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More "Proficient" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to know Mesdames de Valbelle and de Rancerolles, the Princess de Chimai, and many others who were then in the best society of Paris. Although Madame du Remain was not a proficient in the occult sciences, she had nevertheless consulted my oracle more frequently than Madame d'Urfe. She was of the utmost service to me in connection with an unhappy circumstance of which I shall ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... all is the schooner; but, owing to the fact that it is difficult to get them to go well to windward unless the hull is perfectly rigged, the author has decided not to deal with this type of boat. When the reader becomes proficient in building and sailing the simpler types described in this book, he may turn his attention to the construction and sailing of ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... grandsons entered the bush together, and when there was a lion or other wild beast to be stalked the amateur hunter was initiated into the mysteries of backwoodsmanship by his experienced elders. Consequently the Boers became a nation of proficient lion-hunters, and efficiently ridded their country of the pest which continually threatened their safety, the safety of their families and that of ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... that Dr. Partridge had been called in. During the latter part of her aunt's sickness Desire Edwards had made a practice of running into her Uncle Jahleel's many times a day to give a sort of oversight to the housekeeping, a department in which she was decidedly more proficient than damsels of this day, of much less aristocratic pretensions, find it consistent with their dignity to be. The doctor and Desire were at this moment in the living-room, inspecting through the closed shutters the preparations ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... be your own mistress for an hour while her ladyship sleeps. The moment she wakes you will have to be in attendance, either to play to her, or else to read to her—perhaps a little French or Italian, in both of which languages I hope you are tolerably proficient. Your next duty will be to accompany her ladyship in her drive out. When you get back, will come dinner, but only when specially invited will you sit down with Lady Chillington. When that honour is not accorded you, you and I will dine here, darling, ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... eight more in the army of the reserve. In preparation for this duty, every man is enrolled, and required to drill for a period of from four to six months, according to the arm of the service in which he is placed; and those who do not become proficient in this time are required to drill for another and longer period. The kingdom is divided into military districts, and all the soldiers are required to drill from thirty to forty-five days every year. The navy of Denmark consists of thirty-one steamers of all classes, ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... united in a private room. Is it necessary to say in what language the proceedings were opened? Surely not! There is an inarticulate language of the lips in use on these occasions in which we are all proficient, though we sometimes forget it in later life. Natalie seated herself on a locker. The tea, sugar, and spices were at her back, a side of bacon swung over her head, and a net full of lemons dangled before her face. It might not be roomy, but ...
— Miss or Mrs.? • Wilkie Collins
... this power. Contact with one of these well-meaning persons, even for a few days, will demoralise a whole nursery. Tempers grow wild and unruly, sleep disappears, fretfulness and irritability take its place. Yet of most mothers it is probably true that they are neither strikingly proficient nor utterly deficient in the power of managing children. If they lack the gift that comes naturally to some women, they learn from experience and grow instinctively to feel when they have made a false step with the child. ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... which was a board inscribed "GYMNASIUM AND SCHOOL OF ARMS." In the long, narrow entry hung a framed manuscript which set forth that Ned Skene, ex-champion of England and the colonies, was to be heard of within daily by gentlemen desirous of becoming proficient in the art of self-defence. Also the terms on which Mrs. Skene, assisted by a competent staff of professors, would give lessons in dancing, ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... were necessarily under these circumstances thrown much together. As time advanced he passed his evenings generally at the hall, for he was a proficient in the only game which interested Mr. Ferrars, and that was chess. Reading and writing all day, Mr. Ferrars required some remission of attention, and his relaxation was chess. Before the games, and ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... centres, Roughton, Kirkstead, Woodhall, Langton, Wispington, Stixwould, Bucknall, and Thimbleby, the teachers being Mr. S. Leggett of Moorhouses, Boston, and Mr. R. Sharpe of Horsington; prizes of 1 pound and 10/- being given to the most proficient pupils. ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... were compared, a sufficient degree of uniformity was found to serve as a basis for estimating the amount of experience workers of average intelligence would need, under normal shop conditions, in order to become fairly proficient. ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz
... handsome as budding flowers, and they, on the one hand, saw how modest and genial Ch'in Chung was, how he blushed before he uttered a word, how he was timid and demure like a girl, and on the other hand, how that Pao-yue was naturally proficient in abasing and demeaning himself, how he was so affable and good-natured, considerate in his temperament and so full of conversation, and how that these two were, in consequence, on such terms of intimate friendship, it was, in fact, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... demand a high degree of proficiency. If I am not proficient enough, yet knowing the rudiments I can easily improve. I learn most things readily," Andre-Louis commended himself. "For the rest: I possess the other qualifications. I am young, as you observe: ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... key to lock and unlock a padlock. The animal most proficient in this became able to select the right Yale key out of a bunch of half a dozen or more, with as much quickness and precision as the ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... Elizabeth should have wanted to begin the study of Greek; and with the help of her father and of Mr. Boyd, a blind friend of her father's, she became a most proficient Greek scholar. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... not yet been considered proficient enough to take an active part in the monthly entertainment, but Flossie's name was one of the first on the list. She played the violin remarkably well, better than almost anybody else at Chessington; and as she was seldom nervous, her pieces were generally very ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... the wife of Solomon (89) and reign as queen in Jerusalem. God therefore led the royal wanderer to the capital city of Ammon. (90) Solomon took service as an underling with the cook in the royal household, and he proved himself so proficient in the culinary art that the king of Ammon raised him to the post of chief cook. Thus he came under the notice of the king's daughter Naamah, who fell in love with her father's cook. In vain her parents endeavored to persuade her to choose a husband befitting ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... ultimately became such a proficient, and which wrought such marvels as only style backed by passion can work, already engaged his serious attention. We have already seen how Voltaire implanted in him the first root idea, which so many of us never perceive at all, that ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... somewhat threadbare suit of Lincoln green, with a high-crowned Tyrolese hat; a knapsack was slung behind his shoulders, and he was attended by a white Pomeranian dog, evidently foot-sore, but doing his best to appear proficient in the chase by limping some yards in advance of his master, and sniffing into the hedges for rats and ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... years rolled by much as they do with any boy on a farm. Of work there was plenty, but he found time to become a proficient skater, and a strong, sturdy swimmer, to learn and take delight in outdoor sports, all of which helped to build a constitution like iron, and to give him an interest in such things which he has never lost. The ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... brought Beza to the bar, in order to give him the appearance of a criminal put upon trial, rather than that of the representative of a religious party claiming to possess the unadulterated truth, assigned Charles of Lorraine a pulpit among his brother prelates, where, with a theologian more proficient in theological controversy at his elbow, he could assume the air of a judge giving his final sentence respecting the matters in dispute.[1138] His long exordium was devoted to a consideration of the royal and the sacerdotal authority, each of which he in turn extolled. Then passing ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... at Durham, England, March 6, 1809. She was highly educated and was proficient in both Greek and Latin. She wrote her first verses at the age of ten, and her first volume of poems was published when she was but seventeen years old. In 1846 she was married to the poet Robert Browning. Her first known works are "Aurora Leigh," a novel in verse, "The Portuguese ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various
... free to accompany him again to the scene of our awful experience. I was free enough, but reluctant. Why revive the horrors of that awful night! But he persuaded me, and a month later we were in the same region, and moreover had found old Klaas alive and hearty. John had become proficient in the Bushman and Hottentot tongues, as his brother had been; though where and how he had studied them I never knew. Would he, too, I wondered, try to obtain the Proof, as his poor mad brother had done? And when we first came in contact with ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... more—let us examine a third case; that of the astronomer, in whose art, again, you, Hippias, profess to be a still greater proficient than in the preceding—do ...
— Lesser Hippias • Plato
... contest with him. He was famous, too, at athletic sports, but was never known to communicate the secret of the fatal blow; he also taught the sword exercises, at which he was considered to be a proficient. ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the Doors of the Lodge had opened, and its force was flowing through him in Lu, as it was through the Old Philosopher in Honanfu.—By this time he had added archery to his own studies, and (like William Q. Judge) become proficient. Also he had taken a special course in music theory under a very famous teacher. "At thirty ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... myself, I felt that I was becoming quite a proficient open-air performer by now. My voice was standing the strain of singing under such novel and difficult conditions much better than I had thought it could. And I saw that I must be at heart and by nature a minstrel! I know I got more pleasure from those concerts I gave as a minstrel wandering in ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... His achievements were not merely impulsive movements. He was a man of pure mind, of high morality, and intensely devoted to the life-work which he had chosen. His studies during the winter in the cabin of Kin Cade, had made him a proficient in the colloquial Spanish language. This proved to him an invaluable acquisition. He had also gathered and stored away in his retentive memory all that this veteran ranger of the woods could communicate ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... afforded them great pleasure. They were not at particular to hold the pictures right side up; side-wise or upside down seemed quite as satisfactory. Though admiring pictures exceedingly, I did not find them very proficient draughtsmen, and yet nothing seemed to give them more pleasure than to draw with a lead pencil on the margin of every book they could get hold of, and my Nautical Almanac and "Bowditch's Epitome" are profusely illustrated by them. Their favorite ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... in no small measure to his poetic power and to that unrivaled grace of style which led the ancients to say that if Jove should speak Greek he would speak like Plato. He was a remarkable example of that universal culture of body and mind which characterized the last period of ancient Greece. He was proficient in every branch of art and learning and was such a brilliant athlete that he contended in the Isthmian and ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... them none was more remarkable than Tom Steele, an ardent follower of O'Connell, and his "head pacificator." Steele was a gentleman and a Protestant; he had studied with great success at Cambridge University, and was a proficient in mathematics. He began life with bright prospects; talents, education, connections, and property—all were his. He wrecked all in the service of Ireland, as he believed—in the service of an Irish faction, as the event proved. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the time of the Latin holidays,[79] according to his own invitation and message from him, I found him sitting in his study,[80] and in a discourse with C. Velleius, the senator, who was then reputed by the Epicureans the ablest of our countrymen. Q. Lucilius Balbus was likewise there, a great proficient in the doctrine of the Stoics, and esteemed equal to the most eminent of the Greeks in that part of knowledge. As soon as Cotta saw me, You are come, says he, very seasonably; for I am having a dispute ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... all more or less learnt to profit by. Yet no other naturalist has proved himself so proficient in holding the balance true. For the most part, indeed, they have now all ceased to confound the process of speculation per se with the danger of inadequate verification; and therefore the old ideal of natural history as concerned merely ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... throwing herself into a posture of defiance, she broke out anew, in a torrent of words that no art of ours could commit successfully to paper. Her breath was, however, expended in vain; for, although distinguished in her nation as a proficient in the art of abuse, she was permitted to work herself into such a fury as actually to foam at the mouth, without causing a muscle to vibrate in the motionless figure of the stranger. The effect of his ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... break; but after—? He had not been long enough in England to become familiar with the whist-set; similarly, he had been too long abroad to be proficient in English billiards, even if he had been willing to make either whist or pool the pursuit of his life. As for afternoon calls and tea-drinking, that may be an interesting occupation for young gentlemen in search of a wife, but it is too ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... She was a woman about sixty years of age, short, thick, "singing like a cracked pot," says the letter which we have already quoted; an excellent woman, moreover, and the only merry one in the whole convent, and for that reason adored. She was learned, erudite, wise, competent, curiously proficient in history, crammed with Latin, stuffed with Greek, full of Hebrew, and more of a Benedictine ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... of his sunshine experiment work. The crippled lad had definitely settled down to the study of meteorology and spent all his time either at his instruments or at his books. Under the Forecaster's teaching, he was becoming thoroughly proficient, and the fact that the lad was a natural-born mathematician stood him in a good stead. He was no longer merely a crippled lad, with scarcely a chance before him, he was making a place for himself in the community ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... new system if a mere civilian unhorsed a Guardsman trained after the old fashion! For a week he drilled me more or less every day in getting him off his horse in various ways, and I speedily became a proficient in the art, he meanwhile gaining some new ideas on the subject, which were duly printed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... to a new level of sophistication. Some laws may need to be changed. War in Cyberspace does not recognize domestic or foreign boundaries. In this environment the subjects of Information Warfare and Information In Warfare take on new meaning and require focused development. We must become proficient within ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... amateur workman does not always know just what tools he will need, a list is given which will answer for a general class of work. This list can be added to as the workman becomes more proficient in his line and has need for other tools. Only the long run. If each tool is kept in a certain place, it can ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... fortune, by teaching, or marriage, or both, and whose object, naturally, is to make the most money in the shortest possible time, that they may return home and enjoy it. The children generally appear to have an extraordinary disposition for music and drawing, yet there are few girls who are proficient in either. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... was built, and it was one of the principal places of amusement. The Hough Dramatic company, with Bernard, C.W. Couldock, Sallie St. Clair and others were among the notable performers who entertained theatergoers. In 1860 the Wide Awakes used this place for a drill hall, and so proficient did the members become that many of them were enabled to take charge of squads, companies and even regiments in the great struggle that was soon ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... California, failed to find the gold, and returned some time during the latter seventies to the upper San Pedro valley. Here he "raised his family," as the old expression has it, and, his sons grew up, Finn, Ike, and Billy. Those were wild days, and the two last-named boys became more proficient with rope, running-iron, and forty-five revolver than they ever did with their school-books. In time they were known as rustlers and in the lawless town of Charleston by the San Pedro River they fell in ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... morning in the month of November—the long night still lasting—the six sledges took their departure. The adventurers had every day exercised themselves with the dogs for some hours, and were pretty proficient. Sakalar drove the first team, Kolina the second, and Ivan the third. The Kolimak men came afterward. They took their way along the snow toward the mouth of the Tchouktcha river. The first day's journey brought them to the extreme limits of vegetation, after which ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... I cannot express to you the delight of my fair countrywoman at finding that a person who spoke English had arrived at the 'pension'—a feeling I myself somewhat participated in; for to say truth, I was not at that time a very great proficient in French. We soon became intimate, in less time probably than it could otherwise have happened, for from the ignorance of all the others of one word of English, I was enabled during dinner to say many soft and tender things, which one does not ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... calculation in Hong Kong, and making out my baptisms to have amounted to about six hundred.... I believe with you that the study of comparative religion is important for all missionaries. Still more important, it seems to me, is it that missionaries should make themselves thoroughly proficient in the languages and literature of the people to whom they are sent."—Dr. Legge's Letter to the Author, ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... greatest purity and precision. This is a situation that admits of no certain rule. Our clergy are expected to know the original languages of the Bible, notwithstanding the abundance of translations; many of which must be far superior in worth and authority to the judgment of a merely ordinary proficient in Hebrew and ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... Everyone should become proficient in as many of these sports as possible. These are the resources from which the stores of vitality and energy must be supplied in youth, and replenished ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... other "notions," as his son put it, proceeded by easy stages to Marseilles, whence chariot, chaise, horse and family were shipped to Leghorn, and a few days later they found themselves at Pisa. The boys became proficient in Italian and drawing, but it was not until middle life that Richard's writing developed into that gossamer hand which so long distinguished it. Both had a talent for music, but when "a thing like Paganini, length without breadth" ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... "I should like to have you a proficient in all manly accomplishments, only don't be foolhardy and run useless risks. I want my son to be brave, but not rash; ready to meet danger with coolness and courage when duty calls, and to have the proper training to ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... the amphibian a cleverly arranged collapsible canvas boat that could be launched in short order and was to be propelled by means of a short but serviceable paddle. While up in Canada with the Mounties, Perk had become quite proficient in the use of a paddle and also in balancing by sheer instinct while in ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... than once that day had proven himself more willing than proficient with the oars, surrendered them to Endicott and for more than an hour the Easterner battled with the yellow, turgid flood before he finally succeeded in driving the boat ashore in the mouth of a coulee. Abandoning the boat, they struck out on foot up river where, a mile ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... forever in the company of Thrasyllus and made some use of the mantic art every day, becoming himself so proficient in the study that when he was once bidden in a dream to give money to a certain person, he comprehended that a deceitful spirit had been called up before him and he put the man to death. Likewise, in the case of all the rest of the astrologers and magicians and those who practiced divination in ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... will do it for you. Beware of forming wrong conceptions of what must take place. When the impotent man was made whole he had still all to learn as to the use of his new-found strength. If he wanted to dig, or build, or learn a trade, he had to begin at the beginning. Do not expect at once to be a proficient in prayer or any part of the Christian life. No; but expect and be confident of this one thing, that, as you have trusted yourself to Christ to be your health and strength, He will lead and teach you. Begin to pray in a quiet sense of your ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray
... the frankincense or large wax tapers in the processions. As a child my voice was much admired; and after the service was over, I often received presents of sweetmeats from the ladies, who brought them in their pockets for the little Anselmo. As I grew up, I became a remarkable proficient in music; at the age of twenty, I possessed a fine counter-tenor; and flattered by the solicitations of the superior of the convent and other dignitaries of the church, I consented to take the vows, and became a ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... an open book of Family Bible dimensions) often busied himself with expounding his views on the French language, in which he was labouring to become proficient. His linguistic ambitions did not end at self-proficiency, for he was solicitous to instruct his fellows, and we had quite a number of French lessons from him, although it must be admitted that they suffered many interruptions in good old plain English from the Tommies, ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey
... child and spent much of his time in the company of a cat who shared his tastes and pursuits even to the extent of fishing in the River Weir with him, the cat being far more proficient at the sport than the boy. When the cat died we none of us dared to break the news to the child, and were much surprised when he asked us to say why his cat only came to play with him at nights nowadays. When we questioned him about ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... in which it is very desirable for all ladies and gentlemen to be proficient. To ride well, one must be taught early, and have practice. Like swimming, riding cannot be learned from ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... hats, and moustaches a l'Abd el Kader, as we used to say in the old days; these four, the two gendarmes and two policemen, sat down opposite me on chairs and began cross-questioning me in Italian, a language in which I was not proficient. I so far understood them as to know that they ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... girls have passed all the standards of the elementary schools, they enter trade schools, where they remain until they are proficient in some craft which will enable them to earn a living. Those who show decided intellectual or business aptitudes are sent to colleges ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... awaited the three merchants, who narrated events and delivered the messages from Rome with the papal presents. Taking special notice of young Marco, the grand khan enrolled him among his attendants of honour. Marco soon became proficient in four languages, and displayed such extraordinary talents that he was sent on a mission to Karazan, a city six months' journey distant. On this mission he distinguished himself by his tact and success, and during the seventeen years spent in the service of the khan ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... in the same way."—Castle Rackrent, p. 84. "So can I give no reason, nor I will not."—Beauties of Shak., p. 45. "Nor I know not where I did lodge last night."—Ib., p. 270. "It is to be presumed they would become soonest proficient in Latin."—Burn's Gram., p. xi. "The difficulty of which has not been a little increased by that variety."—Ward's Pref. to Lily's Gram., p. xi. "That full endeavours be used in every monthly meeting to seasonably end all business or cases ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... had gained that he was able from the first to do his duty as well as any one. He was fortunately stationed at the gun of which Jacob was captain, and the old sailor took pains to instruct him in handling it. Naval gunnery not being in those days the art it has since become he was soon a proficient. ...
— The Two Shipmates • William H. G. Kingston
... greatest friendship and the highest mark of gratitude. They commanded that henceforward Columbus should be called "Praefectus Marinus," or, in the Spanish tongue, Amiral. His brother Bartholomew, likewise very proficient in the art of navigation, was honoured by them with the title of Prefect of the Island of Hispaniola, which is in the vulgar tongue called Adelantado.[14] To make my meaning clear I shall henceforth employ these usual words of Admiral and Adelantado as well ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... who was destined in the end to be her murderer. As a child, she had been passionately grateful to him; she had learned all she could from the books he gave her to study, and with a quick brain, and a keen sense of observation, she had become a proficient in literature, so much so indeed, that more than one half the Revolutionary treatises and other propaganda which he had sent out to different quarters of the globe, were from her pen. Her one idea had been to please and to serve him,—to show her gratitude for his care of her, and ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... vote whenever the opportunity comes, but I'm not an 'Organizer' for anything of that kind. Mrs. Patterson and I are going to organize the wives, sisters and sweethearts, in Eagle Butte, into a club for the study of 'Scientific and Efficient Management of the Home!' We think we should be as proficient in those arts—and which we believe are peculiarly womanly functions—as the men are in the direction of the more strenuous business affairs in which they themselves ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... writing fluently the language of her adopted country, Second and third proficient in other studies, she paragraphs show proudly cherishes the first "certificate striking results in of literacy" issued by a factory—a one concrete case. factory which has paid her for going ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... were handed over the brass rail to Lottie and Marita, who served as waitresses on the Dixie. First there were lettuce sandwiches, rolled. Any girl who can successfully roll bread and lettuce is termed proficient by the cooking teachers, and it was a tie between Belle and Cora as to who did the most and best of ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... Lake was in prospect. There was a small pond attached to the Briarwood property and Ruth tried Helen's skates there. She had been on the ice before, but not much; however, she found that the art came easily to her—as easily as tennis, in which, by this time, she was very proficient. ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... was, he soon, by his skilfully plied blows (for he had become a proficient in fencing and boxing in England), made his enemies take to ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... education, becoming quite a proficient in the Latin language, of which accomplishment, it is said that he was afterwards somewhat vain. At school he was impetuous, turbulent and self-willed. Upon leaving the academy he entered the military service, and soon developed such energy of character, such ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... young police agent, who had shown himself so proficient; "but he can not live more than two minutes. Poor devil! ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... Selma realized that for the first time since she had lived in Benham she was being understood and appreciated. She felt too that for the first time she was talking to a kindred spirit—to be sure, to one different, and more technically proficient in concrete knowledge, possibly more able, too, to express his thoughts in words, but eminently a comrade and sympathizer. She was not obliged to say much. Nor were, indeed, his actual words the source of her realization. The revelation ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... part of the world. As a mere pastime chess is easily learnt, and a very moderate amount of study enables a man to become a fair player, but the higher ranges of chess-skill are only attained by persistent labour. The real proficient or "master" not merely must know the subtle variations in which the game abounds, but must be able to apply his knowledge in the face of the enemy and to call to his aid, as occasion demands, all that he has of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... if we may trust the panegyric of her son, was on the other hand a far less commonplace character. But for her husband's dislike to learning and philosophy she would have become a proficient in both, and in a short period of study she had made a considerable advance. Yet her intellect was less remarkable than the nobility and sweetness of her mind; other mothers loved their sons because their ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... some of the events of his life. How he had visited the principal cities of Europe; and how he had studied under the best men, in order to make himself proficient in his line of work. Having heard that many Londoners were competing for the construction of carriages for Russia, he had hastily sent in his estimate. The work was accorded to him, and in a few years time he ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... limit set for any course. If proficiency is not achieved in one month or six months, the student can keep doggedly at it for a longer period. St. Dunstan's is a home until proficiency in the chosen calling is achieved. "Grow proficient" was Sir Arthur's demand of his boys; and with few exceptions they stuck at it ...
— Through St. Dunstan's to Light • James H. Rawlinson
... the craft so diligently that by merely clapping my eyes upon a bookseller I can tell you with certainty what manner of books he sells; but you must know that the ideal bookseller has no fads, being equally proficient in and a lover of all spheres, departments, branches, and lines of his art. He is, moreover, of a benignant nature, and he denies credit to none; yet, withal, he is righteously so discriminating that he lets the poor scholar have for a paltry sum that which the rich parvenu must pay dearly for. ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... to enter the Diplomatic Service, my father very wisely determined that I should leave Harrow as soon as I was seventeen to go to France, in order to learn French thoroughly. As he pointed out, it would take three years at least to become proficient in French and German, and it would be as well ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... Quixote, "what a proficient you are in the Italian language! I would lay a good wager that where they say in Italian piace you say in Spanish place, and where they say piu you say mas, and you translate su by ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... it was. But the second found him inured to the surroundings—hardy and strong. When able to, he climbed trees and found birds' eggs, which he accidentally broke and naturally ate. It was a pleasant relief from a purely vegetable diet, and he became a proficient egg-thief; then the birds built their nests beyond his reach. Once he was savagely pecked by an angry brush-turkey and forced to defend himself. It aroused a combativeness and destructiveness that had ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... the youth became such a proficient in the art and talent of wrestling that none of his contemporaries had ability to cope with him, till he at length had one day boasted before the reigning sovereign, saying, "To any superiority my master possesses over me, he ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... and hundreds of rivermen already trod the sawdust-padded streets of the newer Morrison that had sprung into being beyond the bend; they swarmed in on the drives, a hard-faced, hard-shouldered horde, picturesque, proficient and profane. They brought with them color and care-free prodigality and a capacity for abandonment to pleasure that ran the whole gamut of emotions, from raucous-roared chanties to sudden, swift encounters which were as silent as they were deadly. And they spent ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... not only became so distinguished in itself, but set the example, and prepared the way, by its rules and its grammar, for so many others which followed in its wake. Edward VI.; with the natural feeling of a boy fond of knowledge, and himself a proficient for his years, was aware of the evil, and projected the remedy. Colet might be his model—but he was embarrassed in his means by courtiers, who were for ever uttering the cry of the horse-leech's daughters; and, besides, his days were soon numbered. Cranmer, who perhaps remembered the obstacles ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... potentate. Sort of Pooh-bah, you know. For serious offences, such as wife beating, wife stealing, or having more than one wife at a time, we were not so lenient. The offender, on conviction, was strung up by the thumbs and used as a target by amateurs who desired to become proficient in the use of the cattle-adder. Murderers were attended to a trifle more expeditiously. They were strung up by ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... friend Dr Caius calls him. I am glad to have the youthful Verner under my charge. I will presently see that he possesses the necessary qualifications for entering, of which, however, I entertain no doubt, being fully persuaded, from what Master Gresham wrote, that he is far more proficient than ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... public. For convenience of reference they may be defined as the mixed-pugilistic and the insolent. There is, however, a third variety, the equine, in which everyone who aspires to wield the pen of a sporting reporter must necessarily be a proficient. It may be well to warn a beginner that he must not attempt this style until he has laid in a large stock of variegated metaphoric expressions. As a matter of fact one horse-race is very much like another in its main incidents, and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... honor!—since Josephus speaks of his successful and brilliant exploits as a conqueror of the Ethiopians. What a career did the son of the Hebrew bondwoman probably lead in the palaces of Memphis, sitting at the monarch's table, feted as a conqueror, adopted as grandson and perhaps as heir, a proficient in all the learning and arts of the most civilized nation of the earth, enrolled in the college of priests, discoursing with the most accomplished of his peers on the wonders of magical enchantment, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... for publication is one which inheres strongly in every human breast. From the proficient college graduate, storming the gates of the high-grade literary magazines, to the raw schoolboy, vainly endeavoring to place his first crude compositions in the local newspapers, the whole intelligent public are today seeking expression through the printed ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... need that your Majesty command to have sent to me a dozen good men, who understand galleys thoroughly, who may serve as captains, boatswains, and masters, who may teach those who shall serve in those posts to be proficient. For no one here thoroughly understands that calling except Captain Francisco Remanico, who I am told has labored very diligently in this matter, as well as in other affairs of your Majesty's service. I also need two or three oar-makers ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... Florence hoped that the more she knew, and the more accomplished she became, the more glad he would be when he came to know and like her. Sometimes she wondered, with a swelling heart and rising tear, whether she was proficient enough in anything to surprise him when they should become companions. Sometimes she tried to think if there were any kind of knowledge that would bespeak his interest more readily than another. Always: at her books, her music, and her work: in her morning walks, and in her nightly ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... Lander decide between having her brushes in ivory or silver, but there was really no choice for her, and they came in silver. She knew not only her own place, but the places of her two ladies, and she presently had them in such training that they were as proficient in what they might and might not do for themselves and for each other, as if making these distinctions were ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... (against which the Captain had published an interdict at home,) and question us about Oxford larks, and tell us in return stories of wild-fowl shooting, otter hunting, and salmon fishing, in all which they were proficient. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... the stage. (6.) That six hours a week should be bestowed on diction and acting. (7.) That at the end of the course the pupils should submit to a semi-public examination, and receive a diploma if proficient. (8.) That the co-operation of managers should be invited, and that the conduct of the school should be entrusted to one man (not an actor) under the supervision of three eminent actors or actor-managers. (9.) That the school must be endowed ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... education; he had learned it himself at the age of thirteen, and insulted his superior young gentlemen private secretaries by asking them if they knew it. Jane and Johnny, who had been in early youth very proficient at it, had, since they were old enough to know it was a sort of low commercial cunning, the accomplishment of the slave, hidden their knowledge away like a vice. When concealed from observation and pressed for time, they had ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... were prepared to learn Manchu sufficiently well to edit, or translate, into that language such portions of the Scriptures as the Society might decide to issue, provided means of acquiring the language were put within his reach, and employment should follow as soon as he showed himself proficient. To this Borrow had willingly agreed. At this period, the idea appears to have been to execute the work ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... Can. Use one tin can for experimenting. By capping and tipping, heating the cap, and throwing it off and simply putting another cap on the same can, you can use this one can until you become proficient ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... wars in Soudan, and is being held as a slave in the stronghold of the Mahdi. For years it had been thought that he was dead. His friends in London decide to go and try to rescue him. One of them is a well-known and proficient surgeon. They arrive in Cairo, and proceed on down into the Soudan, where they get in contact with an influential Sheikh. They establish themselves by doing many cures, where it is possible, and gradually work themselves nearer and nearer to the place where ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... long rides, in which they learned to be more proficient on horses, the boys did little for the week following the hunt. Jack made anxious inquiries every day after the condition of Peter Lantry, hoping the aged man might have regained his senses enough ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... orchestra was composed of Beck on the violin, Sundbeck on the mandolin, and the undersigned on the flute. I puffed out my cheeks as much as I could, and that is not saying a little, so that the others might see how proficient I was. I hardly think it was much of a musical treat; but the public was neither critical nor ceremonious, and the prevalent costume was jerseys. The dinner consisted of soup, roast pork, with fresh potatoes and whortleberries, ten-years-old aquavit and Norwegian bock beer, ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... nerve poison with deadly accuracy. Death took place in seconds if the saliva touched any bare skin. The lizards had to be looked out for, and shot before they came within range. An hour of lizard-blasting in a training chamber made him proficient in ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... place, in the early part of the twelfth, to instructors of real merit—to Peter Abelard, among others, and to his pupil Peter Lombard, the fame of whose lectures attracted to Paris great crowds of youth eager to become proficient in philosophy and ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... Sola instructed me in the mysteries of the various weapons, and with the Martian young I spent several hours each day practicing upon the plaza. I was not yet proficient with all the weapons, but my great familiarity with similar earthly weapons made me an unusually apt pupil, and I progressed in a very ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... that he could live in his narrow cell and be fairly comfortable. He had long since become used to the limy smell (used to defeat a more sickening one), and to the numerous rats which he quite regularly trapped. He had learned to take an interest in chair-caning, having become so proficient that he could seat twenty in a day if he chose, and in working in the little garden in spring, summer, and fall. Every evening he had studied the sky from his narrow yard, which resulted curiously in the gift in later years of a great reflecting telescope ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... raised, but it is unquestionably true that some can be much more easily altered than others, and as in the last ten years additional safeguards have been thrown around the bills of exchange of banks, so the forger has become more and more expert and proficient, just about keeping the pace. As the question of armor that can not be pierced and projectiles that will pierce anything are first one and then the other a little ahead, so it is with the bank ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... mixed company at the social gathering. Nor may any purpose be more perfectly served than the purpose of true social recreation. Here we find those skilled in music, versed in literature, adept at conversation; we find the practical joker, the proficient at games, and last, but not least, those "born to serve" tables. This variety of genius, of wit, of skill, of willingness to serve, is laid at the altar of pleasure for the worthy purpose of making new again the weary body, the languishing spirit, the lonely ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... considered proficient in the service unless we can make use of these things at two hundred yards, Billinger," he replied, replacing the weapon in its holster. "If it's a running fight I'd rather have 'em than a carbine. If it isn't a running fight we'll come ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... surprise. If the shoulders slope downwards, with the spine bending inwards, the individual 'cannot throw a stone, or handle firearms with dexterity.' When inclined forwards, and well relieved from the body, he may be a proficient in these exercises. A peculiarity in walking is given by the size of the head and neck being out of proportion; and an instance is mentioned of a man being discharged from the army, on account ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... attested by the great quantity of grain raised annually by the Banyeti. A great many villages of this poor and very industrious people are situated on both banks of the river: they are expert hunters of the hippopotami and other animals, and very proficient in the manufacture of articles of wood and iron. The whole of this part of the country being infested with the tsetse, they are unable to rear domestic animals. This may have led to their skill in handicraft works. Some make large ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... quite simple, and is distinctly interesting. In a very important case the services of a qualified chemist will probably be requisitioned, but the cost of the necessary material and the time required to make oneself proficient as a capable tester are so slight that even the small fee that would be charged by a ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... of book-collecting which we must study before we may graduate in book-lore. To the uninitiated the word 'bibliography' conveys little more than a mere writing about books. But it is a vast study, and, if we are to become proficient in it, one that will ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... to have seen to the sending on of the pontoons. However, supposing Burnside and his staff to have as much wit as an average twelve-year-old school boy, they could have found in the army not merely hundreds, but even thousands of proficient workmen in a variety of mechanical trades, who would have constructed on the spot, and at the shortest notice, any number of bridges, pontoons, &c. Oh, how little are those wiseacre generals, the ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... handling in an advertisement, and of the value and relation of illustrations to text. He perceived that his work along these lines seemed to give satisfaction to his employers, since they placed more of it in his hands to do; and he sought in every way to become proficient in the art. ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... supervised. For all the pieces Arethusa had learned "by heart," which was the only way to learn music properly so as to be able to give pleasure to others, were pieces which Miss Letitia herself had practised with painstaking care for expression over fifty years ago. Both musicians were quite proficient in mazurkas and polkas and old-fashioned reels and ballads, and let us not forget to mention variations of every conceivable variety, for Miss Letitia possessed a whole book of variations, and it was ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... were two cases of illness at Miss Forbes's school at the same time, the patient of Dr. Bush already mentioned and another child suffering from a broken arm whom Dr. Francis attended. He set the limb but, as he was not proficient as a surgeon, the act was criticized by the schoolgirls within my hearing. My sense of loyalty to my family doctor caused me to utter some childish remark in his defense which was possibly to the effect that he was a great deal better doctor than Dr. ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... by President Lincoln, in 1865, John managed to get four years of schooling where he learned to read and write and become very proficient in arithmetic. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... all from the Opelousas parishes, and all cultivators—well versed in farming, and in all the mechanical arts connected with a farm. Among them are brickmakers, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, carpenters, etc. Some of them are proficient weavers, who have long been employed making the stuff called Attakapas cottonade, so favorably known in the market. They take along with them the necessary machinery for that trade, and all sorts of ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... with. Question this young man." Accordingly I did so, and drew from him that about a year ago he had been seriously ill of Roman fever; but as he hesitated, and seemed unwilling to speak on the subject, I questioned the friend. From him I learnt that the young man had formerly been a very proficient pupil in one of the best-known studios in Rome, but that a year ago he had suffered from a most terrible attack of malaria, in consequence of his remaining in Rome to work after others had found it necessary to go into the country, and that the malady had so affected the nervous ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... listened in silence to the conversation. What a conversation! At any other time, under any other circumstances, Ferdinand would have been teased and wearied with its commonplace current: all the dull detail of county tattle, in which the squire's lady was a proficient, and with which Miss Temple was too highly bred not to appear to sympathise; and yet the conversation, to Ferdinand, appeared quite charming. Every accent of Henrietta's sounded like wit; and when she bent her head in assent to her companion's obvious deductions, there was about each movement ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... true that Columbus experienced a most honorable reception at the Castilian court; such as naturally flowed from the benevolent spirit of Isabella, and her just appreciation of his pure and elevated character. But the queen was too little of a proficient in science to be able to estimate the merits of his hypothesis; and, as many of those, on whose judgment she leaned, deemed it chimerical, it is probable that she never entertained a deep conviction of its truth; ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... both exponents of the manly art of self-defense, and more than once their skill in the fistic art had stood them to good advantage. They were also proficient in the use of the revolver and sword. They had returned from Russia with a dispatch for Sir John French from the Russian Grand Duke, a message so important that the Russian commander-in-chief would not flash it by wireless for fear that it might be intercepted ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... creeper's music which liken it to a wren's. I am sorry that I have myself heard it only on one occasion: then, however, so far was it from being wren-like that it might rather have been the work of one of the less proficient warblers,—a somewhat long opening note followed by a hurried series of shorter ones, the whole given in a sharp, thin voice, and having nothing to recommend it to notice, considered simply as music. All the while ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... small, fast machines for which the pilot is training have a solid wheel base, and good landings are much more difficult to make. The Morane pilot has the same practices climbing to small altitudes around eight thousand feet and picking his landing from that height with motor off. When he becomes proficient in flying the single- and double-plane types he leaves the school for another, where shooting with ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... than Ascanie, was a greater proficient on the instrument, and went through his task without ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... I had picked up the Irish language, and drew from thence the conclusion that I was not fitted by nature to cut a respectable figure at an English university. "He will fly off in a tangent," said he, "and, when called upon to exhibit his skill in Greek, will be found proficient in Irish; I have observed the poor lad attentively, and really do not know what to make of him; but I am afraid he will never make a churchman!" And I have no doubt that my excellent father was right, both in his premises and the conclusion at which he arrived. I had undoubtedly, at one period ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... and air pressure? The house address alone is not enough, for many children surrounded by wealth are denied health rights, such as the right to play, to breathe pure air, to eat wholesome food, to live sanely. Scholarship will not help, because the frailest child is often the most proficient. Manners mislead, for, like dress, they are but externals, the product of emulation, of other people's influence upon us rather than of our living conditions. Nationality is an index to nothing significant in America, where all race and nationality differences melt into Americanisms, ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... you will create a position for her, and, whether she becomes the king's master, or his mistress, or whether she only becomes his confidant, you will only have made a new proficient." ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... and thus provided made nearly forty assays, some of which were afterwards checked in Adelaide, in each instance coming as close as check assays generally do. Nowadays one can purchase cheaply a very effective portable plant, or after a few lessons a man may by practice make himself so proficient with the blowpipe as to obtain assay results sufficiently ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... Tipperary. Clonmel is the centre of a large corn trade, and is in water communication, by the Suir, with Carrick and Waterford. Bianconi, therefore, merely extended his connection; and still continued his dealings with his customers in the other towns. He made himself more proficient in the mechanical part of his business; and aimed at being the first carver and gilder in the trade. Besides, he had always an eye open for new business. At that time, when the war was raging with France, gold was at a premium. ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... look at it, he found that Marion Fay was environed with fortifications and a chevaux-de-frise of difficulties which were apparently impregnable. He could not call at No. 17, and simply ask for Miss Fay. To do so he must be a proficient in that impudence, the lack of which created so many difficulties for him. He thought of finding out the Quaker chapel in the City, and there sitting out the whole proceeding,—unless desired to leave the place,—with the Quixotic idea of returning to ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... Martin and the mates, to work them out independently, and to submit my calculations to the skipper—who examined and returned them with such written comments as he deemed called for—with the result that I had long since become proficient in the science of navigation. But this was a very different thing. If on board the Salamis I had chanced to make a mistake, the worst that could have happened would have been a sharp rebuke from ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... caterer were brought from away, in the Amberson manner, though this was really a gesture—perhaps one more of habit than of ostentation—for servitors of gaiety as proficient as these importations were nowadays to be found in the town. Even flowers and plants and roped vines were brought from afar—not, however, until the stock of the local florists proved insufficient to obliterate the interior structure of the big house, in the Amberson way. It was the last ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... other things in this life have sometimes preferred; whereof not to be sensible when good and fair in one person meet, argues both a gross and shallow judgment, and withal an ungentle and swainish breast. For by the firm settling of these persuasions, I became, to my best memory, so much a proficient, that if I found those authors anywhere speaking unworthy things of themselves, or unchaste of those names which before they had extolled, this effect it wrought with me,—from that time forward their art I still applauded, but the men I deplored; and above them all, preferred the two famous renowners ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... To form a throughly proficient Choir of limited numbers, with which to give illustrations ...
— St. Gregory and the Gregorian Music • E. G. P. Wyatt
... really accomplished something; and when you have not beaten, you have at least learned points that will enable you to beat the next time, or the next to the next time—or sometime. And everyone who really loves a game wants to stick to it until he has conquered and is proficient. ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... Eddie had become so proficient in the art of rapid calculation that he could estimate within a few ounces just what a person would have to weigh in order to be worth as much as the library, the mansion, or the bonds. The great Gainsborough that hung in the west end of the room corresponded ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... slaved at "footer," and displayed a curious inaptitude for squash racquets. At all games Caesar and Scaife were precociously proficient. John's clumsiness annoyed them. Often the Caterpillar joined him and Fluff, giving them to understand that this must be regarded as an act of grace and condescension which might be suitably ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... it is expensive to employ student labor to do the work of the school. By the time students become fairly proficient in their trades and reach the point where their services begin to be profitable, their time at the institution has expired, and a new, untrained set take their places, so that the school is constantly working on new material or raw recruits. Then, too, Tuskegee ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... stars and no clouds live. She was a sadly dainty little creature. No one in the world except those two was aware of the being of the little bat. Watho trained her to sleep during the day, and wake during the night. She taught her music, in which she was herself a proficient, and taught ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... of interest and untold material out of which to weave suitable dinner-talk, provided it is woven in the right way. And this weaving of talk is an art in which one may become proficient by giving it attention, just as one becomes the master of any other art by taking thought and probing into underlying principles. So in the art of talking well, even naturally fluent talkers need by faithful pains to get beyond the point ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... went right to work and taught the girls how to cut and fit. She taught them many of the little arts and niceties of dressmaking, and the girls became proficient and at the next Council meeting each received several honors. Then she taught them to trim hats and make the daintiest bows; and after she had taught them how to crochet and make Irish lace their gratitude ...
— Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... desirous of again beholding the Pandavas, went back to their homes. And accompanied by Dhaumya, these heroes, the five learned Pandavas equipped in vows set out with Krishna. And each versed in a separate science, and all proficient in mantras and cognisant of when peace was to be concluded and when war was to be waged those tigers among men, about to enter upon a life of non-recognition, the next day proceeded for a Krose and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... that they felt were true. Those eight years at Coventry transformed the awkward country girl into a woman of intellect and purpose. She knew somewhat of all sciences, all philosophies, and she had become a proficient scholar in German and French. How did she acquire this knowledge? How is any education acquired if not ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... of the northern air bit into the girl's blood. She spent much time in the open and became proficient and tireless in the use of snowshoes and skis. Daily her excursions into the surrounding timber grew longer, and she was never so happy as when swinging with strong, wide strides on her fat thong-strung rackets, or sliding with the speed of the wind down ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... did not fully enter into his mother's plans is shown that while at Cracow he devoted himself mostly to medicine. He was so proficient in this that he secured a physician's degree; and having been given leave to practise he revealed his humanity by declining to do so, turning to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... from normal practice tends to induce resumption of consciousness even in the case of such old habits as breathing, seeing, and hearing, digestion and the circulation of the blood. So it is with habitual actions in general. Let a player be never so proficient on any instrument, he will be put out if the normal conditions under which he plays are too widely departed from, and will then do consciously, if indeed he can do it at all, what he had hitherto been doing unconsciously. It is ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... question. On the same morning came a letter from Cleary telling him to come at once to town and make the final arrangements before receiving orders to join his regiment. We shall draw a veil over the last interview between Sam and Marian. She was proficient in the art of saying farewell, and nothing was lacking on this occasion to contribute to its romantic effect. They parted in tears, but they were tears of hope ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... Mail Gazette. As a matter of fact nothing could be wider of the mark. Mr. Larvin for many years has taken a detached and dispassionate view of politics, devoting the greater part of his time to collecting Egyptian papyri, and playing squash racquets, at which he is remarkably proficient. Although he occasionally inspires a paragraph in one or other of the papers mentioned, he hardly ever comes to either office, and is not even known by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 25, 1914 • Various
... Catholic Faith two years before, she entered with the greater ardour on the study of the Piedmontese dialect, and the observation of the habits and manners of the peasantry. In the former, she soon became a proficient. On the latter head, I extract from her familiar letters written home to England at the time, two ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... the Idler, the Spectator, the Tatler, the Guardian, and the Rambler, and would discourse by hours together on the superiority of such publications to anything which has since been produced in our Edinburghs and Quarterlies. He was proficient in all questions of genealogy, and knew enough of almost every gentleman's family in England to say of what blood and lineage were descended all those who had any claim to be considered as possessors of any such luxuries. For blood and lineage he himself had a most profound ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... stands within the curve of the form, before a table filled with letters and papers, and tosses them one by one into the squares to which they belong. This is done with the utmost rapidity, and long practice has made the clerk so proficient that he never misses the proper square. The stamping of the office mark and cancelling of the postage stamps on letters to be sent away is incessant, and the room resounds with the heavy thud of the stamp. This is ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... principle of the pendulum in the swinging lamp in the cathedral at Pisa. Peel was in Parliament at twenty-one. Gladstone was in Parliament before he was twenty-two, and at twenty-four he was Lord of the Treasury. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was proficient in Greek and Latin at twelve; De Quincey at eleven. Robert Browning wrote at eleven poetry of no mean order. Cowley, who sleeps in Westminster Abbey, published a volume of poems at fifteen. N. P. Willis won lasting fame as a poet before leaving college. Macaulay was a celebrated author ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... children's, I naturally talked to her. She told me of Mrs. Ward and of the new delightful school to which she was going. She certainly never once pressed me to send my girls there, but it occurred to me that I would visit Mrs. Ward and see if it could be arranged. My girls are quite proficient for their ages in foreign languages; but I want them now thoroughly to learn literature and English history, and also those numerous small accomplishments which are so necessary for a gentlewoman. There is also no place in the world like London, in my opinion, for hearing ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... movements so worked together that as women marched toward the citadel of political power and responsibility, political action became more and more permeated by forms of social interest in which women were already alert, and by forms of social activity in which women were already proficient. This is particularly noticeable in the United States. For example, in our country we have changed the common point of view and the general governmental approach to individual and private life in the following ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... the truth; and the difficulty is increased by the fact that, while parents and boys alike feel as they do about the essential importance of games, head-masters are more or less bound to select men for masterships who are proficient in them; because whatever else has to be attended to at school, games have to be attended to; and, moreover, a man whom the boys respect as an athlete is likely to be more effective both as a disciplinarian ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... resembling a lady's workbox. With the Virgin Queen it was a prime favorite, although not named expressly for her as the flattering fashion of the time led many to assume. If she actually did justice to some of the airs with variations in the "Queen Elizabeth Virginal Book," she must indeed have been proficient on the instrument. Quaint Dr. Charles Burney (1726-1814) declares, in his "History of Music," that no performer of his day could play them without ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... then related some of the events of his life. How he had visited the principal cities of Europe; and how he had studied under the best men, in order to make himself proficient in his line of work. Having heard that many Londoners were competing for the construction of carriages for Russia, he had hastily sent in his estimate. The work was accorded to him, and in a few years time he had amassed a large fortune. He had also opened a large wagon ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... confirmation without question. On the same morning came a letter from Cleary telling him to come at once to town and make the final arrangements before receiving orders to join his regiment. We shall draw a veil over the last interview between Sam and Marian. She was proficient in the art of saying farewell, and nothing was lacking on this occasion to contribute to its romantic effect. They parted in tears, but they were tears of ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... a proficient canoeist, and will adventure himself with confidence in a canoe of the frailest construction, which he will guide in safety, and with surpassing skill. He will dispel the fears of his disquieted and faithless fellow-voyager (for the motion at ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... Carroll assented good-humoredly. "I believe another month or two of it would have worn me out. It's considerably pleasanter and more profitable to act as your understudy; but a fairly proficient carpenter might have ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... blowpipes, retorts and other "notions," as his son put it, proceeded by easy stages to Marseilles, whence chariot, chaise, horse and family were shipped to Leghorn, and a few days later they found themselves at Pisa. The boys became proficient in Italian and drawing, but it was not until middle life that Richard's writing developed into that gossamer hand which so long distinguished it. Both had a talent for music, but when "a thing like Paganini, length without breadth" was introduced, and they were ordered to learn the violin, Richard ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... B.C. 106, of noble parents. As a boy he had the advantage of the best schools and teachers that Rome could furnish. Later he studied at Athens, under the greatest Greek masters, and became proficient in the Greek language. According to the common practice among the better classes in Rome, he spent some time in travel to complete his education, visiting Egypt, Asia Minor, and other parts of the known world. But Cicero's education can hardly be said to have been ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... do things, and was slow and unwieldy in his motions. But one day, a great change came over Blockey and he began to train his will. He worked hard in the gymnasium: he learned to catch the ball, and, by sticking to it, was not only able to catch the ball but became proficient. Then there came a time when the first one chosen upon the team was Blockey; and it all came about because he had trained his will so that when he made up his mind to do a thing, ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... The efforts of the teacher to seat them proved a failure. The idea among them seemed to be that each should take some part in amusing the company. One would jump from the back of a bench upon which he had been seated, while others were creeping about the floor; another, who deemed himself a proficient in turning somersaults, would be trying his skill in this way, while his neighbor, equally ambitious, would show the teacher how he could stand on his head. Occasionally they would pause and listen to the singing of a ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... BROWNING was born at Durham, England, March 6, 1809. She was highly educated and was proficient in both Greek and Latin. She wrote her first verses at the age of ten, and her first volume of poems was published when she was but seventeen years old. In 1846 she was married to the poet Robert Browning. Her first known works are "Aurora Leigh," a novel ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... water communication, by the Suir, with Carrick and Waterford. Bianconi, therefore, merely extended his connection; and still continued his dealings with his customers in the other towns. He made himself more proficient in the mechanical part of his business; and aimed at being the first carver and gilder in the trade. Besides, he had always an eye open for new business. At that time, when the war was raging with France, gold was at a premium. The guinea ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... of his Caucasian Christian brothers. He made her the most marvellous toys; he would cut out of carrots and turnips the most astonishing roses and tulips; he made life-like chickens out of melon-seeds; he constructed fans and kites, and was singularly proficient in the making of dolls' paper dresses. On the other hand, she played and sang to him, taught him a thousand little prettinesses and refinements only known to girls, gave him a yellow ribbon for his pig-tail, as best suiting his complexion, read to him, showed ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... between having her brushes in ivory or silver, but there was really no choice for her, and they came in silver. She knew not only her own place, but the places of her two ladies, and she presently had them in such training that they were as proficient in what they might and might not do for themselves and for each other, as if making these distinctions were the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... company. Anaitis nagged and sulked for a while when her Prince Consort slackened in the pursuit of strange delights, as he did very soon, with frank confession that his tastes were simple and that these outlandish refinements bored him. Later Anaitis seemed to despair of his ever becoming proficient in curious pleasures, and she permitted Jurgen to lead a comparatively normal life, with only an occasional and ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... ago it would have been misleading to say, what is undoubtedly true, that it is as an artist that Ibsen is great. To call a man a good artist came to much the same thing as calling him a good ping-pong player: it implied that he was proficient in his own business; it did not imply that he was a great man who affected life greatly. Therefore many people who understood Ibsen and were moved by his plays preferred to call him a political thinker or a social reformer; while their enemies, the aesthetes, ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... solitary mistress, Through all the duties of the day, it animated her; for Florence hoped that the more she knew, and the more accomplished she became, the more glad he would be when he came to know and like her. Sometimes she wondered, with a swelling heart and rising tear, whether she was proficient enough in anything to surprise him when they should become companions. Sometimes she tried to think if there were any kind of knowledge that would bespeak his interest more readily than another. Always: at her books, her music, and her work: in her morning walks, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... craft so diligently that by merely clapping my eyes upon a bookseller I can tell you with certainty what manner of books he sells; but you must know that the ideal bookseller has no fads, being equally proficient in and a lover of all spheres, departments, branches, and lines of his art. He is, moreover, of a benignant nature, and he denies credit to none; yet, withal, he is righteously so discriminating that he lets the poor scholar have for a paltry sum that which ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... condition that Dr. Partridge had been called in. During the latter part of her aunt's sickness Desire Edwards had made a practice of running into her Uncle Jahleel's many times a day to give a sort of oversight to the housekeeping, a department in which she was decidedly more proficient than damsels of this day, of much less aristocratic pretensions, find it consistent with their dignity to be. The doctor and Desire were at this moment in the living-room, inspecting through the closed shutters the preparations on the green for ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... sufficient to convey the little they have to return to him, for it is seldom more than, 'My Lord, I have done the thing you gave me to do.' If the matter be complex, he too resorts to the lip-speech, which he could not teach without first being proficient in it himself. Thus, for ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... of famous men laid low. Among them none was more remarkable than Tom Steele, an ardent follower of O'Connell, and his "head pacificator." Steele was a gentleman and a Protestant; he had studied with great success at Cambridge University, and was a proficient in mathematics. He began life with bright prospects; talents, education, connections, and property—all were his. He wrecked all in the service of Ireland, as he believed—in the service of an Irish faction, as ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... character. He had the merit, too, of a proper appreciation of his own capacity; and his aims never rose above that capacity. As a superficial man he dealt with superficial things, and his dealings were marked by tact and shrewdness. In his sphere he was proficient, and he kept his wits upon the alert for everything that might be turned to professional and profitable use. Thus it was that, as he sauntered along one of the main thoroughfares of Cincinnati, as has been written, his attention was suddenly arrested by a voice ringing clear and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... the pipe organ which filled the space behind the staircase, and played a little, but she had never been very proficient, and her own awkwardness annoyed her. In the dining room she could hear the men talking, Howard quietly, his father in short staccato barks. She left the organ and wandered into her mother's ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... he knew English, and if he knew English it was certain the whole of their design was in the Master's knowledge. There was one singularity in the position. If Secundra Dass knew and concealed his knowledge of English, Harris was a proficient in several of the tongues of India, and as his career in that part of the world had been a great deal worse than profligate, he had not thought proper to remark upon the circumstance. Each side had thus a spy-hole on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... soldier's death by shooting has also been censured, but it is evident that no other course was open to the American commander, since a mitigation of the sentence would have implied a doubt as to its justice. Besides courage and distinguished military talents, Major Andre was a proficient in drawing and in music, and showed considerable poetic talent in his humorous Cow-chase, a kind of parody on Chevy-chase, which appeared in three successive parts at New York, the last on the very day of his capture. His fate excited universal sympathy ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... was filled with disgust at the blind carnage of the Revolution. He returned to Scotland and began a series of tours in the Highlands, studying the conditions of life among his Celtic countrymen and becoming proficient in the use of the Gaelic tongue. Not France but Scotland was to be the scene of his ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... it was necessary, in order to prevent their flails colliding, that one lash should be up in the air at the same moment that the other was down on the floor, so that it required some practice in order to become a proficient thrasher. The flails descended on the barn floors with the regularity of the ticking of a clock, or the rhythmic and measured footsteps of a man walking in a pair of clogs at a quickstep speed over the hard surface of ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... Comanches, Tonkaways, Lipans, and other inhabitants of the vast plains of Texas, and the Pawnees, Sioux, Blackfeet, and other northern tribes, were the general go-betweens, trading with all, making peace or war with or for any or all. It is certain that the Kiowas are at present more universally proficient in this language than any other Plains tribe. It is also certain that the tribes farthest away from them and with whom they have least intercourse use it with ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... second than in the first half of his career. Vasari relates that Titian was lodged at Venice with his uncle, an "honourable citizen," who, seeing his great inclination for painting, placed him under Giovanni Bellini, in whose style he soon became a proficient. Dolce, apparently better instructed, gives, in his Dialogo della Pittura, Zuccato, best known as a mosaic worker, as his first master; next makes him pass into the studio of Gentile Bellini, and thence into that of the ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... which for the Spanish sovereigns is regarded as a proof of the greatest friendship and the highest mark of gratitude. They commanded that henceforward Columbus should be called "Praefectus Marinus," or, in the Spanish tongue, Amiral. His brother Bartholomew, likewise very proficient in the art of navigation, was honoured by them with the title of Prefect of the Island of Hispaniola, which is in the vulgar tongue called Adelantado.[14] To make my meaning clear I shall henceforth employ these usual words of ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... and his wife, named Collison, [Footnote: Mr. Collison was not ordained at the time] who came out from England for the purpose of working in the mission field among the Indians. Mr. Collison is studying the language of the Tsimshean Natives, when proficient in it, which he soon will be, judging from the progress he has already made, he will labour among the ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock
... of diseases, in the making of the most cunning electuaries and syllabubs, and even in Arithmetic,—a science of which young gentlewomen were then almost wholly deficient,—she became, before she was sixteen years of age, a truly wonderful proficient. A Bristol bookseller spoke of printing her book of recipes (containing some excellent hints on cookery, physic, the casting of nativities, and farriery); and some excellent short hymns she wrote are, I believe, sung to this day in one of the Bristol free-schools. ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... What the newcomers—whether Cushites or Semites—did teach them, was a more orderly way of organizing society and ruling it by means of laws and an established government, and, above all, astronomy and mathematics—sciences in which the Shumiro-Accads were little proficient, while the later and mixed nation, the Chaldeans, attained in them a very high perfection, so that many of their discoveries and the first principles laid down by them have come down to us as finally adopted facts, confirmed ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... wrought Love and Veneration; the Language of her Eyes sufficiently paid the Loss of her Tongue, and there was something so Commanding in her Look, that it struck every Beholder as dumb as herself; she was a great Proficient in Painting, which puts me in mind of a notable Story I can't omit; her Father had sent for the most Famous Painter in Italy to draw her Picture, she accordingly sat for it; he had drawn some of the Features ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... poetic power and to that unrivaled grace of style which led the ancients to say that if Jove should speak Greek he would speak like Plato. He was a remarkable example of that universal culture of body and mind which characterized the last period of ancient Greece. He was proficient in every branch of art and learning and was such a brilliant athlete that he contended in the Isthmian ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... to take her degree (sid atang) by taking out a man's liver and cooking it with rice in a new pot; then she and the young woman who is initiating her, eat the feast together; a woman who has once eaten such a stew is completely proficient and can never forget what ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... nobleman of Ireland, and wife of George Monk, Esq; By the force of her natural genius, she learnt the Latin, Italian, and Spanish tongues, and by a constant reading of the best authors in those languages, became so great a proficient, especially in poetry, that she wrote many pieces that were deemed worthy of publication, and soon after her death, were printed and published with the following title, Marinda. Poems, and Translations upon several ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... Captain Martin and the mates, to work them out independently, and to submit my calculations to the skipper—who examined and returned them with such written comments as he deemed called for—with the result that I had long since become proficient in the science of navigation. But this was a very different thing. If on board the Salamis I had chanced to make a mistake, the worst that could have happened would have been a sharp rebuke from the skipper for my carelessness, and an equally sharp injunction to be more careful in future; ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... their favour propitiated, by the opportune arrival of Captain Craigengelt in the moment when they were longing for a third hand to make a party at tredrille, in which, as in all games, whether of chance or skill, that worthy person was a great proficient. ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... praise of Bernardin de St. Pierre, that coming immediately after Rousseau and Buffon, and being one of the most proficient writers of the same school, he was in no degree their imitator, but perfectly original and new. He intuitively perceived the immensity of the subject he intended to explore, and has told us that ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... myself so assiduously to the art, that, with the unreserved communications of Madame Gironac, I became a proficient, and could equal her own performances—Madame Gironac declared that I excelled her, because I had ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... heart swell with exaggerated, irresistible emotion, springing he knew not whence; and this rascal, who believed in nothing, who was usually so proficient in humbug, answered in ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... nevertheless, a picturesque figure enough. The man was attired in a somewhat threadbare suit of Lincoln green, with a high-crowned Tyrolese hat; a knapsack was slung behind his shoulders, and he was attended by a white Pomeranian dog, evidently foot-sore, but doing his best to appear proficient in the chase by limping some yards in advance of his master, and sniffing into the hedges for rats and mice, ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... He ground away at the bookkeeping—he was more proficient at it, but he hated it as heartily as ever—and wrote a good deal of verse and some prose. For the first time he sold a prose article, a short story, to a minor magazine. He wrote long letters to ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... war the museums of the Eastern States were regaled by an "Infant Drummer." This lad, Harry W. Stowman, at the age of seven or eight, was a proficient on the drum. He was seen by this editor, executing solos of great difficulty, and accompanying the orchestra with variations on his unpromising instrument, which musicians praised and in which he avoided monotony with precocious talent. Grown up, still a rare drummer, ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... and his employer. He always spoke of Pope as too much a lover of money; and Pope pursued him with avowed hostility; for he not only named him disrespectfully in the Dunciad, but quoted him more than once in the Bathos, as a proficient in the Art of Sinking; and in his enumeration of the different kinds of poets distinguished for the profound, he reckons Broome among "the parrots who repeat another's words in such a hoarse odd tone as makes them seem their own." I have been told that they were afterwards reconciled; ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... the "uttering of mortal drugs" for three years, was at length suffered to follow his own devices, and in 1765, was admitted of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Dr. Farmer was at that time tutor. Of this proficient in black letter (he was one of the earliest, and perhaps the cleverest, of his tribe) we are told by Archdeacon Butler, in a note, that he was a man of such singular indolence, as to neglect sending in the young men's accounts, and is supposed to have burnt large sums of money, by ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XIII, No. 370, Saturday, May 16, 1829. • Various
... Was not that Chouteau, the former member of his squad, whom he had seen, in the blouse of a respectable workman, watching the execution and testifying his approval of it in a loud-mouthed way? He was a proficient in his role of bandit, traitor, robber, and assassin! For a moment the corporal thought he would retrace his steps, denounce him, and send him to keep company with the other three. Ah, the sadness of the thought; the guilty ever escaping ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... Procter had herself professed the Roman Catholic Faith two years before, she entered with the greater ardour on the study of the Piedmontese dialect, and the observation of the habits and manners of the peasantry. In the former, she soon became a proficient. On the latter head, I extract from her familiar letters written home to England at the time, two ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... this evening, so why not visit Victory? Probably he will tell us of this battle. We should like to know how he overcame them. We hear these two giants are really afraid of him since he has become so proficient in the ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry
... ascertained my future fate, and said, 'By the blessing of God, the prince has been begotten and born under such a propitious planet, and in such a lucky moment, that he ought to be equal to Alexander in extent of dominion, and in justice equal to Naushirwan. He will be, moreover, proficient in every science, and every [branch of] learning, and towards whatever subject his heart is inclined, he will accomplish it with perfection. He will in generosity and bravery acquire such renown, that ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... unhappiness at home was compensated for by his many new interests. He took up golf and made a great success of it. He went in for dancing: in 1906 he was an expert at "The Boston," and in 1908 he was considered proficient at the "Maxine," while in 1909 his "Castle Walk" was the envy of every ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... advanced and up-to-date Studies. While their contemporaries in other professions were adding graduate training to the general education which a college gave, the graduates of West Point were considered to have made themselves in four years sufficiently proficient for all the ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... through, the proficient business man with his powers of concentration, the first-rate organiser, the scientist, the inventor—all these men are contemplatives who do not drive to God, but to the world or to ambition. Taking God as their goal, they could ascend to great heights of happiness; though first they must give ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... method requiring special training and experience; that it will be many years before the average practitioner will become proficient in its use; and that the older methods are probably far ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... the name was changed to "Sunnyside," the name by which it is still known. Little by little he bought more land, he planted trees, and cultivated flowers and vegetables. At one time he boasts that he has become so proficient in gardening that he can raise his own fruits and vegetables at a cost to him of little more ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... step of the way was through one vast curious workshop of both divine and human hands. The railway fare is only two cents a mile, first class, and half that, second class; we left the choice to our guide. A good guide is almost indispensable. Our faithful Takenouchi was proficient in everything; he was valet, courier, guide, instructor, purchasing agent, and maid. I never knew a person so efficient in every way; he could be attentively absent; he never intruded himself upon us in any way. It is ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... talked on a variety of topics: of tarpon fishing in Florida; of amateur photography, in which the hostess was proficient, and of gardens; of the latest novels and some current inelegancies of speech. Some one spoke of the growing habit of feeing employs to do their duty. Another referred to certain breaches of trust by bank officers and treasurers, ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... far from taking amiss this brutal allusion to the personal deformity of the Princess Joan. On the contrary, he was rather pleased to find that the Duke was content to be amused with broad jests, in which he was himself a proficient, and which (according to the modern phrase) spared much sentimental hypocrisy. Accordingly, he speedily placed their intercourse on such a footing that Charles, though he felt it impossible to play the part of an affectionate and reconciled friend to a monarch whose ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... too, under the gentle guidance of the learned Pasteur, at the classics, literature, and other subjects, while in French he could not fail to become proficient in the company of the talkative Madame and the sprightly Juliette. Nor did he want for relaxation. There were great woods on the hills behind the Maison Blanche, and in these he obtained leave to shoot rabbits, and, horrible to say, foxes. Juliette ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... relation similar to the more formal dancing functions of Mars that The Grand March does to ours, though it is infinitely more intricate and more beautiful. Before a Martian youth of either sex may attend an important social function where there is dancing, he must have become proficient in at least three dances—The Dance of Barsoom, his national dance, and the dance of his city. In these three dances the dancers furnish their own music, which never varies; nor do the steps or figures vary, having been handed down from time ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... was said, and with reason, for he had studied surgery in Germany for the mere love of the science. After which, making the grand tour in France and Italy, he had taken up that art of being a gentleman in which men became so proficient in my young days. He had learned to speak French like a Parisian, had hobnobbed with wit and wickedness from Versailles to Rome, and then had come back to Annapolis to set the fashions and to spend the fortune his uncle lately had left him. He was our censor ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... creditors before a jury. The young man, after much demur and the ludicrous failure of his father, who at first matriculates in his stead, consents. He listens to the pleas of the just and unjust argument in behalf of the old and new education, and becomes himself such a proficient that he demonstrates, in flawless reasoning, that Euripides is a better poet than Aeschylus, and that a boy is justified in beating his father for affirming the contrary. Strepsiades thereupon, cured of his folly, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... his table, unless he first began a conversation. He commonly ate heartily of poultry, but only the wings and thighs; for in the daytime, he neither ate nor drank much. He had great pleasure in hearing minstrels; as he himself was a proficient in the science, and made his secretaries sing songs, ballads, and roundelays. He remained at table about two hours, and was pleased when fanciful dishes were served up to him, which having seen, he immediately sent them to the tables of his ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... It is made up of talks to students, calculated to make them think; of hints and suggestions which will be of immense assistance to those who are earnestly trying to become proficient in ...
— Music Talks with Children • Thomas Tapper
... at St. Mark's—Zarlino and Cyprians de Rore. To go on with the story of St. Mark's from this point, the most important successor of Willaert was Gioseffo Zarlino, who spent his youth in studying for the Church, and was admitted to minor orders in 1539, and ordained deacon in 1541. He was a proficient scholar in Greek and Hebrew, in mathematics, astronomy and chemistry. After studying for some years with Willaert he was elected in 1555 first Maestro di Capella at St. Mark's. In this position his ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... a cleverly arranged collapsible canvas boat that could be launched in short order and was to be propelled by means of a short but serviceable paddle. While up in Canada with the Mounties, Perk had become quite proficient in the use of a paddle and also in balancing by sheer instinct while in a ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... loyalty and chivalric faith belong only to the past," said the girl, reaching up a rounded arm and patting her aunt's thin hand. "And now we will be practical. I fancied the head of the settlement looked worried when he met me, and he is not very proficient at ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... brought my son with me," Ameres said when the ceremonial observances and salutations were concluded. "He is going to commence his studies in irrigation, but I shall not have time at present to instruct him. I wish him to become proficient in outdoor exercises, and beg you to procure men skilled in fishing, fowling, and hunting, so that he can amuse his unoccupied hours with sport. At Thebes he has but rare opportunities for these matters; for, excepting in the preserves, game has become well-nigh extinct, while as ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... Two of them were brought to Italy about 1875, who within two years' time learned to read and write and to speak Italian with much fluency. They showed themselves superior in school studies to European children of ten or twelve years of age, and one of them became somewhat proficient in music. In their habits they resembled children, being sensitive and impulsive, fond of play, and very quick in their motions. Their readiness in gaining the elements of education is in accord with experience in the case of other savages. It ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... Jimmy remembered the long hours and hours of study and practice before he became proficient with his typewriter. For a moment he felt close to tears. It had been the only possession he truly owned, now it was gone. And with it was gone the author's first check. The thrill of that first check is far ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... letters. This they did for some years, till he had learnt all that was needful, when the King took him out of the professors' hands and committed him to a master, who taught him horsemanship and the use of arms, till the boy attained the age of fourteen and became proficient in martial exercises. Moreover, he outshone all the people of his time for the excess of his beauty; so that, whenever he went abroad on any occasion, all who saw him were ravished with him and made verses in his honour, and even the virtuous were seduced ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... savant educated in a school of high culture, or a man of the world, versed in the sciences and the literature of his time; El-kab was a scribe who knew how to read, write, and cipher, was fairly proficient in wording the administrative formulas, and could easily apply the elementary rules of book-keeping. There was no public school in which the scribe could be prepared for his future career; but as soon as a child had acquired the first rudiments of letters with some ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... soldiers cannot be expected to take over the scouting on this front, not altogether, for they do not know the country as do we French. Yet some of your young men, Henri tells me, show marvelous adaptability in the work. Is it the Red Indian blood in them, think you, that makes them so proficient in scouting?" ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... private capitalism was not a competitive system at all, and that nothing but economic equality could make a truly competitive system possible. Grant, however, for the sake of the argument, that the old system was honestly competitive, and that the prizes went to the most proficient under the requirements of the competition; the question would remain whether the qualities the competition tended to develop were desirable ones. A training school in the art of lying, for example, or burglary, or slander, or fraud, might be efficient in its method and the ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... his apologies for his mistrust, - expressed perfect faith in Mr. Fosbrooke's skill - and then lapsed into silent meditation on the various arts and sciences in which the gentlemen of the University of Oxford seemed to be most proficient, and pictured to himself what would be his feelings if he ever came to see Verdant driving a coach! There certainly did not appear to be much probability of such an event; but can any pater familias say what even the most carefully brought up young Hopeful will do when he has arrived at years ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... first day they only got round the Lizard to Cadgwith, where they dived from steep rocks into deep blue water. Nan dived from a high rock with a swoop like a sea bird's, a pretty thing to watch. Barry was nearly as good; he too was physically proficient. The Bendishes were less competent; they were so much younger, as Barry said. But they too reached the water head first, which is, after all, the main thing in diving. And as often as Nan dived, with her arrowy swoop, Gerda tumbled in too, from the same rock, and ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... at Portsmouth for laughter, as she thought: "I believe lying goes with the breeches; I never was so proficient before." ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... much admired; and after the service was over, I often received presents of sweetmeats from the ladies, who brought them in their pockets for the little Anselmo. As I grew up, I became a remarkable proficient in music; at the age of twenty, I possessed a fine counter-tenor; and flattered by the solicitations of the superior of the convent and other dignitaries of the church, I consented to take the vows, and became a ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... work was over, the colored people would gather in the little hamlet and march to the music of a drum and fife, and under the command of Nimbus, whose service in the army had made him a tolerable proficient in such tactical movements as pertained to the "school of the company." Very often, until well past midnight the fife and drum, the words of command, and the rumble of marching feet could be heard in the little village. The white people in the country around about ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... some three months to rafting, and, being then as proficient as there was any need to be at that branch of the art, I determined to go in for rowing proper, and joined one of the Lea ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... for an hour while her ladyship sleeps. The moment she wakes you will have to be in attendance, either to play to her, or else to read to her—perhaps a little French or Italian, in both of which languages I hope you are tolerably proficient. Your next duty will be to accompany her ladyship in her drive out. When you get back, will come dinner, but only when specially invited will you sit down with Lady Chillington. When that honour is not accorded you, you and I will dine here, ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... conclusion that I was not fitted by nature to cut a respectable figure at an English university. "He will fly off in a tangent," said he, "and, when called upon to exhibit his skill in Greek, will be found proficient in Irish; I have observed the poor lad attentively, and really do not know what to make of him; but I am afraid he will never make a churchman!" And I have no doubt that my excellent father was right, both in his premises and the conclusion at which he arrived. ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... show himself a patron of ability, and to honour the proficient in every art. At the same time he should encourage his citizens to practise their callings peaceably, both in commerce and agriculture, and in every other following, so that the one should not be deterred from improving his possessions for fear lest ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... names to fantastic rocks and fairy isles, and raised imaginary houses and bridges on every picturesque spot which we floated past during our aquatic excursions. I learned the use of the paddle, and became quite a proficient in the gentle craft. ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... which would bring him to town in good time. Peterson had promised to answer his name at roll-call, a delicate operation, in which long practice had made him, like many others of the junior members of the House, no mean proficient. ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... SCHOOL OF ARMS." In the long, narrow entry hung a framed manuscript which set forth that Ned Skene, ex-champion of England and the colonies, was to be heard of within daily by gentlemen desirous of becoming proficient in the art of self-defence. Also the terms on which Mrs. Skene, assisted by a competent staff of professors, would give lessons ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... was less a proficient, and never acquired the art of writing or spelling French, far less foreign languages, with accuracy or correctness; nor had the monks of Brienne any reason to pride themselves on the classical proficiency ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... shelling of the trench, while the German rifle bullets searched along the front. This, however, is a game at which the Russian riflemen are specially proficient. They can in a few moments organize a combined murderous fire which forces every German who is not weary of life to keep his head down. After a few minutes the German rifle fire goes wild, their bullets no ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... says the first, "come, don't be concerned, you have got a good parcel of goods away I promise you, you need not value all the world." "All! would I had done so," says another, "I'd a laughed at all my creditors." "Ay," says the young proficient in the hardened trade, "but my creditors!" "Hang the creditors!" says a third; "why, there's such a one, and such a one, they have creditors too, and they won't agree with them, and here they live like gentlemen, and care not a farthing for them. Offer your creditors ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... seventy-one, and gave all his money to his country on the eve of his departure, yet died wealthy for his time. Serene, even-tempered, philosophical, he was yet far-seeing, care-taking, sagacious, and intensely industrious. He acquired a knowledge of the Italian and Spanish languages, and was a proficient French speaker and writer. He possessed, in an extraordinary degree, the power of gaining the regard, even the affection, of his fellow-men. He was even a competent musician, mastering every subject to which his attention was turned; and province-born and reared ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... nescit, campestribus abstinet armis; Indoctusque pilae, discive, trochive, quiescit; Ne spissae risum tollant impune coronae: Qui nescit versus, tamen audet fingere. Quid ni? A moderate proficient in the laws, A moderate defender of a cause, Boasts not Messala's pleadings, nor is deem'd Aulus in Jurisprudence; yet esteem'd: But middling Poet's, or degrees in Wit, Nor men, nor Gods, nor niblick-polls admit. At festivals, as musick out of tune, Ointment, or honey rank, disgust us soon, ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... mechanics all over the country were becoming greatly interested in the practical possibilities of aviation. Mr. Sopwith decided to learn to fly, and in 1910, after continued practice in a Howard Wright biplane, he had become a proficient pilot. So rapid was his progress that by the end of the year he had won the magnificent prize of L4000 generously offered by Baron de Forest for the longest flight made by an all-British machine from England ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... beauties of the Coliseum, and other moonshine subjects which had kept him, he averred, in Rome a week longer than he intended, he abruptly accosts our Italian friend, assuring him that we have now become such a knowing proficient in all the tricks imposed upon travellers, and in all the various guiles of antiquaries as practised at Naples, that it would be difficult to impose upon us; and that, in fact, he would back us now against being cheated by the best of them—modest ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... was arrested and sent to prison, two new ones, even more proficient in their thievery, seemed ready to spring up in his place; and so the thing had gone on and on until the people who had been ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... orangery they came across two remarkably tall garden boys, and Friedrich Wilhelm immediately offered Eberhard Ludwig three hundred thalers apiece for them. Now, they happened to be her Excellency's own gardeners, and to be proficient in the art of cultivating roses, so Serenissimus prayed the King to let him find other giants for him; these, he said, were ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... in Spaceland will easily understand that my mysterious Guest was speaking the language of truth and even of simplicity. But to me, proficient though I was in Flatland Mathematics, it was by no means a simple matter. The rough diagram given above will make it clear to any Spaceland child that the Sphere, ascending in the three positions indicated there, must needs ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... an ancient Sage of her tribe, who, proficient in mysteries and secret rites gathered from nations as old as Phoenicia and Egypt and as modern as Switzerland, held the Romanys of the world in awe, for his fame had travelled where he could not follow. To Fleda in her earliest days he had been like one inspired, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... uneasy smile of a man who knew that his interlocutor's playfulness occasionally extended to the use of a derringer, in which he was singularly prompt and proficient, and Mr. Hamlin, equally conscious of that knowledge on the part of his companion, ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... wilt learn to dance? How! 'Go,' it says, and 'to the devil go! And shake thyself!' I tremble—but 'tis so; Wretch as thou art, what answer canst thou make? Oh! without question, thou wilt go and shake. What's here? 'The School for Scandal'—pretty schools! Well, and art thou proficient in the rules? Art thou a pupil? Is it thy design To make our names contemptible as thine? 'Old Nick, a novel!' oh! 'tis mighty well - A fool has courage when he laughs at hell; 'Frolic and Fun;' the Humours of Tim Grin;' Why, John, thou grow'st ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... professor in the Cleveland Medical College. Her social position, like that of Miss Brayton, is the highest in that city. She is highly educated, familiar, like her friend Miss Brayton, with most of the modern languages of Europe, but especially proficient in mathematics. During the whole period of the war, she devoted herself as assiduously to the work of the society as did Mrs. Rouse and Miss Brayton. She kept the books of the society (in itself a great labor), made all its disbursements of cash, and did ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... here, in a minor capacity. My younger years were spent in the quest of an education. For the past thirty years I have been the porter for the State Paper Company, Columbia's morning newspaper. As I became proficient in the work, the Gonzales boys grew fond of me. While the youngest one, Hon. William E. Gonzales, was absent in the diplomatic service in Cuba and in Peru for eight years for President Wilson, I looked ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... the New World through his aid. Hooker dedicates his History of Ireland to him; Hakluyt, his Voyages to Florida. A work 'On Friendship' is dedicated to him; another 'On Music,' in which art he had found leisure, it seems, to make himself a proficient; and as to the poetic tributes to him,—some of them at least are familiar to us already. In that gay court, where Raleigh and his haughty rivals were then playing their deep games,—where there was ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... Diable was not in the Sioux lodges. I had been at the encampment for almost a week, daily expecting the warriors' return, before I could persuade the people to grant me the right of search through the wigwams. In the end, I succeeded only through artifice. Indeed, I was becoming too proficient in craft for the maintenance of self-respect. A child—I explained to the surly old men who barred my way—had been confused with the Sioux slaves. If it were among their lodges, I was willing to pay well for its redemption. The old squaws, eying ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... pipe organ which filled the space behind the staircase, and played a little, but she had never been very proficient, and her own awkwardness annoyed her. In the dining room she could hear the men talking, Howard quietly, his father in short staccato barks. She left the organ and wandered into her mother's morning room, behind the drawing room, where Grace ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... studies mapped out for me was much the same as I pursued at Mount Vernon, with a specialty of the first six books of Euclid, and of algebra. Latin was taught but little. From the first, arithmetic, algebra and surveying were my favorite studies, and in those I became proficient. We had an improvised theatre in which we acted plays ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... another long winter. He ground away at the bookkeeping—he was more proficient at it, but he hated it as heartily as ever—and wrote a good deal of verse and some prose. For the first time he sold a prose article, a short story, to a minor magazine. He wrote long letters to Helen and she replied. She was studying hard, she liked her work, and she ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... entered where she was despised by the rest of the family. It may be imagined how great indignation was excited in this man by her refusal, the more especially as, like Dumiger, he thought himself a proficient in science and the mechanical arts, and was one of those who in his way was laboring for the prize so soon to be awarded by the city. If merit was to be the test of success, he had but little chance; but where is that ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... up his London lodgings when he left town at the end of the season, and spare himself the expense of any home as long as he could find friends to entertain him. There are certain items of the cost of living for which the greatest proficient in the art of tick must pay, or he will come to a speedy end;—and a man's lodging is one of them. If indeed the spendthrift adapts himself to the splendour of housekeeping, he may, provided his knowledge of his business be complete, and his courage adequate, house himself gloriously ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... name from its association with hymns to the Virgin. Another is that it was thus called in honor of Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen. We may accept whichever theory best suits us, but history records that both Elizabeth and Mary of Scotland were proficient in its use and that it was the favorite instrument of Henry VIII. Items for repairs and for instruction in playing the virginal appear frequently in the royal expense book, showing conclusively that His Majesty ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... at this boyish age, to have been so far a proficient in gallantry as to know the use that may be made of the trophies of former triumphs in achieving new ones; for he used to boast, with much pride, to Miss Chaworth, of a locket which some fair favourite had given him, and which probably may have been a present from that pretty cousin, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... grade of general proves this fact. But his bravery was equal to every proof, and he was a superb specimen of masculine beauty. The pen alone was an unaccustomed weapon to him, and he could hardly use it to sign his name; and it was said that he was not much more proficient in reading. Being colonel of the guard, he found himself one day alone at the Tuileries in an apartment where he waited until the Emperor could be seen. There he delighted himself with observing his image reflected in the glass, and readjusting his cravat; and the admiration he felt ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... all these supply colour. Certain toys seem specially suited to give hand control, e.g. a Noah's Ark, where the small animals are to be set out carefully, tops or teetotums and tiddlywinks, at which some little children become proficient. The puzzle interest must not be forgotten, and simple jigsaw pictures give great pleasure. It is interesting to note here that the youngest children fit these puzzles not by the picture but by form, though they know they are making a picture and are pleased when ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... made to take her degree (sid atang) by taking out a man's liver and cooking it with rice in a new pot; then she and the young woman who is initiating her, eat the feast together; a woman who has once eaten such a stew is completely proficient and can never forget what ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... gymnasium we have been practising, at all odd minutes, how to hold and sight the guns, and how to pull the trigger. Never before coming here had I heard of the squeeze, in which (of another kind) all army men are popularly supposed to be proficient by nature, but which here is technically a special study. The greenhorn naturally supposes that all he has to do with the gun is, like Stephen in the classic rhyme, to "p'int de gun, pull on de trigger." But since the ordinary pull is ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... 'Organizer' for anything of that kind. Mrs. Patterson and I are going to organize the wives, sisters and sweethearts, in Eagle Butte, into a club for the study of 'Scientific and Efficient Management of the Home!' We think we should be as proficient in those arts—and which we believe are peculiarly womanly functions—as the men are in the direction of the more strenuous business affairs in ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... Khallikan, in the thirteenth century, its best player was one As-Suli, famous as an author and a convivialist, who died one hundred and twenty years before the Norman Conquest. "To play like As-Suli" was indeed a proverb. Among this proficient's friends was his pupil, the khalif Ar-Radi, who had the greatest admiration for As-Suli's genius. One day, for instance, walking with some boon companions through a garden filled with beautiful flowers, Ar-Radi asked them if they ever saw a finer ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... handed over the brass rail to Lottie and Marita, who served as waitresses on the Dixie. First there were lettuce sandwiches, rolled. Any girl who can successfully roll bread and lettuce is termed proficient by the cooking teachers, and it was a tie between Belle and Cora as to who did the most and best ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... men made progress by becoming daily more expert in building, and as their ingenuity was increased by their dexterity so that from habit they attained to considerable skill, their intelligence was enlarged by their industry until the more proficient adopted the trade of carpenters. From these early beginnings, and from the fact that nature had not only endowed the human race with senses like the rest of the animals, but had also equipped their minds with the powers of thought and understanding, ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... sportsman, and a good shot with gun, rifle, and pistol, but now he began to perfect himself in the use of the last-named weapon. He arranged the basement of his house in such a way that he could practise with his revolvers, and he soon became very proficient in the accuracy and quickness of ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... thus provided made nearly forty assays, some of which were afterwards checked in Adelaide, in each instance coming as close as check assays generally do. Nowadays one can purchase cheaply a very effective portable plant, or after a few lessons a man may by practice make himself so proficient with the blowpipe as to obtain assay results sufficiently accurate ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... ever-recurring surprise. If the shoulders slope downwards, with the spine bending inwards, the individual 'cannot throw a stone, or handle firearms with dexterity.' When inclined forwards, and well relieved from the body, he may be a proficient in these exercises. A peculiarity in walking is given by the size of the head and neck being out of proportion; and an instance is mentioned of a man being discharged from the army, on account of his conformation rendering it impossible for him ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... been brought into contact with Western education and Western methods. The establishment of English as the official language of the Law Courts and of all public Departments necessarily favoured the Hindus by displacing Persian and the vernaculars in which the Mahomedans were most proficient. At the present day the vast majority of Indians employed in every branch of the Government service are Hindus, and this majority is entirely out of proportion to the numerical preponderancy of the Hindu community at large[11]. According to the last Census Report the Hindus of Bengal ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... before he had become at all proficient in the knife- grinding and umbrella-mending arts; and many a sly laugh and joke on the part of Deborah made him at times half-inclined to give up the work; but there was a determination and dogged resolution about his character which did not let him ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... and she was warm and impetuous. Isabella Vincent had moderate abilities, but a very persevering temper; whatever she had to learn, she laboured at it with her whole heart, and her disposition was placid and amiable. Miss Grey was a clever girl; she had been at an excellent school, and was proficient in most of the minor branches of education. She was fond of exercising her ingenuity to amuse her companions. One evening she had collected a party round her, intending to divert them with ...
— The Boarding School • Unknown
... cook and wash," said the American miner contemptuously years ago: "he can't work rock." To work rock in mining parlance is to be skillful in boring Earth's stony husk after mineral. It is to be proficient in sledging, drilling and blasting. The Chinaman seemed to have no aptitude for this labor. He was content to use his pick and shovel in the gravel-banks: metallic veins of gold, silver or copper he left entirely to the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... he desires from lack of the final and unconquerable resolution. No education in the world will make a man an intellectual glory to his age, even if his powers are great; for unless he positively desires to seize the flower of perfection, he will be but a dry scholar, a dealer in words, a proficient in mechanical thought, and a mere wheel of memory. And the man who has this positive quality in him will rise in spite of adverse circumstances, will recognise and seize upon the tide of thought which is his natural food, ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... was a tedious one, although they tried to enliven it with a game of bridge, in which Uncle John and Louise were quite proficient and the others dreadfully incompetent. Once in a while the volcano thundered a deep detonation that caused the windows to shiver, but the Americans were getting used to the sound and paid ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... genus for our demonstration, because, as has been said, it is so very easy and so certain that an intelligent girl mastered all its eccentricities of structure after a single lesson, which made her equally proficient in those of Dendrobes, Oncidiums, Odontoglots, Epidendrums, and I know not how many more. The leaves are green and smooth as yet, with many a fantastic bloom, and many an ovary that has just begun to swell, rising amidst the verdure. ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... Creamery for three months, so as to become proficient in dairymaid work, and then I thought I could do some good among our own people who could not afford to send a girl to the Creamery to learn her business. Or it might be where there was no girl, and the vanithee-that is to say, the good woman—did her work in her own way, not half pressing the water ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... out at home, but they had been attacked for a long time by the Rumanians, who had caused them endless trouble. If they had succeeded in remaining in power long enough, they would, no doubt, in time have shown themselves proficient in murdering their fellow-countrymen and as skilled in the use of the rifle as the Bolsheviki in Russia, the Spartacides in Germany and the Communists in Bavaria. These four groups of European Socialists of the extreme Left—ruffians, brutes, murderous thugs, ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... was a native of Castilla, and entered the Augustinian order in that province; he was a religious of great attainments in knowledge and virtue. He arrived in the Philippines in 1606, became very proficient in the language of the Pampangos, and was a missionary among them for five years. In 1614 he was elected provincial of his order in the islands. "Thoroughly inflexible in character, he undertook to secure the most ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... Building, Painting, Varnishing are by Charles F. Adams, one of the most successful builders in Wisconsin. The language employed is so simple that any young man of average ability can, in a short time become proficient in all of these useful and profitable occupations. Each chapter is fully illustrated, there being more than 50 drawings throughout ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... this, I became a good proficient in the Latin tongue; but the contempt which my appearance produced, the continual wants to which I was exposed, and my own haughty disposition, involved me in a thousand troubles and adventures. I was ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... character, who can read and write and pass the physical examination, may enlist for the term of their minority. They enlist as third- class apprentices, and are given six months' instruction at a training station, and thence go to sea in apprentice training vessels. When proficient they are transferred to regular cruising vessels as second class, and when further qualified are rated first class. All other enlistments are for four years. Recruits must speak English. Landsmen are usually ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... to us from the troubadours. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in particular, Provence was filled with rich and populous cities, brilliant feudal courts abounded, and noble lords and ladies not only encouraged song and poetry, but strove to become proficient in the gay science, as it was called, ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... in which I had picked up the Irish language, and drew from thence the conclusion that I was not fitted by nature to cut a respectable figure at an English university. "He will fly off in a tangent," said he, "and, when called upon to exhibit his skill in Greek, will be found proficient in Irish; I have observed the poor lad attentively, and really do not know what to make of him; but I am afraid he will never make a churchman!" And I have no doubt that my excellent father was right, both in his premises and the conclusion at which he arrived. I had undoubtedly, at one period ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... completed their term of service on a cruising training-ship. If they have served a year on a cruising ship of war they are considered properly qualified apprentices, and receive $21 a month. As the apprentices become proficient and their services are required, they are transferred to the seagoing vessels. Upon the expiration of the enlistment of an apprentice he will, if recommended, receive an honorable discharge, and if he enlists ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... The house address alone is not enough, for many children surrounded by wealth are denied health rights, such as the right to play, to breathe pure air, to eat wholesome food, to live sanely. Scholarship will not help, because the frailest child is often the most proficient. Manners mislead, for, like dress, they are but externals, the product of emulation, of other people's influence upon us rather than of our living conditions. Nationality is an index to nothing significant in America, where all ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... that these portraits were simply commemorative; and that the presses beneath them contained the books on subjects not suggested by the rest of the portraits, as for example, secular literature, in which Isidore was a proficient. ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... yonder, on the pave, is the celebrated courtezan, Mrs. St*pf**d, of Curzon-street, May-fair. How she acquired her present cognomen I know not, unless it was for her stopping accomplishment in the polite science of pugilism and modern patter, in both of which she is a finished proficient, as poor John D———, a dashing savoury chemist, can ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the country were becoming greatly interested in the practical possibilities of aviation. Mr. Sopwith decided to learn to fly, and in 1910, after continued practice in a Howard Wright biplane, he had become a proficient pilot. So rapid was his progress that by the end of the year he had won the magnificent prize of L4000 generously offered by Baron de Forest for the longest flight made by an all-British machine from England to the Continent. ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... reproducing things which have already come to their development thousands of times over in the persons of its ancestors. It is in virtue of this that it acquires proficiency in the actions necessary for its existence—so far as it was not already at birth proficient in them—much more quickly and easily than would be otherwise possible; but what we call instinct in the case of animals takes in man the looser form of aptitude, talent, and genius. {84} Granted that certain ideas are not innate, yet the fact of their ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... full play for a few minutes with this question. Some recluse, preferring the absolute simplicity of nature, or perhaps wearied with the artificialities of society, had secluded himself here with the company of his only daughter. Proficient as a pathfinder, he had easily discovered some other way of provisioning his house from the settlements than by the ordinary trails past Collinson's or Skinner's, which would have betrayed his vicinity. But recluses are not usually ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... service on Sunday the gates of the city are shut, and neither ingress nor egress permitted; fortunately their liturgy (the Calvinistic) is at least one hour shorter than the Anglican. Balls and concerts take place here very often and the young Genevois of both sexes are generally proficient in music. They amuse themselves too in summer with the "tir de l'arc" in common with all the ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... the great. It earns you the love of men and the praise of a thousand years. Yet I hope the angelical Beldame, all-helping, all-hated, has given you her last lessons, and, finding you so striding a proficient, will dismiss you to a hundred editions and the adoration of ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... cultivated involves the capacity, nay, the necessity of art. And still further, that those nations that have been or are preeminent on the earth, are preeminent in art. Nay, more, that a nation cannot attain to and maintain eminence without being proficient in art; and that to abstract from a people its artists were not merely to pluck the flowers from its branches; it were ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... keeping with this we have seen that all were trained as warriors; yet the great principle of the division of labor was at work. Some filled in their leisure during times of peace by acting as traders; others became proficient in some branch of work, such as feather work, or making gold and silver ornaments. Yet under a gentile system of society, persons practising such callings could never become very rich or proficient, simply because, being members of different gentes, there could not be that cooperation ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... passages of my life—a last resource with most people. But at the period to which I allude I was just, as I may say, entering upon life; I had adopted a profession, and—to keep up my character, simultaneously with that profession—the study of a new language; I speedily became a proficient in the one, but ever remained a novice in the other: a novice in the law, but a perfect master in the ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... himself. And G. Reece seemed not at all jubilant at being relieved. Next time Bernice danced near, Warren regarded her intently. Yes, she was pretty, distinctly pretty; and to-night her face seemed really vivacious. She had that look that no woman, however histrionically proficient, can successfully counterfeit—she looked as if she were having a good time. He liked the way she had her hair arranged, wondered if it was brilliantine that made it glisten so. And that dress was becoming—a dark ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... sacred asylum in the world of illustrious Anandayasas of excellent vows and great energy, and which are celebrated over the three worlds. Here also, O lord of men, the illustrious Etavarna and Avavarana versed in the Vedas, learned in Vedic lore, and proficient in the knowledge of Vedic rites, performed meritorious sacrifices, O chief of the Bharata race! There also is Visakhayupa to which, in days of yore, came the gods with Varuna and Indra, and practised ascetic austerities. And therefore is that spot so eminently sacred. Here also ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Scriptures, as I read them to my man Friday, I earnestly endeavoured to make him understand every part of it, as much as lay in my power. He also, on the other hand, by his very serious questions and inquiries, made me a much better proficient in Scripture knowledge, than I should have been by my own private reading and study. I must not omit another thing, proceeding from the experience I had in my retirement: It was that infinite and inexpressible blessing, the knowledge of God through Jesus Christ, which was so plain and easy to be ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... sometimes to glance at Evelyn, and notice how very thin and delicate she looked, and an anxiety which was almost paternal was over him. He used almost to wish that she was not so proficient in her studies. One day, meeting her in the vestibule when no one was in sight, he could not resist the impulse which led him to pat her little, dark, curly head and say, in ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... proficient canoeist, and will adventure himself with confidence in a canoe of the frailest construction, which he will guide in safety, and with surpassing skill. He will dispel the fears of his disquieted and faithless fellow-voyager (for the motion at times in canoeing ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... latter part of the last century there lived a man of science, an eminent proficient in every branch of natural philosophy, who not long before our story opens had made experience of a spiritual affinity more attractive than any chemical one. He had left his laboratory to the care of an assistant, cleared his fine countenance ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... Allied pilot who went far back of the German lines used his glasses diligently, in the endeavor to locate the secret aviation field of the Boche. This would naturally be camouflaged in the customary fashion, at which the Teutons had become almost as proficient as the French; but trust an airman to spy out the lodging ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... celestial dancer). And to Ruru also by his wife Pramadvara, was born a son, whose name was Sunaka. He was, O Saunaka, thy great ancestor exceedingly virtuous in his ways. He was devoted to asceticism, of great reputation, proficient in law, and eminent among those having a knowledge of the Vedas. He was virtuous, truthful, and of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... there's virtue in my heavenly words. Who would not be proficient in this art? How pliant is this Mephistophilis, Full of obedience and humility! Such is the force ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... of noble parents. As a boy he had the advantage of the best schools and teachers that Rome could furnish. Later he studied at Athens, under the greatest Greek masters, and became proficient in the Greek language. According to the common practice among the better classes in Rome, he spent some time in travel to complete his education, visiting Egypt, Asia Minor, and other parts of the known world. But Cicero's education can hardly be said to have been "completed" as ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... them proved a failure. The idea among them seemed to be that each should take some part in amusing the company. One would jump from the back of a bench upon which he had been seated, while others were creeping about the floor; another, who deemed himself a proficient in turning somersaults, would be trying his skill in this way, while his neighbor, equally ambitious, would show the teacher how he could stand on his head. Occasionally they would pause and listen to the singing of a hymn or the reading of a little story; then all would be confusion ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... or medical or one of engineering: How successfully dispose of it? Uniformly, in one way. Those problems are successfully solved, if at all, only when their solution is placed in the hands of the most proficient. Judged by the discussions of to-day, what advance has in politics been effected? Do the Outlook and the Commoner imply progress since the Stagirite? Not to any noticeable extent. We are, on the contrary, fumbling and wallowing about where ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams
... excelled, and showed an extraordinary quickness and agility. Of fencing he was especially fond, and made my two boys proficient in that art; so much so, that when the French came to this country with Monsieur Rochambeau, not one of his officers was superior to my Henry, and he was not the equal of my poor George, who had taken the King's side in our lamentable ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... the bookbinder's house; one day courage came to him, and he entered into a compact with his landlord, whereby he was to pay for instruction by a certain period of unremunerated work after he became proficient. That stage was now approaching. On the whole, he felt much happier than in the time of brooding idleness. He looked forward to the day when he would have a little more money in his pocket, and no longer dread the last fortnight ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... father; "I should like to have you a proficient in all manly accomplishments, only don't be foolhardy and run useless risks. I want my son to be brave, but not rash; ready to meet danger with coolness and courage when duty calls, and to have the proper training to enable him to do so ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... in driving or riding them, don't try to ride or drive any of them on a public way at first, but confine your exercise in horsemanship to your own land until you have acquired ordinary skill in their management; for the law requires every driver or rider on a highway to be reasonably proficient in the care and management of any animal he assumes to ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter
... fatality incurred by those who went into a contest with him. He was famous, too, at athletic sports, but was never known to communicate the secret of the fatal blow; he also taught the sword exercises, at which he was considered to be a proficient. ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... under the gentle guidance of the learned Pasteur, at the classics, literature, and other subjects, while in French he could not fail to become proficient in the company of the talkative Madame and the sprightly Juliette. Nor did he want for relaxation. There were great woods on the hills behind the Maison Blanche, and in these he obtained leave to shoot rabbits, and, horrible to say, foxes. Juliette and he would set out together towards ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... accepted, I am told, even in shorthand, where the pupil acquires the knowledge of a number of signs, only for the purpose of discarding them when he is proficient enough to make an individual system. It is also accepted in music, where only the advanced pianist or singer can afford to play tricks with tempo. And I am sure it should ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... recall images in the various sensory lines; determine in what classes of images you are least proficient and try to ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... spy upon them, it was highly probable he knew English, and if he knew English it was certain the whole of their design was in the Master's knowledge. There was one singularity in the position. If Secundra Dass knew and concealed his knowledge of English, Harris was a proficient in several of the tongues of India, and as his career in that part of the world had been a great deal worse than profligate, he had not thought proper to remark upon the circumstance. Each side had thus a spy-hole on the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Italian, carrying on such conversation as I could with Serafino, and with Mrs. Winchell, who was growing proficient in ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... the great praise of Bernardin de St. Pierre, that coming immediately after Rousseau and Buffon, and being one of the most proficient writers of the same school, he was in no degree their imitator, but perfectly original and new. He intuitively perceived the immensity of the subject he intended to explore, and has told us that no day of his ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... one day be placed like Hal and Ned in a position where they will find it, not merely a matter of entertainment, but exceedingly useful; for trailing is as much an art as is painting or sculpture, and requires the most constant practice to become a proficient in it. ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... or two of the penning of this epistle, Tom realised one of the objects of his young Oxford ambition, and succeeded in embarking in a skiff by himself. He had been such a proficient in all the Rugby games that he started off in the full confidence that, if he could only have a turn or two alone, he should satisfy not only himself but everybody else that he was a heaven-born ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... ignorant about the highest matters? Or is wisdom despised of men and can find no buyers, although cypress wood and marble of Pentelicus are eagerly bought by numerous purchasers? Surely the prudent pilot or the skilful physician, or the artist of any kind who is proficient in his art, is more worth than the things which are especially reckoned among riches; and he who can advise well and prudently for himself and others is able also to sell the product of his art, if ...
— Eryxias • An Imitator of Plato
... tests for the flier—vacuum-chambers, spinning-chairs, co-ordination tests—there need be none of these. The average man in the street, the clerk, the laborer, the mechanic, the salesman, with proper training and interest can be made good, if not highly proficient pilots. If there may be one deduction drawn from the experience of instructors in the Royal Air Force, it is that it is the training, not the individual, that makes ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... circumstances, who, while he was a child, reared him in the midst of vice and license. On this account, and by his own nature, he was quarrelsome and evilly disposed. He would learn no trade, except to commit robberies along the highway, in which he became so proficient, that very soon he had a large following—more than two thousand—of whom he was the acknowledged chief, and came to be feared throughout the whole province where he ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... for his mistrust, - expressed perfect faith in Mr. Fosbrooke's skill - and then lapsed into silent meditation on the various arts and sciences in which the gentlemen of the University of Oxford seemed to be most proficient, and pictured to himself what would be his feelings if he ever came to see Verdant driving a coach! There certainly did not appear to be much probability of such an event; but can any pater familias say what even the most carefully brought up young Hopeful will do when ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... other boys busied themselves in copying what he did. They had seen him make such a stone fireplace before, any way, and some of them had practiced the art in private, being desirous of knowing how to do many of the things the leaders were so proficient in. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... the Anglican Church," by J. H. Parker (1851): "St. Dunstan was not only a patron of the useful and fine arts, but also a great proficient in them himself; and his almost contemporary biographers speak of him as a poet, painter, and musician, and so skilled a worker in metals that he made many of the church vessels in ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... in the affirmative. He had taken riding lessons in the city, and was accustomed to ride, whenever he had a chance, in the environs of the city. He was, in truth, an excellent rider, having taken lessons of an accomplished teacher, who often referred to him as one of the most proficient of his pupils. But when Jasper questioned him he only answered that he rode a little, having ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... visitors, some drawn by curiosity and others by sympathy and good will. The latter were profuse in their attentions. When a lawyer appeared, I related to him the details of our arrest. I did the talking, as Thompson could not speak the language, while I was becoming quite proficient in it. Upon leaving, the lawyer promised to have us free ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... diligent, and her favorite studies were music and poetry. She would spend several hours practicing every day, and her father had the most proficient of masters he could find to teach her the koto (Japanese harp), the art of writing letters and verse. When she was twelve years of age she could play so beautifully that she and her step-mother were summoned to the Palace to ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... was Mr Jay. He was a proficient in his art; and though he might not have been able to jump as high or to spin round on one leg as long as an opera-dancer, he was able to teach us to dance like gentlemen. He was also a professor of fencing ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... driving are accomplishments in which it is very desirable for all ladies and gentlemen to be proficient. To ride well, one must be taught early, and have practice. Like swimming, riding cannot be learned ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... He had known ambition once, it was said, and with reason, for he had studied surgery in Germany for the mere love of the science. After which, making the grand tour in France and Italy, he had taken up that art of being a gentleman in which men became so proficient in my young days. He had learned to speak French like a Parisian, had hobnobbed with wit and wickedness from Versailles to Rome, and then had come back to Annapolis to set the fashions and to spend the fortune his uncle lately had left him. He was our censor of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... who in consequence are invalided home, and those who are separated from the service in the interest of the public good, who return to the United States and get an audience there; while those who successfully adapt themselves to local conditions, display interest in their work and become proficient in it, remain in the islands for long periods during which they are too busy, and too far from home, to make ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... essayists of the two last centuries. He possessed complete sets of the Idler, the Spectator, the Tatler, the Guardian, and the Rambler, and would discourse by hours together on the superiority of such publications to anything which has since been produced in our Edinburghs and Quarterlies. He was proficient in all questions of genealogy, and knew enough of almost every gentleman's family in England to say of what blood and lineage were descended all those who had any claim to be considered as possessors of any such luxuries. For blood and ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... countenance, a most extraordinary one; his manner, a mixture of the hero and the bully, of noble dignity and truculent swagger, as if Ancient Pistol had taken the part of Coriolanus, and had not become proficient wholly in his ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... "work was plenty and friends were easily made." But she had found her father living where she could not and would not live. The friends he had made in America she could not and would not have for hers. So when she had grown proficient enough in the factory, she had gone to live in that loneliest of all ...
— Fireside Stories for Girls in Their Teens • Margaret White Eggleston
... try Latin?" suggested Mark, who was a proficient pupil in that language. "Latin is a very old language. ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood
... things in this life have sometimes preferred; whereof not to be sensible when good and fair in one person meet, argues both a gross and shallow judgment, and withal an ungentle and swainish breast. For by the firm settling of these persuasions, I became, to my best memory, so much a proficient, that if I found those authors anywhere speaking unworthy things of themselves, or unchaste of those names which before they had extolled, this effect it wrought with me,—from that time forward their art I still applauded, but the men I deplored; and above them all, preferred the two famous ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... earless desert, does the beginner pass the excruciating interval of his apprenticeship? We have all heard people learning the piano, the fiddle, and the cornet; but the young of the penny whistler (like that of the salmon) is occult from observation; he is never heard until proficient; and providence (perhaps alarmed by the works of Mr. Mallock) defends human hearing from his first attempts upon the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been considered proficient enough to take an active part in the monthly entertainment, but Flossie's name was one of the first on the list. She played the violin remarkably well, better than almost anybody else at Chessington; ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... with a living. For that reason, he periodically left his tiny log house and packed for some survey expedition, or went down to work for a few months at a sawmill. Capable of most determined labor, wonderfully proficient with his hands, he asked no more from life than a little plain food and indifferent shelter. No luxury that civilization could offer would have tempted him to desert ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... possibility that she and Anne might be the subject of unpleasant comment, Grace made up her mind to enjoy herself. She was fond of dancing, and knew that she would have plenty of invitations to do so. David would look after Anne, who was not yet proficient enough in dancing to venture to try ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... enough after her morning's duties were over, for a tramp along the Panipara Jhil for snipe, the sport Honor most enjoyed and at which she was gradually becoming proficient. She would be all alone, that bright January day, as Tommy, her faithful and devoted lover, was prevented by his duties ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... two years had the assistance of an English clergyman and his wife, named Collison, [Footnote: Mr. Collison was not ordained at the time] who came out from England for the purpose of working in the mission field among the Indians. Mr. Collison is studying the language of the Tsimshean Natives, when proficient in it, which he soon will be, judging from the progress he has already made, he will labour among the ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock
... of the Yellowstone and the Snake. Personally, I knew too little to decide as to the comparative merits of the two arms; but I did know that it was a great deal better to use the arm with which our men were already proficient. They were therefore armed with what might be called their ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... and acrobats of every kind are now so common, that a description of their ordinary performances is unnecessary. They are found on every portion of the globe, some of the most proficient being now seen in China ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... at a young age; in his view it was one of the essentials of education; he had learned it himself at the age of thirteen, and insulted his superior young gentlemen private secretaries by asking them if they knew it. Jane and Johnny, who had been in early youth very proficient at it, had, since they were old enough to know it was a sort of low commercial cunning, the accomplishment of the slave, hidden their knowledge away like a vice. When concealed from observation and pressed for time, they had furtively ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... [Madame de Chatillon, whose deceased husband had been governor to King Charles VIII.] As she was discovered to have rare intellectual gifts and a very keen relish for learning, she was provided with every kind of preceptors, who made her proficient in profane letters, as they were then called. Marguerite learned Latin, Greek, philosophy, and especially theology. "At fifteen years of age," says a contemporary, "the spirit of God began to manifest itself in her eyes, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... advantage. But Graciosa's time was not yet mature in the year of grace 1533, for the girl was not quite sixteen. So Graciosa remained in Balthazar's big cheerless house and was tutored in all needful accomplishments. She was proficient in the making of preserves and unguents, could play the harpsichord and the virginals acceptably, could embroider an altarcloth to admiration, and, in spite of a trivial lameness in walking, could dance a coranto or a saraband against any ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... stewardess went out by the other. In a moment more the lovers were united in a private room. Is it necessary to say in what language the proceedings were opened? Surely not! There is an inarticulate language of the lips in use on these occasions in which we are all proficient, though we sometimes forget it in later life. Natalie seated herself on a locker. The tea, sugar, and spices were at her back, a side of bacon swung over her head, and a net full of lemons dangled before her face. It might not be roomy, but ...
— Miss or Mrs.? • Wilkie Collins
... weeks rolled by, her work was changed, and in addition to other employment, she instructed a number of classes in English, both in the training-school and among the deaconesses. As for herself, she was daily becoming more proficient in German, and in a very short time was able easily to follow the sermon. This was a great enjoyment to her, as she much valued the truly evangelical teaching ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... shoes, plated with iron to preserve them, with a child upon his knee, eating his breakfast. His wife and the remainder of his children were, some of them, employed in waiting upon each other, the rest in teasing and spinning wool, at which trade he is a great proficient; and, moreover, when it is ready for sale, he will lay it upon his back, sixteen or thirty-two pounds' weight, and carry it on foot to the market, ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... in bread making depends on the proper handling of the ingredients. Of course, skill in manipulation is acquired only by constant practice, so that the more opportunity the housewife has to apply her knowledge of the processes, the more proficient will she become in this phase of cookery. Each one of the processes mentioned is here discussed in the order in which it comes in the actual work of bread making, and while the proper consideration should ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... their poor homesick old bones for them when necessary. Monsieur Bergerac, afterward professor in St. Mary's College, Baltimore, was a teacher: another preceptor, M. Michel Martel, an emigre of 1780, was proficient in fifteen languages, five of which he had imparted to the lovely and talented Theodosia Burr. Aaron Burr happened to visit Wilmington when the man who had trained his daughter's intellect was lying in the almshouse, wrecked and paralytic, with the memory of all his many tongues gone, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... born at Durham, England, March 6, 1809. She was highly educated and was proficient in both Greek and Latin. She wrote her first verses at the age of ten, and her first volume of poems was published when she was but seventeen years old. In 1846 she was married to the poet Robert Browning. Her first known works ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various
... this instruction is to teach the soldier how to make effective use of the rifle and bayonet in personal combat; to make him quick and proficient in handling his rifle; to give him an accurate eye and a steady hand; and to give him confidence in the bayonet in offense and defense. When skill in these exercises has been acquired, the rifle will still remain a most formidable weapon at close ...
— Infantry Drill Regulations, United States Army, 1911 - Corrected to April 15, 1917 (Changes Nos. 1 to 19) • United States War Department
... was free enough, but reluctant. Why revive the horrors of that awful night! But he persuaded me, and a month later we were in the same region, and moreover had found old Klaas alive and hearty. John had become proficient in the Bushman and Hottentot tongues, as his brother had been; though where and how he had studied them I never knew. Would he, too, I wondered, try to obtain the Proof, as his poor mad brother had done? And when we first came in contact ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... will improve you so much as playing with good players; never refuse, therefore, when any one offers you odds, to accept them: you cannot expect a proficient to feel much interest in playing with you upon even terms, and as you are sure to derive both amusement and instruction from him, it is but fair that he should name the conditions. It will soon happen that you yourself will be able to ...
— The Blue Book of Chess - Teaching the Rudiments of the Game, and Giving an Analysis - of All the Recognized Openings • Howard Staunton and "Modern Authorities"
... is the difficulty, let us make ourselves equally proficient. The more we are in touch with the so-called combatant ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 13, 1890 • Various
... and anxious to secure work, and secondarily for the reason that skilled labor was not an essential factor. Most of the work is done by machinery and in a short period of time a mechanic of ordinary intelligence will become proficient in running a machine. The necessary trained labor could be secured without difficulty. Numbers of highly trained employes at Government arsenals are now with private arms and ammunition concerns. The labor problem ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... except that of Schalken, was deserted. Gerard Douw was pacing the apartment with the restless step of impatient expectation, every now and then humming a passage from a piece of music which he was himself composing; for, though no great proficient, he admired the art; sometimes pausing to glance over the work of one of his absent pupils, but more frequently placing himself at the window, from whence he might observe the passengers who threaded the obscure by-street in which his ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... practice. He rarely attempted and probably would not have excelled in the lighter lyrical measures. But in the grave music of the various elaborate stanzas in which the Elizabethan poets delighted, and of which the Spenserian, though the crown and flower, is only the most perfect, he was a great proficient, and his couplets and blank verse are not inferior. Some of his single lines have already been quoted, and many more might be excerpted from his work of the best Elizabethan brand in the quieter kind. ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... and railroads constructed. In all these works the Negro did most of the heavy work. In the planting, cultivating and marketing of the crops not only was the Negro the chief dependence, but in the manufacture of tobacco he became a skilled and proficient workman, and in this, up to the present time, in the South, holds the lead in the large ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... of the upstart marquis appeared so firmly rooted, the career before him so splendid, that there were not wanted whisperers who, in addition to his other crimes, ascribed to Roderigo Calderon the assistance of the black art. But the black art in which that subtle courtier was a proficient is one that dispenses with necromancy. It was the art of devoting the highest intellect to the most selfish purposes—an art that thrives tolerably well for a time in the ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... River. On August 26 they were sent to Petersburg to rest. While there he enjoyed the use of the city library. He and his brother and two friends were transferred to the signal corps, which was considered at that time the most efficient in the Southern army, and, becoming soon proficient in the system, attracted the attention of the commanding officer, who formed them into a mounted field squad and attached them to the staff of Major-General French. "Often Lanier and a friend," says the latter officer, "would come to my quarters ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... only looked the more unreal, and more like a combination of pen-wiper and pincushion, until his puffy breast and shoulders seemed to offer a positive invitation to any one who had picked up a pin. But, wonderful!—according to his brief story—he had been so proficient in the goose step that he had been put in uniform already, and allowed certain small privileges,—among them, evidently the present one. The consul smiled and passed on. But it seemed strange to him that Trudschen, who was a ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... that one could learn to use it with a little practice, and he's right. Basically, anyone can use it as soon as he puts it on for the first time. But it's like so many other tools. The more you use it, the more proficient you get with it. And I suspect it has capabilities I haven't ...
— Final Weapon • Everett B. Cole
... Roost"; afterward the name was changed to "Sunnyside," the name by which it is still known. Little by little he bought more land, he planted trees, and cultivated flowers and vegetables. At one time he boasts that he has become so proficient in gardening that he can raise his own fruits and vegetables at a cost to him of little more ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... little more proficient, had in a couple of days made 500 cigarettes. I had undertaken to despatch them, and one morning she came to me with a ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... should not be forgotten how clever people are in regard to affairs which do not concern them, even though they show no particularly sign of acuteness in other matters. This is a kind of algebra in which people are very proficient: give them a single fact to go upon, and they will solve the most complicated problems. So, if you wish to relate some event that happened long ago, without mentioning any names, or otherwise indicating the persons to whom you refer, you should be very ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... in part by women. It is well known that they have, within the past few years, entered the field of artistic bookbinding with the most gratifying success; that they excel in art work in textiles, and are proficient in art work ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... ingenious a draughtswoman, that, like the ancient Mexicans, she sometimes made a hasty sketch with her pencil the means of conveying her ideas, either by direct or emblematical representation. Above all, in the art of ornamental writing, much studied at that period, Fenella was so great a proficient, as to rival the fame of Messrs. Snow, Shelley, and other masters of the pen, whose copybooks, preserved in the libraries of the curious, still show the artists smiling on the frontispiece in all ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... class, the acrobatic dancing class, for a month, because here the students get all sorts of primary acrobatic tricks and gain in strength and flexibility. All dancing is easier to those who take this work. And besides, if you go out and accept an engagement you will be proficient in cartwheels, splits, and many other neat tricks that will be of great service to you. These are stunts that you cannot learn in a theatre; no one has time to teach them to you, nor the necessary equipment or facilities, and you want to be ready when the stage director calls ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... of the learning of Ligeia: it was immense—such as I have never known in woman. In the classical tongues was she deeply proficient, and as far as my own acquaintance extended in regard to the modern dialects of Europe, I have never known her at fault. Indeed upon any theme of the most admired, because simply the most abstruse of the boasted erudition ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... man and many women need an income-producing trade or occupation; hence it is the duty of the schools to provide trade and professional educations (really the same thing under different names). No child should be permitted to leave the schools until he is proficient in some income-giving work. The character of the teaching must be altered to suit the locality, but ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... or fortnight, I think of returning to the Continent till autumn, when I shall bring a horse, and stay the winter at Burnham. I return to many charming women; but no charming woman will return with me. I want to be a proficient in the language, which is my only reason for returning. I hate their country ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... pseudo-hallucinations, as he was able to bring them on and cause their disappearance at will. He was frank in his statements and discussed the various ideas without hesitation. He was inclined to write a great deal, especially poetry of the waste-basket variety, and considered himself quite proficient in this respect. On February 2, 1911, he appeared before the Staff conference where the advisability of granting him parole of the grounds was considered. Upon being refused this privilege he again attempted suicide by making several superficial cuts across the wrists. These ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... the brooding, introspective man, who was destined in the end to be her murderer. As a child, she had been passionately grateful to him; she had learned all she could from the books he gave her to study, and with a quick brain, and a keen sense of observation, she had become a proficient in literature, so much so indeed, that more than one half the Revolutionary treatises and other propaganda which he had sent out to different quarters of the globe, were from her pen. Her one idea had been to please and ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... to send him to Jena for three months to pick up your noble vernacular; and in the meanwhile to continue his Greek and Mathematics, in which the young gentleman is fairly proficient. If you can recommend any Professor under whom he can carry on his studies, it ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... taught her and the other children, for she frequently confounded him in open class by questions which have vexed persons of maturest years. She was taught the harp, the piano, the guitar, and the violin. She was proficient in dancing. Such was her astonishing aptitude in all studies that she says, "I had not a single master who did not appear as much flattered by teaching me as I was grateful for being taught; nor one ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... time required to become proficient in the various occupations is about as follows: 43 per cent. of all the jobs require not over one day of training; 36 per cent. require from one day to one week; 6 per cent. require from one to two weeks; 14 per cent. require from one month to one year; one per cent. require from one ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... more lonely evenings for Alec, when he sat with bowed head beside his table, staring into vacancy. He should have had another promotion in March. Alec felt that he was proficient enough to be advanced, and he told himself bitterly that the reason he was not was because the ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... author has had in mind the needs of young men having no technical instruction who are anxious to become proficient in the art of Plumbing. As a consequence each exercise is minutely described and illustrated; so much so, perhaps, that an experienced mechanic may find it too simple for skilled hands and a mature mind. But the beginner will not find the exercises too ...
— Elements of Plumbing • Samuel Dibble
... day and night, sleeping there. "I became quite valuable to Mr. Walker. After working all day I worked at the office nights as well, for the reason that 'press report' came over one of the wires until 3 A.M., and I would cut in and copy it as well as I could, to become more rapidly proficient. The goal of the rural telegraph operator was to be able to take press. Mr. Walker tried to get my father to apprentice me at $20 per month, but they could not agree. I then applied for a job on the Grand Trunk Railroad as a railway operator, and was given a place, nights, ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... may trust the panegyric of her son, was on the other hand a far less commonplace character. But for her husband's dislike to learning and philosophy she would have become a proficient in both, and in a short period of study she had made a considerable advance. Yet her intellect was less remarkable than the nobility and sweetness of her mind; other mothers loved their sons because their ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... tallish sort of person, moderately homely, and not quite thirty-five. I am strong but not athletic. Whatever physical development I possess was acquired through the ancient and honourable game of golf and in swimming. In both of these sports I am quite proficient. My nose is rather long and inquisitive, and my chin is considered to be singularly firm for one who has no ambition to become a hero. My thatch is abundant and quite black. I understand that my eyes are green when I affect a green tie, light blue when I put on one of that delicate hue, ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... actual, certified reports on file in our office—A. B. C. men got their salary raised as a direct result of becoming more proficient from ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... or Semites—did teach them, was a more orderly way of organizing society and ruling it by means of laws and an established government, and, above all, astronomy and mathematics—sciences in which the Shumiro-Accads were little proficient, while the later and mixed nation, the Chaldeans, attained in them a very high perfection, so that many of their discoveries and the first principles laid down by them have come down to us as finally adopted facts, confirmed by later science. Thus, the division of the year ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... the Emperor, 'is a proficient Queen in the art of man training. My other sister, the Duchess of Parma, is equally scientific in breaking-in horses; for she is constantly in the stables with her grooms, by which she 'grooms' a pretty sum yearly in buying, selling, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... become fairly proficient so that his mentor could turn his attention to other things of interest they happened to see around them as ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... spite of his soaking condition at this moment—an air of much dignity. He had on a Norfolk coat and trousers of obviously English make, though they were none that I had given him. Moreover, when he spoke to me in English, though he was by no means proficient in our language, yet he certainly spoke it much better than ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... certainly essential to him during his early stages of development, exist in all savages with some approach to equality. In the speed of running, in bodily strength, in skill with weapons, in acuteness of vision, or in power of following a trail, all are fairly proficient, and the differences of endowment do not probably exceed the limits of variation in animals above referred to. So, in animal instinct or intelligence, we find the same general level of development. ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... justly refuses him the character of an exact scholar, or technical proficient at any time in either of the ancient literatures. But he freely read in Greek and Latin, as in various modern languages; and in all fields, in the classical as well, his lively faculty of recognition and assimilation had given him large booty in proportion to his labor. One cannot under ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... night, after work was over, the colored people would gather in the little hamlet and march to the music of a drum and fife, and under the command of Nimbus, whose service in the army had made him a tolerable proficient in such tactical movements as pertained to the "school of the company." Very often, until well past midnight the fife and drum, the words of command, and the rumble of marching feet could be heard in the little village. The white people ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... by much as they do with any boy on a farm. Of work there was plenty, but he found time to become a proficient skater, and a strong, sturdy swimmer, to learn and take delight in outdoor sports, all of which helped to build a constitution like iron, and to give him an interest in such things which he has ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... the common course of puerile studies, in which he was no great proficient, was put an apprentice to a brewer, with whom he had lived two years, when his uncle died in the city, and left him a large fortune in the stocks. Dick had for six months before used the company of the lower players, of whom he had learned to scorn a trade, and, being now at ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... languages; to the rules of grammar he entertained a rooted aversion; and at history he was inclined to yawn, except when it happened to touch upon the names and deeds of such men as Vasco di Gama and Columbus. But in geography he was perfect; and in arithmetic and book-keeping he was quite a proficient, to the delight of Mrs Dorothy Grumbit whose household books he summed up; and to the satisfaction of his fast friend, Mr Arthur Jollyboy, whose ledgers he was—in that old gentleman's ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... the opportune arrival of Captain Craigengelt in the moment when they were longing for a third hand to make a party at tredrille, in which, as in all games, whether of chance or skill, that worthy person was a great proficient. ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... self-oblivious patriotism to the scaffold on which perished the friend of his opening manhood, Robert Emmet. Trinity College, Dublin, having been opened to Catholics by the Irish Parliament in 1793, Moore was entered there as a student in the succeeding year. He became more proficient in French and Italian than in the classic languages, and showed no turn for Latin verses. Eventually, his political proclivities, and intimacy with many of the chiefs of opposition, drew down upon him (after various interrogations, in which he honorably refused ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... completely, perfectly, totally, entirely, fully; and this is the sense in which it was used by the early writers of English. It is now often used in the sense of rather; as, "It is quite warm"; "She is quite tall"; "He is quite proficient." Sometimes it is incorrectly used in the sense of considerable; as, quite an amount, quite a number, quite a fortune. Quite, according to good modern usage, may qualify an adjective, but not a noun. "She is quite the lady," is a vile phrase, meaning, "She is ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
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