism, and was an agent of terror to the excellent priest who taught her and the other children, for she frequently confounded him in open class by questions which have vexed persons of maturest years. She was taught the harp, the piano, the guitar, and the ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... Borri spent it in Holland with an unsparing hand, and was looked up to by the people with no little respect and veneration. He performed several able cures, and increased his reputation so much that he was vaunted as a prodigy. He continued diligently the operations of alchymy, and was in daily expectation that he should succeed in turning the inferior metals into gold. This hope never abandoned him, even in the worst extremity of his fortunes; and in his prosperity it led him into ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... delicate shades of character, which the less cultivated eye could not detect, that, by elaborating thereupon and endeavoring to disclose to others what he saw, he seemed to overdefine, or even to repeat himself, and sometimes became monotonous. His was the delicate ear of the musical prodigy, capable of grasping half-tones quite beyond the range of the normal ear, and his attempt to cause them to be heard and appreciated by his coarser fellows brought him only criticism and abuse. He realized at times his own powerlessness ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... to a toll on behalf of the temple. Did the daily life forced the necessity upon them; it teaches us at the same time how that fabulous chronicle was elaborated, whose remains have been preserved for us by classical writers. Every prodigy, every fact related by Manetho, was taken from some document analogous to ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... match his father's millions did not aid him in competing with Patsy Halloran, the mathematical prodigy whose father was a hod-carrier, nor with Mona Sanguinetti who was a wizard at spelling and whose widowed mother ran a vegetable store. Nor were his father's millions and the Nob Hill palace of the slightest assistance to Young Dick when he ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... leaders had noticed the gradual progress of the dark semicircle over the sun's disk. The ominous shadow fell upon them, still more awful from its suddenness. A great horror seized the serried hosts. The prodigy in the heavens struck the conscience of each individual; with one consent they hesitated to engage in carnage with so terrible a ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... should be Saturn. Yes, 'tis clear 455 'Tis Saturn; but what makes him there? He's got between the Dragon's Tail And farther Leg behind o' th' Whale. Pray heav'n divert the fatal omen, For 'tis a prodigy not common; 460 And can no less than the world's ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... comes to pass, I know not;* but by ancient and modern example it is evident, that no great accident befalls a city or province, but it is presaged by divination, or prodigy, or astrology, or some way or other. I shall here ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... text-books, she prepared to grapple with the trials which thickly beset the path of a young woman thrown upon her own resources for maintenance. Clara was naturally amiable, unselfish, and trusting. She was no intellectual prodigy, yet her mind was clear and forcible, her judgment matured, and, above all, her pure heart warm and loving. Notwithstanding the stern realities that marked her path, there was a vein of romance in her nature which, unfortunately, ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... and the most civilized nations, yet this did not excite them to borrow their learning, as being foreign to their views of trade and commerce. Eloquence, poetry, history, seem to have been little known among them. A Carthaginian philosopher was considered as a sort of prodigy by the learned. What then would an astronomer or a geometrician have been thought? I know not in what esteem physic, which is so highly useful to life, was held at Carthage; or jurisprudence, so ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... blows upon the floor. After they had mutually promised to conceal what they had seen, they again closed the Tower, and blocked up the gate of the Cavern with earth, that no memory might remain in the world of such a portentous and evil-boding prodigy. The ensuing midnight, they heard great cries and clamour from the Cave, resounding like the noise of Battle, and the ground shaking with a tremendous roar; the whole edifice of the old Tower fell to the ground, by which they were greatly affrighted, the ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... maiden fair of untold age Seeks to adorn our Western stage; How foolish of her, yet how nice To write me, asking my advice! New York's the city where you'll find This prodigy of female kind; Hotel Victoria's the place Where you'll see her smiling face. I pray thee, postman, bear away This missive to her, sans delay. These lines enclosed are writ by me— A Field am I, a ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... even in seared consciences. And thus this man, who had owed his rise to his sister's dishonour, who had been kept by the most profuse, imperious, and shameless of harlots, and whose public life, to those who can look steadily through the dazzling blaze of genius and glory, will appear a prodigy of turpitude, believed implicitly in the religion which he had learned as a boy, and shuddered at the thought of formally abjuring it. A terrible alternative was before him. The earthly evil which he most ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Inner Station,' he answered in a short tone, looking away. 'Much obliged,' I said, laughing. 'And you are the brickmaker of the Central Station. Every one knows that.' He was silent for a while. 'He is a prodigy,' he said at last. 'He is an emissary of pity and science and progress, and devil knows what else. We want,' he began to declaim suddenly, 'for the guidance of the cause intrusted to us by Europe, so to speak, higher intelligence, wide sympathies, a singleness of purpose.' ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... prodigy would, perhaps, have filled the hundred cities of Crete, if Crete had not lately produced a nearer wonder {of her own}, in the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... Galerius, or any other history of wonderful occurrence—it is of course a myth. Does not every one know that nothing marvelous ever happened, or, if it did, would any historian trouble himself to record a prodigy? "Or, if it is couched in symbolical language," as is every eloquent passage in Thucydides, Robertson, Gibbon, or Guizot, the records of China, and of India, the picture-writing of the Peruvians, and especially the Egyptian hieroglyphics, which were fondly expected to do such good ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... herself. In the grand drama of success that he had arranged so carefully, it was a most charming role that he had laid out for himself. Anderson the benefactor, Anderson the discoverer, the adopted father of the prodigy, the patron of music. Crowds hailing him with rapturous gratitude; the wonder-child kneeling and presenting him with a laurel crown, which had been thrown to her, but which she rightly felt to be his due, who had given her all, and brought her from darkness into light! Instead of this, ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... wilfulness in attempting a second voyage against the advice of all my friends and relations. In this terrible agitation of mind, I could not forbear thinking of Lilliput, whose inhabitants looked upon me as the greatest prodigy that ever appeared in the world; where I was able to draw an imperial fleet in my hand, and perform those other actions which will be recorded forever in the chronicles of that empire, while posterity shall hardly believe them, although attested by millions. I reflected what a mortification it ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... learned Greek and Latin before the age of ten, and was in the habit of communicating at the altar with transports of pious ecstasy in his ninth year.[5] The child recited speeches and poems in public, and received an elementary training in the arts of composition. He was in fact the infant prodigy of those plausible Fathers, the prize specimen of their educational method. As might have been expected, this forcing system overtaxed his nerves. He rose daily before daybreak to attack his books, and when the nights were long he went to ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... godlike nature of its victims, was rendered far more clear than ever. There stood one, in physical proportion and stature commanding and exact—in intellect richly endowed—in natural eloquence a prodigy—in soul manifestly "created but a little lower than the angels"—yet a slave, ay, a fugitive slave,—trembling for his safety, hardly daring to believe that on the American soil, a single white person could be found who would befriend him at all hazards, ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... style of the great learned musical school of the Bachs, which may almost be called the algebra or geometry of musical composition, at any rate its higher mathematics, had certainly challenged a spirit of the most daring contrast in the young Hungarian prodigy, who electrified Paris, and carried its severe body of classical critics by storm, with the triumphant audacity of his brilliant and powerful style. Liszt became, at the very opening of his career, so immediately a miracle, and then an oracle, in the artistic and ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... no doubt," replied the Signor solemnly. "She is, indeed, a prodigy of talent,—one of the wonders of the age, ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... Hycy, again staring at him; "why, Masther Edward, you are a prodigy of wonderful sense and unspotted virtue; love has made you eloquent—"'I gaed a waefu' gate yestreen, A gate, I fear, I'll dearly rue, I gat my death frae twa sweet e'en, Twa lovely e'en o' ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... that," said this musical prodigy; and taking the instrument, he played second violin with ease and accuracy. Such precocity seems almost incredible, and only in the history of music does it ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... the Latin world was caused originally by a mere chance circumstance. In 205 B. C, when Hannibal, vanquished but still threatening, made his last stand in the mountains of Bruttium, repeated torrents of stones frightened the Roman people. When the books were officially consulted in regard to this prodigy they promised that the enemy would be driven from Italy if the Great Mother of Ida could be brought to Rome. Nobody but the Sibyls themselves had the power of averting the evils prophesied by them. They had come to Italy ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... determined to profit by the boy's extraordinary ability. The lad was rehearsed privately and was stimulated to further effort by the promise of sweetmeats and release from school duties. Finally the unscrupulous master made engagements for the young prodigy to sing at fashionable weddings and concerts, but he always pocketed the money which came from ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... age, a prodigy of learning. For before he had arrived at the 26th year of his life, he had such a large stock of useful knowledge, as to be philologus, philosophus et theologus eximius, and might well have been an ornament to the most famous and flourishing ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... astonishment. In a word, no actress at the highest acme of popularity ever received greater applause. Next day her performance was the topic of every circle in Bath. Horatia in the Roman Father, and Palmyra in Mahomet, augmented her reputation, and in less than a month the fame of this prodigy, for such she appeared to be, had reached every town and city of ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... of those about whose footsteps legends rise, and legend could add little to the romantic facts of her life;—the poverty of her youth; her debut as a child prodigy at Warsaw and the sudden fame that had followed it; the coronets that had been laid at her feet; her private tragedies, cosmopolitan friendships, her scholarship, caprices and generosities. She had been the Egeria, smiling in mystery, of half a dozen ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... by no stretch of sophism be called a voluntary act. He recalled the long, sordid, sensational matrimonial comedy of which he had been the victim; the keen competition of the parents of daughters for the hand of so renowned an infant prodigy, who could talk theology as crookedly as a graybeard. His own boyish liking for Pessel, the rich rent-farmer's daughter, had been rudely set aside when her sister fell down a cellar and broke her leg. Solomon must marry the damaged daughter, the rent-farmer had insisted to the learned boy's father, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... sleeping-room of Sigar, saying that he brought news of a portentous thing; for he saw leaves and shrubs like men walking. Then the king asked him how far off was the advancing forest; and when he heard that it was near, he added that this prodigy boded his own death. Hence the marsh where the shrubs were cut down was styled in common parlance Deadly Marsh. Therefore, fearing the narrow passages, he left the town, and went to a level spot ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... novelty described as a "new beef animal," which is a blend of the domestic cow and the North American bison. The resulting prodigy has the ferocious hump and shoulders of the bison, with the mildly benevolent face of the Herefordshire ox. It must not, however, be supposed that the old country is behind-hand in such ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various
... an account of it printed for Hogg, Paternoster-row, the trunk or main stem of this tree has been sixty-six feet, and some of the branches twelve feet, in circumference. The age of this prodigy of the forest cannot be ascertained with any degree of precision. The oak viewed by the present King, in Oxfordshire, and some years ago felled in the domains of one of the Colleges, though only twenty-five feet in girth, is said to have been six hundred years old. Fairlop oak having been nearly ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... hear any voice but his own, has a young nephew, Sir Dauphine, who wants to wring from him a third of his property; and the way he gains his point is this: He induces a lad to pretend to be a "silent woman." Morose is so delighted with the phenomenon that he consents to marry the prodigy; but the moment the ceremony is over, the boy-wife assumes the character of a virago, whose tongue is a ceaseless clack. Morose is in despair, and signs away a third of his property to his nephew, on condition of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... appear in the replenished tanks and in the hollows which they overflow, are mature and well-grown fish.[1] Besides, the latter are found, under the circumstances I have described, in all parts of the interior, whilst the prodigy of a supposed fall of fish from the sky has been noticed, I apprehend, only in the vicinity of the sea, ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... a passion on reading the letter. "What meaneth this old dotard, surd and absurd, thus to control our actions? Did not our innate generosity restrain us, I would confound him, and make him a prodigy to all the world!" ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... largest amount of thunder from so small a cloud, I was rebuked of my faintheartedness. In truth, not the least of my misgivings was Hipp's extraordinary zeal. He gave the townsmen to understand that I was a prodigy of oratory, whose battle-sketches would harrow up their souls and thrill them like a martial summons. It brought the blush to my face to see him talking to knots of old men after the fashion of a town crier at a puppet-booth, and I wondered whether I occupied a more reputable rank, after all, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... invitation to the laird and his sister little hoping or expecting they would come. But the laird, likewise being a deputy lord-lieutenant, he accepted the invitation, and came with his sister in all the state of pedigree in their power. Such a prodigy of old-fashioned grandeur as Miss Jenny was!—but neither shop nor mantuamaker of our day and generation had been the better o't. She was just, as some of the young lasses said, like Clarissa Harlowe, in the cuts and copperplates of Mrs Rickerton's set of the book, and an older ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... to the fever of the brain, by supplying constant mental stimulus, until the victim finds refuge in idiocy or an early grave. Where such fatal results do not occur, the brain in many cases is so weakened that the prodigy of infancy sinks below the medium of intellectual ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... celebration was a scene of a demonstration of popular interest and patriotic feeling amazing in its multitudinous enthusiasm. The Loyal League was out in full force, the parade was a prodigy of display, and the Clover Club gave a brilliant dinner, and the cleverness of the President's speech carried the club by storm. ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... the prodigy, then, is it? It seems, young man, that you have an absolute talent for mechanics. But, Rondic, he does not look ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... really a prodigy. He was only two-and-twenty years of age; yet his information seemed already to be universal. He spoke on every science and every art like one of its ablest professors. There was no broken lumber nor useless trash in his ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... Samaria spared nothing that might improve the education of his nephew. He taught him to ride, draw the bow, and all other accomplishments becoming the son of a sovereign; so that Codadad, at eighteen years of age, was looked upon as a prodigy. The young prince, being inspired with a courage worthy of his birth, said one day to his mother, "Madam, I begin to grow weary of Samaria; I feel a passion for glory; give me leave to seek it amidst the perils ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... reason to their aid, dare call for an account from God why he condemns or predestines to damnation innocent beings before they have even seen the light. Truly, Luther, in the eyes of all God's creatures, must appear a prodigy of daring when he ventures to maintain that no one can reach heaven unless he adopts the slavery of the human will. And it is not merely by the spirit of disputation, but by settled conviction, that ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... minor, looking in alarm towards this prodigy of baseness, "why, that's—that's Fisher, ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... for sustained narrative. Hard Cash displays it; parts of It is Never Too Late to Mend display it. But over much of these two novels lies the trail of that defective taste which makes A Simpleton, for instance, a prodigy of cheap ineptitude. ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... piece with that prodigy of self-contradiction that, when the Liberal leaders in the House of Commons expose the absurdity of professing to rectify the German exchanges by keeping out German fabric gloves, a tariffist leader replies by arguing that the Paris Resolutions of the first Coalition Government, under ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... Then, again, in "Time and Tide," the great writer gives us the following exquisite passage about a little dancer who especially pleased him—"She did it beautifully and simply, as a child ought to dance. She was not an infant prodigy; there was no evidence in the finish and strength of her motion that she had been put to continual torture during half of her eight or nine years. She did nothing more than any child—well taught, but painlessly—might do; she caricatured no older ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... the broadest Scotch) ever heard, and boasted of being unanswerable in all manner of argument. He wrote some of the most wearisome treatises ever read—among others, a book upon witchcraft, in which he was a devout believer—and thought himself a prodigy of authorship. He thought, and wrote, and said, that a king had a right to make and unmake what laws he pleased, and ought to be accountable to nobody on earth. This is the plain, true character of the personage whom the greatest men about the court praised ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... a prodigy," murmured Fran, as she obeyed Mrs. Gregory's gesture inviting her to follow up-stairs. "Now it's stopped raining," Simon Jefferson complained, as he wheeled his ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... as to be proud of having it thought that I was ushered into the world with a prodigy or a miracle, and I should never have mentioned this trifling circumstance had it not been for some libels since published by my enemies, wherein they affect to make the said sturgeon a presage of the future commotions in this kingdom, and me the ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... you that revell'd in our Parliament, And made a preachment of your high descent? Where are your mess of sons to back you now? The wanton Edward and the lusty George? And where's that valiant crook-back prodigy, Dicky your boy, that with his grumbling voice Was wont to cheer his dad in mutinies? Or, with the rest, where is your darling Rutland? Look, York; I stain'd this napkin with the blood That valiant Clifford with his rapier's point Made issue from the bosom of the boy, And, if thine ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... too long to tell him; he presented me to the rest of the Company, and, at my Request, the Cacklogallinians were humanly treated, whom otherwise they had look'd upon as overgrown dunghill Fowls. Volatilio did not appear much surpriz'd at this, who had once esteem'd me a Prodigy of Nature. As we walk'd to the House, one of the Selenites address'd me in the Spanish Language, with the known Affiability and ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... such numbers, in so great, so insistent, so mutual an interest, so absolutely as a nation and as Germans. Never again will you be so bidden. If you do not listen now and examine yourselves, if you again let these addresses pass you by as an empty tickling of the ears or as a strange prodigy, no human being will longer take account of you. Hear at last for once; for once at last reflect! Only do not go this time from the spot without having made a firm resolve; let every one who hears this voice make this resolution within himself and for ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... confederates, I remember the danger of Coriolanus, who was afraid that girls with spits, and boys with stones, should slay him in puny battle; when the other crosses my imagination, I remember the prodigy in Macbeth, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... My feet are fixing roots, and every limb Is billowy and gigantic, till I seem A wild, old, wicked mountain in the air: And the abhorred conscience of this murder, It will grow up a lion, all alone, A mighty-maned, grave-mouthed prodigy, And lair him in my caves: and other thoughts, Some will be snakes, and bears, and savage wolves, And when I lie tremendous in the desert, Or abandoned sea, murderers and idiot men Will come to live upon my rugged sides, Die, and be buried in me. Now it comes; I break, and magnify, and lose ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... linqui he was subject to fainting-fits. 8. capite detecto, so Cyrus the Younger and Hannibal. 9. incredibili celeritate, cf. Cic. Ep. ad Att. viii. 9hoc teras ( prodigy) horribili vigilantia, celeritate, diligentia est. Cf. also Napoleon the Great. 14. cessantibusque copiis and when the troops delayed their coming. Caesar did not then know that Antonius had himself ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... maxim that "no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless the testimony is of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish." But, as a matter of fact, no testimony exists of which the falsehood would be a prodigy. We cannot find in history any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men of such ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury
... lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to the worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. And with what execrations should the statesman be loaded, who, permitting one-half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... year fresh boughs appear—it waxes huge in size; And, with wild glee, this prodigy Sir Ranulph grim espies. One day, when he, beneath that tree, reclined in joy and pride, A branch was found upon the ground—the ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... did her husband's words save me the suspicion that my eyes deceived me when anon I was presented to a very pale, small lady whose hair was rather white than gray. And the "little daughter!" This prodigy's hair was as yet "down," but looked as if it might be up at any moment: she was nearly as tall as her father, whom she very much resembled in face and figure and heartiness of hand-shake. Only after a rapid mental calculation could I account ...
— James Pethel • Max Beerbohm
... Holland, "followed Lope with veneration in the streets; the king would stop to gaze at such a prodigy; the people crowded round him wherever he appeared; the learned and studious thronged to Madrid from every part of Spain to see this phoenix of their country, this monster of literature; and even Italians, no extravagant admirers, in general, of poetry that is not their own, made pilgrimages ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... the dream glow in the towering talent of a 12-year-old, Tyrone Ford. A child prodigy of gospel music, he has surmounted personal adversity to become an accomplished pianist and singer. He also directs the choirs of three churches and has performed at the Kennedy Center. With God as your composer, Tyrone, your music will be the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan
... in God alone, never forget it, my boy. But this is really the book 'Jmoreth' written by Zosimus the Panopolitan for his sister Theosebia. What a glory and what a delight to read this unique MS. rediscovered by a kind of prodigy! I'll give it my days and night watches. How I pity, my boy, the ignorant fellows whom idleness drives into debauchery! What a miserable life they lead! What is a woman in comparison with an Alexandrian papyrus? ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... fall and rot unnoticed, like the leaves of the forest? Degraded, superstitious, many of them still are. But they need only to be organized and directed to do untold mischief. More than once already has a similar catastrophe occurred. Some prodigy of skill and genius has seized such enormous forces, given them discipline and coherency and hurled them like a thunderbolt upon Christendom. Sometimes the shock has been frightful, and before it the proudest of empires and the stateliest of institutions ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... the bald records of the case the fact was fixed for all time that Hans was the most wonderful mental prodigy that ever bore the form of a four-footed animal. His learning and his performances were astounding, and even uncanny. I do not care how he was trained, nor by what process he received ideas and reacted to them! He ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... employment, civil or military. But, as the Roman Emperors were still considered as the generals and magistrates of the Republic, their wives and mothers, although dignified by the name of Augusta, were never associated to their personal honors; and a female reign would have appeared an inexplicable prodigy in the eyes of those primitive Romans, who married without love, or ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... thirty-nine years of age, the Infanta Isabella six years younger. She was esteemed majestically beautiful by her courtiers, and Cardinal Bentivoglio, himself a man of splendid intellect, pronounced her a woman of genius, who had grown to be a prodigy of wisdom, under the tuition of her father, the most sagacious statesman of the age. In attachment to the Roman faith and ritual, in superhuman loftiness of demeanour, and in hatred of heretics, she was at least ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Vice-Warden. "Why, he's simply a prodigy! You shall hear him play the piano? And he walked to the window. "Ug—I mean my boy! Come in for a minute, and bring the music-master with you! To turn over the music for him," ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... can doubt but God may communicate to those glorious spirits, his immediate attendants, any of his perfections; in what proportions he pleases, as far as created finite beings can be capable? It is reported of that prodigy of parts, Monsieur Pascal, that till the decay of his health had impaired his memory, he forgot nothing of what he had done, read, or thought, in any part of his rational age. This is a privilege so little known to most men, that it seems almost incredible to those who, after ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... long did he pause and how long did he debate? There was presently nothing to measure it; for his vibration had already changed—as just by the effect of its intensity. Shut up there, at bay, defiant, and with the prodigy of the thing palpably proveably done, thus giving notice like some stark signboard—under that accession of accent the situation itself had turned; and Brydon at last remarkably made up his mind on ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... such a career was an OLD stager—some long-visaged, parchment-faced fellow the OTHER side of forty at least. Well, this hero of the gaming table, Henry Weston, was aged only TWENTY-THREE years! What terrible times those must have been to produce such a prodigy! ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... but a few Months in this Country, but my search after the Prodigy of humane Knowledge the People abounds with, led me into Acquaintance with some of their principal Artists, Engineers, and Men of Letters; and I was astonish'd at every Day's Discovery of new and of unheard-of Worlds of Learning; but I Improv'd in the Superficial Knowledge ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... contrary to uniform experience of the course of nature in cases where all the circumstances are the same. The inhabitants of Sumatra have always seen water fluid in their own climate, and the freezing of their rivers ought to be deemed a prodigy: But they never saw water in Muscovy during the winter; and therefore they cannot reasonably be positive what would there ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... admiration, Marian complied; and though, of course, no great cricketer, her skill was sufficient to make her a prodigy in their eyes. But the game was brought to a sudden conclusion by Miss Morley, who, seeing them from the window, came out very much shocked, and gave the girls a lecture on decorum, which Marian felt almost ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... nearly exhausted. Dashing forward into the middle of the room, he struck me violently on the shoulders with his ferule, and snatching the rope out of my hand, exclaimed, with a stentorian voice, and genuine Yorkshire accent, "Prodigy of ignorance! dost not even know how to ring a bell? Must I myself instruct thee?" He then commenced pulling at the bell with such violence, that long before half the school was dismissed the rope broke, and the rest ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... born and reared under the shadow of Strasburg Cathedral. The majestic spire, a world in itself, became indeed a world to this imaginative prodigy. He may be said to have learned the minster of minsters by heart, as before him Victor Hugo had familiarized himself with Notre Dame. The unbreeched artist of four summers never tired of scrutinizing the statues, monsters, gargoyles and other outer ornamentations, ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
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