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More "Retort" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... His retort, addressed to his Danish friend, Lindholm, was written and sent in such heat that it is somewhat incoherent in form, and more full of abuse than of argument, besides involving him in contradictions. ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... died without issue, her companions taunt her.... One often hears women abuse their husbands or other men in the most obscene language, even on the street, and the men do not dare to make the least retort." "The wife can at any time return to her mother's house, and remain there months, sending word to her husband that he may come to her if ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... At this unexpected retort, Madame de Bergenheim lost countenance and sat speechless before the young maiden, like a pupil who has just been punished ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... been slandering me?" he demanded, angered suddenly by her retort. "I have stood in a relation to you which gives me a right to demand ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... to the porter that he had no soul about him, having left that indispensable article behind in the person of his grandchild? "Then you had better go back and fetch it. There is no admission at this gate for people without souls." Such might very well be the porter's retort; and foreseeing it any man of ordinary prudence would take the precaution of recovering his lost spiritual property before presenting himself to the Warden of the Dead. This theory would sufficiently account for the otherwise ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... Gaeta's taken, what then? When the fair wicked queen sits no more at her sport Of the fire-balls of death crashing souls out of men? When your guns at Cavalli with final retort Have cut ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... so imperative, I wondered that even Madame Beck herself could for one moment delay obedience; but she stood firm; she gazed upon him dauntless; she met his eye, forbidding and fixed as stone. She was opening her lips to retort; I saw over all M. Paul's face a quick rising light and fire; I can hardly tell how he managed the movement; it did not seem violent; it kept the form of courtesy; he gave his hand; it scarce touched her I thought; she ran, she whirled from the ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... despair would give the disputants "a few minutes' freedom of tongue." Then he would be amused by hearing one of them saying, "Turn your back to the sahib, and let him see it still wealed with the whipping Nikalseyn gave you!" Whereupon the other would retort, "You need not talk, for your back is ...
— John Nicholson - The Lion of the Punjaub • R. E. Cholmeley
... said he, "that I retort upon him the foul and false words he has uttered against me; that I trample upon his assertions with the same scorn I feel towards himself; and that before this hour to-morrow, I will confront him to death as through life. ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of a cotton bag, closed all round, save for a small opening at the side, just sufficient to allow of the mother's passage. In shape, it resembles the body of an alembic, a chemist's retort with a short lateral neck, or, better still, the foot of a stocking, with the edges brought together, but for a little round hole left at one side. The outward appearances increase the likeness: one can almost see the traces of a knitting-needle working with coarse stitches. That is why, struck ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... prances, Like a Buffalo Bill buck-jumper, When you have a "regular stumper" (Such as "silver") do not care about Perfect rhyming; "there or thereabout" Is the Muse's maxim now. You may get (bards have, I trow) Rhyme's last minimum irreducible, From dye-vat, retort, or crucible. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... a grin instead of a retort. He appreciated her sharpness too much to get one ready in time. Turning away, he left the room with a quiet, steady step, taking his grin with him: it had drawn the clear, scanty skin yet tighter on his face, and remained fixed; so that he vanished ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... to retort. She hung down her head, and large scalding tears fell from her eyes. Count Kinsky placed her in the carriage, closed the door, and then returned to his own travelling-chariot, which was a few paces behind. The two equipages thundered down the streets together, ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... meant to go this time, and at first she was rather glad of it, since he was in such a very bad temper. She felt that he had insulted her, and if he had stayed any longer she would doubtless have called him a brute, that being the woman's retort under the circumstances. She had not the slightest doubt of being quite reconciled with him before luncheon, of course, but in her heart she wished that she had not made him angry. It had been very pleasant to watch the storm together, and when they had come to the place, ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... like that? Great Heaven! With just such accent he had heard a wrangling woman retort upon her husband at the street corner. Is there then no essential difference between a woman of this world and one of that? Does the same nature lie beneath ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... was his retort. "Some day in the near future I'll remind you of those words. The first three weeks are not arduous, I'll agree. The next twelve or fourteen days are harder, though; there are more things to think ...
— The Story of Silk • Sara Ware Bassett
... great ones, Dietel was very methodical. So he continued his occupation undisturbed till an inexperienced merchant's clerk from Ulm, who wanted to ride farther speedily, accosted him and asked for some special dish. Dietel drew his belt farther down and promptly snubbed the young man with the angry retort; "Everybody must wait for his meal. We make ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... retort, Lady Montbarry approached Agnes. The presence of Henry Westwick seemed at once to relieve and embolden her. 'Permit me to ask my question, Miss Lockwood,' she said, with graceful courtesy. 'It is nothing to embarrass you. When the courier ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... her quick mind to work upon that, and then make the inconsequent retort, which he accepted as perfectly sagacious, because, in fact, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... no difference in Burke's relations with him. In 1787 a coldness arose between them. Burke had delivered a strong invective against the French Treaty. Wilberforce said, "We can make allowance for the honourable gentleman, because we remember him in better days." The retort greatly nettled Burke, but the feeling soon passed away, and they both found a special satisfaction in the dinner to which Wilberforce invited Burke every session. "He was a great man," says Wilberforce. "I could ...
— Burke • John Morley
... longitude was longitude," would be the captain's retort. "Variation and deviation are used in setting courses ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... at the retort, and not without hope that it might offend his kinswoman into departing; but she contented herself with denouncing all imaginable evils from Dennet's ungoverned condition, with which she was prevented in her beneficence from interfering ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... collected was heated in a retort which expelled the quicksilver in vapor, which was condensed and ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... thy treasures," said a tyrant to a philosopher. "Nay, that thou canst not," was the retort; "for, in the first place, I have none that thou knowest of. My treasure is in heaven, and ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... word. Words are hushed in great encounters. Debate with a pirate, a body-snatcher, would be folly; no arguments, therefore, were wasted, on the top of Nebo, by Michael, over the grave of Moses. "The Lord rebuke thee," was his retort; his heavenly form stopping the way, his baffling right arm hindering the accursed design, were the ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... a phrase he had used that afternoon to the dark-eyed girl at the garden-party: "What risks we run when we scramble into the chariot of the gods!" And at the same instant he heard her retort, and saw her fine gesture of defiance. How could he ever have doubted that the thing was worth doing at whatever cost? Something in him—some secret lurking element of weakness and evasion—shrank out of sight in the light of her question: "Do you act on that?" and ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... without raising his voice. His manner, even more than his words, expressed fixed determination. Farwell lifted his eyebrows, and puckered his lips in a silent whistle. His diplomacy was turning out badly, and he repressed an inclination to retort. ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... been talking of a fly that for a moment had buzzed by his side. The cruel indifference of his manner stung me into quick retort. ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... fierce retort. "D'you think I want to lose Jill? But she'll have to go some day. It's inevitable. And the only thing she could ever really love is a playmate. The finest lover in the world would never find the trick of ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... never met any one half as good as Uncle Max,' was my warm retort. 'He is the most unselfish ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the English mad; and one of Winchester's secretaries told Cauchon it was clear that he favored the girl—a charge repeated by the Cardinal's chaplain. "Thou art a liar," exclaimed the Bishop. "And thou," was the retort, "art a traitor to the King." These grave personages seemed to be on the point of going ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... answered it with a look of concentrated spite. Probably she would have risked her dignity to retort, had not Parson Babbage advanced down the ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... air bespoke a vast and settled contempt for such inanities and his iron descended against the side of the victim below him—he would not deign to reply. Not so with Johnny, who could not refrain from hot retort. ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... our passage across the world, if very short, is yet too serious to be wasted in frivolous disrespect for ourselves, and angry disrespect for others. All this was actually his mind. And hence the little difficulty he had in keeping his retort to the archbishop, as to his other ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... the amalgam, which was gathered and put into a stout leathern bag with a cloth bottom, and the unabsorbed mercury drained out. The amalgam, resembling lead in appearance, being now cut up into cakes, and placed under an immense retort, fire was applied; the mercury, in form of vapor, was driven through a hole in the bottom of the platform into water, where it was condensed, while the silver remained pure in the retort. This is called ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... and distressed him, it was so difficult to answer. However, the retort courteous came easily to Mr Ffolliot, and raising her hand to his lips, he replied, "To provide a sufficiently beautiful setting for you, my dear, that is my metier at present." And Marjory, who had spent a long, hot morning ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... the subject of his scorn had passed, and he was neither to be goaded into retort nor terrified into entreaties. Folding his arms with calmness, ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... most poorly paid of all the professions," was the retort of Fred Rangely, who was lounging in a big easy chair; "except literature, that is. Even sin is said to get death for its wage, and ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... generally laughed. She did not remind Mrs. Fountain that she, at one time of her existence, had not found it particularly easy and simple to "get on with Alan"; but the girl did once allow herself the retort—"It's not so easy to quarrel, is it, when you don't see a person from week's end to week's end?" "Week's end to week's end?" Mrs. Fountain repeated vaguely. "Yes—Alan is away a great deal—people trust him so much—he has so ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... distinctly,—all added fresh subject for mirth to the torn cloak and shattered shoe, which have afforded legitimate subjects of raillery against the poor scholar from Juvenal's time downward. It was never known that Sampson either exhibited irritability at this ill usage, or made the least attempt to retort upon his tormentors. He slunk from college by the most secret paths he could discover, and plunged himself into his miserable lodging, where, for eighteenpence a week, he was allowed the benefit of a straw mattress, and, ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Verdad sospechosa, which was adapted by Corneille as the Menteur. Alarcon had the misfortune to be a hunchback, to be embittered by his deformity, and to be constantly engaged in personal quarrels with his rivals; but his attitude in these polemics is always dignified, and his crushing retort to Lope de Vega in Los pechos privilegiados is an unsurpassable example of cold, scornful invective. More than any other Spanish dramatist, Alarcon is preoccupied with ethical aims, and his gift of dramatic presentation ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... The table was set—she couldn't help wondering where he had found the kitchen knives and forks—the bacon was sizzling, the tin of biscuits open, and the coffee bubbling and gurgling in its glass retort. ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... have been, by no will of their own, left behind. It is to these, in no small degree, that the safety and equanimity of London have been due. And it is as well that here tribute should be paid to those who have endured without retort the sneers of the malicious and ill-informed as well as the multiplicity of extra duties the war has ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... Lauragais, and was a very singular and eccentric person. He was a great Anglomane, and was the first introducer into France of horseraces 'a l'Anglaise; it was to him that Louis XV.—not pleased at his insolent Anglomanie— made so excellent a retort. The King had asked him after one of his journeys, what he had learned in England? Lauragais answered, with a kind of republican dignity, "A panser" (penser).—"Les chavaux?" inquired the King. On ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... chemistry?" asked Lindsley. But the trapper did not answer. He got out the retort, and in five minutes the oxygen was bubbling furiously through the wash bottle into the India-rubber receiver. Edwards stood at the window scanning the road toward Gager's with his telescope until it grew dark, which in that latitude was at about ten o'clock. ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... The retort is effective, but it does not make Mr. Lloyd George beloved by the people to whom it is addressed. Twitting on facts ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... devastating bits of scornful and quiet invective by which he sometimes delights the House of Commons. Jesse had spoken of the proposals of the Queen's Speech as a ridiculous mouse, and thereupon came the dread retort that mice were not the only "rodents" that infested ancient buildings; the words derived additional significance from the fact that, as he used them, the Prime Minister directed on Jesse those luminous, large, searching eyes of his, with all their infinite capacity for expressing ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... Jack, dear, and giving the captain a chance to practice command, for fear he'll not get a show in battle." The roar that saluted this retort subdued the bumptious cavalier, and he affected deep interest in the whispered questions of one of the young women in the rear ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... time past still been making a feint of running the race that wins. The retort, the interruption, the call, the reply, the surprise, had yet kept a spoilt tradition of suddenness and life. You had, indeed, to wait for an interruption in dialogue—it is true you had to wait for it; so had the interrupted ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... these two; noiseless conversations, be it understood, in which the snappy dialogue went unuttered. His sarcasm to Bulger in the matter of that ten-dollar loan was biting, ruthless, witty, invariably leaving the debtor in direst confusion with nothing to retort. Bean always had the last word, both with Bulger and Breede, turning from ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... she had delivered these several little pointed shafts, Klara Goldstein was far too clever to wait for a retort. Before Elsa, whose simple mind was not up to a stinging repartee, could think of something indifferent or not too ungracious to say, the handsome Jewess had already spied Andor's face among ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... indiscreet acts during the past twenty-four hours? The latter was not unlikely; I knew her whims and her faults by this time. In either case, I had come to feel decidedly uncomfortable, so much so, in fact, that I was content to let the innuendo pass without a retort. It behooved me to keep my temper ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... forth with fluency and zest Gracious solicitude Punctiliously civil and polite An air of sphinx-like mystery Consumed by zeal Awaited with lively interest Sledge-hammer blows against humbug This recalls a happy retort Preeminently a case in point Exquisite precision and finish Incomparably better informed A keen eye for incongruities Polite to the point of deference To the last degree improbable People with rampant ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... age, the son of a man who was at that time a candidate for office. And what I saw made me pity the Commonwealth. I saw the child dancing to the castanets, and it was a dance which one of our wretched, shameless slaves would not have danced.' On another occasion he showed a power of quick retort. As censor he had degraded a man named Asellus, whom Mummius afterwards restored to the equites. Asellus impeached Scipio, and taunted him with the unluckiness of his censorship—its mortality, &c. 'No wonder,' ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... Christopher,—trained and renowned for a useful evasiveness of retort in those far-off London days, answered mechanically: "Waiting for the fortune to ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... the armed forces. Is the army to be a British army, with authority at the will of the Federal Government to enter every part of the new Union, or is Ireland to have an independent force of her own? This, again—and every specific criticism is open to the same retort—may be called a detail, but it is a detail which touches the root of the whole matter. If the Federal, that is in effect the English, Government is to retain the same control over the whole army as at present—if ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... By this time he was at the gas machine. He soon saw nothing was the matter save that new material must be placed in the retort where the vapor was generated. He refilled it, the gas was manufactured once more, and ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... meadow where her cottage stood. Before they reached it, the blind woman, whose name was Tibbie (Isobel) Dyster, had put many questions to her, and without asking one indiscreet, had yet, by her gift for fitting and fusing things in the retort of her own brain, come to a tolerably correct knowledge of her character, circumstances, ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... lost out o' sight of land, John," is the cruel retort, "and that old shoe-box of yours 'ud be scared to death without a harbor to run into every time the sun clouded over. Expect to navigate to Africy with an alarm-clock and ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... escape from his presence; "Katherine secretly, you openly. Better that I had never had children. Look here, Eliza: let this matter remain in abeyance for six or twelve months, things resting as they are. By that time you may have come to your senses; or I (yes, I see you are ready to retort it) to mine. If not—well, we shall only then be where ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... the speaker from it; but it was so obvious that I could not clear myself of the imputation cast upon me in that way that I surrendered the idea in the very instant in which it occurred to me. I searched in my own mind for a retort, but I searched in vain; and I spent a good part of that night in the invention of scorching phrases. But the exercise afforded me no relief, and on the following day I sat down and wrote my first newspaper article. We had in our new-made borough, in those days, one ineffective, ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... perused the preceding pages. Considering that it was Perron's own employer who kept the Imperial House in penury and durance, it was the extreme of impudence for one of Perron's compatriots to retort the charge upon the English, to whom Shah Alam was indebted for such brief gleams of good fortune as he had ever enjoyed, and whose only offence against him had been a fruitless attempt to withhold him from that premature return to Dehli, which had been the beginning of his worst misfortunes. ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... been sitting at the same table with him, and as they walked along together Redoutez declared that he was finally in possession of the famous secret. Arriving in his laboratory, he threw pieces of iron into a retort, made a projection, and obtained crystals the colour of blood. The other examined the salts and made a flippant remark. The alchemist, furious, threw himself upon him, struck him with a hammer, and had to be overpowered and ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... remarks on the same subject cannot be forgotten; and other critics of the highest reputation have concurred in ascribing to Collins a conception and genius scarcely exceeded by any English poet. To say that Sir Egerton Brydges's Essay exaggerates the merit of some of his productions may produce the retort which has been made to Johnson's criticism, that he was too deficient in feeling to be capable of appreciating the excellence of the pieces which he censures. It is not, however, inconsistent with a high respect for Collins, to ascribe every possible praise to that unrivaled production, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... characters are thrilled, like housewives reminded by their husband that they have forgotten to order it at the "lowest summer prices." No doubt the author will say that after all coal is coal, and may be reminded of the plaintive retort by the little girl in Punch that "mother said the last lot was nearly all slates." Willie talks of making a million out of the purchase; he is fortified in his views by the fact that the Great Central Railway is going to run through part of the property. Writers of fiction are apt ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... work, replied, "Is not that Lorenzo there? Can he do nothing? And I marvel at you as well." Then the Wardens answered, "He will do naught without thee"; and Filippo retorted, "But I could do well without him." This retort, so acute and double-edged, was enough for them, and they went their way, convinced that Filippo was ill from nothing but the desire to work alone. They sent his friends, therefore, to get him out of bed, with the intention of removing ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... similar parliamentary style. He would not say, he was astonished at the speech they had just heard; he would not say, he was disgusted (cheers). He would not retort the epithets which had been hurled against him (renewed cheering); he would not allude to men once in office, but now happily out of it, who had mismanaged the workhouse, ground the paupers, diluted the beer, slack-baked the bread, boned the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Salmasius in mental power as he was inferior to him in extent of book knowledge. But the conditions of retort which he had chosen to accept neutralised this superiority. His greater power was spent in a greater force of invective. Instead of setting out the case of the Parliament in all the strength of which it was capable, ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... the worse for Scripture,' was the unguarded, yet honest, retort of Mr. Penrose; and Dr. Hale laid a kind hand on the young minister's shoulder ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... an oil found in certain plants, mostly from the camphor laurel. This oil is separated from the plant, and then undergoes the process of refining. It is mixed with water, and then boiled in a sort of retort. It makes steam, which is allowed to escape through a small aperture, which is then closed, and the camphor becomes solid in the upper part of the vessel. This is the article ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... same debate, that he produced that happy retort upon Mr. Pitt, which, for good-humored point and seasonableness, has seldom, if ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... aimed at the negro man, and outrage every sense of decency in foul language addressed to the negro woman; but if one of the helpless creatures, goaded to resistance and crazed under tyranny, should answer back with impudence, or should relieve his mind with an oath, or retort indecency upon indecency, he did so at the cost to himself of one dollar for every outburst. The agent referred to in the statute was the well-known overseer of the cotton region, who was always coarse and often brutal, sure to be profane, and scarcely knowing the border-line ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... for a time Lewis tried to rally Nita about what he styled her sympathy with the chamois-hunter, but Nita did not retort with her wonted sprightliness; the flow of her spirits was obviously checked, and did not return during their ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... The ready retort with which she had learned to parry these personalities was not forthcoming. She felt as she had that day five years ago in his father's office, when she told him what she thought of him. He smiled up at her with the same irresponsible light in his ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... "What fools you women are," said he, angrily: "you know nothing of business. I would work my fingers to the bone for you: I would give up my life for you: but you can't expect a man to sacrifice his honor for a woman." Her retort is one of the greatest in literature. "Millions ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... an unbeliever, a materialist, yourself," was the bold retort. "Do as you please, but you can't drag me into your money calculations." The swift slam of the door left them ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... heart, even this thought, Let Christ go, if He will: so when I was fallen under the guilt for this, the remembrance of my other thought, and of the effect thereof, would also come upon me with this retort, which also carried rebuke along with it, Now you may see that God doth know the most secret ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... fingers from time to time, taking aim, boring the ceiling with his gaze, filing the prison bars. By his restlessness, he had tired out the soldiers who watched him through the little window, and who, several times, in despair, had threatened to shoot. Tsiganok would retort, coarsely and derisively, and the quarrel would end peacefully because the dispute would soon turn into boorish, unoffending abuse, after which shooting would ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... shoulders, made some critical remark about the place accorded Balzac's letters to Madam Hanska, which caused Georgia to retort that perhaps it would be better if people arranged their own libraries, and then they could put things where they wanted them. Then after she had given a resting place to what she denounced as some very disreputable French ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... lips to say that it was time that the questioner was in his bed, but it is not safe upon a campaign to be ironical at the expense of khaki-clad men. He contented himself, therefore, with the bald statement that it was after two. But no retort that he could have devised could have had a more crushing effect. The voice turned drunken also, and the man caught at the ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... forever to reach it," was the half-growled retort. "I ain't chasin' sunsets. Here's Happy Walley—my Happy Walley, right below us, and the smoke you see curlin' up th'oo the trees is ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... quickness and aptness in retort, have gathered about his name in England. Many of them indicate a mere spirit of boyish fun. Early in his Ambassadorship he was spending a few days at Stratford-on-Avon, his hostess being an American woman who had beautifully ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... A retort from Leonard was welcome in Ethel's ears, and she quite developed his conversational powers, in an argument on the sagacity of all canine varieties. It was too late to send the little animal home; and he fondled and played with it till ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... extended marine of Great Britain, which the desperate act of declaring war invited? Would Canada compensate the middle States for New York, or the Western States for New Orleans? They would not be deceived! A war of invasion might invite a retort of invasion. When Americans visited the peaceable, and, to Americans, the innocent colonies of Great Britain, with the horrors of war, could Americans be assured that their own coast would not be visited with like horrors. At such a crisis ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... that words used in retort, although more violent and disrespectful than those first used, will not satisfy,—words being no satisfaction ...
— The Code of Honor • John Lyde Wilson
... down in extenso because some fifty books will be discussed in this work, which emanate from German universities. A neutral reader may retort: You also are not impartial, for you are an Englishman! Having anticipated the question, the author ventures to give an answer. If he could make a destructive attack on Britain's policy—the attack would be made without the least hesitation. Such an attack, if ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... of some Yankee skippers who've given a bad name to your infernal shipping, an' I reckon I've run up against one. But no fear! I recognize you as our saviour, an' won't say a word, sir. The retort courteous, as the saying is, would be a crack on the jaw of such a fellow, but I don't say as I'll do it, sir. There's some fellows as needs rippin' up the back, but you bein' captain of this here ship, I won't ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... his position in his chair. "What could I say, if it were discussed?" he made vague retort. "I'm merely one of the Directors. You are our Chairman, but you see he hasn't found it of any use to discuss it with you. There are hard and fast rules about these things. They run their natural course. You are not ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... certain honoured guest, he parenthetically explains that this academical convive is the "Baron de B.-W.!" Erreur! I, the Baron de B.-W., being of sound mind and body, hereby declare that the Baron himself was not present. And why? Well, do my readers remember the honest milk-maid's retort to the coxcomb who said he wouldn't marry her? Good. Then, substituting "me" for "you," and "he" for "she," the Baron can adopt the maiden's reply. After this, other reasons would ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 21, 1891 • Various
... discovered a suitable retort, but, coming to the conclusion that better late than never does not apply to repartees, ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... were no other articles of furniture in the room. A pair of skeletons stood facing each other, one at each side of the mirror, and their ghastly appearance, duplicated in the mirror, added to the unnatural effect. Near the table was a small portable furnace upon which stood a peculiarly shaped retort, and from this, issued a ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... tried their rifles at a mark, Six rods, sixteen, twenty, or forty-five; Sometimes their wits at sally and retort, With laughter sudden as the crack of rifle; Or parties scaled the near acclivities Competing seekers of a rumored lake, Whose unauthenticated waves we named Lake Probability,—our carbuncle, Long sought, ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... face fell at the retort; then he broke into a laugh. He adored Undine's "smartness," which was of precisely the same quality as his own. "Oh, that's another thing: you can always trust me ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... marvelous rapidity; and the other progressed in fits and starts and stops? Why did a million and a half Canadians—or one-fourth the native population—leave Canada for the United States? The Canadian retort always is—for the same reason that two million Americans have left the United States for Canada—to better their position. But the point is—why was it these million and a half Canadians found better opportunities ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... stolen Borrowing of slaves Bourne, George, anecdote of Boy killed Boys' fight to amuse their drivers Bowie Knives Boys' retort Brandings Branding with hot iron Brasses "Breeders" Breeding of slaves prevented "Breeding wenches" " " comparative value of Bribes for begetting slaves Brick-yards "Broken-winded" slaves Brutality to slaves Brutes and slaves treated alike Burial of slaves Burning of McIntosh Burning slaves Burning ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the charge our enemies bring against us. We feel, but don't reason, they say. We have much reason to retort, 'You reason, but have no feeling and little comprehension for those that have.' Come, I will be serious now," and his expression became grave and firm. "Cousin Sophy, Mr. Houghton will never give me a penny, nor would I take a gift from him even if starving, ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... why Henriette greeted this observation with a peal of silvery laughter that fairly made the welkin ring. All I know is that it so irritated me that I left the room to keep from making a retort that might seriously have disturbed our friendship. Later in the day, Mrs. Van Raffles rang for me and I ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... and never surely without great profit from his having been "drawn." His apparent triumph—if it be even apparent—still leaves, it will be noted, convenient cover for retort in the riddled face of the opposite stronghold. The last word in these cases is for nobody who can't pretend to an ABSOLUTE test. The terms here used, obviously, are matters of appreciation, and there is no short cut ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... relish the retort; for he replied stiffly, "If so, they are at least at the other end of the world, and not likely to trouble you. That is surely something in ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... and no quarrels are your quarrels. That is about the truth, I fancy!" was the smart retort; which our champion rendered more emphatic by a playful lunge that caused the big bully to ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... her husband and I would quarrel. She knew well how opposite our sympathies were; she could not understand that our arguments were wholly lacking in personal animus. When I told him of the Allies' growing superiority in aircraft Rhubarb would retort by showing me clippings about the German trench fortifications, the "pill boxes" made of solid cement. I would speak of the deadly curtain fire of the British; he would counter with mysterious allusions to Krupp. And his ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... the PAST few!" she replied, with a bitterness which overrode her satisfaction in the effectiveness of the retort. "Surprised! I'd like to know who wouldn't be surprised when half the town acts like it's gone crazy. People PRAISIN' that fellow, that nobody in their sober minds and senses never in their lives had a good word for before! Why, ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... throat cut before to-morrow morning; and you've talked such nonsense, sir, that I don't know whether that wouldn't be the best thing for me to do." I never saw a Padgett, M.P., collapse more completely than did this unfortunate specimen of the race under a retort which, however wanting in urbanity, was ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... attack, how can we blame him? Are we not quite as bad in hitting back? To be sure, he began it. But did he? How do we know what roused him? Then, too, he might have poured volleys of abuse upon us, and not provoked an angry retort, if the temper had not been latent within us, to begin with. So it is with minor matters. In direct proportion to our freedom from others is our power for appreciating their good points; just in proportion to our slavery to their tricks ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call
... less at the justice of the retort than at the humiliation of being put out of countenance by a woman from whom he desired no less a gift ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... "That's a good retort," I admitted. "A few days; that's all. And we can't get out to procure any more; and we can't go shooting, because the wood's infested with these ruff—I beg pardon—with ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... Allspice's appeal to the consciences and the pockets of the pudding-eating public. 'If you are wise,' said the admonitory placard, 'you will lose no time in joining Allspice's Plum-pudding Club.' Remembering the retort of a celebrated quack: 'Give me all the fools that come this way for my customers, and you are welcome to the wise men,' we must own we felt rather doubtful of the prosperity of the puddings; but having an interest ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... reckoned without the new spirit that was gradually taking hold upon Poketown people. One of his ungracious statements, when his store was well filled with customers, brought about the retort pointed from none less that Mrs. Marvin ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... heard, but said nothing. She knew the boys were a little inclined to boast, and she thought Virginia's sharp tongue might have a good effect. But the retort had grown somewhat sharper than was pleasant, and, fearing a quarrel might follow if she did not interrupt the ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... you speak frequent words of commendation to those about you? Do those you claim to love often hear you talking in love's language, Or is your softest tone and your sweetest speech saved for the sometime guest, While the harsh voice and the sharp retort are used with those you ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the indignant retort. "When I got up the man was still on the stairs leading to this floor, and I picked up the great shears which had tumbled out of me hand and heaved thim at him. I had brought the shears up to cut ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... weeds grow thick among the flowers, And make the best of sunny hours; The drums are silent; fifes are mute; No tones are raised in high dispute; No hearty laughter's cheerful sound Announces fun and frolic round. Here's comic Alan's wit wants sport; And dark-eyed Bessie's quick retort Is spent on Nellie, mild and sweet; And dulness reigns along the street. The table's lessened numbers bring No warm discussion's changeful ring, Of hard-won goal, or slashing play, Or colours blue, or brown, or gray. The chairs stand ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... converse over his master's wine?"—"Not unwillingly," replied the nag. "But in any case he would have Isuke and this lazy groom make better and more frequent use of broom and bucket. The good offices of Abe Dono are requested." By this retort courteous the two noblemen were silenced and amused. Uncertain as to the course of further converse with the beast Okumura made salutation, mounted and departed homewards. As he gave the horse into the groom's charge he said—"It is for Kakunai to keep in mind the ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... none of your cheek,' was the shockingly feeble retort which alone occurred to him. The other said nothing. ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... no doubt, Mistress Hall," said Collet, driven to retort as she rarely did, "if you'd had the world to make, it'd ha' been mortal grand, and all turned out spic-span: look you, the old saw saith, 'Bachelors' wives be always well-learned,' and your lads be angels, that's sure, seein' ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... different temperatures; a certain degree of heat will, therefore, dispose a metal to combine with oxygen, whilst, on the contrary, the former will be compelled to part with the latter, when the temperature is further increased. I have put some oxyd of manganese into a retort, which is an earthen vessel with a bent neck, such as you see here. (PLATE VII. Fig. 2.) —The retort containing the manganese you cannot see, as I have enclosed it in this furnace, where it is now red-hot. But, ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... respect to the great Apostle," writes one of them, "one may be allowed to express his regret that St. Paul has not said less about the Church and more about the Kingdom."[28] To which I hope one may be forgiven if he is tempted to retort that the great apostle probably knew what he was about as well as his modern critic can tell him. We shall do well to pause, and pause again, before we accept any interpretation of the facts of the New Testament which implies that we to-day have a better understanding ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... Gas Works with its immense gas-holders, retort-houses, its own special canal and railway approaches, covers an area of about twenty-six acres, extending almost from Dartmouth Street to Aston Road. Though there can be no grand architectural features about such an establishment ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... having borrowed some intelligence in this matter from them, but nobody could say they knew of the thing itself what I writ. This, I confess, however, do trouble me, for that he seemed to speak it as a quick retort, and it must sure be Will. Howe, who did not see anything of what I writ, though I told him indeed that I would write; but in this, I think, there is no great hurt. I find him, though he cannot but owne ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... fresh roar of laughter, and the boys watched Dominic Braydon, who stood frowning, to see if he would make some sharp retort, verbal or physical, and perhaps get thrashed again. But he concealed his annoyance, and ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... Frenchman. "It is a poor valor to insult a helpless captor. Can he retort upon his own victim? But it is for you to think of what I say. True, I am not reco'nize on the parade; that my frien's who come here do not present me to their ladies; that Meestaire Nash has reboff' me in the pomp-room; still, am I not known for being ...
— Monsieur Beaucaire • Booth Tarkington
... of retort referred to is merely a large tube, closed at one end, and with a screw coupling at the other; the dimensions may be conveniently about 5 inches by 10. The screw threads should be filled with fireclay (as recommended by Faraday) before the joint is screwed up. Before ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... careful to speak of their own services as "Divine worship": how Mr. Jones went so far, in his Washington's Birthday Speech, as to compliment the architectural effect of "the old meeting-house on the green, that venerable monument of an earnest period of dissent," to which Mr. Hopkins made the retort courteous by giving thanks, in his prayer on the same occasion, for "the gracious memories of fraternal intercourse which still hallowed the little brown chapel beside the cemetery": how all these strokes and counterstrokes ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... more in their estimation than does Mr. Jefferson's evident devotion to them all or my impartial compliments and gallantry. But beware! Madame de St. Andre is no woman if she does not try to retaliate for that retort of yours." ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... divined that he wished to be cheeky. His mentor had said so much to Fluff and him about the propriety of not putting on "lift" or "side" in the presence of an older boy, that he had choked back a retort which occurred to him. ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... and Julian the Apostate; but, above all, Settle and Shadwell, whom, under the names of Doeg and Og, he has depicted in the liveliest colours his poignant satire could afford. They who have patience to look into the lampoons which these worthies had published against Dryden, will, in reading his retort, be reminded of the combats between the giants and knights of romance. His antagonists came on with infinite zeal and fury, discharged their ill-aimed blows on every side, and exhausted their strength ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... did not expect her return so soon; but, oddly enough, it did not strike her as being singular to see her there. Vexed as she had felt with her all day for going, and rather glad, in her woman's way, to have something entirely different from the genuine casus belli to hang a retort upon, my wife said: "Well, Harriet, I should have thought another dress would have done quite as well for your picnic as that best black silk you have on." My wife was the elder of the twain, and had always assumed a little of the air of counsellor to her sister. Black silks were thought a great ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... behind uncurtained windows its testimony to the soundness of London. There they sit, plainly illuminated, dressed like ladies and gentlemen, in bamboo chairs. The widows of business men prove laboriously that they are related to judges. The wives of coal merchants instantly retort that their fathers kept coachmen. A servant brings coffee, and the crochet basket has to be moved. And so on again into the dark, passing a girl here for sale, or there an old woman with only matches to offer, passing the crowd from the Tube station, the women ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... a graphic description of the rage Lulu was thrown into at the sight of Rosie galloping away on the pony she had expected to ride, repeated her angry retort in reply to Aunt Dinah's reproof, and told, without any extenuation of the hard facts, how the baby girl, escaping from her nurse's watchful care for a moment, had toddled along to her sister, caught at her skirts for support, and received a savage kick, ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... revengeful as the Moors. If not, why not? They all have the gold standard. You may say that this answer is foolish, and I don't think much of it myself, but it is strictly according to Scripture (Proverbs xxv. 5). The retort is on a par with the proposition, and both are claptrap. The progress of nations and their rank in civilization depend on causes quite aside from the metal basis ...
— If Not Silver, What? • John W. Bookwalter
... or you'll turn to be a Sorry-cus—tomer, old man," came the swift retort, with a portentous frown. "But, joking aside, why not? With such hunting and fishing, I'd be willing to sign a contract for a round year in ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... on the knob, as if he were going to make some retort, but, perhaps because he could think of none, ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... just as foundering at sea is a vile habit in a ship, and that each of these descents, however picturesque to childhood's eye, implies a construction originally derective, or some little subsequent mismanagement. It appeared by Reginald's retort that when his kite tumbled he had the tumultuous joy of flying it again, but, by its keeping the air like this, monotony reigned; so he now proposed that his new friend should fasten the string to the pump-handle, and play at ball with him beneath the kite. The good-natured sailor consented, and ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... "This is what comes of your recklessness," we say. "Aren't you ashamed of it?" And after inscrutable meditations the fond parent usually answers us by sending out the child to beg or sell matches or by some equally effective retort. Now a great number of excellent people pretend that this is a dilemma. "Take the child away," it is argued, "and you remove one of the chief obstacles to the reckless reproduction of the unfit. Leave it in the parents' hands and you must ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... impeachment of the entire classification of Pawkins.[A] Pawkins in his "Rejoinder"[B] suggested that Hapley's microscope was as defective as his power of observation, and called him an "irresponsible meddler"— Hapley was not a professor at that time. Hapley in his retort,[C] spoke of "blundering collectors," and described, as if inadvertently, Pawkins' revision as a "miracle of ineptitude." It was war to the knife. However, it would scarcely interest the reader to detail how these two great men quarrelled, and how the split between ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... sent to question her, Tyrwhitt had a keen mind and one well trained to cope with any other's wit in this sort of cross-examination. Elizabeth was only a girl of fifteen, yet she was a match for the accomplished courtier in diplomacy and quick retort. He was sent down to worm out of her everything that she knew. Threats and flattery and forged letters and false confessions were tried on her; but they were tried in vain. She would tell nothing of importance. She denied ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... hung his head, deeming himself lost, and lacking the wit to retort as Francesco unexpectedly retorted ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... here probably refers to the earlier period of Dante's acquaintance with the prince, about A. D. 1318-20. Balbo does not seem to have thought this story worthy of notice, though he furnishes one or two other examples of the poet's powers of retort. See also Cinthio's Hecatommithi, Deca Settima, Novella ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... reputation have concurred in ascribing to Collins a conception and genius scarcely exceeded by any English poet. To say that Sir Egerton Brydges's Essay exaggerates the merit of some of his productions may produce the retort which has been made to Johnson's criticism, that he was too deficient in feeling to be capable of appreciating the excellence of the pieces which he censures. It is not, however, inconsistent with a high respect for Collins, to ascribe every possible praise to that unrivaled ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... his mouth for a retort. But, with one look at Donald Ferry, who sat across the table, he closed it again. He met an amused glance of comprehension. Then Ferry also opened his lips to speak. But before the words found breath Mr. Timothy Rudd rose ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... had patriotism of a kind, and some of his songs show it. It certainly was not up to the mark of the "Young Irelanders," one of whom attacked him on one occasion, when he made the clever retort that "the fount from which he drew his patriotism was a more genuine source than a fount of Irish type"—alluding to the plentiful use of the Gaelic characters in "The Spirit of the Nation," the world-famed collection ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... to the eyes, and bitter was the retort that arose to her tongue; but she suppressed it, and nodding to Miss Mowbray in the most friendly way in the world, yet with a very particular expression, she only said, "So you have told your brother of the little transaction which we have had this morning?—Tu me lo ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... selfe more then thine owne decay Which blindfold pleasure clouds as they arise, Be gracious, and retort the domefull daye Which thee and me to shame would sacrifice. Loe, on the great west-walling boisterous sea, Which doth imbrace thy gold-enclosing eyes, Of many sailes one man, of one poor Ile, That will my fame, and all thy ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... packing fruit for market, I heard him, his voice raised for my benefit, thus admonishing his son who was casually using some of the newer hampers: "Allus wear out the old, fust." But I must not attribute to his son the unfilial retort which another youth made under similar circumstances, when told to fetch some more hampers from a shed some distance away: "No, father, you fetch them, allus wear out ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... Bishop, catching at a shadow of hope, discontinued his reading. This drove the English mad; and one of Winchester's secretaries told Cauchon it was clear that he favored the girl—a charge repeated by the Cardinal's chaplain. "Thou art a liar," exclaimed the Bishop. "And thou," was the retort, "art a traitor to the King." These grave personages seemed to be on the point of going to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... her heart out, flies into a rage and declares she will go whining to that upstart Geyling! And you, Monsieur de Stafforth, Hofmarshall and successful courtier, propose terms to a young husband in so unpolished a fashion, that even a peasant would be obliged to retort with the old affectation of a wife's honour and purity. Now hear me; I know the court better than you do——' The darkness hid the meaning smiles which played over the lips of the others, for Frau von Ruth (Madame de Ruth as she was named ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... in her life Denise Ryland found herself unable to retort suitably. The mildly reproachful gaze of Leroux she could not meet; and although Dr. Cumberly had spoken no word of complaint against her, from his pale face she persistently turned away ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... flaring pine torches, cheered and applauded the rival speakers who from a rude platform addressed the excited multitude. Partisan spirit at that time ran high in the foot-hills; crimination and recrimination, challenge, reply, accusation, and retort had already inflamed the meeting, and Colonel Bungstarter, after a withering review of his opponent's policy, culminated with a personal attack upon the career and private character of the eloquent and chivalrous ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... Australian savage is more? vicious in his propensities or more virulent in his passions than are the larger number of the lower classes of what are called civilized communities. Well might they retort to our accusations, the motives and animus by which too many of our countrymen have been ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... exulted the fond Callenders. But on the word they saw the scene dissolve into a new one. Through a squall of wind and rain, out from the line of ships, four of their consorts glided away eastward, flashing and howling, in chase of the overmatched gunboats, that flashed and howled in retort as they fled. On the west a Federal flotilla in Mississippi Sound, steaming up athwart Grant's Pass, opened on Fort Powell and awoke its thunders. Ah, ah! Kincaid's Battery at last! Red, white and red they sent buffet for buffet, and Anna's ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... or fly. Dryden's conscience, or his prudence, angry as he was, withheld him from the conflict; Congreve and Vanbrugh attempted answers. Congreve, a very young man, elated with success, and impatient of censure, assumed an air of confidence and security. His chief artifice of controversy is to retort upon his adversary his own words: he is very angry, and, hoping to conquer Collier with his own weapons, allows himself in the use of every term of contumely and contempt; but he has the sword without the arm of Scanderbeg; he has his antagonist's coarseness, but not his strength. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... the common people, and earn your living playing tunes for them to dance by," answered the High Ki. And at this retort every one laughed, so that the handsome youths turned away with twin scowls upon their faces and departed amidst ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... chronic, and simply calls for refilled prescriptions," he laughed, his generosity giving over the retort that was his due. "I somehow think this matter of yours will prove obscure and will call ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... while he lay upon his side, trussed up as securely and helplessly as a papoose in its birch-bark carrying-cradle. There was nothing left of his kingship but to snort regal defiance, to which his captors offered not the slightest retort. In his bonds he was carried off to the settlements, on the big logging-sled, drawn by the patient ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... when Gaeta's taken, what then? When the fair wicked queen sits no more at her sport Of the fire-balls of death crashing souls out of men? When your guns at Cavalli with final retort Have cut ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... to meet Gade, and an opportunity soon occurred. Gade expressed a willingness to look at some of his compositions, and asked if he had anything to show him. Edward modestly answered in the negative. "Go home and write a symphony," was the retort. This the young composer started obediently to do, but the work was never finished in this form. It became later Two Symphonic Pieces ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... almost everything, about herself, and it soon became apparent that she was no ordinary woman. She had never had a set-back; in innumerable conversational duels she had always given the neat and deadly retort, and she had never been worsted, save by base combinations deliberately engineered against her—generally by women, whom as a sex she despised even more than men. Her sincere belief that no biographical detail concerning Miss Fancy was too small to be uninteresting to the public amounted ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... felt the sting of this retort, which in no degree aided the cause of his indiscreet foster-brother. After pacing the room in agitation for some time, he so far conquered his resentment as to answer more mildly, ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... some scathing retort when Grace, who had gotten up to shake the crumbs from her dress and had walked down toward the road, suddenly called to them. It was such an excited, urgent call that they ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope
... bits of scornful and quiet invective by which he sometimes delights the House of Commons. Jesse had spoken of the proposals of the Queen's Speech as a ridiculous mouse, and thereupon came the dread retort that mice were not the only "rodents" that infested ancient buildings; the words derived additional significance from the fact that, as he used them, the Prime Minister directed on Jesse those luminous, large, searching eyes of his, with all their infinite capacity for expressing passion, ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... happy in his delivery of blank verse. To which the unsympathetic may retort, that he does not deserve to be. Mr. Punch, however, recommends his pupils to treat such sneers with the contempt they merit, and to study the little dramatic exercise which has just been thrown off by a Blank Verse Bard who ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 24, 1887 • Various
... turned red. Jack, with an angry retort on his lips, stepped forward, but his sister laid a detaining hand ...
— The Motor Girls • Margaret Penrose
... severe check at Grand-Champ from the royalists. The law repealed which forbad the wives and daughters of emigrants to marry foreigners. The republicans charge the royalists with violating the late treaty. The latter retort the charge. The republicans claim the victory of the 14th ult. The nephew of General Dubois writes a letter full of invective and gall against the convention. All sorts of pastry forbidden, on account of the scarcity of corn. ...
— Historical Epochs of the French Revolution • H. Goudemetz
... catched in a conversation with one of my lord's men, which was not to her credit; for, it coming to his ears, she was turned out of the house by my lord's orders, and was never suffered to come into it again during his lifetime, and I did not dare to speak a word in her favour for fear he should retort upon me, "Like ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... Felton is said to have had,' he concludes," etc. The writer further goes on to say: "As to the imputation of villanous assassinations, which the Examiner charges so home on the French nation, I am heartily sorry he has given them so fair an opportunity to retort the unfair and unjust argument from particulars to generals. For, without mentioning Felton, whose crime this writer has endeavoured to extenuate, no foreign records can afford a greater number of murders, parricides, and, to ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... about to retort, when the door opened, and the spiritual adviser of the establishment, Dr Catton, entered. He was a small thin man, with sallow complexion, and that peculiar pucker about the mouth which seems a characteristic of those who hold his views. The two gentlemen were ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... silently. He had, at first, responded to encouragement of this kind by a witty retort, but had found the consequences unfortunate. There was no use in wasting delicate satire on a dolt. Besides, it was a relief to feel he was getting better and ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... the boy's temples, and a retort was on his lips, but he struggled to withhold it; and likewise speaking English, said, "I would we could have some water, and make ourselves meeter for ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... distressed him, it was so difficult to answer. However, the retort courteous came easily to Mr Ffolliot, and raising her hand to his lips, he replied, "To provide a sufficiently beautiful setting for you, my dear, that is my metier at present." And Marjory, who had spent a long, hot morning in superintending the removal of books, busts, ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... Mistress Hall," said Collet, driven to retort as she rarely did, "if you'd had the world to make, it'd ha' been mortal grand, and all turned out spic-span: look you, the old saw saith, 'Bachelors' wives be always well-learned,' and your lads be angels, that's sure, seein' you ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... the lecturer, "is, we may say, a species of mental geography, as it were; which—by a study of the skull—leads also to a study of the brain within, even as geology naturally follows the initial contemplation of the earth's surface. The brain, thurfur, or intellectual retort, as we may say, natively exerts a molding influence on the skull contour; thurfur is the expert in phrenology most readily enabled to accurately locate the multitudinous intellectual forces, and most ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... using the formula, "the self-determination of nationalities," as the basis of a propaganda to bring about the dismemberment of Russia and its reduction to a chaotic medley of small, helpless states. To Lenine's statements about the readiness of the German working class to rebel, Kerensky made retort that Lenine should have remained in Germany while on his way to Russia ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... as a blacksmith than a carpenter, aren't you, Peter?" And, seeing I could find no answer worthy of retort, she laughed, and, sitting down, watched me while I took my saw, forthwith, and shortened the three long legs as she had suggested. Having done which, to our common satisfaction, seeing the moon was rising, we went and sat down on the bench ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... the present moment Haughton, as he threw a log or two into the retort furnace and watched the shower of sparks fly high up over the battery roof, was thinking of old Channing's daughter Kate, and the curious state of affairs existing between her and his partner Ballantyne. Briefly stated, this is what had ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... decree. But the instant he intimates that her father is a traitor, and she another as his daughter, she springs to her feet, and in an attitude of intense defiance, but without a motion of her folded arms, flings back her scornful retort: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... the owner of the Cloistered House returned alone. The blue-eyed lady was gone to her grave; the youth was abroad. This time he came to die. He was found lying on the floor of his laboratory with a broken retort in fragments beside him. With his servant, Luke Claridge was the first to look upon him lying in the wreck of his last experiment, a spirit-lamp still burning above him, in the grey light of a winter's morning. Luke Claridge closed the eyes, straightened the body, and crossed the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... rate had the merit of tickling his own sense of humour, if it availed nothing with the railway porters, and if any one remarks that he has read the tale in some ancient "Farmers' Almanack," I shall only retort that it is still ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... boys laughed aloud, jeeringly and ostentatiously, and the Purdee blood was moved to retort: "We-uns don't want none sech ez that. ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... I didn't have time to," I said. "When Mr Macdougall spoke to me in that way, I suppose I gave him a cheeky retort, for he threatened ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... a white collar and his best coat. His shoes were laced, too. This was the Sunday-morning longshoreman that was the pleasantest to look at. "Where d' y' git hold of such stuff?" was his retort. (Yet Barber smiled as he put on his hat. The boy was coming to time in great shape these days, behaving himself, doing his work, learning to answer a man right. A blind person could see the improvement. ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... Canadians generally, he refrained from the strictures with which succeeding governors and intendants freely interlarded their despatches. It was not his instinct to clash with the humbler classes, and he generally reserved his anger for those who could retort it. He had the air of distinction natural to a man familiar all his life with the society of courts, and he was as gracious and winning on some occasions as he was unbearable on others. When in good humor, his ready ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... replied in a similar parliamentary style. He would not say, he was astonished at the speech they had just heard; he would not say, he was disgusted (cheers). He would not retort the epithets which had been hurled against him (renewed cheering); he would not allude to men once in office, but now happily out of it, who had mismanaged the workhouse, ground the paupers, diluted the beer, slack-baked the bread, boned the meat, heightened the work, and lowered the soup ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... that plants are unwholesome absorbents of vital air, and that for him the ideal of a garden would be a succession of asphaltum paths, with fine-cushioned seats, and narghiles for ever burning in the guise of flowers and shrubbery. A retort of Sainte-Betive's shows the sincerity of his free-thinking opinions. Madame Sand having declared that she was sure we had three souls—one for our bodily organs, one for society and one for worship—the critic replied, "I wish we could be sure that we had one." There ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... At this retort the audience giggled. They admired the audacity of Tim, although most of them were model children. For, as his distracted mother often said, in excuse of her own leniency, "Tim has such a way with him. You couldn't help but smile, even when ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... a time, or which, sometimes, she affected not to hear, or which now and again would hit their mark and make the poor victim wince (as you could see by her flushing face and eyes filling with tears), or which again worked her up to anger and retort, when, in answer to one of these heavy bolts, she would flash back with a quivering reply. The pair were not happy; nor indeed was it happy to be with them. Alas that youthful love and truth should end in bitterness ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... retorted Carraway, triumphantly. "Of course you didn't; and that's what I mean when I say you argue like a woman. You get hold of what seems on the surface to be a regular solar-plexus retort, and fail to see how it becomes a boomerang before ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... made the obvious retort that it was probably the last place Mr. Beebe WOULD spend ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... people who speak the language of the Bohemians equaled the combined inhabitants of Richmond, Atlanta, Portland, and Nashville—all large cities. "What do you think of it?" I asked. "We are up against it," was the reply. I can not explain this retort so that you would understand it, but it had great significance. The professor, a distinguished philologist, was worried, and he looked it. A lady who was a club woman—and by this I do not mean that she was armed with a club, but merely a member of clubs or societies for educational advancement ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... sublimation, filtration, various chemical apparatus, water-baths, sand-baths, cupels of bone-earth, of the use of which he gives a singularly clear description. A chemist reads with interest Djafar's antique method of obtaining nitric acid by distilling in a retort Cyprus vitriol, alum, and saltpetre. He sets forth its corrosive power, and shows how it may be made to dissolve even gold itself, by adding a portion of sal ammoniac. Djafar may thus be considered as having solved the grand alchemical problem of obtaining gold in a potable state. ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... This drew the retort from the Corporal who was acting as hangman, that if it were the Bailie who was going to be hanged, he would be in no such ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... possibly the young lady in question will not be too strictly examined in all these branches—- neither will she be required to impart more than the mildest possible of knowledge to her pupils. Very possibly, too, she will teach Chemistry—think of it, ye brethren of the retort!—without experiments!! For just such atrocious and ridiculous humbug have we known to be passed off on children, in 've-ry expensive' 'first-class' ladies' schools in Philadelphia and in New York, for instruction in Chemistry. The young brains were vexed and wearied day ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... things will arrange themselves for our pleasure. This argument is halting from every aspect. There is no force in the inference: one might grant the conclusion: the argument may be retorted upon the author. Let us begin with the retort, which is easy. For are men any happier or more independent of the accidents of fortune upon this argument, or because they are credited with the advantage of choosing without reason? Have they less bodily suffering? Have ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... have turned Leon's sarcasm with a retort in kind, but Leon's remark fell on deaf ears, for Abe was listening to a conversation at the next table and the language ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... Mr Flintwinch, turning his head to retort, as he went before with the candle. 'More courageous than ninety men in a hundred, sir, let ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... gave Lord Shaughnessy for a time almost equal prominence with Sir Sam Hughes. His quite sensible speech criticizing the haphazard and costly methods of recruiting made Hughes retort that to raise the First Contingent was as great a task as building the C.P.R. Lord Shaughnessy earned that absurd retort because of his announcement to the Government that he meant to make the speech; as ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... silence. We had made friends on leaving Corfu, and were on easy terms, so that, as I entered and no one spoke to me, but all looked up as if I were the shadow of death, I began to rally them for their seamanship, but got no word of retort from one of them. "What's the matter with you all?" I said; "you look as if you had had bad news." "The matter is we are going ashore," said the chief engineer. "This—fool of a mate has got caught ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... as I think it should be. It is too much on the defensive, and too excessive in the caution to say nothing irritating. I have seldom been able to prevail upon my colleagues to insert anything in the style of retort upon the harsh and reproachful matter which ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... took the 45 grains of red matter formed during this experiment, which I put into a small glass retort, having a proper apparatus for receiving such liquid, or gasseous product, as might be extracted: Having applied a fire to the retort in a furnace, I observed that, in proportion as the red matter became heated, the intensity of its colour augmented. When the retort was almost red hot, the ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... the words just as he was going up the fore-ladder, and though he could not just then take his pipe from his mouth to utter a retort, he gave a fierce look with one of his ferrety eyes, which showed that he acknowledged himself deeply in his messmate's debt. His pipe sounded more shrill than usual, as he could not give any ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... so bloody, nor their cruelties so great, as those of the North American Indian. They slay all they meet with of their enemies—men, women, and children; but this is common to all wild tribes. They have an implacable spirit of revenge as long as the war lasts, retort evil for evil, and retaliate life for life; and, as I have before said, the heads are the trophies, as the scalps are to the red men. But, on the contrary, they never torture their enemies, nor do they devour them; and peace ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... repeatedly, and broke it in several places. The besiegers turned two of their slinging engines on this monster, and kept constantly slinging smaller stones on to the platform of the barbican, and killed two of the engineers. But the Turk disdained to retort. He flung a forty-pound stone on to the besiegers' great catapult, and hitting it in the neighbourhood of the axis, knocked the whole structure to pieces, and sent the engineers ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... THAT child, Marse Tom? There can't ANYBODY spoil her. She's the king bee of this post, and everybody pets her and is her slave, and yet, as you know, your own self, she ain't the least little bit spoiled." Then she eased her mind with this retort: "Marse Tom, she makes you do anything she wants to, and you can't deny it; so if she could be spoilt, she'd been spoilt long ago, because you are the very WORST! Look at that pile of cats in your chair, and you sitting on a candle-box, just ...
— A Horse's Tale • Mark Twain
... elements, one black and the other yellow, as generally found. If these two elements are mixed together under ordinary conditions no change occurs. The result is simply a mixture of carbon and sulfur. But, if this mixture is heated in a retort which excludes the air, the carbon and sulfur unite into a chemical compound called carbon disulfid. This compound is neither black, yellow, nor solid; but it is a colorless, limpid liquid; and yet it contains absolutely ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... fact I don't see that any object is to be gained in prolonging this interview," was his quick retort. "If, as you say, I gave you five thousand—which I certainly never did—then what more can you want? I however, suspect that the five thousand exists only in your ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... more for casting up his obligations, but had no retort to make. He had an idea of making a man of young Selinville, and his notion of the process had something of the bullying tendency of English young towards the poor-spirited or cowardly. He ordered the boy roughly, teased him for his ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... unexpected retort, Madame de Bergenheim lost countenance and sat speechless before the young maiden, like a pupil who has just been punished ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... wooden echoes from a platform, in the great historic chord of his lyre. "He is very English, too English, even," says the Master on whom his enemies alone—assuredly not his most loving, most reverent, and most thankful disciples—might possibly and plausibly retort that he was "very French, too French, even"; but he certainly was not "too English" to see and cleave to the main fact, the radical and central truth, of personal or national character, of typical history or tradition, without seeking to embellish, to degrade, in either ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... to Bessie. When the old lady opened her mouth, it was to snub me. The snub direct, the snub indirect, the snub implied, and the snub far-fetched,—I submitted to all with a cheerful spirit, and not a hasty retort escaped me. ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... hatred all who presumed on their own consequence, whether arising from wealth, titles, or commissions in the army; officers he usually called "the epauletted puppies," and lords he generally spoke of as "feather-headed fools," who could but strut and stare and be no answer in kind to retort his satiric flings, his unfriends reported that it was unsafe for young men to associate with one whose principles were democratic, and scarcely either modest or safe for young women to listen to ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... "I wont retort the question about 'something sharp,' " said Constance, arching her eyebrows, "because it is against my principles to make people uncomfortable; but you have certainly brought in some medicine with you, for Miss Ringgan's ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... to him that he professes an art of making appearances, he will grapple with us and retort our argument upon ourselves; and when we call him an image-maker he will say, 'Pray what do you mean at all by an image?'—and I should like to know, Theaetetus, how we can possibly ...
— Sophist • Plato
... delineated (fig. 66.). This I have found exceedingly useful in experiments continued in succession for days together, and where large quantities of indicating gas were to be collected. It is fixed on a weighted foot, and has the form of a small retort containing the two electrodes: the neck is narrow, and sufficiently long to deliver gas issuing from it into a jar placed in a small pneumatic trough. The electrode chamber, sealed hermetically at the part held in the stand, is five inches ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... in a rich anger, "Your Fathers!" as if Scott's must either have been Presbyterians or Cavaliers, the retort is cleverly put by Sir Walter in the mouth of Jedediah. His ancestors of these days had been Quakers, and persecuted ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... had to listen without retort to an old saying that is irritatingly true, and until now seemed to offer no chance for a return jibe: 'An Englishman does dearly love a lord'; but after this I shall talk back, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Madame Olenska's departure from New York. During those ten days Archer had had no sign from her but that conveyed by the return of a key wrapped in tissue paper, and sent to his office in a sealed envelope addressed in her hand. This retort to his last appeal might have been interpreted as a classic move in a familiar game; but the young man chose to give it a different meaning. She was still fighting against her fate; but she was going to Europe, and she was not ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... review of Childe Harold, February, 1812 (xix., 476), the editor inserted a ponderous retort to this harmless and good-natured "chaff:" "To those strictures of the noble author we feel no inclination to trouble our readers with any reply ... we shall merely observe that if we viewed with astonishment the immeasurable fury with which the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... events was the result of his own action. But surely there must be some way out? If he wrote straight to Cecilia and told her the truth? And then he almost laughed bitterly as he realized the futility of this plan. What would the truth matter to Mrs. Cricklander? She could very well retort that he had known all this truth from the beginning, and had been willing to marry her while his financial position made it an advantage to himself, but was now recalcitrant only because fortune had otherwise ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... himself on a powerful popular sentiment by urging, in a really excellent speech, that the country should repay to the aged Jackson the fine which had been imposed upon him for contempt of court during the defense of New Orleans. An experienced opponent found him ready with a taking retort to every interruption. It being objected that there was absolutely no precedent for refunding the fine, "I presume," he replied, "that no case can be found on record, or traced by tradition, where a fine, imposed upon a general for saving his country, at ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... of necessity—the devil's grand luxury, Revenge. Say to yourself, "For what I suffer I condemn another man, or I accuse the Arch-Invisible, be it a Destiny, be it a Maker!" and the logical sequel is to add evil to evil, folly to folly—to retort on the man who so wrongs, or on the Arch-Invisible who so afflicts you. Of all our passions, is not Revenge the one into which enters with the most zest a devil? For what is a devil?—A being whose sole work on earth is ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... him, thus marked out as the champion of the most debatable theory of evolution, that, two days later, the Bishop addressed his sarcasms, only to meet with a withering retort. For on the Friday there was peace; but on the Saturday came a yet fiercer battle over the "Origin," which loomed all the larger in the public eye, because it was not merely the contradiction of one anatomist by another, but the open clash between Science and ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... at Aurora's red peep, Awaken'd his tyros by bawling—"Two deep!" Jack Jones would retort, with a half-suppress'd sigh, "Ay! too deep by half for such ninnies ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 404, December 12, 1829 • Various
... them, but since you demand it, I will repeat them just as they fell from her lips," was Mr. Brotherson's bitter retort. "She said, 'You of all men should recognise the unseemliness of these proposals. Had your letters given me any hint of the feelings you have just expressed, you would never have had this opportunity of approaching me.' That was all; but her indignation was scathing. ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... hot retort to this, but he didn't. He decided to salve his feelings in a cigar and to escape the agony of watching Old Eli crush the Crimson under the added weight of a touchdown. As Davies lighted up, the lowering clouds spread wide apart, letting down ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... The word "boy" naturally provokes and awakens in Orlando the sense of his manly powers; and with the retort of "elder brother," he grasps him with firm hands, and makes him ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... Theodorick, had done, Alboin did with yet more terrible results; and the fourth captivity which Nova Roma had prepared for her mother, become in her mind a hated rival, was the hardest, the longest, the most destructive of all. It is doubtful whether the retort of the eunuch Narses to the empress Sophia, when she recalled him from his government to ply, as she said, the spindle, that he would spin for her such a thread as in her life she would not disentangle, is authentic, ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... began to dress Jerry down for having presumed to close up a certain gambling resort without consulting the authorities. After about twenty minutes' harangue in which he threatened Jerry with all manner of punishment, he collapsed at the drawled retort: ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... of hope? What revelation of a mystery of hope arising out of a deeper mystery of despair? He announced a deliverer. Deliverer! from what? Answer that—from what? Why, from evil, you say. Evil! of what kind? Why, you retort, did not the Pagans admit that man was lying under evil? Not at all; nothing of the kind. But you are sure you have heard of such things? Very likely. And now you are forced back upon your arguments you remember specially that evil as to its origin was a favourite speculation of theirs. ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... year old system ought to be scrapped," Fanny would retort, boldly. "Anyway, the Simon Legree thing has ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... anywhere without it; but it is the very flower of decadence. The last trumpet should have sounded the moment it was written.' 'But,' said the dull man, 'would you not have given us time to read it?' 'Oh no,' was the retort, 'there would have been plenty of time afterwards—in either world.' I think he seemed to us, baffled as we were by youth, or by infirmity, a triumphant figure, and to some of us a figure from another age, an audacious ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... on her hat even while she listened to the message, and she astonished the man at the other end by making no retort whatever. She almost ran to the store, and she did not ask Pete for a saddle-horse; she just threw her office key at him, and told him she was going to take his bay, and she was at the stable before he closed the mouth he had opened in ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... "saponaceous" necessarily elicited a bitter retort from Bishop Wilberforce; but perhaps the most valuable judgment on the whole matter was rendered by Bishop Tait, who declared, "These things have so effectually frightened the clergy that I think there is scarcely ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... the back-scene remains the same. The sky remained, and in the depths of winter it seemed to be blue with summer; and so clear that I almost flattered myself that clouds were English products like primroses. An American would probably retort on my charge of scene-shifting by saying that at least he only shifted the towers and domes of the earth; and that in England it is the heavens that are shifty. And indeed we have changes from day to day that would seem to him as distinct as different magic-lantern ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... porch, by the common hangman. He was reminded that the instrument bore the great seal; to which he boldly answered, that the seal would help to make it burn the better. It was not thought politic to take notice of this revolutionary retort. ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... spirit, however, he resolved, if he could, to retort upon the King, and knowing that women, especially such as are of lofty and honourable minds, are more moved by resentment than by love, he made bold one day while speaking with the Queen (5) ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... handles the retort and decanter! Makes lightning and thunder would scare Tam O'Shanter; Makes feathers as heavy as lead, in a jar, And eliminates spirits from coal and ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... the kind," was the sharp retort; "but how know I, even were I to marry one of the princesses I have enumerated, that I should be more fortunate than I have hitherto been? If beauty and youth could have ensured to me the blessing of a Dauphin, had I not every right to ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... idiosyncrasies in the slightest degree, the poet certainly makes himself out as the most insupportable of human companions. None the less did the publication of Elle et Lui, a quarter of a century later, provoke a savage retort from the deceased poet's brother, in Lui et Elle. Finally, in Lui, a third novelist, Madame Colet, presented the world with a separate version of the affair from one who imagined she could have made up to the poet ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... trouble to get a good start again. But he needn't have bothered; there was no occasion. It was mainly an English-feeling mob. It had but obeyed a law of our nature—an irresistible law—to enjoy and applaud a spirited and promptly delivered retort, no matter who makes it. The mob was with the preacher; it had been beguiled for a moment, but only that; it would soon return. It was there to see this girl burnt; so that it got that satisfaction—without too much ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... frequently occurred for me to defend General Buell against what I believed to be most unjust charges. On one occasion a correspondent put in my mouth the very charge I had so often refuted—of disloyalty. This brought from General Buell a very severe retort, which I saw in the New York World some time before I received the letter itself. I could very well understand his grievance at seeing untrue and disgraceful charges apparently sustained by an officer who, at the time, was at the head of the army. ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... long-necked decanter hung up with the opening below. From the bottom of the decanter a strong band attaches the whole to the branch of a tree. (Fig. 28.) The Yellow Weaver Bird of Java, as described by Forbes, constructs very similar retort-shaped nests.[96] ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... of the retort lay in the word "stout." But Iris was not accustomed to cross-examination. During a three months' residence on the island she had learnt how to avoid Lady Tozer. Here it was impossible, and the older ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... brings tears to our eyes also. Richard calls for a glass wherein to see his sins, and we are reminded of Hamlet, who advises the players to hold the mirror up to nature. He jests with his grief, too, in quick-witted retort, as ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... grandson at that time, and when the nurse announced my birth, she was not sufficiently courageous to tell the truth, and said: "A boy, sir!" Her faltering manner possibly betrayed her, as the sarcastic retort was: "I dare ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... head in sad remonstrance at this vulgar, coarse, but latterly frequent retort of insurgent democracy upon indignant aristocracy. But he ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... remark, but took no notice of it. Owen had again a good deal to endure from Ashurst, and his temper was sorely tried. Often a retort rose to his lips, though he refrained from uttering it. A month or more went by. The two frigates had come round to the ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... bit hurt, and this time I indulged a retort. "Wonder if you'll get Popplewell into the Academy. You've never had anything in yet, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 22, 1914 • Various
... Writes me that man—how dearly ever parted How much in having, or without, or in— Cannot make boast to have that which he hath, Nor feels not what he knows, but by reflection; As when his virtues shining upon others Heat them, and they retort their heat ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... the occurrence, or the non-occurrence, of certain phenomena at a certain time and in a certain place. This sudden revelation of the great gulf fixed between the ecclesiastical and the scientific mind is enough to take away the breath of any one unfamiliar with the clerical organon. As if, one may retort, the assumption that miracles may, or have, served a moral or a religious end, in any way alters the fact that they profess to be historical events, things that actually happened; and, as such, must ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... tone stung him to instant retort. "And in gude company I'd be. Fifty years syne Lord Erskine was laughed down in Parliament for proposing to give legal protection to dumb animals. But we're ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... good-humoured over her taking-off that for a long time I cherished a rather dream-like faith in her reappearance to prove that this attitude had been justified. Not that Mr. LOWIS has not every right to retort that he is writing comedy rather than farce; certainly he has made his four blind mice to run in highly diverting fashion, very entertaining to those of us who see how they run; and as they at least save their tails triumphantly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 15, 1920 • Various
... part of the archangel more by act than word. Words are hushed in great encounters. Debate with a pirate, a body-snatcher, would be folly; no arguments, therefore, were wasted, on the top of Nebo, by Michael, over the grave of Moses. "The Lord rebuke thee," was his retort; his heavenly form stopping the way, his baffling right arm hindering the accursed design, were the invincible logic of ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... fancifully added that we too should peradventure be gilded by the legend, should be pointed at for having listened, for having actually heard. Gravener, who had glanced at his watch and discovered it was midnight, found to all this a retort beautifully characteristic of him. ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... and you make our conceptions the measure of reality. Mysteries, therefore, become nonsense, and miracles an impossibility. In fact, Ward's logic would lead to Spinoza, not to the deity of Catholic belief. Ward might retort that Fitzjames's doctrines would lead to absolute scepticism or atheism. Fitzjames, in fact, still accepts Mill's philosophy in the fullest sense. All truth, he declares, may be reduced to the type, 'this piece of paper is blue, and that is white.' In other words, it is purely empirical ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... this stage that Danny Ward arrived. Quite a party it was. His manager and trainer were with him, and he breezed in like a gusty draught of geniality, good-nature, and all-conqueringness. Greetings flew about, a joke here, a retort there, a smile or a laugh for everybody. Yet it was his way, and only partly sincere. He was a good actor, and he had found geniality a most valuable asset in the game of getting on in the world. But down ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... play like that for when he is howling?" Harris would retort, catching the boot. "You let him alone. He can't help howling. He's got a musical ear, and your playing ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... though the streets are wide and regular, and the large town is well aired by four squares, the whole aspect was strongly suggestive of the cocineros (cooks), as the citizens of the capital are called by the sons of the capital-port. They retort by terming their rival brethren chicharreros, or fishers of the ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... This neat retort, which made the Marquise smile, gave the Prefet of la Charente a nervous chill. "You may tell her," Lucien went on, "that I now bear gules, a bull raging argent on a ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... they were quite alone. He began the experiment, explaining as he went, and she watched it as eagerly as he. He turned away for a moment, to get another chemical. As he leaned over the retort to put it in, he heard it seethe. With all her strength, she pushed him away instantly. There was an explosion which shook the walls of the laboratory, a quantity of deadly gas was released, and, in the fumes, they ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... intellectually, there was also in parts of his poems evidence of a healthy vigour which only needed favourable circumstances to develop into transcendent excellence. Hazlitt, holding with the one of these opinions, cries, 'If Chatterton had had a great work to do by living, he would have lived!' Others retort on the critic, 'On the same principle, why did Keats, whom you rate so high, perish so early?' The question altogether is nugatory, seeing it can never be settled. Suffice it that these songs and rhymes of Chatterton have great beauties, apart from the age and position of their author. There ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... proposed an increase of territory and a Turkish title in return for the acknowledgment of suzerainty. "As long as my people defend me," was the proud answer, "I need no Turkish title to my throne; if they desert me, such a title would avail me little." War was the effect of this retort, but the Turks gained nothing by it, and peace ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... producing a very great lowering of temperature. It is this principle that is utilized in refrigeration and ice making. In the absorption system, where aqua ammonia is used, the liquor is contained in a retort to which heat is applied by means of a steam coil, and a great part of the gas which was held in solution by the water is expelled, and carries with it a small amount of water or vapor. This passes into a separator in the ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... throat, but said nothing, recollecting by this time that all retort or explanation was lost upon Miss Deborah Coggins. To change the subject she remarked, "How disappointed I was at your not coming last night, my dear Miss Debby—one of the friends I most wished ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... trouble to find out!" was his mother's retort. "I tell you, my boy, no lass that ever lived thinks more of a lad for staying in the background. You ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... concerned with playwriting as with generalship. The latter dipped his pen in the satirical inkpot, and wrote a farce, "The Blockade of Boston." It was this play that drew forth from a woman, an American playwright, the retort stinging. This lady was Mrs. Mercy Warren[1] who, although distinguished for being a sister of James Otis, and the wife of General James Warren, was in her own name a most important and distinct ...
— The Group - A Farce • Mercy Warren
... makes light of favours while he does them, and seems to be receiving when he is conferring. He never speaks of himself except when compelled, never defends himself by a mere retort; he has no ears for slander or gossip, is scrupulous in imputing motives to those who interfere with him, and interprets everything for the best. He is never mean or little in his disputes, never takes unfair advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp sayings ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... The French claim that he did; the English that he did not. "The house demolished with bullets" was probably an old trading post, contend the English; but there was no trading post except Radisson's west of Lake Superior at that time, retort the French. By "cows" Radisson meant buffalo, and no buffalo were found as far east as Hudson Bay, say the English; by "cows" Radisson meant caribou and deer, and herds of these frequented the shores of Hudson Bay, answer the French. No river comes from the Saguenay to Hudson ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... their quarters, at the same time striking right and left with the flat of his sword, hitting two of the men. One proved to be a sergeant who was trying to quell the noise and get his men into quarters. The latter resented the blow and made a sharp retort to the colonel, who immediately repeated it, whereupon the sergeant struck him a terrible blow in the eye with his fist, knocking him down. I got there just in time to see the colonel fall, and immediately seized the sergeant and placed him in arrest. ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... report you for impertinence!" declared the now angry passenger, taking out his notebook and making a memorandum lest he forget the conductor's retort. "It's a disgrace the way this road is managed," he went on to the crowd of passengers that had gathered. "I'm going to write to the newspapers about it. They're always having accidents. Why, only last week, they run over a steer, somewhere in this locality, the engine was derailed, two cars ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young
... He explained what had happened to the principal chief. The chief seemed very much put out and told La Verendrye for his {62} consolation that there were a good many rascals among the Mandans. Later, when the Assiniboines told the chief that he was himself the thief, he made the weak retort that one of his accusers might be the culprit. He promised to do his best to recover the bag, but La Verendrye never ...
— Pathfinders of the Great Plains - A Chronicle of La Verendrye and his Sons • Lawrence J. Burpee
... flashed. She opened her lips to speak—closed them again with the angry retort unuttered. After all, Frank was her mother's and her sole dependence. They could hope for little from him, but nothing must be said that would give him and his mean, selfish wife a chance to break with them and refuse to do ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... deft, was plaiting horsehair about a stick of hardwood to form the handle of a quirt, Sandy overhauling his two Colts and Sam furnishing orchestra on his harmonica. Now he put it to his lips, unable to find a sufficiently crushing retort to Mormon's diatribe against words of more than one syllable, breathing out the burden of "My Bonnie lies over ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... the grains of corn they had gained from the autumnal store. There can be little doubt that some species of ants do store food; but their praiseworthy actions in this direction have been greatly exaggerated, and there appears, indeed, to be some danger of idle persons being prepared with the retort to the wise man, that the ant is by no means the model creature he thought her to be. If, however, the supposed corn-grains turn out to be the rising generation of ants in their chrysalis-state, it may be said that what the ants may have lost in the way of fame in this direction ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... the beer, put it into a glass retort, furnished with a receiver, and distil, with a gentle heat, as long as any spirit passes over into the receiver; which may be known by heating from time to time a small quantity of the obtained fluid in a tea-spoon over a candle, and bringing ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... commissions in the army; officers he usually called "the epauletted puppies," and lords he generally spoke of as "feather-headed fools," who could but strut and stare and be no answer in kind to retort his satiric flings, his unfriends reported that it was unsafe for young men to associate with one whose principles were democratic, and scarcely either modest or safe for young women to listen to a poet whose notions of female virtue were so loose and his songs so free. These sentiments ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... O viper vile! The "solus" in thy most mervailous face; The "solus" in thy teeth, and in thy throat, And in thy hateful lungs, yea, in thy maw, perdy, And, which is worse, within thy nasty mouth! I do retort the "solus" in thy bowels; For I can take, and Pistol's cock is up, ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... a Bunsen burner under a large glass retort. But he had no sooner done so than he sat down on a chair and, picking up a book which I surmised might be some work ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... their point. For instance, a dull dog of a jester (played in a funereal fashion by Mr. SUGDEN) stopped the action of the piece, for what seemed to me (no doubt the time was actually less) some three-quarters of an hour, while he explained the difference between the "retort courteous" and "the reproof valiant." The plot was as thin as a wafer, but as it is, no doubt, generally known, I need not further refer to it. Mrs. LANGTRY was a most graceful and pleasing Rosalind. She acted with an earnestness worthy of a better cause, and afforded not a trace of ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... ages, ladies to look at, all of them,—suggested anew the question, Why should his daughter be shut off from the privileges of these? He felt ashamed when he asked. Yet the question would be answered; and without palliation, self-excusing, or retort, he meditated. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... only grunted in retort, his head nodding drowsily. The tremulous tracery the wood-fire cast upon his face gave it an expression of dumb intensity which adumbrated all the pathos and the patience of ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... been the object of it: she had waited by his side, and, with every good purpose, had preached patience to him, while he was smarting under the pain, but more under the shame, of his chastisement. At first, his fury threatened a retort upon the servants around him (and who refused his entrance into the house) of the punishment he had received. But, in the certainty of an amende honorable, which must hereafter be made, he overcame the many temptations which the moment offered, and re-mounting ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... once more appeared dubious, and made no answer; but she noticed that the man now preceded them, and raised his hand when they came up with the band, which had apparently halted to indulge in retort or badinage with some ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... formed by mixing intimately eight parts of common salt, and three parts of the black oxide of manganese in powder; put this mixture into a retort, then pour four parts of sulphuric acid, diluted with an equal weight of water, and afterwards allowed to cool upon the salt and manganese; the gas will then be immediately liberated, and the operation may be quickened by a moderate heat. A tube ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... the poor creature of a husband strove very hard to draw Marion into a dispute, about what he was pleased to call our "REBELLION". I expected to have heard him lashed very severely for such brutality; for few men ever excelled Marion in the 'retort abrupt'. But every time the subject was introduced, he contrived very handsomely to waive it, by some pretty turn to the ladies, which happily relieved their terrors, and gave a fresh spring to general ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... "I won't retort the question about 'something sharp,'" said Constance arching her eyebrows, "because it is against my principles to make people uncomfortable; but you have certainly brought in some medicine with you, for Miss Ringgan's cheeks a little ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... would come now! He saw Railsford's face flush and his eyes flash. But before the furious retort escaped from his lips, a wise whisper from somewhere fell between them and robbed ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... the clerk's lips to say that it was time that the questioner was in his bed, but it is not safe upon a campaign to be ironical at the expense of khaki-clad men. He contented himself, therefore, with the bald statement that it was after two. But no retort that he could have devised could have had a more crushing effect. The voice turned drunken also, and the man caught at the ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... keep more to the middle of the river?" was the retort, and then the boat shot around and took the same direction as the one in which the ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Winter Camp - Glorious Days on Skates and Ice Boats • Laura Lee Hope
... boring the ceiling with his gaze, filing the prison bars. By his restlessness, he had tired out the soldiers who watched him through the little window, and who, several times, in despair, had threatened to shoot. Tsiganok would retort, coarsely and derisively, and the quarrel would end peacefully because the dispute would soon turn into boorish, unoffending abuse, after which shooting would ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... father's habit, could have vented such an insinuation—he was however frank and generous in his nature, and at all times open to conviction; so that he had scarce got to the last word of this ungracious retort, when his ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... have," was the angry retort; and taking no notice of his visitor's proffered hand, the man stamped his foot impatiently on the uncarpeted floor. "No one ever comes to see me about anything else but business. And I don't want them to," he added with a grim chuckle. "Well, let us get it done. My ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... what came over me, for I had not been conscious of a similar weakness since I was a child, but I was so mortified by this retort that my eyes pricked and filled with tears, as I continued to gaze ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not really believe that they love us and have kindly feelings toward us, or that they will be just and kind and sympathetic in their actions that affect us or relate to us. Have you not seen children who, when one would hurt another and say, "Oh, I did not mean to do it!" the other would retort, "Yes, you did; you just did it on purpose"? There are many older persons who are always ready to say, "It was just done on purpose; they just meant to hurt my feelings!" This is childish, but alas, how many professed Christians ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... angrily, and proud, He answered thee with laughter loud And brief retort. But thou didst speak So mild, so earnestly did seek To change his mood, in wonder first He eyed thee; then no longer durst Raise his bold glances to thy face, But, looking down, began to trace, With little, naked foot and hand, Thoughtful devices in the sand; And when at last thou didst ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... stock of anecdotes made to screw on and screw off for the special behoof of college presidents and university professors. Why hold up Choricius to ridicule? He was no worse than others of his guild. It was not Choricius, it was another Byzantine historian who conveyed from Herodotus an unsavory retort, over which the unsuspecting Gibbon chuckles in the dark cellar of his notes, where he keeps so much of his high game. The Greek historian of the Roman Empire, the Roman historian of every date, are no better, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who has devoted many pages to the arraignment ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... the "Baron de B.-W.!" Erreur! I, the Baron de B.-W., being of sound mind and body, hereby declare that the Baron himself was not present. And why? Well, do my readers remember the honest milk-maid's retort to the coxcomb who said he wouldn't marry her? Good. Then, substituting "me" for "you," and "he" for "she," the Baron can adopt the maiden's reply. After this, other ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 21, 1891 • Various
... water and place them in a retort connected with a Liebig's condenser. Add a drop or two of a solution of carbonate of soda and distil over 100 c.c.; collect another 50 c.c. separately. Determine the ammonia in the distillate colorimetrically (with Nessler's solution, as described under Ammonia) ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... think of a retort, so, perhaps thinking she had said enough, madame gave him a dignified bow ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... deg., and even in open vessels the explosion is very violent. Care must also be taken during the fractional distillation of the concentrated solution in methyl alcohol to cool the apparatus before changing the receiver, as if air is admitted while the retort is heated the experiment ends with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... blown half a gale about it—that he had had no right to dispose of such a production without her consent. His answer to this was simply that the purchaser was so little of a stranger that it didn't go, so to speak, out of the family, out of hers. It didn't matter, Miriam's retort that if Mr. Sherringham had formerly been no stranger he was utterly one now, so that nothing would ever less delight him than to see her hated image on his wall. He would back out of the bargain and Nick be left with the picture on his hands. Nick ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... game went on Harry never exactly knew. Well practised as he was in snapping in the nursery, he often failed to think of a retort, and paid for his unreadiness by the loss of his hair. Oh, how foolish and wearisome all this rudeness and snapping now seemed to him! But on he had to go, wondering all the time how near it was to twelve o'clock, and whether the Snap-Dragons ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... same lightning flash which had illuminated the beribboned diploma in Miss Priscilla's mind had passed to Virginia also, the girl bit back a retort that was trembling on her lips. "I wonder if she can be getting to know things?" thought the older woman as she watched her, and she added half resentfully, "I've sometimes suspected that Gabriel Pendleton was almost too ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... course of any cousinly discussion, whatever the subject in dispute, and she had not even glanced at Herbert's hands to assure herself that the accusation was warranted. But, as usual, the facts supported her; and they also supported Herbert in his immediate mechanical retort: ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... "You have provoked the retort—were you convinced that you would be happy with Arthur Carew, when you made up your mind ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... in a humour to bear this affront, and she was about to make a very angry retort on the child, when she perceived that the villagers were once again entering the chapel to see the conclusion of the ceremony, so turning to her uncle, she whispered, "You see they do not want you at home, uncle Dorsain, so you may as well ...
— The Young Lord and Other Tales - to which is added Victorine Durocher • Camilla Toulmin
... why a much greater subdivision of land would not be beneficial in England. Of course, if to the example of America you retort all its singular and advantageous conditions, I have nothing to say; but how about Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Switzerland? where small proprietorship appears to result in prosperity both to the land and its ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... slaughtered; even women were hanged. The dead numbered 600. Grey doubtless regarded the measure as a just return for the doings of the Inquisition, and the punishment of English sailors as pirates, for his retort to the garrison's overtures had been that their presence in Ireland was piracy. But the whole business illustrates the sheer ruthlessness which characterised both sides, at least where there was a technical excuse for denying belligerents' rights to ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... master wit of the Play consist in any one class of fun, as verbal conceits in the punning line; practical jokes; Euphuism, so-called; banter in speech and retort, versemaking and sonneteering, learned quips, or in the use of all these combined in a way to bring out the point of the Play—the clash of ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... decomposition commenced. That the portions passing over below 290 deg. had a strong acid reaction already indicated the presence of ethers. Herr Convert boiled 10 grammes of the oil with 20 grammes of alcohol and 1 gramme of potash during one day in a retort provided with a return condenser. Finally the alcohol was separated by distillation, the residue supersaturated with dilute sulphuric acid, and together with much water submitted to distillation until the distillate had scarcely an acid reaction. The liquid that had ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... only 2d., a sum which has been immortalized by Samuel Johnson's famous retort on his tutor: 'Sir, you have sconced me 2d. for non-attendance at a lecture not ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells
... This retort angered the owner of the Three Stars, but before he could say anything the proprietor of ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... experience,—much like a headstrong personage who was about to attempt crossing a river in a boat sure to sink. "You will drown, if you go in that thing," said a bystander. "Never was drowned yet," was the prompt retort; and pushing off, he soon lost the opportunity to repeat that boast! But this resistance is constantly becoming less. Meantime, numbers of foreseeing men are waking up, or are already awakened, to the importance of recreation and physical culture,—members ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... give you my face as well as my name to help you bear it," said April drily. Unexpectedly the retort pierced, for ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... had a certain tenderness for the pretty black sheep of the family, checked the sharp retort which trembled on her lips. Still, it was quite true that Rosamund had more than once been kept to lunch at The Trellis House, and that on the day of Nanna's accident Mrs. Crofton had issued a sort of general invitation to ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... broom from the black servant's hand, discharged it at Iskender's head with all his strength. The son of Yacub, by a lucky move, escaped the missile; but seeing the negro stepping forth to recover his broom, stayed to make no retort. ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... be thought to lay myself open to the rejoinder,—"Neither have you any right to assume that Inspiration will result in Infallibility." But the retort is without real point. I do but assert that, just as every man of honour claims to be believed until he has been convicted of a falsehood,—inspired Prophets, Evangelists, and Apostles have a right to our entire ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... may, so they be men and not cowards!" shouted John Alderton in retort, and springing to the stern he thrust out his own oar, calling to a comrade,—"Here, Cornish Jim, come you and help me, and so long as ash blades and stout arms hold we two ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... Rose would retort curtly: "What can I buy with your wisdom? Will it give me wherewith to eat and to drink, and to clothe myself? No! Very well then, what is ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... perfectly true that what neither Hoadly nor Warburton, nor Tindal, nor Wesley could do, was done by John Dennis.... "Plays," wrote Law, "are contrary to Scripture as the devil is to God, as the worship of images is to the second commandment." To this Dennis gave the obvious and unanswerable retort that "when St. Paul was at Athens, the very source of dramatic poetry, he said a great deal publicly against the idolatry of the Athenians, but not one word against their stage. At Corinth he said as little against ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... the troops, embittered almost intolerably by a sense that the Fifth Division had disgraced itself. One regiment blamed another, and all conspired to curse the artillery—whose practice, by the way, had been brilliant throughout the siege. Nor did the gunners fail to retort; but they were in luckier case, being kept busy all the while, first in shifting their batteries and removing their worst guns to the ships, next in hauling and placing the new train that arrived piecemeal from England; ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... countered by asking him whether he really believed me such a fool as to venture into his country without sending a messenger to my countrymen by another way, informing them where I had gone, and asking them to investigate my fate if I did not arrive at home in due course. This retort proved to be my winning card, for he gave in at once, acknowledging Nell's presence in the place; but insinuating that, since he had kept her alive and treated her well ever since the Tembu had sent her to him as a present, I ought to ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... this was the wisest course, but wisdom is often disconcerted by an indignity, and even a meek Christian may forget to turn the other cheek after receiving the first blow until the natural man has asserted himself by a retort in kind. But the wrong was committed; his resignation was accepted; the vulgar letter, not fit to be spread out on these pages, is enrolled in the records of the nation, and the first deep wound was inflicted on the proud ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... synagogues and beating Jews to senselessness in all parts of the city, undisturbed by the presence of police and troops who did nothing to stop the atrocities. The appeal of representative Odessa Jews to Governor-General Kotzebue was met by the retort that the Jews themselves were to blame, "having started first," and that the necessary measures for restoring order had been adopted. The latter assertion proved to be false, for on the following day the pogrom was renewed ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... careless retort, and with the words a gas-jet shot up, then two, then all that the room contained. "How's that? What's a flash ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... was the gruff retort. 'Orders are that all the men are to turn in and take what rest they can. Faith, it's mighty little slape any of ye will get, once you're ashore. Go down now and ate your suppers and rest. I'm thinking ye'll be taking tay with the Turks ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... only too easy. And Jules Janin, whom he had already indisposed by sketching a seeming portrait of him in the Provincial Great Man in Paris, came down heavily on the daring satirist in the Debats of the 20th of February 1843. The retort, so he informed Madame Hanska, made him laugh immoderately. Perhaps; but the laugh must have been somewhat forced—what the French ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... mildest, was stung quickly to a retort, and I was about to order her to hold her tongue and return me my basket, when the door into the house opened and shut, and the little girl of the enchanted garden appeared in ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... and longitude was longitude," would be the captain's retort. "Variation and deviation are used in setting courses and ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... Strand in grand array with bag-wig and sword, he excited the merriment of two coxcombs, one of whom called to the other to "look at that fly with a long pin stuck through it." Stung to the quick, Goldsmith's first retort was to caution the passers-by to be on their guard against "that brace of disguised pickpockets"—his next was to step into the middle of the street, where there was room for action, half draw his sword, and beckon the joker, who was armed in like manner, to follow him. ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... suppose an oyster is dull," was Rose's disdainful retort. "But it's no good to talk to ...
— Miss Merivale's Mistake • Mrs. Henry Clarke
... but, above all, Settle and Shadwell, whom, under the names of Doeg and Og, he has depicted in the liveliest colours his poignant satire could afford. They who have patience to look into the lampoons which these worthies had published against Dryden, will, in reading his retort, be reminded of the combats between the giants and knights of romance. His antagonists came on with infinite zeal and fury, discharged their ill-aimed blows on every side, and exhausted their strength in violent and ineffectual rage. But the keen and trenchant ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... merely paid back in their own coin, but they had never been accustomed to yield to others the privileges they claimed for themselves, and could not understand how "this fellow" dared presume to retort the foulness hurled at him. His paper meanwhile enjoyed a fair circulation, and his enemies periodically saw themselves held up before the people of the Province in a light well calculated to bring down public execration upon them. They winced, and hated their aggressor ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... time the Monroe Doctrine was originally proclaimed, it did unquestionably express a valid national interest of the American democracy. It was the American retort to the policy of the Holy Alliance which sought to erect the counter-revolutionary principles into an international system, and which suppressed, so far as possible, all nationalist or democratic agitation. The Spanish-American colonies had been winning their independence from Spain; and there was ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... cutting-process to your taste As much as leaving growths of lies unpruned, Nor see more danger in it,—you retort. Your taste's worth mine; but my taste proves more wise When we consider that the steadfast hold On the extreme end of the chain of faith Gives all the advantage, makes the difference With the rough purblind mass we seek to rule: We are their lords, or ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... bewildered by Vesey's boldness and dazed by his terrifying doctrines, reply defensively "we are slaves," the harsh retort "you deserve to remain so," was, without doubt, intended to sting if possible, their abject natures into sensibility on the subject of their wrongs, to galvanize their rotting souls back to manhood, and to make their base and sieve-like minds capable of receiving and retaining, ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... significant. Everybody remembers, or ought to remember, Goldsmith's charming pastor, to whom it can only be objected that he has not the fear of political economists before his eyes. This is Crabbe's retort after describing a dying pauper ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... leaves me arms, Vigour of soul and body, and a race Subject by law, and dutiful by choice, Whose hand is never to be holden fast Within the closing cleft of gnarled creeds; No easy prey for these vile mitred Moors. I, who received thy homage, may retort Thy threats, vain prelate, and ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... far better creature than the cause of his fortunes; and one doubts if Lord Beaconsfield would have trusted even the least frank of his private negotiations to some of the men who enjoy the Prime Minister's political confidence. Nor can Mr. Lloyd George retort that he makes use of all kinds of energy to get his work done, for one knows very well that he is far more at his ease with these third-rate people than with people of a higher and more intellectual order. For culture ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... more the owner of the Cloistered House returned alone. The blue-eyed lady was gone to her grave; the youth was abroad. This time he came to die. He was found lying on the floor of his laboratory with a broken retort in fragments beside him. With his servant, Luke Claridge was the first to look upon him lying in the wreck of his last experiment, a spirit-lamp still burning above him, in the grey light of a winter's morning. Luke Claridge ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... way through the city we were met by an old female mendicant, who, by her beggings and importunities, disturbed him in his story. "Pack yourself off, old witch!" said he, and walked by. She shouted after him the well-known retort,—only somewhat changed, since she saw well that the unfriendly man was old himself,—"If you did not wish to be old, you should have had yourself hanged in your youth!" He turned round violently, and I feared a scene. "Hanged cried he, "have myself hanged! No: ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... Jane did not retort, but it was noticeable that thereafter she kept her eyes more closely on her work and not dreamily upon the floor. Presently, from out that roomy kitchen rose a medley of odors that floated even to the workers out of doors; each odor most appetizing ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... an object of compassion for the merciful, was beginning to stir and glow under his ashy paleness. Before the last words were out of Mr. Hawley's mouth, Bulstrode felt that he should answer, and that his answer would be a retort. He dared not get up and say, "I am not guilty, the whole story is false"—even if he had dared this, it would have seemed to him, under his present keen sense of betrayal, as vain as to pull, for covering ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... said the mother. Oh yes, it was a little revenge upon those people who were taking her daughter from her, and who thought themselves at liberty to jeer at all her friends: but as was perhaps inevitable it touched Elinor a little too. She restrained herself from some retort with a sense of extreme and almost indignant self-control: though what retort Elinor could have made I cannot tell. It was much "nicer" than anything else she had. None of Phil Compton's great friends, who were ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... the Covenanters used to throw many aspersions respecting their receiving proof against shot from the devil, and other infernal practices, rejoiced to have an opportunity, in their turn, to retort on their adversaries the charge of sorcery. Dr. Hickes, the author of "Thesaurus Septentrionalis," published on the subject of Major Weir, and the case of Mitchell, who fired at the Archbishop of St. Andrews his book called "Ravaillac Redivivus," written with ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... indissoluble, self-sufficing; that our passage across the world, if very short, is yet too serious to be wasted in frivolous disrespect for ourselves, and angry disrespect for others. All this was actually his mind. And hence the little difficulty he had in keeping his retort to the archbishop, as to his other antagonists, on a ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... Liberal party. Mr. Robert Lowe, a Liberal, became one of its most powerful assailants. His enmity to the working classes made him extremely unpopular. Mr. Horseman also joined the Conservatives in opposing the bill. Mr. Bright, in a crushing retort, fastened upon the small party of Liberals, led by these two members in opposition to the bill, the epithet of "Adullamites." Mr. Horseman, Mr. Bright said, had "retired into what may be called his political Cave of Adullam, ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... atrabilious, and arrogant man, was about to retort, when the craftier Tinville laid his hand on his arm, and, turning to the general, said, "My dear Henriot, thy dauntless republicanism, which is too ready to give offence, must learn to take a reprimand from the representative ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... next retort to their enemies was the grandest of all. At a Synod held in Lindsey House, they resolved that a Book of Statutes was needed, and requested Zinzendorf to prepare one {1754.}. The Count was in a quandary. He could see that a Book of Statutes was required, but he could not ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... the Chien Noir," went on Commines, ignoring the retort; "you are in the King's service and have been paid with your life. Why are you not faithful? Under your very eyes a devilish scheme is hatched and you see nothing. Are you a fool, or have you grown besotted in your age? ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... and other friends emphasize the President's sense of humor. He had it, of course. He took pains to establish the true reading of that famous retort, "All I want out of you is common civility and damned little of that." He used to repeat with glee Lounsbury's witticism about "the infinite capability of the human mind to resist the introduction of knowledge." I wonder whether he knew of that other good saying of Lounsbury's about ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... body was quite still the raccoon let go and stood over it expectantly for some minutes. He bit it several times, and seeing that this treatment elicited no retort, suffered himself to feel assured of his victory. Highly pleased, he skipped back and forth over the body, playfully seized it with his fore-paws, and bundled it up into a heap. Then seeming to remember the origin of the quarrel, ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... North American Indian. They slay all they meet with of their enemies—men, women, and children; but this is common to all wild tribes. They have an implacable spirit of revenge as long as the war lasts, retort evil for evil, and retaliate life for life; and, as I have before said, the heads are the trophies, as the scalps are to the red men. But, on the contrary, they never torture their enemies, nor do they devour them; and peace can always be restored among them by a very moderate payment. ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... pastor's eyes. For an instant a wild desire to refuse help, to even command Neil to see that the programme was a failure, entered his heart. But it was only momentary; Donald was incapable of being petty. But he could not resist the retort, "I couldn't think of assuming such honours in the presence of the clergyman and the schoolmaster, but I can at least produce the cause of this serious mishap." He put his fingers to his lips and gave three sharp whistles, ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... calmly, but with much apparent confidence, said, "I am sure it is an Irish dog."—"How do you know that?" exclaimed the astonished young man with eagerness.—"I know it, sir," (replied the divine,) "by its impudence and its howl." This seasonable retort cured the garrulity of the patient, and gave him a locked-jaw till the stage ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... never be brought to see that he had done anything wrong when he stole. Nor, indeed, did the Doctor think he had; but that gentleman was never very scrupulous when in want of a retort. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been disturbed the reply has been that till quiet is restored nothing can be done, and when a peaceful Ireland has demanded legislation the absence of agitation has been adduced as a reason for the retort that the request is not widespread, and can, in ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... but few virtues, I do not yet think the Australian savage is more? vicious in his propensities or more virulent in his passions than are the larger number of the lower classes of what are called civilized communities. Well might they retort to our accusations, the motives and animus by which too many of our countrymen have been actuated ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... yet to say truth, too late I thus contest; then should have been refused Those terms whatever, when they were proposed: Thou didst accept them; wilt thou enjoy the good, Then cavil the conditions? And, though God Made thee without thy leave, what if thy son Prove disobedient, and reproved, retort, "Wherefore didst thou beget me? I sought it not!" Wouldst thou admit for his contempt of thee That proud excuse? yet him not thy election, But natural necessity begot. God made thee of choice his own, and ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... hoped that Prosper would betray himself by uttering some passionate retort when thus wounded to the quick; but he remained impassible. Of all the judge said to him his mind dwelt upon only one word—Caldas, the name of the poor travelling agent who had ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... Miscreants are for throwing down Religion in general, for stripping Mankind of what themselves own is of excellent use in all great Societies, without once offering to establish any thing in the Room of it; I think the best way of dealing with them, is to retort their own Weapons upon them, which are ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... constituents that they renominated him for the succeeding term. In the canvass which followed he distinguished himself as a stump-speaker; showing, by his tact and ability, by the skill and ingenuity with which he met his opponents in debate, by his shrewdness in attack and readiness in retort, how much he had profited by the ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... at once lest Conroy should venture another retort, and make an immediate fight unavoidable. Before his eye the silent audience melted as swiftly as it had appeared, and Conroy was alone with his sick sense of having ventured too far, which stood him in place ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... for perhaps half a minute, while a sense of dismay took possession of her. There was no doubt that Gregory's retort was fully warranted. She had insisted upon his carrying out an obligation which would cost him something, not because she took pleasure in seeing him do what was honorable, but to preserve the credit of another man. And now it was with intense repugnance that she recognized that there was ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... Americans find leisure, of late years, to travel and take notes, as well as their transatlantic brethren; and, in return for the polite attentions of our travellers, describe England and Englishmen in the bitter language of recrimination and retort; and thus the enmity between the mother and daughter is kept alive and perpetuated. A publication of this kind fell lately into my hands, entitled, "The Glory and Shame of England." The writer, said to be a Christian minister, with the ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... hope it is!" was Aileen's disgusted retort. "And if you don't watch out you'll boast just once too often and Miss Woodhull will get wise to your boasting. Then there will be something ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... Nature! (wrote the funny Sidney Smith). To what purpose, we say, is a bird placed in the woods of Cayenne with a bill a yard long, making a noise like a puppy-dog, and laying eggs in hollow trees? The toucan, to be sure, might retort, to what purpose are certain foolish, prating members of Parliament created, pestering the House of Commons with their ignorance and folly, and impeding the business of the country? There is no end to such questions; so we will not enter into the ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... true than such careless reports of actual occurrences as are published in the daily newspapers. Water that has been distilled is much more really H{2}O than the muddied natural liquid in the bulb of the retort; and life that has been clarified in the threefold alembic of the fiction-writer's mind is much more really life than the clouded and unrealized events that are reported in daily chronicles of fact. The newspaper may tell us that a man who left his office in ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... worse for Scripture,' was the unguarded, yet honest, retort of Mr. Penrose; and Dr. Hale laid a kind hand on the young minister's shoulder ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... he handles the retort and decanter! Makes lightning and thunder would scare Tam O'Shanter; Makes feathers as heavy as lead, in a jar, And eliminates spirits from coal ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... upon whom the Covenanters used to throw many aspersions respecting their receiving proof against shot from the devil, and other infernal practices, rejoiced to have an opportunity, in their turn, to retort on their adversaries the charge of sorcery. Dr. Hickes, the author of "Thesaurus Septentrionalis," published on the subject of Major Weir, and the case of Mitchell, who fired at the Archbishop of St. Andrews ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... her instantly ready wit, was too astonished to retort or to try to stop him. It was clear at a glance that she and King had had some sort of conference while the Mahatma and I were locked up together, and she had evidently expected King to fall in line and accept the trust imposed on him. Even now she seemed to think that ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... compliance, it is authority and retort and a medium declaration of fitness and agility and solemn use of patience. All this does not disease a stomach or distress a vaccination, it ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... my resolution. My old enemy, the midshipman (whose name was Crampley), entertaining an implacable animosity against me for the disgrace he had suffered on my account, had since that time taken all opportunities of reviling and ridiculing me, when I was not entitled to retort this bad usage; and, even after I had been rated on the books, and mustered as surgeon's mate, did not think fit to restrain his insolence. In particular, being one day present while I dressed a wound in a sailor's leg, he began to sing a song, which I thought highly injurious ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... man of your ain, Janet," my grandmother would retort, "then you will have new light as to how it is permitted for a woman ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... quite sure what his retort is, but you take my point. It is manifestly absurd to drag the psychological element into this cold-blooded mathematical pursuit. After all that England has done and come through in the last few years, is a man in baggy knickerbockers, with tufts on the ends of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various
... it may flee. I have always thought that the worst type of bully is the teacher in school or in college who indulges a pretty talent for satire at the expense of his pupils. It is a cowardly and a demoralising practice. It means not only hitting some one who is powerless to retort, it means confusing the sense of truth in the adolescent mind. Here is some one quite grown up who smiles and means to hurt you, who says good and means bad, who says yes and means no. The young soul stares at ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... minutes' freedom of tongue." Then he would be amused by hearing one of them saying, "Turn your back to the sahib, and let him see it still wealed with the whipping Nikalseyn gave you!" Whereupon the other would retort, "You need not talk, for your back is ...
— John Nicholson - The Lion of the Punjaub • R. E. Cholmeley
... him. His language was terrific. He cursed freighters in most able style. He asked why the Nequasset was loafing there in the seaway without steering headway on her! That amazing query took away Captain Wass's breath and all power to retort. Asking that of a man who had obeyed the law to the letter! A fellow who was banging through the fog at eighteen knots' speed blaming a conscientious skipper because the latter had stopped so as to ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... echoes from a platform, in the great historic chord of his lyre. "He is very English, too English, even," says the Master on whom his enemies alone—assuredly not his most loving, most reverent, and most thankful disciples—might possibly and plausibly retort that he was "very French, too French, even"; but he certainly was not "too English" to see and cleave to the main fact, the radical and central truth, of personal or national character, of typical history or tradition, without seeking to embellish, ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and refused to be "touched," he rebuked her for withholding that which, save for his help, she would never have been able to make. This went on until they were almost entirely estranged. He was wont to say that "now his sister was up in the world, she had got the big head," and she to retort that her brother "wanted to use her for ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... expedition, that his knowledge of Hindustani might be useful to us; he was not wanted for any other purpose, and unless he was satisfied with doing that alone, we would get on much better without him. To this provocation Baraka mildly made the retort, "Pray don't put yourself in a passion, nobody is hurting you, it is all in your own heart, which is full of suspicions and jealousy without ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... intonation so bitter and so imperative, I wondered that even Madame Beck herself could for one moment delay obedience; but she stood firm; she gazed upon him dauntless; she met his eye, forbidding and fixed as stone. She was opening her lips to retort; I saw over all M. Paul's face a quick rising light and fire; I can hardly tell how he managed the movement; it did not seem violent; it kept the form of courtesy; he gave his hand; it scarce touched her I thought; she ran, she whirled from the room; she was gone, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... no retort but stands passive. The great orange brute whose nerves has been torn to rags creeps to the squatter an' with mournful howls explains what we've ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... that they may forget their existence. I do not venture to think this exactly culpable, but I feel sure that it is a pity that people do not do less and think more. If a man asks what good comes from thinking, I can only retort by asking what good comes from the multiplication of unnecessary activity. I am quite as much at a loss as any one else to say what is the object of life, but I do not feel any doubt that we are not sent into the world to be in a fuss. Like the lobster in The Water-Babies, ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Saxon ministry against him, to secure the originals; the existence and reality of which might otherwise have been denied. He observed, that every man has a right to prevent the mischief with which he is threatened, and to retort it upon its author; and that neither the constitutions nor the laws of the empire could obstruct the exertion of a right so superior to all others as that of self-preservation and self-defence; especially when the depository of these laws is so closely united to the enemy, as ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... married already?" The question escaped before she could bite it back. With a quickening heartbeat she awaited an outburst, a retort that would end everything. But he answered quietly, in the same toneless voice: ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... visitor to be further pressed by the zealot with the vision of eternal hell, I believe he would retort that there is no reason for God to punish those who doubt or deny faith in His existence, since it is His own doing; and if He desired each one of His children to worship Him according to the precepts of a certain creed, He surely would have instilled that creed into man's make-up ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... the fine Temper of genius so soon Thrills at each smart, is the praise, Not to have yielded to pain! No small boast, for a weak Son of mankind, to the earth Pinn'd by the thunder, to rear His bolt-scathed front to the stars; And, undaunted, retort 'Gainst thick-crashing, insane, Tyrannous tempests of bale, Arrowy lightnings ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... certain time and in a certain place. This sudden revelation of the great gulf fixed between the ecclesiastical and the scientific mind is enough to take away the breath of any one unfamiliar with the clerical organon. As if, one may retort, the assumption that miracles may, or have, served a moral or a religious end, in any way alters the fact that they profess to be historical events, things that actually happened; and, as such, must needs be exactly those subjects about which ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... too much of a man for ship discipline, if that is what you mean, and if you know what I mean," was Wolf Larsen's retort. ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... our pile of quicksilver balls into an iron retort that had a pipe leading from it to a pail of water, and then applied a roasting heat. The quicksilver turned to vapor, escaped through the pipe into the pail, and the water turned it into good wholesome quicksilver again. Quicksilver is very costly, and they never waste ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... who speak the language of the Bohemians equaled the combined inhabitants of Richmond, Atlanta, Portland, and Nashville—all large cities. "What do you think of it?" I asked. "We are up against it," was the reply. I can not explain this retort so that you would understand it, but it had great significance. The professor, a distinguished philologist, was worried, and he looked it. A lady who was a club woman—and by this I do not mean that she was armed with a club, ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... disciples and successors, and seems to suggest that Mr. Asquith in his generous and difficult estimate may have exaggerated the purely Victorian element in the science of the age of Darwin. This only accentuates the difficulty, and he may perhaps retort that there is an extreme danger in suggesting what does and what does not form a part of so huge ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... or clay, leaves all its saltness in it. Woollen stuffs placed on board ship absorb fresh water. If sea water is distilled under a retort it becomes of the first excellence and any one who has a little stove in his kitchen can, with the same wood as he cooks with, distil a great quantity of water if the retort is a ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... him as a cicerone!" said Miss Bordereau with an effort of something like cruelty in her implacable power of retort—an incongruous suggestion that she was a sarcastic, profane, cynical old woman. "Haven't we heard that there have been all sorts of changes in all these years? You ought to see them and at your age (I don't mean because you're so ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... my broad-minded ancestor of the first degree—an aimless challenge coupled with the name of one recognisable spot, replied to by the haphazard retort of another place, frequently in no way joined to it, was regarded as an exceptionally fascinating sit-round game by ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... healthy vigour which only needed favourable circumstances to develop into transcendent excellence. Hazlitt, holding with the one of these opinions, cries, 'If Chatterton had had a great work to do by living, he would have lived!' Others retort on the critic, 'On the same principle, why did Keats, whom you rate so high, perish so early?' The question altogether is nugatory, seeing it can never be settled. Suffice it that these songs and rhymes of Chatterton have great beauties, apart from the age and ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... one may retort, Why should they not do so? Why should they not have their own views as to the future of South Africa? Why should they not endeavour to have one universal flag and one common speech? Why should they not win over our colonists, if they can, and push us into the sea? I see no reason why they should ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with twinkling eyes retorted: "Sure av ye was boss av a gang ye wud break more hearts wid yer swate face than I could heads wid me two hands." Which retort effectually closed ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... frequently complained of the lack of presence of mind which would seize him on any conventional emergency not included in the daily social routine. In a real one he was never at fault. He never failed in a sympathetic response or a playful retort; he was always provided with the exact counter requisite in a game of words. In this respect indeed he had all the powers of the conversationalist; and the perfect ease and grace and geniality of his manner on such occasions, arose probably ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... rage and declares she will go whining to that upstart Geyling! And you, Monsieur de Stafforth, Hofmarshall and successful courtier, propose terms to a young husband in so unpolished a fashion, that even a peasant would be obliged to retort with the old affectation of a wife's honour and purity. Now hear me; I know the court better than you do——' The darkness hid the meaning smiles which played over the lips of the others, for Frau von Ruth (Madame de ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... Hudson Bay in this passage. The French claim that he did; the English that he did not. "The house demolished with bullets" was probably an old trading post, contend the English; but there was no trading post except Radisson's west of Lake Superior at that time, retort the French. By "cows" Radisson meant buffalo, and no buffalo were found as far east as Hudson Bay, say the English; by "cows" Radisson meant caribou and deer, and herds of these frequented the shores of Hudson Bay, ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... him as chaplain to insult others, knowing that his cassock protected him. This was a bitter reply to Mr Hawkins, who at the very time that the insinuation made his blood boil, was also reminded that his profession forbade a retort: he rushed into his cabin, poor fellow, having no other method left, vented his indignation in tears, and then consoled himself by degrees with prayer. In the meantime, Mr Pottyfar had gone on deck, wroth with ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... down in what must be regarded as the listener's end of the room. We then have the whole story over again from her point of view; and this time it is the gentleman who would bite off his tongue rather than make a retort calculated to put the ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... hope, discontinued his reading. This drove the English mad; and one of Winchester's secretaries told Cauchon it was clear that he favored the girl—a charge repeated by the Cardinal's chaplain. "Thou art a liar," exclaimed the Bishop. "And thou," was the retort, "art a traitor to the King." These grave personages seemed to be on the point of going ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... reading, declared it was no better than dram-drinking, and even preached to him an ingenious variety of mechanical aids to memory and short cuts to knowledge, till Robert would turn round upon him with some triumphant retort drawn from his own utterances at some sincerer and less discreet moment. In vain. Langham felt a dismal certainty before many weeks were over that Elsmere would miss his first in Greats. He was too curious, too restless, too passionate about many things. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of abortive misery. He pored over the document that had so possessed him, turning its crabbed meanings every way, trying to get out of it some new light, often tempted to fling it into the fire which he kept under his retort, and let the whole thing go; but then again, soon rising out of that black depth of despair, into a determination to do what he had so long striven for. With such intense action of mind as he brought ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ammoniac, and place in a suitable vessel. Afterwards you must take a pound of alum, a pound of Hungary crystals, four ounces of verdigris, four ounces of cinnabar, and two ounces of sulphur. Pulverise and mix, and place in a retort of such size that the above matters will only half fill it. This retort must be placed over a furnace with four draughts, for the heat must be raised to the fourth degree. At first your fire must be slow so as to extract the gross phlegm of the matter, and when the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... wretches, bewildered by Vesey's boldness and dazed by his terrifying doctrines, reply defensively "we are slaves," the harsh retort "you deserve to remain so," was, without doubt, intended to sting if possible, their abject natures into sensibility on the subject of their wrongs, to galvanize their rotting souls back to manhood, and to make their base and sieve-like minds capable of ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... to him, thus marked out as the champion of the most debatable theory of evolution, that, two days later, the Bishop addressed his sarcasms, only to meet with a withering retort. For on the Friday there was peace; but on the Saturday came a yet fiercer battle over the "Origin," which loomed all the larger in the public eye, because it was not merely the contradiction of ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... belongs to a poor widow lady who's got two daughters to support?" he asked of an officer who was foremost in the destruction. "Poor? Damn them! I don't know when I have seen a house furnished like this! Look at that furniture! They poor!" was the retort, and thereupon the work went bravely on, of making ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... protesting, for example, that women were by no means helpless creatures, but, on the contrary, the rulers of the stronger sex, and so of the world,—then she would have merely smiled sarcastically and relapsed into silence; but there was something like a challenge in his unexpected retort. ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... in great encounters. Debate with a pirate, a body-snatcher, would be folly; no arguments, therefore, were wasted, on the top of Nebo, by Michael, over the grave of Moses. "The Lord rebuke thee," was his retort; his heavenly form stopping the way, his baffling right arm hindering the accursed design, were the ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... this oxide is a dangerous explosive, great care must be taken in its preparation; the chlorate is finely powdered and added in the cold, in small quantities at a time, to the acid contained in a retort. After solution the retort is gently heated by warm water when the gas is liberated:—3KClO3 2H2SO4 KClO4 2KHSO4 H2O ClO2. A mixture of chlorine peroxide and chlorine is obtained by the action of hydrochloric acid on potassium chlorate, and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... he had committed a fault in giving expression to his astonishment. Porthos had taken advantage of it, to retort with a question. "Why," said he, "you know I am a bourgeois, in fact; my dress, then, has nothing astonishing in it, since it ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... got inside before your sister came with her husband to see me—to beg me to go with her to Flint House and reason with your brother. To reason with him! He was beyond the futility of argument, the folly of retort. I did not want to go—at first. Then it dawned upon me that a kindly fate offered me a providential chance of securing my safety. No suspicion could fall on me if I went back—and ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... retorts and moved by the cranes over, and lowered into the cast iron coolers beneath the floor; these had water from the canal circulating around them; the covers being then put on to exclude the air, the mass of charcoal was rapidly cooled. As soon as a slip cylinder was removed from a retort a freshly charged one would take its place, and thus the process was continued. The slip cylinders were taken out of the coolers in succession by the cranes, and swung over a long and broad table upon which their contents were dropped; here the sticks of charcoal were separately ...
— History of the Confederate Powder Works • Geo. W. Rains
... utterly erred; for his mother, a black slave, had been one of the mistresses of a Virginia planter belonging to one of the oldest families in that state. Another insulting remark followed this innocent disclosure; retort followed retort; in a word, at last they came together ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... persuasion to prevail over the resolute will of her majesty, the favorite at last forgot himself so far as to turn his back upon her with a laugh of contempt; an outrage which she revenged after her own manner, by boxing his ears and bidding him "Go and be hanged." This retort so inflamed the blood of Essex that he clapped his hand on his sword, and while the lord admiral hastened to throw himself between them, he swore that not from Henry VIII. himself would he have endured ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... his mouth as if to make some retort, when suddenly Oku re-appeared carrying a tray in which was a tempting spread of cocktails, ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... An impatient retort was rising in the man's breast, and it might have found an outlet if she had not left him at that instant to give an order to the girl who had come in ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... wholly to pass by a matter of this Importance, I will first take notice to you, that Guajacum (for Instance) burnt with an open Fire in a Chimney, is sequestred into Ashes and Soot, whereas the same Wood distill'd in a Retort does yield far other Heterogeneities, (to use the Helmontian expression) and is resolv'd into Oyl, Spirit, Vinager, Water and Charcoal; the last of which to be reduc'd into Ashes, requires the being ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... clothes was always a strong point with him, and he resented the barbarism of his present get-up acutely. "If I wanted a job at teaching manners, I could find one in your boat, that's certain," was his prompt retort. "And when I'd finished with that, I could give some of you a lesson in pluck without much harm being done. I wonder if you call yourselves white men to let a crowd of niggers clear you out of your ship ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... Olympus—Minerva goes down and persuades Fandarus to violate the oaths by wounding Menelaus with an arrow— Agamemnon makes a speech and sends for Machaon—He then goes about among his captains and upbraids Ulysses and Sthenelus, who each of them retort fiercely—Diomed checks Sthenelus, and the two hosts then engage, with great slaughter ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... was a series of happenings. Tom's elbow came in contact with another jar of acid, knocking it over, and spilling it into the retort where he had been mixing the first two liquids. There was a hissing sound, as the acids combined, and a thick, white vapor arose, puffing into Tom's ...
— Tom Swift and his Wizard Camera - or, Thrilling Adventures while taking Moving Pictures • Victor Appleton
... outrage every sense of decency in foul language addressed to the negro woman; but if one of the helpless creatures, goaded to resistance and crazed under tyranny, should answer back with impudence, or should relieve his mind with an oath, or retort indecency upon indecency, he did so at the cost to himself of one dollar for every outburst. The agent referred to in the statute was the well-known overseer of the cotton region, who was always coarse and often brutal, sure to be profane, and ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... I've begun," had been the small boy's retort. And he had returned to the onslaught, regardless ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... the Dunciad, and all Swift's lampooning ballads.—Whatever their other works may be, these originated in personal feelings and angry retort on unworthy rivals; and though the ability of these satires elevates the poetical, their poignancy detracts from the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... however, and Bruhl, that which to everyone else seemed an amusing retort had a totally different aspect; while the former turned yellow with chagrin and came near to choking, the latter looked as chapfallen and startled as if his guilt; had been that moment brought home to him. Assured by the tone of the monk's voice—which ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... it, they much mistook the man. He entertained their principles sincerely and not the less that they were found impracticable; for the miscarriage of his experiment no more converts the political speculator, than the explosion of a retort undeceives an alchymist. But Bletson was quite prepared to submit to Cromwell, or any one else who might be possessed of the actual authority. He was a ready subject in practice to the powers existing, and made little difference betwixt various kinds ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... the like, till I ground my teeth, clenched my fists, and sat there bent over the exercises before me, seeing nothing but the interior of Lomax's cottage, and listening to his instructions how to stop that blow and retort with another, till in imagination I could fancy myself thrashing my enemies, and making for myself ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... remarking that it has always seemed to me strange that even experienced women of the world, like Mrs. Milton-Cleave, can be so easily hoodwinked by that vague nonentity, 'The Best Authority.' I am inclined to think that were I a human being I should retort with an expressive motion of the finger and thumb, "Oh, you know it on the best authority, do you? Then that ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... the crystallization of an infusion of the blood of many cultured, high-bred, haughty women which had been melted in the retort of a stern necessity and had come out a rather brilliant specimen of the modern woman, if a bit hard. Viewed in some ways she became an alarming augury of the future, but there are always potent counter-forces at work in life's laboratory, and the kind of forces that David Kildare brought to bear ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... great many people, is sometimes set down by the more critical or, let us say, the more censorious of them, to a sort of childish prepossession—akin to that which makes a not ill-conditioned child fail to discover any uncomeliness in his mother's or a favourite nurse's face. There is no retort to such a proposition as this so proper as the argument not ad hominem, but ab or ex homine. The present writer did not read the Devil till he had reached quite critical years; and though he read Gil Blas much earlier, he was not (for what reason he cannot say) particularly fond ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... working features. He saw and appreciated the terror he was causing, the suffering. But he could draw no further retort. ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... tell you better after I have asked her," was Elfreda's flippant retort. "I have an idea that she will feel dreadfully hurt if no ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... certain sarcasm, of which Marthe felt the sting. But, before she had time to retort, Philippe ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... bold vindication of an opinion which all present deemed to be so audacious, there succeeded a general and loud murmur. Encouraged by this evidence of his superior popularity, Nightingale was not slow, nor very meek, with his retort; and then followed a clamorous concert, in which the voices of the company in general served for the higher and shriller notes, through which the bold and vigorous assertions, contradictions, and opinions of the two principal disputants ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... words, were but momentary, but for that brief moment the angry retort was checked on Hortensius' lips, even as were the sneers and the bibulous scowls on the faces of those around. Taurus Antinor, towering above them all, and imbued with a strange dignity, seemed to be gazing into a space beyond the walls of the gorgeous dining-hall; into ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... of satisfaction in that, you know. Now, I can chuck the giddy persiflage at Piddie day in and day out, and enjoy doin' it, because it always gets him so wild. Also there's more or less thrill to slippin' the gay retort across to Old Hickory Ellins now and then, because there's a giddy chance of gettin' fired for it. But to rub it into a non-resister like Uncle Dudley—well, ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... as the honourable gentleman has NOT had the courtesy to give him notice of that question (great cheering from the Wigsby interest), he must decline to give the honourable gentleman the satisfaction he requires. Mr. Magg, instantly rising to retort, is received with loud cries of 'Spoke!' from the Wigsby interest, and with cheers from the Magg side of the house. Moreover, five gentlemen rise to order, and one of them, in revenge for being taken ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... refusal to see that which is pointed out or which stares one clearly in the face, cannot go far to establish one's case or as a method of defense. And the same thing applies to that oft-repeated and tiresome retort: "You do not (or perhaps you cannot) understand our theories and viewpoints." Or that other evasive accusation, rather than reply: "Your lack of understanding is of itself proof positive that our theories are absolutely correct in every detail." Or "Your attack or criticism ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... know why the reiteration of this phrase of the fat man irritated me, but it did exceedingly, and I turned around and glared at him, a sharp retort on the tip of my tongue. Ballard's fingers closed on my arm and I was silent. But the fat man's glances and mine had met and ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... would give too much," she said; for the magic of the hour and place was upon her, and the Doctor's earnest tones admitted of no laughing retort. She ought to have checked him then, and the instant she had spoken she knew it; but before she could speak again he had taken the hand he was already touching between both of his, and was ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... equipment of old colonels and other originally mean persons. If there was to be a House of Lords, Hasilrig and others now said imprudently, why should it not be a real one, why should not the old nobility, so many of them honourable men, resume their places? "Why not?" was the instant retort from some independent members, with the instant applause of many in the House. Hasilrig saw his mistake, of which Thurloe did not fail to take advantage. "The old Peers," said Thurloe, "are not excluded by the Petition and Advice: divers are called,—others ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... said to me: 'Rose, did we disturb your sleep last night?' I answered, 'No, I had no sleep'—which was not entirely true but the retort amused him. Then the young lawyer's wife complained to him that we were not fairly used. We came along with them, young women, and when they were having the best time we were sent away like children to go to bed in ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... of C and O, metallic sodium is formed. As usual, heated charcoal is the reducing agent. The end of the retort, which holds the ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... pan, had now poured the whole into a large test-tube, and was holding it in the flame of the burner. At the moment that it reached the boiling point it became colourless. He carefully placed the whole of the liquid in a retort to which he attached a condensor. He ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... was Lucien's quick retort. "That speech from Mme. d'Espard's cousin would dry the eyes of a weeping Magdalene. Oh me! for a little moment old memories, and lost illusions, and my twentieth year came back ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... herself by indiscreet acts during the past twenty-four hours? The latter was not unlikely; I knew her whims and her faults by this time. In either case, I had come to feel decidedly uncomfortable, so much so, in fact, that I was content to let the innuendo pass without a retort. It behooved me to keep my temper as well ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... was personal criticism, and it irritated her vanity, over-fed with public adulation and the sincere praise of musical critics. 'If you don't like me as I am, there are so many people who do that you don't count!' That was the sub-conscious form of her mental retort, and it was in the manner of Cordova, and not ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... c.c. of the water and place them in a retort connected with a Liebig's condenser. Add a drop or two of a solution of carbonate of soda and distil over 100 c.c.; collect another 50 c.c. separately. Determine the ammonia in the distillate colorimetrically (with Nessler's solution, as described under Ammonia) ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... viscosity or chemical properties of sap, regardless of whether it flows in liana, shrub, or vine, yet the Bug's artesian product is clear, tasteless and wholly without the possibility of being blown into bubbles. When a large drop has collected, the tip of the abdomen encloses a retort of air, inserts this in the drop and forces it out. In some way an imponderable amount of oil or dissolved wax is extruded and mixed with the drop, an invisible shellac which toughens the bubble and gives it an astounding glutinous endurance. As long as the abdominal air-pump ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... on her part. The fact that during the present war German trade has been swept from the seas, and that she is in the position of a blockaded Power, will certainly convince any German patriot, not that she did not need a navy, but that she needed a much stronger one; and the retort that there need have been no war if Germany had not provoked it by building a fleet is not one that can be expected to appeal to any nation so long as the European anarchy endures. For, of course, every nation regards itself as menaced perpetually ...
— The European Anarchy • G. Lowes Dickinson
... to Mary's mood and purpose. But she did not find it easy to begin. Pretty quick at a retort herself, she could often foresee the retorts open to her interlocutor. Beaumaroy had provided himself with plenty: the old man's whim; the access to the old man so willingly allowed, not only to her but to Captain Alec; his own candor carried to the verge of self-betrayal. ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... feelings." said Mrs. Nelson, "for I have myself endeavored to change my husband's determination. But he is a rigid disciplinarian, and makes it a rule never to overlook the first symptom of insubordination in any of the servants. He says if a servant is once permitted to retort, all discipline ceases, and he must be sold South. It is his rule and he never departs from it. O! I sometimes feel so sick when I see the punishments inflicted that seem necessary to keep them in subjection. ...
— A Child's Anti-Slavery Book - Containing a Few Words About American Slave Children and Stories - of Slave-Life. • Various
... with good-natured forbearance. Of all qualities, good temper is the one that wears and works the best in married life. Conjoined with self-control, it gives patience—the patience to bear and forbear, to listen without retort, to refrain until the angry flash has passed. How true it is in marriage, that "the soft answer turneth ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... the extravagance of purchasers was incredible: to such an extent was it carried, that when a Roman accused his wife of expending his money on pearls, jewels, or similar costly trifles, she used to retort, and turn the tables on her husband. Hence our expression of 'turning ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... visible. What Alaric, what Odoacer, what Theodorick, had done, Alboin did with yet more terrible results; and the fourth captivity which Nova Roma had prepared for her mother, become in her mind a hated rival, was the hardest, the longest, the most destructive of all. It is doubtful whether the retort of the eunuch Narses to the empress Sophia, when she recalled him from his government to ply, as she said, the spindle, that he would spin for her such a thread as in her life she would not disentangle, is authentic, but it undoubtedly ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... this view, says Fitzjames, and you make our conceptions the measure of reality. Mysteries, therefore, become nonsense, and miracles an impossibility. In fact, Ward's logic would lead to Spinoza, not to the deity of Catholic belief. Ward might retort that Fitzjames's doctrines would lead to absolute scepticism or atheism. Fitzjames, in fact, still accepts Mill's philosophy in the fullest sense. All truth, he declares, may be reduced to the type, 'this piece of paper is blue, and that is white.' In other words, it is purely empirical ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... basis of one bank, one newspaper, one wife and one country, and the way to do that is to get out in the open and fight. If I've got as much sense as a rabbit I say that Ab Handy is the man, and whether I'm right or wrong I'm going to run him." He seemed to retort to some objector: "Yes, and the first thing you know he'd come charging up to the Speaker's desk with a maximum freight-rate bill, or a stock-yards bill—and where would I be? I tell you he won't stand hitched. He'll swell up like a pizened pup, and you ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... the obvious retort that the property was not looked after, but allowed to fall into dilapidation; but Mr Farrell understood without the need of words, and his ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... that the approximate length of the previous dispute had now been taken up, whatever retort Carolyn Drake had made. Then he checked himself, again looking at his watch: "And just what did you answer to your husband's ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... of the grains of corn they had gained from the autumnal store. There can be little doubt that some species of ants do store food; but their praiseworthy actions in this direction have been greatly exaggerated, and there appears, indeed, to be some danger of idle persons being prepared with the retort to the wise man, that the ant is by no means the model creature he thought her to be. If, however, the supposed corn-grains turn out to be the rising generation of ants in their chrysalis-state, it may be said that what the ants may have lost in ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... eyes flashed. She opened her lips to speak—closed them again with the angry retort unuttered. After all, Frank was her mother's and her sole dependence. They could hope for little from him, but nothing must be said that would give him and his mean, selfish wife a chance to break with them and refuse to ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... Labouchere. How that ostentatiously manufactured alias ever imposed on Truth passes comprehension. Is it any wonder that at one of our numerous mid-day lunches "Colonel" Norton fired the following rhyming retort at Field?— ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... talk of the atheist Terror, to rejoin that the retainers of Anjou and Montpensier slew more men and women on the first day of the Saint Bartholomew, than perished in Paris through the Years I. and II. But the retort does us no good beyond the region of dialectic. Some of the opinions of Chaumette were full of enlightenment and hope. But it would be far better to share the superstitious opinions of a virtuous and benignant priest, like the Bishop in ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... interrupted Elizabeth; I know it all. The forms of the law must be complied with, however; the search must be made, the deer found, and the penalty paid. But I must retort your own question. Have you lived so long in our family not to know us? Look at me, Oliver Edwards. Do I appear like one who would permit the man that has just saved her life to linger in a jail for so small a sum as this fine? No, no, sir; my father is ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... promptly that she never learnt he had a wife, even then. It occurred to him then for the first time, in the flash of her retort, that she did not know he ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... So deeply did he take the matter to heart, that he suffered one small boy to inquire pathetically, "if 'e'd bin long in that state o' grumps?" and another to suggest that, "if 'e couldn't be 'appier than that, 'e'd better go an' drown hisself," without vouchsafing a retort, or ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... better for all concerned if she had trusted you in the beginning," was Emma's dry retort. "I can't help feeling a trifle out of patience with that girl, Grace. She had no business to commit an act, no matter how trivial, that would lay ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... words the hypothetical Mrs. Courage was presumed to use, while Steptoe slowly threw back his head for the purchase, bringing it forward in condescending grace. Language could not have given Mrs. Courage so effective a retort courteous. ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... fire, and a sharp retort rose to his lips. But, after a brief silence, he answered his wife with a restraint that spoke volumes to the girl at ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... unfortunate, Lord Frederick had been the object of it: she had waited by his side, and, with every good purpose, had preached patience to him, while he was smarting under the pain, but more under the shame, of his chastisement. At first, his fury threatened a retort upon the servants around him (and who refused his entrance into the house) of the punishment he had received. But, in the certainty of an amende honorable, which must hereafter be made, he overcame the many temptations ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... opened his mouth in angry retort. Then he discovered he had no retort, only anger. And this made him angrier, and his mouth remained open, quite ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... supposed to be, he was not quite prepared to give credit to this explanation; but being of a peaceful disposition, and altogether unaccustomed to retort, he merely smiled his disbelief, as he proceeded to lay aside his fowling-piece, and divest himself of the voluminous out-of-door trappings with which he was clad. Mr. Hamilton was a tall, slender youth, of about nineteen. He had come out by the ship in autumn, and was spending his ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... of disposing of the dead likely to become very popular, especially with women who are so fond of having the last retort. ...
— The Foolish Dictionary • Gideon Wurdz
... his memorable rebuke addressed to the Duke of Grafton. If the testimony of English travellers in this country is to be believed, the legislative assemblies of our own land have hitherto enjoyed the unenviable monopoly of this species of retort. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... "A fair retort! But let's be serious. I'm not sure I'd have fallen off the log if I'd been left alone, but it's very possible. Walters' help was useful, whether he saved my life or not, and you can't deny that ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... Tcheremisses in the European Russia adhere to this religion, which is formed on the earthly model of one king or God, his ministers or angels, and the rebellious spirits who oppose his government. As these tribes of the Volga have no images, they might more justly retort on the Latin missionaries the name of idolaters, (Levesque, Hist. des Peuples soumis a la Domination des Russes, tom. i. p. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... was displeased at this retort, so at last the woman agreed to comb his hair, for she did not want to see the Malaki angry. By and by the Malaki felt sleepy while his hair was being combed; and he said to the Bia, ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... help thinking, as I sat taking in all this, that the misfortune extended to some other members of that family besides Mrs. Gummidge. But Mr. Peggotty made no such retort, only answering with another entreaty to Mrs. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... like a yellow-fanged snake with its forked tongue fairly dripping with poison," was the ready retort. "She come to gloat over you as she always has since the day you cut her out of that young man. She knowed you were going to work at home to-day, and she had the littleness to traipse over here to try to make you feel like ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... punishment with it. "You are no gentleman!" said Gangsman Dibell to one Hartnell, a currier who accidentally jostled him whilst he was drinking in a Poole taproom. "No, nor you neither!" replied Hartnell. The retort cost him a most disagreeable experience. Dibell and his comrades collared him and dragged him off to the rendezvous, where he was locked up in the black-hole till the next day. [Footnote: Admiralty Records 1. 580—Inquiry into the ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... altitudes. To such devices the usual wretched girl, who has never drawn rebellious breath, or listened to the discourses of Valeria Du Prel, has to turn for a living, or to keep ennui at bay. But I, no, the inimical sex may possess their souls in peace, as far as I am concerned. They might retort that they never had felt nervous, but a letter has the same advantage as the pulpit: the adversary can never get ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... perfuming their hair with oil of benzoin, which they distil themselves from the gum by a process doubtless of their own invention. In procuring it a priuk, or earthen rice-pot, covered close, is used for a retort. A small bamboo is inserted in the side of the vessel, and well luted with clay and ashes, from which the oil drops as it comes over. Along with the benzoin they put into the retort a mixture of sugar-cane ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... These writers would retort (if I take them properly) that this was very true; that it was the same with themselves and other persons of (what they call) the artistic temperament that in this we were exceptional, and should apparently be ashamed of ourselves; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... their eyes at the tips of their feelers, and cannot even see unless they at the same time touch. When these finger-philosophers affirm that Plato, Bruno, &c. must have been "out of their senses," the just and proper retort is,—"Gentlemen! it is still worse with you! you have lost ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... at the personification. The gastronomists chuckled at the nightingale sauce; but for the first few minutes no one spoke. During this temporary embarrassment, Vetranio whispered a few words in Julia's ear; and—just as the Cynic was sufficiently recovered to retort—accompanied by the ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... separation from the others, Johnston had been unaware of the manner in which Frank had been tormented, as it was borne so uncomplainingly. But this time Frank's indignant speech, followed so fast by Damase's angry retort, told him plainly that there was need of his interference. He emerged from his corner just at the moment when Damase was ready to strike. One glance at the state of affairs was enough. Damase's back was turned toward him. With a swift spring, that startled the others as if he ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley
... It is impossible that you could conceive such a plot and execute it without help, and I am going to sift it to the bottom," was Miss Williams' sharp retort; for she by no means relished being aroused at midnight by such a frightful bedlam, to find herself a prisoner ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... a stove in it is a retort in which the power of strong men is evaporated, where their vitality is exhausted, and their wills enfeebled. Government offices are part of a great scheme for the manufacture of the mediocrity necessary for the maintenance of a Feudal ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... revenge upon those people who were taking her daughter from her, and who thought themselves at liberty to jeer at all her friends: but as was perhaps inevitable it touched Elinor a little too. She restrained herself from some retort with a sense of extreme and almost indignant self-control: though what retort Elinor could have made I cannot tell. It was much "nicer" than anything else she had. None of Phil Compton's great friends, who were not of the same monde as the people ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... the daughters and the neighbors saw only the same old wooden house there, it was a two-story brick to Aleck and Sally and not a night went by that Aleck did not worry about the imaginary gas-bills, and get for all comfort Sally's reckless retort: "What of it? We can ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... and nuns, who shut themselves up, and never see their fellow-creatures at all?" he had retorted, greatly pleased with himself for the retort. ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... little of his rebellion, but was gentler, would regard him with horror. "Why, Henry Whitman, that is a dreadful wicked spirit!" she would say, and he would retort stubbornly that he didn't care; that he had to pay a road tax for these people who would just as soon run him down as not, if it wouldn't tip their old machines over; for these maniacs who had gone speed-mad, and were appropriating ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the time of which I am speaking; on the contrary, I had my full share of the failing and short-comings common to my age, and often my own temper would rise when Aunt Lucinda found fault with me, or in some other way manifested a feeling of dislike, and the bitter retort would rise to my lips; but I believe I can say with truth that I never gave utterance to a disrespectful word. My mother's counsel to me before leaving home, recurring to my mind, often prevented the ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... thick or thin. There is one explicit reference in the poem to his predecessor's work, and it is significant. Everybody remembers, or ought to remember, Goldsmith's charming pastor, to whom it can only be objected that he has not the fear of political economists before his eyes. This is Crabbe's retort after describing a dying pauper in need of ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... how you understand it?' began Maxime, enraged by this last piece of presumption. There was something of Talleyrand's wit in the insolent retort, if you have quite grasped the contrast between the two men and their costumes. Maxime scowled and looked full at the intruder; Cerizet not merely endured the glare of cold fury, but even returned it, with an icy, cat-like malignance and fixity ...
— A Man of Business • Honore de Balzac
... originates is the substance in its subsequent states. As thus the substance in all its states has being, there is nothing irrational in the satkarya theory.— But the admission of the origination of a non-existing state lands us in the asatkarya theory!—If he, we retort, who holds the asatkarya theory is of opinion that the origination of the effect does not itself originate, he is similarly landed in the satkarya theory; and if he holds that the origination itself originates, he is led ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... a growth of English root, Though nameless in our language: we retort The fact for words, and let the French translate That awful ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... one way in which the Company might have used some of the profits: it might have granted shorter hours and higher wages to the workmen whose health was destroyed and whose lives were shortened by the terrible labour of the retort-houses and the limesheds; but of course none of the directors or shareholders ever thought of doing that. It was not the business of the Company to concern itself ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... these frequent consultations with the wolf from Midian?" was the quick retort. "Thou art unskilled in the ways of war, my father. The king who would conquer treats not with his enemy. Thou dost risk the respect of thy realm for thee. Strengthen thy fortifications and exhaust the cunning of ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... Fifth Division had disgraced itself. One regiment blamed another, and all conspired to curse the artillery—whose practice, by the way, had been brilliant throughout the siege. Nor did the gunners fail to retort; but they were in luckier case, being kept busy all the while, first in shifting their batteries and removing their worst guns to the ships, next in hauling and placing the new train that arrived piecemeal from England; and not only busy, but alert, on ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... like to know what o'clock it was; and the other would display the ring, and tell me that his sweetheart would value it when she knew that it was taken from a conquered Englishman. This was their practice every day, and I was compelled to receive their gibes without venturing a retort. ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... be caned," and the like, till I ground my teeth, clenched my fists, and sat there bent over the exercises before me, seeing nothing but the interior of Lomax's cottage, and listening to his instructions how to stop that blow and retort with another, till in imagination I could fancy myself thrashing my enemies, and making for ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... platform, in the great historic chord of his lyre. "He is very English, too English, even," says the Master on whom his enemies alone—assuredly not his most loving, most reverent, and most thankful disciples—might possibly and plausibly retort that he was "very French, too French, even"; but he certainly was not "too English" to see and cleave to the main fact, the radical and central truth, of personal or national character, of typical history or ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... boy to inquire pathetically, "if 'e'd bin long in that state o' grumps?" and another to suggest that, "if 'e couldn't be 'appier than that, 'e'd better go an' drown hisself," without vouchsafing a retort, or ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... sickened me, and I was about to retort when a shout from one of our men drew our attention to the gully below. And there were our terrified Indians peering out cunningly at us like so many foxes playing tag with an unbroken ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... the boy, growing moody after his sharp retort. "I won't have any one know about it. Tessibel, I want this more than anything else in the world. I love you—I love you, and you love me. Then why not? You ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... for yourself and your friends, Sir, if you were;" was the natural retort. Their common friends interfered, to prevent a ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... took up his abode in his lonely refuge on Lake Hanover, which he alternately dubbed his Diogenes tub, his Uncle Tom's Cabin, and his retort. It was no Diogenes tub, because the two friends brought wood and anthracite coal for a little American stove in the bedroom, which gave quite a good deal of heat and made a cosey appearance with the glow of the burning coal visible; and because the ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... journeys are apt to make companions irritable one to another; but under hard circumstances, a traveller does his duty best who doubles his kindliness of manner to those about him, and takes harsh words gently, and without retort. He should make it a point of duty to do so. It is at those times very superfluous to show too much punctiliousness about keeping up one's dignity, and so forth; since the difficulty lies not in taking up quarrels, but in ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... I might retort truthfully and say I am not accustomed to have students address me in quite this manner. I'm glad, however, to find that you are sensible enough not to make an amusing show of yourself by imagining that you are making a noble fight ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... snuff and offered some to Bakahenzie, who grunted acceptance and sniffed with even greater indifference. Motionless they continued to sit and silently. Bakahenzie wondered whether Yabolo knew that he, too, had fled, and Yabolo, who did know, waited for the first move on Bakahenzie's part to retort. ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... had not tried more than once to catch Grumpy Weasel perhaps Mr. Crow's retort wouldn't have made him feel so uncomfortable. And muttering that he wished when people spoke of his beak they wouldn't call it a bill, and that Mr. Crow was too stupid to talk to, Solomon blundered away ...
— The Tale of Grumpy Weasel - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... grandmother!" was the trader's retort. "You want to pay up your debts, that's what you want. You owed me twelve hundred dollars Chili. Very well; you owe them no longer. The amount is squared. Besides, I will give you credit for two hundred Chili. If, when I get to Tahiti, the pearl sells well, I will give you credit ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... is the charge our enemies bring against us. We feel, but don't reason, they say. We have much reason to retort, 'You reason, but have no feeling and little comprehension for those that have.' Come, I will be serious now," and his expression became grave and firm. "Cousin Sophy, Mr. Houghton will never give me a penny, nor would I take a gift from him even if starving, yet ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... the show-room before a retort could formulate itself, so Morris struggled into his overcoat instead and made for the store door. As he reached it his eye fell on the clock over Wasserbauer's Cafe on the other side of the street. The hands pointed to two o'clock, and he broke into a ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... and bodily, by his cousin's retort, Richard Frayne gave way, and was borne back against the ruined wall of the old sanctuary; for Mark had, by a quick action, seized him hard by the ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... Rebellion,' and is very warmly and gracefully expressed in a letter to his father, written at Holyrood.' {23a} He could not be induced to punish miscreants who attempted his life and snapped pistols in his face. He could hardly be compelled to retort to the English offer of 30,0001. for his head by issuing a similar proclamation about 'the Elector.' 'I smiled and created it' (the proclamation of a reward of 30,000l. for his head) 'with the disdain it deserved, upon which they' (the Highlanders) 'flew into a violent rage, ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... I'm the only one!" came the quick retort, and the young chap in the shade of the adobe shook ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... A Painter's Retort, or Dangerous Re-touch.—Antonio More, the celebrated painter, was highly favoured by Philip of Spain, whose familiarity with him placed his life in danger; for More ventured to return a slap on the shoulder which the king in a playful moment gave him, by rubbing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 563, August 25, 1832 • Various
... hurried on Bert, too engrossed in his solution to retort in kind. "Sandy was telling me a little while ago about the habits of grizzlies, and he mentioned especially the trick they have of standing on their hind legs and clawing at trees as high as they could reach. But I remember ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... the car is not what it should be, and judging by the product the builder is not what he is represented to be either. Dr. Martineau was far too keen a controversialist to adopt Canon Green's foolish retort, but he does seek to parry the force of the atheist criticism by saying that God "if once he commits his will to any determinate method, and for the realisation of his ends selects and institutes a scheme of instrumental rules, he thereby shuts the ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... course, if you choose," came the scornful retort; "but you have no power to break ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... same penetrating sense of humour as her brother Raymond and quite as much presence of mind in retort. Her gift of expression was amazing and her memory unrivalled. My daughter Elizabeth and she were the only girls except myself that I ever met who were real politicians, not interested merely in the personal side—whether Mr. B. or C. spoke well ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... twice in the course of his speech Mr. Macdonald spoke of himself and his Labour friends as 'we.' 'Who are "we"?' sharply challenged Mr. Wardle, reviving a question familiar in the annals of split parties. 'You knof perfectly wel thlat you are not inclueddin the "we,"' was the retort."—Manchester Guardian. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 • Various
... not seen it since that autumn afternoon when he had bestirred himself to rebuke its owner concerning the inadequacies of the domestic provision. His admonition had been kindly meant and had not deserved the retort, the flippant ridicule of his spiritual yearnings. Though he still winced from the recollection, he was sorry that he had resisted the importunacy of Basil's apology. He realized that Aurelia had persisted to the limit ...
— The Christmas Miracle - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... but the words stuck in his throat. The consummate art with which his patron had led him to this point, and managed the whole conversation, perfectly baffled him. He did not doubt that if he had made the retort which was on his lips when Mr Chester turned round and questioned him so keenly, he would straightway have given him into custody and had him dragged before a justice with the stolen property upon him; ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... man will need discipline; but I imagine he was thinking less about my poor old father than about—well, I needn't have mentioned the Baker house, but what does he really know of how I came to leave it? Perhaps suspicion and bitter memories made my retort more spirited ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... demurely closed lips, a probable indication that the only retort she could think of was ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... Greenwell for remarking from the Durham County Bench that if a few motorists were shot no great harm would be done. The same paper subsequently published an article headed, "Maxims for Motorists." Retaliation in kind is natural, and a maxim is an excellent retort to a canon. But why abuse the ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton
... blowed!" came the retort; "p'r'aps nex' time the Proosians are round Paris and you have to git your dinner off a steak from the 'ind wheel of a motor-car, you Frenshmen'll wish you ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... of 79 A.D. is interesting as having given rise to a happy retort from Vespasian, whose death the comet was held to portend. Seeing some of his courtiers whispering about the comet, 'That hairy star,' he said, 'does not portend evil to me. It menaces rather the king of the Parthians. He is a hairy man, but ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... dubious, and made no answer; but she noticed that the man now preceded them, and raised his hand when they came up with the band, which had apparently halted to indulge in retort or badinage with some of ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... came out of the Bibliotheque with a man who had been sitting at the same table with him, and as they walked along together Redoutez declared that he was finally in possession of the famous secret. Arriving in his laboratory, he threw pieces of iron into a retort, made a projection, and obtained crystals the colour of blood. The other examined the salts and made a flippant remark. The alchemist, furious, threw himself upon him, struck him with a hammer, and had to be overpowered and carried ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... Victorine flashed to retort, but saw the smiling critic as pale as Anna and recalled the moment's truer business, the list still darting innumerably around them always out of reach. The carriage had to push into the very surge, ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... ought to be made for a moment of irritation. My character was traduced by Captain Hawkins, supposing that I was dead; so much so, that even the ship's company cried out shame. I am aware, that no language of a superior officer can warrant a retort from an inferior; but, as what I intended to imply by that language is not yet known, although Captain Hawkins has given an explanation to his, I shall merely say, that I meant no more by my insinuations, than Captain ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... pool of blood had been found, and some tufts of wool. That also, I pointed out, could be explained in a perfectly natural way. Further, the nights upon which sheep disappeared were invariably very dark, cloudy nights with no moon. This I met with the obvious retort that those were the nights which a commonplace sheep-stealer would naturally choose for his work. On one occasion a gap had been made in a wall, and some of the stones scattered for a considerable distance. Human agency ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... king to death. Georges punned on his name, and addressed him as "Monsieur Tue-Roi."[50] When called up for sentence, the judge missed the miniature, and asked him what he had done with it? "And you," answered the prisoner, "what have you done with the original?"—a retort which nothing could prevent the audience from applauding. Georges and eighteen more were condemned to death; and he, and eleven besides, suffered the penalty with heroic firmness. Of the rest, among whom were two sons of the noble house of Polignac, some were permitted to escape ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... tourists, have often been taunted with their ignorance and want of culture, and the perfunctory manner in which they hurry through and "do" the art galleries of Europe. There is a large amount of truth, no doubt, in the charge, but they might very well retort on their critics that no one had come forward to meet their wants, or to assist in dispelling their ignorance. No doubt there are guide-books, very excellent ones in their way, but on all matters of art very little better than mere indices; something fuller ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... cheated you, someone else would," was Ethel's inadequate muttered retort, unheard by ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... scarlet and Miss Dorner, full of astonishment, looked at her glowing face. She expected a fitting retort, ...
— Cornelli • Johanna Spyri
... that it has always seemed to me strange that even experienced women of the world, like Mrs. Milton-Cleave, can be so easily hoodwinked by that vague nonentity, 'The Best Authority.' I am inclined to think that were I a human being I should retort with an expressive motion of the finger and thumb, "Oh, you know it on the best authority, do you? Then that ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... scoffes in vildest base contempt, Or is there said or done, ought I repent, But can retort even to your grinning teeths, Your worst of spights, tho Princesse lofty steps May not be tract, yet may they tread ...
— Philaster - Love Lies a Bleeding • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... more, thou dost talk nothing (i.e. nonsense) to me." Gonzalo replies that he did so purposely "to minister occasion to those gentlemen, who are of such sensible and nimble lungs that they always use to laugh at nothing." They retort that they were not laughing at his humour, but at himself. "Who," he replies, "in this merry fooling am nothing to you" meaning, apparently, that he is acting the fool intentionally and out ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... mad; and one of Winchester's secretaries told Cauchon it was clear that he favored the girl—a charge repeated by the Cardinal's chaplain. "Thou art a liar," exclaimed the Bishop. "And thou," was the retort, "art a traitor to the King." These grave personages seemed to be on the point of going to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... he said, abruptly, "your doll-baby face does your intelligence an injustice—Miss Smith, I apologize." And before the astonished and indignant Alicia could summon a withering retort, he added heartily: "This whole place is quite the real thing, you know—almost too good to be true and too true to be good. Would you mind telling me how you happened to think of letting ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... the magazines. On her telling him that she never followed anything of that sort, he undertook a defence of the serial system, which she presently reminded him that she had not attacked. He was not discouraged by this retort, but glided gracefully off to the question of Mount Desert; conversation on some subject or other being evidently a necessity of his nature. He talked very quickly and softly, with words, and even sentences, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... Raleigh grunted, disdaining, retort, and passed forth to his waiting cab. The day had commenced inauspiciously. The night before, smoking his final cigarette in his upper berth in the wagon-lit, he had tempted Providence by laying out for himself a programme and a time schedule; and it looked as if Providence had been unable ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... content. She was so happy at the thought that Flora was really gone that she felt very good and amiable; she liked herself all the better for having such nice, comfortable, kindly thoughts about everyone. Even Eric could scarcely have extracted a sharp retort from ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... maintained for one year at the royal expense. The vexation of the Bishop of Burgos augmented visibly at this fresh claim for assistance, and he roundly declared such a concession would cost the Crown more than an armada of twenty thousand men, which provoked the pertinent retort from Las Casas: "Does it appear to your lordship that after you have killed off the Indians, I should now lead Christians to death? Well, I shall not." As the Bishop, according to Las Casas, was no fool, he hoped that he understood ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... Pliny, and all the rest of you? He might be less savage in his attacks on our order." "And equally a pity," Pliny gallantly responded, "that he could not modify his views on your sex by knowing such ladies as are in this room." Tacitus bowed gravely to Quadratilla as their host said this. A retort trembled on the wicked old lips, but Calpurnia, seeing it, made haste to ask if any of them had ever talked with Juvenal. "I asked Martial once," she said, "to bring him to see us, but he never came. I cannot help feeling that, ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... at this invidious and unnecessary comparison, and cast about in his mind how he might retort upon Spencer. I do not know that my conjecture is right; but it has always seemed to me that his reason for introducing his repartee to Spencer in the odd place where he did, just after a most eloquent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... hearty?" said the captain, making an effort to come to me; but I then became aware of the fact that we were surrounded by savages, for one great fellow struck the captain on the arm with his club, and in retort the skipper gave him a kick which sent him on ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... lip, probably to keep back some hasty retort, and thought rapidly for a moment. She looked straight at him with eyes that stirred and dazzled him. He was handsome in a coarse way, like a fine young animal, well groomed, well fed, magnetic, forceful; but his boldness, being of a sort to which she had not been ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... He would have cut the same figure as 'a forlorn scullion from a greasy eating-house at Rotterdam, if suddenly called away in vision to act as seneschal to the festival of Belshazzar the King, before a thousand of his lords.' And what, we may retort, would Taylor, or Browne, or De Quincey himself, have done, had one of them been wanted to write down the project of Wood's halfpence in Ireland? He would have resembled a king in his coronation robes compelled to lead a forlorn hope up the scaling ladders. The fact is, that Swift required for his ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... shust to be politeful to Mrs. Nelson," was Dutchy's quick retort. "I know, I know, and it is too pad. Why is he not here? Pecause he haf gone out. Why haf he gone out? For der defelopment of der appetite. How does he defelop der appetite? He walks barefoots in der snow. Ach! don't ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... the flowers, And make the best of sunny hours; The drums are silent; fifes are mute; No tones are raised in high dispute; No hearty laughter's cheerful sound Announces fun and frolic round. Here's comic Alan's wit wants sport; And dark-eyed Bessie's quick retort Is spent on Nellie, mild and sweet; And dulness reigns along the street. The table's lessened numbers bring No warm discussion's changeful ring, Of hard-won goal, or slashing play, Or colours blue, or brown, or gray. The chairs stand round like rows of pins; ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... I fell asleep over my dinner; and my wife, seeing my condition of fatigue, got into the habit of carving our frugal joints, a habit which has become permanent. Thus, when I say, as a bit of pleasantry, that where the lady carves, you learn who is the master of the house, Lady Watkin will retort by mentioning this old story of past and ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... of an opinion which all present deemed to be so audacious, there succeeded a general and loud murmur. Encouraged by this evidence of his superior popularity, Nightingale was not slow, nor very meek, with his retort; and then followed a clamorous concert, in which the voices of the company in general served for the higher and shriller notes, through which the bold and vigorous assertions, contradictions, and opinions of the two principal disputants were heard ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... Celia Craig's cheeks; her lips unclosed, tightened, as though a quick retort had been quickly reconsidered. She meditated. Then: "Honey-bell," she said tranquilly, "if we are bitter, try to remember that we are ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... of the critics, and he takes in this volume, not in this poem only, a full and a characteristically good-humoured revenge. The Epilogue follows up the pendant to Pacchiarotto. There is the same jolly humour, the same combative self-assertiveness, the same retort Tu quoque, with a yet more earnest and ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... alchemists of old. But their failure to transmute the baser metals into gold resulted in the birth of chemistry. They did not succeed in what they attempted, but they brought into vogue the natural processes of sublimation, filtration, distillation, and crystallization; they invented the alembic, the retort, the sand-bath, the water-bath and other valuable instruments. To them is due the discovery of antimony, sulphuric ether and phosphorus, the cupellation of gold and silver, the determining of the properties of saltpetre and its use in gunpowder, and the discovery of the distillation of essential ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... should receive everybody, because it would be my duty to do so; but, being a private individual, I receive whomsoever I please, and at what hour soever I please!" Disconcerted by the liveliness of the retort, the great seignior did not utter one word in reply. We must even believe that from that moment he resolved not to visit any but ministers, for the plain man of science ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... reiteration of this phrase of the fat man irritated me, but it did exceedingly, and I turned around and glared at him, a sharp retort on the tip of my tongue. Ballard's fingers closed on my arm and I was silent. But the fat man's glances and mine had ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... girls know about driving!" was the retort from the small piece of masculine science ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... contest; then should have been refused Those terms whatever, when they were proposed: Thou didst accept them; wilt thou enjoy the good, Then cavil the conditions? And, though God Made thee without thy leave, what if thy son Prove disobedient, and reproved, retort, "Wherefore didst thou beget me? I sought it not!" Wouldst thou admit for his contempt of thee That proud excuse? yet him not thy election, But natural necessity begot. God made thee of choice his own, and of his own To serve him; thy reward was of ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... girl without resentment; she appeared to enjoy a bold retort and to be disposed to be gracious. "Perhaps she hasn't had so good an excuse as I. Tell her at any rate that she must come and see me this evening at that horrid hotel. She may bring her husband ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... to your rebuke, Mr. Leslie, though I meant not the offence you would ascribe to me. I regret my unlucky quotation yet the more, since the wit of your retort has obliged you to identify yourself with Marmion, who, though a clever and brave fellow, was an uncommonly—tricky one." And so Harley, certainly having the best of it, moved on, and joined Egerton, and in a few minutes more ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... instead of a retort. He appreciated her sharpness too much to get one ready in time. Turning away, he left the room with a quiet, steady step, taking his grin with him: it had drawn the clear, scanty skin yet tighter on his face, and remained fixed; ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... imagine that I rise under some little feeling of irritation to reply to the personal reflections which have been introduced into the discussion. It would be easy to reply to these reflections. It would be still easier to retort them: but I should think either course unworthy of me and of this great occasion. If ever I should so far forget myself as to wander from the subject of debate to matters concerning only myself, it will not, I hope, be at a time when the dearest interests of our country ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... herb-doctor, without noticing the retort, overbearing though it was, began his panegyrics anew, and in a tone more assured than before, going so far now as to say that his specific was sometimes almost as effective in cases of mental suffering as in cases of physical; or rather, to be more precise, in cases when, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... eh?" was the sneering retort. "All right. I will go; and I'll not come near you again. But I'll make you bitterly repent of your treatment of me yet, or my name ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... can retort the door of the kitchen is opened; and the voices of the others are heard returning. Crofts, unable to recover his presence of mind, hurries out of the cottage. The clergyman appears at the ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... Germany; Germany chose, and let the Armenian massacres go on. But she was in a difficulty. What if the Turkish Government retorted (perhaps it did so retort), 'You are not consistent. Why do you mind about the slaughter of a few Armenians? What about Belgium ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... one would think I'd married a monkey—a hourang-howtang, instead of a man. There—now you're vexed! One can't open one's mouth." My mother knew where to strike; and this attack upon his pigtail was certain to provoke my father, who would retort in no measured language, till she, in her turn, lost her temper, and then out she would sing, in a sort ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... army. Marie Graevenitz, after sobbing her heart out, flies into a rage and declares she will go whining to that upstart Geyling! And you, Monsieur de Stafforth, Hofmarshall and successful courtier, propose terms to a young husband in so unpolished a fashion, that even a peasant would be obliged to retort with the old affectation of a wife's honour and purity. Now hear me; I know the court better than you do——' The darkness hid the meaning smiles which played over the lips of the others, for Frau von Ruth (Madame de Ruth as she was named at court, German being considered ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... knowledge of the ways and the men and women of New York. I did not, I explained, wish to be unkind, but the memory of that latter-day Petronius was one of the most mirth-provoking memories of my boyhood. Was he fair game for a chapter of a flippant nature? But why not? was the retort. He ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... works of the company, at their different stations, were erected. From this period various improvements were gradually introduced into almost every part of the apparatus. In 1816, Mr. Clegg obtained the patent for his horizontal rotative retort; his apparatus for purifying coal gas with cream of lime; for his rotative gas meter; and self-acting governor; and altogether by his exertions the London and Westminster Company's affairs assumed a new ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various
... that one of the most characteristic follies of young men, unmarried, or in the opinion of prudent mammas, unmarriageable, is, when they arrive at the age of indiscretion, to dogmatize on what they call the appropriate sphere of woman. You remember the thundering retort which came, like a box on the ears, to one of these philosophers, when he was wisely discoursing vaguely on his favorite theme. "And pray, my young sir," asked a stern matron of forty, "will you please to tell us what is the appropriate sphere of woman?" Thus confronted, he only babbled ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... in the shop. Mr Verloc made no comment. He made no retort, and yet the retort was obvious. But he refrained from pointing out to his wife that the idea of making Stevie the companion of his walks was her own, and nobody else's. At that moment, to an impartial observer, Mr Verloc would have appeared more than ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... passion. With many vices and but few virtues, I do not yet think the Australian savage is more? vicious in his propensities or more virulent in his passions than are the larger number of the lower classes of what are called civilized communities. Well might they retort to our accusations, the motives and animus by which too many of our countrymen have been actuated ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... cranes over, and lowered into the cast iron coolers beneath the floor; these had water from the canal circulating around them; the covers being then put on to exclude the air, the mass of charcoal was rapidly cooled. As soon as a slip cylinder was removed from a retort a freshly charged one would take its place, and thus the process was continued. The slip cylinders were taken out of the coolers in succession by the cranes, and swung over a long and broad table upon which their contents were dropped; here the sticks ...
— History of the Confederate Powder Works • Geo. W. Rains
... our Government," including as "enemies" the Congress and Cabinet that supported and maintained the war for the Union. These and other unfortunate allusions, such as that to the "poison of Abolitionism," enabled General Hayes to effectively retort at Sidney, and at other points. So much of the Sidney speech as refers to Judge Thurman's Waverly speech is reproduced in ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... traitors nor pirates. He supported his opinion by arguments before the council; these were answered by Dr. Littleton, who succeeded him in the office from which he was dismissed; and the prisoners were executed as traitors. The Jacobites did not fail to retort those arts upon the government which their adversaries had so successfully practised in the late reign. They inveighed against the vindictive spirit of the administration, and taxed it with encouraging informers and false witnesses—a ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... him back to the Station in the Rue Mouffetard," was Chauvelin's curt retort; "there to give notice that I might require a few armed men presently. But he should be somewhere about here by now, looking for us. Anyway, I have my ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... than the Liberal party; and Mr. Hyndman's classical quotation, 'Non olet'—'It does not smell,' meaning that there is no difference in the flavour of Tory and Whig gold once it comes into the Socialist treasury, was a sufficient retort to the accusations of moral corruption which were levelled at him. But the Tory money job, as it was called, was none the less a huge mistake in tactics. Before it took place, the Federation loomed large in the imagination of the ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... George offered no retort. Despite his sharp walk, he was still terribly agitated and preoccupied, and the phenomena of the lamplit studio had not yet fully impressed his mind. He saw them, including Agg, as hallucinations gradually turning to realities. He could not be worried with Agg. His sole desire ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... lion's ambuscade. "Has not my service glorious Made both of us victorious?" Cried out the much-elated ass. "Yes," said the lion; "bravely bray'd! Had I not known yourself and race, I should have been myself afraid!" The donkey, had he dared, With anger would have flared At this retort, though justly made; For who could suffer boasts to pass So ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... came the dry retort. "I'll have a few good fights on my own account, then, for it's a personal grievance when the men turn down ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... cleared her throat, but said nothing, recollecting by this time that all retort or explanation was lost upon Miss Deborah Coggins. To change the subject she remarked, "How disappointed I was at your not coming last night, my dear Miss Debby—one of the friends I ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... brass yourself!" would be the irate retort of the old woman, nodding her head that was adorned with a red and ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... And in retort to his wife's "your," he laid a faint emphasis on the word "now," to imply that those women were always inventing some fresh imaginary woe ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... instant, it seemed as if the girl were going to flash out a bitter retort that might have betrayed her. Then she showed the same self-control as before, and went, without a word, into the next room. She was absent for a few minutes, and when she reappeared, carried what was unmistakably a bundle of soiled linen, going away with this on one arm, the volumes of music ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... past weeks of all the honors which England had apportioned them. Permit me as one who had the opportunity to do much for the propagation of your dramatic works, especially of your finest drama, "Candida," in Western Germany and in Holland, to present as quiet and as moderate a retort as is possible. ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... other friends emphasize the President's sense of humor. He had it, of course. He took pains to establish the true reading of that famous retort, "All I want out of you is common civility and damned little of that." He used to repeat with glee Lounsbury's witticism about "the infinite capability of the human mind to resist the introduction of knowledge." I wonder whether he knew of that other good saying of Lounsbury's ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... Lentsue's sovereign Lady, Queen Victoria, were not at war with him. It was defined, by an uncanny white man's mode of reasoning, that the war was a white man's business in which the blacks should take no part beyond merely suffering its effects. The Natives' retort to this declaration was in the words of a Sechuana proverb, viz., "You cannot sever the jawbones from the head and expect to keep those parts alive separately." It was this principle, we presume, that guided Lentsue's action. Still from the standpoint of white South Africa, the Chief's operations ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... seldom prominent in conversation, and never wearisome. He makes light of favours while he does them, and seems to be receiving when he is conferring. He never speaks of himself except when compelled, never defends himself by a mere retort, he has no ears for slander or gossip, is scrupulous in imputing motives to those who interfere with him, and interprets every thing for the best. He is never mean or little in his disputes, never takes unfair advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... says to you something uncomplimentary of yourself or your near relations, instead of your doing what you ought to do, and pitying poor Snarling, and recommending him some wholesome medicine, you are strongly tempted to retort in kind: and thus you sink yourself to Snarling's level, and you carry on the row. Your proper course is either to speak kindly to poor Snarling, or not to speak to him at all. There is something unsound about the man whom you never heard say ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... But whatever retort he may have contemplated was checked by the accents of Authority and the tapping of an imperative pencil on ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... follies. Often, as in your case, they are great oppressions, as well as great absurdities. But still an injury is not always a reason for retaliation; nor is the folly of others with regard to us a reason for imitating it with regard to them. Before we attempt to retort, we ought to consider whether we may not injure ourselves even more than our adversary; since, in the contest who shall go the greatest length in absurdity, the victor is generally the greatest sufferer. Besides, when there is an unfortunate emulation in restraints ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of expatriated Americans. Althea was accustomed to these assaults and met them with weary dignity, at times expostulating: 'It is all very well for you, Aunt Julia, who have Uncle Tom and the girls; I have nobody, and all my friends are married.' But this brought upon her an invariable retort: 'Well, why don't you get married then? Franklin Winslow Kane asks nothing better.' This retort angered Althea, but she was too fond of Franklin Winslow Kane to reply that perhaps she, herself, did ask something ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... his companions had made them Christians, they did their best, or their worst, to insist that they could not be truly Christians, unless they submitted to the outward sign of being Jews. Paul points a scathing finger at them when he bids the Philippians 'beware,' and he permits himself a bitter retort when he lays hold of the Jewish contemptuous word for Gentiles which stigmatised them as 'dogs,' that is profane and unclean, and hurls it back at the givers. But he is not indulging in mere bitter retorts when he brings against these teachers the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the Vicar of God, who should have no such dealings against "that wicked woman." To some Catholics, Elizabeth: to Knox, Mary was as Jezebel, and might laudably be assassinated. In idolaters nothing can surprise us; when persecuted they, in their unchristian fashion, may retort with the dagger or the bowl. But that Knox should have frequently maintained the doctrine of death to religious opponents is a strange and deplorable circumstance. In reforming the Church of Christ he ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... Anglesey and O'Connell, to whom it is glory enough (of his sort) to be on a kind of par with the Viceroy, and to have a power equal to that of the Government. Anglesey issues proclamation after proclamation, the other speeches and letters in retort. His breakfasts and dinners are put down, but he finds other places to harangue at, and letters he can always publish; but he does not appear in quite so triumphant an attitude as he did. The O'Connell tribute is said to have failed; no men ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... difficult, not only because of faulty memory, but because we like to make the tale more like a story, because, let us say, of the artist in us. Life is so incomplete and unfinished! We so rarely retort as we should have! And a bald recital of most events is not interesting and so,—the proportions are altered, humor is introduced, the conversation becomes more witty, especially our share, and the adventure is ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... the note to the fort came closer—partly to call attention to themselves, partly to claim credit, partly because the outer silence frightened them. They elbowed Ismail and Darya Khan, and one of them received a savage blow in the stomach by way of retort from Ismail. Before that spark could ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... dilemma. When she has been disturbed the reply has been that till quiet is restored nothing can be done, and when a peaceful Ireland has demanded legislation the absence of agitation has been adduced as a reason for the retort that the request is not widespread, and can, ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... the retort, but Betty added: "I only wanted to know if it was safe for me to come over and help ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... neck," said Tetchen. "That would be the best thing." Even this did not bring forth an angry retort from Madame Staubach. About an hour after that Peter came in. He had already heard that the bird had flown. Some messenger from Jacob Heisse's house had brought him the tidings to ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... the Kaiser, but I did not lose my self-possession. I turned to the Emperor and said, 'Sir, the Queen and I have known each other for a few moments only, but already we have a secret between us!'" The Kaiser was very tickled by my retort ... very tickled ... and the Queen told me afterwards that it was very adroit of me to get out of it like that. She said it was my ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... face grew red at the Judge's words. He quickly faced about as if to retort, but checked himself, and, ignoring the Elder said directly to Dan, "Yes, and I may as well tell you that I wouldn't be here today, but I am caught late with my harvesting, and short of hands. I drove into town to see if I could ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... exemption from sensibility which has sometimes been mistaken for philosophy, and has conferred reputation upon little men. In a word, he exhibited his emotions in a fine, simple, natural manner. Contrary to the usual habits of wits, no retort or reply by Lamb, however smart in character, ever gave pain. It is clear that ill nature is not wit, and that there may be sparkling flowers which are not surrounded by thorns. Lamb's dissent was very intelligible, but never superfluously demonstrative; often, indeed, expressed ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... way, an' I ain't goin' to have anything said against it," Sarah Barnard would retort stanchly, and her sister would sniff back again. Charlotte was as loyal as her mother; she did not like it if even her lover intimated anything in ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... The exchange in part two of The Merry-Thought is not, however, half so satisfactory. The woman takes umbrage at her admirer's suggestions that the glass on which he writes is "the Emblem" of her mind in being "brittle, slipp'ry, [and] pois'nous," and writes in retort: ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... "I retort in your own words—Is it likely? He does not know why he is being employed or what I want with the man I wish traced. At present he is working, as far as that goes, in the dark. I might have put him on a false scent, just as cleverly and unsuspiciously as ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... all who presumed on their own consequence, whether arising from wealth, titles, or commissions in the army; officers he usually called "the epauletted puppies," and lords he generally spoke of as "feather-headed fools," who could but strut and stare and be no answer in kind to retort his satiric flings, his unfriends reported that it was unsafe for young men to associate with one whose principles were democratic, and scarcely either modest or safe for young women to listen to ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... The common wombat felt the sting of the remark and determined upon a crushing repartee. While the other chuckled over his achievement (about an hour and a half) the common wombat laboriously constructed his retort. "Yah! hairy-nose!" he said, when the reply was properly finished and polished. And then he chuckled, while the other thought it over. The hairy-nosed wombat thought it over and the common wombat thought it over (chuckling the while) ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... of the old actor capitally suggests the Spanish mummer. And the painter's cousin, Esperanza! What cousins he boasts! We recall The Three Cousins, with its laughing trio and the rich colour scheme. Our recollection, too, of The Piquant Retort, and its brown and scarlet harmonies; of the Promenade After the Bull-fight, which has the classical balance and spaced charm of Velasquez; and that startling Street of Love overbalances any picture except one in this exhibition, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... interrupted Mrs. Ormond, who saw that Ida was about to make an angry retort, and judged that the discussion had gone far enough. "Come, you boys will be late if you don't make haste with your breakfast. Are you going to play ...
— Under Padlock and Seal • Charles Harold Avery
... was not accustomed to such treatment, even from a woman; but without a word by way of retort he steadied the hammock in its descent of the twisting path as if his very life depended upon the stranger's comfort. The women, children and very old men of the harbor—all who had not gone to the scene of the wreck save the bedridden—came ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... at her with a scowl. She knew quite well that he had married her for the child's sake alone. A savage retort was on his tongue, but Mrs ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... will,' said Fascination. And it was not a mere retort for the sound's sake, but was a cheerful cogent consequence of the refusal; for if Lammle had applied himself again to the loaf, it would have been so heavily visited, in Fledgeby's opinion, as to demand abstinence from bread, on his part, for the remainder of that meal at ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... for a useful evasiveness of retort in those far-off London days, answered mechanically: "Waiting for the fortune ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... venture into his country without sending a messenger to my countrymen by another way, informing them where I had gone, and asking them to investigate my fate if I did not arrive at home in due course. This retort proved to be my winning card, for he gave in at once, acknowledging Nell's presence in the place; but insinuating that, since he had kept her alive and treated her well ever since the Tembu had sent her to him as a present, I ought to buy her of him. Of course, after this, the remainder of our ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
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