"Custom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the deuteronomistic redaction could nowhere be traced in any of the parts belonging to the Priestly Code. Even the history of the language itself was forced to render service against Graf: it had already been too much the custom to deal with that as if it were soft wax. To say all in a word, the arguments which were brought into play as a rule derived all their force from a moral conviction that the ritual legislation must be old, and could not possibly have been committed ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... application of subsidies, and called royal ministers to account by repeated instances of impeachment. Under the first two kings of the House of Lancaster Parliament had been summoned almost every year. Under Henry the Sixth an important step was made in constitutional progress by abandoning the old custom of presenting the requests of Parliament in the form of petitions which were subsequently moulded into statutes by the royal Council. The statute itself in its final shape was now presented for the royal assent and the Crown deprived of all opportunity ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... the Antiquary the duel was easily enough arranged between these two over-hasty young men. It was the custom of the time to fight about trifles, and it seemed to Lovel that as a soldier he had really no honourable alternative. He was fortunate enough to find a second in the Lieutenant-commander of one of the King's gun-brigs, which was stationed on the coast to put down smuggling. ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... a boy on the farm, we used to thrash our grain with the hand-flail. Our custom was to thrash a flooring of sheaves on one side, then turn the sheaves over and thrash them on the other, then unbind them and thrash the loosened straw again, and then finish by turning the whole ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... letting things take their own course that Englishmen owe their liberty. Liberty in England behaves very much as the sea around England. It is a tide. Little by little manners surmount the law. A cruel system of legislation drowned under the wave of custom; a savage code of laws still visible through the transparency of universal ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... the services were constantly referring to the limitations of Executive Order 9981. The Air Force could not intervene in local custom, Assistant Secretary Zuckert told Clarence Mitchell in 1951. Social change in local communities must be evolutionary, he continued, either ignoring or contrasting the Air Force's own social experience.[19-15] Defending the practice of maintaining ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... It was my custom to make daily excursions to some part of the island. One day, walking along the beach, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot plainly impressed on the sand. I stood like one thunderstruck. I listened, I looked around, but I could hear ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... isn't the custom, and you know you never got them in London, and hardly ate them at home," said Thomas Savine, but Mrs. Savine remained ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... was not drunk, but he had been drinking—persistently nipping, as his custom was in times of mental excitement, in the fallacious hope of keeping up courage and steadying irritable nerves. The series of moods usually resultant on such recourse to spirituous liquors, followed one another with clock-work regularity. ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... that temper which is in truth implied in all the more majestic conceptions of the State—the temper that regards the main institutions of every great civilisation, whether it be property, or law, or religious custom, as necessarily, in some degree, divine and sacred. For man has not been their sole artificer! Throughout there has been working with him "the ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... wise, discrete. and well aduysed in suche wyse that they take not of y'e peple ne requyre no more than they ought to haue by reson/ ne that they take of the sellars ne of the byars no more than the right custom and toll/ for they bere the name of a c[o]mun sone/ and therfore ought they to shewe them c[o]mune to all men/ and for as moche as the byars and sellars haue somtyme moche langage/ they ought to haue ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... known that it is a custom with shepherds, when a lamb dies, if the mother have a sufficiency of milk, to bring her from the hill, and put another lamb to her. This is done by putting the skin of the dead lamb upon the living ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... the defections mentioned he continued to levy money and rob the temples; and he named himself imperator and Parthicus,—the latter being quite the opposite of the Roman custom, in that he took his title from those he had led against his countrymen: whereas regularly it would imply that he had conquered the Parthians instead of citizens. [-28-] Antony kept hearing of these operations as he did of whatever else was being done, such as matters in Italy, of which ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... that the first actress who ever faced the public told her friends that the profession was not all paint and glitter, because being a pioneer, and so treading on the corns of custom, she was held as an unwomanly creature, and had unpleasant things thrown at her, as well as words. So her impressions are not recorded. But when women had settled down into the work, and were allowed to represent themselves in the theatre (a ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... chief Huguenots were conspicuous. After reading and explaining the terms of the royal clemency, the seneschal turned to the Protestants, who stood by themselves, and demanded whether they intended to avail themselves of its protection. Mirabel, their chief spokesman, replied that it was the custom of the reformed churches to offer prayer to God before treating of so important affairs as this, and proffered a request that they be allowed to invoke His presence and blessing. Permission was granted. A citizen of Valence, who was also a deacon of the Reformed Church, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... his custom, insisted on rooming with Roger and Dave, while Belle Endicott and her chum were made comfortable in a room next to those occupied by Jessie ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... true ideas of the ignorance, credulity, negligence, and sottishness of common people, will always regard their religious opinions with the greater suspicion for their being generally established. The majority of men examine nothing; they allow themselves to be blindly led by custom and authority; their religious opinions are specially those which they have the least courage and capacity to examine; as they do not understand anything about them, they are compelled to be silent or put an end to their reasoning. Ask the common man if ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... to whom you take your custom is an advocate of an immediate operation for such cases as yours and all others. I may be unduly sensitive on account of having recently emerged from the surgeon's hands, but it strikes me now that there are an awful lot of doctors who take one brief glance at a person who is complaining, ...
— "Speaking of Operations—" • Irvin S. Cobb
... the railroad station at seven o'clock in the morning to meet them and accompanied the coffin from the baggage car to the hearse. So simple an act bespeaks the innate dignity and simplicity of the man. It was his custom at the cemetery to walk with the chief mourner, and by such little kindnesses and numberless other courtesies he endeared himself to each generation in his long ministry. A parishioner whose mother ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... a universal custom to consider a battery discharged when the specific gravity of the electrolyte has dropped to 1.150, and that it is fully charged when the specific gravity of the electrolyte has risen to 1.280-1.300. This is true in temperate ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... the Holy Ghost even from his mother's womb" (Luke 1:11), so that he was in the desert even as a boy; in another way by the practice of virtuous action, according to Heb. 5:14: "Strong meat is for the perfect; for them who by custom have their senses exercised to the discerning of good ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... force, in which all government takes effect, is to be constantly backed, and, as it were, illuminated, by thought in speech and writing. The ruler of St. Paul's time "bare the sword" (Rom. xiii: 4). Bare, it as the Apostle says, with a mission to do right; but he says nothing of any duty, or any custom, to show by reason that he was doing right. Our two governments, whatsoever they do, have to give reasons for it; not reasons which will convince the unreasonable, but reasons which on the whole will convince the average mind, and carry it unitedly forward in a course of action, often, though ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... of how he was to live. The cold looks, averted faces, and rude scandal of the neighbours, could be borne, because really there was some excuse in the circumstances, and because he hoped that there would be a joyful ending of it all at some future day. But the loss of custom first opened his eyes to his real situation. No work came to his shop; he made articles, but he could not sell them; and as the little money he had saved was necessarily exhausted in the unavoidable expense of the trial, the family found ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... have learned wisdom after living for so many years in defiance of the law," thought Marcy, when it came his turn to go aloft and relieve the lookout. "Of course a smuggler has to take his chances with the revenue cutters he is liable to meet along the coast, as well as with the Custom House authorities, and I should think that constant fear of capture would have made him sly and cautious; but it hasn't."—"Nothing in sight, sir," he said, in answer to an inquiry from the officer who ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... wound of Tristram grew more desperate day by day. His strength, quite prostrated, no longer permitted him to be carried to the seaside daily, as had been his custom from the first moment when it was possible for the bark to be on the way homeward. He called a young damsel, and gave her in charge to keep watch in the direction of Cornwall, and to come and tell him the color of the sails ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... looked at him. Most jobmasters are in the habit of giving five sous to any servant who comes in search of a cab for his master; and this was the custom here. But the keeper of the office, who felt sure that Chupin was not a servant, hesitated; and this made the young fellow angry. "Make haste," he cried, imperiously. "If you don't, I shall run to ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... him used to practise drawing in the Brancacci Chapel of the Carmine. There Masaccio and his followers bequeathed to us noble examples of the grand style upon the frescoed panels of the chapel walls. It was the custom of industrious lads to make transcripts from those broad designs, some of which Raphael deigned in his latest years to repeat, with altered manner, for the Stanze of the Vatican and the Cartoons. ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... half the northern side is occupied by the salient circular mass that is such a conspicuous object to one looking at the mound from the plain. We do not know what caused this deviation from the traditional custom; a reason should perhaps be sought in the configuration of the ground, and in the course here followed by the river which then bathed the foot of the artificial hill upon which stood the royal dwellings ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... him myself," Saton answered, "but I know that he has a letter to me. He will come to my house, I believe, and if he follows out his usual custom, he will scarcely leave it while he stays in England. I shall ask a few people to talk one night. I cannot attempt anything conventional. It does not seem to me to be an occasion for anything of the sort. If you will come, I will let you know the night ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... custom to let applicants open and shut for themselves, her hands being often at a critical point of work; so in this case, with a refractory flower half adjusted—while Faith was in the intricacies of a knot of ribband, she merely cried, "Come in!" And the young lady came—so far as across the threshold,—there ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... secretly resolved that she would work hard to be enabled to increase the sum allowed. Oh, if her labours could serve to retrieve a parent from the necessity of darker resources for support! Alas! when crime has become a custom, it is like gaming or drinking—the excitement is wanting; and had Luke Darvil been suddenly made inheritor of the wealth of a Rothschild, he would either still have been a villain in one way or the other; or ennui would have awakened conscience, ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... presence." Addressing the little girl it said, "We are here to place you on trial for the wrongs we Bush creatures have suffered from the cruelties of White Humans. You will meet with all fairness in your trial, as the proceedings will be conducted according to the custom of your own Courts of justice. The Welcome Swallow, having built its nest for three successive seasons under the eaves of the Gabblegabble Court House, is deeply learned in human law business, and will instruct us how to proceed. Your conviction will, therefore, leave you no ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... Fitzgerald is so ill that he can scarcely carry on the business of his office, and yet he does not like to give it up, for fear of embarrassing the Government; he complained that the other offices had thrown much of their business on the Board of Trade, a custom which had grown up in Huskisson's time, who was the most competent man, and who took it all. Probably Huskisson was not sorry, by making himself very useful, to make himself nearly indispensable, and thought that he was so; and so he was de jure, but the Duke ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... outer air, might well be misleading and cause the Osmia to treat the narrow passage at the back as though the wide passage in front did not exist. This would account for the placing of the female in the large tube above the males in the small tube, an arrangement contrary to her custom. ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... favoured me with the piteous tale of the very losses I myself brought upon him; and I make no doubt that I shall hear in a few days, the whole history of the departed diamond, now in my keeping, coupled with your honour's appearance and custom. Allow that it would be a pity to suffer pride to stand in the way of the talents with which Providence has blest me; to scorn the little delicacies of art, which I execute so well, would, in my opinion, be as absurd as for an epic poet to disdain the composition of a perfect epigram, or ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that this mania for matching (if mania be indeed a legitimate word for a custom based on common-sense principles and seldom carried to the extremes which the recruit has been led to fear) obtains not only in the army but also in the nursing profession. Not long after I became a ward orderly I got a wigging from my "Sister" because I ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... trouble me. It was ten o'clock in the morning when I awoke, and saw my uncle sitting beside the bed. Another sun was bright in the heavens outside: the whole world looked so calm and happy that my first impulse was to leap up and run, as was my custom, to mother's room. Then my eyes fell on Uncle Loveday, and the whole dreadful truth came surging into my awakened brain. I sank back with a ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... repeated Jack in dismay. Then he spoke to Matilda, caustically: "I suppose it's all right, Matilda, but has it been your fixed custom, when we've been away for the summer, to fill the house with ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... no small difficulty that the master brought the school to such a degree of order that the closing speeches could be received with becoming respect and attention. The trustees, according to custom, were invited to express their opinion upon the examination, and upon school matters generally. The chairman, John Cameron, "Long John," as he was called, broke the ice after much persuasion, and slowly rising from the desk into which he had compressed his long, lank form, he made his speech. Long ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... four other wives came to her, and they said, "Here it is the custom before a child is born to bind its mother's eyes with a handkerchief that she may not see it just at first. So let us bind your eyes." She answered, "Very well, bind my eyes." The four wives then ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... marriage. At this point the male representatives of King Dermid came to open rupture with the Earl. Donald Kavanagh, surnamed "the Handsome," and by the Normans usually spoken of as "Prince" Donald, could scarcely be expected to submit to an arrangement, so opposed to all ancient custom, and to his own interests. He had borne a leading part in the restoration of his father, but surely not to this end—the exclusion of the male succession. He had been one of King Henry's guests during the Christmas holidays ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... yellow fortress that rose above them. Behind the tiny promontory on which the fortress crouched was the town, separated from it by a stretch of water so narrow that a golf-player, using the quay of the custom-house for a tee, could have driven a ball ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... reconciled to the thoughts of the discovered and frustrated conspiracy, began meantime, according to their custom, to turn themselves to the consideration of the matter which had more avowedly called them together, and private whispers, swelling by degrees into murmurs, began to express the dissatisfaction of the citizens at being thus long assembled, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... the custom for Mr. Western to come down into the library before breakfast, and there to receive his letters. On the morning after Miss Altifiorla's departure he got one by which it may be said that he was indeed astonished. It can seldom be the case that a man shall receive a letter by which ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... overarch their lordly mansions with broad boughs, centuries old; they may send forth explorers to penetrate into the then obscure and smoky alleys of the Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth-street; and going still farther south, may exhume the present Doric Custom-house, and quote it as a proof that their high and mighty ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... us—and this is their alternative punishment. It makes death trivial by comparison.... You don't believe. It's hard. But you see that some of us, oldest in point of exile, are sliding back into bestiality. And you saw us drive away, as our custom is, a man who had definitely ...
— The Devil's Asteroid • Manly Wade Wellman
... traitor to his unhappy king. The republic had offered him higher distinctions than he could hope to obtain from the emigrant princes, and he had embraced the offer. Betrothed to him in my childhood, according to the foolish and fatal custom of our country, I was still in some degree pledged to him. But now no human bond shall ever unite me to one whom I doubly disdain as a traitor. Still, I am in his power. What is there now to save me? I am at this moment in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... the custom of Auld Licht ministers to leave any house without offering up a prayer in it, and to us it always seemed that when Gavin prayed, he was at the knees of God. The little minister pouring himself out in prayer in a humble room, with awed people around him who knew ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... the reconciling power of custom does not go quite so far," said Lady Anne. "It does not extend to Caliban, or even to the hero of La Belle et La Bete; but I do believe, that, in a mind so well regulated as yours, esteem may certainly in time be improved into love. I will tell Mr. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... strode straight towards a position of colonial fame. His children and his children's children kept up the family tradition and name until one of them, of a more theological bent than his cousins had been, annulled the custom of his ancestors and named his oldest son for the grim divine, Cotton Mather Thayer, and during the next one hundred and fifty years, Cotton Mathers and Richards had flourished side by side among the Thayers ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... inward righteousness which judgeth not according to custom, but out of the most rightful law of God Almighty, whereby the ways of places and times were disposed according to those times and places; itself meantime being the same always and every where, ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... their coats when Lord Denton and Mr. Karlbeck came in through the private entrance. Edestone was introduced, and after the two Americans had had their cocktails, both Englishmen having declined to indulge in this distinctly American custom, the four sat down to dinner. Rebener put "Lord Denton" on his right, Edestone on his left, while "Mr. Karlbeck" took the only remaining seat. The conversation was general, and Edestone found that both the Englishmen were evidently making an effort ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... fulfilled his promise. The fatted pup was killed for the wedding feast, and when Hi-Chum-Chop passed Winky-Hi the liver wing all present knew that it was a token of eternal goodwill, in accordance with Chinese custom from time immemorial. ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... prescribes for a case of chronic constipation or diarrhea without first examining the sufferer for proctitis and colitis, is either ignorant or does wilful harm to his patient and injury to his practice. The abominable, aboriginal and almost universal custom at the present time of giving some physic to "cleanse" the gastro-intestinal canal is in every respect a deplorable mistake for a ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... Virgin Mary, by means of the rosary! He exhorted all Christianity to pray the rosary daily during the month of October, in order to obtain assistance in these distressing times. In his brief on this occasion Leo XIII says: "It has been a favorite and prevalent custom of Catholics, in times of need and danger, to take refuge in Mary, and to seek consolation from ...
— The Excellence of the Rosary - Conferences for Devotions in Honor of the Blessed Virgin • M. J. Frings
... had attacked the fort, we could not tell, as not a prisoner had been saved. In vain did Uncle Richard call to his followers to spare the lives of those who yielded; his orders were not listened to. The men only followed the custom of that savage warfare, and the example of the Spaniards, upon whom ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... dozen shops which she desired to honor with her custom and presence, and stepped into the coupe. William closed the door, and James touched up the pair and drove off toward the city. He was perfectly indifferent to any possible exposure. In truth, he forgot everything, absolutely and positively everything, but the girl and the fortification ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... transfixed the assembly like some blood-curdling ghost. The ladies would have huddled together in a circle round the wearer and gazed at him open-mouthed. He would subsequently have had to pay for the ball's liquid refreshment. The Bal Jasmin did not employ meretricious ornament to attract custom. A low gallery containing tables ran around the bare hall, the balustrade being of convenient elbow height from the floor, so that the dancers during intervals of rest could lounge and talk with the drinkers. In the middle was a circular bandstand where greasy musicians ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... custom, the Ashantis were not terrified at the sight of the bayonets and, through their loopholes, kept up a heavy fire. The assailants, however, soon reached the stockade. Two white men scrambled up the timbers, which were slippery with blood; and jumped down, eight feet, on the other side, ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... opportunities of his ever-mellowing companionship. Strongly as he upheld the conventions when these represented some valid results of social experience, he was always ready to set aside his mere likes and dislikes on good cause shown; to follow reason as against the mere prejudice of custom, even ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... willing, but that I hoped the Germans would adhere to their usual custom. I felt all at once that, properly conserved, a long and happy life might lie before me. I mentioned that I was a person of no importance, and that my death would be of no military advantage. And, as if to emphasise my peaceful fireside at home, and dinner at seven o'clock with candles ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... LXXXI. A custom in Hesperian Latium reigned, Which Alban cities kept with sacred care, And Rome, the world's great mistress, hath retained. Thus still they wake the War-god, whensoe'er For Arabs or Hyrcanians they prepare, Or Getic tribes the tearful woes of war, Or push ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... and voice of Dexter Ralston. The latter, glancing at the figures in the landau, observed Leslie, and made a sign of recognition. By this time the wheel was cleared, Ralston again shut the window sharply, and the carriage dashed away at full speed towards the custom-house on which "V.R." is displayed for the benefit of those who never tread upon British soil to ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... Iron, lead, silver, are all to be found in the bosom of the earth in this richest and most beautiful of lands. Nature has been lavish beyond measure, and man, instead of using her gifts, has ungratefully diverted them for generations to the purposes of guerrilla warfare and cheating the Custom-House officers. But this high moral tone hardly sits well on a man who was aiding and abetting the entry of a couple of foreign free-lances, on homicidal thoughts intent, and perhaps doing a stroke of contraband on his own account. We suffered no molestation; but others might ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... his diet, and by no means a gastronome. In his long seclusion in a Buddhist cloister he had acquired habits of severe simplicity and frugality, as a preparation for the exercise of those powers of mental concentration for which he was remarkable. At these morning repasts it was his custom to detain me in conversation relating to some topic of interest derived from his studies, or in reading or translating. He was more systematically educated, and a more capacious devourer of books and news, than perhaps any man of equal ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... the cant of custom—Providence sends no evil without a remedy. Should I lie groaning under a yoke I can shake off, I were accessory to my ruin, and my patience were no better ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... custom in this land, as men are called Christians therein, that ill-doers, and folk riotous, and thieves shall go their ways in peace and become free by trials; yea, and what would the evil man do but save his life while he might? So here now is a ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... need to worry aboot yer custom; it's aye there. Noo in other lines the laws o' supply and demand are tricky. I mind a gey puckle years syne there was a craze for walkin'-sticks wi' ebony handles. Weel, I went doon to Dundee and bocht ten pund worth o' ebony, and afore the wood was delivered the ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... ceremony of shaking hands, and expected they would depart; but, before doing so, Tararo went up to Jack and rubbed noses with him, after which he did the same with Peterkin and me! Seeing that this was their mode of salutation, we determined to conform to their custom, so we rubbed noses heartily with the whole party, women and all! The only disagreeable part of the process was, when we came to rub noses with Mahine, and Peterkin afterwards said, that when he saw his wolfish eyes glaring ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... Medina, and at length broke their power completely. Mohammedans have always recognized the Mohammedan ruler who controlled Mecca and Medina, the birthplace and the burial place of the prophet, as their Kalif. If this custom is followed, the King of Hedjaz becomes the Kalif in place of the Sultan ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... the referee had been chosen, the color-writers selected, and Sir Peter had won the draw, choosing, of course, to weigh first, the main being governed by rules devised by the garrison regiments, partly Virginian, partly New York custom. Matches had been made in camera, the first within the half-ounce, and allowing a stag four ounces; round heels were to be used; all cutters, twists, and slashers barred; the metal was ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... [4] A common custom when death takes place. The two great toes are tied together, to make the body look decent; and formerly the hands were placed with the palms together, as if in the attitude of prayer, and were kept in that posture by tying the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... was b. in Dumfries. In 1780 he pub. the Siller Gun in its original form in Ruddiman's Magazine. It is a humorous poem descriptive of an ancient custom in Dumfries of shooting for the "Siller Gun." He was continually adding to it, until it grew to 5 cantos. He also wrote a poem on Hallowe'en, and a version of the ballad, Helen of Kirkconnel. His verses were admired ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... had a kind heart, but she was a very trying person to live with, for she never knew her own mind for two minutes together, and as she was the sole ruler at Court till the prince grew up everything was always at sixes and sevens. At first she determined to follow the old custom of keeping the young king ignorant of the duties he would have to perform some day; then, quite suddenly, she resigned the reins of government into his hands; but, unluckily, it was too late to train him properly for the post. However, the fairy did not think of that, but, ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... he challenges you to produce that reasoning, and taking for granted that you have none to produce, he proceeds to indicate what principle it is which, in his opinion, does determine us to form the inference. That principle he declares to be custom or habit, by which alone, he asserts, we are, after the constant conjunction of two objects, determined to expect the one from the appearance of the other; adding that all inferences from experience are effects of custom, not ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... verbatim from the same book. The writer quotes it apropos of the Roman custom of bribing the Britons on the mountain tops. We are told the fable was delivered by one of the Britons, named Gwrgan Farfdrwch, who spoke to this effect, and ...
— Welsh Fairy-Tales And Other Stories • Edited by P. H. Emerson
... no industrial class struggle during Colonial times when the market remained purely local and the work was custom-order work. The journeyman found his standard of life protected along with the master's own through the latter's ability to strike a favorable bargain with the consumer. This was done by laying stress upon the quality of the work. It was mainly for this reason that during ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... with the body all night and all the next day. They sewed on the quaint garments in which it is still the custom of rural New England to robe the dead. They put a cap of stiff white muslin over Mercy's brown hair, which even now, in her fiftieth year, showed only here and there a silver thread. They laid fine plaits of the same stiff white muslin ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... come to know each other under peculiar circumstances a year ago. Rolfe was at Brussels, staying—his custom when abroad—at a hotel unfrequented by English folk. One evening on his return from the theatre, he learnt that a young man of his own nationality lay seriously ill in a room at the top of the house. Harvey, moved by compassion, visited the unfortunate Englishman, listened ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... the lady, quickly, "if custom and propriety forbid you to meet me through the ordinary channels of society, do you not see the impropriety of such an attempt to see me as that which you have ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... was there before I turned to look, because of the delicate tinkling of little Egyptian amulets, which is her accompaniment, her leit motif, and because of the scent of sandalwood with which, in obedience to the ancient custom of Egyptian queens, she ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... which he stooping and looking in saw a dead body of stature, as appeared to him, more than human, and having nothing on but a gold ring; this he took from the finger of the dead and reascended. Now the shepherds met together, according to custom, that they might send their monthly report about the flocks to the king; into their assembly he came having the ring on his finger, and as he was sitting among them he chanced to turn the collet of the ring inside his hand, when instantly he became invisible to the rest of the company ...
— The Republic • Plato
... is true enough: I do not see anything hard in this. But then there is the other side. Custom is a ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... spectacle to a populace debased from infancy by attendance on bull-fights. A foreigner that had been by special grace licensed to visit Mexico, was considered a fortunate prize, for to offer a foreigner as a human sacrifice was in accordance with the ancient custom of the Aztecs. There was only one foreigner who amassed great wealth, and that was Laborde the miner, who bought his peace by building ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... remembered the pleadings of his wife. She had implored him to keep a tight hold of himself; and in fairness to her he must exercise discretion. She and he were one. With extraordinary tenderness he mentally framed the words that by custom he employed when speaking of her. "She is the wife ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... door, and locked himself in; double-locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus secured against surprise, he, took off his cravat; put on his dressing gown and slippers, and his night-cap; and sat down before the fire to take his gruel. As he threw his head back in the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... him civilly, after the custom of the time and place. He took him for a mountaineer, and he judged by the heavy whip he carried, that he was a ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... awful, remember what I told you about the physical limitations of Ullerans. But I had to kill him myself, with a sword; according to local custom that makes me ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... 1770.—From the year 1700 to the breaking out of the Revolution, it was the custom of many of the colonists to send their sons to England to be educated. Yale College and other institutions of learning were established at home, from which many eminent scholars graduated, and, although it was the fashion of the day to imitate the writers of the time ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... from an overturned cup was trickling in a warm, thick stream to the floor. But the paroxysm did her good. She rose to the kindly caresses of her neighbor like a flower beaten to earth but refreshed by a relentless torrent. After this, custom and habit began to reassert themselves in spite of the crushing weight of circumstance. She 'phoned to the office. Mr. Flint had returned, they told her. She explained her trouble to the cashier. "I'll try to be back the first of the week," ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... of gold thread worked into black velvet, and the heavy day pressed heavily on her senses, so that she sought that silence more willingly. For three days she had had no news of her lord, but that morning he was come back to Hampton, though she had not yet seen him, for it was ever his custom to put off all work of the day before he came to the Queen. Thus, if she were sad, she was tranquil; and, considering only that her work of bringing him to God must begin again that night, she let her thoughts rest upon the netting ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... The custom of canning fruit in syrup is based on the improvement in flavor and texture which sugar gives to fruit. Sugar is not necessary for its preservation. Success depends upon thorough sterilization—that is, killing the organisms which cause food to spoil, and then sealing perfectly ...
— The New Dr. Price Cookbook • Anonymous
... are to evil custom, and clinging to it voluntarily till your last breath, you are hurried to destruction; because light has come into the world, and men have loved the darkness rather than the light." ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... British Government. He was re-appointed by the second Continental Congress, in July, 1775. The First Congress under the Constitution erected a general post-office, but its head attained the dignity of a regular cabinet officer not till about 1830, and then only by custom. To begin with, in fact, there was strictly no cabinet in the modern sense. Washington's habit was to consult his ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... not return on board without examining to the bottom the idea he had discovered. Now, we know that when D'Artagnan did examine, according to custom, daylight pierced through. As to the officer, become mute again, he left him full measure to meditate. Therefore, on putting his foot on board his vessel, moored within cannon-shot of the island, the captain of the musketeers had ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... of Pretenders to this Art, who, without either Horse or Pickle-Herring, lie snug in a Garret, and send down Notice to the World of their extraordinary Parts and Abilities by printed Bills and Advertisements. These seem to have derived their Custom from an Eastern Nation which Herodotus speaks of, among whom it was a Law, that whenever any Cure was performed, both the Method of the Cure, and an Account of the Distemper, should be fixed in some Publick Place; but as Customs ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... meeting that discomfiting gaze—and her familiars have learned to avoid it—Diana impresses you as being graceful, dainty and possessed of charming manners. Her taste in dress is perfect. She converses fluently on many topics. It is her custom to rise at ten o'clock, whatever time she may have retired the night before; to read until luncheon; to devote the remainder of her day to ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... politics.[332] Abroad (with the exception of the acquisition of Algeria, which had begun earlier, and which conferred no great honour, though some profit, and a little snatching up of a few loose trifles such as the Society Islands, which we had, according to our custom, carelessly or benevolently left to gleaners), French arms, despite a great deal of brag and swagger, obtained little glory, while French diplomacy let itself wallow in one of the foulest sloughs in history, the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... yon sunset! swift and strong As new-fledged Eagles, beautiful and young, That float among the blinding beams of morning; And underneath thy feet writhe Faith, and Folly, 2185 Custom, and Hell, and mortal Melancholy— Hark! the Earth starts to hear the mighty warning Of thy voice sublime and holy; Its free spirits here assembled See thee, feel thee, know thee now,— 2190 To thy voice their hearts have trembled Like ten thousand clouds which flow With one wide wind as ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... my opinion, is the greatest of villanies, and ought to incur some punishment, yet nothing is more common, and our topping tradesmen, who seem otherwise to stand mightily on their credit, make this but a matter of course and custom. If I do not, says one, another will (for the servant is sure to pick a hole in the person's coat who shall not pay contribution). Thus this wicked practice is carried on and winked at, while receiving of stolen goods, and confederating with felons, ...
— Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business • Daniel Defoe
... civilized life we regard as inherent in our common nature, it is practised by savages in their hardships and extreme difficulty of procuring subsistence for the parties who suffer, without being considered as an act of cruelty, but as a deed of mercy. This shocking custom, however, is seldom heard of among the Indians of this neighbourhood; but is said to prevail with the Chipewyan or Northern Indians, who are no sooner burdened with their relations, broken with years and infirmities, and incapable of following the camp, than ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... whets her appetite by holding back her meal possibly for an hour, in the meantime playing most cruelly with the pitiful mouse, letting it run and catching it again, and doing this over and over. If she has children she attends to their training in the details of cat etiquette and custom with the utmost care, all by instinct; and the kittens instinctively respond to her attentions. She conducts herself during the day with remarkable cleanliness of life, making arrangements which civilized ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... l'Humanite, p. 94) refers to various peoples who practice this last custom. Egypt was a great centre of the practice more than 3000 ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... This barbarous custom has now fallen entirely into disuse. If attempted to be renewed, it is summarily put down by the police, though it still exists among the Basques as a Toberac. It may also be mentioned that a similar practice ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... resemble one another in figure, but custom and prejudice have taught us to make a very different estimate of their properties: the first is considered as perfectly harmless, while the latter is supposed to ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... circumstances prevented the judge from laughing at the performances of our friend Essper George; for we need hardly mention that the conjuror was no other. His ill-humour did not escape the lord of the cups and balls, who, as was his custom, immediately began to ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield |
