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More "Curtain" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lane sloped, much as the bottles do, From a house you could descry O'er the garden-wall. Is the curtain blue Or green to ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... from him. He had a great need of solitude. It came to him almost as a shock to realize that things were happening in the world round about him quite as heroic, in the eyes of the High Gods, as the battle between Sypher's Cure and Jebusa Jones's Cuticle Remedy. The curtain of life had been lifted, and a flash of its inner mysteries had been revealed. His eyes still were dazed. But he had received the gift of vision. He had seen beyond doubt or question the heart of Septimus Dix. He knew what he had done, why ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... Quince's presence, she turned the key in the door, and made some affectionate enquiries about me in a whisper; and then she stole to the window and peeped out, standing back some way; after which she came to my bedside, murmured some tender sentences, drew the curtain a little, and making some little fidgety adjustments about the room; among the rest she took the key from the lock, quietly, and put it ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... my eyes, and then I saw, glaring at me through the doorway of the tent, the hideous countenance of a red-skin warrior, horribly covered with paint and decked with coloured feathers. While with his left hand he lifted up the curtain, in his right he grasped his tomahawk, which quivered with his eagerness to ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... nothing of Sextus' doings, although he protects Sextus as far as he can and sees him now and then. Sextus' plan is to keep all three rival factions by the ears, so that if anything should happen—" he nodded toward the curtain, from behind which came the sounds of childish laughter and the crashing voice of Commodus encouraging in some piece of mischief—"they would be all at odds and Pertinax ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... He held aside the curtain for her, and followed her out, with a careless jest. The two who were left heard them laughing as they sauntered away. Olga rose with ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... to individual health; viz., that the husband and wife should habitually occupy separate beds. Such a practice would undoubtedly serve to keep the sexual instincts in abeyance. Separate apartments, or at least the separation of the beds by a curtain, are recommended by some estimable physicians, who suggest that such a plan would enable both parties to conduct their morning ablutions with proper thoroughness and without sacrificing that natural modesty which operates so powerfully as a check upon the excessive indulgence of the ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... no news; then the first fruitless descent; then men went down and brought up heavy shapes rolled in canvas and bore them to the women; and "each morning the Red Cross president, lifting the curtain of the car where he slept, would see at first light the still rows of those muffled figures waiting in the hopeless daybreak." Not yet had the body of the young superintendent been found; yet one might not hope because of that. But when one afternoon ...
— The Courage of the Commonplace • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... it all. An instant and he would be free of all his troubles—but after all that was the weakling's way; he had not altogether forgotten those words spoken so long ago by old Moses.... So much for the pause. Suddenly, one dark February afternoon the curtain was rung up outside Zachary Tan's shop and Peter was whirled into the centre of ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... hiding the dark space beneath the bed. The "high-post bedstead" had long groups of smooth flutes in the upward course of its posts, and no footboard, a plain-sawed headboard and smooth headposts. There must be a long curtain at the head of the bed, which would hide both headboard and plain headposts, and this curtain she meant should have a wide border of crewelwork at the top and bunches of flowers scattered at intervals on ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... must keep it to myself, and never let anybody know it. I suppose other women have had to do the same thing many a time. And some of them, perhaps, grow hard and cold, and say bitter things, and people dislike and avoid them, not knowing that if they lifted up the curtain of their hearts they would see a grave there, in which all their hopes were buried long ago. Well, God knows best, and will do His best for us all. How can I ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... the slightest intention of being present to hear his work. For three days they besieged Ivan with expostulation, incredulity, persuasion. All in vain. When, twenty minutes after the hour on the night named, the curtain rose, disclosing to the chorus a house packed to the doors, the composer's box—reserved for him—contained only the two Rubinsteins, Balakirev, Kashkine, and Laroche. Ostrovsky, the librettist, was behind the scenes, still ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... performed. The family of General Mason remained entirely ignorant of what was transpiring regarding the duel, until his mangled corpse was brought into his dwelling, from which he had so recently gone forth in all the vigor of life and manhood. And here let us drop the curtain, nor intrude on that scene of domestic affliction around the deserted hearth-stone of the bereaved family of ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... talked with fond regret of the splendour of the Republic, and is very angry with Daru for his history. The Hall of the Great Council, containing the portraits of the Doges (and Marino Faliero's black curtain), is splendid, and adorned with paintings of Paul Veronese, Bassano, Tintoret, and Palma Giovane. At twelve o'clock I got into the gondola and left Venice without the least regret or desire to return there. The banks of the Brenta ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... that the poor Welsh puddler once lived, but this figure of the mill-woman cut in korl. I have it here in a corner of my library. I keep it hid behind a curtain,—it is such a rough, ungainly thing. Yet there are about it touches, grand sweeps of outline, that show a master's hand. Sometimes,—to-night, for instance,—the curtain is accidentally drawn back, and I see a bare arm ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... off. We were quite ready to give it a favourable reception. The shops were shut, business abandoned. Many had taken secure places the night before, so as to be in plenty of time. Nearly all were seated expectant long before dawn. The rising sun was to ring the curtain up. It rose. The curtain never stirred. From whom shall we indignant ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... of Fools, 1509, it is stated that at that time damask, satin, and velvet were employed as luxurious materials for the covering of books, and it seems to have been usual to draw a curtain before the case in which they were preserved. Showy or gay bindings were approved, especially where the owner was not a reader, but, to quote the Latin text, was "Viridi ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... him and enjoyed his loveliness!" Then she gazed in his face and said, "O my lord and light of mine eyes, awake from sleep and take thy pleasure in my beauty and grace." And she moved him with her hand; but Maymunah the Jinniyah let down sleep upon him as it were a curtain, and pressed heavily on his head with her wings so that Kamar al-Zaman awoke not. Then Princess Budur shook him with her hands and said, "My life on thee, hearken to me; awake and up from thy sleep and look on the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... refreshment of my memory, in the leading scenes and events of my first winter on the island, giving prominence to the state and changes of the weather, the occurrences among the natives, and the moral, social, and domestic events around me. But the curtain of the world's great drama is now fully raised, by our free commercial and postal union with the region below us; new scenes and topics daily occur, which it would be impossible to note if I tried, and which would be useless if possible. ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... lighthouses, when suddenly they glided into beautiful, clear weather. The scene was phenomenal. Not a speck of fog was to be seen ahead of the vessel, while astern there stood a great black pall, as though one had drawn a curtain ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... figure came along, noiselessly, and placed itself at the window. Charlie gave him but a moment to listen, then he sprang forward, and, with his whole strength, brought his cudgel down upon the man's head. He fell like a stone. Charlie threw open the window, and, as he did so, the curtain was torn back by his father, the sound of the blow and the fall having reached the ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... aside a curtain. We entered the smaller of two lovely drawing rooms lately fitted up. Before us, over the mantelpiece, was suspended a magnificent full length portrait by Gaspar de Crayer of Philip II. of Spain. Just then my head was ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... vast square, in the heart of the city, I perceived a large folding gate, covered with plates of gold, which stood open; a curtain of silk stuff seemed to be drawn before it: a lamp hung over the entrance. After I had surveyed the building, I made no doubt but it was the palace of the prince who reigned over that country: and being much astonished that I had not met with one living creature, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... window, standing a little behind the white curtain, I could see the whole embarkation. There was Mahmoud al Ackbar, looking indeed a little hot, but still going through his work with all that excellence of deportment which had graced him on the preceding evening. ...
— George Walker At Suez • Anthony Trollope
... billows I have been among When they roll'd in mountains dark, And Night her blackest curtain hung Around our heaving bark; But give me, when the storm is fierce, My home and fireside glee, Where winds may howl, but dare not pierce; The land! the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Reuben Dale the injustice to lift the curtain at this critical point in his history. Suffice it to say that he went into that coppice pale and came out red—so red that his handsome sunburned countenance seemed on the point of catching fire. There was a pleased expression on it, however, ...
— The Thorogood Family • R.M. Ballantyne
... it is said Cromwell stabled his horses; but if so, they were remarkably quiet beasts, for tombstones, which form the pavement, are not broken, nor cracked, nor bear any hoof-marks. All around the cloisters, too, the stone tracery that shuts them in like a closed curtain, carefully drawn, remains as it was in the days of the monks, insomuch that it is not easy to get a glimpse of the green enclosure. Probably there used to be painted glass in the larger apertures ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... used with great quaintness by John Bellini in the noble picture of the Brera Gallery; a black screen, with marbled veins, behind the portraits of himself and his brother in the Louvre; a crimson velvet curtain behind the Madonna, in Francia's best picture at Bologna. Where the subject was sacred, and the painter great, this system of pervading light produced pictures of a peculiar and tranquil majesty; where the ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... crowded house; but Webster, particularly obnoxious, at that period, to a large party, having a part in it, a tremendous tumult took place, and it was scarcely heard. I was on the stage, and directed the curtain to be dropped. It has since been frequently acted in, I believe, all the theatres of the United States. A few years since, I observed, in an English magazine, a critique on a drama called 'Pocahontas; or, the Indian Princess,' produced at Drury Lane. From the sketch given, this piece ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker
... reached him. He went cautiously forward. At the bend of an avenue suddenly the whole house confronted him with its dark face; in two upstair-windows only a light was shining. In Lisa's room behind the white curtain a candle was burning, and in Marfa Timofyevna's bedroom a lamp shone with red-fire before the holy picture, and was reflected with equal brilliance on the gold frame. Below, the door on to the balcony gaped wide open. Lavretsky ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... shrugged her shoulders, said something about "la belle nature," and the good taste of Monsieur l'Anglois. The moment the curtain drew up, she told him the names of all the actors and actresses as they appeared—noting the value and celebrity of each. The play was, unfortunately for Ormond, a tragedy; and Le Kain was at Versailles. Ormond thought he understood French pretty well, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... allow him to see any one of his family. It was at night, and during his slumbers, that Lady Armine stole into his room to gaze upon her beloved child; and, if he moved in the slightest degree, faithful to her promise and the injunction of the physician, she instantly glided behind his curtain, or a large Indian screen which she had placed there purposely. Often, indeed, did she remain in this fond lurking-place, silent and trembling, when her child was even awake, listening to every breath, and envying the nurse that might gaze on him ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... not desire the problem play. It demands a play that will end with a curtain definite, convincing. But in the problem plays of the past it finds the material it fain would see applied to a bolder, unequivocal purpose. In the eight years that have elapsed since the production of Pinero's ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... "Don't worry. Is it far, Mr. Harvey? If not, perhaps I can be back to go home with you when the curtain goes down." ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... do I let fall the curtain; when it rises, the world and I shall be two years older, two years wiser, two years better, or ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... not; but, my dear, when young people begin to look upon each other as friends—you see I accent it right—it is very apt to be the overture to a very difficult opera which is as likely to end with the curtain descending to the strains of slow music as any other way. I like to see the young interchanging gifts at holiday times, but I might be allowed to suggest, as the result of the observation of an old man, be careful of what you write in sending them. You have seen pictures ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... administration of justice, through the interposition of the chamberlain as rumour affirmed, the persons who had been imprisoned as accomplices were released from their confinement: Dorus disappeared, and Verissimus kept silence for the future, as if the curtain had dropped and the ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... curtain, the ground of which was orange colour, covered with silks of various hues, faced them at the end of the corridor. Baroudi pulled aside this curtain, pushed back a sliding door of wood that was ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... Corinthian common at the period; much more to the rich fantasies which we have seen at Torcello. The apse itself, to-day (12th September, 1851), is not to be described; for just in front of it, behind the altar, is a magnificent curtain of new red velvet with a gilt edge and two golden tassels, held up in a dainty manner by two angels in the upholsterer's service; and above all, for concentration of effect, a star or sun, some five feet broad, the spikes of which conceal the whole of the figure of the Madonna except the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... her son are living. God be praised! They have not to suffer the fatigues of these rude halting-places. A kitanda—it is a kind of litter of dry grass, suspended to a long bamboo, that two men carry on the shoulder. A stuff curtain covers it over. Mrs. Weldon and her little Jack are in that kitanda. What does Harris and Negoro want to do with them? Those wretches are evidently going to Kazounde. Yes, yes, I shall find them again. Ah! in all this ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... and that as a sign of His mercy He would restore the light. The beautiful miracle went on through its changing phases; and, watching in the darkness, the terrified natives saw the silver edge of the moon appearing again, the curtain that had obscured it gradually rolling away, and land and sea lying visible to them and once more steeped in the serene light which they worshipped. It is likely that Christopher slept more soundly that night than he had slept for many ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... upon the Stage of Time You stand to bow your last adieu; A moment, and the prompter's chime Will ring the curtain down on you. Your mien is sad, your step is slow; You falter as a Sage in pain; Yet turn, Old Year, before you go, And ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... automobiles in the world were gathered together. On the sidewalks, pedestrians, muffled against the nipping chill of the crisp air, hurried to and fro. And, above, that sapphire sky spread a rich velvet curtain which made the tops of the buildings stand out like the white minarets of ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... officer was said to have been struck by a sniper's bullet. Somewhat conspicuously the wounded officer was borne on a litter through the streets, followed by the dead body of his assailant. Very promptly a news curtain was drawn down around the city, cutting it off from all information of the world without. Artillery fire was heard. Presumably this came from the last stand of the Belgian rear guard in a valley of the hilly country between Louvain and Brussels. With sustained optimism to the end, rumor had ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... leathern manufacture cased his ample feet. Enterprise, or the noble glow of his present culinary profession, spread a yet rosier blush over a countenance early tinged by generous libations, and from beneath the curtain of his pallid eyelashes his large and rotund orbs gleamed dazzlingly on the new comers. Such, O reader! was the aspect and the occupation of the venerable man whom we have long since taught thee to admire; such, alas for the mutabilities of earth! was—A new chapter ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... shock chilled the painter's blood, for at the same moment the lady's voice was suddenly audible close to his ear, almost as deep as a man's but not unmelodious, ordering the girls to draw back the curtain as far ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... When the curtain fell he still remained seated. He knew before the second act there was an interminable wait; but he did not want to chance running into Holworthy in the lobby and he told himself it would be rude to abandon Sister Anne. But he now was not so conscious of the imaginary ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... crowned with chaplets of the fresh blossom of the nono or flower-tree (Morinda citrifolia), which the women had gathered in the freshness of the morning dew. On looking round the apartment, though it contained several beds, we found no partition, curtain, or screens; they had not yet been considered necessary. So far, indeed, from concealment being thought of, when we were about to get up, the women, anxious to show their attention, assembled to wish us good morning, ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... on top of the heap of boards. The curtain that separated the two circus compartments was festooned at one side. Just beyond was the orchestra. Andy could look over their heads and past them, with a perfect view of ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... Dexter was concerned, the heavy curtain that fell so suddenly between her and the world was not drawn aside—not uplifted—even for a moment. Her deep seclusion of herself was nun-like. Gradually new objects of interest—new causes of excitement—pressed the thought of her aside, and her name grew a less and less familiar ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... The curtain was drawn aside, the window cautiously raised, and the outline of Edith's beautiful head appeared dark and distinct against the light within. She instantly ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... moccasons, and gave me white wampum, and with that I crossed the lake, and went from town to town, and everywhere I showed the people this,"—and the wrinkled woman extended her hand to me; but, at the instant, Saul lifted the tent-curtain and came in. She hid her hand under her blanket, and, wrapping it closely about her, walked out without a glance to testify that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... some time in bed, and, as every thing was still, Mr. Falkland hoped that he slept; but in that he was mistaken. Presently Mr. Clare threw back the curtain, and looked in the countenance of his friend. "I cannot sleep," said he. "No, if I could sleep, it would be the same thing as to recover; and I am destined to have the worst in ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... my two lovers?" or, in more general terms, "between my characters and the realization of their will?" There is nothing more futile than a play in which we feel that there is no real obstacle to the inevitable happy ending, and that the curtain might just as well fall in the middle of the first act as at the end of the third. Comedies abound (though they reach the stage only by accident) in which the obstacle between Corydon and Phyllis, between Lord Edwin and Lady Angelina, is not even a defect or peculiarity of character, but simply ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... ample range extends, The scale of sensual, mental power ascends. Mark how it mounts, to man's imperial race, From the green myriads in the peopled grass: What modes of sight betwixt each wide extreme, The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam: Of smell, the headlong lioness between And hound sagacious on the tainted green: Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood, To that which warbles through the vernal wood: The spider's touch, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... curt nod. Narcissa lingered in the background, beneath a great oak; her chin was a little lifted with a touch of displeasure; the eyelids drooped over her brown eyes; her hands, with her wonted careless gesture and with a certain mechanical effort to dispel embarrassment, were raised to the curtain of her white sunbonnet, and spread its folds wingwise behind her auburn hair. Sundry acquaintances among the honorary attendants paused to greet her pleasantly as they passed, but old Sneed's disapprobation of a woman's appearance on so public an occasion ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... very loop of the curtain, And the very curve of the vine, Were full of the grace and the meaning Which was ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... and the same fact is true, though in another and a stranger way, of all things in a Japanese home: even such articles of common use as a bronze candlestick, a brass lamp, an iron kettle, a paper lantern, a bamboo curtain, a wooden pillow, a wooden tray, will reveal to educated eyes a sense of beauty and fitness entirely unknown to Western cheap production. And it was especially during the Tokugawa period that this sense of beauty began ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... hankers after matrimony. To preserve her from it, M. de Vaudrey commences a course of delicate attentions, sufficiently marked to prevent her favouring other admirers, but duly regulated by thermometer, and warranted never to rise to marrying point. And the fall of the curtain leaves the humorous old soldier of fifty-five and the vain coquette of fifty, fairly embarked upon the tepid and rose-coloured stream of flirtation; he quizzing her, she admiring him—she thinking of her wedding, he only of her ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... Admiral would be happy to see the officers of the fleet on board his ship that evening. Boats were accordingly sent off from the different vessels, loaded with visitors; and on mounting the gangway, a stage, with a green curtain before it, was discovered upon the quarter-deck. The whole of the deck, from the poop to the mainmast, was hung round with flags, so as to form a moderate-sized theatre; and the carronades were removed from their port-holes, ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... change from the old place as we had known it! Hiram, indeed was gone. The doctor had set out for pastures new. The "Arizona Babe" and "Foxy Grandpa" had departed for fresh fields. Like one who, falling asleep in a theater, awakes to find the curtain down and the spectators gone, so I now looked about the vacant town. The actors had departed, and "the play was ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... to prepare for death. They were to die on June 21st. Among those leaders about a dozen were Brethren. We have arrived at the last act of the tragedy. We have seen the grim drama develop, and when the curtain falls the stage will be covered ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... deathless line as the curtain speech and crawled to my feet. He threw the Mark III file at me and went back to scratching in his papers. Just as I reached the door, he looked up and impaled ...
— The Repairman • Harry Harrison
... the thrill that the appearance of the orchestra produced, followed by the arrival of all the important personages fortunate enough to afford fifty-cent seats, which gave them the security to put off their appearance until the curtain was almost ready to rise. And when the curtain really did rise upon the inevitable spectacle of villagers dancing upon the village green! And Mrs. Robson carefully picked out in the chorus the stout ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... extends across the stage from right to left, about six feet back of the foot-lights. Throughout the text, what goes on in front of this curtain is referred to as the Real-play; what goes on behind the curtain is the Play-play. Upon the sides of the curtain, Right and Left, is painted a representation of an attic room in a tenement house. The curtain becomes thin, practically nothing at center, so ...
— The Pot Boiler • Upton Sinclair
... had from the decks were bound to be disappointing. It was just after daylight. The mist of the night had thickened instead of vanishing. Here and there patchy bits of land could be seen through the haze, but for the most part France was invisible behind a curtain of early winter fog. ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... And, as the curtain of night falls on these ragged ones, scattered now, many of them, to varied homes of vice, and filth, and misery, the heavy eyelids close to open again, perchance, in ecstatic dreams of food, and fun and green fields, fresh air and sunshine, which impress them more or less ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... himself down again, and the old woman would have withdrawn the light. He moved uneasily. "Not that," he murmured,—"light to the last!" and putting forth his wan hand, he drew aside the curtain so that the light might fall full ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in the West, Athanasius was frequently admitted to the Imperial presence; at Capua, Lodi, Milan, Verona, Padua, Aquileia, and Treves. The bishop of the diocese usually assisted at these interviews; the master of the offices stood before the veil or curtain of the sacred apartment; and the uniform moderation of the primate might be attested by these respectable witnesses, to whose evidence he solemnly appeals. [116] Prudence would undoubtedly suggest the mild and respectful ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... abstinence from singing and permanence in this wailing and weeping? Thou art not the first that hath been parted from a beloved!' Wherefore I knew what she suffered for love of me. Then he hung a curtain before her along the gunwale and calling those who ate apart, sat down with them without the curtain; and I enquired concerning them and behold they were his brethren.[FN43] he set before them what they needed of wine and dessert, and they ceased not to press the damsel to sing, till ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... hearth, in his own chair; Tinker takes post beside, with eyes that say, "Master! we've done our business for the day." The kettle sings, the cat in chorus purs, The busy housewife with her tea-things stirs; The door's made fast, the old stuff curtain drawn; How the hail clatters! Let it clatter on. How the wind raves and rattles! What cares he? Safe housed, and warm beneath his own roof-tree, With a wee lassie ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... lain too long in the sun. Probably burn like hell to-night. "Here goes Rachel into the sea." Soft music and a falling curtain. ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... forgiven. The evening was dark and wet, and as he entered the court in which his friends lived, his heart failed him, and he turned back; but, unable to resist the impulse, he again returned, and stole under the window of the room. A rent in the narrow curtain enabled him to see within. His mother sat by the fire, and her countenance was so sad, that he was sure she thought of him; but the room looked so comfortable, and the whole scene was so unlike the place in which he had lately lived, that he could no longer ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... odd crackling, and then a purry little sound as of a kettle singing. These noises came from behind a curtain drawn before a deep bay window. Daisy snatched it back, gave one joyful, "Oh!" and then stood gazing with delight at what ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... long and 15 cm. wide, fixed on two four-wheeled trucks. It was divided by vertical partitions of black cardboard into ten compartments, each slightly wider than the aperture to correspond with the visual angle. A curtain fastened to the back of the car afforded a black background to the compartments. The couplets were supported by being inserted into a groove running the length of the car, 3 cm. from the front. A shutter 2 cm. high also running the length of the ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... tucking it away in an inner pocket of his undress blouse. Then, gathering up the other reports in one hand, he pushed aside the curtain and ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... was meant for an artist, and it is to be hoped that there was one at Tarr Farm to see the curtain of fog slowly lifting from the bright waters of the Creek, and creeping up the bluff beyond it, until it melted into the clear blue sky, and let the sunshine come glancing down the valley, where groups of derricks, long lines of tanks, engine-houses, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... elected major, captain, lieutenants, and ensigns, by the free votes of the whole corps, according to the degrees that we had determined for them. In the doing of this, and the bringing it to pass, my skill and management was greatly approved and extolled by all who had a peep behind the curtain. ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... determined to approach the first bed and trust to the chapter of accidents for the rest. Advancing noiselessly to the side of the couch, I lifted the curtain of dressed buffalo hide. The fire cast a dim light over the face of the sleeper, and, oh, joy, it was the loved features of my wife. I tried to speak, whisper her name; my tongue clove to the roof of my ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... sandhills stretching from the Gonubie Mouth to the Nahoon, with the dark, olive-green boskage that clothed their curves with beauty, and the veil of orange tinted mystery that at dawn hung like a curtain across that region where sea and sky awaited, breathless, the advent of day. I suppose the placid lagoons still mirror the drifting pageants of cloudland, while the purple kingfishers flit from rock to rock, ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... dream often of going to live in an ancient house,—of trying to find in it my room; mosquito netting at the window, not quite tight; from my room into a smaller one a door which I try to fasten but can not because at the bottom it is a swaying curtain, the wall paper loose and a mouse hole near the floor; a long, sunshiny room where I see what appears to be a rat but which becomes a little kitten, weak from long confinement, that follows me from room to room and at last ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... commonly called the young queen, yet an unmarried virgin about forty-six years of age; and had likewise along with her the little daughter of another sister, who was married to Rajah Siack, brother to the king of Johor.[386] After some conference, she let fall the curtain, as a signal for our departure, and it was signified to us that we should come again next day, which we did, and were well entertained. On this occasion twelve women and children danced before the queen, and performed as well as I had ever seen in the Indies. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... back and said, 'Now let the Curtain at the mouth of the Cave, and the Fire at the back of the Cave, and the Milk-pots that stand beside the Fire, remember what my Enemy and the Wife of my Enemy has said.' And he went away through the Wet Wild Woods waving his wild tail and walking by ...
— Just So Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... on the right through dense forests. On the left, flowing through the rolling sand hills, and joining the main river just where the waters fall over a precipice in a cataract of spray, is the Rideau River with its famous falls resembling the white folds of a wind-blown curtain. Then the voyageurs have swept round that wooded cliff known as Parliament Hill, jutting out in the river, and there breaks on view a wall of water hurtling down in shimmering floods at the Chaudiere Falls. The high cliff to the left and countercurrent from the falls swirl the ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... him in the cradle, which stood beside the table. She remained leaning over him for an instant to assure herself that he was asleep; then she let down the curtain in the already darkened room. Then she busied herself with supple and noiseless movements, walking with so light a step that she scarcely touched the floor, in putting away some linen which was on the table. Twice she crossed the room in search of a little missing ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... prescribed by the simplest tactics, and by the simplest common sense, when the enemy is in front. Not a single serious reconnoissance to ascertain the real force of the enemy, to pierce through the curtain behind which the rebels hide their real forces. It must be conceded to the rebel generals that they show great skill in humbugging us. Whenever we try to make a step we are met by a seemingly strong ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... the turbulence increased. The soldiers, stimulated by drink, committed still greater cruelties. Shrieks and shouts continually rent the air. Not daring to go to the door, I peeped under the window curtain. I saw a mob dragging along a number of colored people, each white man, with his musket upraised, threatening instant death if they did not stop their shrieks. Among the prisoners was a respectable old colored minister. They had found a few parcels of shot in ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... big windows, was the rolling prairie, with the touch of early fall on it, sometimes revealed in a light curtain of haze, at which a fellow could gaze and imagine he saw the squaws of the savage tribes gathering the maize for the coming winter's store, while the braves rode off ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... Providence, R. I. The act on ahead of Nat was Professor Woodward's Trained Seals. One afternoon Nat, hearing a noise, looked around and there was one of the seals coming out under the curtain behind him. It took Nat just two jumps to get off the stage. An attendant came out and captured the seal. Nat came back. "Well," he said, scratching his head; "I have followed every animal on earth but a skunk and a lizard, and now I have got that. Humph; Professor Woodward's Trained ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... breeze the next light cloudlet Impels to meet the moon, a man could run That road unto its end, between the hedges, Then comes a cross-road, now a planted field, And then the shadow of the standing corn, At last a garden! There his hand would touch At once a curtain, back of which is all: All kissing, laughing, all the happiness This world can give promiscuously flung About like balls of golden wool, such bliss That but a drop of it on parched lips Suffices to be lighter ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... window, began tying and untying the curtain cord. When Sam, raising his eyes, looked at her, he caught her eyes watching him intently and she smiled, continuing to look at him squarely. It was his eyes ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... will be brief.... God will rend it asunder like a curtain.... Already the messenger is afoot, the bearer of evil tidings, he is running, he is running; his swift footsteps lead towards Jerusalem. Already, already, he is at hand, the messenger of fear, the messenger of terror, already the messenger is ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... or most barbarous nations of ancient or modern days. There sat the inquisitors in a gloomy vaulted chamber—on one side the fearful rack, with grim, savage executioners ready to perform their office, a black curtain only partly concealing other instruments of torture, with hooded familiars standing silently round; while at the table sat two secretaries, ready to note every word uttered by the prisoner, to be wrested, if possible, to his destruction. The only person whose countenance could have been regarded ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... in the east, bathing the countryside in a light which caused trees and hills, fences and bowlders to stand out in soft distinctness. Armitage raised the window curtain and lying with face pressed almost against the pane, watched the ever-changing scenes of a veritable fairyland. He was anything but a snob. He was not lying awake because a few select representatives of the Few Hundred happened to be in his car. Not by ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... at this map that the master of Niss'rosh, the eagle's nest, was peering as the curtain rises on our story. He was half reclining in a big, Chinese bamboo chair, with an attitude of utter and disheartening boredom. His crossed legs were stretched out, one heel digging into the soft pile of the Tabreez rug. Muscular arms ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... he has changed his mind again. He is now going in for amateur theatricals and is using you for a theatre. First thoughtfully draping a little rubber drop curtain across your proscenium arch to keep you from seeing what is going on behind your own scenes, he is setting the stage for the thrilling sawmill scene in Blue Jeans. You can distinctly feel the circular saw at work and you can taste a hod of mortar and a bucket of hot tar and one thing and another ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... small posse of soldiers, we crossed the court to a larger and more handsome square, decorated in Arab style with horseshoe arches and wide colonnades, until at the further end a great curtain of crimson velvet was drawn aside and we found ourselves in a spacious hall, wherein many gorgeously attired persons had assembled and in the centre of which was erected a great canopy of amaranth-coloured ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... fine-looking young man, whom I had never seen before. She asked who my companions were, and I told her they were in the Venetian ambassador's household. She praised their beauty and began to talk to Armelline, who answered well enough till the curtain went up. The young man also complimented her, and after having asked my permission he gave her a large packet of bonbons, telling her to share them with her neighbour. I had guessed him to be a Florentine from his accent, and asked him if the sweets came from the banks of the Arno; ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the brilliant stretches in Auriga and Perseus, and its color, if one may speak of color in connection with such an object, seemed richer than that of the galactic band; but I did not think of it as yellow, although Humboldt has described it as resembling a golden curtain drawn over the stars, and Du Chaillu in Equatorial Africa found it of a bright yellow color. It may vary in color as in conspicuousness. The fascination of that extraordinary sight has never faded from my memory. I turned to regard it again and again, although ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... leading the way toward an inner room, separated from the study by a heavy silken curtain; "but in this apartment we shall certainly be free from interruption. Your face reveals nothing," he continued, in an agitated voice, "but I believe you have brought me ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... young chief and the girl were being conducted to the waggon. All was done so rapidly and silently, that none of the sleeping servants were awakened, and only those who had charge of the cattle could have observed what had happened, while the curtain which closed the front of the waggon was allowed to remain open, so as not to excite the suspicion of the Zulus, should they come ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... some vigorous ivy at the back, the roses spiring up, the honeysuckle creeping in and out among the long strands and holding them together, while the ivy ran rapidly up the back till it could grow no higher, and then began to droop down till it had formed itself into a thick curtain which kept out ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... frowned. "Of course, there are many other aspects. It would mean the end of such things as the Iron Curtain. And also the end of such things as American immigration control. There are many, many ramifications, Don, some of which frighten us. The world would be ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... means of lighting and ventilating the room was a sky-light; but this was now covered with heavy linen, undoubtedly for the purpose of concealing what was passing within from any spy who might be seized with a fancy for a promenade on the roof. At one end of the room, and separated from it by a thick curtain, was an alcove. There were about twenty people, mostly women, in the room. Every one stood silent and motionless, as if awaiting some mysterious event. When the clock struck eleven, a voice from behind the curtain said: "Close ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... to tinkle when I came into the stamp store tinkled in back of the partition when I came in. A moment later the curtain in the doorway of the partition parted, and ...
— The Gallery • Roger Phillips Graham
... lover as all the other Lucias never fail to do till the act is ended, as soon as Edgar throws her from him she remains motionless: she is a statue. A livid smile contracts her features, her haggard eyes are fixed on the table where she signed the fatal contract, and when the curtain falls one sees that madness has already ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... circumference of the principal temple is not very considerable, and the sanctuary, which contains the tooth, is a small chamber hardly twenty feet broad. Within this place all is darkness, as there are no windows, and inside the door, there is a curtain, to prevent the entry of any light. The walls and ceiling are covered with silk tapestry, which, however, has nothing but its antiquity to recommend it. It is true that it was interwoven with gold thread, but it appeared never ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... qualifications as a statesman, there were other objections of a private nature to Lord Bute, which rendered it impossible that he could ostensibly continue to guide the councils of the Ministry, however he might be permitted, or retained, to influence them from behind the curtain. But his short essay at Government had sufficiently disturbed the ancien regime, to leave in the King's hands the power of choosing his Ministers without reference to popular clamour or the will of Parliament. The ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... achievements of Cortes made their impression on the public mind, and gave a new impulse to the spirit of adventure. The southern expeditions became a common topic of speculation among the colonists of Panama. But the region of gold, as it lay behind the mighty curtain of the Cordilleras, was still veiled in obscurity. No idea could be formed of its actual distance; and the hardships and difficulties encountered by the few navigators who had sailed in that direction gave ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... heard in the place. Liquid fire would leap from these caldrons and scatter like bombs below—and men were working there, seeming careless, so that Jurgis caught his breath with fright. Then a whistle would toot, and across the curtain of the theater would come a little engine with a carload of something to be dumped into one of the receptacles; and then another whistle would toot, down by the stage, and another train would back up—and suddenly, without an instant's warning, one ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... and then the fortifications zigzagged up steeply to a monstrous fantastic fortress perched upon a great mountain headland that overhung the town. Behind it the rocks, slashed to and fro with the road to Cettinje, continued to ascend into blue haze, upward and upward until they became a purple curtain that filled half the heavens. The paved still town was squalid by day, but in the evening it became theatrically incredible, with an outdoor cafe amidst flowers and creepers, a Hungarian military band, a rabble of promenaders like a stage chorus ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... the stairs, are small rooms where concierges sit, eternally en camisole, amid vegetables and sewing. The wooden blinds are flung back on the faded yellow walls, revealing a portion of white bed-curtain and a heavy middle-aged woman, en camisole, passing between the cooking stove, in which a rabbit in a tin pail lies steeping, and the men sitting at their trades in the windows. The smell of leather ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... to the queen's chamber, and found her ladies there ready clothed. Jesu mercy, said Sir Meliagrance, what aileth you, madam, that ye sleep thus long? And right therewithal he opened the curtain for to behold her; and then was he ware where she lay, and all the sheet and pillow was bebled with the blood of Sir Launcelot and of his hurt hand. When Sir Meliagrance espied that blood, then he deemed in her that she was false to the king, and that some ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... horse stumble, was sure that the rider fell. The next moment, Colonna's attention was diverted to himself. He was taken prisoner and knew no more of the day's events. The figure of Charles of Burgundy disappears from the view of man. A curtain woven of vague rumour hides the closing ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... down in his chair. He supposed that he had imagined the whole thing. He had not seen anything definitely; he had merely felt that eyes were watching him; what had seemed a figure across deck might have been the oil coat hanging on a peg or a curtain blowing out of a window. The more he thought over the matter the more assured was he that he had allowed his imaginings to make a fool of him. And by the time the sun flooded the decks next morning he was ready to ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... Mrs. Ogilvie and her son ever entered the room without some special reason, and it was too far away from the rest of the house for casual visitors to intrude themselves. The short passage, within the more modern house, which led to the bridge was reached by a door hung with a leather curtain securely arranged to prevent draughts, and no one ever lifted this curtain except those who had a right to the ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... occupied is called the 'kila', or fort, and the wall that surrounds it is thirty feet high, with a round embattled tower at each corner. On the east face is a fine large gateway for the entrance, with a curtain as high as the wall itself. Inside the gate is a piece of ordnance painted red, with the largest calibre I ever saw.[8] This is fired once a year, at the festival ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... last, all is movement and fusion,—all is clothed in flesh and blood. The scene changes, the curtain rises and falls, but the theme is still Man,—his opportunities, his relations, his past, his future, his sex, his pride in himself, his omnivorousness, his "great hands," his yearning heart, his seething brain, ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... standing in a garden of orange-trees, which he determined to reconnoitre. He observed that a window was open and lights were in the room; and he climbed up to the window, and just opened the white curtain and looked in. On a bed lay an elderly person, evidently dying, and by the side of the bed were three priests, one of whom held the crucifix in his hand, another the censer, and a third was sitting at a table with a paper, pen, and ink. As ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... very dark. The wind had the coldness of death in it, and when the lights of Lone Hollow had faded behind the obscurity closed round me like a thick curtain. Still, trusting to an instinctive sense of direction men acquire in that land, I pushed on for the big coulee—one of those deep ravines that fissure the prairie and much resemble a railway cutting. This one was larger than the rest, and Carrington Manor stood near one end of it. The horse ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... to win and secure fame, the curtain is now and then drawn aside, and we see with frightful evidence a boundless ambition and thirst after greatness, regardless of all means and consequences. Thus, in the preface to Machiavelli's Florentine history, in which he blames his predecessors Leonardo, Aretino ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... Puerto. Before we had taken a dozen paces along the aged alley, a faint odour of perfume began to assert itself, and a few seconds later we were standing before a tiny shop, scrupulously sweet and clean to look upon, absurdly suggestive of the patronage of marionettes. A curtain of apple-green canvas was swaying in the low doorway, while an awning of the same stuff guarded a peepshow window, which was barely three feet long and less than one foot high. Herein, ranged behind a ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... until it broke into a snow-storm. A light east wind arose, and the white flakes tossed and whirled, blotting out the lines of the horizon. The heights of Levis melted in the distance, the bed of the river was surmounted by a wall of vapor, and the tall rock of the citadel wavered like a curtain of gauze. What a delicious sense of isolation is produced by an abundant snowfall. It hems you in from all the world. You extend your hand feeling for your neighbor, and you touch nothing but a palpable mist. You raise your face to the heavens, and ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... and Miss Cushman, her understudy, took her place. That night she held her audience with such grasp of intellect and iron will that it forgot the absence of mere dimpled feminine grace. Although poor, friendless, and unknown before, when the curtain fell upon her first performance at the London theater, her reputation was made. In after years, when physicians told her she had a terrible, incurable disease, she flinched not a particle, but quietly said, "I have learned to ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... opera ended amid a real storm of applause; and, with their enthusiasm at the highest pitch, the audience claimed to know the names of the poet and of the composer. After a long pause the curtain rose and the registrar appeared; he made the three customary bows, and in a loud voice named Marsollier as the author and Mehul as the composer ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... in curtain velocity, ease and speed of operation, simplicity of construction, freedom ...
— Bromide Printing and Enlarging • John A. Tennant
... us look at what has been achieved by these men, and many others who followed their banners! The East, formerly a land of dreams, of fables, and fairies, has become to us a land of unmistakable reality; the curtain between the West and the East has been lifted, and our old forgotten home stands before us again in bright colors and definite outlines. Two worlds, separated for thousands of years, have been reunited as by a magic spell, and we feel ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... the Thessalonian play. It was already long past time for the performance to begin. The orchestra finished the overture and waited a few minutes; then began another selection. They played this through, and there was still no indication of the curtain going up. They played a third piece. The house became restless and began to clap for the appearance of the performers. No sign from the stage. Behind the curtain there was pandemonium. When everything was about ready to begin it was discovered that none of the stage lights would ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... lifted the misty curtain and the sun burst on the scene. The valley lay like the smooth ground of some vast arena prepared for a pageant and back of it rose the silent hills, tier on tier like the seats of a mighty amphitheatre. But the men crouching on those seats ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... present so resembled the past, that it seemed over-boldness to anticipate a different complexion for the future. But, amid the unbreathing stillness, the appointed hour arrived. The rigid marble curtain of the old conventionalities was struck asunder by the iron mace of Destiny; and the silence was straightway broken by a roar as if of many waters, by the wrathful shouts of armed millions—the thunderings of cannon, blent with the rattle of musketry—the wild shrieks ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... inquiry lifts the curtain over the closing scene, it was marked by a similar calm forgetfulness of self in the higher interests of his Sovereign, his Country, the British Race. If enemies he had, he forgave them. Attending only to his country's call for volunteers to defend her shores, ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... fall the curtain. The siege of Paris is over; the last balloon has carried our letters through the clouds; the last shot has been fired. The Prussians are in the forts, and the Prussian armies are only not in the streets because they prefer to keep watch and guard outside the vanquished city. What will be the ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... unblinkingly at the sun through a curtain of water, which had already cleaned them of heat and passion, and wisps of red hair drifted ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... be all right," said Prowler, looking about him nervously. "Just wait till you hear 'em announce the refreshments—that always means a rush, you know. Then slip through the crowd and out by that door behind the curtain, and hustle down to the ship just as fast as ever you can lay your ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... The construction of their tents, is well known to be wooden hoops fastened into the ground, and covered with an awning of blankets or canvas, which resembles the tilt of a waggon; the end is closed from the wind by a curtain. This gang was called by the name of Corrie. It consisted of an old man, his wife, a niece, and their son and daughter with ten children; said to be all from Staffordshire. The men ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... architectural meanings, such as must drop gently into the mind one by one, after infinite tranquil contemplation. But even to the hurried and preoccupied traveller the solemn little chapel- yard in the city's heart, in which they stand girdled by their great swaying curtain of linked and twisted iron, is one of the most impressive spots in Italy. Nowhere else is such a wealth of artistic achievement crowded into so narrow a space; nowhere else are the daily comings and goings of men blessed by the presence ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... had turned very quickly, the curtain, had fallen. Maurice came up and helped the Duke to unfasten the girl. She was radiant. He was transformed. Maurice guessed that they had spoken together, but he ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... covered them with short pieces of board, from the ruins of an old cook-house on the island. The job was finished when breakfast was ready, about seven o'clock, including a mast and sail, the latter made of the curtain of a tent. The preparations I had been making had a wonderful effect in warming up the spirits of the boys, considerably depressed by the prospective calamities which were supposed to lie in the wake of the loss of our boats; and at least three quarters of them ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... quite in darkness, the Knight, bare-headed, and rosary in hand, knelt before the dark-robed figure of a confessor, while at a short distance lay, on a couch of deer-skins, the sleeping Leonard Ashton. Before the looped-up curtain that formed the door was Gaston d'Aubricour, on one knee, close to a huge torch of pine-wood fixed in the earth, examining by its flaring smoky light into the state of his master's armour, proving every joint with a small hammer. Near him, Eustace, with the help of John Ingram, ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... other objections of a private nature to Lord Bute, which rendered it impossible that he could ostensibly continue to guide the councils of the Ministry, however he might be permitted, or retained, to influence them from behind the curtain. But his short essay at Government had sufficiently disturbed the ancien regime, to leave in the King's hands the power of choosing his Ministers without reference to popular clamour or the will of Parliament. The consequence was, a rapid series of Ministerial mutations, throughout ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... light of the lamp fell on Molly, standing, pale and open-eyed, beside the curtain ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... my wrongdoing, for what, after all, is Books in General as compared to Mr. Squire's Life and Letters? As a divertissement, compared to a tone poem; as a curtain-raiser to a three-act play. Life and Letters, though not lacking in the lighter touches of Mr. Squire's fancy, contains chapters on Keats, Jane Austen, Anatole France, Walt Whitman, Pope and Rabelais of that more considered character ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... draping the curtain round her shoulders, sontag fashion. "These are fine. Now, see, I'm getting your dress ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... you been all this time?" asked Donna Tullia, as she lifted the curtain and entered the studio. He had kept out of her way during ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... Will Shakespeare the curtain had risen on a new world, a world of giant, of hero, of story, a world of glitter, of pageant, of scarlet and purple and gold. And now henceforth the flagstoned floor about the chimney was a stage ...
— A Warwickshire Lad - The Story of the Boyhood of William Shakespeare • George Madden Martin
... dispersed, gliding over the sea as clouds move in the sky. The king's hungry eye roved over the tossing waters before him, but he saw nothing, yet he could not banish the hope that somewhere behind that moving curtain he would find his refuge. Little by little the horizon came into view; light wreaths of mist, like smoke, still floated about the surface of the water, and in each of them the king thought he recognised the white sails of his vessel. The last gradually ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... wild vines and wild wheat to grow. The Northmen, however, did not follow up their explorations by lasting settlements. Before long all memory of the far western lands faded from the minds of men. The curtain fell on the New World, not again to rise until the time of ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... When the curtain rises, HECTOR ALLEN, a youngish man of forty, with an attractive intellectual face, is seen standing by the dining-table in the inner room, draining his liqueur-glass, with WALTER COZENS to the right of him, lighting a cigarette. WALTER is a few years younger ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... day of the initial performance, five hours before the curtain rose, they were on hand, having taken the best seats in the house. They also took the worst, wherever a hisser might hide. These advocates of liberal art wore coats of green or red or blue, costumes like bullfighters, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... as he touched a rose with a warning glance, for the flower was both an emblem of love and of silence. Did he mean to hint that he recalled the past, or to warn her that someone was near? She leaned from the shadow of the curtain where she sat, and caught a glimpse ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard
... with the swans, having exhausted the lake, the general curiosity reverted to the break in the trees at the farther end—remarked a startlingly artificial object, intruding itself on the scene, in the shape of a large red curtain, which hung between two of the tallest firs, and closed the prospect beyond from view—requested an explanation of the curtain from Julius Delamayn—and received for answer that the mystery should be revealed ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... my senses in one of the bedrooms of the Shantytown Hotel. There was only a partition between that and the other bedrooms of brown cotton cloth, and as I slowly became conscious of things about me, I heard two voices beyond the next curtain talking of my affairs. ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... draught of the dewy morning breeze, so chilly, that she drew her shawl tightly about her; but she knew that this had been an instance of her father's care, and if she wished to make the slightest move, it was only to secure a fuller view of the patient, from whom she was half cut off by a curtain at the foot of the bed. A sort of dread, however, made Mary gaze at everything around her before she brought her eyes upon him—her father's watch on the table, indicating ten minutes to four, the Minster Tower in the rising sunlight—nay, the very furniture of the room, and Dr. May's position, ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the curtain stopped short these discussions, which displayed so much good-nature and perspicacity. But some laid the blame on the influence of that little bigot of a Talbrun, who had secretly blown up the fire of religious ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... began his eulogy of the dead, and his doleful voice, mingled with the sobbing which it was its purpose to stimulate and sustain, rose and fell, seemed to come and go, like the sound of a sullen sea. The gloomy day grew darker as he spoke; a curtain of cloud underspread the sky and a few drops of rain fell audibly. It seemed as if all nature were ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... I used to act when I first fell in love with her. I used to lean over the fence in front of her house and gaze at her shadow on the curtain, afraid to go in. And I act just the same way now when I ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... over! While I am pleading, she places persons to inform her from time to time how I am heard, what applauses I receive, and what success attends the cause. When at any time I recite my works, she conceals herself behind some curtain, and with secret rapture enjoys my praises. She sings my verses to her lyre, with no other master but love, the best instructor, for her guide. Her passion will increase with our days, for it is not my youth nor my person, which time gradually impairs, but my reputation and my glory, of which, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... mother, the little girl—all work in the house—sew, cook, make the cloth, everything! When they make the dinner or the lunch, set the table very nice, put on everything; then run behind the curtain (no have any door on home China), and then the man—the father, the son, the little boy—all come in, sit down, eat the dinner; eat him all up. Pretty soon, by and by, the woman—the mother, the wife, the little girl—come quiet, lift up the curtain. If he all gone, can come ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 06, June, 1884 • Various
... were both of the same medium size, and both had the same plain white curtains, made to draw, if necessary, all round them. The occupied bed was the bed nearest the window. The curtains were all drawn round this, except the half curtain at the bottom, on the side of the bed farthest from the window. Arthur saw the feet of the sleeping man raising the scanty clothes into a sharp little eminence, as if he was lying flat on his back. He took the candle, and advanced softly to draw the curtain—stopped ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... side-scene in our theatre, and Eleanor and Clement laboured day and night with papers of powdered paint, and kettles of hot size, in converting canvas into scenery. "Theatricals" promised to be a lasting fancy; but the next holidays were in fine weather, and we made the drop-curtain into a tent. ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of the Hindu priest, contorted now by his mingled emotions of hate and triumph. For his eyes had lighted on the idol, and it was with a shout of joyful recognition, 'Ganapati! Ganapati!' that the fanatic flung himself upon me, and plunged a dagger into my throat. Then the curtain of black forgetfulness descended and covered ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... wished to get away lest he should be unable to keep up to the level of the scene as he had played it. So thoroughly was his whole attitude consciously theatrical, that he smiled to himself outside the door as the whimsical reflection crossed his mind that he really deserved a call before the curtain. Then he remembered how awkward he should find it to be called back; and with a smile he ran down stairs to get his hat and coat, and hurried out of the house into the ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... they crossed over one another, and fled into the distance until lost to sight. The train windows were shut; silence reigned in the station; from time to time there resounded a violent hammering on the axles; a curtain here or there was raised, and behind the misted glass the dishevelled head ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... production the chief topic of conversation in salons and caffes. No such enthusiasm is manifested in regard to the first representation of a new play; and although the house may be crowded and the author called before the curtain, he may deem himself happy if his drama is played four times during the season; whereas a popular opera will be given night after night for two months. An opera, if it has any merit, may be the means of carrying the fame of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... close to him with a trembling touch and laid his other hand over it. Then she felt the terrible beating of his heart, felt that he was shaking. "Sheila, I love you." She had hidden her face against the curtain, had turned from him. She felt nothing but weariness and shame. She was like a leaden weight tied coldly to his throbbing youth. Her hand under his was hot and lifeless like a scorched rose. "I want you to come away with me from Millings. You can't keep on ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... the whole proceeding seemed nothing really happened, and Linda's fears gradually faded into a mere curiosity and interest. A curtain hung across the door to the rest of the establishment, but it had been brushed partly aside; and she could see, in the compartment they had vacated, another man bending with waving irons over the liberated mass of a woman's hair. He ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... planting of the church; the rush of immigration; the occupation of the continent with Christian institutions by a strange diversity of sects; the great providential preparations as for some "divine event" still hidden behind the curtain that is about to rise on the new century,—and here the story breaks ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... with illustrious Senators and soldiers. Neither could take his part nor fill his position. And the same law of the coming and going of great men is true of our own day. In piping times of peace, genius is not aflame, and true greatness is not apparent; but when the crisis comes, then God lifts the curtain from obscurity, and reveals the man for ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... played the opening bars of the martial music. With the first notes the vast audience rose. I looked up at the row of wounded leaning heavily against the rail, their eyes fixed and staring on the curtain. I noticed the officers in the boxes, their eyes glistening. I heard a convulsive catch in the throats of persons about ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... beside Voltaire. Piron and Gresset are remembered, not by their tragedies, but each by a single comedy. Marmontel's Memoirs live; his tales have a faded glory; as for his tragedies, the ingenious stage asp which hissed as the curtain fell on his Cleopatre, was a sound critic of their mediocrity. Lemierre, with some theatrical talent, wrote ill; as the love of spectacle grew, he permitted his William Tell to shoot the apple, and his widow of Malabar to die in flames ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... quality or length of your part the just plain, bald fact of "acting something" thrills you with nameless joy; if the rattle-to-bang of the ill-treated old overture dances through your blood, and the rolling up of the curtain on the audience at night is to you as the magic blossoming of a mighty flower—if these are the things that you feel, your fate is sealed: Nature is imperious; and through brain, heart, and nerve she cries to you, ACT, ACT, ACT! and act you must! Yes, I know what I have ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... In our democracies, however, it is impossible to believe in the divinity of humbugs, shaky and discredited, like some of our moth-eaten Ministers; we are too close to them, we know their dirty tricks, so they have invented the idea of concealing God behind their drop-curtain; God means the Republic, the Country, Justice, Civilisation; the names are painted up on the outside. Each booth at the fair displays in huge many-coloured posters, the picture of its Beautiful Giantess; millions ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... been spirited secretly out of his reach by her relatives. She recognized him at the same moment, and fainted; but was borne within the grate of the chapel. It was supposed the agitation of the ceremony and the heat of the throng had overcome her. After some time, the curtain which hung within the grate was drawn up: there stood the novice, pale and trembling, surrounded by the abbess and the nuns. The ceremony proceeded; the crown of flowers was taken from her head; she was shorn of her silken tresses, received the black veil, and went passively through the remainder ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... A damask curtain parted, and a woman who looked like an old servant entered the salon, dressed in black, wearing a plain skirt and a poor jacket, after the manner of a peasant woman. Her gray hair was partly concealed by a ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... home what he thinks the public wants. If it is not true, so much the worse for truth. If it falsifies the story, well, a lying story with a "punch" is better than a true one that lacks a fire-spitting climax. The audience which judge a play by the effect of its "curtain," will not complain of a trifling illogicality in narrative, or a little juggling with what might happen if the story were life. Of what the editor wants I find a typical example in a recent number of a popular ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... fled with steps uncertain On a thousand-year long race, But the bellying of the curtain Kept me always in one place; While the tumult rose and maddened To the roar of Earth on fire, Ere it ebbed and sank and saddened To a whisper tense ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... occupy the apartments of the first and second story? No one knows. Never have the most curious of the neighbors discovered the face of a tenant. And yet they are occupied; for often, in the afternoon, a curtain is drawn aside, and a shadow is seen to move. In the evening, lights are noticed within; and sometimes the sound of a cracked ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... been to give a tale, In which (though true, decorum must prevail), The subject from a picture shall arise, That by a curtain's kept from vulgar eyes. My brain must furnish various features new: What's delicate and smart produce to view; By this expressed, and not by t'other said: And all so clear, most easy to be read, By ev'ry fool, without the aid of notes, That idiot's ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... the back of the hall. Grodman had been honored with a seat on the platform, which was accessible by steps on the right and left, but he kept his eye on Denzil. The picture of the poor idealist hung on the wall behind Grodman's head, covered by its curtain of brown holland. There was a subdued buzz of excitement about the hall, which swelled into cheers every now and again as some gentleman known to fame or Bow took his place upon the platform. It was occupied by several local M. P.'s of varying politics, a number of other ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... my words. Her face stiffened. I had the impression of a steel curtain coming down and blotting out the real woman. Without a word, she turned and went swiftly up the stairs, whilst I stood like an idiot gaping ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... marry me; and though I should have been glad if that could be, being alone and motherless I knew not whom to open my mind to, and so I left it as it was, showing him no favour, except when my father, and his too, were from home, to raise the curtain or the lattice a little and let him see me plainly, at which he would show such delight that he seemed as if he were going mad. Meanwhile the time for my father's departure arrived, which he became aware of, but not from me, for I had ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... staler beer, and the thrill that the appearance of the orchestra produced, followed by the arrival of all the important personages fortunate enough to afford fifty-cent seats, which gave them the security to put off their appearance until the curtain was almost ready to rise. And when the curtain really did rise upon the inevitable spectacle of villagers dancing upon the village green! And Mrs. Robson carefully picked out in the chorus the stout sister of a former ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... is the cottage interior, the usual first flat, with the cloak upon the nail, the rosaries of onions, the gun and powder-horn and corner-cupboard; here is the inn (this drama must be nautical, I foresee Captain Luff and Bold Bob Bowsprit) with the red curtain, pipes, spittoons, and eight-day clock; and there again is that impressive dungeon with the chains, which was so dull to colour. England, the hedgerow elms, the thin brick houses, windmills, glimpses of the navigable Thames—England, when at last I came to visit it, was only Skelt made ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... doubtless recollect the thrilling situation upon which we were forced to drop the curtain. Lady BELLEDAME, the hardened Grandmother of Little ELFIE, has, under the influence of that angel-child, just vowed to amend, when, in the person of her minion, MONKSHOOD, she is reminded of the series of atrocious crimes she had been contemplating through his instrumentality. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... night when I was awakened by the grating sound of curtain rings drawn sharply over the metal rods. There sat the Countess at the foot of my bed. The light from a lamp set on my table fell full ...
— The Message • Honore de Balzac
... memory, says, "Thy affection, duty, and love to me was that of a friend as well as of a child." So Wirt writes of his Agnes: "To me she was not only the companion of my studies, but the sweetener of my toils. The painter, it is said, relieved his aching eyes by looking on a curtain of green. My mind, in its hour of deepest fatigue, required no other refreshment than one glance at my beloved child, as she sat beside me." Not many fathers and daughters have been fonder or faster friends than Aaron and Theodosia ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... these two frocks she would wear to the opera that evening. After long hesitation she fixed on the blue. At half-past nine the two sisters ascended the grand staircase at the opera-house. Just as they entered their box the curtain rose on the second scene of the second act of Aida, that ...
— L'Abbe Constantin, Complete • Ludovic Halevy
... Suddenly the curtain of fire lifted and moved forward to the next line of trenches. The German trench that had been the object of the furious bombardment appeared. In many cases it had been simply blown to pieces and no trace of it could ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay
... best she could ask for; but Monte watched it indifferently, resenting the fact that it did hold her attention. Besides, there were too many people all about her here. For two hours and a half it was as if she had gone back into the crowd. He was glad when the final curtain rang down and he was able to take her arm ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... finally decided that the Indians had fled before the arrival of the cavalry, and that none but empty lodges were before us. This conclusion somewhat emboldened as well as accelerated our progress. Arriving at the first lodge, one of our party raised the curtain or mat which served as a door, and the doctor and myself entered. The interior of the lodge was dimly lighted by the dying embers of a small fire built in the centre. All around us were to be seen ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... hoping to develop something useful. And I did develop. On account of my voice being in the right pitch, I expanded into a spieler, a front man, the person who makes the announcements in front of the curtain, that does the ballyhoo for the side show or bawls out, from the center ring, the features of the concert 'that will ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... Purlrose and his men. Yes, we must have pitch torches. I can bring any number of them, for we use them sometimes in the big parts of the mine, where the smoke doesn't matter. Well, it all seems easy enough. I don't believe there'll be a door to batter down, only a curtain across to keep the wind out, and it's a very narrow place, I remember. I went just ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... was full of wooden frames, hanging one behind another, like the leaves of a book. One by one the man lifted them out, swept off the black curtain of bees that clung to them, and showed the clean, ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... away a curtain from Tom's thoughts. Perhaps Rad's cry about "de bomb" aided the young inventor to understand ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... upon the whole structure of the tongue was prodigious, when the Goths poured into Italy, established themselves in the capital, and began to speak and write in a language previously foreign to them. With the close of the reign of Theodoric the curtain ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... And although the | eorum / ut non inveniat homo opus quod highest generality of motion or summary | operatus est Deus ab initio usque ad law of nature God should still reserve | finem. within his own curtain, yet many and noble | are the inferior and secondary operations | Luther Bible: Prediger Salomo 3,11: which are within man's sounding. This is a | Er aber tut alles fein zu seiner Zeit thing which I cannot tell whether I may so | und lt ihr Herz sich ngstigen, wie plainly speak ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... philosopher, "was ever known a quarrel more absurdly founded! The Countess is jealous of one whom her husband probably never will see, nor is there any prospect that the Princess of Zulichium will be hereafter better known, to the modern world, than if the curtain hung before her tomb." ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... creature; he had the bad taste, some few hours since, to doubt whether you were telling him the truth. Don't be afraid, he didn't see me. When he looked up, after settling with the cab driver, I was behind the curtain. I have been behind the curtain once or twice since; and I have seen enough to satisfy me that he and his servant will relieve each other at the window, so as never to lose sight of your house here, night or day. That the parson suspects the real truth is of course impossible. But that he ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... day that was not hers. And yet, she had come into a new world with new ideas and new emotions; if not the best of all possible worlds, it was better than any which had once seemed probable, and she wanted to stay in it. She was dazzled by the splendour of religion. The curtain had risen on the great miracle-play of the soul; she, too, longed to dance in the masque of the virtues and the graces. Every fresh phase of life had presented itself to Audrey in spectacular magnificence; she could not help seeing things so, it was the way her mind worked. The ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... over the barricade and pushed open the door of the dining-room, which was in darkness. But the heavy curtain dividing it from the drawing-room was dragged aside and Daleham appeared in the doorway, outlined against the faint light of a turned-down lamp. Behind him Noreen was rising from ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... was a variety to launch the dingey, and scull along the quays and visit the other yachts, all of them most hospitable to the Rob Roy. I ventured even to go alongside the Turkish vessel, the Dahabeeh, from the Nile, full of specimen "fellahs," all hidden by a curtain of grey calico, except to those who had paid their franc for general entrance. We never observed any visitor actually on board this vessel; indeed, it required a bold inquirer to face those solemn Africans' gaze, as they sat cross-legged ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... with human remains. Canon Billini, in charge of the cathedral, immediately ordered that the opening be closed until the return of the bishop from a pastoral visit to the Cibao. The hole was hidden behind a curtain and no immediate attention given to it. Towards the end of June Mr. Carlos Nouel, a friend of Canon Billini, obtained permission to look in at the box and deciphered a rude inscription reading, "El Almirante D. Luis Colon, Duque de Veragua, Marques de—" "The Admiral Don Louis ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... cabinet—it requires a strong imagination to believe that this is nothing but hallucination. Then, too, we all saw the phenomenon at the same instant, invariably; and if one of us failed to do so, it was always because there was a physical cause for it: the curtain intervened, or something of a similar nature occurred. I need hardly point out that this, in itself—looked at from one point of view—is exceedingly strong evidence that the manifestation was not hallucinatory, but objective. The unexpected nature of ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... on certain fixed days, of demanding penny-collections from house to house (-stipem cogere-). Lastly, the subordinate class of priests and soothsayers, as was reasonable, rendered no service without being paid for it; and beyond doubt the Roman dramatist sketched from life, when in the curtain-conversation between husband and wife he represents the account for pious services as ranking with the accounts for the cook, the nurse, and ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the door, under which a little pool of water was now standing, and leaned out. There seemed to be a curious cessation of immediate sounds. From somewhere straight ahead of him, on the other side of that black velvet curtain of darkness, came the dull booming of the wind, tearing across the face of the marshes; and beyond it, beating time in a rhythmical sullen roar, the rise and fall of the sea upon the shingle. But near at hand, for some reason, there was almost silence. The rain had ceased, ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and may the gates of plenty, honour, and happiness be ever open to thee. May no sorrow distress thy days; may no grief disturb thy nights. May the pillow of peace kiss thy cheek, and the pleasures of imagination attend thy dreams; and when length of years makes thee tired of earthly joys, and the curtain of death gently closes around thy last sleep of human existence, may the Angel of God attend thy bed, and take care that the expiring lamp of life shall not receive one rude blast to ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... you are!" she said, carelessly enough, and turned away to the window, pushing back one heavy curtain with her delicate hand, as if she would ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... but in every respect her good fortunes were but preliminary to something else. Her marriage was but the raising of the curtain—the play had not yet begun. The money she was spending was but an earnest of something more expected. Her newly developed physical beauty, which she could not fail to appreciate, would fade away again, did it not continue to be nourished by that which gave it ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... special theatres in the Hindu Middle Ages, and plays seem to have been performed in the concert-room (Sangita-Cala) of royal palaces. A curtain, divided in the middle, was a necessary part of the stage arrangement; it did not, however, separate the audience from the stage, as in the Roman theatre, but formed the back-ground of the stage. Behind the curtain was the ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... drew a white curtain aside, and a pale, wrinkled face, surrounded by dishevelled iron-gray hair, appeared above the window-sill. "I just wanted to know if you was up. I heard you through the night. Your aunt was ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... walls; shelves were built for the accommodation of many trinkets dear to the feminine heart; a rag carpet covered the centre of the floor; plain but appetising dishes peeked enticingly from behind the paper curtain that now clothed the bare ribs of the cupboard; and a sense of homeliness pervaded the atmosphere. The two men, in their own realm, had found much to occupy them, although for some days the range of their activities was limited owing to the necessity of giving ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... turn fall to fighting each other. The line of Brutus being extinct with the death of Gorboduc, the country falls into anarchy, with rebels, nobles, and a Scottish invader all fighting for the right of succession. The curtain falls upon a scene ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... when he followed the soldiers and prisoners to the throne-room, and bounded up the stairs to look for her father and mother. As she passed the door of the throne-room she heard an unusual noise in it, and running to the king's private entrance, over which hung a heavy curtain, she peeped past the edge of it, and saw, to her amazement, the shepherd and shepherdess standing like culprits before the king and queen, and the same moment heard ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... am writing, I can almost hear the groans of a woman in an adjoining house, who is just on the borders of the drunkard's grave. But, independent of this, it is scarcely possible to dry up the secret elements of this wasting pestilence, without the aid of female influence. I have no doubt, if the curtain were lifted from the domestic history of the past generation, it would appear that most of the intemperate appetites which have exerted such a terrific influence upon society were formed in the nursery. But, besides the formation of early habits, ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... of climbing roses hung like a delicate pink curtain between Helmsley's eyes and the sunshine, while the busy humming of bees in and out the fragrant hearts of the flowers, made a musical monotony of soothing sound. He sat down and surveyed the simple scene with a quiet sense of ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... place, he observed, by a rent in the curtain, Ernanton walking up and down, apparently waiting with ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... West, Athanasius was frequently admitted to the Imperial presence; at Capua, Lodi, Milan, Verona, Padua, Aquileia, and Treves. The bishop of the diocese usually assisted at these interviews; the master of the offices stood before the veil or curtain of the sacred apartment; and the uniform moderation of the primate might be attested by these respectable witnesses, to whose evidence he solemnly appeals. [116] Prudence would undoubtedly suggest the mild ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... virtue of constancy; and yet who can tell what Romeo might have become, after six months' exile in Mantua? Juliet, we know, had taken the place of Rosaline. Might not some fairer and newer star have arisen to eclipse the image of the other? We will not credit the heresy. Far better that the curtain should fall upon the dying lovers, before one shadow of doubt or suspicion of infidelity has arisen to perplex the clear ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... satisfactory output. The cylinders in contact run at different speeds, and, as will be seen in the diagram, the chocolate always clings to the roll which is revolving with the greater velocity, and is delivered from the rolls either as a curtain of chocolate or as a spray of chocolate powder. It is very striking to see the soft chocolate-coloured dough become, after merely passing between the rolls, a dry powder—the explanation is that the sugar having been ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... He rang again, and out of the corner of his eye beheld the curtain pushed a trifle aside, in the window near at hand, where someone looked out from this concealment. For the third time he rang—and at last the door was opened for a distance no more than six inches wide. The face he saw was old ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... first dramatic representation which they have witnessed. The unusual form of the house, filled with such groups {p.073} of crowded spectators, themselves forming an extraordinary spectacle to the eye which has never witnessed it before, yet all intent upon that wide and mystic curtain, whose dusky undulations permit us now and then to discern the momentary glitter of some gaudy form, or the spangles of some sandalled foot, which trips lightly within: Then the light, brilliant as that of day; then the music, which, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... in the shadow of the church, under a black cross, in a bed with a coverlet of grass, for Fanny's bed had been her grandfather's when he was a little baby, and the little girl slept now in the same place as her ancestor. She slept. A cotton curtain with a pattern of roses protected her slumbers. She slept and dreamed. She saw the blue bird flying toward the castle of his love. He looked as beautiful as a star, but she did not expect for a moment to see him perch on her shoulder. She knew she was not a princess, and couldn't ...
— Our Children - Scenes from the Country and the Town • Anatole France
... only I, Tawno," said I, "going to fill the kettle, as it is possible that Miss Berners may arrive this night." "Kos-ko," drawled out Tawno, and replaced the curtain. "Good, do you call it?" said the sharp voice of his wife; "there is no good in the matter; if that young chap were not living with the rawnee in the illegal and uncertificated line, he would not be getting up in the middle of the night to fill her kettles." Passing on, I proceeded ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... and misty, driving sleet came along on the wind, and the horizon was closed in as by a dull curtain. ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... were not real street scenes; the acting of the singers was so fine that one was carried away by it and forgot all about the wooden acting of grand opera customary in America and England; and it was only when the curtain finally rang down that one realized that the flawless performance ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... Theodora, straight browed, most gorgeously arrayed, very beautiful and a little sinister, bearing a golden chalice, attended by her splendid ladies and two priests. Upon the extreme left of the picture stands a little fountain before an open doorway hung with a curtain. ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... cordage. But when we got into a warm room in an excellent hotel, and sat down, comfortably washed and dressed, to an early breakfast (for it was too late to think of going to bed), Deal began to look more cheerful.... Then the fog began to rise like a curtain; and numbers of ships, that we had had no idea were near, appeared. I don't know how many sail the waiter told us were then lying in the Downs. Some of these vessels were of grand size: one was a large Indiaman, just come home; and when the sun shone through the clouds, making silvery pools ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... can hardly stand on one's feet; the grains fly upwards, over the crest of the hill, in blinding showers, mighty squadrons of them careering across the plain below. The landscape is involved in a dim, roseate twilight. But occasionally there comes a sickly radiance from behind the curtain of cloud that glimmers lustreless, like an incandescent lamp seen through a fog: it is the sun shining brightly in the pure regions ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... it is fashionable to drop the curtain over a newly married pair, they recede from the altar; but we cannot but hope our readers may by this time have enough of interest in our little history to wish for a few words on the lot of the personages whose acquaintance they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... is this? A Gothic arch, curtained with violet merino. He draws the curtain. It is an ante-room. One half of it is a bathroom, screened, and paved with encaustic tiles that run up the walls, so you may splash to your heart's content. The rest is a studio, and contains a choice little library of well-bound books in glass cases, a piano-forte, and a harmonium. Severne tried ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... exquisitely frescoed, and ornamented with bas reliefs in plaster. The proscenium is beautifully carved and frescoed, and is adorned with busts of the elder Booth and the proprietor of the theatre; and in the sides before the curtain are arranged six sumptuous private boxes. The curtain is an exquisite landscape. The decoration of the house is not done in the rough scenic style so common in the theatres of the country, but is the perfection of ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... the same time he said to his son Kuntala, "Give him that curtain there!" Kuntala, however, gave the old man only half of the small curtain. When the old man showed the piece to Kumuda, Kumuda angrily asked his son why he had not given his grandfather the whole curtain. Respectfully placing ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... usually dine with their hostess before the opera, they arrive together; the gentlemen assist the ladies to lay off their wraps, one of the gentlemen (whichever is nearest) draws back the curtain dividing the ante-room from the box, and the ladies enter, followed by the gentlemen, the last of whom closes the curtain again. If there are two ladies besides the hostess, the latter places her most distinguished or older guest in the corner nearest ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... sound of a great noise about the house, above which I heard the voice of Marais storming and shouting, and that of my father trying to calm him. Presently Marie entered the room, drawing-to behind her a Kaffir karoos, which served as a curtain, for the door, it will be remembered, had been torn out. Seeing that I was awake and reasonable, she flew to my side with a little cry of joy, and, kneeling down, kissed me on ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... day (during twilight) with light, variable, westerly breezes. All around hangs a heavy curtain of haze, and, although very light snow is falling, overhead is black and clear with stars shining. As soon as the faint noon light fades away the heavy low haze intensifies the darkness and makes one thankful that one has a good firm 'berth' in ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... blue curtain of the sky— With thousand stars inwrought, Hung like a royal canopy With glittering diamonds fraught— Be, Lord, thy temple's outer veil, What splendor ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... sponge-lined, and when the bartenders began to send them in fast, Ikey would lower an asbestos curtain to keep the fumes ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart
... she entered, the curtain of a small gallery which to that time had been closed, was drawn, and the pale face of the cardinal appeared, he being dressed as a Spanish cavalier. His eyes were fixed upon those of the queen, and a smile of terrible joy passed ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Englishman's castle, into which he retired, shutting the outer and inner door upon the enemy, and not quitting his stronghold until after nightfall. Against this outer barrier the foe used to come and knock and curse in vain, while the chevalier peeped at them from behind the little curtain which he had put over the orifice of his letter-box; and had the dismal satisfaction of seeing the faces of furious clerk and fiery dun, as they dashed up against the door and retreated from it. But as they could not be always at his gate, or sleep on his staircase, the enemies of the ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... foreigner are largely concerned with people who have been queer at one time or another, so that one's parentage is often uncertain, though they always pay for it by going off in the head before the final curtain. I mean to say, there is too much neighbourhood scandal ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... not the remotest suspicion of her presence. It is well known that in these places there are private seats for ladies, where they remain screened by a curtain. I returned to St. Sulpice covered with honours and congratulations. It was six in the evening. The moment I returned, a lady was announced, who desired to speak with me. I went to meet her. ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... was open, the tin boxes and the packets on the table, the dam beneath but invisible; for the flame and smoke that rose from the window below came like a fiery curtain between us and the water; and it was through this curtain that we should ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... from house to house (-stipem cogere-). Lastly, the subordinate class of priests and soothsayers, as was reasonable, rendered no service without being paid for it; and beyond doubt the Roman dramatist sketched from life, when in the curtain-conversation between husband and wife he represents the account for pious services as ranking with the accounts for the cook, the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... a little, and peered in. I could see nothing, so dark was the chamber within—but the candles at the further end and a few faces far away. A great curtain, as a wall, shut off ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... listens to their private talk and stands by, panting at all their excesses. Refuge more secret than the best padded boudoir. Formidable entrenchment sacred to all! What jealous lover would dare to lift that curtain of serge behind which are murmured ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... footsteps, slipped into the study and moved stealthily to the fireplace. There was a little heap of ashes in one distinct spot. She gathered them up in her handkerchief and secreted it in her dress. Then she moved hurriedly towards the door and stepped quietly behind the curtain. She stood there listening intently. Craig was doing something in the hall. Even while she was hesitating, the door was opened. He came in and moved towards his master's table. Through a chink in the curtain she could see that he was stooping down, collecting some letters. She stole out, ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to New York, I was taken by Mr. James Gordon Bennett to Niblo's Garden, where I saw "The Black Crook." We witnessed the performance from a private box and my breath was fairly taken away when the curtain went up on the fifth act. Needless to say, that was the first time I had ever witnessed a musical show and I thought it the most wonderful spectacle ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... the "curtain rang down" on Thursday—(this is not, at first sight, a racing expression, but is largely used by sporting writers, as demonstrating the diversified nature of their knowledge!), in time for us to catch the early special for Liverpool ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 23, 1892 • Various
... called me to consult with him on the furnishing of his drawing room. I begin looking about me, and find the walls rather bare; I think such and such a paper might be desirable—perhaps a little fresco here and there on the ceiling—a damask curtain or so at the windows. 'Ah,' says my employer, 'damask curtains, indeed! That's all very fine, but you know I can't afford that kind of thing just now!' 'Yet the world credits you with a splendid income!' 'Ah, yes,' says my friend, 'but do you know, at ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... low. He did not stop: he used to wonder afterward how it would have been if he had, until he came to have a sincere and reverent belief in God as the disposer of human events, the Hand back of the curtain, that guided every step, and kept sacred watch even over ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... wider sense the whole movable structure within the court is called the tabernacle. But in a stricter sense the rich inner curtain is distinguished in the Mosaic description as the tabernacle, while the curtain of goats' hair is called the tent. Exod. 26:1, 7; 36:8, 14, 19. The true meaning of the word rendered in our version badgers is uncertain. Some think that the ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... centre. On the left side is a window. Four large grandfather clocks are standing here and there round the room. In front of the fire is seated a little wee bit of a pigeen. The Stranger is seated by the window, apart from the rest. As the curtain rises one of the clocks strikes two, another strikes eleven, while the others remain silent. It is thus impossible to tell what time it is. The Stranger gazes out of the window. No one speaks. The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... had caught it up and was already at his elbow. His hand was shaking so that the light danced wildly now upon the carpet, now upon the green walls. This room also was deserted. A black gap in the curtain showed where the material had ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... can any man marvel at the play of puppets, that goeth behind the curtain and adviseth well of ...
— "Stops" - Or How to Punctuate. A Practical Handbook for Writers and Students • Paul Allardyce
... pop of a pistol, a puff of blue against the gray, and then the fog reached out and gathered Blink and the sorrel to itself. Only the clatter of galloping hoofs came to them from behind the damp curtain. Andy Green was lying on his back in the grass, his cigarette smoking dully in his fingers, a fast widening red streak ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... Shabluka Cataract and Kerreri, were strong, well-built earthen bastions, with flanking curtains. The central semicircular portion was pierced with three embrasures for ordnance, but so badly made as to admit of but a limited area of fire. Each curtain was loopholed for musketry. There was a deep, wide trench before the works, the parapet of which was about ten feet high, whilst the walls of earth were about three yards in thickness. Despite the skill shown in the construction and placing of the forts, the gunboats, by bringing ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... upon his mother, in an unguarded moment, induced a few thoughtless boys like himself to resist the law. It was an act of folly for which his life paid the penalty. He was shot dead on the spot, and his death proved the signal for raising the gloomy curtain that veils the last of the drama in which ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... gesture, Vance swept aside from the opening in the cabinet the black velvet curtain. "It's a simple affair," he said indifferently. "As you see, it's open at the top and bottom. The medium sits inside on that ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... has been acted more than once, and by different groups of people; sometimes on a stage equipped with footlights, curtain, and scenery; sometimes with barely any of these aids. Practical suggestions as to costumes, scenery, and some simple scenic effects will be found at the end ...
— The Christmas Dinner • Shepherd Knapp
... with funny eyes, and he had a white bulldog at his heels; and all the fellows said he was the one who guarded the outside of the tent when the circus began, and kept the boys from hooking in under the curtain. ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... after all sorts of difficulties, the goal seems in sight, it is found that the hat so ardently sought is precisely the one that has been eaten. The same voyage of discovery is depicted in another equally well-known comedy of Labiche. [Footnote: La Cagnotte.] The curtain rises on an old bachelor and an old maid, acquaintances of long standing, at the moment of enjoying their daily rubber. Each of them, unknown to the other, has applied to the same matrimonial agency. Through innumerable difficulties, one mishap following on the heels of another, they hurry along, ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... a castle of the thirteenth century, consisting of two centre and two corner towers, and a curtain between them, terminating in a rocky promontory. Nothing can be more perfect than the masonry, or more elegant than the few ornaments. The outside is covered with marks of bullets, which appear to have rattled ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... should have seized the occasion to confirm the people in their strong purpose, and elevate their hopes to the level of the great stake at issue, exhausted itself in balancing the routine details of cold and empty statistics. The curtain fell, and nothing remained but grotesque figures, withered garlands, broken panels and desolate dust, which mingled confusedly behind the scene, over the dark, deserted stage. The journals, of course, preserved, for a few days, very glittering reminiscences ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... table, the same tones of question and answer rising to the roof of the court, the same scratching of the Judge's pen, the same ushers going in and out, the same lights kindled at the same hour when there had been any natural light of day, the same foggy curtain outside the great windows when it was foggy, the same rain pattering and dripping when it was rainy, the same footmarks of turnkeys and prisoner day after day on the same sawdust, the same keys locking and unlocking ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... a door to him hidden by a damask curtain, and Quennebert saluting her, opened it and disappeared, leaving Angelique convinced that she had seen the devil in person. Not until the next day did the sight of the displaced partition explain the apparition, but even then so great ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... we came to the fourth, formed by the wall of the church, and heard the voice of a priest behind a curtain that fell down before a door. Lifting it aside, we went in, and found ourselves in the ancient chapter-house, a large interior formed by two great pointed arches crossing one another in a groined roof. The broad spaces of the walls were entirely ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... minutes they sat in silence. It takes a long time to prepare a big rag; the curtain very seldom goes up punctually on the first night; and there had been no dress rehearsal. There was a sound of scuffling from the door in the cloister which led into the School House studies. Then came the tread of measured feet. The door opened, ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... tropical nights.' And once, during a voyage from Lima to Mexico, he saw it in greater magnificence than ever before. 'Long narrow clouds, scattered over the lovely azure of the sky, appeared low down in the horizon, as if in front of a golden curtain, while bright varied tints played from time to time on the higher clouds: it seemed a second sunset. Towards that side of the heavens, the light diffused appeared almost to equal that of the moon in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... a locker, this being nothing more than a series of hooks set into the lower ridge plate of the tent, and on which they were supposed to hang their clothes. A curtain covered this locker or clothes press. There was one washstand for each pair of girls. They provided their own towels. In the case of the Meadow-Brook Girls, their towel rack was empty, but each had a pair ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... utterly alone, in the midst of the great city, and was soon forced to seek companionship with his fellow beings. It was strange, meanwhile, how black the heavens grew, as if the whole sky were sheeted with a curtain of lead. I saw him now constantly in the streets, the rooms, and in the midst of the people: he fascinated my gaze as if I saw only him. Under the calm of a tranquil face, he concealed bitter torment, intense suffering. Evil thoughts are winding through him, like swarms of black and poisonous worms, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... play;" he has poured ridicule upon the so-called "well-made play" which Scribe, Sardou, and their school could concoct for the delight of Frenchmen; he has exposed the insignificance of the accidents and catastrophes, and the coming down of the curtain "on a hero slain or married." He has compelled sensible people to look to the theatre for something more than sentiment, romance, ingenuity; for something relevant to the larger issues of life. That he has done; and it is doubtful if any English-speaking and English-writing man now alive, ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... our readers to some of the characters in this history, we must make them better acquainted with those who have made their appearance, and must introduce those who are still behind the curtain. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... was at length carried out, they had built up with stone and lime the open spaces between several of the rocks; had cased these curtain-walls outside and lined them inside with softer and warmer walls of fells or divots cut from the green sod of the hill; and had covered in the whole as they found it possible—very irregularly no doubt, but smoothing up all the corners and hollows with turf and heather. ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... business, and was gradually sobered by sentiment until it ended on a note of romance or even of pathos. A commonplace little officer, the butt of the mess, becomes by the last act as high and hopeless a lover as Dante. Or a vulgar and violent pork-butcher remembers his own youth before the curtain goes down. The first thing that Bernard Shaw did when he stepped before the footlights was to reverse this process. He resolved to build a play not on pathos, but on bathos. The officer should be heroic first ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... party left the Executive Mansion for the State House, and then went by himself to the State House, and secreted himself in the office of the Secretary of State, where he surreptitiously watched proceedings from behind the sheltering folds of a curtain. ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... line of the apartment where the raised floor terminates, is a gilded rod extending along the ceiling. When the King held his court at Rambouillet, a curtain only separated his chamber and the levee-room. In the latter room are several portraits of the Peers of France during the reign of Louis the Fifteenth, with those ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... have," Deede Dawson answered. "That's why I brought you here. We are safe from eavesdroppers here, in a house you can never tell who is behind a curtain or a door. But then, Ella is a part of my plans, a very important part. Do you remember I told you I might want you to take a second packing-case away from here ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... went out the other girl said. "You have been in a hurry." My cousin was pronounced the best fucker. Whilst the strumming was going on in the parlour, people bought cigars, and tobacco—for it was really sold there,—little did they guess the fun going on behind that rod curtain of the shop-parlour. ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... forbade him to break, enjoining him, moreover, never to call her Mermaid. After little more than a year, however, he grew curious and jealous, and yielded to the temptation of peeping through the curtain of her chamber, where he beheld her swimming about, half woman and half fish. He had broken the condition of his happiness, and might no longer stay with her. Wherefore he was cast up again on the shore where he had first met the mermaid. Rising and going into the village he inquired for ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... pausing a few minutes to sketch an outline of one of the best whom the last generation has produced for a part that, owing to accidents of birth and fortune, young men like Lord Thetford must play on that stage from which the curtain is not yet drawn up. Destined to be the head of a family that unites with princely possessions and a historical name a keen though honourable ambition for political power, Lord Thetford has been care fully educated, especially in the new ideas of his time. His father, though a ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and thinks he does well; everything he does for the child is done against the child, making crooked that which nature has made straight; his teaching poisons the young mind with aged prejudices, drawing evening twilight, like a curtain, over the dawn. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... SERVICE BILL.—CHARLES THE SECOND (WYNDHAM) is following in the footsteps of CHARLES THE FIRST (MATHEWS) and beginning to play several short pieces as one entertainment, instead of giving a three-act farce or comedy, and one brief and unimportant curtain-raiser. At least, he is Trying It On. How far preferable, in the summer and autumn season, would be an evening bill of fare consisting of three entrees, each of a different character, and all of first-rate quality. The patron of the drama ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, May 3, 1890. • Various
... friend as well as of a child." So Wirt writes of his Agnes: "To me she was not only the companion of my studies, but the sweetener of my toils. The painter, it is said, relieved his aching eyes by looking on a curtain of green. My mind, in its hour of deepest fatigue, required no other refreshment than one glance at my beloved child, as she sat beside me." Not many fathers and daughters have been fonder or faster friends ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... orders of Naples and the puppet showman is obliged to have recourse to various stratagems and ingenious sallies to induce a handsome contribution to be made. Sometimes he will say with a very grave face (the curtain being drawn up and no Pulcinello appearing) that he is very sorry there can be no performance this day; for that poor Signor Pulcinello is sick and has no money to pay the Doctor: but that if a quete be made for him, he will get ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... fasten her grip upon the continent. One by one these fortresses rose up in the far wilderness to hem in the English between the sea and the Alleghanies, and one by one they were demolished, as England and her colonies slowly rolled down the curtain on the drama of French dominion in ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... attracted his attention. In the shadows it had the aspect of a squatting monster that bared at him the teeth of its wide mouth. As if he had been awaiting this grotesque effect of challenge, he moved toward the hazy windows, and began to curtain them. ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... which hung over the courtyard. The windows were closed, yet we heard a sort of inarticulate murmur from a great number of voices. The Queen desired me to go and see what it was; I raised the muslin curtain, and perceived more than fifty persons beneath the balcony: this group consisted of women, young and old, perfectly well dressed in the country costume, old chevaliers of St. Louis, young knights ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... forward. "Let be, here's a friend!" Saying nothing, Penfeather thrust away the weapon, and gripping the little man in both hands, with prodigious strength jerked him bodily in through the window; which done, he clapped to the lattice and drawing the curtain stood fronting Godby grim-lipped. ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... though the voice was a shriek. I remember that I broke forth with words like these—"I do not fear, my soul does not fear"; and at the same time I found the strength to rise. Still in that profound gloom I rushed to one of the windows—tore aside the curtain—flung open the shutters; my first thought was—LIGHT.—And when I saw the moon high, clear, and calm, I felt a joy that almost compensated for the previous terror. There was the moon, there was also the light from the gas-lamps in the deserted slumberous street. I turned to look ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... terrific gesture, she not seeming particularly afraid of him, but willing to wait for the better chance she foresaw was coming. Gregor made no explanation or apology, but fastened down the leather window-curtain after her and threw more ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... character to the face. His costume is elegantisimo, white satin and gold,—with a tissue-of-gold doublet, and a cassock of silver-damask, with great black fur collar and lining, against which is relieved the under-dress; he wears his velvet cap and plume, and a deep emerald satin curtain hangs on his right hand. These portraits are just about as wonderful as any you may remember,—in his best style and in capital condition. But I know you would say that the great portrait of Charles on horseback is more grand. It is a sort of heroic poem; he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... marriage was to take place in a few weeks, the captain had at once allotted married quarters to him. Now the deputy sergeant-major was furnishing the rooms and decking the bare walls and windows with touching care. He would arrange and rearrange the furniture, and would drape a curtain a thousand different ways, and yet nothing was ever ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... old, Gisela suddenly stopped short and returned the hard stare of two young women who had drawn apart and were evidently discussing her. That they were Americans Gisela recognized at a glance, but for a moment she saw them through a curtain of fire and smoke and shrieking shells and dying groans, so deep in the background of her memory were the people and events of her merely personal life. One of the young women was very tall, with a slim dashing figure, fine fair hair, keen cold gray eyes, a haughty nostril and upper lip: ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... disarrangements occasioned by its being dwelt in, and all the objects scattered around displayed the taste of her who hallowed it by her presence. I saw her enter with a quick light step—I saw her approach the window—she drew back the curtain yet further, and looked out into the night. Its breezy freshness played among her ringlets, and wafted them from the transparent marble of her brow. She clasped her hands, she raised her eyes to heaven. I heard her voice. Guido! she softly murmured, Mine own Guido! ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... crowded into the seats below, longing for the play to begin. And nowhere were there two merrier or more eager faces than those of Charley and Talbot, pecking now and then at a brown paper cone filled with white grapes, which I held, and waiting for the solemn green curtain to roll up, and disclose the coral ...
— The Little Violinist • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... above men's comprehension, or who were remarkable for any singularity of action were immediately deified. Pythagoras recognized this truth when he shrouded himself in mystery and delivered his lectures from behind a curtain, though to be sure he has come to be regarded as something of a ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... laying down my pen, "you are a prophet in disguise, the prophet sent to lift the curtain which is before my eyes. Which way shall I go to find these real men and real women, to look upon these tragic happenings? For Heaven's sake direct me. Where, for ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the dramatist; and it will train them to a sterner veracity in dealing with human character. It will inhibit that pitiful tendency toward a falsification of the facts of life, which asserts the reform of a character in the twinkling of an eye just before the final fall of the curtain. It will lead to a renunciation of the feeble and summary psychology which permits a man of indurated habits of weakness or of wickedness to transform himself by a single and sudden effort of will. And, on the other hand, it may tempt ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... Twin. "But," she added guardedly, "if it's a curtain-pole, I refuse to bring it out. I offered to bring one out for Lucille Carter last night, because she was in a hurry to give a house-warming, and I speared the conductor with it getting into the car; ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... theatre-goers of Paris thronged from early morning about the doors of the Comedie Francaise; three persons were crushed to death; great ladies dined in the theatre, to keep their places. At half past five the curtain rose. The success was unbounded, in spite of savage criticism, which spared neither the play nor the author.[Footnote: Campan, i. 277. Lomenie, Beaumarchais, ii. 293. Grimm, xiii. 517. La ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... solicit a display of his skill, and to claim from him a knowledge of their future fortunes. Lavallee was once more their spokesman; and the eyes of Luminelli remained fixed upon him until the conclusion of his address, when he turned away abruptly, without vouchsafing any reply, and drew back a curtain behind which was placed a large globe of polished steel. He looked earnestly upon this for a few moments; and then rising, he put on a cap of dark velvet which lay beside him, took Lavallee by the hand, and approaching ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... angle between the plane of the moon's orbit and that of the earth. The plane of the earth's orbit round the sun is called the ecliptic; the plane of the moon's orbit round the earth is inclined to it at a certain angle, which is slowly changing, though in a periodic manner. Imagine a curtain ring bisected by a sheet of paper, and tilted to a certain angle; it may be likened to the moon's orbit, cutting the plane of the ecliptic. The two points at which the plane is cut by the ring are called "nodes"; and these nodes are not stationary, but are slowly regressing, ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... for rest; How sweet, when labors close. To gather round an aching breast The curtain of repose, Stretch the tired limbs, and lay the head Down on our own delightful bed! Night. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... he looks back and flings GIRL a wreath. GIRL smiles and sings Hawaiian song, picks up the wreath and drops face in her hands as Curtain goes down.] ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... artistic expression to pride in Natty Bumppo was wrought in less permanent material. Upon the drop-curtain on the stage of the Village Hall was painted the scene from The Pioneers which represents Leather-Stocking, Judge Temple, and Edwards grouped about a deer that has been shot on the border of the lake. In producing this scene the artist enlarged an illustration drawn by F. O. C. Darley ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... me from the garden at the edge of the woods as I entered the forest. Only this morning, both waving to me as I rode away—and when I returned from the city at noon, they were gone! I looked to the window as I came back. The curtain moved and I thought my boy was hiding, but it was only the wind. We've searched every nook from cellar to attic. His toys were littered about and I fancied I heard his voice everywhere, but no! No—no—and we've been hunting ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... grunt, "Keep to your right,—make way!" When squeezing past the men from the front-line: White faces peered, puffing a point of red; Candles and braziers glinted through the chinks And curtain-flaps of dug-outs; then the gloom Swallowed his sense of sight; he stooped and swore Because a sagging wire had caught his neck. A flare went up; the shining whiteness spread And flickered upward, showing nimble rats, And mounds of glimmering ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... profound repose, and guided by the lamps which burned around the royal quarters, the dauntless Scots reached the tent. Wallace had already laid his hand upon the curtain that was its entrance, when an armed man with a presented pike, demanded, "Who comes here?" the regent's answer laid the interrogator's head at his feet; but the voice had awakened the ever watchful king. Perceiving his own ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... and to believe the wondrous tale while we are reading it; but to have a conjurer brought before us in his conjuring-gown, with his spirits about him, which none but himself and some hundred of favoured spectators before the curtain are supposed to see, involves such a quantity of the hateful incredible, that all our reverence for the author cannot hinder us from perceiving such gross attempts upon the senses to be in the ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... force Barnum to lower the admission fee. This the manager refused to do, and it soon became evident that although they attended the concerts, they were not disposed to show the singer the least favor. It was, therefore, with much inward trepidation that Barnum watched the curtain rise on the first concert. The following account of that concert is taken from the New ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... knees at the foot of the tree and had drawn the matted curtain of creepers aside with one hand while with the other he reached in to the full length of his arm. He had no suspicion of the presence of ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... the wind again passed on with its ominous wail. Nothing whatever could be seen; the pale dim dawn was veiled by mist and snow, and each time the icy particles were driven against the window, they left behind them a thicker curtain of frost. Mrs. Costello went shivering back to bed, but she did not sleep again. She began to consider anxiously how far the boat that was carrying her dead could have come before the storm commenced. At midnight it had been ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... But you timorous virgins form a dreadful chimaera of a husband, as of a creature contrary to that soft, humble, pliant, easy thing, a lover; so guess at plagues in matrimony, in opposition to the pleasures of courtship. Alas! courtship to marriage, is but as the music in the play-house, until the curtain's drawn; but that once up, then ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... victims with heartless unconcern. What will you gain if you unmask the past of Thursday Smith? You uncover a rogue or a man of affairs, and in either case you will lose your pressman. Better leave the curtain drawn, Miss Doyle, and accept Thursday ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... he spoke, and led her through the darkness to a spot of shaded light at the further end of the room, whence too came laughter and voices; then drew back the curtain from a sash door and let ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... lingered, warm and heady; the lights swam, weaving their maze across the shaken pool; on the impending rock, reflections danced like butterflies; and the air was fanned by the waterfall as by a swinging curtain. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... advice of his father, Nigel had changed his sailor costume for the "shore-goin' toggery" in which he had landed on the Keeling Islands, as being more suitable to his new character as a traveller, namely, a white cloth cap with a peak in front and a curtain behind to protect his neck, a light-grey tunic belted at the waist, and a pair of strong canvas trousers. He had also purchased an old-fashioned double-barrelled fowling-piece, muzzle-loading and with ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... night betrayed. In perspective the wall ahead narrowed, until the two sides seemed to come to a point. Back of all was the thick curtain of black that had settled down over the gulf. A little farther out, too, the water seemed rougher. There would seem to be hardly a doubt that a ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... now the nacelle slowed, beside it, in the shadow of its grim blackness. The major got an impression of exceeding richness from the shrouding veil, which he saw to be a huge silken fabric, each side like a vast theater curtain of black, with a two-foot band a little more than half-way up, the whole covered with verses from ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... when the night air was thinning to gray there was a shattering rap on the ground-level window. The half-dressed young factory daughter clambered over the others and ripped down the rain coat that served as a night-time window curtain. Against the square-paned window ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... especially, were attracted to them as to the very source of light, in which he sought to steep himself, as in diluted sunshine fitted to his weakness. He could tell that the sun lay behind that yellower gleam upon one corner of the curtain, and that sufficed to make him feel himself again. Meanwhile a far-off rustle of leaves came upon his listening ear, and against the right-hand window the clean-cut greenish shadow of a lofty bough brought him ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... what that loss was to Mr. Wright, the pen alike fails to portray. If the daughter seemed to her father humanly indispensable, she was to her husband a sort of inseparable part of his being; and over such experiences as these it is the part of delicacy to draw the curtain of silence. But it should be recorded that no trait in Mrs. Wright was more pathetically attractive than her humility. Few disciples ever felt their own nothingness as she did, and it was this ornament of a meek and quiet spirit—the only ornament she wore—that ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... rifle-fire did its worst. The Germans, then, could see now where the attack was concentrated, and promptly proceeded to break it up before it was launched. Shells began to sweep the trench where the Hotwater Guards lay, to batter at their parapet, and to prepare a curtain ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... Lucan, about hating tyrants and dying for freedom, is brought on the stage in a time of great political excitement. Both parties crowd to the theatre. Each affects to consider every line as a compliment to itself, and an attack on its opponents. The curtain falls amidst an unanimous roar of applause. The Whigs of the Kit Cat embrace the author, and assure him that he has rendered an inestimable service to liberty. The Tory secretary of state presents a purse to the chief actor for defending the cause of liberty so well. The history of that night was, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and protects their perception as the curtain of the eagle's eye. Our swifter Americans, when they first deal with English, pronounce them stupid; but, later, do them justice as people who wear well, or hide their strength.—High and low, they are of an unctuous texture.—Their daily feasts argue a savage vigor ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Zambezi forms a natural riverine boundary with Zambia; in full flood (February-April) the massive Victoria Falls on the river forms the world's largest curtain of ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... the symbol of all things earthly, in the midst of a throng of child-angels "hovering in the sunny air, reposing on clouds, or sporting among their silvery folds"—"the apotheosis of womanhood." It is as if an unseen hand had suddenly drawn aside an invisible curtain and we, the children of earth, were for a moment permitted to view the interior of heaven itself. In this vision of a poet, so masterfully painted, the lover ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... in 1205 to consolidate his rule over John Lackland's fresh-won province, had consisted of an almost circular building, with six towers, a demi-tower, and this donjon which was built upon two thick curtain-walls and entirely interrupted the guards' "chemin de ronde," on to which no door opened from its massive circular walls. The Castle of Arques (1038), and of Chateau Guillard (1195), are indeed older than this ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... I?' The curtain rises! 'Oh, this is lovely! It is a new world; how beautifully they sing; and how sweetly and tenderly they speak!' I had eyes for nothing else: I was quite beside myself with joy. 'It is Cinderella,' I cried aloud in my excitement. 'Be quiet,' ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... omnipotent in the wretched creature, and he was attacked by uncontrollable desire for drink. But William's patience was infinite, and his yearning and pity at such times were as sweet and strong as a mother's. Death rung the curtain down in the fall of 1842, on this miserable life with its sorry ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... wake up, Marjorie dear, Come to the window, Your home is quite near. See, we are landed Upon your own roof, Just outside your bedroom. Come, here is the proof— I'll lift up the curtain; There's your little bed, With the cosy white pillow And cover ...
— The Cruise of the Noah's Ark • David Cory
... being in full readiness, the king went in procession, on Sunday the 7th of March 1500, to hear mass at the monastery of Belem, accompanied by the captain-general, whom he took along with himself behind the curtain in the royal seat, to do him the more honour. After mass, Don Diego Ortis, bishop of Viseu, preached a sermon, in which he gave high praise to Cabral for undertaking the command of this expedition, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... plan must provide for getting the needed additions to the fleet with the utmost despatch. Owing to the keen appreciation by European nations of the value of secrecy and despatch, any attack contemplated by one of them on our Atlantic coast would be prepared behind the curtain, and nothing about its preparation would be allowed to be reported to the outside world until after the attacking force had actually sailed. For the force to reach our shores, not more than two weeks would be needed, even if the fleet ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... it was tells me about the picnic, calling me in as I passed their house to show me her natty new riding togs that had just come from the mail-order house. She called from back of a curtain, and when I got into the parlour she had them on, pleased as all get-out. Pretty they was, too—riding breeches and puttees and a man's flannel shirt and a neat-fitting Norfolk jacket, and Stella being a fine, ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... they had gone to sleep. He squinted at their hammocks. Yes, they were occupied. Stepping softly to the hammock of Pedro, he lifted the net to whisper to the occupant. Then he stared, dropped the net, and lifted Lourenco's curtain. A soft, self-derisive chuckle sounded in his throat ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... power. O Te! when Thou hadst opened the course for the inactive and active forces of matter to operate, thy making work went on. Thou didst produce, O Spirit! the sun and moon and five planets, and pure and beautiful was their light. The vault of heaven was spread out like a curtain, and the square earth supported all on it, and all creatures were happy. I, thy servant, presume reverently to thank Thee." Farther on he says: "All the numerous tribes of animated beings are indebted to Thy favor for their ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... ultra-marine blue among the clouds that rolled about them, for the day was showery. We were set down at Rutland, where we passed the night, and the next morning crossed the mountains by the passes of Clarendon and Shrewsbury. The clouds were clinging to the summits, and we travelled under a curtain of mist, upheld on each side by mountain-walls. A young woman of uncommon beauty, whose forefinger on the right hand was dotted all over with punctures of the needle, and who was probably a mantua-maker, took a seat in the coach for a short distance. We made some inquiries about the country, ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... evening came. Langhetti had certainly expected a good house from those happy accidents which had given him the co- operation of the entire musical world and of the press. Yet when he looked out and saw the house that waited for the rising of the curtain he was overwhelmed. ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... who began to entertain a high opinion of the Countess's heart, declared that Mademoiselle d'Estrelles would find in him a friend and father. After which flattering assurance, Madame de la Roche-Jugan seated herself in a solitary corner, behind a curtain, whence they heard sobs and moans issue for a whole hour. She could not even breakfast; happiness had ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and Houston, only to give it up. All night had the snow fallen, in a thick, curtain-like shield which blotted out even the silhouettes of the heaviest pines at the brow of the hill, which piled high upon the ridges, and with great sweeps of the wind drifted every cut of the road to almost unfathomable depths. The horses floundered and plowed about in vain efforts at locomotion, ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... bebes that appear to be born on purpose to poke their fingers in the cages; there is certain also to be another cage hanging above the flowers—one filled with a fresh lettuce or a cabbage leaf. There is usually a snowy curtain, fringed; just at the parting of the draperies an old woman is always seated, with chin and nose-tip meeting, her bent figure rounding over ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... some fault if it disappoints me, as it always does. I can imagine what gaudy hopes by day and by night the bright staging of the potential drama must awaken in the breast of a young girl when she first sees it, and how blank she must feel when the curtain goes down and there has been no play. It was a real anguish to me when that young girl with the Deerings welcomed my wife and me with a hopeful smile, as if we were the dramatis personae, and now the performance must be going to begin. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... commanded Launcelot. "I'll take care of Judy, and you must not get wet," and with a protest Anne disappeared behind the curtain of driving rain. ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... impatience mixed with uneasiness; so that, when he heard the sound of his steps, his pale face took a yet more deathlike tinge, while at the same time he raised himself on his elbow and ordered his three friends to go away. They obeyed at once, and scarcely had they left by one door than the curtain of the other was raised, and the monk, pale, immovable, solemn, appeared on the threshold. When he perceived him, Lorenzo dei Medici, reading in his marble brow the inflexibility of a statue, fell back on his bed, breathing a sigh so profound ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... fate is kinder than you think!" Angelique threw back a rich curtain and disclosed a recess filled with pots of blooming roses and flowers of various hues. "The roses are blooming here which will ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... smoke bordering the thin folds of curtain with rims of faint white spray, glowed on until the clock in St. Anne's down the street struck one with a querulous fashionable beauty. The elevated, half a quiet block away, sounded a rumble of drums—and should he lean from his window he would see the train, like an angry eagle, breasting ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... of this name in the prim, archaic, stuffy little back-parlour, Meshach raised the curtain on the last act of a drama which had slumbered for fifteen years, since the death of William Twemlow, and which the principal actors in it had long thought to be ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... teeth of fishes. Night was coming on, and the tide had risen on the beach; but I hammered lustily, and laid open in the dark red shale a vertebral joint, a rib, and a parallelogramical fragment of solid bone, none of which could have belonged to any fish. It was an interesting moment for the curtain to drop over the promontory of Ru-Stoir; I had thus already found in connection with it well nigh as many reptilian remains as had been found in all Scotland before,—for there could exist no doubt that the bones I laid open were such; and still more interesting discoveries promised to ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... carrion there!" he accused me. He jerked down a section of white curtain and whirled it over the stiffening body. "If you must grieve, grieve for Miss Nefer! Exiled, imprisoned, locked forever in the past, her mind pulsing faintly in the black hole of the dead and gone, yearning for Nirvana yet nursing one lone painful patch of ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... the opening bars of the martial music. With the first notes the vast audience rose. I looked up at the row of wounded leaning heavily against the rail, their eyes fixed and staring on the curtain. I noticed the officers in the boxes, their eyes glistening. I heard a convulsive catch in the throats of persons about me. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Hawkins reluctantly and tenderly laid "Bleak House" on the library table, stretched himself and prepared for bed. The blizzard had not lost any of its fury. Indeed, it seemed to have grown more vicious, more merciless. Hawkins, in his pajamas, lifted the curtain and sought a glimpse of the night and its terrors. The window panes were white with frost. He scraped away the thick layer and peered ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... fashionable. There is just the difference between the Sibleys and the Van Bergs that there is between a drop curtain at a theatre and one of Bierstadt's oil paintings. There is more paint and surface in the former, but truth and genius in the latter. If you prefer paint and surface it is ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... muse; and rightly so, for he finds an employment ornamental and useful still. But solitude does not nurture the virtues of the soul more than physical defect does that of the body, and the withdrawal of the curtain divulges a very sad sight of discontent and envy. Homer himself is recorded to have ejaculated his aspiration to be the favourite of the Greek girls and boys. A poet seer loves no brother near his throne, and is but too apt to complain of non-appreciation of his ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... lookout port framed a picture of awful majesty. The earth was a great disc, faintly luminous in a curtain of dead black. From beyond it, a hidden sun made glorious flame of the disc's entire rim. And, streaming toward it, a straight, blasting line from their stern exhaust, was an ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... (Trachodon annectens) may be known as a dinosaur 'mummy' is that in all the parts of the animal which are preserved (i.e. all except the hind limbs and the tail), the epidermis is shrunken around the limbs, tightly drawn along the bony surfaces, and contracted like a great curtain below the chest area. This condition of the epidermis suggests the following theory of the deposition and preservation of this wonderful specimen, namely: that after dying a natural death the animal was ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... under the skillful application of his instrument; the window sash behind was not even bolted, for the bolt had perished with time and had not been replaced. So far, very good! But at this early point Mike received his first surprise. He could not see much of the interior; a tall curtain stretched across the entire breadth of the window, distant about two feet from it; but he could see that the room ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... choked with sandwich; Virtue never looked so beautiful or Vice so deformed as when we paused, sandwich in hand, to consider what would come of that resolution of Wickedness in boots, to sever Innocence in flowered chintz from Honest Industry in striped stockings. When the curtain fell for the night, we still fell back upon sandwich, to help us through the rain and mire, and home ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... against the almost impenetrable curtain of pre-historic days in all the majesty of their so-called civilization. Huge, massive, aloof from the world, their temples and tombs and ruins remain. Research has given us the key to their religion, so we understand ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... Cf. A. Wallace Rimington. Colour music (OP. CIT.) where experiments are recounted with a colour organ, which gives symphonies of rapidly changing colour without boundaries— except the unavoidable ones of the white curtain on which the colours are reflected.—M.T.H.S.] A never-ending extent of red can only be seen in the mind; when the word red is heard, the colour is evoked without definite boundaries. If such are necessary they have deliberately to be imagined. But such red, as is seen by the mind and not by the ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... to look into the window, and the curtain of that descended relentlessly. The bank had suddenly taken on an aspect of Sabbath blankness. Once more the Colonel rattled the knob, then he turned ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... the girl's trunk. "You can put your trunk right here, I should think; and here is your closet," swinging open the closet door and showing a plenitude of hooks and hangers, "and that is your bathroom." She pushed back the crash curtain that shut off the tiny bathroom, and stood back smiling. But the girl was not looking at her. She had cast one wild look around, and then her eyes had been riveted on the little vase on her bureau, containing a single late rose that Leslie ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... was the throng, so strong the pressure on the doors that the lock gave way and I, with my dollar clutched tightly in my hand, was borne into the hall and half-way up the stairs without touching foot to the floor, and when at last, safe in my balcony seat I waited for the curtain to rise, I had a distinct realization that a shining milestone was about to be established in my ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... of these bundles of dreams sometimes pick out one or two for our own dreaming. They are the fairy tales and the Arabian Nights' entertainments of science. But if the reader is stubbornly mathematical and logical, he will only be holding up a great torch against the muslin curtain, upon which the fantastic shadows playing upon it must vanish at the instant. It is an amusement which can only take place by carefully keeping ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... The curtain will rise at 7 o'clock Tickets at three quarters of a dollar each to be had at Mr. Suter's and Mrs. White's Taverns and at this ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... the picture she beholds, And spots it o'er with artificial molds; 60 Her countenance complete, the beaux she warms With looks not hers: and, spite of nature, charms. Thus artfully their persons they disguise, Till the last flourish bids the curtain rise. The prince then enters on the stage in state; Behind, a guard of candle-snuffers wait: There swoln with empire, terrible and fierce, He shakes the dome, and tears his lungs with verse: His ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... noticed the evening before—was adjusting a wig behind the curtain of his section. He looked when he was completely dressed rather a well-preserved person; and Helen was impressed with the thought that he must still feel young to wish ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... asunder, in one of the houses, were Natchkoa and Matseeta. Mr Webber's view of the inside of a Nootka house, in which these images are represented, conveys a more perfect idea of them than any description. A mat, by way of curtain, for the most part, hung before them, which the natives were not willing, at all times, to remove; and when they did unveil them, they seemed to speak of them in a very mysterious manner. It should seem, that they are at times accustomed to make offerings to them; if we can ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... optical communication proposed by Capt. Gaumet, and which he names the Telelogue, is based upon the visibility of colored or luminous objects, and upon the possibility of piercing the opaque curtain formed by the atmosphere between the observer's eye and a signal, by utilizing the difference in brightness that exists between such objects and the atmosphere. It is a question, then, of giving such difference in intensity its ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... he learned his lesson. It is hard for us to realize how great a novelty such simplicity was in John's day, or how much originality it required to attain to this discipleship of the prophets. From the time when the curtain rises on the later history of Israel in the days of the Maccabean struggle to the coming of that "voice crying in the wilderness," Israel had listened in vain for a prophet who could speak God's will with authority. The last thing that people expected when John came ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... Monsieur Perrichon." Although probably not every one in the audience understood all the speeches, the play went off well, for the plot is such that it is easily comprehended through the acting; also to aid the audience a short synopsis was read in English before the curtain rose, by Shirley Woodward, who looked the part ...
— The 1926 Tatler • Various
... these preparations outwardly to win and secure fame, the curtain is now and then drawn aside, and we see with frightful evidence a boundless ambition and thirst after greatness, regardless of all means and consequences. Thus, in the preface to Machiavelli's Florentine history, in which he blames his predecessors Leonardo, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... generous friend, but the rabble declared these two were the worst of all, and under this pressure Palma yielded. It was the last terrible scene of this act in the life-drama we are following. The lights were out, the curtain down. Military expeditions were sent to avenge the massacre, but they might as well have chased the stars. The missions on the Colorado were ended. Never again was an attempt made to found one. The desert relapsed into its former complete subjection to the native tribes, ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... sought Ingeborg in the grove of Balder. Most beautiful was this temple of the sun-god, and here the sunshine seemed lovelier than in other groves. The flowers glowed in the friendly rays and seemed more beautiful. At night, when evening drew the rosy curtain, the brooks and breezes whispered softly to one another and the stars gleamed like pearls upon the ...
— Northland Heroes • Florence Holbrook
... pictures. The ball-room is resplendent with the rich apparel of those who, on either side of the white, glistening boards, await the signal from the orchestra. The footlights of the theatre flash up; the bell rings, and the curtain rises; and out from the gorgeous scenery glide the actors, greeted with the vociferation of the expectant multitudes. Concert-halls are lifted into enchantment with the warble of one songstress, or swept out on a sea of ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... clean people, but Gavotte is the cleanest man I ever saw. The cabin floor was so white I hated to step upon it. The windows shone, and at each there was a calico curtain, blue-and-white check, unironed but newly washed. In one window was an old brown pitcher, cracked and nicked, filled with thistles. I never thought them pretty before, but the pearly pink and the silvery green were so pretty and looked so clean that they had a new beauty. Above ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... in a low and soothing tone. "Far be it from me to start anything in your family, but if I were you, I would never go back there to serve a life sentence in one of those lime-kilns, with a curtain over my face. You are now at the spot where woman is real superintendent of the works, and this is where you want to camp for the rest ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... to me than it really was, by contrast with all the after-years. For then the curtain of the future was as impenetrable to me as to other children: I had all their delight in the present hour, their sweet indefinite hopes for the morrow; and I had a tender mother: even now, after the dreary lapse of long years, a slight trace ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... best to make the room look pleasant and inviting to the little stranger. In fact, before she was through with the work she became really very much interested in it. She had put a clean white quilt upon the bed, and looped up the curtain with a handsome crimson ribbon, taken from the stock in the wardrobe. She had swept and dusted every corner and crevice; she had displayed all her ornaments to the best advantage, and put fresh cologne in the bottles. She had even brought from some sanctum, where it was folded away ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... under the mosquito curtain. It was very still, breathless, hot! The venomous insects were thick;—they filled the room with a continuous ebullient sound, as if invisible kettles were boiling overhead. A sign of storm.... Still, it was strange!—he could not ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... daughter Vesta, and Lester Kane, the man who makes and mars her—all these are drawn with infinite painstaking, and in every one of them there is the blood of life. But it is Jennie that dominates the drama from curtain to curtain. Not an event is unrelated to her; not a climax fails to make clearer the struggles going on ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... more Zora slipped in every day and performed the little tasks that Miss Smith laid out: she sorted papers, dusted the bureau, hung a curtain; she did not do the things very well, and she broke some china, but she worked earnestly and quickly, and there was no thought of pay. Then, too, did not Bles praise her with a happy smile, as together, day after day, they stood and watched the black dirt where ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... saw where it was that Zoraida was conducting him. He remembered the dim ante-room in which they paused a moment while Zoraida fastened the door behind them; then, the curtain thrown aside, they were again in that barbaric, tapestry-hung chamber in which, the first night here, he had been brought before her. As before the ruby upon the thin crystal stem shone ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... but one visitor after the last curtain has been drawn, a strange bird with a harsh yet melancholy note, that reminds me of the night-jar of the fen lands in our own country. The hills make a semicircle round the camp, and the visitor seems to arrive at the corner nearest Spartel about one o'clock ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... "The way of safety we have well considered, and will teach thee. Take a sharp knife, and hide it in that part of the couch where thou art wont to lie: take also a lamp filled with oil, and set it Privily behind the curtain. And when he shall have drawn up his coils into the accustomed place, and thou hearest him breathe in sleep, slip then from his side and discover the lamp, and, knife in hand, put forth thy strength, and strike off the serpent's head." And so ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... again and again sing: BIBAMUS! For joy through a wide-open portal it guides, Bright glitter the clouds, as the curtain divides, An a form, a divine one, to greet us ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... morning, about nine A. M., Neptune hailed the ship again, when he was invited on board (from the head). On the fore-part of the gang-way and after-part of the long-boat, a boom was placed across, and a tarpauling was hung in form of a curtain, so that when they were in readiness they took it down, and the procession moved on towards the cuddy, twelve of the officers walking in the front, two by two with staves (broomsticks); next followed Neptune's car, (a grating with a chair covered with sheep skins) ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... disguise The secret of self-sacrifice. O heart sore-tried! thou hast the best That Heaven itself could give thee,—rest, Rest from all bitter thoughts and things! How many a poor one's blessing went With thee beneath the low green tent Whose curtain never ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... red and angry. The night came on dark and howling. No moon. A murky sky, like a black bellying curtain above, and huge ebony waves, that in the appalling blackness seemed all crested with devouring fire, hemmed in the tossing boat, and growled, and snarled, and raged ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... doubtful claim to satire, but the substance of satire is present in the Old Comedy, and the form seems to have existed in writings now lost. There are even one or two genres, such as the imaginary speech, which Greece invented and which are not, fortunately, found in modern literature. When the curtain rose on Homer, European literature did not exist: long before it falls on the late Byzantines, the lines were laid on which it has moved up to our own day. This is the entire work of a single people, politically ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... he rose, and, as if in fear of his own second thoughts, he traversed the hall with hasty strides to the interior of the mansion. He ascended a flight of steps, and, drawing aside a curtain suspended between two columns, Antagoras, who ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... I expected," said Bertram, wiping his heated brow on the window curtain. "You have been ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... this was now covered with heavy linen, undoubtedly for the purpose of concealing what was passing within from any spy who might be seized with a fancy for a promenade on the roof. At one end of the room, and separated from it by a thick curtain, was an alcove. There were about twenty people, mostly women, in the room. Every one stood silent and motionless, as if awaiting some mysterious event. When the clock struck eleven, a voice from behind the curtain said: "Close ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... development of ancient ideas. Think only of this one fact, which no one would now venture to doubt, that the supreme deity of the Greeks, the Romans, the Germans, is called by the same name as the supreme deity of the earliest Aryan settlers in India. Does not this one fact draw away the curtain from the dark ages of antiquity, and open before our eyes an horizon which we can hardly measure by years? The Greek Zeus is the same word as the Latin Ju in Jupiter, as the German Tiu; and all these were merely dialectic varieties of the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... side of the wall there hung a curtain of silvery-gray spider-web, and the voice seemed to come from it. The hero went toward it, but he saw nothing, for the spider that was spinning it moved so fast that no eyes could follow it. Presently it paused up in the left-hand corner of the web, ...
— The Counterpane Fairy • Katharine Pyle
... MRS. CAUDLE," he asserts, "having received an enthusiastic welcome from a Gravesend audience, and being pronounced far superior to any of the counterfeit Representatives, will have the honour of repeating her Curtain Lecture this and to-morrow evenings." "Mrs. Caudle at Gravesend" was, in fact, a "Comic Sketch" by C. Z. Barnett; and the programme decorated with a common engraving in impudent imitation of Leech's immortal cut, contained all the dramatis personae of Jerrold's little domestic drama, including ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... side of the tent, when I opened my eyes, and then I saw, glaring at me through the doorway of the tent, the hideous countenance of a red-skin warrior, horribly covered with paint and decked with coloured feathers. While with his left hand he lifted up the curtain, in his right he grasped his tomahawk, which quivered with his eagerness to ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... or future historic celebrity in the Netherlands, whose names are so familiar to the student of the epoch, seemed to have been grouped, as if by premeditated design, upon this imposing platform, where the curtain was to fall forever upon the mightiest emperor since Charlemagne, and where the opening scene of the long and tremendous tragedy of Philip's reign was to be simultaneously enacted. There was the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... lives a misery. Each one prayed that all this foolishness might end one way or the other. It was too much for human endurance. Every private soldier knew that such things as this could not last. They were willing to ring down the curtain, put out the footlights and go home. There was no hope ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... that, being a college town, it would rally to the call of the serious drama. Unfortunately the college was otherwise engaged at the moment with a drama of more contemporaneous interest and authorship. An unusually severe January added to the eager and nipping air upon which the curtain rises in "Hamlet," and proved too much for the well-meaning players. Hastings (so ran tradition) had gallantly bestowed such money as he had upon the ladies of the company to facilitate their flight to New York. His father, a successful manufacturer of codfish packing-boxes at Newburyport, ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... still, came forth at intervals the repetition "I will get over it, I will get over it." John found me out, and said, quite startled, "What is the matter with you, Margery?" I complained of "my head," and drew back within the shelter of a curtain. "Margery, my dearest, you are ill," he said, and then the flood-gates of bitterness opened in my heart. How long was he going to act a cruel lie to me? I said, "I am ill; I must go to bed." He followed me out of the room, questioned me anxiously, wrapped ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... really, Aunt Hannah," she cried, with some show of animation. "And they clapped and cheered and gave him any number of curtain calls. We were so proud of him! But you see, I am tired," ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... being perched up aloft, sees, through the curtain, the Christmas holly and the Captain—taking care to mark that individual with mental chalk. The musician's eyes are in the Brown pue; but the eyes that used to meet them are turned another way—all ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... whilst the children clung to their knees, and the Countess (Mrs. Bingley) and Baron Steinforth (performed with great liveliness and spirit by Garbetts)—while the rest of the characters formed a group round them, Pen's hot eyes only saw Fotheringay, Fotheringay. The curtain fell upon him like a pall. He did not hear a word of what Bingley said, who came forward to announce the play for the next evening, and who took the tumultuous applause, as usual, for himself. Pen was not even distinctly ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that curtain of thick darkness. Behold! A vast city of fantastic houses half buried in winter snows and reddened by the lurid sunset breaking through a saw-toothed canopy of cloud. Everywhere upon the temple squares and open spaces great ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... the rumble of the ice fields was clearer because there was no wind to deaden their tumult. The sky was cloudless, and the stars were like glaring, yellow eyes peering through holes in a vast, overhanging curtain of jet black. Keith, out to fill his lungs with air, looked up at the phenomenon of the polar night and shuddered. The stars were like living things, and they were looking at him. Under their sinister glow the foxes were holding high carnival. It seemed to Keith that ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... they seemed unstinted praise. Thus: "It was not the fault of the management that the new play was so far from being a triumphant success," was cut down to one modest sentence, "A triumphant success." "A few enthusiastic cheers from personal friends alone broke the ominous silence when the curtain fell," became ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... large sofas, or standing bed-places, on either side, with brass bars overhead, by which a curtain could be ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... medium size, and both had the same plain white curtains, made to draw, if necessary, all round them. The occupied bed was the bed nearest the window. The curtains were all drawn round this, except the half curtain at the bottom, on the side of the bed farthest from the window. Arthur saw the feet of the sleeping man raising the scanty clothes into a sharp little eminence, as if he was lying flat on his back. He took the candle, and advanced softly to draw the curtain—stopped ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... on from the Presidio and from Black Point, and both forts were hidden behind a great curtain of tumbling white smoke that rolled up to mingle with the fog. Everybody was on that side of the deck watching and making guesses as to the reason of it. It was perhaps target practice. Ah, it was a good thing ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... and his feet dangling in front of the wheel, which plays on to them a continuous stream of dirt and dust. In windy weather one must crawl inside and sit on the floor tailor fashion, there being no seat, and then let down the curtain, thus effectually blocking all view but keeping out most of the dust, which, flying in blinding clouds, would quickly reduce one to a state of absolute filth, filling the clothes, hair, ears and mouth ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... make my way to England, the land of my fathers, did not take definite shape until comedy, with a broad smile, rang down the curtain upon my love affair. But I fancy it had been a long while in the making. I am not sure but what the germ of it began to stir a little in its husk even at St. Peter's Orphanage; I feel sure it did while I browsed upon English fiction in my little wooden ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... to this window, put aside the dainty white curtain, and looked forth: the whole city of Washington, Georgetown, the winding of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers, Anacostia Island, and the undulating hills of the Virginia and Maryland shores lay spread like ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... space of time; and perplexed at the absurdity of a king's messenger applying for his son-in-law to succeed the King of Spain: "Is the man drunk, or mad? Where are your dispatches?" exclaimed his grace, hastily drawing back his curtain; where, instead of a royal courier, he recognized at the bedside, the fat, good-humored countenance of his friend from Cornwall, making low bows, with hat in hand, and "hoping my lord would not forget the gracious promise he was so good as to make, in ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... waits to trace His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place; The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface 70 So fair a prey, till darkness and the law Of change, shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain draw. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... began to lose the thread of his narrative; and at last: 'Que que j'ai? Je m'embrouille!' says he, 'Suffit: s'm'a la donne, et Berthe en etait bien contente.' It struck me as the falling of the curtain or the closing of the ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... she imagined it was some sick person, or a secret tent set apart for the worship of the Great Spirit; but one day when the chief of the people had gone up the river hunting, and the children were asleep, she perceived the curtain of skins drawn back, and a female of singular and striking beauty appeared standing in the open space in front. She was habited in a fine tunic of white dressed doeskin richly embroidered with coloured ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... rustic ill-breeding of his hinds, his magnanimous soul cruelly tortured by the machinations of jealousy and envy and evil-browed ambition. Yonder on the hill Burgoyne's battery threatens death, and Lincoln avenges us of Burgoyne. Let the curtain fall; a bloodier scene ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... the sunset, and the white mountains were great banks of roses against a skyful of fading violets. But the minute we stepped inside the machine shop, which was lighted up by the red fire of a forge, night seemed suddenly to fall like a black curtain, shutting down outside the open door ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... at peace with God could not be doubted. One has no motive for being at enmity with Him when one is well in the land, and has never had to ask Him for anything. From the grand salon of the Manila home, a little door, hid behind a silken curtain, led to a chapel—something obligatory in a Filipino house. There were Santiago's Lares, and if we use this word, it is because the master of the house was rather a poly- than a monotheist. Here, in sculpture and oils, were saints, martyrdoms, and miracles; ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... upper and lower schools were divided by a curtain, about which there is a remarkable story. A boy, having torn this curtain, was saved from one of Busby's terrible floggings by his school-mate assuming the fault, and bearing the rod in his place. This brave lad in the civil war took the King's side, ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... style of decoration and can always be kept fresh and dainty. But elaborate lace curtains which have seen better days elsewhere are most emphatically not for bedrooms, and should find another asylum. A pretty window drapery is the thin white curtain with a colored figured inner curtain. The use of figured draperies demands a good sense of proportion and of the eternal fitness of things, else ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... ebon vault Studded with stars unutterably bright, Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls, Seems like a canopy which love has spread To curtain her sleeping world. ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... large war party of Iroquois—sacrificing their lives to save the little struggling colony at Montreal. Again, their way lay beneath those towering cliffs overlooking the Ottawa, on which now stand the Canadian Houses of {26} Parliament. They had just passed the curtain-like falls of the Rideau on one side, and the mouth of the turbulent Gatineau on the other, and before them lay the majestic Chaudiere. Here they disembarked. The voyageurs, following the Indian example, threw a votive offering of tobacco into ...
— Pathfinders of the Great Plains - A Chronicle of La Verendrye and his Sons • Lawrence J. Burpee
... remote corner of the cool, shady parlor, sympathizing in silence with the touching scene, but keeping as much in the background as etiquette and custom allowed, that she might not intrude on this last farewell. At length the curtain behind the grating fell, and the young girl had severed the tenderest link that bound her to the world. Many other visits were paid—some to friends of Mademoiselle G——'s parents (she had long been an orphan), some to ecclesiastical personages who had interested ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... a berlingot. When this shabby carriage was driven past the windows the inhabitants of the chateau, who were at breakfast, were convulsed with laughter; but when the bald head of the old man was seen issuing from behind the leather curtain of the vehicle Monsieur d'Hauteserre told his name, and all present rose instantly to receive and do honor to the head ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... the parlor door was partly of glass shaded by a silken curtain the folds of which hung a little awry. So strong was the merchant's interest in witnessing what was to ensue between the fair Polly and the gallant Feathertop that after quitting the room he could by no means refrain from peeping through the crevice of the curtain. But there was nothing very miraculous ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... familiar story preserves their names as companions, and commemorates their rival genius. Zeuxis, such is the story, painted a cluster of grapes which so closely imitated the real fruit that the birds pecked at them. His rival, for his piece, painted a curtain. Zeuxis asked Parrhasius to draw aside the veil and exhibit his picture. "I confess I am surpassed," generously admitted Zeuxis to his rival; "I deceived birds, but you have deceived the eyes of an ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... could be nothing but the violence of the wind penetrating through the divisions of the shutters; and she stepped boldly forward, carelessly humming a tune, to assure herself of its being so, peeped courageously behind each curtain, saw nothing on either low window seat to scare her, and on placing a hand against the shutter, felt the strongest conviction of the wind's force. A glance at the old chest, as she turned away from this examination, was not ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... the fortunes of those three during their long period of exile. The curtain was lifted in order that the Reader might take a glance at them in the far-off land. They are a pleasant trio to look upon. They do not thirst feverishly for the precious metal as many do. Their nightly reading of the Word saves them from that. Nevertheless, ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... an uncracked crystal—was always in his hand. He never disobeyed his father, and for years he never knew what became of Claude Melnotte after he went to the wars; or if Damon got back in time to save Pythias before the curtain fell. The Boy, naturally, had a most meagre notion as to what all these plays were about, but he enjoyed his fragments of them as he rarely enjoys plays now. Sometimes, in these days, when the air is bad, and plays are worse, and big hats are worse than either, he wishes that ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... him. He chose to show himself in public with them, and to check any impression that they were without due protection. As usual, the pit was full of officers, and between the acts they all rose, as usual, and faced the boxes, which they perused through their lorgnettes till the bell rang for the curtain to rise. But Mrs. Elmore, having touched his arm to attract his notice, instructed him, by a slow turning of her head, that Captain Ehrhardt was not there. After that he undoubtedly breathed freer, and, in the relaxation from his sense of bravado, he enjoyed the last acts of the opera more than ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... are four years old the candle is all dressed up in a new frill. And stars nod to you through the hole in the curtain, (except the big stiff planets too fat to move about much,) and you curtsey back to the stars when no one is looking. You feel sorry for the poor wooden chair that knows it isn't nice to sit on, and no one is sad but mama. ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... at by many curious eyes, for everyone in Hilltown knew about the young beauty and the prize she had caught; but Helen saw no one, and had eyes for only one thing, the little white house where Arthur lodges. The carriage swept by and she saw no one, but she saw that the curtain of Arthur's room was drawn, and she shuddered at the thought, "Suppose he should be dying!" Yet it was a great load off her mind to have escaped seeing him, and she was beginning to breathe again and ask herself ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... to an almost immediate summit twenty thousand feet above the sea; on the left, in the distance, was just visible the receding snow dome of the South Peak, with its two horns some five hundred feet higher. The mists were passing from the distant summits, curtain after curtain of gauze draping their heads for a moment ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... expecting her; she went to the gate, and found it was fast locked, returned, locked and bolted the doors of the house, went to bed and slept as soundly as she had done since her residence in the old mansion. "I have at least, she said, escaped the disgusting curtain-lecture ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... staircase. The light no longer shone out into the left-hand passage; but groping down it, I found the study door open, as before, and passed in. A sick light stole through the blinds—enough for me to distinguish the glasses and decanters on the table, and find my way to the curtain that hung before the room where the light ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... evening at the theatre had quickly run through all Paris; the officer on duty told it at his relief to some of the guards, they to those whom they met, and it spread like wildfire. It was therefore very natural that, long before the curtain was raised, the great opera-house was completely filled, parquette, boxes, and parterre, with a passionately-excited throng. The friends of the queen went in order to give her a long- looked-for triumph; her enemies—and these the poor queen had in overwhelming numbers—to fling ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... the complaints of their subjects, and soon after brought the kings themselves to answer at their bar. At this last ceremony the ambassadors had not Clootz for their Cotterel. Pity that Clootz had not had a reprieve from the guillotine till he had completed his work! But that engine fell before the curtain had fallen upon all the dignity of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the boundaries which humanity has placed, and the moral order of the world imposes: they perish both,—each at odds with self, with God, and with human society: only for him there yet remains room for further development. Then the curtain falls,—that is right, according to artistic rule of composition; true and necessary according to the views of those who hold the faith of the Church of England; and from a theological point ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... a knack for decoration, Sherm. I never dreamed you were artistic. Why didn't you tell us? That spray against the curtain is exquisite. Have you ever taken drawing lessons?" Marian was both surprised and interested to discover this unexpected talent in ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... art, the small beneficial result that follows so much outlay and such a combination of artistical skill, the amount of training bestowed on the singers and dancers, greater than that which produces great men, and the company before the curtain, together with reflections thereanent. It is a piece of forcible description, and of thoughtful though perhaps rather one-sided reflection. As we heard it remarked a few days ago by a shrewd critic, Carlyle is never so much himself as ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... levels: the higher, at the back, for the Song-preludes alone, concealed by a purple curtain; the lower only being discovered when the drop goes up. Diagonally across the extreme left of the lower stage, is arranged the king's court, with various platforms, for the various dignitaries ascending to the canopied throne. The body of ...
— The Cycle of Spring • Rabindranath Tagore
... had bade us good night. Mother and daughter finally retired; but, as for myself, I was nervous and restless, sleeping little, thinking of home and loved ones; not, however, forgetting the little "Wild Rose" that was separated from me only by a curtain partition. ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... before Primrose came. She is going to show me all her conservatories to-morrow, and she took a great fancy to my carnations. I promised her some slips. Oh dear! oh dear! who is that knocking at the hall door? Daisy, run and peep from behind the curtain, and let me know." ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... about sunrise. Going to the window, I put aside the curtain, and looked out into the garden. Louis Herbois and his wife were there, renewing the garlands with fresh flowers, and watering the moss which was spread over the grave. It must be their own child, thought I, and yet—no—I will step out and ask them, and put an end to the mystery. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... of dark red velvet with ornamented designs cut from the green silk, and upon which are small pieces of white silk representing berries. Also, another handsome specimen of Spanish applied work of the seventeenth century is a linen curtain richly embellished with heraldic emblems couched with gold thread. Horse trappings and reposters, loaded with applique flowers cut from gold and silver cloth, were much in evidence among the Spanish ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... to Allah, the sentinels also being duly set, the warrior who is to fall in battle on the morrow lies down to sleep as peaceful as that of the babe he has left behind in the aoul, and soft as if the canopy overhead were not the star-spangled curtain of the skies. If the party have tents, as is sometimes the case, they are pitched by cutting down branches of trees for lack of poles, and then covering them with the mats and felts which have been transported ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... amid a real storm of applause; and, with their enthusiasm at the highest pitch, the audience claimed to know the names of the poet and of the composer. After a long pause the curtain rose and the registrar appeared; he made the three customary bows, and in a loud voice named Marsollier as the author and Mehul as the composer ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... a red curtain, and the cosy warmth of the place sent a glow of comfort through Nan. Jerry's efforts had not ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... words and the orchestra played a soft accompaniment that made the whole thing most effective. Major Pierce was a splendid Villikins, and as Dinah I received enough applause to satisfy anyone, but the curtain remained down, motionless and unresponsive, just because I happened to be the ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... crisis of Elizabeth's reign, her gay and dashing courtiers, and even her serious masters of affairs, persisted in pretending to look on the world in which they lived, as if through the side-scenes of a masque, and relieved against the background of a stage-curtain. Human life, in those days, counted for little; fortune, honour, national existence hung in the balance; the game was one in which the heads of kings and queens and great statesmen were the stakes,—yet the players could not get out of their stiff ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... while granny was talking, and taking a stitch occasionally, Lucy picked up the other curtain and made it. It was not a very big matter; all the windows in Seacombe houses were small. Then she put on the kettle, and while it was boiling she took the other curtain from granny's frail hand and worked away ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... value, the value of the figures to which it serves as a background is impaired and often lost, and so the painted hangings of the Elizabethan age were a far more artistic, and so a far more rational form of scenery than most modern scene-painting is. From the same master- hand which designed the curtain of Madison Square Theatre I should like very much to see a good decorative landscape in scene-painting; for I have seen no open-air scene in any theatre which did not really mar the value of the actors. One must either, like Titian, make the landscape subordinate to the figures, ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... at last, Alexander, snatching a spear from one of the soldiers, met Clitus as he was coming forward and was putting by the curtain that hung before the door, and ran him through the body. He fell at once with a cry and a groan. Upon which the king's anger immediately vanishing, he came perfectly to himself, and when he saw his friends about him ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the women apart, knitting or spinning by the light of the fire and one candle. The children play with their gifts of apples and nuts. As the hour grows later, and mysterious noises begin to be heard about the house, and a curtain sways in a draught, the thoughts of the company already centred upon the dead find expression in words, and each has a tale to tell of an adventure with some friend ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... in which it prefers to sit. Their habits are remarkably strong and invariable, and new ones are slowly formed. While using a large reaction box I noticed that the frogs, after having once escaped from an opening which could be made by pushing aside a curtain at a certain point in the box, tended to return to that place as soon as they were again put into the box. This appeared to be evidence of an association; but the fact that such stimuli as light and the relation of the opening to the place at which the animals ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... plays light tunes until the house lights are turned down; the curtain rises in darkness, accompanied by solemn music. A small light grows in the middle of the stage, and shows the LORD CHIEF JUSTICE sitting in judgment, wearing wig and red robes of office, in the Court of Criminal Appeal. ...
— Night Must Fall • Williams, Emlyn
... was found by the soundings, etc., that we were near our port, but a thick fog hid the land from our sight. About nine o'clock the fog began to rise, and seem'd to be lifted up from the water like the curtain at a play-house, discovering underneath, the town of Falmouth, the vessels in its harbor, and the fields that surrounded it. This was a most pleasing spectacle to those who had been so long without any other prospects than the uniform view of a vacant ocean, ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... of a great noise about the house, above which I heard the voice of Marais storming and shouting, and that of my father trying to calm him. Presently Marie entered the room, drawing-to behind her a Kaffir karoos, which served as a curtain, for the door, it will be remembered, had been torn out. Seeing that I was awake and reasonable, she flew to my side with a little cry of joy, and, kneeling down, kissed me on ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... and found the lamp gone out. She rose and re-lighted it. Every box and drawer lay overthrown and rifled, nothing left but what the thieves deemed not worth taking. She turned round to the mosquito curtain which concealed her husband; it was cut by two long gashes, the one close to his head, the other to his feet. There the robber-sentry must have kept watch, ready to destroy the sleepers if they had wakened for ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... be practical! I know Europe; I do not know India! I need a man brave, cool, and unscrupulous; I need a resolute man to aid me in the one purpose of my life! I wish to go out to India to face this Hugh Fraser, to lift up the curtain of the dead past, and I need a protector—a paid champion—a man who values the only thing which is concrete power in life; a man who knows the power of money! For, gold is ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... number of forty or fifty, can move about freely from larboard to starboard, or from stem to stern, or seat themselves on the benches running along the inside of the guard railing on the two sides of the vessel. They are protected from rain by a roof, and from the rays of the sun by a curtain ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... lock up what jewels she had. She must be sure to do that. Violet Oliver looked towards the window and shivered. It was very silent in the room. Fear seized hold of her. It was a big room, and furtively she peered into the corners lest already hidden behind some curtain the ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... drop the curtain over the rest of the race—Hartshorn won it in a neck-and-neck drive with Calloway just as Shea was flogging the bay colt past the sixteenth pole—and we will lift the curtain again at the point where the judges summoned Pitkin ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... York. The short scene where Cardinal Beaufort, who is tormented by his conscience on account of the murder of Gloster, is visited on his death- bed by Henry VI. is sublime beyond all praise. Can any other poet be named who has drawn aside the curtain of eternity at the close of this life with such overpowering and awful effect? And yet it is not mere horror with which the mind is filled, but solemn emotion; a blessing and a curse stand side by side; the pious King is ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... window and balcony, with a sort of pole or flag-staff; for the place is official or rather municipal. Round it swelled the crowd, with its songs and poems and passionate rhetoric in a kind of crescendo, and then suddenly the curtain of the window rose like the curtain of the theatre, and we saw on that high balcony the red fez and the tall figure of the Mahometan ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... notice as possible; but fate was sure to pursue them sooner or later, for Rachel had come down resolved on testing their acquirements, and deciding on the method to be pursued with them; and though their mamma, with a curtain instinctive shrinking both for them and for herself, had put off the ordeal to the utmost by listening to all the counsel about her affairs, it was ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... It is written (Ex. 26:3, seqq. [*St. Thomas quotes the sense, not the words]): "Let one curtain draw the other." Therefore one man should ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... across the table. There was something forced and graceless about the act. Blackie eyed Von Gerhard through a misty curtain of cigarette smoke. Von Gerhard gazed at Blackie through narrowed lids as he lighted his cigar. "I'm th' gink you killed off two or three ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... Elizabeth's reign is the dispersion of the Armada. The dragon has been fought and vanquished, and at this point, the curtain ought to ring down and leave the audience to imagine the Red-cross knight and his ladye-love living happy for ever afterwards. But in history no climax is more than an incident; at the most it is but the decisive entry on a new phase. The chain of causation, of ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... that it is quite within the bounds of truth to say that on July 31 the curtain went down upon a world which ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... of avoiding the danger of the night air are—to have your evening meal about 6.30 or 7,—8 is too late; sleep under a mosquito curtain whether there are mosquitoes in your district or not, and have a meal before starting out in the morning, a good hot cup of tea or coffee and bread and butter, if you can get it, if not, something left from last night's supper or even aguma. Regarding ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... as stiff as bolsters! Here is the cottage interior, the usual first flat, with the cloak upon the nail, the rosaries of onions, the gun and powder-horn and corner-cupboard; here is the inn (this drama must be nautical, I foresee Captain Luff and Bold Bob Bowsprit) with the red curtain, pipes, spittoons, and eight-day clock; and there again is that impressive dungeon with the chains, which was so dull to colour. England, the hedgerow elms, the thin brick houses, windmills, glimpses of the navigable Thames - England, when at ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... companion of the Night, In drearier depths my being steeping, Like the felt presence of an unseen sprite, With muffled tread comes creeping, creeping. Before me close her smothering curtain swings, And o'er my life a shadeless shadow flings; Sinking with pitiless weight, and slow To shroud the last sweet glimpse of Earth and Man, And set my limits to the narrow span Of but ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... been glad if that could be, being alone and motherless I knew not whom to open my mind to, and so I left it as it was, showing him no favour, except when my father, and his too, were from home, to raise the curtain or the lattice a little and let him see me plainly, at which he would show such delight that he seemed as if he were going mad. Meanwhile the time for my father's departure arrived, which he became aware ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... little ink-horn and two quills primly side by side upon it; and at the back stood a couple of small bound volumes in which the nun was accumulating little by little private devotions that appealed to her. A pair of beads hung on a nail by the window over which was drawn an old red curtain; two brass candlesticks with a cross between them stood over the hearth, giving it a faint resemblance to an altar. The boards were bare except for a strip of matting by the bed; and the whole room, walls, floor, ceiling and furniture were ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... put forward, widening the distance in imagination; and the next time she turned to view her work, the shack was sinking behind a billow of land. She stood now and gazed back at the flat, flowered expanse; then she turned her back upon it for the last time. One does not look long upon the gay curtain after it has closed ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... of a curtain, Archie was aware of some illogicality in his position, and stood abashed. He had a strong impression, besides, of the essential valour of the old gentleman before him, how conveyed it would be hard ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the faint glimmer peculiar to the shaded lamp of a sick-room. Guy's pulse bounded wildly at first, and then grew dull and still. In that room he knew Constance lay dying. The other window was brightly lighted, but half shaded by a curtain. While he gazed, this was torn suddenly aside, as if by an angry, impatient hand, and a man leaned out, throwing back the hair from his forehead, to catch the cold wind which was blowing sharply. Guy had never seen the dark, passionate face before, but he know ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... anybody know it. I suppose other women have had to do the same thing many a time. And some of them, perhaps, grow hard and cold, and say bitter things, and people dislike and avoid them, not knowing that if they lifted up the curtain of their hearts they would see a grave there, in which all their hopes were buried long ago. Well, God knows best, and will do His best for us all. How can I ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... ago, in his last address to the Congress, President Harry Truman predicted such a time would come. He said, "As our world grows stronger, more united, more attractive to men on both sides of the Iron Curtain, then inevitably there will come a time of change within the Communist world." Today, that ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... carry out. I made as you saw a determination of the angle at which this weight of 250 grams just slipped on the ice. The lower surface of the weight, the part which presses on the ice, consists of a light, brass curtain ring. This can be detached. Its mass is only 61/2 grams, the curtain ring being, in fact, hollow and made of very thin metal. We have, therefore, in it a very small weight which presents exactly the same surface beneath as did the weight ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... "'After closing the curtain she conversed with me for some time, and then walked across to where Miss Cook was lying senseless on the floor. Stooping over her, "Katie" touched her and said: "Wake up, Florrie, wake up! I ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... thou scan aright Dreams and visions of the night? Wouldst thou future secrets learn And the fate of dreams discern? Wouldst thou ope the Curtain dark And thy future fortune mark? Try the mystic page, and read What ...
— The Voice • Margaret Deland
... she had lain quiet a long time, the grasp was suddenly loosened and Clytie was privileged to ease her aching neck and cramped shoulders. Then, even as she looked down, she heard from Nancy the measured soft breathing of sleep. She drew a curtain to shut out one last ray of light, and went softly ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... is lighted up by camp fires which send their flames toward heaven in a cloud of smoke. These little red spots throw everywhere a fiery glow over the snow, and down upon this wonderful color symphony the moon pours its weak, ghostlike light through a curtain of clouds so that people seem to float away as in a dream. In the foggy twilight three battalions march to the front.... The noise of the gunfire penetrates to us in separate, spasmodic outbreaks. Flashes of fire flare up on the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
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