"Almanac" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Benoit, dressed like the finest cavalier, gives a masked ball in his father's gardens. Half Versailles is invited, but having taken the Court Almanac to his aid, he has made the mistake of inviting many people who have long been dead. Those who do appear, seem to him to be very insipid, and wanting some friends with whom he can enjoy himself, the useful Miton presents the Marquis de la Bluette and de Flarembel, who are {302} delighted ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... passed since the war, many a worthless almanac has been put in the fire, but Tarascon has never forgotten; and, renouncing the futile amusements of other days, it thinks of nothing now but how to make blood and muscle for the service of future revenge. Societies for pistol-shooting and gymnastics, costumed and equipped, ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... dancing school was not permitted. While in Boston a fencing school was allowed, there were no musicians permitted to exist, and the anti-papal character of the people was even more evident from the fact, that the first thing printed in New England was the Freeman's Oath! the second an almanac; and the third an edition of ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... read." He put out a couple of volumes from the thinly-furnished shelves that hung on the wall, and went back to his work. Huerlin had no inclination to read, but he took one of the books in his hand and opened it. It was an almanac, and he began to look at the pictures. The first was a fantastically dressed ideal woman's figure depicted as an ornament for the title-page, with bare feet and flowing locks. Huerlin remembered that he had a stump of lead-pencil in his pocket. He took it out, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... those captious people who must verify by the calendar every new moon you read of in a book, and if you are pained to discover the historian lifting anchor and spreading sail contrary to the reckonings of the nautical almanac, I beg to call your attention to these items from the time-table of the Mid-Western and ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... skip a day in the log, to make up for the one we lost on the voyage, passing over Saturday and writing down the day which followed Friday as 'Sunday'—otherwise we would have been all out of our reckoning with the almanac." ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the Almanac de Gotha lay at his hand. Having avidly absorbed the meagre narration of the country's history from the pages of the encyclopedia, his inquiring mind sought enlightenment as to the present personnel of the house who had ruled ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... old fellow got mixed with the boys? If there has, take him out, without making a noise! Hang the Almanac's cheat and the Catalogue's spite! Old Time is a liar! We're ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... sparrows and purple finches are so punctual in announcing spring, that some seasons one wonders how they know without looking in the almanac, for surely there are no signs of spring out of doors. Yet they will strike up as cheerily amid the driving snow as if they had just been told that to-morrow is the first day of March. About the same time I notice the potatoes in the cellar show signs of sprouting. They, too, find ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... charts, sailing directions, and other publications for the use of seamen. Among these is the nautical almanac used in navigating ships. ...
— Elements of Civil Government • Alexander L. Peterman
... was sick of my life, and I counted the days that would have to pass till I saw her again—only thirty more days, only nineteen days, only one more week—so I used to count, marking off each day in an almanac, until one day I read the announcement of her marriage; then I knew all hope was at an end. I went mad that night and rushed out of the house, and I should have drowned myself had I not fainted. When I came to, I was weak and delirious, and wandered along the beach, not knowing where I was going. ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... kinds of German beer. Brunswick boasts a special local sweet black beer, brewed from malted wheat instead of barley, known as "Mumme"—heavy, unpalatable stuff. If any one will take the trouble to consult Whitaker's Almanac, and turn to "Customs Tariff of the United Kingdom," they will find the very first article on the list is "Mum." "Berlin white beer" follows this. One of the few occasions when I have ever known Mr. Gladstone ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... well once; even bulletins and almanacs must have one excellent and immortal bulletin and almanac. So let Carlyle's be the immortal ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... I laughed myself almost sick over that a long time ago. Read it in an almanac when I ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... several mathematical, astronomical, medical and chemical terms as alcohol, alcove, alembic, algebra, alkali, almanac, assassin, azure, cipher, elixir, harem, hegira, sofa, talisman, zenith ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... family of Master Hugh, at Baltimore, seven years, during which time—as the almanac makers say of the weather—my condition was variable. The most interesting feature of my history here, was my learning to read and write, under somewhat marked disadvantages. In attaining this knowledge, I was compelled to resort to indirections by no means congenial to my nature, ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... confident that Sumter fell on the 13th, and not on the 14th of April, as you have it. It fell on Saturday, the 13th; the first call for troops on our part was got up on Sunday, the 14th, and given date and issued on Monday, the 15th. Look up the old almanac and other data, and see if ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... of names assists the memory, may it not also quicken the fancy? and there are other things worth having at our fingers' ends, besides the contents of the almanac. Pope's versification is tiresome from its excessive sweetness and uniformity. Shakespeare's blank verse is the ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... "Either August or late July. One could find out from the almanac, I suppose. It would suit me very well if you could ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... dear, The almanac's untrue; For roaring Boreas, 'tis clear, In sleet and snow and atmosphere, Will be the monarch of ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... without any other mistakes than must in fairness be attributed to the unreasonable character of orthography rather than to any deficiency in the speller, and, moreover, to learn his musical notes and part-singing. Besides all this, he had read his Bible, including the apocryphal books; Poor Richard's Almanac, Taylor's Holy Living and Dying, The Pilgrim's Progress, with Bunyan's Life and Holy War, a great deal of Bailey's Dictionary, Valentine and Orson, and part of a History of Babylon, which Bartle Massey had lent him. He might have had many more books from Bartle Massey, ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... were in the habit of reading either the almanac or the heavens, you would know that there will be no moon to-night till after eleven o'clock," said her chaperone. "These roads will be as black as pitch by half-past seven. Now, girls, each of you take your own shawl and one of ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... to make very certain there was no error, the figures were gone over, Then, as one result checked the other, Tom put away the papers, the nautical almanac, and said: ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... possible outlay Of salt and sanctity; in daily life Showing as little actual comprehension Of Christian charity and love and duty, As if the Sermon on the Mount had been Outdated like a last year's almanac Rich in broad woodlands and in half-tilled fields, And yet so pinched and bare and comfortless, The veriest straggler limping on his rounds, The sun and air his sole inheritance, Laughed at a poverty that paid its taxes, And hugged his ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... a grimace of disgust. "I've come from three solid hours of it. What I really do want is something to read. Haven't you even got an almanac?" ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... have been calling to Patrick to look in his almanac for the day of the month; I did not know but it might be leap-year. The almanac says 'tis the third after leap-year; and I always thought till now, that every third year was leap-year. I am glad they come ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... had not forgotten him. The rover much wanted a skilful navigator, and thinking that he would prefer a life of comparative freedom at sea to slavery on shore, he repurchased him, and carried him on board the brig. He was rather disappointed, however, to find that, without a quadrant or nautical almanac, the captain could be of very little use to them in that way. He told us, indeed, that the pirates were very nearly killing him for his supposed obstinacy, because he could not tell them one day whereabouts they ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... say, the idea! Here's an old critter—yes, he is old, too. He's so nigh seventy he don't dast look at the almanac for fear he'll find it's past his birthday. And he's always been so tight with money that he'd buy second-hand postage stamps if the Gov'ment wouldn't catch him. And his wife's been dead a couple of hundred ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the miners. When ye swaller things that way, don't laugh 'r ye'll choke yerself to death, like the elephant did when he read the comic almanac ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... crawled into her lap. She put her arms round him and held him absently. She was thinking over Katrine's words. The Spring! were they really near it? "so near," she had said, "it was almost here." Her eyes looking upwards to the darkening windows caught the old and smoke-hued almanac pinned up to the wall beside it. She set the child down, and getting up walked slowly over to it and ran one trembling finger down the dates. Each one from December, when they had first hung it up, had a heavy black line against it, where ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... Kipling (Hodder & Stoughton). 1912. This edition does not contain the Departmental Ditties nor the Rhymes for Nicholson's Almanac. ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... Evang. iii. 4, quotes Prophesy concerning the Egyptian belief in the Lords of the Ascendant whose names are given {Greek letters}: in these "Almenichiaka" we have the first almanac, as the first newspaper in the Roman ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... passes for nothing in the annals of wisdom. That was a great revolution in all affairs human and divine, and from that event we must now date all our knowledge. Before the Trojan war we used to talk of the rebellion of the Titans, but that business now is an old almanac. As for my powers of prophecy, believe me, that those who understand the past are very well qualified to predict the future. For my success in life, it may be principally ascribed to the observance of a simple rule—I ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... probably aware of, or have seen, a Saxon Almanac, answering the above description, in St. John's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various
... went over to it and saw that I had come to Ann Street, where Barnum's museum used to stand. The Post Office, the City Hall, the restaurant where I ate breakfast, studying upon the wall the bible texts and signs bidding me watch my hat and overcoat; the Tribune building, just as it looks on the almanac cover—all these made an instant, deep impression. Not in the ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... Sunday. The motto for the day in the English almanac is: 'He is happy whose circumstances suit his temper: but he is more excellent who can suit his temper to any circumstances' (Hume). Very true, and exactly the philosophy I am practising at this moment. I am lying on my berth in the light of the electric ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... opened the almanac he had just taken down from its allotted corner, and thought, as he searched for "Nov. 25th," that he had the best wife in the world, and if his children were not good it was their own fault. The great maxim of the deacon's life had been ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... a joke," retorted Bud, "it's that kind of a joke what's foundered in its front laigs and can't do nothin' but walk around itself. I got the same almanac over to my office." ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... Catholic religion, which has been shown, first by persecuting, and then by expelling the Jesuits from the empire, the Chinese government is, however, obliged to keep at least some missionaries at Pekin to compile the almanac. While astrology has led in other nations to the study of astronomy, the Chinese, though they have studied astrology for some thousand years, have made no progress in the real knowledge of the stars. Their ancient boasted observations, and the instruments which they make use of, were brought by ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... these attractions merit that we should try to please them; and in effect a new form, new lustre, and new graces have been given to the 'Almanac of the Mexican Ladies,' whom the editor submissively entreats to receive with benevolence this small tribute due to their ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... inventory of household effects made in 1775 shows that Mr. Simonds owned a Bible and Prayer Book and Mr. White a Bible and a copy of Watt's psalms and hymns, and the only other book of which mention can be found is an almanac. It would seem that one at least of the partners was fond of fiction, for Samuel Blodget writes in a letter to James White—the latter then at Crown Point—Dec. 8, 1762: "I confess I was a little ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... He had shrunk from a personal interview with the king, trusting rather to the efforts of his friends, many of whom were in high favor at Versailles. But one day he happened to light upon an old copy of "Poor Richard's Almanac," that unique publication in which Benjamin Franklin printed so many wise maxims and witty sayings. As Jones listlessly turned its pages, his eye ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... cause; they would keep destiny carefully abed and feed it upon spoon-victual. They play duenna to the universe, and are perpetually on the qui vive, lest it escape, despite their care, into improprieties. The year is with them too fast by so much as it removes itself from the old almanac. The reason is that they are the old almanac. Or, more distinctly, they are at odds with universal law, and, knowing that to them it can come only as judgment and doom, they, not daring to denounce ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... is known of the saint whose name is written here as can well be known of any saint or sinner. We, your loyal servants, are deeply thankful to him for having somehow gained possession of one day in the year—for having, as no doubt he has, arranged the almanac for 1866— expressly to delight us with the enchanting fiction that we have some tender proprietorship in you which we should scarcely dare to claim on a less auspicious occasion. Ladies, the utmost devotion sanctioned by the saint we beg to lay at your feet, and any little innocent privileges ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... you. I was thinking of the first Good Friday in Old Jerusalem. I was thinking of the sun hiding his face at noonday. Thora, have you an almanac?" ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... small villages had their fairs. If you look at an old almanac you will see a list of fair-days with the names of the villages which, when the appointed days come round, cannot now boast of the presence of a single stall or merry-go-round. The day of the fair was nearly always on or near the festival of the patron saint ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... history gives political prophets little encouragement—we cannot foretell the future from the past. Nevertheless, there is some truth in the saying that history is like an old almanac, if we may take this to mean that, although the same events never happen again in the same way, yet in the great movements of the tide of the world's affairs a sort of periodical recurrence, an ebb and flow, may be noticed. ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... the moon, should all be beyond cavil. And how troublesome the moon is! I have come to grief over the moon in "Prince Otto," and, so soon as that was pointed out to me, adopted a precaution which I recommend to other men—I never write now without an almanac. With an almanac and the map of the country, and the plan of every house, either actually plotted on paper or already and immediately apprehended in the mind, a man may hope to avoid some of the grossest possible blunders. With the map before him, he will scarce ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the almanac, it was the last day but one of the old year, midwinter, a time of frost and snow, and surely these brilliant oleanders, these great scarlet geraniums, these bright hedges of the many-colored Lantana were but a fairy ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... sometimes treated under the splendid conception of 'philosophy teaching by example,' and sometimes as an 'old almanac;' and, agreeably to this latter estimate, we once heard a celebrated living professor of medicine, who has been since distinguished by royal favor, and honored with a title, making it his boast, that he had ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... the case for centuries in German-speaking communities both in Europe and North America, where there has been a general lack of books, the want of reading-matter has largely been filled by that most important medium, the almanac. The same condition applies to Brazil. We might call the almanac the colonist's encyclopedia. It is his agricultural guide, medical adviser, compendium of short stories and poetry, moral guide, diary, and a thousand and one other things in addition to being the source of the information which an ...
— The German Element in Brazil - Colonies and Dialect • Benjamin Franklin Schappelle
... limited; to get up morning after morning with the faint hope that the change may have come at last; to see the dry slates and the clear horizon and the iron-bound earth, and to ascertain in your own proper person that the water gets colder and colder every day. You puzzle over the almanac till your eyes ache, and study the thermometer till you get a crick in your neck. You watch the smoke from every farmhouse and cottage within your ken, and still, after curling high up into the pure, rarefied atmosphere, it floats hopelessly away to the southward ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... Meyrick. "I have been punished enough for wagging my tongue foolishly—making an almanac for the Millennium, as my husband ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... sensitive steed, the field of her mind's eye seemed to be entirely filled by an image of the woman of forty as imagined by herself at the age of twenty. And she was that woman now! But she did not feel like forty; at thirty she had not felt thirty; she could only accept the almanac and the rules of arithmetic. The interminable years of her marriage rolled back, and she was eighteen again, ingenuous and trustful, convinced that her versatile husband was unique among his sex. The fading of a short-lived and factitious passion, the descent ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... those partic'lar books; but land! I've read a sight in my time! Nowadays I'm so drove I get along with the Almanac, the Weekly Argus, and the Maine State Agriculturist.—There's the river again; this is the last long hill, and when we get to the top of it we'll see the chimbleys of Riverboro in the distance. 'T ain't fur. I live 'bout half a mile beyond the ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... no almanac for love. With many women love is born the moment they know they are beloved. All wisdom tells us that a moment once gone is irrevocable. Were I in your place, I should feel that I approached a moment that I must not ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... doorway, equipped in his hunting dress—for he usually spent Saturday afternoons in the forest; and it was only at his wife's solicitation that he had consented to wait and "take a bite of dinner" before starting, Every now and then he raised his head from the almanac, over which he was bending, to listen to the whirr of his wife's spinning-wheel, and her merry song issuing from the cottage, or to cast an impatient glance in the ...
— Po-No-Kah - An Indian Tale of Long Ago • Mary Mapes Dodge
... Y was bordered with eager spectators: the news of the great skating-match had travelled far and wide. Men, women, and children, in holiday attire, were flocking toward the spot. Some wore furs, and wintry cloaks or shawls; but many, consulting their feelings rather than the almanac, were dressed as for ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... every mast with bunting, and there was a corresponding display of it on shore. Events such as births, deaths, marriages, and other more or less interesting doings were accurately remembered by a visitation of this kind. The local almanac chronicled the occasion as minutely as it did the death of Nelson or the accession of Queen Victoria to the throne. So that if any lapse of memory occurred a reference to this touchstone of local history put matters right. Archie Macvie had longed for the time to come ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... I shall have to be private until nine o'clock in the evening, when I shall be again at your service. Meantime you may go to your room. I have ordered the one next to this to be prepared for you. But you must not be idle. Here is Poor Richard's Almanac, which, in view of our late conversation, I commend to your earnest perusal. And here, too, is a Guide to Paris, an English one, which you can read. Study it well, so that when you come back from England, if you should then have an opportunity to travel about Paris, to see its wonders, ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... satisfied with their native stimulants, but see no other way of getting rid of the unwelcome and obtrusive white than by yielding to his demand. The agreement is made that he must return the so-called loan on a certain date, two or three months hence; the Indian, of course, having no almanac, easily makes a mistake in his calculation, and the date passes. The dealer has gained his point. He saddles his horse, looks up the Indian, and makes a great to-do about all the trouble he is put to in collecting the debt, charging not ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... books were an almanac and an arithmetic, in which last he was considerably expert. The former was a sort of cyclopaedia to him, which he supposed to contain an abstract of human knowledge, as indeed it does to a considerable extent. I loved to sound him on the various reforms of the day, and ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... or St. Petersburg, by the French and Russians. Each of these places has an observatory, and chronometers that are kept carefully regulated, the year round. Every chronometer is set by the regulator of the particular observatory or place to which the almanac used is calculated." ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... and children, and this the wife should recognize by giving her husband the things for which he has made his economic sacrifice. In the old days a man who did not marry paid for his liberty by loss of physical comfort and wealth. Thus Hesiod, one of the earliest Greek poets, in his Farmer's Almanac called "Works and Days," coupled the marrying of a wife with the purchase of a yoke of oxen and a plow as the first things needful in beginning to farm, and this in despite of the fact ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... Phileas Fogg. He took out and consulted a pocket almanac, and added, "As today is Wednesday, the 2nd of October, I shall be due in London in this very room of the Reform Club, on Saturday, the 21st of December, at a quarter before nine p.m.; or else the twenty thousand ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... the almanac, which showed that at the time the murder was committed there was no moon at all. In his argument, Lincoln's speech was so feelingly made that at its close all the men in the jury-box were in tears. It was just half an hour when the jury returned a ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... but meantime we'll go on looking around, in a modest way, and if you get a chance to superintend a sausage-stuffer at six or eight dollars a week, you just trade off the earldom for a last year's almanac and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... express, and to point also, that the river passed southerly into the Balonne, which river she named, and even the Culgoa: she seemed to say the name of that locality was "Mundi." Neither of these females had any covering, but the younger wore, by way of ornament, a page of last year's Nautical Almanac, suspended by a cord from her neck. The mother continuing implacable, the daughter, with a graceful expression of respect for her, and courtesy to the stranger, waved her arm for him to retire, which ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... of Poor Robin's Almanac (1676) and we find it alluded to in Boccaccio, the classical sedile which according to scoffers has formed the papal chair (a curule seat) ever since the days of Pope Joan, when it has been held advisable for one of the Cardinals to ascertain that His Holiness possesses ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... his breeches, on a charge of murder. Six witnesses swore that they had seen him do the deed about 11 P.M. on such and such a night. Cross-examined: They saw it all quite clearly; they saw it so clearly because of the moonlight. The only evidence for the defence was an almanac. There had been no moon that night. Another case is interesting for his sake. Two young men set up in a farm together, bought a waggon and team from a poor old farmer, Lincoln's client, did not pay him, and were sued. ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... Championnet, that of Joseph II.; those of the Queen of England, the King of Prussia, the Grand Duke of Tuscany; that of the Emperor, and those of the Empress and of the Princes of Russia; that of Goethe, of the Duchess de Berry, of the Duke d'Aumale—I skip them by scores. The whole Gotha Almanac might there be passed in review. This determined, ramble through the streets at will, without troubling yourself about their names, as these change often at the caprice of ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... day except when interrupted by the gaoler. Jack, following the example of Robinson Crusoe, attempted to tie knots on the tail of time by cutting notches with his knife on the leg of the table, but most days he forgot to perform this operation, and so his wooden almanac fell hopelessly out of gear. He estimated that he had been a little more than a week in prison when he heard by the clang of the bolts that the next cell was to ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... labour of preparing the sheet almanac. This useful publication is much valued by the tenants of the district, and may be found pinned against the wall for ready reference in most farmhouses. Besides the calendar it contains a list of county and other officials, dates of quarter sessions and assizes, fair days and markets, ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... school-house in every kind of weather. During the first year I had about fourteen pupils, of varying ages, sizes, and temperaments, and there was hardly a book in the school-room except those I owned. One little girl, I remember, read from an almanac, while a second used ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... their holes; the street again became silent, and the rain continued to rain on. In fact, there was no hope of its clearing up; the barometer pointed to rainy weather; mine hostess' tortoise-shell cat sat by the fire washing her face, and rubbing her paws over her ears; and, on referring to the almanac, I found a direful prediction stretching from the top of the page to the bottom through the ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... trowsers, and shoes, to be used when we reached civilized life, and others in a bag, which were expected to wear out on the way; another of the same size for medicines; and a third for books, my stock being a Nautical Almanac, Thomson's Logarithm Tables, and a Bible; a fourth box contained a magic lantern, which we found of much use. The sextant and artificial horizon, thermometer, and compasses were carried apart. My ammunition ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... here in his own pages, and in them only, doth he propound his invention. But he is not exclusive; having published his wonderful invention, he invites the makers to copy his plan. Mr. Murphy is already busily arranging his Almanac for 1842, by means of a PUNCH thermometer, made by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... Murdoch's History of Nova Scotia, vol. 2, p. 234] just twelve years before the appearance of the Quebec paper. From 1769 we commence to find regular mention of the Nova Scotia Gazette and Weekly Chronicle, published on Sackville Street by A. Fleury, who also printed the first Almanac in Canada, in 1774. One of the first newspapers published in the Maritime Provinces was the Royal Gazette and New Brunswick Advertiser, which appeared in 1785 in St. John, just founded by the American Loyalists. The first paper appeared in Upper Canada on the establishment ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... so they say, But let the seasons roll, He doth not lack an almanac Whose youth is in his soul. The snows may clog life's iron track, But does the axle tire, While bearing swift through bank and drift The engine's ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... was more familiar Than e'er was almanac well-willer (compiler); Her secrets understood so clear That some believed he had been there; Knew when she was in fittest mood For cutting corns, or letting blood: Whether the wane be, or increase, Best to set garlick, or sow pease: Who first found out ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... Academy Exhibition (which someone had left on the table), and with the most universally well-informed book, on a small scale, that has ever enlightened humanity—modestly described on the title-page as an Almanac. ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... Brown. "Why, he could read a patent medicine almanac and not have a solitary symptom of ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... one end of a great gloomy dining-room, and, my repast being over, I had the prospect before me of a long dull evening, without any visible means of enlivening it. I summoned mine host and requested something to read; he brought me the whole literary stock of his household, a Dutch family Bible, an almanac in the same language, and a number of old Paris newspapers. As I sat dozing over one of the latter, reading old news and stale criticisms, my ear was now and then struck with bursts of laughter which seemed to proceed from ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... XII. 254.—According to the royal almanac of 1792 the Paris national guard comprises 32,000 men, divided into sixty battalions, to which must be added the battalions of pikemen, spontaneously organized and composed, especially of the non-active citizens.—Cf. in ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... only my almanac memorandums for this month, I shall hasten immediately to what I think my dear partial lecturers will find most to their taste in ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... gloomily for the Colonies. The Tories felt certain of victory. In the political almanac of that party, 1777 was "the year with three gallows in it." The English held New York and ravaged the Jerseys on their way to Philadelphia. Howe issued a proclamation "commanding all congresses and committees to desist and cease from their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... I, "that you should do a gastronomic tour. Every department of France has its particular dainty. With a reliable list, an almanac, and a motor ambulance, you could ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... about Plato; yet our favorite teacher's practicality is not in the least of the Poor Richard variety. If he have any Buncombe constituency, it is that unrealized commonwealth of philosophers which Plotinus proposed to establish; and if he were to make an almanac, his directions to farmers would be something like this:—"OCTOBER: Indian Summer; now is the time to get in your early Vedas." What, then, is his secret? Is it not that he out-Yankees us all? that his range includes ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... paper, on which was written any legal document for use in any court, was to be charged with a stamp duty of from three pence to ten pounds sterling. After that day, every license, bond, deed, warrant, bill of lading, indenture, every pamphlet, almanac, newspaper, pack of cards, must be written or printed on stamped paper to be made in England and sold at prices fixed by law. If any dispute arose under the law, the case might be tried in the vice-admiralty courts ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... Clary's Grove boys, and a prosecuting witness told how, by the light of the moon, he saw the blow struck. Lincoln subjected the witness to one of his dreadful cross-examinations and then confronted him with the almanac of the year in which the crime was committed to show that the moon had set at the hour at which the witness claimed to have seen the blow struck by Armstrong. The boy was acquitted and Lincoln would accept no fee but the tears and gratitude of his ...
— Life of Abraham Lincoln - Little Blue Book Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 324 • John Hugh Bowers
... leagues round was papered with these legends, a fresh speculation must be discovered; the Alsacien could not go beyond the limits of the department. Eve, turning over everything in the whole printing house, had found a collection of figures for printing a "Shepherd's Calendar," a kind of almanac meant for those who cannot read, letterpress being replaced by symbols, signs, and pictures in colored inks, red, black and blue. Old Sechard, who could neither read nor write himself, had made a good deal of money at one time by bringing ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... experienced a great sense of disappointment. For a little while she was very homesick for Betty. To have her away a whole month! And a curious thing was that no one seemed really to miss her and wish her back. Mrs. Leverett scanned the weather and the almanac and hoped they would get safely to Springfield without a storm. Mr. Leverett counted up the time. It had ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... may be willing, as we say, to die for the other, yet unwilling to utter the agreeable word at the right moment; but if the wits were sufficiently quick for them to perceive that they are in a comic situation, as affectionate couples must be when they quarrel, they would not wait for the moon or the almanac, or a Dorine, to bring back the flood-tide of tender feelings, that they should ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... granddad, had been to school as a child. He knew how to write, though he took the greatest liberties with spelling; he knew how to read and understood what he read, provided the reading presented no more serious literary difficulties than occurred in the stories in the almanac. He was the first of his line to allow himself to be tempted by the town and he lived to regret it. Badly off, having but little outlet for his industry, making God knows what shifts to pick up a livelihood, he went through all the disappointments ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... Conkling when he resigned from the United States Senate and went to Albany to ask for re-election! What's become of them? Passed from view like a movin' picture. Who took Conkling's place in the Senate? Twenty dollars even that you can't remember his name without looking in the almanac. And poor old Plattt He's down and out now and Odell is in the saddle, but that don't mean that he'll always be in the saddle. His enemies are workin' hard all the time to do him, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if he went out before ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt
... Since then there had been ten years of anxious, longing grief that had remained unconfessed until this night. Now the hearts of both yearned for their lost son. But how should they find him? Andrew read nothing but his Bible and almanac; he had no conception of the world beyond Kendal and Keswick. He could scarcely imagine David going beyond these places, or, at any rate, the coast of Scotland. Should he make a pilgrimage ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... sound advice as to getting on in the world there has probably been nothing written so forcible, quaint and full of common sense a the following preface to an old Pennsylvanian Almanac, entitled "Poor Richard Improved," by the great philosopher, Benjamin Franklin. It is homely, simple, sensible and practical—a condensation of the proverbial wit, wisdom and every-day philosophy, useful at all times, and essentially so in ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... on the spot with somewhat suspicious alacrity. "Get the almanac, Mullins, and look up Time of High Water ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... had wished to have a moon. The Duke will need it presently in his courtship; for marvelously it sharpens a lover's oath. 'T is a silver spur to a halting wooer. Shrewd merchants, I am told, go so far as to consult the almanac when laying in their store of wedding fits; for a cloudy June throws Cupid off his aim. What cosmetic—what rouge or powder—so paints a beauty! If the moon were full twice within the month scarcely ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... funny language?" demanded Chet, sitting up again. "And spelling! My! Do you wonder foreigners find English so difficult? Here's one that I found in an almanac at the drug store," and he fished out a clipping and ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... dedication, till Harvey ventured to publish a collection of panegyrics on himself—and thus gravely stepped into a niche erected to Vanity. At length he and his two brothers—one a divine and the other a physician—became students of astronomy; then an astronomer usually ended in an almanac-maker, and above all, in an astrologer—an avocation which tempted a man to become a prophet. Their "sharp and learned judgment on earthquakes" drove the people out of their senses (says Wood); but when nothing happened of their predictions, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... it struggled as hard as Partridge the Almanac-maker to rebut that fatal accusation; complained (Teutschmeister and German-Papist part of it) loudly at the Diets; got Albert and his consorts put to the Ban (GEACHTET), fiercely menaced by the Kaiser Karl V. But nothing came of all that; nothing ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... for six months," said Berry, refilling his tankard. "By the way, you'll have to be very careful when you take off my boots. They're very full of foot this evening." He sank back and closed his eyes. "You know I never look at the almanac, but before I was up this morning I knew that this was a ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... and is shown by the sundial; mean solar time, on the other hand, is shown by a correct clock; and the difference between the two—or the difference between apparent time and mean time is technically known as the equation of time, and is set forth in a nautical almanac published by the government." ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... the gross receipts. I'll just enter you in my time-book now. Let's see—it is one-fifteen," and as he spoke Sam took out, first his watch, and then a muddy little book that had time-tables and all sorts of almanac things ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... course I know her," said Mr. Sutton, who was greatly pleased because Mrs. Duncan had likened him to an almanac: greatly pleased this evening in every respect, and even the diamond in his bosom seemed to glow with a brighter fire. He could afford to be generous to-night, and he turned to Mr. Worthington and laughed knowingly. "She's the ward of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 1868, swings from a small chain fastened to a staple screwed in the side of his desk; two other bound volumes stand on their feet in front of his nose, and two more of the same kind are fast asleep on the book-rack in the corner. Stray numbers of the almanac peep from every nook. The man who would carry off Greeley's bound pile of almanacs would deserve capital punishment. The Philosopher could better afford to lose one of his legs than to lose his almanacs. The room is kept scrupulously clean and neat. ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... perhaps an almanac would settle the question. The judge believes it would. The government attorney disappears to ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... the meanwhile, had seated herself near their fire of fallen branches upon the mossgrown and mouldering trunk of a tree uprooted years before. Her employment, diversified by an occasional glance at the pot, now beginning to simmer over the blaze, was the perusal of the current year's Massachusetts Almanac, which, with the exception of an old black-letter Bible, comprised all the literary wealth of the family. None pay a greater regard to arbitrary divisions of time than those who are excluded from ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the almanac of a sect of Christians who keep the Jewish Sabbath, having a chapel at Mill Yard, Goodman's Fields. They wrote controversial works, and perhaps do so still; but I never ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... eccentric Mormon at Salt Lake City of the name of W.W. Phelps. He is from Cortland, State of New York, and has been a Saint for a good many years. It is said he enacts the character of the Devil, with a pea-green tail, in the Mormon initiation ceremonies. He also published an almanac, in which he blends astronomy with short moral essays, and suggestions in regard to the proper management of hens. He also contributes a poem, entitled "The Tombs," to his almanac for the current year, from which I ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... smile, quite cool and unperturbed, gave the lie to his words. "For a year, though the almanac ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... took more pride in possessing than in displaying wealth,—in having a large barn than an attractive residence. They were more certain to build a church than a school-house, and few of them wanted anything of the book-pedler except an almanac. The descendants of such men founded Cincinnati, and made it a thriving, bustling, dull, unintellectual place. Then came in a spice of Yankees to enliven the mass, to introduce some quickening heresies, to promote schools, to found libraries, to establish new manufactures ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... down. Nothing was more common than mistakes of identification. His glance wandered round the room, as though in search of some inspiration for his next question. His eye took mechanical note of the trumpery articles of rickety furniture; wandered over the cheap almanac prints which adorned the walls; but became riveted in the cheap overmantel which surmounted the fire-place. For, in the slip of mirror which formed the centre of that ornament, Inspector Chippenfield caught sight of the features of Mrs. Hill frowning and shaking her head at somebody invisible. ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... said. "What puzzles me is how you can find the longitude. I know you get the latitude by seeing how high the sun is above the horizon at noon, and then with the aid of the nautical almanac you can easily work out ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... being infinitely more adventurous, and more knowing than their masters, carry on all the foreign trade, making frequent voyages to town in canoes loaded with oysters, buttermilk and cabbages. They are great astrologers, predicting the different changes of weather almost as accurately as an almanac; they are, moreover, exquisite performers on three-stringed fiddles; in whistling they almost boast the far-famed powers of Orpheus' lyre, for not a horse nor an ox in the place, when at the plough or before the wagon, will budge a foot until he hears the well known ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... be winter, according to the almanac, but our wonderful Indian Summer weather continues. Susie and I have been "blue-doming" to-day. We converted ourselves into a mounted escort for Gershom and the kiddies as far as the schoolhouse, and then rode ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer |
