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More "Postman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... simpler than to say: "We were all overjoyed to hear from you this morning," or, "Your letter was the most welcome thing the postman has brought for ages," or, "It was more than good to have news of you this morning," or, "Your letter from Capri brought all the allure of Italy back to me," or, "You can't imagine, dear Mary, how glad I was to see an envelope with your writing this morning." And then you take ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... afterwards as occasion might offer, one way or other. But that which mortified me most was, that Amy did not write, though the fourteen days were expired. At last, to my great surprise, when I was, with the utmost impatience, looking out at the window, expecting the postman that usually brought the foreign letters—I say I was agreeably surprised to see a coach come to the yard-gate where we lived, and my woman Amy alight out of it and come towards the door, having the coachman ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... he was postman to the gods, so he is put on stamps now. The Prussians wear helmets, but they have spikes like the old Roman fellows. I like Prussians ever so much; they fight splendidly, and always beat. Austrians have a handsome ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... declined with thanks by adamantine magazine editors, like a certain short story which I had lately written, and which contained the germ of "Lady Audley's Secret." Indeed, at this period of my life, the postman's knock had become associated in my mind with the sharp sound of a rejected MS. dropping through the open letter-box on to the floor of the hall, while my heart seemed to drop in sympathy with that ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... same ground, each leaving his cans of milk here and there in a sporadic fashion as haphazard as a bee among the flowers. Contrast, says the socialist, the wasted labors of the milkman with the orderly and systematic performance of the postman, himself a little fragment of socialism. And the milkman, they tell us, is typical of modern industrial society. Competing railways run trains on parallel tracks, with empty cars that might be filled and with vast executive organizations which do ten ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... D. postman making his rounds, came to Amos Vick's shortly after noon that day. He volunteered a bit of information. Rosabel had given him a letter when he stopped the day before. It was addressed to Caleb Vick. She asked him how long he thought it would take the letter to reach ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... a great sheaf of roses came for Mary with the card of James Farraday, and on its heels a bush of white heather inscribed to them both from McEwan. The postman contributed several cards, and a tiny string of pink coral from Miss Mason. "How kind every one is!" Mary ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... he passed upon his brilliant fellow-Hebrew Heine, as "rather scorbutic." He preferred to talk about the little matters of common incident and experience. He amused himself with such things as the mystification of the postman of whom he asked his way to Phillips Avenue, where he adventurously supposed his host to be living. "Why," the postman said, "there is no Phillips Avenue in Cambridge. There's Phillips Place." "Well," ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the ensuing weeks, the same scene reenacted itself with endless variations. Lizzie, after the first sharp spasm of disappointment, made no effort to conceal her anxiety from Miss Macy, and the fond Andora was charged to keep a vigilant eyeupon the postman's coming, and to spy on the bonne for possible negligence or perfidy. But these elaborate precautions remained fruitless, and ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... persons contributing for a wage, to the convenience of everyday life in these latter times, is more waited and watched for, and brings more of joy, and more of sorrow when he comes, than the postman. ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... more valuable the target must be. Besides, firing a cannon had become as commonplace a function to both French and German gunners as getting up to put another stick of wood in the stove or going to open the door to take a letter from the postman. ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... was one glad moment for her—the arrival of the postman. He was late, of course, but when he did come he brought her a budget of letters and parcels that convinced her she was not forgotten by her absent schoolgirl friends. With a hasty glance over them, she put them on one side until after dinner, when, her ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... lame Mary, the postman's wife, for she is always longing to see the fields," they answered; "but these roses are for you, dear little boy; they are all for you," and putting them into his hands they went ...
— Very Short Stories and Verses For Children • Mrs. W. K. Clifford
... But the postman, who brought, with increasing frequency, letters that were big and heavy, like the writer, was the man whom Lottie most doted ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... letters from the postman, and carried the morning paper up to Mr. Morris's study, and I always put away the clean clothes. After they were mended, Mrs. Morris folded each article and gave it to me, mentioning the name of the ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... much beautiful as sound In heart and limb; not always strong When nose and eyes impel to wrong, Nor always doing just as bid, But sterling as the minted quid. And I have loved thee in my fashion, Shared with thy face my frugal ration, Squandered my balance at the bank When thou didst chew the postman's shank, And gone in debt replacing stocks Of private cats and Plymouth Rocks. And, when they claimed the annual fee That seals the bond twixt thee and me, Against harsh Circumstance's edge Did I not put my fob in pledge And cheat the minions of excise Who otherwise had ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various
... room and so fettered him.) He found himself able to use his hands to write, and, happily, discovered writing material and stamps upon a table. He would write a letter and throw it on the porch below, where perhaps the postman would find it and send it to its destination. He asked help. His friends must come that night. The doctor would be on guard, and who could say he would not call in others? The doors and windows were all well secured, all but a cellar window on the east side. (Of this, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... later, and before she had had time to form any plans, the postman brought a letter with the postmark of St. Louis. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... Christina into the parlour while Jeannie tidied up. Presently the door bell rang, and Jimsie rushed to meet the postman. ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... following day, with my friend the minister, for Rum, where he purposed preaching on the Sabbath. To have lost a day would have been to lose the opportunity of exploring the island, perhaps forever; and, to make all sure, I had taken a seat in the mail gig, from the postman who drives it, ere going to bed, on the morning of my arrival; and now, when it drove up, I went to take my place in it. The postmaster of the village, a lean, hungry-looking man, interfered to prevent me. I had secured my seat, I said, two days previous. Ah, but ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... reasons. He goes out in the morning upon our errands. It is part of our contract with him that he shall stop the night in town with his family and return the next day early. He is really our caterer and postman. But Anton—Anton is 'bound.' And Anton needs watching. Lad, do you promise that if I let you take a horse and ride to camp you'll do the lady's errand right and ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... peaks. I should much have liked to get as far as Erzeroum, in the heart of Asia Minor. But as time failed me I contented myself with travelling at full speed for one day, along the road leading thither, with the Tartar or postman who carried the mails, so as to obtain some idea of the country. When I say road I speak figuratively. It was not even a path. It was a mere track across the woods and rocks and ravines of that mountainous region, ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... canvassed as seemed most expedient by interviews, letters or return postals. Every woman personally solicited her neighbor, her doctor, her grocer, her laundrywagon driver, the postman and even the man who collected the garbage. It was essentially a womanly campaign, emphasizing the home interests and engaging the cooperation of home makers. The association published and sold 3,000 copies of The Washington Women's Cook Book, compiled by the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... rights she wants; and even women, I am ashamed to say, tell us so. They mistake the politeness of men for rights—seats while men stand in this hall to-night, and their adulations; but these are mere courtesies. We want rights. The flour-merchant, the house-builder, and the postman charge us no less on account of our sex; but when we endeavor to earn money to pay all these, then, indeed, we find the difference. Man, if he have energy, may hew out for himself a path where no mortal has ever trod, held ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the adjective. Every man has some portion of self-love. So his next effort was a passionate denial that he was nice. When should he meet her? The postman brought him a letter which contained one word—Nimmer! He sent her four pages, a frank and witty description of himself and friends, his past and ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... weeks, but there was some slight uncertainty about the address or the contents, so they are yet unmailed. They have not done either me or anybody else any good yet. They will never accomplish anything until I let them go out of my hands and trust them to the postman and the mail. ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... bookshop in London, an old man sat reading Gibbon's History of Rome. He did not put down his book when the postman brought him a letter. He just glanced indifferently at the letter, and impatiently at the postman. Zerviah Holme did not like to be interrupted when he was reading Gibbon; and as he was always reading Gibbon, an ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... in his clammy grasp; he had to cover it with a handkerchief to get a firm hold. He turned discreetly, and the door was pushed open in perfect stillness, except for that dreadful husky thumping of his own heart. At this moment the postman's hard knock at the door nearly made him cry out aloud. Then he entered; a dreadful visitor, had anyone seen him. She did not see him; she was asleep, sound asleep; in the dirty brown twilight of a London winter day, he could make out that much. He did not ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... two, Jo behaved so queerly that her sisters were quite bewildered. She rushed to the door when the postman rang, was rude to Mr. Brooke whenever they met, would sit looking at Meg with a woe-begone face, occasionally jumping up to shake and then kiss her in a very mysterious manner. Laurie and she were always making signs to one ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... this is the day on which those charming little missives, ycleped Valentines, cross and intercross each other at every street and turning. The weary and all forspent twopenny postman sinks beneath a load of delicate embarrassments, not his own. It is scarcely credible to what an extent this ephemeral courtship is carried on in this loving town, to the great enrichment of porters, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... point out and explain, Lavinia Cortright began to jot down name and quantity, and then, stopping, said: "No, you must write it out as the first record for The Garden, You, and I. I make a motion to that effect." As I was about to protest, the postman brought some letters, one being from Mary Penrose, to whom Mrs. Cortright stands as aunt by courtesy. I opened it, and spreading it between us we began to read, so that afterward Lavinia declared that her motion was ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... for people to be coming to the door, and lifting the latch and looking straight in at me as I sit at work—just the same as in any cottage in the country. I think William rather forgets that I never was accustomed to this kind of thing at home. Last night even, when the postman came; if he had not been so anxious to read his letter, he might have noticed how the draught from the open door made the candle flare, and the tallow ran down all over my nice bright candlestick. The letter was from his father, ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... It was the postman's insistent knocking at eight-thirty that woke her from a dreamless sleep, and, half-awake, she dragged herself into her dressing-gown and ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... big books of his that he presses his bits of chickweed and groundsel in do hold the dust is awful. If you wished to do him some kindness you'd get him away for a bit, so that I could turn his rooms inside out. Postman, sir." ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... in the ways of life, and steeled with his boasted stoicism, this epistle threw him into such an agony of vexation, that a double proportion of souring was visible in his aspect, when he was visited by the author, who, having observed and followed the postman at a proper distance, introduced a conversation upon his own disappointments, in which, among other circumstances of his own ill-luck, he told him, that his patron's steward had desired to be excused ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... after the postman had gone away from Belton, so that there might be no possibility of any recall of her letter, 'I have something to tell you which I ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... this Captain Jan; a man who knew the forty miles of underground workings in Botallack as well, I suppose, as a postman knows his beat; a man who dived into the bowels of the earth with the vigour and confidence of a mole and the ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... the laws of sequence, our correspondence should have been brought to a standstill. I calculated, however, that when the postman delivered my phantom communication next morning Phyllis would not remain twiddling her thumbs ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... knows the postman collects at six o'clock. Well, I s'pose she is hiding somewhere, reading a book. Won't I give it to her when I catch her! For she said she'd come out here, ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... America—of sending around Christmas cards, dainty things with lovely pictures and hearty verses upon them. Friends and lovers send them to one another, children send them to their parents, parents to their children, and the postman, as he flies from house to house, fairly glows ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... of the mail was something of a ceremony in the early days of Cooperstown. Toward evening the sound of the postman's horn was faintly heard as he rounded the slopes of Mount Vision; the blasts grew louder as he descended the hill and approached the village; then the thunder of the four post-horses as they crossed the bridge was heard, and the postman drew up with a flourish at the post office, ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... become the favourite pursuit of all classes, and the postman is probably the only man who leaves letters for the vulgar pursuit of lucre! Even the vanity of servant-maids has undergone a change—they now study 'Cocker' and neglect ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... history, more especially if he, or she, has ever had the misfortune to pass through such a time in their own proper persons. The day of any one's departure is always wretched, but much more is it wretched, when the person departing is a lover, whose face will not be seen and of whom no postman will bear tidings ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... cup which My FATHER hath given me, shall I not drink it?" How the tendency to resentment and a wrong feeling would be removed, could we take an injury from the hand of a loving FATHER, instead of looking chiefly at the agent through whom it comes to us! It matters not who is the postman—it is with the writer of the letter that we are concerned: it matters not who is the messenger—it is with GOD that His ...
— A Ribband of Blue - And Other Bible Studies • J. Hudson Taylor
... rare and unlooked for at the cottage, that the postman never included it in his rounds; and the contents of the pigeon-hole appropriated to them at the office was seldom inquired for, except on mail-days, when there might be an off-chance of an English letter for Miss Opie. Even Bluebell, who for the first fortnight after her banishment from ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... two curious things occurred: one, the postman brought a letter for the late owner of River Hall, and dropped it in the box; another, Mrs. Stott asked me if I would allow her and two of the children to take up their residence at the Uninhabited House. ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... passed on, but still there came no answer from Paul. Every morning, for a fortnight, Jeanne had gone along the road to meet the postman, and had asked, in a voice which she could ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... Oh, I know it's nothing to boast of even on earth. Up here, it's simply contemptible. Now that you gods are too old for your work, you've made me the miserable drudge of Olympus—groom, valet, postman, butler, commissionaire, maid of all work, parish beadle, ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... builder. He no longer dares come out and fight in the open, for he knows that public sentiment is against him. The people understand—to what an extent is shown in a report of a Tenement House Committee in the city of Yonkers, which the postman put on my table this minute. The committee was organized "to prevent the danger to Yonkers of incurring the same evils that have fallen so heavily upon New York and have cost that city millions of money and thousands of lives." It sprang from the Civic League, was appointed by ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... boy to college—that is, I promised him fifty dollars a year. He died in his junior term, however. Sisters of Mercy, the postman, a beggar selling pencils or shoelaces—almost anybody, in short, that actually comes within range—can pretty surely count on something from me. But I confess I never go out of my way to look for people in need of help. I have ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... repression. And yet one must doubt whether Cowper would have felt himself quite at ease in the family of the Wolmars. The circle which gathered round the hearth at Olney to listen for the horn of the approaching postman, and solaced itself with cups 'that cheer but not inebriate,'[19] would have been a little scandalised by some of the sentiments current in the Vaudois paradise, and certainly by some of the antecedents of the party assembled. ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... it's the right kind of name. It's the way most of the farms all over England once were named—after their owners, and where the owner was a man of character and force the name persisted. Call it 'Buckler's' and you will help everyone, from the postman to the strange guest who might otherwise tour the neighbourhood for miles searching for you long after lunch ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... the still, small voice of realism, intense longing is always followed by disappointment. Nothing should have happened that summer, and Providence should not have come disguised as the postman. It was a sultry day in early September-which is to say that it was comparatively cool—a blue day, with occasional great drops of rain spattering on the brick walk. And Honora was reclining on the hall sofa, reading about Mr. Ibbetson and his duchess, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... suddenly appeared in the distance. At the same time a sweep, a postman, and a servant ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... who brings the coal Claims his customary dole: When the postman rings and knocks For his usual Christmas-box: When you're dunned by half the town With demands for half-a-crown,— Think, although they cost you dear, Christmas ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... "It was the postman with a money-order." (Henriette, the servant, comes in, upper left, with a hat-box on her arm and a little tray of letters which she ...
— Erdgeist (Earth-Spirit) - A Tragedy in Four Acts • Frank Wedekind
... I were just starting off to the office, after having finally made our submission to Mrs Nash, and induced her, with a promise "never to do it again," to withdraw her threat to turn us out, when the postman ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... in the daily mails, no hopeful looking forward if one failed to come, no cheery saying to one's heart, "Never mind, it will surely come to-morrow." This state is infinitely better than the hopeless glance one bestows upon the postman, realizing ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... most about this," he said, "is the revelation of your shortcomings as a wife. You ought to think me the picture of manly beauty. Baby does. She thinks that, next to the postman, I am ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... knew. At any rate, it was no concern of hers, and she was about to dip a pen when her ear was caught by the sound of a step upon the stone staircase. She followed it past Mr. Chippen's chambers; past Mr. Gibson's; past Mr. Turner's; after which it became her sound. A postman, a washerwoman, a circular, a bill—she presented herself with each of these perfectly natural possibilities; but, to her surprise, her mind rejected each one of them impatiently, even apprehensively. The step became slow, as it was apt to do at the end of the steep climb, and Mary, listening ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... not by herself, as soon as the opportunity presented itself. She was, in fact, a woman on whom the police might do worse than keep an eye; but, reflected Gimblet, he was not the police, and the dishonesty of this scheming widow was really no concern of his. As he reached his door, a postman was leaving it, and two or three letters had been pushed through the flap. He let himself in and took them out of the box. They were not of great importance. A bill, an appeal for a subscription to some charity, ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... did, I meant to water it as soon as I had finished my letter. He has never been able to bring this home to me, he says, because he burned my correspondence. As if a business man would destroy such a letter. It was yet more annoying when Gilray took to post-cards. To hear the postman's knock and then discover, when you are expecting an important communication, that it is only a post-card about a flower-pot—that is really too bad. And then I consider that some of the post-cards bordered upon insult. One of them said, "What about chrysanthemum?—reply ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... either," he returned, laughing; "you can have the postman who delivered the letters here—nothing ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... London for a copy of The Chorus in Green, as the author had oddly named the book. He wrote on June 21st and thought he might fairly expect to receive the interesting volume by the 24th; but the postman, true to his tradition, brought nothing for him, and in the afternoon he resolved to walk down to Caermaen, in case it might have come by a second post; or it might have been mislaid at the office; they forgot parcels sometimes, especially ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... Hivohitee's postman held no oral communication with the sentries. Dispatched round the island with divers bits of tappa, hieroglyphically stamped, he merely deposited one upon each altar; superadding a stone, to keep the missive in its place; and ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... the few cottage chimneys. Here he heard a quick, familiar footstep in the path ahead of him, and, turning the corner of the bushes, confronted the foot- post on his way to Welland. In answer to St. Cleeve's inquiry if there was anything for himself the postman handed out one letter, and ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... The postman's time for passing was just after Melbury's men had assembled in the spar-house; and Winterborne, who when not busy on his own account would lend assistance there, used to go out into the lane every morning and meet the ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... library"; another, because she "saw it was a nice place to come to on a rainy day." Still another frankly avows that "it was the fad among the boys and girls of our neighborhood; we used to meet at the library." A postman reported that he entered the library first in the line of his duty, but was attracted by it and began to take out books. A clergyman had his attention called to the library by requests from choir-boys that he should sign their application blanks; ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... interrupted by the appearance of Koku, who came out of the shop with a letter the postman ...
— Tom Swift and his Wizard Camera - or, Thrilling Adventures while taking Moving Pictures • Victor Appleton
... me to transfer this leaf from the book of his experience: "Not long ago the postman brought me a letter of a rather touching kind. The unknown writer, lately a widow, and plainly a woman of refinement, had just suffered a new affliction in the loss of her little girl. My correspondent asked me to copy for her ten or a dozen lines from a poem ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... landlady and the boy at' Child's." There is another allusion to the house in the Spectator. "Sometimes I"—the writer is Addison—"smoke a pipe at Child's, and while I seem attentive to nothing but the Postman, overhear the conversation of every table in the room." Apart from such decided lay patrons as Addison, Child's could also claim a large constituency among the medical and learned men of ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... our door a postman was delivering letters. One of them was for the Reverend Mother and I saw in a moment that it was in my father's handwriting. She read it in silence, and in silence she handed ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... effect of "Ship-Bored" upon others, its publication has exerted a very definite effect upon me, or rather upon the character of my daily mail. Instead of letters the postman now leaves little packages containing pills which, according to the senders, will prevent the casting of ...
— Ship-Bored • Julian Street
... without: the waterman, seated on his empty bucket, contemplates the untrodden pavement between his feet, and is at rest. The blue butcher's boy trots by with empty cart, five miles an hour, instead of full fifteen, and stops to chat with the red postman, who, his occupation gone, smokes with the green gatekeeper, and reviles the Czar. Along the whole north pavement of the square only one figure moves, and that ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... know; but he was for no dispute with Bess and kept his want of knowledge to himself. Yes; Richard was to write Dorothy every day; and she, for her sweet part, was likewise to write Richard every day. The good Bess, like an angel turned postman, would manage the exchange of ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... a mother watches, Her eyes with weeping dim, Or sweetheart waits the postman In vain for news of him. While snow of winter freezes, And April violets thrust Sweet blossoms through the grasses ...
— The Woman with a Stone Heart - A Romance of the Philippine War • Oscar William Coursey
... loud cheers raised for Marlborough, for Wolfe, for Nelson, or for Wellington, while overhead the church bells are ringing loudly in the old grey tower. These were the days of the highwaymen, and even as late as 1830 a postman was robbed near the moorland village of Lockton, on his way to Whitby. The driver of the mailcart at that time used to carry a large brass-mounted cavalry pistol, which was handed to him when he had mounted his ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... felt more nervous than usual. I had expected a letter from America for some days past, and none had arrived. On this evening I knew the mail was due, and I waited anxiously for the last ring of the postman at ten o'clock; but I was doomed to listen in vain. There was the sharp, loud ring next door, but not at ours; and I went to my room earlier than the others, really to give way to a few tears that ...
— J. Cole • Emma Gellibrand
... on earth since she's lost confidence in that cousin of her mother's because he didn't come to her wedding. She hasn't an idea that he never got her note asking him to give her away. Thank heaven I got hold of that before it reached the postman! If that old granny had been here we should have had trouble indeed. I had an experience with him once just before I married Betty's father, and I never want to repeat it. But we must look out what gets in ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... taste of Epsom salts; We snatch the cup and lift to drain it dry,— Its central dimple holds a drowning fly Strong is the pine by Maine's ambrosial streams, But stronger augers pierce its thickest beams; No iron gate, no spiked and panelled door, Can keep out death, the postman, or the bore. Oh for a world where peace and silence reign, And blunted dulness verebrates in vain! —The door-bell jingles,—enter Richard Fox, And takes this ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... keep them at due distance, for fear of losing one's authority. I'm sure last winter (it was a very severe one, if you recollect, and when it did not snow, it rained and blew), not a creature but the butcher and postman came to the house, from November till February; and I really got quite melancholy with sitting night after night alone; I had Leah in to read to me sometimes; but I don't think the poor girl liked the task ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... Post-Office department has many surprises in store for the American tourist. Mail delivery everywhere free, even in a rural commune remote from the railroad he may see a postman on his rounds two or three times a day. When money is sent him by postal order, the letter-carrier puts the cash in his hands. If he wishes to send a package by express, the carrier takes the order, which soon brings to him the postal express wagon. A package sent him is delivered ...
— Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum • James W. Sullivan
... the present time, Mr. Vollmar had had unusual success, but circumstances were soon to change. One morning as the family was breakfasting, the postman delivered a letter containing the information that the ship which carried a valuable cargo belonging to Mr. Vollmar had been lost ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... to the aged at last, however, even in Oldport. We have lately lost, for instance, that patient old postman, serenest among our human antiquities, whose deliberate tread might have imparted a tone of repose to Broadway, could any imagination have transferred him thither. Through him the correspondence of other days came softened of all immediate solicitude. Ere it reached you, friends had died or recovered, ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... say to Bridget, "'tis for marrying us he'd be, if he knew how it was with us, same as he married off Rose to the postman and gave them a cottage; and that new girl isn't up to Rose's work yet, nor ever will be, ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... came in, at about half-past three, the mail was just being distributed, and Mrs. Cope was waiting as usual to pounce on her letters; you know she was always watching for the postman. She was standing so close to me that I couldn't help seeing a big official-looking envelope that was handed to her. She tore it open, gave one look at the inside, and rushed off upstairs like a whirlwind, with the director shouting after her that she had left all her other letters behind. I ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... Billy trotted up to the smiling postman and received the letter in his mouth. Once or twice he capered round Lucy, who had followed to the gate, and then, standing quite still, he held up his head as if proud of his achievement, and allowed the letter ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... irreligious men. There are rudimentary moral principles which they that know not God nevertheless acknowledge and obey. It was so in Christ's time; it is so still. The popular American ballad, "Jim Bludso," and Ian Maclaren's touching story of the Drumtochty postman, are familiar illustrations of self-sacrificing virtues revealed by men of coarse and vicious lives. Nor ought we to deny the reality of such virtues; still less ought we to follow the bad example of St. Augustine and call them "splendid ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... go beyond that corner, but he could look and see what was coming, and perhaps he could see the postman ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... the hours of postal delivery, and listened with throbbing heart to the double knocks at neighbouring houses. When the last postman was gone by, she sat down, ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... its male inhabitants. Like that fabulous realm of Tennyson's Princess, it is a realm inhabited by women; and the only male voice left in the land is the voice of the milk-boy on his rounds, the necessary postman, and the innocuous grocer's tout. There is something of the 'hushed seraglio' in these miles of trim houses, from whose doors and windows only female faces look out. An air of sensible bereavement lies upon ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... that after mailing a letter he would often linger about the box until the postman arrived, and ask permission to inspect his letter, ostensibly to see if he had put on the stamp, but in fact to reassure himself that he had really mailed the missive, although he knew perfectly well that ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... his first two accepted stories had not arrived. Neither had a loan which, sorely against his will, he had been driven to request from the only man he could think of—an old schoolmate, far away in Scotland. He had listened for the postman's knock, hoping it would bring relief, for four long days—and not one letter had come, and he was despairing and ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... and by an enlightened philanthropy that won him the respect of all parties. When he was named as director of the post-office in 1822, many people of his circle blamed him for taking a place beneath him. "Congratulate me," he said, laughing, "that I have not been offered that of postman; I should have taken it just the same if I had thought I could be useful." And he added: "It was thought that it would be a sinecure for me. Far from that, I gave myself up wholly to my new employment, ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... postman, Goguelat carries all the news of the countryside, and a good deal of practice acquired in this way has made him an orator in great request at up-sittings, and the champion teller of stories in the district. Gondrin looks upon him as a very knowing ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... cotter or small farmer who is his cousin. I wish you could see him walking into his cousins' curds and cream, and into their dairies generally! Yesterday morning, between eight and nine, I was sitting writing at the open window, when the postman came to the inn (which at Loch Earn Head is the post-office) for the letters. He is going away, when Fletcher, who has been writing somewhere below-stairs, rushes out, and cries, 'Halloa there! Is that the Post?' 'Yes!' somebody answers. 'Call him back!' ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... further speculation for the moment by a knock at the door. The postman entered with two letters, for one of which, as it was registered, John had to sign. When he had tipped the postman and was alone again, he put his registered letter on the dressing-table (with a view to disciplining ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... he had been in such a hurry, so all was forgiven, and he went on playing fireman. He was in the midst of putting out a make-believe blaze in the village church when the doorbell rang, and the postman's whistle ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Snow Lodge • Laura Lee Hope
... Anthea, who consequently missed half the performance. Then there was the time when, Nurse having gone to tea with a friend out Ivalunk way, they were playing 'devil in the dark'—and in the midst of that most creepy pastime the postman's knock frightened Jane nearly out of her life. She took in the letters, however, and put them in the back of the hat-stand drawer, so that they should be safe. And safe they were, for she never thought of them again ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... difficulty in finding In den Zelten. I had to ask the way, once of a postman and once of a wounded soldier who was limping along with crutches. Finally, I found it, a narrowish street running off a corner of the great square in front of the Reichstag. No. 2 was the ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... thoroughly converted to the marvels of the high Alps, he reached the Kursaal side by side with the postman who brought the chief English mail about six o'clock ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... lord, I beg your pardon for so long a silence in the late reign; I knew nothing worth telling you; and the great event of this morning you Z, will certainly hear before it comes to you by so sober and regular a personage as the postman. The few circumstances known yet are, that the King went well to bed last night; rose well at six this morning; went to the water-closet a little after seven -, had a fit, fell against a bureau, and gashed his right temple: the valet de chambre heard a noise and a groan, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... September, in uniform, his revolver on the table, the doctor gave consultation to an old peasant couple. The husband had suffered with a varicose vein for seven years, but had waited until his wife had one too, so that they might go and hunt up a physician together, guided by the postman when he should ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... sons and tall daughters were housed and reared, and came to man and womanhood in that nest of little chambers; so that the face of the earth was peppered with the children of the manse, and letters with outlandish stamps became familiar to the local postman, and the walls of the little chambers brightened with the wonders of the East. The dullest could see this was a house that had a pair of hands in divers foreign places: a well-beloved house - its image fondly dwelt on ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Breaking up of the Ice First appearances of Spring Burning a Fallow A Walk through a Settlement Log Huts Description of a Native New Brunswicker's House Blowing the Horn A Deserted Lot The Bushwacker The Postman American Newspapers Musquitoes An Emigrant's House Unsuccessful Lumberer The Law of Kindness exemplified in the Case of a Criminal Schools The School Mistress The Woods Baptists' Association A Visit to the House of a Refugee The ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... the spring and early summer he had walked down that sun- and shadow-flecked suburban road, and rested on that particular iron chair. The butcher's and fishmonger's boys going their rounds, the policeman on his beat, the postman wearily footing it, the daily governess returning from her morning's occupation, had become used to his appearance there; and he watched each one going upon his or her ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... accepting his Uncle William's advice, John sent the manuscript of his story to the editor of Blackwood's Magazine; and each morning, after he had done so, he eagerly awaited the advent of the postman. But the postman, more often than not, went past their door. When he did deliver a letter to them, it was usually a trading letter ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... the 18th came, with its initial postman's knock, but neither Mr. Morton nor any sign or news from him. Mrs. Morton, who evidently had spent a sleepless night, for she looked sadly changed and haggard, sent a wire to the hall porter at the large building in Cannon Street, where her husband had his office. An hour later she had ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... wonder if you would think so," Betty teased, adding quickly to forestall the outburst she saw was coming, "It really isn't anything at all—only—I met the postman on ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... her father, the King, had the news sent all through the kingdom that his daughter was named at last, and then everybody sent her letters. She had bags and bags full of mail every day, and they had to put on an extra postman. And she had valentines in the mail, and catalogues, and birthday presents, and samples of dresses, and seeds for flowers, and,—and magazines, and,—and,—and one day a little live kitten came to her in the mail, and she was so pleased. So she named the kitten Toodle-Doo, ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... Besides, it's the right kind of name. It's the way most of the farms all over England once were named—after their owners, and where the owner was a man of character and force the name persisted. Call it 'Buckler's' and you will help everyone, from the postman to the strange guest who might otherwise tour the neighbourhood for miles searching for you long ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... woman might as well be buried alive as live here. In fact, I am buried alive; I feel it. I stood at the window three hours this blessed day, and saw nothing but the postman. No: it isn't a pity that I hadn't something better to do; I had plenty: but that's my business, Mr. Caudle. I suppose I'm to be mistress of my own house? If not, ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... even women, I am ashamed to say, tell us so. They mistake the politeness of men for rights—seats while men stand in this hall to-night, and their adulations; but these are mere courtesies. We want rights. The flour-merchant, the house-builder, and the postman charge us no less on account of our sex; but when we endeavor to earn money to pay all these, then, indeed, we find the difference. Man, if he have energy, may hew out for himself a path where no mortal has ever trod, held back by nothing but what is in himself; the world is all before him, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Nancy, "that wasn't the next. The next was the one which got away for three days, and then the postman brought it back. Then came the one that swallowed the thimble, and then, the day after mother had said we were not to have another there came a strange one to Andrew's cottage, and he brought it ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... strides forward, and put his hand on the shoulder of an ordinary passing postman who had bustled by them unnoticed under ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... travelled in the contrary direction to his heart. Oh, how interminably long did the short days of December and January appear! There was one bright hour for me, among all my hours,—it was when I heard from my room the step, the voice, and the rattle of the postman, who was distributing the letters in the neighborhood. As soon as I heard him I opened my window; I saw him coming up the street, with his hands full of letters, which he distributed to all the maid-servants, and waited at each door till he received ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... days, passed in waiting for it, days which they are not able to remember when they look back? This is my unfortunate case. Night after night, I have gone to bed without so much as opening my Journal. There was nothing worth writing about, nothing that I could recollect, until the postman came to-day. I ran downstairs, when I heard his ring at the bell, and stopped Maria on her way to the study. There, among papa's usual handful of letters, ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... covering the same ground, each leaving his cans of milk here and there in a sporadic fashion as haphazard as a bee among the flowers. Contrast, says the socialist, the wasted labors of the milkman with the orderly and systematic performance of the postman, himself a little fragment of socialism. And the milkman, they tell us, is typical of modern industrial society. Competing railways run trains on parallel tracks, with empty cars that might be filled and with vast executive organizations ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... there was the postman's whistle at the door. He handed in a large, thick letter, and it was ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... NELL,—I did not "swear at the postman" when I saw another letter from you. And I hope you will not "swear" at me when I tell you that I cannot think of leaving home at present, even to have the pleasure of joining you at Harrogate, but I am obliged ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... surprised at this little adventure; but when day after day passed, and no tidings came from Natalie, he grew alarmed. Each morning he was certain there would be a letter; each morning the postman rung the bell below, and Waters would tumble down the stairs at breakneck speed, but not a word from ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... then it was enveloped in an outer covering of clay, on which the address and the chief contents of it were noted; but the public were usually prevented from knowing what it contained in another way. Before it was handed over to the messenger or postman it was "sealed," which generally appears to mean that it was deposited in some receptacle, perhaps of leather or linen, which was then tied up and sealed. In fact, Babylonian and Assyrian letters were treated much as ours are when they are put into a post-bag to which the seals of the ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... just the honest, red-cheeked, pretty, shy simpleton of a lass you will meet by the round dozen in our country, who grows into the plump wife of Master Church-warden-in-broadcloth, bears a half-score children, gets flushed after midday dinner, and would sooner miss church than the postman any day in the year. Such was Molly Lovel at nineteen, honestly handsome and honestly a fool, whom in Bankside ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... never came when it ought to have come and what she went through morning after morning when the postman brought none for her the very postman himself compassionated when she ran down to the door, and yet we cannot wonder at its being calculated to blunt the feelings to have all the trouble of other people's letters and none ...
— Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings • Charles Dickens
... to answer." Immediately on the wayfarers' arrival at Dotheboys, Mrs. Squeers, arrayed in a dimity night-jacket, herself a head taller than Mr. Squeers, was always introduced with great effect, as seizing her Squeery by the throat and giving him two loud kisses in rapid succession, like a postman's knock. The audience then scarcely had time to laugh over the interchange of questions and answers between the happy couple, as to the condition of the cows and pigs, and, last of all, the boys, ending with Madame's intimation that "young Pitcher's ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... finish the sentence: the postman's knock came to the door, and she bounded off to see what he had brought, leaving Miss Dasomma in fear lest she should appropriate a letter not addressed to her. She returned with a look of triumph—a look so wildly exultant that her ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... MacAlisters' kitchen, which is at the same time their shop, and where every one goes in and out. The box is never locked; and after the letters are sorted they often lie on the table for hours, waiting until the postman comes to take them away. Any one who was not honest could easily slip into the kitchen when Mrs. MacAlister's back was turned and do what they liked with the letters; but such a thing has never happened before. Now, whoever committed the robbery has seen that Neil was in the ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... "She knows the postman collects at six o'clock. Well, I s'pose she is hiding somewhere, reading a book. Won't I give it to her when I catch her! For she said she'd come out here, right ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... like a toy lighthouse. Everything was grey and white in a cold and dolorous sort of shepherd's plaid. In the profound silence, broken only by the noise of oars at sea, a horn was sounded twice; and I saw the postman, girt with two bags, pause a moment at the end of ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and laughter." Unconsciously Helen repeated the words aloud; then she smiled bitterly as she applied them to herself. Youth?—she was twenty-five. Love?—the grocer? the milkman? the floorwalker? oh, yes, and there was the postman. Laughter?—she could not remember when she had seen anything funny—really ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... o'clock, when the postman reaches that quarter, Eugene received a letter. The dainty envelope bore the Beauseant arms on the seal, and contained an invitation to the Vicomtesse's great ball, which had been talked of in Paris for a month. A little ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... I know; it is all cramped enough here, compared with many other places. But there is life here—there is promise—there are innumerable things to work for and fight for; and that is the main thing. (Calls.) Katherine, hasn't the postman been here? ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... the cliffs, every rift showing maidenhair fern and wild-flowers in abundance, the fragrant evening primrose and lavender, the fringed gentian. The weather is warm as in July, and of deepest blue the sky above the glittering white peaks. Half-way we meet the rural postman, whose presence reminds us that we are still on the verge of civilization, eerie as is all the solitude ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... hours of postal delivery, and listened with throbbing heart to the double knocks at neighbouring houses. When the last postman was gone by, she ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... each sex, who is accustomed to attend them, is now habited in black. Thus a round of mourning is kept up by the courtiers of Europe, not by means of any sympathetic beating of the heart, but at the sound, as it were, of the postman's horn. ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... however scarcely time to congratulate himself, before he was annoyed by a Postman, in the usual costume, whom he had already seen delivering letters to the company; the contents of which appeared to afford considerable amusement; and who, presenting a letter addressed to The Lord Chief Justice Bunglecause, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... to know where you get all your funny things for PUNCHINELLO? He knows they are there, does Mr. DROWSE; for he gets my copy of the penny postman, and he keeps it, too. It is the only good taste my neighbor has displayed of late years. I tell Mr. DROWSE that you make your fun. He further asks, Where? I tell him in the attic—up there where they keep ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various
... the old tree on the green, with perhaps to secure portrait the old POSTMAN sitting there with his bag a la ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... wireless-telegraphy message throughout the country and brought applications from "would be" jurors or recommendations from friends of "would be" jurors until the files of the board room were filled to the limit, and the colored postman of the free-delivery postal service in the southern home of the chairman thought he had relapsed into a ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... at the head of the bridge, and, as usual, it was the Baron himself who partially opened the heavy portal. He scrutinized the man as minutely as if he were a stranger, although the honest face and twinkling eyes of the postman had been familiar to the Baron for many years. The man ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... was seldom disturbed, except by the grocer and butcher, who came to receive orders, or the cabs, hackney-coaches, and Bath-chairs, in which the ladies took an infrequent airing, or the livery-steed which the retired captain sometimes bestrode for a morning ride, or by the red-coated postman who went his rounds twice a day to deliver letters, and again in the evening, ringing a hand-bell, to take letters for the mail. In merely mentioning these slight interruptions of its sluggish stillness, I seem to myself to disturb too much the atmosphere of quiet that brooded over the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... had got beyond Chateau Renard before he was conscious of arousing wonder. On the road between that place and Chatillon-sur-Loing, however, he encountered a rural postman; they fell together in talk, and spoke of a variety of subjects; but through one and all, the postman was still visibly preoccupied, and his eyes were faithful to the Arethusa's knapsack. At last, with mysterious roguishness, ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... departure! And yet I feel rather a toad for saying so. She is splendid in some things—yes, she is! And the Rectory people take the most rose-coloured view of her—it's too late to tell you why, for the postman ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... lit from a hansom an eager and pretty little lady, all in gauzy tissues and lace scarf, who knocked at the door like a postman and flew up the stair into Sanchia's arms. "Oh, Sancie, Sancie, how sweet of you to write! Now we are all going to be happy again forever after. Oh, and here's Cuthbert—I forgot." In the doorway stood the erect form, and smiled the bronzed face of Captain ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... that you put on Mr. Keller's desk," she said pleasantly. "This time, David, I act as my own postman—at Mr. Keller's request." ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... of Sicily there lived a man named Nicolo Pesce,—Nicholas the Fish. This man's powers seem to have been decidedly superhuman. He was evidently an amphibious animal. He appears to have acted the part of ocean-postman in these old times, for it is related of him that he used to carry letters for the king far and wide about the Mediterranean. On one occasion a vessel found him out of sight of land in the discharge of ocean-postal duty—bearing despatches of the king from Sicily to Calabria. ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... uniform, that's all. When they are in the field—so to speak,—they always wear them; you never see an angel going with a message anywhere without his wings, any more than you would see a military officer presiding at a court-martial without his uniform, or a postman delivering letters, or a policeman walking his beat, in plain clothes. But they ain't to FLY with! The wings are for show, not for use. Old experienced angels are like officers of the regular army—they dress plain, when they are off duty. New angels ...
— Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Mark Twain
... little tilbury harnessed to a white horse, which was going in the opposite direction, and in which there was but one person, a man enveloped in a mantle. The wheel of the tilbury received quite a violent shock. The postman shouted to the man to stop, but the traveller paid no heed and pursued his road ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... such a time in their own proper persons. The day of any one's departure is always wretched, but much more is it wretched, when the person departing is a lover, whose face will not be seen and of whom no postman will bear tidings ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... used in the place of "city," in addressing a note that is to pass through the postman's hands, is a needless and annoying affectation, since it is hardly to be expected that a knowledge of the French language forms one of the qualifications for a letter-carrier's position, and if delay ensues in delivery, the writer, not ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... off the moment your back is turned. No, better!—to be slipped into your pocket and carried home to yourself by yourself. How, when you get to your destination and find it, you will curse yourself that you were not a speedier postman! ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... sometimes turning over the leaves. But my old Bible was poor print and small, and it troubled me for a long while. So I thought I would ask the Lord to send me a new one. I told Him all about it. One day, this Summer, the postman brought me a package of magazines and a letter. I began to undo the package, eager to scan their welcome pages. My sister laughingly said she would read my letter, and suiting the action to the word, opened the envelope. I ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... the sands, enforcing from the negroes a restitution of clothes to the plundered postman, when the crack of a cannon, higher up the beach, made me fear that an aggression was being committed against my homestead. Before I could depart, however, two more shots in the same quarter, left me no ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... evening, and as they were all so dull he did not very much mind being sent to bed when he had finished his supper. When he said good-night to father, he noticed that his boots were very muddy, as if he had walked a long way like a common postman. He made a joke about this, but they all looked at him as if he had said something wrong, so he hurried out of the room, glad to get away from these people whose looks had no reasonable significance, and whose words had no discoverable meaning. It had been a bad day, and he hoped ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... Commander Osborn thus facetiously describes the circumstance.[119] "Several animals thus intrusted with despatches or records were liberated by different ships; but, as the truth must be told, I fear in many cases the next night saw the poor 'postman,' as Jack termed him, in another trap, out of which he would be taken, killed, the skin taken off, and packed away to ornament at some future day the neck of some fair Dulcinea. As a 'sub,' I was admitted into this secret ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... bucket, contemplates the untrodden pavement between his feet, and is at rest. The blue butcher's boy trots by with empty cart, five miles an hour, instead of full fifteen, and stops to chat with the red postman, who, his occupation gone, smokes with the green gatekeeper, and reviles the Czar. Along the whole north pavement of the square only one figure moves, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... street where we first noticed the stove-pipes sprouting from the pavement, we saw a postman in the regulation costume of the French postman, with the regulation black, shiny wallet-box hanging over his stomach, and the regulation pen behind his ear, smartly delivering letters from house to house. He did not knock at the doors; he just stuck the letters through the ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... tailor. Entering our village each evening, he announced his arrival by three blasts on his tin horn; he was very shy of being observed in this performance, and the people had to catch him as he passed and hand him their letters. He must have walked nearly 100,000 miles in the many years he was our postman, and he told me before I left that more letters were addressed to the Manor when I first came, than to all the rest of the houses in the village together. When correspondence became more general a pillar-box was erected, but I always regretted the loss of ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... Ippolito did not come, but in the afternoon the postman brought a letter for Mrs. Vervain, couched in the priest's English, begging her indulgence until after the day of Corpus Christi, up to which time, he said, he should be too occupied ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... after the disorderliness and warm humanity of her Irish home, after the run of the stables and the kennels, and the freedom of the village, after the chats with the pedlars and the beggars, and the borrowing and blowing of the postman's bugle, after the queenship of a host of barefooted gossoons, her loyal messenger-boys. Now her mere direct glance under reproof was considered "hardi." "Droop your eyes, you bold child," said the shocked Madame Agathe. A fancy she took to a French girl was checked. "On defend les amities particulieres," ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... barrows with the help of grave and formidable dogs; washers and cleaners at the doors of highly-decorated villas, amiably performing their tasks while the mighty slept; fishermen and fat fisher-girls, industriously repairing endless brown nets on the other side of the parapet of the road; a postman and a little policeman; a porcelain mender, who practised his trade under the shadow of the wall; a few loafers; some stable-boys exercising horses; and children with adorable dirty faces, shouting ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... join the sisters in the barn playhouse, wandered down to the gate and stood looking up the street in search of something to occupy her attention. She was tired of playing games in the barn, she had read the latest St. Nicholas from cover to cover, and the postman had not yet brought the Youth's Companion, although this was the regular day for it. Anyway, she didn't care to read. She would rather stay and listen to what the women in the house were talking about, ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... ladies of the house alone did not seem to feel the cheering influence of Fink's presence. The baroness fell sick; it was no violent ailment, yet it came suddenly. That very afternoon she had spoken cheerfully to Anton, and taken from him some letters which the postman had brought for her husband, but in the evening she did not make her appearance at the tea-table, though the baron himself treated her indisposition as trifling. She complained of nothing but weakness, and the doctor, who ventured ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... seemed most expedient by interviews, letters or return postals. Every woman personally solicited her neighbor, her doctor, her grocer, her laundrywagon driver, the postman and even the man who collected the garbage. It was essentially a womanly campaign, emphasizing the home interests and engaging the cooperation of home makers. The association published and sold 3,000 copies of The Washington Women's Cook Book, compiled by the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... policeman suddenly appeared in the distance. At the same time a sweep, a postman, and a ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... the Inspector on the back. "You've seen the postman. It is a pleasure to work with you. Well, here is the lodge, and if you will come up, Colonel, I will show you the scene of ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... the envelope. "I thought it came from the postman, but there is no postmark; Sarah ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... A postman, dog, and baker's cart, all hurrying at top speed, seemed to stand still; Cecilia felt the wind beating her cheeks. She gave a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... carrier," he said; "addressed to 'Drake Vernon, Esquire.' The little one is registered. The carrier acted as auxiliary postman, and ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... not said a word on the subject, but I am very sure he would be overjoyed to have her come back. Every day when the postman arrives I believe he looks for a letter from her, and he shows that he feels it when he finds none. He is good-natured, and pleasant, but he is not as cheerful as ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... save the postman a miserable Christmas, we follow the example of all unselfish people, and send out our cards early. Most of the cards had finger-marks, which I did not notice at night. I shall buy all future cards in the daytime. Lupin (who, ever since he has had the appointment ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... long walk at his country seat in Hampshire, thinking of the contents of a letter which he held crushed up within his trousers' pocket. He always breakfasted exactly at nine, and the letters were supposed to be brought to him at a quarter past. The postman was really due at his hall-door at a quarter before nine; but though he had lived in the same house for above fifteen years, and though he was a man very anxious to get his letters, he had never yet learned the truth about them. ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... too was waiting on that side, for it had not yet been able to get across: a road would have to be prepared. Without any interview with his agents, without a glance at his books, he thrust a pile of bank-notes, uncounted, into his pocket, and left the house. At the threshold he met the postman, who brought a registered letter, and demanded a receipt. Michael was in too great haste to go back to his room; he carried pen and ink with him, and laying the receipt on the broad back of the postman, he signed his name to it. Then he looked at the letter. It was from his ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... hurrying steps behind them made both men turn round. A postman, hot and perspiring, was hurrying to the chateau; he had a ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... week an immense dispatch found its way to the village, which excited universal wonderment. It was a great oblong missive, with the words 'On His Majesty's Service' printed at the top. It had an enormous seal, and was directed to 'Mr Thomas Larkin.' A crowd of idlers followed the postman with this epistolary phenomenon, in the hope of getting some knowledge of its contents. Tom, however, when he read it, coolly put it into his pocket, and walked to the cottage without ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... up there and I thought maybe you were behind it," the postman called, as he looked among the pack of letters he ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... stooping, walked briskly to the gate, and holding himself a little more erect than usual, glanced first at the vane, noticing with a sailor's instinct the quarter in which the wind sat; and then turning, gazed anxiously up the village in the direction of the postman's approach, till that functionary appeared in sight. Then he would lay his hand nervously on the top of the little garden-gate, half open it, close it again, and finally, as the letter-carrier advanced, hail him with the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... by the loud cheers raised for Marlborough, for Wolfe, for Nelson, or for Wellington, while overhead the church bells are ringing loudly in the old grey tower. These were the days of the highwaymen, and even as late as 1830 a postman was robbed near the moorland village of Lockton, on his way to Whitby. The driver of the mailcart at that time used to carry a large brass-mounted cavalry pistol, which was handed to him when he had mounted ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... to observe the contrast between her fervent sentences and the weak, faint characters that expressed them, but hastily sought the servant who was accustomed to act as postman, gave him directions to acquaint her of its reception, and watched him out of sight. All that in the swiftness of a fever-fit. Scarcely had the boat vanished when old thoughts rushed over her again and she would have given her life ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... to immediate delivery by special messenger. The tendency for the establishment of slight divergency in language between England and America is seen in the terms of the post-office as in those of the railway. A letter is "mailed," not "posted;" the "postman" gives way to the "letter-carrier;" a "post-card" is expanded into a "postal-card." The stranger on arrival at New York will be amused to see the confiding way in which newspaper or book packets, too large for the orifice, are placed on the top of the street letter-boxes (affixed to lamp-posts), ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... of it all! And yet the man hit something and broke his neck! Contrast that explanation with the verdict of a coroner's jury in the West of England on a drowned postman—'We find that deceased met his death by an act of God, caused by sudden overflowing of the river Walkhan and helped out by the scandalous neglect of ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... He folded them just so, put the proper stamps inside the long envelope along with the manuscript, sealed the envelope, put more stamps outside, and dropped it into the mail-box. It travelled across the continent, and after a certain lapse of time the postman returned him the manuscript in another long envelope, on the outside of which were the stamps he had enclosed. There was no human editor at the other end, but a mere cunning arrangement of cogs that changed the manuscript ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... with a like vigour and freedom of language. Nor did Mr. Sheldon's announcement of his profession confine itself to the brass-plate and the glass-case. A shabby-genteel young man pervaded the neighbourhood for some days after the surgeon-dentist's advent, knocking a postman's knock, which only lacked the galvanic sharpness of the professional touch, and delivering neatly-printed circulars to the effect that Mr. Sheldon, surgeon-dentist, of 14 Fitzgeorge-street, had invented some novel method of adjusting false teeth, incomparably superior to any existing method, ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... slowly on the first of the month, and, the meal finished, took a seat in the window with his pipe and waited for the postman. Mrs. Gribble's timid reminders concerning the flight of time and consequent fines for lateness at work fell on deaf ears. He jumped up suddenly and met ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... ago, and our spirits catch a contagion from the elements. Our step on the boards recovers its buoyancy. We are rocked to rest at night by a gentle movement which soothes you into the dreamless sleep of childhood, and we wake with the certainty that we are beyond the reach of the postman. We are shut off, in a Catholic retreat, from the worries and anxieties of ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... with Miss Fanny. The poor young lady had not recovered her spirits; and Susan said she was afraid that if anything should happen to Harry it would bring her to her grave. This of course made us more than ever anxious to hear again from Jerry. At last one day the postman brought a letter to our door and demanded three shillings for it, which I willingly paid, for I saw at a glance that it was from my old shipmate. I have it still by ...
— The Loss of the Royal George • W.H.G. Kingston
... heavier when the postman's last ring brought no note for her, and she had to go upstairs to a lonely night—a night as grim and sleepless as her tortured fancy had pictured it to Gerty. She had never learned to live with her own thoughts, and to be confronted with them through such hours of lucid misery made the confused ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... have either," he returned, laughing; "you can have the postman who delivered the letters here—nothing ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... pictures which show that, before Egyptian history begins at all, the camel was known in Egypt, somehow that useful animal seems to have disappeared from the land for many hundreds of years. The Pharaohs and their adventurous barons never used the queer, ungainly creature that carries the desert postman in our picture (Plate 12), and the ivory, gold-dust, and ebony that came from the Soudan had to be carried on the ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie
... ten days lost, always presuming that the diabolical postman would dare to repeat his attempt and produce ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... going to throw him over. I thought as much! You were always writing to him when you first came to the city, and talking about him, at night when we brushed our hair; but lately you haven't spoken of him at all. You used to look happier when the postman brought you something from him. And you ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... the pickets no one could doubt. Morn, noon, and night she prowled about the neighborhood, employing the "byes," so she termed such stray sheep in army blue as a dhrop of Anatole's best would tempt, to carry scrawling notes to Jim, one of which, falling with its postman by the wayside and turned over by the guard to Captain Cram for transmittal, was addressed to Mister Loot'nt James Doyle, Lite Bothery X, Jaxun Barx, and brought the only laughter to his lips the big horse-artilleryman ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... from the day on which she had fled he was starting out as usual, early in the morning, for another day of hopeless, weary tramping in the city, when the postman handed him a letter addressed in her handwriting. It was to him like a voice from the grave, and ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... missis said 'No' to me the first time." And then you went and told the gardeners—I suppose you had all the gardeners together in the potting-shed, and gave them a lecture about it—and when you had told them, you said, "Excuse me a moment, I must now go and tell the postman," ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... Mr. Vollmar had had unusual success, but circumstances were soon to change. One morning as the family was breakfasting, the postman delivered a letter containing the information that the ship which carried a valuable cargo belonging to Mr. Vollmar ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... Friedrich August Vogt, was gazing in surprise on a letter which the postman had just pushed in at the little window. The superscription was in the hand-writing of his son, but the post-mark bore the name ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... night. She got up early the next morning. She was determined to stand at the gate and watch for the postman. The letters usually arrived about eight o'clock. The postman hove in sight, and ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... much interest. But if he were appointed he might be able to get you a berth on board the ship. As that didn't seem very hopeful, I thought it better to say nothing to you about it. However, this morning, just after you had started for school, the postman brought a letter from him, saying that, owing to the threatening state of affairs in the East, a number of ships were being rapidly put in commission, and that he had been appointed to the 'Falcon,' and had seen the captain, and as the latter, who happened to be an old friend ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... Park, when I was startled by a distinctly burglarious noise at the window. My host smiled at my look of bewilderment, and explained that it was only the letter-carrier; and, sure enough, when the servant came into the room she picked up three or four letters from the floor. The postman was somehow able to reach the front window from the "stoop," open it, and throw in the evening's mail—a primitive arrangement, more suggestive of the English than of the American Gotham. Even the gum on the United States postage-stamps is ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... good children. After he was enclosed by the enemy at Thermopylae, desiring to save two that were related to him, he gave one of them a letter and sent him away; but he rejected it, saying angrily, I followed you as a soldier, not as a postman. The other he commanded to go on a message to the magistrates of Sparta; but he, answering, that is a messenger's business, took his shield, and stood up in his rank. Who would not have blamed another that should have omitted these things? But he who has collected and recorded the fart of Amasis, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... and chided him for his wantonly cruel words. They chatted along merrily for an hour, first about this trifle and then that, completely under the influence of the glorious event, without one thought being given to the cloud, as big as a postman's hand, among Gabrielle's packages, for they did not see ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... as my printers know not: nor the postman—nor the correspondent, who riseth in his wrath and curseth over ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... that did not look quite polite; so she scratched out "isn't mouse" and changed it to "I hope it will be fine," and she gave her letter to the postman. ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... the most natural of dreams and quite its own excuse for being. But strange things come in the mail,—pieces of turf in which are growing tiny plants, boxes of rice, jelly, breakfast food, cooked fish still warm; and once a sack of mail is emptied upon my door-stone—not by the postman but by a man who the day before drove past with a little child. Other recurring motifs are strawberries, yeast, Bologna sausage, ice cream— once poured over slices of clear, transparent fruit which I ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... landlord, and he gives them a Christmas-box: such as a piece of salt fish, or money, or what may be. Then, when you enter your house, you will find on your table, with the heading, "A Happy Christmas," a book of little leaflets, printed with verses. These are the petitions of the postman, scavenger, telegraph man, newsboy, &c., asking you for a Christmas-box. Poor fellows! they get little enough, and a couple of francs is well bestowed on them once a year. After mid-day breakfast or luncheon is over, rich and poor walk out and take the air, and a gaudy, pompous crowd they form ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... fervour gets a little cooling occasionally: but, although there are doubtless many acute minds in power, and many great men in public situations, yet the majority of the people of intellect and of wealth in the United States keep aloof whilst this order of things remains: for, from the penny-postman and the city scavenger to the very President himself, the qualification for ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... been able to bring this home to me, he says, because he burned my correspondence. As if a business man would destroy such a letter. It was yet more annoying when Gilray took to post-cards. To hear the postman's knock and then discover, when you are expecting an important communication, that it is only a post-card about a flower-pot—that is really too bad. And then I consider that some of the post-cards bordered upon insult. One of them said, ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... Religious House which stood close by. I have rather an odd anecdote to relate of the Nun's Well. One day the landlady of a public house, a field's length from it, on the road-side, said to me, 'You have been to see the Nun's Well, sir.' 'The Nun's Well! What is that?' said the postman, who in his royal livery stopt his mail-car at the door. The landlady and I explained to him what the name meant, and what sort of people the nuns were. A countryman who was standing by rather tipsy stammered out, 'Ay, those Nuns ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... not been the case for some time before. The harsh countenance of the soldier Dagobert is becoming smoother—a sure sign of some amelioration in the condition of the marshal. Detected by their handwriting, the last anonymous letters were returned by Dagobert to the postman, without having been opened by the marshal. Some other method must be found to get ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... hated English, it makes very little difference to the Bosch, for the innkeeper here says that orders concerning the taking off of hats to all and sundry became so stringent in 1918 that the local postman was constantly interrupted in his duties to answer the salutes of people who wished to be on the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... people at the other end, grandfather's face was quite hidden in his newspaper, which he had kept over from last night on purpose to have something to read in the train, knowing that they would start before the postman came in the morning, and mother and auntie were talking together, softly, not to ...
— The Adventures of Herr Baby • Mrs. Molesworth
... country, a pocket compass, and the sagacity and instinct of their black boy, they started for Barra Warra, a station distant about fifty miles; which was centrally situated, and from whence there was a postman's track to Brompton. To reach this point before dark, it was necessary to push on; as, should they not complete their distance in daylight, it would necessitate the alternative of spending a night in the bush; a circumstance, which, though not likely to cause ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... had a "dooce" of a time. Of course, we have to improvise shelters with our blankets. Our place is known as "The Moated Grange,"—a trench having been dug round it for reasons not wholly connected with Jupiter Pluvius. Others are, or would be, known to the postman, did he but come our way ("he cometh not") as "No. 1 Park Mansions," "The Manor House," "Balmoral," "Belle Vue," "Buckingham Palace," and "The Lodge." Apropos of something which concerns a lot of A.M.B.'s, the following may ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... displaced for an egg, which he tapped until Mrs. Chump cried out, "Oh! if ye're not like a postman, Pole; and d'ye think ye've got a letter for a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... morning a great burden rolled from her heart when she saw Sadie hand the postman a letter and a small package on which there was a special delivery stamp, and she earnestly hoped that this step in the right direction would forever end the ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... old fashion, and their occupations had not changed. It was just as if he had wound up a clockwork toy before leaving England, and had returned after many years to find it still working. Here came old Dymond, the postman, with the usual midday delivery, light as ever, and the well-remembered dot-and-go-one gait. The maids who came out to take the letters were different; in one of them the Emigrant recognised a little girl who had once sat facing him in the Wesleyan day-school; but the bells that fetched them ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... addressed the label and tied it round his neck, he posted himself honourably at the General Post-Office. The rest of the letters in the box made a fairly comfortable bed, and Billy fell asleep. When he awoke he was being delivered by the early morning postman at the Houses of Parliament in the capital of Plurimiregia, and the Houses of Parliament were just being opened for the day. The air of Plurimiregia was clear and blue, very different from the air of Claremont Square, Pentonville. The hills and woods round the town looked soft ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... one wears a red flower or a white in her hair, or watching along the Corso for a gloved hand on a carriage door, as we used to do at Milan; instead of snatching a mouthful of baba like a lackey finishing off a bottle behind a door, or wearing out one's wits with giving and receiving letters like a postman—letters that consist not of a mere couple of tender lines, but expand to five folio volumes to-day and contract to a couple of sheets to-morrow (a tiresome practice); instead of dragging along over the ruts and dodging behind hedges—it would be better to give way to the adorable ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... not really leave the field: that very evening an aged man, in green spectacles, was inquiring about the postal arrangements to Vizard Court; and next day he might have been seen, in a back street of Taddington, talking to the village postman, and afterward drinking with him. It was ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... and Collins and Mrs. Collins at the station together and I heard them say they were going to the opera. That was the first time I'd seen Collins and his wife together since they separated. And this morning the postman told me that Mrs. Collins had spent the night in her own house—that she and her husband evidently had decided ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... same day, the postman brought him a letter, so vilely addressed, that it had been taken to two or three places, on speculation, before it ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... it's nothing to boast of even on earth. Up here, it's simply contemptible. Now that you gods are too old for your work, you've made me the miserable drudge of Olympus—groom, valet, postman, butler, commissionaire, maid of all work, parish ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... away, The Postman gone—and I must pay, For down below Deaf Mary dwells, And does not hear ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... that came that night was ushered in somewhat prosaically, not by the sound of a foeman's horn being wound in the distance, but by the postman's knock. There was only one letter, but that was an important looking one addressed to Rendel, in a big, square envelope with an official signature in the corner. It was, however, marked "private and confidential," and was not written in an official capacity. Rendel as he looked at it, ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... I waited upon the postman, and when the summons came I dodged a committee-meeting, and ascended the marble stairs with trepidation, and underwent the doubting scrutiny of an English lackey, sufficiently grave in deportment and habiliments ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... whether sina Tona had had any word from Tonet. As time went on, the three women from the old hulk there on the shore followed all the voyages and stops of the schoolship Villa de Madrid with Tonet on board as able seaman. And how excited they would get when the postman would throw down on the wet counter a narrow envelope, sometimes sealed with red wax and then again with bread dough, and a complicated address written all over it in huge fat letters: "For sinora tona The Woman who keeps The little cafe near The ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the first magnitude to entitle him to the appellation of Doctor from his landlady and the boy at' Child's." There is another allusion to the house in the Spectator. "Sometimes I"—the writer is Addison—"smoke a pipe at Child's, and while I seem attentive to nothing but the Postman, overhear the conversation of every table in the room." Apart from such decided lay patrons as Addison, Child's could also claim a large constituency among the medical and learned men ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... she remembered an American teacher at school who had been in love with the man she was soon to marry. She remembered how she had hidden behind the trees to see this young teacher run to the gate to meet the postman, and her own failure to see why these letters should bring such joy. She, with other girls, had spent a whole recess acting this scene amid peals of laughter. Now it all came back to her with new meaning, and it seemed ...
— Little Sister Snow • Frances Little
... every comet that has come back upon predicted time—not that, essentially, there was anything more abstruse about it than is a prediction that you can make of a postman's periodicities tomorrow—was advertised for all it was worth. It's the way reputations are worked up for fortune-tellers by the faithful. The comets that didn't come back—omitted or explained. Or Encke's comet. It came back ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... knock, but the postman was an unfamiliar visitor in that house, and Mrs. Bunting started violently. She was nervous, that's what was the matter with her,—so she told herself angrily. No doubt this was a letter for Mr. Sleuth; the lodger must have relations and acquaintances somewhere in the world. All gentlefolk ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... Flitters's birthday, and she woke with a start and hurried down to see what the postman had brought. There were five parcels and a letter. The letter was from Miss Bitters. "Dear Miss Flitters," it ran, "I am so sorry to hear of your cold, and in the hope that it will do you good, I am sending you a ——. I always find it excellent, although mother prefers ——. We both wish you many ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... you will be able to decipher this, written at steam speed with a breaking pen, the hotfast postman at my heels. No excuse, says you. None, sir, says I, and touches my 'at most civil (extraordinary evolution of pen, now quite doomed—to resume—) I have not put pen to the Bloody Murder yet. But it is early ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... why you should feel anything at all. It's nothing to you—or very little. It wouldn't be your fault; not any more than it's the postman's if he has to bring you a letter with ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... Cragg; another a tall, thin man with a monocle in his left eye; the third, she found to her surprise, was none other than Jim Bennett the postman. The tall man held in his arms a ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... Mrs. Cooper—not over-strong since the Paris days. They left its grass of "ghostly green" when the "dog-star raged with all its fury," and "came on old Aix-la-Chapelle, well-cloaked and carriage windows closed." In compliment to the republic of letters the postman called on Cooper here, and like tribute was also paid two posts farther on, where he was asked if he "was the man who wrote books!" That day was well spent when they reached the terrace above the Rhine and got their first view of the towers of Cologne. ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... rounds. He stopped below the cottage, and Miss Anna's servant went out to him. Phoebe sighed afresh in disappointment, her ears still strained the while to catch the first sound of that primitive horn, wherewith the postman in his cart, as he mounts the Langdale Valley, summons the dwellers in the scattered farms and cottages to come and ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... innocent fun. He hadn't harmed anyone, even if he did squirt a little water on the postman and a delivery boy. She had not minded it herself, and no one had been rude to him until I'd come chasing in and handled him so rough. That was an outrage, and Martha thought I ought to get a ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... the twins to the door. For some reason the Professor could not have explained, they all three walked out on tiptoe. Old Mr. Brent, the postman, was passing, and the twins ran after him and each took a hand. Malvina was still standing where the Professor had left her. It was very absurd, but the Professor felt frightened. He went into the kitchen, where it was light and ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... the knowledge that it was to be actually printed and published, and not to be declined with thanks by adamantine magazine editors, like a certain short story which I had lately written, and which contained the germ of "Lady Audley's Secret." Indeed, at this period of my life, the postman's knock had become associated in my mind with the sharp sound of a rejected MS. dropping through the open letter-box on to the floor of the hall, while my heart seemed to drop in sympathy with that ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... extraordinary, something solemn about the whole class. But what surprised me most was to see at the back of the room, on the benches which were usually empty, some people from the village sitting, as silent as we were: old Hauser with his three-cornered hat, the ex-mayor, the ex-postman, and others besides. They all seemed depressed; and Hauser had brought an old spelling-book with gnawed edges, which he held wide-open on his knee, with his ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... lights. I was looking down the dingy street from behind the curtains of my little window at the postman who was working his way slowly from side to side delivering his messages of hope and fear, and was wondering whether I was among those to whom he bore tidings of joy or sorrow. I had few correspondents, and no expectations, and so it was with surprise that I saw ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... a warm golden evening, fit for October, and I was watching (with regret) a lot of little black pigs being turned out of my garden, when the postman handed to me, with a perfunctory haste which doubtless masked his emotion, the Declaration of Futurism. If you ask me what Futurism is, I cannot tell you; even the Futurists themselves seem a little doubtful; perhaps they are waiting for the future to find out. ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... to wash up. Then she went to her bedroom, and, dragging out her trunk, slid it unaided down the stairs. Back again in the bedroom, she carelessly glanced at the money in her purse, and then put on her things for the journey. Waiting, she stood at the window to look for the postman. Presently she saw him in the distance; he approached quickly, but spent an unendurable minute out of sight in the shop next door. When he emerged Hilda was in anguish. Had he a letter for her? Had he not? He seemed to waver at the gateway, and to decide to ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... words met his sudden conjecture. 'Ay, boys, you little know what you may be spared by home peace and confidence! Well, and what may you be doing, Felix? Your bag looks as if you had turned postman to ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the middle of July, he was coming out of his hall-door, when the postman handed him two letters, one of which was directed to his sister. Suspecting the party from whom it came, and that a knowledge of its contents might lead to some discovery useful to him in frustrating the writer's designs, he opened it, and found that his suspicion was ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
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