... Ursus exhibited his power as an engastrimist, and executed marvels of ventriloquism. He imitated every cry which occurred in the audience—a song, a cry, enough to startle, so exact the imitation, the singer or the crier himself; and now and then he copied the hubbub of the public, and whistled as if there were a crowd of people within him. These were remarkable talents. Besides this he harangued like ... — The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo Read full book for free!
... should be. He never startles for the sake of startling; neither does he mock. Certainly, unlike the best of his contemporaries, he seems almost as indifferent to the tradition as he is to the public; but he no more laughs at the one than he tries to startle the other. Only amongst the whipper-snappers of painting will you discover a will to affront tradition, or attract attention by deliberate eccentricity. Only, I think, the Italian Futurists, their ... — Since Cezanne • Clive Bell Read full book for free!
... man's dominion Has broken nature's social union, And justifies that ill opinion Which mak's thee startle At me, thy poor earth-born ... — Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various Read full book for free!
... from the track. And he himself, like everybody else, had felt the Adventist infection, and did not want to commit himself. So he turned to Mrs. Anderson. She answered like a seraph every question put to her—the conventional questions never pierce the armor of a hypocrite or startle the conscience of a self-deceiver. Mr. Hall congratulated her in his most official tone (a compound of authority, awfulness, and sanctity) on her deep experience of the things that made for her everlasting peace. He told her that ... — The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston Read full book for free!
... Those words seemed to startle Iris. "I hope you don't think that my husband is brutal to me!" she exclaimed, still resenting even the appearance of a reflection on her marriage, and still forgetting what she herself had said which justified a doubt of her happiness. ... — Blind Love • Wilkie Collins Read full book for free!
... he said. 'You must feel the justice of what I said just now. There are only two remedies that I know. One of these you startle at. The other, is that you should take up your abode at Dr. Maryland's ... — The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner Read full book for free!
... a time, without moving a muscle, he suddenly sat bolt upright and looked round at the player. The character of the music, always individual, had grown more marked, and at this point an effect was produced which appeared to startle the musician. He withdrew his gaze, after a moment, muttering something to himself, and resumed his former attitude, slowly and gravely nodding his head. There was a long silence after the last of the lingering, questioning notes had ... — The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird Read full book for free!
... light fantastic toe; And in thy right hand lead with thee The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty; And if I give thee honour due, Mirth, admit me of thy crew, To live with her, and live with thee, In unreproved pleasures free; To hear the lark begin his flight And singing startle the dull night From his watch-tower in the skies, Till the dappled dawn doth rise: Then to come, in spite of sorrow, And at my window bid good-morrow, Through the sweetbriar, or the vine, Or the twisted eglantine: While ... — The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various Read full book for free!
... moral intention, big enough to flatter his vanity. Even in this aberration of his genius he served the progress of the world. Charles Gould felt sure of being understood with precision and judged with the indulgence of their common passion. Nothing now could surprise or startle this great man. And Charles Gould imagined himself writing a letter to San Francisco in some such words: ". . . . The men at the head of the movement are dead or have fled; the civil organization of the province is at an end for the present; the Blanco ... — Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad Read full book for free!
... her, then," said Beatrice, feeling scarcely so much convinced as overwhelmed. "It will startle her if ... — Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt Read full book for free!
... northern ice have brought in such a chance waif that has become body amongst them. How wild and frightened they become! And quite naturally! Ghosts dropping out of the air becoming flesh and blood might startle a rational being into a rigid course of religious practices, not to say superstition. But look, how fair the night ... — The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap Read full book for free!
... and unobtrusive, a thing that enters into one's soul, and does not startle or amaze it with itself, but with its subject. How beautiful are the retired flowers! How they would lose their beauty were they to throng into the highway crying out, "Admire me, I am a violet! Dote upon me, I am a primrose!".... I will cut all this—I will have no more of Wordsworth ... — The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins Read full book for free!
... certain she knew something and feared lest it should come to his knowledge. Therefore he resolved to startle her by a blunt question. "I never knew you were acquainted ... — The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume Read full book for free!
... the use of thinking of it now, Sitting alone and listening to the clock! She'd best make haste and knit another row. Three hours at least must pass before his knock Would startle her. It always was a shock. She listened—listened—for so long before, That when it came her hearing ... — Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell Read full book for free!
... fellow," replied the artist, laying down his weapons and grasping Gibault's proffered hand with a sigh of evident relief, "I am well, excellently well. You did, indeed, startle me by your sudden appearance; but no harm is done, and where none was intended no apology is necessary. You are a ... — The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne Read full book for free!
... as she left the office. In the evening she wouldn't so much criticize herself as suddenly and without reason remember office settings and incidents—startle at a picture of the T-square at which she had stared while Mr. Wilkins was telephoning.... She wasn't weary because she worried; she worried because she was weary from the airless, unnatural, straining life. She worried about everything available, from her soul ... — The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis Read full book for free!
... May 21, the Versailles army began to make its way into Paris, and the Commune, seeing its fantastic and terrible power about to pass away, tried to startle the world by its excesses. Orders were sent at once to Mazas to send the archbishop, the priests, Senator Bonjean, suspected spies, and sergents de ville to that part of the prison of La Roquette reserved for condemned ... — France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer Read full book for free!
... collection and among her witty remarks was one on Bartholdi's statue of Liberty. "The real goddesses of Liberty in this country do not spend a large amount of time standing on pedestals in public places; they use their torches to startle the bats in political cellars." Referring to the ignoring of women's work in the histories she said: "When I was a child and studied about the Pilgrim Fathers I supposed they were all bachelors, as I never found a word about their wives." Mrs. Charlotte Perkins ... — The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper Read full book for free!
... in real life quite as well as in make-believe, planned to conceal her radiance until her first appearance on the stage, when she would startle them all, and especially Lysander, with her dazzling loveliness. She stood in a shadow of the wings with her coat wrapped about her. Except for Jerry, waiting to do her humble part, she was alone. She listened to the ceaseless chatter in the dressing-room ... — Highacres • Jane Abbott Read full book for free!
... sudden proud impulse he raised his head and looked at her with a bold steadfastness,—a critical scrutiny,—a calmly discriminating valuation of her physical charms that for the moment certainly appeared to startle her self-possession, for a deep flush colored the fairness of her face and then faded, leaving her pale as marble. Her emotion, whatever it was, lasted but a second,—yet in that second he had measured his mental strength against hers, and had become aware of his ... — Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli Read full book for free!
... Didn't you notice the lurid mixture of colors I was daubing on my block? And all because I knew you were having psychic thoughts and I was so afraid you would say what I thought you were thinking and startle Estelle. I wanted so much to know myself just what you were driving at with your watch-chains that I almost chewed my tongue ... — The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown Read full book for free!
... as Nancy's soft voice reached her. "Dear child, how you startle one! Have you been there long?" Her voice ... — The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln Read full book for free!
... conspirator is not of the stuff to bear surprises. He feared he had hurt her, and was manly in his efforts to soothe: he had been up "hours", he said, and had watched her coming along the avenue, and did not mean to startle her: it was the kind of fun he played with fellows, and if he had hurt her, she might do anything to him she liked, and she would see if he could not stand to be punished. He was urgent with her to inflict corporal punishment ... — The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith Read full book for free!
... history, and every rising and setting sun found something added to the volume of my life. But there seems so little to describe! I could go on for ever, giving utterance to thoughts that used to crowd in my young brain, thoughts that would startle as well as amuse,—but I fear they might become ... — Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz Read full book for free!
... Cochrane, coming round into the streak of lamplight, carrying his boots in his hands. "I just strolled over to see if you were all right. When I got to the steps it struck me I might startle you if I came thundering up, so I took my boots off and crept round to find out where you were. You were so quiet I thought you must have gone to bed and left the ... — Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield Read full book for free!
... me—oh, there's the dinner-bell! Look here, I wish you'd not keep appearing so suddenly. It does startle me so.' ... — Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit Read full book for free!
... her assistance, but Marian shook her head at her, with a kindly look, that seemed to say, "Do not startle her—she is used only to me lately," and bore her out of sight into ... — The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth Read full book for free!
... dangers threatening France? They were to be looked for in the very magnitude of the changes proposed, changes which could not fail to startle and alarm all Europe. They were to be seen in the opposition of the nobles, who were ready to give up much, but were asked to give up more. They were to be feared most of all in a monarch so weak and an administration so faulty, that the first attempt at reform was ... — The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell Read full book for free!
... and must admit that the effect upon my spirits was not cheering. Now and then the apparition of some cadaverous old woman, wrinkled with age—a greenish hue upon her features—would appear unexpectedly at some unexpected opening in one of the ruinous old houses, and startle me by a gaze of wonder or some unintelligible speech addressed to herself. Probably a human being had not been seen in that vicinity for the last month. Sometimes a slatternly servant-girl would appear in the distance, her dress bedraggled with slops, a ... — The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne Read full book for free!
... and making his beard wag with enjoyment. "Yes, that would startle them. White man's magic. Fancy, Fred, old chap, a wounded man with a bullet in him, and I at work with my black slave, Frank, here, to help me, in a dark tent, while I made the poor wretch transparent to find out where ... — In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn Read full book for free!
... we will not speak of this now; yet I have spoken, for the subject makes me feel too much. I could give instances that would startle the most vulgar and callous; but I will not, for the public opinion of their own sex is already against such men, and where cases of extreme tyranny are made known, there is private action in the wife's favor. But she ought not to need this, nor, I think, can she long. Men ... — Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli Read full book for free!
... It may startle some of our readers to find any mention of Irish history "before the Flood," but we think the burden of proof, to use a logical term, lies rather with those who doubt the possibility, than with those who accept as tradition, ... — An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack Read full book for free!
... moved to and fro through the room with a cautious tranquillity which nothing could startle; she prepared her decayed roots for food with a patient attention which nothing could divert. Lost, through the aggravated miseries of her position, to recent grief and present apprehension, she could still instinctively perform the simple offices of the woman and the daughter, ... — Antonina • Wilkie Collins Read full book for free!
... fear not to offend. We of the brigantine are accustomed to divers epithets that might startle less practised ears. We are not to learn, at this late hour, that, in order to become respectable, roguery must have the sanction of government. You were pleased, Captain Ludlow, to name the mystifications of the Water-Witch; ... — The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper Read full book for free!
... the salutation quite calmly, and even the wildest, most spectacled and knobby-browed aborigine cannot startle me. Nonchalantly I reply, "Nabben'," and wish that Norah could but ... — Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber Read full book for free!
... late at night, and even if they startle me a little when I'm in bed, the pleasure of going to sleep again is all the greater. But in the morning I awaken them, when I put my room in order. Then they scold a little and go." I had been observing him in the mean time. His clothes were scrupulously clean, ... — The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke Read full book for free!
... Will looked westward, in the direction of his shop, and it struck him how amusing it would be to startle Rosamund by a disclosure of his social status. Would she still be anxious for his company in search of the picturesque? He could not feel sure—curiosity urged him to try the experiment, but an obscure apprehension closed ... — Will Warburton • George Gissing Read full book for free!
... in the center were the sun and solar system depicted in yellow. But that six-rayed yellow sun, the size of a large dinner plate, with its group of lesser six-rayed orbs as large as saucers, did not startle Patience as much as the rug beside the Squire's bed. That was made of a brindle cow-skin with—the horns on. The little girl's fascinated gaze rested on these bristling horns and could not tear itself away. Across ... — The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Read full book for free!
... possible bounds. Thus, sir, the circulation of the blood and the fluids of the body will not give me pause; you shall hear them flow with the impetuosity of cataracts; you shall perceive them so distinctly as to startle you; the slightest irregularity of the pulse, the least obstacle, is striking, and produces the same effect as a rock against which the waves ... — Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne Read full book for free!
... "But startle ye not when the tempests blow? Have you no dread of a wily foe? Do you not tremble, when the serpents hiss Mid leaves that the zephyr ... — Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins Read full book for free!
... not hurry his courtship, for he believed that he had a clear field before him, and he was too sagacious to startle Clara by overmuch energy. Meantime he began to be conscious that an influence from her was reaching his spirit. He had hitherto considered her a child; one day he suddenly recognized her as a woman. ... — Overland • John William De Forest Read full book for free!
... boards. They are most absorbing creatures, if you only give yourself up to the study of them; but it is no use to be half-hearted in a study of that kind. I went without so much as a cup of tea for twenty-four hours, watching my gnats, for fear the opening of the door should startle them. Another time I shall make the nursery governess watch ... — Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon Read full book for free!
... Suffrage Convention. Thomas Haviland Hicks, Jr., was actually returning to old Bannister; and he was bringing "The Prodigious Prodigy," whatever that was, with him. Knowing the cheery Senior's intense love of doing the dramatic and his great ambition to startle his Alma Mater with some sensational stunt, they could hardly wait for old Dan Flannagan's jitney-bus to roll ... — T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice Read full book for free!
...startle you? I 'm so sorry," said Miss Sandus, coming up to her. "Yes, Don Antonio has arrived. I saw him as he disembarked at his native railway-station. I was ordering a book at Smith's. And such luggage, my dear. Boxes and bags, bags and boxes, till you could n't ... — The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland Read full book for free!
... the orchard. Neither did she guess at the quiet approach of a tall figure through the mist, until it stood upon the edge of the garden. The first she knew of its presence was the sound of a familiar voice, speaking quietly so that it might not startle her, yet with a note of joy plainly perceptible through ... — Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond Read full book for free!
... the list of subjects to the commonplace. The fact is that in a composition exercise the purpose is not to startle the world with some new thing; it is to learn the art of expression. And here in the region of common things, things thoroughly understood, every bit of effort can be given to the manner of expression. The truth is, it does not require much art to ... — English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster Read full book for free!
... form completely, the antipodes of a Chinese woman; and this is intensified by some of the women who, when in the street, grasp the skirt and in an ingenious way wrap it about so that the outline of the American divinity is sufficiently well defined to startle one. Such a trick in China could but originate with the demimonde, yet it is taken up by certain of the Americans who are constantly seeking for variety. There can be no question but that the middle-class fashion designer revenges himself upon the beau monde. They will not receive him socially, ... — As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous Read full book for free!
... ... across strange seas they call, Strange seas, and haunted coasts of time.... They startle me with wordless songs To which the Sphinx hath known ... — Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis Read full book for free!
... the habit of praying with and for people in great misery, as well as in great sin, so the request did not startle her as it might have startled many. She read, from the Prayer Book, the Confession, and then chose the concluding portion of the Litany, feeling sure that almost any part of that list of petitions was suitable both ... — Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale Read full book for free!
... aspect of this matter which would perhaps startle those who think that all piety and orthodoxy reside in the rural districts; and that is, that the city, as it is, affords far greater encouragements to well developed piety than the country; and that if the ... — Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent. Read full book for free!
... myself by imagining them done; but would they really work out in practice? Evidently the sole performer of my experiment must be myself; the subject—whom or what? Accident should determine. I itched to commence with murder—to tackle the stiffest problems first, and I burned to startle and baffle the world—especially the world of which I had ceased to be. Outwardly I was calm, and spoke to the people about me as usual. Inwardly I was on fire with a consuming scientific passion. I sported with my pet theories, ... — The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill Read full book for free!
... poisoned. In this spiritual distress, the expiring faction was revived, and united, and perpetuated, by the labors of a monk; and the name of James Baradaeus [129] has been preserved in the appellation of Jacobites, a familiar sound, which may startle the ear of an English reader. From the holy confessors in their prison of Constantinople, he received the powers of bishop of Edessa and apostle of the East, and the ordination of fourscore thousand bishops, ... — The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon Read full book for free!
... familiar sight and a threatening sound would very plausibly result in cautious immobility. As for its instantaneous assumption of the pose, to move instantaneously is the next best thing to not moving at all. It is less likely to startle than a slow movement. Twigs which have been bent get suddenly released in the natural course of events; they do not move slowly. The instantaneous appearance of a twig where no twig was before may possibly give the victim pause; it may halt ... — Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre Read full book for free!
... my arm brought back my scattered senses with a rush. It was Mrs. Brennan who stood there, her face whitened by anxiety, her eyes peering anxiously through the opening of the door. Imminent danger may startle even a trained soldier, but any necessity for action always recalls him to duty, and that one glance at her sufficed to make me ... — My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish Read full book for free!
... got the better of him, and he rose and closed the window noisily enough to startle the speakers below, as he ... — Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin Read full book for free!
... of this reform in these States would be, that it would make a difference between the English orthography and the American. This will startle those who have not attended to the subject; but I am confident that such an event is an object of vast ... — Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder Read full book for free!
... of a natural instinct, and these sudden lapses from virtue which startle a small portion of community and afford a filthy kind of pleasure to the other part, are but the outgrowths of mental unchastity. "Filthy dreamers," before they are aware, become filthy in action. The thoughts mold the brain, as certainly ... — Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg Read full book for free!
... then again "Your Majesty," she called in a low tone, that she might not startle him; but the answer for which she waited in breathless suspense did not come, and now the anxious dread that filled her sisterly heart forced from her lips the cry, "Carlos!" and ... — Uarda • Georg Ebers Read full book for free!
... Left to itself it awakened her sex very gently. First with love, which came to her like a whisper in a dream, like the touch of an angel on her sleeping eyelids, so that when she awoke to the laws of life the mysteries of sex did not startle or ... — The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine Read full book for free!
... he said, and grunted so savagely as to startle the king, who involuntarily shrank ... — A Son Of The Sun • Jack London Read full book for free!
... a source of puzzling surprises. While she was from the South, she was not Southern in speech, sentiments, ideas, or ideals. Her voice was not Southern and, while she elided final consonants, her intonation was not of the South. Indeed she would startle him every now and then by dropping some archaic word or old form of expression that made him think of Chaucer. Her feeling toward the negro was precisely what his was, and once when he halted in some stricture on the Confederacy and started ... — In Happy Valley • John Fox Read full book for free!
... you or A.K. I scarce know what I meant, for I do not just now feel the grievance. I wanted to make an article. So in another thing I talkd of somebody's insipid wife, without a correspondent object in my head: and a good lady, a friend's wife, whom I really love (don't startle, I mean in a licit way) has looked shyly on me ever since. The blunders of personal application are ludicrous. I send out a character every now and then, on purpose to exercise the ingenuity of my friends. "Popular Fallacies" ... — The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb Read full book for free!
... The silence was most impressive. Now and then the faint yeap of some traveling bird would come from the air overhead, or the wings of a bat whisp quickly by, or an owl hoot off in the mountains, giving to the silence and loneliness a tongue. At short intervals some noise in-shore would startle me, and cause me to turn inquiringly to the ... — Wake-Robin • John Burroughs Read full book for free!
... themselves and their families, would alike have been prevented. The diffusion of a knowledge of the first indications of this insidious disease, and of what it may culminate in, is the only safeguard against the terrible acts which from time to time startle the community, and which are found, when too late, to have been perpetrated by those who ought to have ... — Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke Read full book for free!
... reader, and the quarter-deck by the preacher. The clerk, during the sermon, would often fall asleep and make known his state by a snore. Then the reader would tap his bald head with a hymn-book, whereupon he would wake up and startle the congregation by ... — The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield Read full book for free!
... they had little time or leisure to attend to any but their own interest. But a very brief interval convinced both nobles and people that a new era was dawning for them. In the short period of eighteen months, the wise administration of Isabella and Ferdinand, had effected a sufficient change to startle all ranks into the conviction that their best interests lay in prompt obedience, and in exerting themselves in their several spheres, to second the sovereign's will. The chivalric qualities of Ferdinand, his undoubted wisdom and unwavering firmness, excited ... — The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar Read full book for free!
... community at large. Men in power then ruled more for their own ends than in these latter times; and use and wont sanctioned and sanctified many doings, from the days of our ancestors, that, but to imagine, will astonish and startle posterity. Accordingly, when Mr Pittle, after a lingering illness, was removed from us, which happened in the first year of my third provostry, I bethought me of the consequences which had ensued from his presentation, ... — The Provost • John Galt Read full book for free!
... colleague. Independently of the more ordinary practice of kissing—there is the "ceremonial kiss"—the kissing of hands, or of feet and toes, which still survives in Court functions—whilst the Viennese and the Spaniards, though they no longer actually carry out their threat, habitually startle a foreigner by exclaiming—"I kiss your hands." The Russian Sclavs are the most profuse and indiscriminate of European peoples in their kissing. I have seen a Russian gentleman about to depart on a journey "devoured" by the kisses of his relations ... — More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester Read full book for free!
... as Charlotte does about Mr. Goodloe, and he'll say so to everybody," said Martha, with a sad smile after the door had closed with vigor enough to startle... — The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess Read full book for free!
... contends that the situation is governed by Art. 19, the text of which has been several times set out in your columns, of the old Convention of 1799. This may startle those who are acquainted with what occurred at The Hague in 1907, and I have seen no reference to what must be the gist of the German argument on the point. They no doubt argue that the old Convention ... — Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland Read full book for free!
... I'll be Mammon. I'll lend money at usury—that's what they do at all schools accordin' to the B.O.P. Penny a week on a shillin'. That'll startle Heffy's weak intellect. You can ... — Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling Read full book for free!
... well. She's mad, you know,—mad as a hatter,—and no one can ever guess what freak may come next. One always feels that she'll do something sooner or later that will startle all ... — The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope Read full book for free!
... man in all Europe than the kaiser. It is related of him at the Court of Berlin that when on one occasion he inquired of his brother, Prince Henry, if he could suggest to him anything new wherewith to startle both his own subjects and the world in general, the sailor prince, with a merry laugh, proposed that his majesty should remain perfectly quiet, without saying or doing anything, for an entire week! That, he assured his imperial brother, would amaze and dumbfound the entire universe more than ... — The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy Read full book for free!
... dear me, JANE! I wish you wouldn't come and startle me with your horrid telegrams—there, give it to me. (Reading.) "Wife down, violent influenza. Must come without her, TOOMER." (Resentfully.) Again! and I know she's had it twice since the ... — Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various Read full book for free!
... become proverbial. Many trivial and laconic proverbs bear the jingle of alliteration or rhyme, which assisted their circulation, and were probably struck off extempore; a manner which Swift practised, who was a ready coiner of such rhyming and ludicrous proverbs: delighting to startle a collector by his facetious or sarcastic humour, in the shape of an "old saying and true." Some of these rhyming proverbs are, however, terse ... — Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli Read full book for free!
... actually few birds. As you brush through the long grass and trample the tangled undergrowth, putting aside the sprawling branches, or dodging under the pliant arms of the creepers, you may flush a black or grey partridge, raise a covey of quail, or startle a quiet family party of peafowl, but there are no sweet singers flitting about to make the vaulted arcades of the forest echo ... — Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis Read full book for free!
... sent To be a moment's ornament; Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair; Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair; But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful Dawn; A dancing Shape, an Image gay, To haunt, to startle, and way-lay. ... — Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various Read full book for free!
... "I didn't mean to startle him. I fancied he was asleep, and just wanted to see how he seemed to be getting on. No one would tell me a word about him," said ... — A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed Read full book for free!
... was a rigid Calvinist. His sermons were gloomy, and so long that he occasionally would startle the congregation by calling out to some culprit, "Sit up there, how daur ye sleep i' the kirk." Some saw-mills in the neighbourhood were burnt down, so the following Sunday we had a sermon on hell-fire. The kirk was very large and quaint; a stair led to a gallery on each side of ... — Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville Read full book for free!
... some time before I was heard; but at length the door was opened, and I was accosted by an Englishman, who, in a strange compound of French and English, asked, "What the devil I meant by all that uproar?" Determining to startle my old friend the major, I replied, that "I was aide-de-camp to General Picton, and had come down on very unpleasant business." By this time the noise of the party within had completely subsided, and from a few whispered sentences, and their thickened breathing, I ... — Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever Read full book for free!
... even here we have few masters, and our critics know and care little for style; they are entirely preoccupied with plot and incident and situation. What we lack is true originality, tranquil force; we are all occupied in trying to startle and surprise, to make a sensation. How little the Greeks cared for that! It was beauty and charm, delicate colour, fine subtlety of which they were, in search; they held all things holy, yet nothing solemn. Their ... — The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson Read full book for free!
... you were all that I could wish. Moreover, I recognised the face of an old actor, who had been I knew in the troupe that Cornelia joined when she fled from Paris, and I resolved to address myself first to him; so as not to startle you by too abrupt a disclosure of my claims upon you. But when I sent the next morning to the hotel in the Rue Dauphine, I learned that Herode's troupe had just gone to give a representation at a chateau in the environs of Paris, and would be absent three days. I should have endeavoured ... — Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier Read full book for free!
... upon Phoebe, as though it had been something visible to startle her. It shook off her old English self for a moment, and she leaped to ... — The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye Read full book for free!
... have come to the front if it were not that the educational value of Free Libraries, as the complement of Board Schools, has been very properly put forward by their promoters. With this aim in view, it does startle one somewhat to see the completely disproportionate supply of novels in the Free Libraries. This often rises to 75 per cent. of the total supply, and in some libraries even a higher percentage has been reached. There are, however, exceptions. At ... — How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley Read full book for free!
... to startle him, she certainly succeeded; but only in turn to be startled herself. With a tiger spring he turned on her, and his right hand was feeling for her throat. At the same instant with the other hand he crumpled ... — The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Read full book for free!
... set about to attempt an ascent, laughing heartily at the thought of how we should startle poor 'King Billy' by reappearing out of the bowels of the earth, instead of by the ... — Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke Read full book for free!
... doors and all. And in the chaos and complexity of those perpendicular streets anything may dwell or happen, and it is in one of them, I believe, that the inquirer may find the offices of the Club of Queer Trades. It may be thought at the first glance that the name would attract and startle the passer-by, but nothing attracts or startles in these dim immense hives. The passer-by is only looking for his own melancholy destination, the Montenegro Shipping Agency or the London office of the Rutland Sentinel, and passes through the twilight passages as one passes through the twilight corridors ... — The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton Read full book for free!
... news wherewith to startle the parish. And Mrs. Carradyne, a martyr to belief in ghosts and omens, grew to dread the chimes with ... — The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various Read full book for free!
... got up, nor moved a mite. That is one of the peculiarities of the boy, you can't surprise him: nothin' seems to startle him. ... — Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley) Read full book for free!
... be felt how removed is the foregoing from any thing like an effort, on the preacher's part, to startle his audience with the far-fetched and unexpected. It must, however, be admitted that Bossuet was not always—as, of our Webster, it has well been said that he always was—superior to the temptation to exaggerate an occasion by pomps of rhetoric. ... — Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson Read full book for free!
... the dark wood rings with our voices shrill, That startle the sleeping bird! To-morrow eve must the voice be still, And the step must fall unheard. The Briton lies by the blue Champlain, In Ticonderoga's towers, And ere the sun rise twice again, Must they and the lake ... — Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant Read full book for free!
... with her back to him, and Forrester didn't make a sound, not wanting to startle the Goddess. She was totally unclad, her glorious body shining in the light of the room, her blue-black hair unbound and falling halfway down her gently curved back. But she must have heard him somehow, for she turned, and for half a ... — Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett Read full book for free!
... ostentatious in his preference of the writings of Mr Boz; would walk through the streets so absorbed in them that he all but ran against Miss Jenkyns; and though his apologies were earnest and sincere, and though he did not, in fact, do more than startle her and himself, she owned to me she had rather he had knocked her down, if he had only been reading a higher style of literature. The poor, brave Captain! he looked older, and more worn, and his clothes were very threadbare. But he seemed as bright and ... — Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Read full book for free!
... hardly any bristles left in it, which he was rubbing backwards and forwards on the boards, as gravely and steadily as if he had been at scouring-work for years, and had got a large family to keep by it. The coming-in of Trottle and the old woman did not startle or disturb him in the least. He just looked up for a minute at the candle, with a pair of very bright, sharp eyes, and then went on with his work again, as if nothing had happened. On one side of him was a battered pint saucepan without ... — A House to Let • Charles Dickens Read full book for free!
... amusing himself professionally by casting the drapery of the window-curtains hither and thither into all sorts of picturesque folds. She looked next at Zack. Just at that moment he was turning his muffin and singing louder than ever. The temptation to startle him out of his provoking gaiety by a good sharp reproof was almost too strong to be resisted; but Mrs. Blyth forced herself to resist it, nevertheless, for Madonna's sake. She did not, however, communicate with the girl, either by signs or writing, until she had settled herself ... — Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins Read full book for free!
... that night for eagerness and anticipation. Ever since the afternoon when the vision of Miss Dudley appeared, to startle me from my painting, in the little south parlor, she had been the foremost figure in my brightest day-dreams, as often as, with little Philip warm and slumberous on my knees, I could find time for day-dreams. ... — The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various Read full book for free!
... thirst of the human heart for the beauty of God's working—to startle its lethargy with a deep and pure agitation of astonishment—are their higher missions. They are as a great and noble architecture, first giving shelter, comfort, and rest; and covered also with mighty ... — Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby Read full book for free!
... home that night for a starter, and the next mornin' he's up bright and early at seven, ready to startle Manhattan. He said he wanted me to go out with him and watch him win my eight hundred bucks and also to notice the way he worked. He picks up the mornin' paper, runs through the "Help Wanted" columns for a minute and ... — Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer Read full book for free!
... That cannot change except in the matter of uniform and equipment. The officers may write to the papers demanding the heads of the Horse Guards in default of cleaner redress for grievances; the men may break loose across a country town and seriously startle the publicans; but neither officers nor men have it in their composition to mutiny after the continental manner. The English people, when they trouble to think about the army at all, are, and with justice, absolutely assured that ... — This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling Read full book for free!
... feeblest follower, yet Thy follower Indomitable for Thine only sake. To-night I gird my will afresh, and stir My strength, and brace my heart to do and dare, Marvelling: Will to-morrow wake the whirr Of the great rending wheel, or from his lair Startle the jubilant lion in his rage, Or clench the headsman's hand within my hair, Or kindle fire to speed my pilgrimage, Chariot of fire and horses of sheer fire Whirling me home to heaven by one fierce stage? Thy Will I will, I Thy desire desire; Let not the waters close above ... — Poems • Christina G. Rossetti Read full book for free!
... returned home—the strangest home-going,—for by this time her mission and her aspirations could no longer be hid, and rumour must have carried the news almost as quickly as any modern telegraph, to startle all the echoes of the village, heretofore unaware of any difference between Jeanne and her companions save the greater goodness to which everybody bears testimony. No doubt, it must have reached Jacques d'Arc's cottage ... — Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant Read full book for free!
... a fool, child!" cried his father, gruffly. "You will never make a man, I do believe; there is too much of your mother in you. I have known the rustling of a leaf startle you. Hark! Here comes the merry fellow now. You shall see that there is no ... — The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne Read full book for free!
... daughter of a gamekeeper to nobility was preparing to emigrate with her father to a new home in the Western world, where she would learn to perform miracles with rifle and revolver, and where the beauty of the hermit thrush's song would startle her into comparing it to the beauty of her own untried voice. But to her father, and to her, the most beautiful thing in all the world was ... — The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers Read full book for free!
... haughtily isolated from true human love as the man of science, and the fellowship with his kind which Paracelsus needs can be poorly learnt from such a distracted creature as Aprile. It is indeed Aprile's example and the fate which has overtaken him rather than his wild words which startle Paracelsus into a recognition of his own error. But the knowledge that he has left love out of his scheme of life is no guarantee that he will ever acquire the fervour and the infinite patience of love. The whole scene, ... — Robert Browning • Edward Dowden Read full book for free!
... exposition of the very principles of Epicurean Hedonism, touched with Spinozistic equanimity, into the mouth of our Lord, wandering through the Luxembourg Gardens, may perhaps startle certain gentle souls, but the Dorian delicacy of what might for a moment appear blasphemous robs this charming Idyll of any gross or merely popular profanity. It is a book for those who have passed through more than one intellectual Renaissance. Like the "Golden Ass" of Apuleius ... — One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys Read full book for free!
... heard much of him—but of things connected with another part of his character. It is true that he is in favour with great personages. It is because they are aware that he has observed much for many years. He is light and ironic, but he tells truths which sometimes startle those who ... — The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett Read full book for free!
... intent had been to startle her, and thus catch her off her guard. If so, he succeeded, for the girl was certainly startled, if only at ... — The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells Read full book for free!
... her daughter were possessed of good nerves, for the dramatic entrance of the Bradys did not seem to startle them ... — The Bradys and the Girl Smuggler - or, Working for the Custom House • Francis W. Doughty Read full book for free!
... to bed she did not sleep soon or soundly. There was not much traffic along the street in which her father lived, but the bells of St. Pancras rang out the hours and the quarters with painful tunelessness, and an occasional rumble of wheels would startle her into wakeful terror. At half-past two in the morning she heard the opening and shutting of the front door, and her father's footsteps on the stairs as he came up to bed. There seemed to her something uncanny ... — Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant Read full book for free!
... arrives it finds a voice as surely as the flower ready to bloom opens its petals. And if there be two lovers equally sincere, both are likely to feel at the same moment the same impetus to revelation. Besides which, Fate of any kind seeks the unusual and the unexpected; it desires to startle, and to force events ... — The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr Read full book for free!
... come at an hour fixed upon before hand. They can be commanded less by artists than by other men, for they are all more or less struck by some sacred malady whose paralyzing torpor they must shake off, whose benumbing pain they must forget, to be joyous and amused by those pyrotechnic fires which startle the bewildered guests, who see from time to time a Roman candle, a rose-colored Bengal light, a cascade whose waters are of fire, or a terrible, yet quite innocent dragon! Gayety and the strength necessary to be joyous, are, unfortunately things only accidentally to be encountered ... — Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt Read full book for free!
... inner toe, and which indicate, from their distance apart in the straight line, a stride of about six feet in the creature that impressed them in these ancient sands,—measurements that might well startle zoologists who had derived their experience of the ornithic class from existing birds exclusively. Comparatively recent discoveries have, however, if not lessened, at least familiarized us to the wonder. In a deposit of New Zealand that dates little if at all in advance of the human ... — The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller Read full book for free!
... the dowager, "I startle you! Well, well—it profits nothing to recite these ills. Many a man, and woman, too, has been put to death for saying less;—and the exile of my son to remember—yes; all that! He was Republican—I a Legitimist; I of the old, he of the new. Republics are good in theory; France might have given ... — The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan Read full book for free!
... most commonplace and familiar objects take on another character. The trees group themselves differently; they draw closer together, as if in fear. The very silence has another quality than the silence of the day. And it is full of half-heard whispers—whispers that startle—ghosts of sounds long dead. There are living sounds, too, such as are never heard under other conditions: notes of strange night-birds, the cries of small animals in sudden encounters with stealthy foes or in their dreams, a rustling in the dead leaves—it may be the ... — Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce Read full book for free!
... as Nollichucky Jack is safe I'll follow you into Kentucky." He slapped me on the knee. "Egad, Davy, it seems like a fairy tale. We always said we were going to Kentucky, didn't we? What is the name of the place you are to startle with your learning ... — The Crossing • Winston Churchill Read full book for free!
... a great deal of trouble to take care of them. The first morning after Carl left, Billy, and Bella, and Davy, and I followed Miss Laura upstairs. She made us sit in a row by the door, lest we should startle the canaries. She had a great many things to do. First, the canaries had their baths. They had to get them at the same time every morning. Miss Laura filled the little white dishes with water and put them in the cages, and then came and sat on a ... — Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders Read full book for free!
... To startle him back into hiding would have only deferred my getting truly rid of him, so I was most tiptoe and diplomatic in my doings. Finally, a paper bag, put into a likely nook with some sentimentally preserved wedding-cake crumbled into it, ... — An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous Read full book for free!
... until it lay pasted smooth and tight. As she worked, she smiled at him challengingly. Peter knew he was experiencing a ceremony of some kind, the significance of which he must learn. It was the first time Linda had voluntarily touched him. He breathed lightly and held steady, lest he startle her. ... — Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter Read full book for free!
... young life, and sterner and more grim by her gay and cheerful presence. But, now, the chambers were cold and gloomy, and when she left her own little room to while away the tedious hours, and sat in one of them, she was still and motionless as their inanimate occupants, and had no heart to startle the echoes—hoarse from their ... — The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens Read full book for free!
... think of first-rate, excellence. How does such a whole stand as compared with a building of strange, and at first sight, unintelligible outline, formed by the juxtaposition of two parts, each of admirable merit in itself, but which startle by their absolute contrast in every way? Chartres was made, Le Mans eminently grew; and different minds will be differently inclined in the comparison between a single harmonious work of art and a union of two buildings ... — Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman Read full book for free!
... Pilgrim's doctrines upon the subject of conscience and repentance will startle those who do not ... — The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton Read full book for free!
... they are that, it may be said in their favour that they startle us into thought. And truly Mr. Chesterton is invaluable as a quickener and stimulator of the minds of his readers. Moreover, by adopting the method of paradox, he has undoubtedly done one remarkable thing. He has ... — Among Famous Books • John Kelman Read full book for free!
... he thought of the whole performance; but a friend of the lean man, who sat just in front of Arick, tells me what seemed to startle him most. The first thing was when two of the officers came out with blackened faces, like minstrels, and began to dance. Arick was sure that they were really black, and his own people, and he was wonderfully surprised to see them dance in this ... — The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson Read full book for free!
... that famous nurse, to care for our sick or dead. There is a tradition that a summer visitor once hired a "shay," and drove, all by herself, up to Horn o' the Moon, drawn on by the elusive splendor of its name. But she met such a dissuading flood of comment by the way as to startle her into the state of mind commonly associated with the Gully Road. Farmers, haying in the field, came forward, to lean on the ... — Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown Read full book for free!
... created a God after his own mind; if he could but have created a universe also after his own mind, we should doubtless have been relieved from all our perplexities. But, unhappily, we find in it, as I imagine, the very things which so startle Mr. Newman in the Scriptural representations of the divine character and proceedings. Is he not, like all other infidels, peculiarly scandalized, that God should have enjoined the extermination of the Canaanites? and yet does not God do still more startling things ... — The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers Read full book for free!
... Paley, why does Jeremy Taylor, when no practical matter is before him, lay down a maxim about the lawfulness of lying, which will startle most readers? The reason is plain. He is forming a theory of morals, and he must treat every question in turn as it comes. And this is just what St. Alfonso or Scavini is doing. You only try your hand yourself at a treatise on the rules of morality, ... — Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman Read full book for free!
... desperate but decisive battle in Flanders. All the medical officers of the garrison were immediately in requisition; and the sights which I saw, even when standing at the gate, as the carts and cars rolled over the drawbridge, were sufficient to startle feelings more used to such terrible demonstrations of the folly or the frenzy of the world. But this was no time to indulge indolent sensibilities. Of course, I have no desire to enter into the startling details of that spectacle. But mastering myself so far, as ... — Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various Read full book for free!
... that with a tiny wild thing by being so tender of him— of his little timidities and feelings—so adoringly anxious not to startle him or suggest by any movement the possibility of your being a creature who COULD HURT—that your very yearning to understand his tiny hopes and fears and desires makes you for the time cease to be quite a mere human thing and gives you another and more exquisite sense ... — My Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett Read full book for free!
... trilogy called The Sensationalists, three books giving the history for a few years before the war, during and immediately after the war, of a group of sensation-mongers, emotion-hunters or whatever you like to call them, whose principle and practice it was to startle the world by the extravagance of their behaviour, speech, dress and thought and, in the other sense of the word, sensationalism, to live on the excitement of new experiences. Such people have always existed and always will exist, receiving ... — When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton Read full book for free!
... up. Eunice's eyes were fixed on a shrubbery, at some little distance from us, which closed the view of the garden on that side. I noticed that she was trembling. Nothing to alarm her was visible that I could discover. I asked what she had seen to startle her. She pointed ... — The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins Read full book for free!
... night as usual. No word had fallen from my lips, at that time or at any time before it, that could betray me, or startle her into sudden knowledge of the truth. But when we met again in the morning, a change had come over her—a change ... — The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins Read full book for free!
... from engaging in such a state: and now, though they are more settled, and of late (which you will be glad to hear) considerably improved, I begin to think myself too far advanced in life for such youthful undertakings, not to mention some other petty reasons that are apt to startle the delicacy of difficult old bachelors. I am, however, not a little suspicious that, was I to pay a visit to Scotland (which I have some thought of doing soon), I might possibly be tempted to ... — Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson Read full book for free!
... moonlight shining on the little white figure, the deep silence, broken only by the faint murmur of the river and the distant singing of a nightingale, the gleam of the glowworms, compose a scene of fantastic beauty. The slightest sounds startle her, whether it be a fish leaping at the surface of the water to seize a fly, the gurgling of a little eddy, or the shrill cry of a bat. There is a certain voluptuous beauty in the very sound of the words that describe the little nymph, kissed ... — Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer Read full book for free!
... know where to begin—events have moved so swiftly, and such incredible things have happened. Even now I am in a daze, for history is being made every hour—history for Mexico, for you, and for me. I bring you good news and bad news; something to startle you and set your brain in a whirl. I planned to send a messenger ahead of me, and then I said: 'No, this is a crisis; therefore no tongue but mine shall apprise her, no hand but mine shall comfort her. Only a coward shrinks ... — Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach Read full book for free!
... listened to with more freedom than in this State, nor with more firmness of mind. They might need a preparatory discourse on the text of 'Prove all things, hold fast that which is good,' in order to unlearn the lesson that reason is an unlawful guide in religion. They might startle on being first awaked from the dreams of the night, but they would rub their eyes at once, and look the spectres boldly in the face. The preacher might be excluded by our hierophants from their churches and meeting-houses, but would be attended in the fields by whole acres of hearers and ... — Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson Read full book for free!
... open valley we startle gazelles from their hiding-places among the reeds. Then, near the river, we pass several encampments of Bedouins whose tents are black as those of Kedar. At last, after being in the saddle all of ten hours, just at sun-set, we reach the Jordan at the bridge of Jisr el Mejamia, ... — My Three Days in Gilead • Elmer Ulysses Hoenshal Read full book for free!
... military philosophy, dating back as far as Frederick II., but intensified by the exhortations of press and professors during our own times. The mind of the average kindly German citizen has been debauched and yet again debauched until it needed just such a world crisis as this to startle him at last from his obsession and to see his position and that of his country in its true relation with humanity ... — New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various Read full book for free!
... th'owed hit on," Aunt 'Phrony proceeded, "de fire blaze an' spit an' sputter jes' lak dis do, an' de ooman she fotched a yell an' cried out, she did, 'Lan' er de mussiful! W'at cur'ous sort er wood is dish yer dat ac' lak dis?' De Owl he wuz startle' an' he look roun' suddint, dis-a-way, over his shoulder, an' de wimmins dey let out a turr'ble screech, 'kase dey seed 'twa'n't nuttin' but a ... — The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various Read full book for free!
... over the crest began the descent through the woods, the moccasined feet of our dusky allies falling noiselessly upon the pine quills. We almost held our breath, lest the least noise, the accidental breaking of a twig, should startle the enemy. Though this was to be my first real Indian fight, I felt no fear and not so much excitement as when stalking my first buck. As we neared the edge of the wood and were almost prepared for the rush, the Indians ... — Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson Read full book for free!
... faults, and the general direction of those faults has been previously suggested. The chief of his faults, a certain uncontrollable brutality of speech and gesture when he was strongly roused, was destined to cling to him all through his life, and to startle with the blaze of a volcano even the last quiet years before his death. But any one who wishes to understand how deep was the elemental honesty and reality of his character, how profoundly worthy he was of ... — Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton Read full book for free!
... more than startle. At about 11 in the morning two six-inch shells hit the Hardinge near the southern entrance of the lake. The first damaged the funnel and the second burst inboard. Pilot Carew, a gallant old merchant seaman, refused to go below ... — New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various Read full book for free!
... specimens of the art era from which the Greeks had just emerged appeared at much later periods of their history; but these creations, as in the case of the Centaur, were usually representations of what were believed to be historical facts, rather than fantastic creations designed by the artist to startle the beholder. The Greek still gratified his passion for beauty of detail, while he was pursuing his new-born purpose of copying nature. It was not long before he found that nature, however skilfully copied, could be perfectly mirrored to ... — The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson Read full book for free!
... charging the bunch intrepidly. Others made shift with flat sirup-cans with pebbles inside. A few, like Pink and the Silent One, flapped their slickers till their arms ached. Anything, everything that would make a din and startle the cattle out of their lethargy, was ... — Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower Read full book for free!
... were uttered in a very low voice, but they produced sound enough to startle Meg Merrilies, who led the van, and who, having already gained the place where the cavern expanded, had risen upon her feet. She began, as if to confound any listening ear, to growl, to mutter, and to sing aloud, and at the same time to make a bustle among some brushwood which was ... — Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott Read full book for free!
... at the woman sitting in the scow, and he saw that she was fast asleep; his tale having no power to startle her senses, now worn-out ... — The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend Read full book for free!
... us, "Watrin, the present colonel of the 6th, does not care for fighting; perhaps he will resign me the command amicably. I will go and find him alone, so as to startle him the less, and ... — The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo Read full book for free!
... shall not curse you. But singing — My singing fatefully ringing Till startled and dumb You falter, the sum Of your crime shall reveal — This do I prophesy . . . O Heart wrung dry, Awake! Startle the world with thy cry: Ethiopia shall not die! ... — Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje Read full book for free!
... displaying their whole breadth, which makes him look like a gigantic butterfly, then instantly lowers his head and runs again, generally picking up something as he stops. A correspondent in South Carolina, familiar with the ways of the bird, suggests that his object is to startle the grasshoppers, or, as he expresses it, to "flush his game." I watched very closely and could not fix upon any theory more plausible, though it seemed to be weakened by the fact that the nestlings, ... — In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller Read full book for free!
... sight of either patient. As those who seek her assistance are apt to be persons of means, she has a motive in doing so. It may be one or ten years after her services were rendered, but, at what she considers the proper time, she renews her acquaintance with them. She will startle them by a call, or a note, recalling to them the events they would gladly forget, and soliciting a loan for a short time. The appeal is generally made to the man, and is sustained by such strong proofs that he ... — The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin Read full book for free!
... bad of me to startle you like that," he acknowledged. "Please forgive me. I caught sight of you both through the trees and declared myself rather ... — The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler Read full book for free!
... reached home. The flock was very timid, and when disturbed on North Head invariably came past the wireless station close to the engine-hut. Sandell concealed himself there with a gun, while I went out to startle the animals. They did not fail to do their part, but Sandell missed and the shot frightened them. He then rushed out and fired another shot as they were running, managing to hit one, which immediately dropped behind and ran to the edge of the cliff. We did not want to shoot the ... — The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson Read full book for free!
... deputed to present to the Prime Minister, Lord Grey, a petition from Nottingham for the disestablishment of the Church of England. The Premier regretted that he could not give his support to such a sweeping measure, which would embarrass the Ministry, alarm both Houses of Parliament, and startle the nation. He declared his intention of standing by the Church to the best of his ability, believing it to be the sacred duty of Government to maintain an establishment of religion. To which sturdy William Howitt replied that to establish ... — Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston Read full book for free!
... We don't know!" The professor slapped the magazine with an emphatic hand. "Emil Mundson hasn't written this article for nothing. He's paving the way for some announcement that will startle the scientific world. I know him. In the same manner he gave out veiled hints of his various brilliant discoveries and inventions long before he offered them ... — Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various Read full book for free!
... burst into tears at a single tone of her voice. Her natural conception was so fine, that the merest commonplace often received a living spirit from her lips. I have seen a single glance from her powerful eye hush an audience—I have seen her acting sometimes even startle and bewilder the actors beside her. There is perhaps a genius for every art, and hers was the genius of the stage—a faculty of instant communication between the speaker and the hearer, some unaccountable sympathy, ... — Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various Read full book for free!
... and wretched smiles. Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, And love to live in dimple sleek; Sport that wrinkled Care derides, And Laughter holding both his sides. Come, and trip it as ye go On the light fantastic toe. . . . . . To hear the lark begin his flight, And singing startle the dull night, From his watch-tower in the skies, Till ... — English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall Read full book for free!
... appeared in sight, and as George peered beyond the projecting point of the ledge, he threw up his hands and burst out in laughter. Angel was in the boat, imitating Harry in the building operation. The sudden appearance did not startle him in the least, nor did he stop beating his lullaby, after he noticed the broad smiles that ... — The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay Read full book for free!
... Over and over, score upon score, Wherein to live, and love, and pray, And suck the ripe world to its rotten core? Yet do you reek if my reign be done? E're I pass ye crown the newer one! At ball and rout ye dance and shout, Shutting men's cries of suffering out, That startle the white-tressed silences Musing beside the fount of light, In the eternal space, to press Their roses, each a nebula bright, More close to their lips serene, While ye wear this ... — The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor Read full book for free!
... said, as she recalled the incident, "what a startle we got. As we think, Pete kicks open the door and cries oot, 'Ony rozetty roots?' and Leeby says 'No,' and gangs to shut the door. Next minute she screeches, 'What, what, what!' and ... — A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie Read full book for free!
... observation she immediately made was a strange coincidence. I believe she understood, for, while young women educated by their mothers are usually ignorant upon all the more masculine subjects, those who have long been their father's companions are ever prone to startle one with the most unexpected flashes of intelligence. "I am in rather a high state of tension now," she said, turning calmly to Maitland; "but when alone the expression which has been denied me here will afford relief." Maitland glanced at her quickly, and then at me, and I knew he ... — The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy Read full book for free!
... heart! he goes up to bed in the dark on purpose to break himself of the fear. I went in for them shirts missis told me of, and he started like anything, and his face turned white. He hadn't heard me till I was in the room; I'd no candle, and 'twas enough to startle him. 'Oh, is it you, Judith?' said he, quietly, making believe to be as indifferent as may be. I struck a light, for I couldn't find the shirts, and then I saw his white face. He can't overget the fear: 'twas implanted in him in babyhood: and I only wish I could ... — The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood Read full book for free!
... kind assistance of a friend, I am enabled to offer a metrical translation. In judging it we should bear in mind that it was not written by a gnostic or by a pantheistic philosopher, but by a poet who felt all these doubts and problems as his own, without any wish to convince or to startle, only uttering what had been weighing on his mind, just as later poets would sing the doubts ... — Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller Read full book for free!
... looked its fairest for our wanderers. Just as a woman adorns herself with all her jewels when she wishes to startle or enthrall, wishes to make a lover of a friend, so Devorgilla arrayed herself to conquer these two pairs of fresh eyes, ... — Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin Read full book for free!
... written in the blood of your poor friend would indeed be of a nature to startle you; but this is nought but harmless red ink, or, as the witty mercantile phrase hath it, Clerk's Blood. Damn 'em! my brain, guts, skin, flesh, bone, carcase, soul, TIME, is all theirs. The Royal Exchange, Gresham's Folly, hath me body and spirit. I admire some of Lloyd's lines on you, ... — The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas Read full book for free!
... had to take the empty plate and cup and set them back on the table, but I feared to startle her in my approach, for she was still sitting with averted head. I made a little noise with the things to draw her attention, set them down, and ... — Wanderers • Knut Hamsun Read full book for free!
... began, "Canon Parkyn's compliments," but broke off; for the organist greeted him with a sound cuff and a "How many times have I told you, sir, not to come creeping up those stairs when I am in the middle of a voluntary? You startle me out of my senses, coming round the corner ... — The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner Read full book for free!
... have raised me, whilst they awed, And sent my soul abroad, Might now perhaps their wonted impulse give, Might startle this dull pain, and ... — English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill Read full book for free!
... no figure of speech to say that the world heard the crash. Hundreds, ay, thousands of miles did the sound of that mighty upheaval pass over land and sea to startle, more or less, ... — Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne Read full book for free!
... secret hearts, are the objects of abhorrence. All this came out gradually before me. Nor did I feel as I ought to feel in their behalf until, in my own person and purse, I became the victim of a system of tyranny which cries from earth to heaven for relief. Were I to narrate my own story it would startle many of the Protestants of Ireland. There are good landlords—never a better than the late Lord Downshire, or the living and beloved Lord Roden. But there are too many of another state of feeling and action. There are estates in the north where the screw is never withdrawn from ... — The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin Read full book for free!
... every love-sick girl in her condition, who will not be allowed to have her own way; but of what use is a father unless he puts all this nonsense down, and substitutes his own judgment for that of a silly girl. I will say something now that will startle her, and I will say nothing but what I will ... — Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton Read full book for free!
... room. If your patient be well enough, and wishes you to talk to him, speak in a low, distinct voice, on cheerful subjects. Don't relate painful hospital experiences, nor give details of the maladies of former patients, and remember never to startle him with accounts of dreadful crimes or accidents that you have read in ... — Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis Read full book for free!
... when the likeness flashed upon Lynde suddenly, as it had done in the grove the previous day, that it now had the power to startle him. At the present moment it did not even seriously annoy him. In an idle, pensive way he noted the coincidence of the man leading the mule. The man was Morton and the mule was Mary! Lynde smiled to himself at the reflection that Mary would probably not accept the analogy with very good ... — The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich Read full book for free!
... hold on," he said, in an eager but subdued voice. "Doubtless it would be pleasant to vent our feelings in a hearty cheer, but it would startle the old gentleman inside. Get along with you, and let us ... — The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne Read full book for free!
... mob opened fire on the soldiers. This appeared for a moment to startle the captain and his men. But it was only for a moment. Then he coolly gave the command: "Ready! aim! fire!" The company obeyed to the instant, and poured a volley of bullets into that part of the mob which was trying to batter down the side door of ... — The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett Read full book for free!
... sand did not startle him more than that strange lonely cry startled me. Indeed, as between the two of us, I had rather the worse of it: for Crusoe, at least, knew that he was dealing with a reality, while I could not be certain that I was not dealing with a bit of a dream in which there was no reality ... — In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier Read full book for free!
... parted lips. He seemed afraid to breathe lest he startle away some hesitant hope. ... — Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt Read full book for free!
... selfe would startle at this letter, And play the swaggerer, beare this, beare all: Shee saies I am not faire, that I lacke manners, She calls me proud, and that she could not loue me Were man as rare as Phenix: 'od's my will, Her loue is not ... — The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare Read full book for free!
... help it," replied the other, "you looked so comfortable. I didn't mean to startle you. I thought you must have heard ... — The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole Read full book for free!
... and tight. As she worked, she smiled at him challengingly. Peter knew he was experiencing a ceremony of some kind, the significance of which he must learn. It was the first time Linda had voluntarily touched him. He breathed lightly and held steady, lest he startle her. ... — Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter Read full book for free!
... it—for I by this time knew the ground well enough to be fully aware that there ought not to be any moving thing there—that I stopped playing and sprang to my feet so suddenly that my movement appeared to startle Ama, who uttered a little cry of alarm, or surprise, and made as though she too ... — A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood Read full book for free!
... rare, and sounding line Thy name, gitana bright! Earth's wonder and delight, Worthy above the empyrean vault to shine; Fain would I snatch from Fame The trump and voice, whose loud acclaim Should startle every ear, And lift Preciosa's ... — The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Read full book for free!
... Peter's; we have stood in the Forum and seen the Coliseum. Penini says: 'The sun has tome out. I think God knows I want to go out to walk, and so He has sent the sun out.' There's a child who has faith enough to put us all to shame. A vision of angels wouldn't startle him in the least. When his poor little friend died, and we had to tell him, he inquired, fixing on me those earnest blue eyes, 'Did papa see the angels when they took away Joe?' And when I answered 'No' (for I never try to deceive ... — The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning Read full book for free!
... infinity and the limitations of the world and of man's mind. To us limited beings God can express His idea only in fragments. We can bring together apparent contradictions in those fragments whereby a greater truth is suggested. If we do this in a sudden or incongruous manner we startle the unprepared and arouse the cry of paradox. But if we will not do it we shall miss a great ... — Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward Read full book for free!
... appellation of repose; and, on the strength of comprehensiveness and repose, is of course qualified to take his seat beside Shakspeare, and chat cosily with Bacon, and wink knowingly at Goethe, and startle Leibnitz with a slap on the shoulder,—the true Red-Republican sign of liberty in manners, equality in power, and fraternity in ideas! These men, to be sure, have a way of saying things which he has not yet caught; but then their wide-reaching thoughts are his as well as theirs. Imitating the ... — Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various Read full book for free!
... the high wall—from its eyrie without doubt—a huge female eagle suddenly shot down toward the drifting aeroplane. The flying machine seemed not to startle the great bird at all; it only angered her. Perhaps she had young up there in the cliff and she feared her hereditary enemy, Man, was coming on wings to deprive ... — On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood Read full book for free!
... them in Castile, knowing that I should instantly have been deprived of them, and with them of my last hope. They remained concealed against precisely such a time as this, when, beyond the immediate reach of Philip's justice, I should startle the world and clear my own character ... — The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini Read full book for free!
... staggering under the weight of the deer, and the spare guns were carried by my tracker. We were proceeding slowly along, when the tracker, who was in advance, suddenly sprang back and pointed to some object in the path. It was certainly enough to startle any man. An enormous serpent lay coiled in the path. His head was about the size of a very small cocoa-nut, divided lengthways, and this was raised about eighteen inches above the coil. His eyes were fixed upon us, ... — The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker Read full book for free!
... you, dear, that you must use your common-sense; and you must have known that to startle Stella by a sudden scream at her was enough to make her ... — Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells Read full book for free!
... went on Shirley, importance of the occasion echoing in her tone. "She wanted to get it down pat and startle her manager into starring her. It seems a great deal depended on that frightful scream and she kept at it every chance she got." Here the girls threatened to outdo the "lady of the scream," but rough walking checked the attempts. They also realized ... — Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft Read full book for free!
... I thought I heard a sound, and then it was so quiet that I came out to see what it meant. Every little noise seems to startle me ... — The Dragon's Secret • Augusta Huiell Seaman Read full book for free!
... acquiring a permanent victory over your besetting sin, you will be the more inclined to bestow your attention on the means which I am now going to recommend for your consequent adoption. They have been often tried and proved effectual: experience is their chief recommendation. They may indeed startle some pious minds, as seeming to encroach too far on what they think ought to be the unassisted work of the Spirit upon the human character; but you are too intelligent to allow such assertions, unfounded as they are on Scripture, to prove much longer a stumbling-block in ... — The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady Read full book for free!
... he murmured. "Forgive me, gnaedige Frau. It is a startle to think that perhaps you have given to the world ... — A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton Read full book for free!
... that the noise would startle the audience and perhaps throw them into a panic. The mayor of the town stepped forward to give warning. The audience, however, had not assembled to listen to the mayor, and overwhelmed him ... — More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher Read full book for free!
... quick imagination she followed him to the wondrous depth of silent waters where strange shapes, never seen by human eye, abound. She hung upon his words; he saw it, and rejoiced in his success. He did not startle her by any further compliment, but when their walk was ended he told her that morning would live in his memory as the ... — Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme Read full book for free!
... believe now, Mrs. Jones, that that Mr. Talbot is still alive?" He asked the question in a very soft voice, and endeavoured not to startle her by his look as he did so. But it was necessary to his purpose that he should keep his eye upon her. Half the answer to his question was to be conveyed by the effect on the muscles of her face which that question ... — Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope Read full book for free!
... could Be happy here, Or one of the gods perhaps, were they Not of inhuman stature dire, As poets say Who have not seen them clearly; if At sound of any wind of the world In grass-blades stiff They would not startle and shudder cold Under the sun. When gods were young This ... — Last Poems • Edward Thomas Read full book for free!
... in that which need startle or surprise any man who believes in a living God at all, and in the possibility, therefore, of a connection between the Great Spirit and all the human spirits which are His children. I would maintain, in opposition ... — Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren Read full book for free!
... Hazlitt's definitions often startle and give a vigorous buffet to our preconceptions. He is likely to open an essay on "Good-Nature" by declaring that a good-natured man is "one who does not like to be put out of his way.... Good-nature is humanity that costs ... — Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin Read full book for free!
... were compelled to supply themselves with enough goods to last from November till April, as it was too expensive to ship goods by express during the winter. Occasionally some enterprising merchant would startle the community by announcing through the newspapers that he had just received by Burbank's express a new pattern in dress goods, or a few cans of fresh oysters. The stages on most of the routes left St. Paul at 4 o'clock in the morning, and subscribers ... — Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore Read full book for free!
... about after sunset. They are dusky with a white throat and band on the wing. They sail through the air without any effort, wings outspread and beak wide open, and thus glean their harvest of winged insects as they skim along. Oftentimes their sudden swoop will startle you as they ... — The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James Read full book for free!
... that the police bullied suspected persons in this way. If you make a guilty person believe that you know him to be guilty, you can also get him to confess if you startle him sufficiently. It occurred to me that this was what these men were doing, especially as they had not been sure of me when I came into ... — Jim Davis • John Masefield Read full book for free!
... had sometimes had a strange expression which was quite her own, and which he had not yet seen in Gloria. But he felt that he should see it some day. He was sure of it, so sure that he had thrown its full force into the sketch on the wall, knowing that it would startle Donna Francesca. It was not possible that two women should be so much alike and yet that one of them should never have that look. Perhaps Gloria had it now and was staring at the back of ... — Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford Read full book for free!
... sweetheart of hers, ready to jump out of his smooth hide with pleasure, snuffling and sneezing in sheer joy, whose eye she could see straying round to catch a glimpse of her intentions, from whose lips she could hear issuing the sweet bitt-music, whose vagaries even seemed designed to startle from her a closer embracing—she was filled with a sort of delicious impatience with everything that was not this ... — Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy Read full book for free!
... door, and stepped out into the little observatory the sound was so plain as to startle him. He looked up quickly, and, directly overhead he saw ... — Tom Swift and his Sky Racer - or, The Quickest Flight on Record • Victor Appleton Read full book for free!
... Psalm, "out of His secret places." As to the hailstorm, he lays great stress upon the plague of hail sent by the Almighty upon Egypt, and clinches all by insisting that God showed at Mount Sinai his purpose to startle the ... — History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White Read full book for free!
... for living flies, but none for dead ones; but Susy does not trouble herself to apologize for Sour Mash's eccentricities of taste. This Biography was for us, and Susy knew that nothing that Sour Mash might do could startle us or need explanation, we being aware that she was not an ordinary cat, but moving upon a plane far above the prejudices and superstitions which are law to ... — Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain Read full book for free!
... still more surprising Shall on Friday next be told, Things to startle and delight thee, When I've crossed thy palm ... — The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Read full book for free!
... stand still. She was pale to the lips, and he could see, even in the darkness, her eyes grow and startle. ... — The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips Read full book for free!
... and Austria) or Jules Cambon (former French Ambassador to Germany, the United States and Spain) probably could excel Mr. Gerard in revelations of entertaining diplomatic history and gossip. Count von Bernstorff, former Ambassador to the United States, too, I imagine might startle us with a diary of ... — Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard Read full book for free!
... saw how darkness and fancy can combine to startle one who wakes suddenly from sleep, for the man who had been Mr Raydon's companion on the previous day suddenly made his appearance silently at the door and walked in, his deerskin moccasins making no sound as he came towards us. He was followed by a great fierce-looking ... — To The West • George Manville Fenn Read full book for free!
... age of tin applied to the dinner call, just as your tin oven supplanted the better bread maker. I like Kitty's call much better than the tin horn. It seems to me more musical, although it appeared to startle you." ... — In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr Read full book for free!
... well that they only want a strong impulse to make them follow it. I feel sure sometimes that we are all living on the brink of a great change for the better, and that there is only one thing wanting now—a great calamity, or a great teacher—to startle us out of our apathy and set us to work. We are not bold enough. We should try more experiments; they can but fail, and if they do, we should still have learnt something from them. But I do not think we shall fail for ever. What we want is somewhere, and must ... — Ideala • Sarah Grand Read full book for free!
... and rickety bridge by which we have crossed the Jordan soon disappears behind us, as we trot along the winding bridle-path through the river-jungle, in the stifling heat. Coming out on the open plain, which rises gently toward the east, we startle great flocks of storks into the air, and they swing away in languid circles, dappling the blaze of morning with their black-tipped wings. Grotesque, ungainly, gothic birds, they do not seem to belong to the Orient, but rather to have drifted hither out of some quaint, ... — Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke Read full book for free!
... manifold misfortunes had not quenched her interest in the 'Incroyable' corset, opened her parcel, and found that the corset was not an 'Incroyable' at all, but an inferior substitute, with no proper belted band, and of a shape to startle even a Brighton bathing-woman! The change must have been effected by the assistant in ... — Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett Read full book for free!
... after a moment's pause, and had his intention been to startle her he could hardly have ... — The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner Read full book for free!
... with more firmness of mind. They might need a preparatory discourse on the text of 'Prove all things, hold fast that which is good,' in order to unlearn the lesson that reason is an unlawful guide in religion. They might startle on being first awaked from the dreams of the night, but they would rub their eyes at once, and look the spectres boldly in the face. The preacher might be excluded by our hierophants from their churches and meeting-houses, but would be attended in the fields by whole ... — Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson Read full book for free!
... lay thinking of these and other things he fancied that he could hear the footfall of a man on the road leading up to his house—a byway, which led scarce anywhere else; and therefore a tread was at any time more apt to startle the inmates of the homestead than if it had stood in a thoroughfare. The footfall came opposite the gate, and stopped there. One minute, two minutes passed, and the pedestrian did not proceed. Christopher Swetman ... — A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy Read full book for free!
... entire garrison was awakened by rifle shots and cries of "Indians! Indians!" There was pandemonium at once. The "long roll" was beaten on the infantry drums, and "boots and saddles" sounded by the cavalry bugles, and these are calls that startle all who hear them, and strike terror to the heart of every army woman. They mean that something is wrong—very wrong—and demand the immediate report for duty at their respective companies of every officer and man in ... — Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe Read full book for free!
... such a fine, tall, gray-haired old gentleman, was not really very strong or well. It was a great deal for him that they had all come abroad this winter, and the doctors had told mother and auntie that anything to startle or distress him might make him very ill indeed. Poor grandfather! I can't tell you what a kind, good man he was. He had stayed a great many years in India, though he would have liked dreadfully to ... — The Adventures of Herr Baby • Mrs. Molesworth Read full book for free!
... English girl.' Miss Heriot fulfilled to a nicety the requirements of those who are sensibly reassured by the spectacle of careful conventionality allied to feminine charm—a pleasant conversability that may be trusted to soothe and counted on never to startle. Hermione would almost as soon have stood on her head in Piccadilly as have said anything original, though to her private consternation such perilous stuff had been known to harbour an uneasy instant in her ... — The Convert • Elizabeth Robins Read full book for free!
... planning of delicious surprises, that I believed her capable even of miracles. In some way or other she must have discovered the state of my desires towards Agnes. She had written, or something. She and Agnes had been plotting together by letter to startle me, and perhaps telegraphing. Agnes had fibbed in telling me that she could not possibly come to Bursley for Christmas; she had delightfully fibbed. And my mother had got her concealed somewhere in the house, or was momentarily expecting her. That explained the tears, the nervousness, ... — The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett Read full book for free!
... worth, he was, at the same time, a strange man in exterior manners; for, with an abundance of real piety, he had an abruptness of delivery and a strange way of mixing up an occasional remark to his congregation in the midst of the celebration of the mass, which might well startle a stranger; but this very want of formality made him beloved by the people, and they would do ten times as much for Father ... — Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover Read full book for free!
... in silence, for a word from her was always put down by some tender jest, avowing as much inferiority in goodness as superiority in intellect. As to Clement, Edgar's sport was to startle him with jokes, dilemmas, and irreverences, and then to decline discussion on the ground that he never argued with sisters, and that Clement would understand when he went to Cambridge. Otherwise, the subject was avoided at home, but Edgar consorted a good deal with ... — The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge Read full book for free!
... on round and ruddy cheeks, that had ripened in the far-off island, and had hardly yet grown paler or thinner in the atmosphere of New England. There was, moreover, a boldness and rotundity of speech among these matrons, as most of them seemed to be, that would startle us at the present day, whether in respect to its purport ... — The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne Read full book for free!
... she was at the very top of ecstasy, floating in the softest summer sea of fancy, some little noise would startle her into opening her eyes, and there beside her in the deepening dusk would be the bare white beds of her two dormitory companions, the ugly wall-paper opposite, and the uncovered boards with their frugal strips of carpet stretching away on either hand. The tea-bell would ring perhaps in ... — Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward Read full book for free!
... the epidemia. The mere act and habit of writing, without probably even a remote view of publication, has produced an agreeable delirium; and perhaps some have escaped from a gentle confinement by having cautiously concealed those voluminous reveries which remained to startle their heirs; while others again have left a whole library of manuscripts, out of the mere ardour of transcription, collecting and copying with peculiar rapture. I discovered that one of these inscribed this distich on ... — Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli Read full book for free!
... gave a start of astonishment. In his own mind he had arrived at the conclusion that the will would never be executed, and to have Miss Merrick thus suddenly declare her decision was enough to startle... — Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne Read full book for free!
... opened out of my sister's room, which was a large, sombre apartment. It was said to attract a frequently seen ghost by the force of its profound twilight and historic sorrows; and my sister, who was courageous enough to startle a ghost, highly approved of this corner of her domain. But she suddenly lost her buoyant taste for disembodied spirits, and a rumor floated mistily about that Una had seen the wretched woman who could not forget her woes ... — Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop Read full book for free!
... offence,' said Longworth. 'You merely seemed to be posing as a sort of goody-goody young man when I spoke of mining swindles, so I only wished to startle you. How much have you to pay for the mine—that ... — A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr Read full book for free!
... table of marble and rosewood, occupying velvet chairs that have traveled unmistakably from London or Paris. French mirrors and Italian statuettes may have for their vis-a-vis the exquisite mosaics, the massive gold vases and the costly bijouterie of the Orient, strewn so profusely around as to startle unaccustomed eyes; and a genuine Meissonier will be just as likely to be placed side by side with a Persian houri as anywhere else. The Parsees drive the finest Arab steeds, but on their equipages there is a more lavish display of ornament ... — Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various Read full book for free!
... over it at breakfast. He told me he was going to startle the world as it had never been since ... — The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint Read full book for free!
... then, that's the reason. It's just because he is that sort that he hasn't bothered about an increase of salary. By George! I'll give it to him without the asking! I never did such a thing before in all my life. It will startle the office people out of their wits, but they need startling, and as for ... — A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston Read full book for free!
... applications and my jury evasions as Ornithologist. And now this playful Spirit of the Jungle permitted me to meditate cheerfully on my ability to compare the faunas of New York and Guiana, and then proceeded to startle me with three salvos of birds, first ... — Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe Read full book for free!
... said Dr. Wherry when, after a swift ride across the continent, Mr. Passamore and his wife reached Oak Farm. "We must not startle the patient." ... — The Moving Picture Girls in War Plays - Or, The Sham Battles at Oak Farm • Laura Lee Hope Read full book for free!
... more than I have been told. It is the rude speech of a barbarous people, who had few thoughts to express, and were content, as they conceived grossly, to be grossly understood. After what has been lately talked of Highland Bards, and Highland genius, many will startle when they are told, that the Earse never was a written language; that there is not in the world an Earse manuscript a hundred years old; and that the sounds of the Highlanders were never expressed by letters, till some little books of piety were translated, ... — A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson Read full book for free!
... fire a gun the noise would likely startle them, and the first impulse of the savages would be to extinguish ... — The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay Read full book for free!
... did not fear poor Rachel's ghost. It was a sharpish night, bright, somewhat of a frost. As Jan neared the pool, he turned his head towards it and half stopped, gazing on its still waters. He had been away when the catastrophe happened; but the circumstances had been detailed to him. "How it would startle Jack and a few of those timid ones," said he ... — Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood Read full book for free!
... principle of the anticipation of perception must somewhat startle an inquirer whom initiation into transcendental philosophy has rendered cautious. We must naturally entertain some doubt whether or not the understanding can enounce any such synthetical proposition as that respecting ... — The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant Read full book for free!
... hoped to startle her, but she asked, rather quietly, "What do you mean?" and she added, as if to punish him for trying to mystify her: "I've heard that it requires gifts for ... — Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells Read full book for free!
... us; but she is only connected with us as the road is with the goal it reaches in the end. She exists independently of us, but yet she exists to suggest to us what we may become, to awaken in us dim longings and desires, to surprise us into confession of our inadequacy, to startle us with perceptions of an infinitude we do not possess as yet but may possess; to make us feel our ignorance, weakness, want of finish; and by partly exhibiting the variety, knowledge, love, power and finish ... — The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke Read full book for free!
... Eve home that night for a starter, and the next mornin' he's up bright and early at seven, ready to startle Manhattan. He said he wanted me to go out with him and watch him win my eight hundred bucks and also to notice the way he worked. He picks up the mornin' paper, runs through the "Help Wanted" columns for a minute and ... — Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer Read full book for free!
... a step in the porch. The lateness of the hour, perhaps some other reason, seemed to startle her, and she half rose. The next moment the figure of Miguel appeared at the doorway, and with a quick, hurried look around him, and at the open window, he approached her. He was evidently under great excitement, ... — A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte Read full book for free!
... first she gleamed upon my sight; A lovely Apparition sent To be a moment's ornament; Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair; Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair; But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful Dawn; A dancing Shape, an Image gay, To haunt, to startle, and way-lay. ... — Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various Read full book for free!
... which were conducted by Diderot alone after the great schism of 1759. On the subject of sport, however, the writer of the article Chasse enumerates all the considerations which a patriotic minister could desire to see impressed on public opinion. Some of the paragraphs startle us by their directness and freedom of complaint, and even a very cool reader would still be likely to feel some of the wrath that was stirred in the breast of our shrewd and sober Arthur Young a generation ... — Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley Read full book for free!
... faintly stirred by the soft south wind, or by the low murmur of the forest river, stealing on its stealthy course under overarching boughs, mysterious as that wondrous river in Kubla Khan's dream, and anon breaking suddenly out into a clamour loud enough to startle Arion as the waters came leaping and brawling over the shining moss-green boulders? Where were these happy comrades going as they rode side by side under the glancing lights and wavering shadows? Everybody knows what became of Launcelot and Guinevere after that famous ride of theirs. What of these ... — Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon Read full book for free!
... should have for his baptismal name—Francis. But if you found that this was the very reason for his admitting the man into his series, that, however strange a reason, it had in fact governed him in selecting his subjects, you would no longer see anything to startle... — The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey Read full book for free!
... the water's brim are quiet. It is a dream in half tones that he gives us, grey and green and steely blue; and just that, and some homely magic of his own, hint the commerce of another world with man's discarded domain. Men and women are asleep, and as in an early walk you may startle the hares at their play, or see the creatures of the darkness— owls and night hawks and heavy moths—flit with fantastic purpose over the familiar scene, so here it comes upon you suddenly that you have surprised Nature's ... — Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett Read full book for free!
... not enough to amuse my spectators; I must also, in order to fulfill the object of my mission, startle and even terrify them by the display of ... — The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne Read full book for free!
... a taste for refined morality and delicate sentiment, for chaste acting and spirited dialogue, for scenery painted on the spot, but like nothing in nature except canvas and colour—go to the Victoria and see "Mary Clifford." It may, perhaps, startle you to learn that the incidents are faithfully copied from the "Newgate Calendar," and that the subject is Mother Brownrigg of apprentice-killing notoriety; but be not alarmed, there is nothing horrible or revolting in ... — Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 21, 1841 • Various Read full book for free!
... man about it; but he seemed to think that he was not responsible for the cow's voice. I then told him to take her away; and he did, at intervals, shifting her to different parts of the grounds in my absence, so that the desolate voice would startle us from unexpected quarters. If I were to unhitch the cow, and turn her loose, I knew where she would go. If I were to lead her away, the question was, Where? for I did not fancy leading a cow about till I could find somebody ... — Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner Read full book for free!
... have her husband recognized as a martyr. Hitherto her toil and money have been wasted. In my estimation the Bishop is a perfectly detestable tyrant, and if I know him at all he will take all she will give and never grant her wish. Now she is preparing her great move, and hopes to startle him into compliance by a new marvel. She thinks that, like a juggler who turns a white egg black, she can turn a heathen district into a Christian one by a twist of her finger. Well—so far as I am concerned I will have nothing to do with ... — Uarda • Georg Ebers Read full book for free!
... reliquary or bone-house. There may be seen rows of small boxes like dog-kennels with heart-shaped openings. Round these openings, names, dates, and pious ejaculations are written. Looking through the aperture, a glimpse of a skull may startle one, for it is a gruesome custom of the country to dig up the bones of the dead and preserve the skulls in this way. The name upon the box is that once borne by the deceased, the date that of his death, ... — Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence Read full book for free!
... that there shall be no rain of more than an hour's duration in the daytime, but that it shall all fall by night. Yet when the Sun does exert himself, as if at their bidding, and is shining, as he supposes, to their heart's content, up go a hundred green parasols in his face, enough to startle the celestial steeds in his chariot. A broken summer for us. Now and then a few continuous days—perhaps a whole week—but, if that ... — Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson Read full book for free!
... however, out of this roaring hive of men and women striving to feed and clothe and house themselves came a flash of vivid lightning in the murky sky,—the bomb of the anarchist. That was enough to startle even the Milly Ridges,—spitting forth its vicious message only a mile or two from where the very "nicest" people had their homes! The sodden consciousness of the city awoke in a hideous nightmare of fear. The newspapers were filled with the ravings of excited ignorance. Nobody talked of anything ... — One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick Read full book for free!
... the civilized! What will the answer be? Already we can hear the faint responses, as yet vague and indistinct, the drowned murmurings of the wiser tongues. These must grow into a national anthem whose echo will challenge the powers of the world and startle them into the consciousness of the ... — Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association Read full book for free!
... impiety; I could almost recommend to you to add a slight postscript on the massacre of that wretch Manuel. I do not love such insects as we are dispensing judgments yet, if the punishment of that just victim might startle such profane criminals, it might be charity to suggest ... — Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole Read full book for free!
... out of window, and the height of the sun seemed suddenly to startle her. Her more gentle look suddenly vanished and one ... — The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum Read full book for free!
... ourselves almost opposite to it, and then began to keep watch. What we should see pass up the avenue we could only surmise, but our suppositions certainly did not lead us to imagine in the faintest degree the sight which before long was destined to completely startle us. ... — The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various Read full book for free!
... knew was that she liked him and was content to be near him. She had not reached the stage of being miserable out of his presence. The dawn of a woman's love is the happiest time in its story. There is no certain realisation of the truth to startle, perhaps affright, her, no doubts to depress her, no jealous fears to torture her heart—only a vague, delicious feeling of gladness, a pleasant rose-tinted glow to brighten life and warm her heart. The fierce, devouring flames ... — The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly Read full book for free!
... our lassitude, I think," replied the old man, with authority. "And then their way of preaching; they have a skilful manner of doing it! And they know how to startle one, too. I got quite a fright myself in '32, in Vienna, I assure you; but I didn't cave in to them, I ran away ... — The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky Read full book for free!
... mother might. So, with her mouth almost in my ear, she whispered, "This is delightful—is it not so? Pray, just hearken to Nicholas: 'With that I fired.' 'Then we tried the covert.' 'The lock jammed.' 'Forty-four brace.' Listen to the huntsmen! Shall we startle them with the horn, tra-la?" And she thrilled with laughter in my ear there in the blissful dark, till I had to put that over ... — Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett Read full book for free!
... peace, by means of the father prior, Fray Andres de Urdaneta, and by public act of the notary. But it had no better effect than the preceding efforts. Hence he ordered his artillery to be discharged, somewhat high, so that he might frighten and startle them, without doing them any harm. This succeeded as he expected, for those people, little accustomed to similar reports, immediately abandoned the shore and sea, fleeing more quickly than they had gathered. Thus our men landed without ... — The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various Read full book for free!
... from physical agony would come to the criminal, if the dream of dying should startle him from the dream of suffering. The paradise of Spirit would come to Jesus, in a spiritual sense of Life and [15] power. Christ Jesus lived and reappeared. He was too good to die; for goodness is immortal. The thief was not equal to the demands of the hour; but sin was de- stroying ... — Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy Read full book for free!
... may be the golden sunset or the breezy noon, the solemn breadth of twilight, or the silvery freshness of morn—the something of colour, of form, of light and shade, floating rapidly away, that makes the meanest and most commonplace view at times startle us with wonder at its beauty, when treated by the ... — Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton Read full book for free!
... I knew what he thought of the whole performance; but a friend of the lean man, who sat just in front of Arick, tells me what seemed to startle him most. The first thing was when two of the officers came out with blackened faces, like minstrels, and began to dance. Arick was sure that they were really black, and his own people, and he was wonderfully surprised to see them dance in ... — The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson Read full book for free!
... fireplace, leaning on the mantelpiece, and looking up into the eyes of the girl above, smiling and talking softly to her, Miss Ludington entered the room and laid her hand gently on his arm. Her appearance did not seem to startle him in the least. "Paul, my dear boy!" she said, "you had better ... — Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy Read full book for free!
... leaves nothing for the perception of the hearing save the dull thread of many thousand feet and the rough rattle of an occasional carriage. Rarely, the harsh tones of a peasant, or the clear voices of a knot of strangers, unused to such oppressive silence, startle the ear, causing hundreds of eager, half-suspicious, half-wondering eyes to turn in ... — The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford Read full book for free!
... rejoined the other, breathing on his fictitious nose, and polishing it with the cuff of his coat, 'but he was a queer subject altogether—a kind of gipsy—one of the finest, stand-up men, you ever see. Ah! He told me some things that would startle you a bit, did that friend of mine, on the morning when ... — Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens Read full book for free!
... a light in a window and heard the scraping of a fiddle. At the edge of a clearing enclosed by a worm fence I came to a row of slave-cabins. Mongrel dogs barked through the fence, and in one angle of it a young white man with long straight hair showed himself so abruptly as to startle my horse. Only the one cabin was lighted, and thence came the rhythmic shuffle of bare-footed dancers while the fiddle played "I lay ten dollars down." There were three couples on the floor, and I saw—for ... — The Cavalier • George Washington Cable Read full book for free!
... guide our steps. I have by this time made acquaintance with the principal giants of the grove. Some are standing, some are felled; the unmolested monarchs stand full 200 feet high, and heave their white and spectral limbs in all directions; the fallen monsters, crushed with their overthrow, startle you with their strange appearances; whilst underfoot a wild variety of new plants arrest your attention. The bush-shrubs are exquisitely beautiful. Anon a charred and blackened trunk stops your path: if you are in spirits, you jump over all; if you ... — Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden Read full book for free!
... ways of human life there; the reflexion, in sacred image or ideal, of its flocks, and orchards, and wild honey; the dangers of its hunters; its weariness in noonday heat; its children, agile as the goats they tend, who run, in their picturesque rags, across the solitary wanderer's path, to startle him, in the unfamiliar upper places; its one adornment and solace being the dance to the homely shepherd's pipe, cut by Pan first from the ... — Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater Read full book for free!
... she turned to cross to the opposite fence. Midway in the glade she came upon the tramp. Her startle was merely a startle. There was no fear in it. She stood and looked long and curiously at the forbidding spectacle, and was about to turn back when the sleeper moved restlessly and rolled his hand among the burrs. She noted the sun on his face, and the buzzing flies; her face grew ... — The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London Read full book for free!
... Beloved. This precaution is necessary, for though you know it not, you are under the command of vulgar prejudices: The Business on which I must be employed this night, might startle you from its singularity, and lower me in your opinion. Tell me; Are you possessed of the Key of the low door on the western side of ... — The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis Read full book for free!
... and frighten him away before Festus returned, there would not be quite such odds against her. She accordingly unhooked the horse by reaching over the bank, and then, pulling off her muslin neckerchief, flapped it in his eyes to startle him. But the gallant steed did not move or flinch; she tried again, and he seemed rather pleased than otherwise. At this moment she heard a cry from the cottage, and turning, beheld her adversary approaching round ... — The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy Read full book for free!
... necessary to make a small circuit in order to reach it. While doing this, the young mariner discovered a boat pulling from the direction of the marinella, at the foot of the Scaricatojo, which had got so near, unseen, as at first to startle him by its proximity. A second look, however, satisfied him that no cause of apprehension existed in that quarter. His eye could not be deceived. The boat contained Ghita and her uncle; the latter rowing, and the former seated in the stern, with her head bowed ... — The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper Read full book for free!
... foot," it commanded so peremptorily, so humanly, as again to startle Michael and made him quest about the steerage for the god-throat ... — Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London Read full book for free!
... chanced to meet "Nell Montgomery, the Pearl of the Variety Stage," on the Sacramento boat, in one of his forced visits to civilization. Without knowing her in her profession, her frank exposition of herself did not startle him; he recognized it, accepted it, and strove to convert it. And as long as this daughter of Folly forsook her evil ways for him, it was a triumph in which there was no shame, and might be proclaimed from the housetop. When his neighbors thought differently, and avoided them, he saw no inconsistency ... — Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte Read full book for free!
... sound in this forest, and she was startled by a cough behind her. It was only Pats, not wishing to startle her by a sudden presence. His face seemed flushed, and even thinner than before; and about his mouth had come a drawn and sensitive look. But her eyes rested coldly upon him as they would rest upon any repugnant object that she ... — The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell Read full book for free!
... she replied in a low voice, but with such passionate earnestness as quite to startle me. "Is 262 laughing, then, such an infallible ... — Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley Read full book for free!
... are too much shaded and overgrown by young trees to give proper pasturage, when they made delightful harbors for the small wild creatures which yet remain, and for wild flowers and berries. Here you send an astonished rabbit scurrying to his burrow, and there you startle yourself with a partridge, who seems to get the best of the encounter. Sometimes you see a hen partridge and her brood of chickens crossing your path with an air of comfortable door-yard security. As you drive ... — A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett Read full book for free!
... an' glad to be alive. An' 'tis tin to wan, an' more thin that, that th' town humorist has named him th' orange-peel hero, an' he'll go to his grave with that name. Th' war is over an' th' state iv war exists. If ye saw a man fall fr'm th' top iv a tin-story buildin' 'twud startle ye, wanst. If it happened again, 'twud surprise ye. But if ye saw a man fall ivry fifteen minyits ye'd go home afther awhile f'r supper an' ye wuddent even mintion it ... — Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne Read full book for free!
... with me?" Murray laughed a little. "But we can remedy that, can't we, Amy? But you might hint at what I'm expecting of her. I don't want to startle her." He came and sat down beside her. "You are always a great dear ... — The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey Read full book for free!
... "You might not startle a wolf, or turn the Royal Americans from a discharge; but I have seen the time when you had a better favored look; your streaked countenances are not ill-judged of by the squaws, but young women of white blood give ... — The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper Read full book for free!
... or at the Bar. Those who knew the two gentlemen wondered whether the somewhat leisurely and conservative Secretary could leash in his restless young First Assistant, with his Titanic energy and his head full of projects. No one believed that even Roosevelt could startle Governor Long out of his habitual urbanity, but every one could foresee that they might so clash in policy that either the head or the assistant would ... — Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer Read full book for free!
... night and leave her alone with no message. She felt even quite radiantly happy sitting there. She said to herself what a little goose she had been. Even a noise made by some coal falling in the kitchen-range failed to startle her. She now hoped that the train would not be late, and it was, in fact, very nearly on time. Then she watched for her father with not the slightest doubt that he would come. It had come to that pass that her credulity as to disaster ... — The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman Read full book for free!
... Thomas Alva Edison's leap to fortune was sudden and spectacular, as have been most of his accomplishments since. Those who do really great things along the lines of physical improvement, or concerning the inception of large enterprises are apt to startle the public and to surprise thoughtful people almost as though some impossible ... — Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron Read full book for free!
... spring upon Phoebe, as though it had been something visible to startle her. It shook off her old English self for a moment, and she ... — The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye Read full book for free!
... will and equal way, no contraction, no extension; one soundless, causeless, march of sequent rings, and spectral processions of spotted dust, with dissolution in its fangs, dislocation in its coils. Startle it, the winding stream will become a twisted arrow; the wave of poisoned life will lash through the grass like a cast lance.* It scarcely breathes with its one lung (the other shriveled and abortive); it is passive to the sun and shade, and is cold or ... — The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin Read full book for free!
... enemy's fire did more than startle. At about 11 in the morning two six-inch shells hit the Hardinge near the southern entrance of the lake. The first damaged the funnel and the second burst inboard. Pilot Carew, a gallant old merchant ... — New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various Read full book for free!
... particularly lively by night than by day. Directly the cold dew-mist wreathed the grass at the entrance of the burrow, they commenced to sport and play, tumbling over each other, grunting and fighting in mimic anger, or pretending to startle their mother directly she entered the pipe on returning at intervals ... — Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees Read full book for free!
... the tapestry that, when it came to Paris, had power to startle Napoleon, ever superstitious, ever ready to read signs. The star over Harold's head reminded him of the possible ... — The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee Read full book for free!
... and Priscilla quickly moved to the mother's side, but great joys do not kill even though they startle, and presently the white white face was raised with a smile almost of heaven illuminating it, and the ... — Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin Read full book for free!
... nothing. And we sat talking of other things till he rose to go away. And then, at the very moment he was mounting on his camel, he turned, and came back. And he said: Listen! Thou art hiding from me something that maybe I could startle thee by guessing: but no matter. Keep thy secret: but listen to a piece of good advice, which may serve thee at a pinch. If ever thou wouldst have a woman prize thee, never let her see that thou settest ... — The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain Read full book for free!
... pears," I thought; and I was about to run and shout at them, for I knew that would startle them away; but on second thoughts I felt as if I should like to catch some of them, and turning, I ran softly back up the path, ... — Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn Read full book for free!
... three hair-brushes, and half a dozen toothbrushes, and a small collection of combs, and four or five little glass bottles, looking as though they contained poison,—all with silver tops. I can only suppose you desired to startle the weak mind of the chambermaid. I have put them all up; but remember this, if they are taken out again you are responsible. And I will not put up your boots, George. What can you have wanted with three ... — Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope Read full book for free!
... should startle you," he said; "and do you know, you looked so busy that I hoped it would have fallen souse on your heads before you were aware of it. What was the Master ... — Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott Read full book for free!
... thee The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty; And if I give thee honour due, Mirth, admit me of thy crew, To live with her, and live with thee, In unreproved pleasures free; To hear the lark begin his flight And singing startle the dull night From his watch-tower in the skies, Till the dappled dawn doth rise: Then to come, in spite of sorrow, And at my window bid good-morrow, Through the sweetbriar, or the vine, Or the twisted eglantine: While the cock with lively din, Scatters the rear of darkness ... — The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various Read full book for free!
... a power that some of us have not known to let that glass go untouched, and that quieting drug untasted and unhandled. If the rear end of some pharmacies could speak out, many a story would startle our ears of struggles and defeats that tell sadly of ... — Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon Read full book for free!
... but would they really work out in practice? Evidently the sole performer of my experiment must be myself; the subject—whom or what? Accident should determine. I itched to commence with murder—to tackle the stiffest problems first, and I burned to startle and baffle the world—especially the world of which I had ceased to be. Outwardly I was calm, and spoke to the people about me as usual. Inwardly I was on fire with a consuming scientific passion. I sported with my pet theories, and fitted them mentally ... — The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill Read full book for free!
... your pardon," said Mr. Sinclair. "I did not mean to startle you. Have I been too abrupt? Surely you must have known—you must ... — Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery Read full book for free!
... quiet, each man under the crag, as he happened to be placed, and trust that the guards would pass by without noticing them. And while they were waiting in breathless alarm they got a new cause of fright. One of the soldiers of the castle, willing to startle his comrades, suddenly threw a stone from the wall, and cried out, "Aha, I see you well!" The stone came thundering down over the heads of Randolph and his men, who naturally thought themselves discovered. If they had stirred, or made the slightest noise, they would have been entirely destroyed; ... — Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester Read full book for free!
... call, Through the live translucent bath of air, As the sights in a magic crystal-ball. And of all I saw and of all I praised, The most to praise and the best to see Was the startling bell-tower Giotto raised: But why did it more than startle me? ... — Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson Read full book for free!
... eyes were large and pretty, and altogether she was rather good-looking. Indeed, there seemed to be no reason why she should not be decidedly pretty, but she was not. Perhaps it was because of that self-satisfied air of hers, the air of one whom nothing in the world could startle or stir. Temperamentally she reminded me somewhat of Miss Kalmanovitch, but she was the better-looking of the two. I was not in love with her, but she certainly ... — The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan Read full book for free!
... complete surrender of self to the impression, whether spiritual or sensual, of the moment. It is a quality, perhaps, in which the young poet is richer than the mature, his very inexperience making him more venturesome in those leaps of language that startle us with their rashness only to bewitch us the more with the happy ease of their accomplishment. For this there are no existing laws of rhetoric, for it is from such felicities that the rhetoricians deduce and codify their statutes. It is something which cannot be improved ... — Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell Read full book for free!
... parrot beats them hollow both in its voice and in the way it imitates. Do you know that when I have been giving my quick short bark, to tell that I am not well pleased, I have heard one of these fellows near me actually make me startle—its bark was so like to that of one of our kind! I cannot bear the blacks! I have had a grudge against them since some little urchins shot at me when I was young, and made my hand bleed. How it bled! My mother, with whom I had been, kept out of the way of these blackguards, ... — Heads and Tales • Various Read full book for free!
... was moved by a desire to startle Meldon. She was really engaged on quite an innocent novel, but she chose to pretend that she was going on in ... — The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham Read full book for free!
... in these he was the moralist, not the satirist. During four-and-thirty years Bourdaloue distributed, to those who would take it, the bread of life—plain, wholesome, prepared skilfully and with clean hands, never varying from the evenness and excellence of its quality. He does not startle or dazzle a reader; he does ... — A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden Read full book for free!
... it was possible that his eyes had gone bad on him, or that his mind had slipped out of its normal groove and was tricking him with weirdly absurd hallucinations. So what happened in almost that same breath did not startle him as it might otherwise have done. It was for a brief moment simply another assurance of his insanity; and if the mountains had suddenly turned over and balanced themselves on their peaks their gymnastics would not have frozen him ... — The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood Read full book for free!
... strangest home-going,—for by this time her mission and her aspirations could no longer be hid, and rumour must have carried the news almost as quickly as any modern telegraph, to startle all the echoes of the village, heretofore unaware of any difference between Jeanne and her companions save the greater goodness to which everybody bears testimony. No doubt, it must have reached Jacques d'Arc's cottage even before she came back ... — Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant Read full book for free!
... a matter of prudence, Terry stayed where he was, but partly sheltered himself, so as not to startle any one of the animals that might come upon him suddenly. At the same time, Fred bent low and with loaded and cocked rifle began stealing toward ... — The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis Read full book for free!
... know about that," said Miss Ingate. "It wouldn't startle me to hear that he knew you were intending to come. All I know is that Miss Foley's been here for several days. Not a soul knows except me and Aguilar. And it seems to get safer every day. She does venture about ... — The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett Read full book for free!
... stopped a minute—and in the pause we could hear the old trees wave very solemnly above us, and a nut, or burr, or sycamore ball, came rattling down the old kirk roof as we stood there in the graves, to startle us the ... — Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend Read full book for free!
... confidence. That was out of the question now. His first impulse was to hail them, and try to make friends of them by offering some small present; but he checked himself as the thought flashed upon him that a movement on his part might startle them and provoke a discharge of their tiny arrows, which were probably poisoned. He could not doubt they had seen him long before he had seen them, and had been for some time playing the part of silent spectators, being kept at a distance, ... — Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang Read full book for free!
... due time, a worthy consort, and a certain Crown Prince would, in further due time, startle the world with his left-handed pitching. It was a prospect all golden to dream upon. His spirit grew tall and ... — Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson Read full book for free!
... you in my last" (he wrote), "that the discoloration of my skin had begun. The complexion which you were once so good as to admire, has disappeared for ever. I am now of a livid ashen color—so like death, that I sometimes startle myself when I look in the glass. In about six weeks more, as the doctor calculates, this will deepen to a blackish blue; and then, 'the saturation' (as he calls ... — Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins Read full book for free!
... it in hand, running our fingers over the big staring letters, as over the black and white keys of a piano, drumming out of them a mild melody of perfect repose. With what delight do we disport us in the illimitable void of its nothingness, as who should swim in air! Here is nothing to startle-nothing to wound. The very atmosphere is saturated with "the spirit of the rural press;" and even our dog stands by, with pendant tail, slowly dropping the lids over his great eyes; and then, jerking them suddenly up again, tries to look as ... — The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile Read full book for free!
... she, with a second laugh, but it did not startle me like the first. "We should all be perfect, ... — In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt Read full book for free!
... darkest of the books of God there is written a truth that is also a riddle. It is of the new things that men tire—of fashions and proposals and improvements and change. It is the old things that startle and intoxicate. It is the old things that are young. There is no sceptic who does not feel that many have doubted before. There is no rich and fickle man who does not feel that all his novelties are ancient. There is no worshipper of change who does not feel upon his neck the vast ... — The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton Read full book for free!
... not last long. A recollection of something I had heard or read would come back to startle me out of the confident happy mood; reason would revive as from a benumbed or hypnotized condition, and the mocking voice would be heard telling me that I had been under a delusion. Once more I would ... — Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson Read full book for free!
... her very well. She's mad, you know,—mad as a hatter,—and no one can ever guess what freak may come next. One always feels that she'll do something sooner or later that will startle all the world." ... — The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope Read full book for free!
... which is seen daily ceases to seem strange. Beyond their natural solicitude over his failing appetite, his unwholesome complexion, and his loss of flesh, they had no misgivings. His decline was so very gradual that there was nothing to startle them. Every day they hoped to see a change for the better, and sought to bring it about by preparing such dainty dishes as were within their means to catch his capricious appetite, and by keeping all their little perplexities and worriments to themselves, ... — Without a Home • E. P. Roe Read full book for free!
... Mary had not been sheltered from taking part in scenes of suffering; she had seen sickness and death in cottages, as well as in her own home, and she had none of the fanciful alarms, either of novelty or imagination, to startle her in the strange watch that had so suddenly been thrust on her but what did fill her with a certain apprehension, was the new and lofty beauty of expression that sat on that sleeping countenance. 'A ... — The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge Read full book for free!
... situations equal in effect to some in this plain historic statement. Nay, it would perhaps be difficult to produce a passage from Ezekiel, from Aeschylus, or from Shakspeare, which would so profoundly startle the sense of sublimity as one or two of his incidents, which attended either the earthquake itself, or its immediate sequel in the sudden irruption of the Tagus. Sixty thousand persons, victims to the dark power in its ... — Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey Read full book for free!
... would take some noisy instrument to the lake to startle the echoes; a whistle his father made him served for a time; after that he marched up and down the banks, rattling a tin canister with pebbles in it; then he got a large frying-pan from the kitchen, ... — A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H. Read full book for free!
... sympathy. She had come alone to the parting of the ways, and she had thought only for the boy whom she had mothered tenderly and successfully. Ledyard did not interrupt the gentle flow of her thoughts. There was time; he would not startle or hurry her, although her first statement had shocked and surprised ... — The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock Read full book for free!
... sounds of birds are of that pensive or mysterious character which intensifies the feeling of solitude, rather than imparts a sense of life and cheerfulness. Sometimes, in the midst of the stillness, a sudden yell or scream will startle one. This comes from some defenceless fruit-eating animal, which is pounced upon by a tiger-cat or stealthy boa-constrictor. Morning and evening howling monkeys make a most fearful and harrowing noise, under which it is difficult to keep up one's ... — The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston Read full book for free!
... was drifting across the country, getting lost in valleys where it piled up into fleecy mounds, getting caught in tree-tops where it fluttered like tattered banners. Every now and then, with the suddenness of our approach, we would startle an aged shepherd, muffled and pensive as an Arab, strolling slowly across moorlands, followed closely by the sentinel goats which led his flock. The day had been strangely mystic. Time seemed a mood. I had ceased to trouble ... — Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson Read full book for free!
... different than the night he had lain beside Rachel and whispered, "You have given me wings." But how? He felt the same. Change came like that. Leaving one the same. He would write things from Europe that would startle. He could write.... But, something unspoken in the night. He must say it to himself.... "You must love her...." Then that was it. He no longer ... — Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht Read full book for free!
... his child sicken unto death, why, look For scarce abatement of his cheerfulness, 160 Or pretermission of the daily craft! While a word, gesture, glance from that same child At play or in the school or laid asleep, Will startle him to an agony of fear, Exasperation, just as like. Demand The reason why—"'t is but a word," object— "A gesture"—he regards thee as our lord Who lived there in the pyramid alone, Looked at us (dost thou mind?) when, being young, We both would ... — Men and Women • Robert Browning Read full book for free!
... can a branch do apart from the vine? It may retain a certain, momentary greenness, but death is advancing apace. And there are multitudes of professing Christians who are like detached branches; their spiritual life is ebbing away: they do not startle the beholder and cause him to exclaim, "How full of life!" They do not strike at all! They have no splendid "force of character," and they therefore exercise no arresting witness for the King. They are not "abiding" ... — My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett Read full book for free!
... now and then, not too often. He did not mean to startle any one with his purpose, but to let it grow gradually. Still, at the last assembly of the season, his attentions were somewhat pronounced. It was partly her doings, she was sheltering herself ... — A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas Read full book for free!
... as a mother might. So, with her mouth almost in my ear, she whispered, "This is delightful—is it not so? Pray, just hearken to Nicholas: 'With that I fired.' 'Then we tried the covert.' 'The lock jammed.' 'Forty-four brace.' Listen to the huntsmen! Shall we startle them with the horn, tra-la?" And she thrilled with laughter in my ear there in the blissful dark, till I had to put that over her mouth ... — Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett Read full book for free!
... around her; and when she saw that all the guard were asleep, she smiled an ominous smile, and was going up to the Prince's bedside, when she perceived that in one corner of the room there was a man yet awake. This seemed to startle her, but she went up to ... — Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford Read full book for free!
... jingle of alliteration or rhyme, which assisted their circulation, and were probably struck off extempore; a manner which Swift practised, who was a ready coiner of such rhyming and ludicrous proverbs: delighting to startle a collector by his facetious or sarcastic humour, in the shape of an "old saying and true." Some of these rhyming proverbs are, however, terse and ... — Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli Read full book for free!
... within them. These doubts enter into the mind at first almost imperceptibly: they exist only as vague indistinct surmises, and by no means take the precise shape or the substance of a formed opinion. At first, probably, they even offend and startle by their intrusion: but by degrees the unpleasant sensations which they once excited wear off: the mind grows more familiar with them. A confused sense (for such it is, rather than a formed idea) of its being desirable that their doubts should prove well founded, ... — A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce Read full book for free!
... more likely! We were so cold that a race seemed the only chance of getting warm! I hope we didn't startle... — Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey Read full book for free!
... well-developed busts, and on round and ruddy cheeks, that had ripened in the far-off island, and had hardly yet grown paler or thinner in the atmosphere of New England. There was, moreover, a boldness and rotundity of speech among these matrons, as most of them seemed to be, that would startle us at the present day, whether in respect to its purport or ... — The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne Read full book for free!
... generally known as Wagamama Irikyo (the Wayward Recluse*). His most intimate friends were the shogun's father-in-law, Shimazu Ei-O, and Ikeda Isshinsai. The latter two were also inkyo and shared the tastes and foibles of Harunari. One of their greatest pleasures was to startle society. Thus, when Sadanobu was legislating with infinite care against prodigality of any kind, the above three old gentlemen loved to organize parties on an ostentatiously extravagant scale, and Sadanobu naturally shrank from seeing the title of ... — A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi Read full book for free!
... rise from the mere maxims of worldly wisdom to the widest principles of ethical philosophy. Polybius, indeed, in the remarkable chapters with which his Histories open, uses expressions that are so modern as almost to startle us. 'People who study history,' he says, 'in separate and detached portions, without reference to one another, and suppose that from them they acquire a knowledge of the whole, are like a man who in looking on the severed members of what had once been an animated and comely ... — Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley Read full book for free!
... from the outer to the inner toe, and which indicate, from their distance apart in the straight line, a stride of about six feet in the creature that impressed them in these ancient sands,—measurements that might well startle zoologists who had derived their experience of the ornithic class from existing birds exclusively. Comparatively recent discoveries have, however, if not lessened, at least familiarized us to the ... — The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller Read full book for free!
... Milton boys who had many bunches of fire-crackers, good-naturedly thought they would startle little Washee-washee-wang at his work. So they stole around a corner of the garden, where he was busy in his neat little cabin, and "lit" a whole bunch and threw it over the fence, at a point where all would "go off" right at his door, then threw after it two cannon crackers, ... — Little Sky-High - The Surprising Doings of Washee-Washee-Wang • Hezekiah Butterworth Read full book for free!
... to carry out the rash plan. He had seen her stroll away, and had followed her until she should be so far from the house that she must listen. As she emerged from under the apple-tree, through which as a white cloud she had been looking at the moon, he appeared so suddenly as to startle her, and without any gentle reassurance he seized her hand, and poured out his feelings in a way that at first wounded ... — Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe Read full book for free!
... exercise of the will, or suddenly, as in some great physical shock, and of a necessity comes to all in the event called death. Were I to tell you how I acquired this knowledge, Mr. Henley, it would startle you, far more than any exhibition of the power itself. No, I can not tell you; at least, not at present; perhaps some day you may be better ... — The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale Read full book for free!
... I have been thinking a good deal about it, and I have a proposal to make which may at first startle you, but it appears to me that it is our only, and our best resource. The few hundred pounds which you have left are of no use in this country, except to keep you from starving for a year or two; but in another country they may be made to be worth ... — The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat Read full book for free!
... he heard a woman, in face of existing prejudices, speak the simple truth in regard to the social wrongs of her sisters, as Mrs. Love had done, asking no leave of the Convention, and making no apology for her sincere words, however they might startle false delicacy, he felt bound as a man, and in the name of man, to offer her the tribute of his ... — History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage Read full book for free!
... coming-on of rain and squally blast. And oh! that even now the gust were swelling, 15 And the slant night-shower driving loud and fast! Those sounds which oft have raised me, whilst they awed, And sent my soul abroad, Might now perhaps their wonted impulse give, Might startle this dull pain, and make it move so ... — Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge Read full book for free!
... the King, Who has publicly commanded None should dare descry the wonder That among these rocks is guarded, Yield at once your arms and lives, Or this pistol, this cold aspic Formed of steel, the penetrating Poison of two balls will scatter, The report and fire of which Will the air astound and startle. ... — Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca Read full book for free!
... have gained, my dear lady, while I have been knocking about the world. You are now more than "sweet": you are almost handsome. I suppose it is a question of lights and the time of day whether or not you are really brilliant. And you carry surety in your face. There is nothing in Chicago to startle you, ... — Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick Read full book for free!
... the repugnance she felt toward the miserable, misshapen creature, now sleeping on the floor, and after one glance in his direction looked swiftly away. But that glance had been sufficient to startle her by its resemblance to another face she hoped never ... — Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond Read full book for free!
... will be pitched in the depths of forests or on desolate, naked barrens; and always, in forests or on barrens, he will hear the rush and roar of mighty rivers or the lapping waves of wide, far-reaching lakes. The timber wolf will startle him from sleep in the dead of night with its long, weird howl, rising and falling in dismal cadence, or the silence will be broken perchance by the wild, uncanny laugh of the loon falling upon the darkness as a token of ill ... — Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace Read full book for free!
... him. "Here, don't startle me; I've got a weak heart," he observed, with a grin. "You say it as if you meant it. Here, what's ... — The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice Read full book for free!
... astonishing and yet natural things which sometimes startle us is the value some minds attach to mere modernity in art. An old thing is tossed up in a new way, and there are those who attach more value to the way than the thing, and are instantly agape with admiration of ... — My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray Read full book for free!
... over to the exit, and crawled out. And what his eyes beheld was enough to startle anybody, let alone a boy. If a genuine cyclone had not struck the camp on the Little Machias, then something almost as bad must have dropped down upon them, Thad thought, as he stared, hardly able to believe his eyes, or ... — The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter Read full book for free!
... rate, there he sat, a sad memento of the fate that so often overtakes those who would penetrate into the unknown; and there doubtless he will still sit, crowned with the dread majesty of death, for centuries yet unborn, to startle the eyes of wanderers like ourselves, if ever any such should come again to invade his loneliness. The thing overpowered us, already almost perished as we were ... — King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard Read full book for free!
... about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful dawn; A dancing shape, an image gay, To haunt, to startle, ... — Health and Education • Charles Kingsley Read full book for free!
... girl about thirteen years old passed us—a child with a thin anxious face burnt by the sun to a dark brown, and deep-set, dark blue, penetrating eyes. It was a face to startle one; and as she went by she stared intently at the ... — A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson Read full book for free!
... for such fun. He's going to startle the crowd with a regular Captain Kidd rig, pistols and cutlasses enough for a whole ... — A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott Read full book for free!
... Sometimes in the village street, the slender column grey against the green trees, sometimes in the churchyard, these crosses come on the mind like a sudden enigma. It requires an effort to grasp their meaning, so long have the ideas passed away which led to their erection. They almost startle modern thought. How many years since the peasant women knelt at their steps! On the base of one which has a sculptured shaft the wall-rue fern was growing. A young starling was perched on the yew by it; he could but just fly, and fluttered across to the sill of the church window. Young birds ... — Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies Read full book for free!
... well the reason why he had not interfered. He had not interfered because he had wished too much to interfere. The desire had been strong enough to startle him, to warn him. ... — A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens Read full book for free!
... bent over her work, getting up from time to time to turn the roast which she had impaled upon a sharp stick above the glowing coals, the bride had a stream of shy callers, of the little people of the woods. She sat very still, so as not to startle them, and there is much curiosity among these people concerning ... — Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman Read full book for free!
... soon plain enough, and whether venomous or not it was enough to startle the watcher, as a serpent some seven or eight feet in length came into sight, travelling through the undergrowth, with its scales ever changing in tint as its folds came more or less into connection with the ... — Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn Read full book for free!
... remember how often the Agitation of the Slavery question has been done to death in Congress, and how sure it was to appear again to startle its murderers from their propriety. Like "the blood-boltered Banquo," it would confront again the eyes that had hoped to look upon it no ... — The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various Read full book for free!
... warning to malefactors—extended itself in a kind of grim appeal to everybody. It seemed to possess strange fascinations for all seafaring folk; and when there was a man-of-war in port the rat-tat-tat of that knocker would frequently startle the quiet neighborhood long after midnight. There appeared to be an occult understanding between it and the blue-jackets. Years ago there was a young Bilkins, one Pendexter Bilkins—a sad losel, we fear—who ... — Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various Read full book for free!
... nothing in his advances to startle or alarm. He never even talked of love, but there are modes of making it more eloquent than language, and which convey it subtilely and irresistibly to the heart. The beam of the eye, the tone of voice, the thousand tendernesses ... — The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving Read full book for free!
... occurred that night an event which gave my thoughts quite a new turn, and seemed to startle even Carmilla's languid nature into ... — Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu Read full book for free!
... and wilds alone, thou blendest thus The dirge note and the song of festival; But in one heart, one changeful human heart,— Ay, and within one hour of that strange world,— Thou call'st their music forth, with all its tones To startle and to pierce!—the dying Swan's, And the glad Sky-lark's,—Triumph ... — Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson Read full book for free!
... between the Espronceda of legend and the Espronceda of fact; for a legend sprang up during his own lifetime, largely the result of his own self-defamation. Like many other Romanticists, Espronceda affected a reputation for diabolism. He loved to startle the bourgeois, to pose as atheist, rake, deposer of tyrants. Escosura sums up this aspect of his character by branding him "a hypocrite of vice." Many have been led astray by Ferrer del Ro's statement that in drawing the character of the ... — El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup Read full book for free!
... blessing of being still able to call it home, darkened for ever as it is, for the multiplying memories with which it is thronged make it dearer as well as sadder every day of my life! Lotty, shall I ever believe that he has left me, quite left me, never to return? Will the fearful silence ever cease to startle me? Whenever I came in from a walk or a drive I used to know almost before I opened his door, by the sound of his voice, or of something, whether all was well with him, and now there is only that deadly silence. And yet, I often ... — Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell Read full book for free!
... trader, laughing quietly. "That was merely to startle you out of your, pardon me, unreasonable obstinacy. You must believe me it was the only thing possible that you should accompany us, for if you were a whiskey runner then it was better for us that you should be under guard, ... — Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor Read full book for free!
... can any punishment be devised or imposed for such a huge panorama of sorrow? I think she has already punished herself horribly, and will continue to do so. My prayer is that what we have gone through will startle the world into some new realization of the sanctity of life—all life, animal as well as human. Don't you find that a visit to a zoo can humble and astound you with all that amazing and grotesque ... — The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley Read full book for free!
... extra money by doing odd jobs. But nothing could get his speech back. It was a very stubborn and perplexing case. For eighteen months he had not succeeded in uttering a word, though understanding everything that was said to him. All the usual devices had failed; every kind of sudden surprise to startle him into articulation had been attempted; electricity had been passed through the muscles of the tongue and larynx; doctors had discussed him with a volubility only equalled by his own silence. But he ... — Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 5, 1917 • Various Read full book for free!
... seems to have led them to prefer, for their patterned walls, pale and dull hues.... The general tone of their coloring is quiet, not to say sombre. There is no striving after brilliant effects. The Assyrian artist seeks to please by the elegance of his forms and the harmony of his hues, not to startle by a display of bright and ... — Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin Read full book for free!
... could have returned to his native city after fifteen years or so in the grave, not the least of the phenomena to startle him would have been that which was taking place in his own house. For he would have beheld serenely established in that former abode of Calvinism one of the most reprehensible of exotic abominations, a 'mariage de convenance;' nor could he have failed to observe, moreover, the complacency with ... — The Crossing • Winston Churchill Read full book for free!
... hire the services of a detective, and will file a petition in the Divorce Court. The case will probably be undefended, and the Court having listened to her tale of cruelty, the imaginative boldness of which will startle even the friend who corroborates it in the witness-box, will decree to her a divorce from the supposed author of her sufferings. She will then set up for a short time as an object of universal pity, but, meeting a bluff and burly widower, she will accept him as her second husband. After ... — Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, May 3, 1890. • Various Read full book for free!
... hourly expected for weeks; yet when it comes, it falls on us suddenly, and reveals in us emotions we could not dream. The opening of those heavenly gate for them startles and flutters our souls with strange mysterious thrills, unfelt before. The glimpse of glories, the sweep of voices, all startle and dazzle us, and the soul for many a day aches and longs ... — Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur Read full book for free!
... the boldest book ever written. There are no similitudes in Ossian or the Iliad or the Odyssey so daring. Its imagery sometimes seems on the verge of the reckless, but only seems so. The fact is that God would startle and arouse and propel men and nations. A tame and limping similitude would fail to accomplish the object. While there are times when He employs in the Bible the gentle dew and the morning cloud and the dove and the daybreak in the presentation ... — New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage Read full book for free!
... movement. There was something so strange and uncanny about it—for I by this time knew the ground well enough to be fully aware that there ought not to be any moving thing there—that I stopped playing and sprang to my feet so suddenly that my movement appeared to startle Ama, who uttered a little cry of alarm, or surprise, and made as though she too would spring ... — A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood Read full book for free!
... Ireland, Scotland, with imitations in slang or of brogue, as the case may be, on every possible or even impossible opportunity; and, when the subject of conversation does not afford him any chance for his interpolations, then, for a time, he will "lay low," like. Brer Fox, only to startle us with some sudden outbursts of song, generally selected from the popular English Melodies of a byegone period, such as "My Pretty Jane," "My Love is like a red, red Rose," or "Good-bye, Sweetheart, good-bye," and such-like ... — Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 29, 1891 • Various Read full book for free!
... the mossy grass, And gathered up her work and went her way; Straight to that ancient turret she did pass, And startle back some fawns that were at play. She did not sigh, she never said "Alas!" Although he was her friend: but still that day, Where elm and hornbeam spread a towering dome, She crossed the ... — Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow Read full book for free!
... to keep the same sense of surprise in one's home town that one would have in a strange city. You will find much to startle you if you keep your eyes open. Yesterday, for instance, I was lucky enough to meet a gentleman who had stood only a few feet away from Lincoln when he made the Gettysburg Speech. Then I found that in a certain cafeteria which I frequent the price ... — Pipefuls • Christopher Morley Read full book for free!
... of uniform and equipment. The officers may write to the papers demanding the heads of the Horse Guards in default of cleaner redress for grievances; the men may break loose across a country town and seriously startle the publicans; but neither officers nor men have it in their composition to mutiny after the continental manner. The English people, when they trouble to think about the army at all, are, and with justice, ... — This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling Read full book for free!
... how long it was since any woman had spoken to her in that tone. It seemed to startle back her shattered wits. She rose to her ... — John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik Read full book for free!
... quite forget myself, and sit staring into vacancy, till Mr. Davies, lifting his nose from his volume, would note my absence and call on me by name, and thump his desk, and startle me with some question on the matter we were supposed to have in hand. A mighty matter, truly, the name of some emperor or the date of some campaign—matter infinitely less real than the name of the ship that was leaving the harbour or the sunlight on the incoming sail. ... — Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy Read full book for free!
... hour. (There was a chime) Lunar Projects Placement is here to serve you. Plastics-chemists, hydroponics specialists, machinists, mechanics, metallurgists, miners, helpers—all are urgently needed. The tax-free pay will startle you. Free subsistence and quarters. Here at Serene, at Tycho Station or at ... — The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun Read full book for free!
... sustained, and the earth must have become for the most part desert plain, or stagnant marsh. But the feeding of the rivers and the purifying of the winds are the least of the services appointed to the hills. To fill the thirst of the human heart for the beauty of God's working,—to startle its lethargy with the deep and pure agitation of astonishment,—are their higher missions. They are as a great and noble architecture; first giving shelter, comfort, and rest; and covered also with mighty sculpture ... — Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin Read full book for free!
... Salesman Moral steam-roller had passed over it Morality-everybody's private instinct of self-preservation Morals made by men Never felt as yet the want of any occupation No two human beings ever tell each other what they really feel Not his fault that half the world was dark Nothing in that book to startle him or make him think Of course! The words seemed very much or very little One from whom the half of life must be excluded Overwork personified Potent law of hobbies controlled the upper classes Professional intolerance Putting into words things that can't be put in words Secret ... — Quotations from the Works of John Galsworthy • David Widger Read full book for free!
... goods in Cap'n Abe's store did not so much startle the visitor, as the figure that rose from behind the counter, where he was ... — Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper Read full book for free!
... of hoofs was heard, and looking toward the sound, I perceived the Chancellor cantering down the road. When abreast of the carriage he dismounted, and walking up to it, saluted the Emperor in a quick, brusque way that seemed to startle him. After a word or two, the party moved perhaps a hundred yards further on, where they stopped opposite the weaver's cottage so famous from that day. This little house is on the east side of the Donchery road, near its junction with that to Frenois, and stands about ... — The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan Read full book for free!
... almost fierce action—the peculiar abruptness of the apostrophe—the whitely-robed, the almost spiritual elevation of figure—all so dramatic—combined necessarily to startle and surprise; and, for a few moments, no answer was returned to the unlooked-for speech. But the effect could not be permanent upon minds made familiar with the thousand forms of human and strong energies. Munro, after a ... — Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms Read full book for free!
... young and I used him sore, So you never shall startle Frankie more, Without capsizing Earth and her waters. ... — Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling Read full book for free!
... lorgnettes, as he bowed forward, grasped the hem of his frock-coat with two fingers of each hand, and with springy legs demonstrated the various steps of the mazurka. But when he had a mind to completely startle his audience, he would suddenly and without cogent reason leap high in the air, cut pigeon-wings with bewildering rapidity, trilling with his feet, so to say, whereupon he would return to this earth with a muffled thud which, however, shook ... — The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various Read full book for free!
... And, do you know, I will; for who knows what might happen? They tell me down in the village that there's trouble uppards, and people gets talking agen the king. Ah! I'd talk 'em if I had my way, and make some of 'em squirm.—Yes, I will tidy things up a bit. Startle some on 'em if we was to fire off a gun ... — The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn Read full book for free!
... and fro through the room with a cautious tranquillity which nothing could startle; she prepared her decayed roots for food with a patient attention which nothing could divert. Lost, through the aggravated miseries of her position, to recent grief and present apprehension, she could still instinctively perform the simple offices of the woman and the ... — Antonina • Wilkie Collins Read full book for free!
... First of all, there are the transport-wagons, with their long span of oxen straggling all across the road, and a nervous bullock precipitating himself under your horse's nose. The driver, too, invariably takes the opportunity of a lady passing him to crack his whip violently, enough to startle any horse except Scotsman. Then when you have passed the place where the wagons most do congregate, and think you are tolerably safe and need only look out for ruts and holes in the street, lo! a furious galloping behind you, and some half dozen of ... — Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various Read full book for free!
... feeling came to Philip that possibly the whole story was an elaborate imposture, not told with any base motive, but merely from a wish to impress, startle, and amaze. Athelny had told him that he was at Winchester; but Philip, sensitive to differences of manner, did not feel that his host had the characteristics of a man educated at a great public school. While he pointed out ... — Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham Read full book for free!
... to benevolence, and take men of business and opulence on their own ground. If this principle will fill one's own treasuries, it will fill the treasuries of the Lord. Let it then be regarded. I would sound it in the ears of the million who are delving the earth for gold, and startle them from their delusive dreams. I would that it might echo and re-echo till its solemn utterances should make every votary of Mammon tremble. Hear, ye rich men; give ear, ye who are pursuing the bubbles of wealth! is it christian, is it right, to adopt principles of prudence and ... — The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark Read full book for free!
... the senior, making himself young to please the boy, and to show him that, if he looked old, he was not worn out, "would you like a bit of fun? We will startle her—we'll give her a kiss." Arthur hung back irresolute, and his cheeks were ... — Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade Read full book for free!
... 1883, a striking young Frenchman, who said he was a nobleman, came to Little Missouri with a plan ready-made to build a community there to rival Omaha, and a business that would startle America's foremost financiers, the citizens of the wicked little frontier settlement, who thought that they knew all the possibilities of "tenderfeet" and "pilgrims" and "how-do-you-do-boys," admitted in some bewilderment that they had been mistaken. The Frenchman's name ... — Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn Read full book for free!
... told you, dear, that you must use your common-sense; and you must have known that to startle Stella by a sudden scream at her was enough to make her drop ... — Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells Read full book for free!
... trouble to himself in its perusal. I feel often that my lack of skill is spoiling what might be a good story. That I cannot help; and I write with the firm conviction that any effort on my part to arrange these facts in such order that the tale should show dramatic force, or startle him with unexpected issues of event, would only procure derision for its writer, and might even obscure the only end he has at heart, that of giving a complete grasp of the facts, as nearly as may be in the order of ... — When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan Read full book for free!
... her bosom rend, And let me hence to hell alive descend; Or die the death I dread no less than hell, Sew'd in a sack, and plunged into a well, Ere I my fame by one lewd act disgrace, Or once renounce the honour of my race. 590 For know, sir knight, of gentle blood I came; I loathe a whore, and startle at the name. But jealous men on their own crimes reflect, And learn from thence their ladies to suspect: Else why these heedless cautions, sir, to me These doubts and fears of female constancy This chime still rings in every lady's ear, ... — Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope Read full book for free!
... the head of the grave was vacant, and for a long moment the ceremony halted as if waiting for a manifestation. With a swift, sudden startle the coil of black cord, always reserved for the chief mourner, slipped off the coffin-lid and fell heavily into ... — Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett Read full book for free!
... account went on, showed the case to be as originally stated. The well-known lawyer had been interviewed. He had told the reporter that the contents of Field's letter were surprising beyond words and that as soon as he had made full preparations some arrests would follow that would startle the country. The lawyer, whose name was withheld for obvious reasons, was a man whose integrity was beyond question. He had no intention of using the funds willed him by Field, for he and Field had grown up together in a little New England town. The money would be put in trust ... — The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow Read full book for free!
... the removal of sin, redemption, pardon, sanctification, which otherwise are mere words. God speaks to us primarily in our hearts. Self- knowledge is the key to the precepts and doctrines of Scripture. The very utmost that any outward notices of religion can do is to startle us and make us turn inward and search our hearts; and then, when we have experienced what it is to read ourselves, we shall profit by the doctrine of the Church and the Bible." My brethren, the temper ... — Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte Read full book for free!
... he remained for a short while—until satisfied that Tiburcio was yet alive. Then a bright thought seemed to startle him; for a voice had spoken to him from within, stronger than the voice of conscience. It was that of personal interest. Cuchillo knew the rare qualities of Tiburcio—his talents as a rastreador, or tracker—his daring prowess in Indian warfare; and after some consideration, he resolved to ... — Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid Read full book for free!
... They all counseled patience, and advised against any attempt to hasten her recollections upon any point; they all had known similar cases, but never one so sharply defined or so painful as this. Still they were unanimous in advising that nothing should be said to startle her; that all ... — Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson Read full book for free!
... summers rear'd up in an hour! Then I said, in the fear of my dream, I will fly From this magic, but could not, because that my eye Grew love-idle among the rich blooms; and the earth Held me down with its coolness of touch, and the mirth Of some bird was above me,—who, even in fear, Would startle the thrush? and methought there drew near A form as of AEgle,—but it was not the face Hope made, and I knew the witch-Queen of that place, Even Circe the Cruel, that came like a Death, Which I fear'd, and yet fled not, for want of my breath. There was thought in her face, and her eyes were not ... — The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood Read full book for free!
... hurry his courtship, for he believed that he had a clear field before him, and he was too sagacious to startle Clara by overmuch energy. Meantime he began to be conscious that an influence from her was reaching his spirit. He had hitherto considered her a child; one day he suddenly recognized her as a woman. Now a woman, a beautiful ... — Overland • John William De Forest Read full book for free!
... hit on," Aunt 'Phrony proceeded, "de fire blaze an' spit an' sputter jes' lak dis do, an' de ooman she fotched a yell an' cried out, she did, 'Lan' er de mussiful! W'at cur'ous sort er wood is dish yer dat ac' lak dis?' De Owl he wuz startle' an' he look roun' suddint, dis-a-way, over his shoulder, an' de wimmins dey let out a turr'ble screech, 'kase dey seed 'twa'n't nuttin' but a ... — The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various Read full book for free!
... fury flew, (From Hector, Phoebus turn'd the flying wound,) Yet fell not dry or guiltless to the ground: Thy breast, brave Archeptolemus! it tore, And dipp'd its feathers in no vulgar gore. Headlong he falls: his sudden fall alarms The steeds, that startle at his sounding arms. Hector with grief his charioteer beheld All pale and breathless on the sanguine field: Then bids Cebriones direct the rein, Quits his bright car, and issues on the plain. Dreadful he shouts: from earth a ... — The Iliad of Homer • Homer Read full book for free!
... could lay down his life with as much ease and willingness as another man could put off his clothes. He even wished, every step of his journey, to meet with the wild beasts; and though that death was most shocking and barbarous, and presented the most frightful ideas, sufficient to startle the firmest resolution; yet it was incapable of making the least impression upon his courageous soul. The perfect mortification of his affections appears from his heavenly meekness; and he expressed how perfectly he was dead to himself and the world, living ... — The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler Read full book for free!
... wreak thy murder. Hissing fire of flaming stead, Groan of spear-carles, wail of women, Soon shall startle through the night. Then on Mosfell, Kirtle-Wearer, Eric waits the face of Death. Freed from weary life and sorrow, Soon we'll kiss in ... — Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard Read full book for free!
... but one thing more to ask. Why, if your story is authentic, and well calculated to startle even the brave king, have you thought it necessary to remove ... — Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach Read full book for free!
... of this before the boy's dreadful secret was revealed to Winona; six weeks before he appeared to startle her with one eye radiating the rich hues of a ripened eggplant. It had been simple enough. He had seen his chance to step in and punish Spike, and he had stepped—and Spike's ... — The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson Read full book for free!
... questions with upturned noses, a rock above them will sometimes be unable to keep its own countenance, but, simulating without flattery one of the human visages below, will wear an expression of humour fiendish enough to startle the least superstitious ... — Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker Read full book for free!
... that night a solemn vow, To startle all beholders: I wore white muslin on my brow, Green velvet on my shoulders— My trousers were supremely wide, I learn'd to swear "by Allah"— I stuck a poniard by my side, ... — The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 345, December 6, 1828 • Various Read full book for free!
... before long, the organs of the human body; that a light has been found which can penetrate, so as to make a photographic record, through everything from a purse or a pocket to the walls of a room or a house, is news which cannot fail to startle everybody. That the eye of the physician or surgeon, long baffled by the skin, and vainly seeking to penetrate the unfortunate darkness of the human body, is now to be supplemented by a camera, making all the parts of the human body as visible, in a way, as the exterior, ... — McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various Read full book for free!
... his splendid capacity for prompt decision, the Doctor suddenly wheeled old Billy about and went sleighing in considerable excitement into the village whence a host of night-telegrams went singing over the busy wires to startle eventually a slumbering conscience or so. And presently when the Doctor drew up with a flourish before the lonely little house among the forest pines, his earlier depression ... — When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple Read full book for free!
... Lord Grey, a petition from Nottingham for the disestablishment of the Church of England. The Premier regretted that he could not give his support to such a sweeping measure, which would embarrass the Ministry, alarm both Houses of Parliament, and startle the nation. He declared his intention of standing by the Church to the best of his ability, believing it to be the sacred duty of Government to maintain an establishment of religion. To which sturdy ... — Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston Read full book for free!
... was the most thrilling place of all. It opened out of my sister's room, which was a large, sombre apartment. It was said to attract a frequently seen ghost by the force of its profound twilight and historic sorrows; and my sister, who was courageous enough to startle a ghost, highly approved of this corner of her domain. But she suddenly lost her buoyant taste for disembodied spirits, and a rumor floated mistily about that Una had seen the wretched woman who could not forget her woes in death. In "Monte Beni" this ... — Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop Read full book for free!
... to ascertain from the servants what the lady's future movements might be; and, thus informed, to startle her by anonymous warnings, conveyed through the post, and claiming their answer through the advertising channel of a newspaper. Here was the certainty of alarming her, coupled with the certainty of safety to himself! Little did Mrs. Glenarm dream, when she capriciously ... — Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins Read full book for free!
... faces and observable in their attitudes, as no wonder it should. What they have just seen is sufficient to terrify the stoutest hearts—even those of tried tars, as all of them are. A ship manned by hairy men—a crew of veritable Orsons! Certainly enough to startle the most phlegmatic mariner, and make him tremble as he tugs at his oar. But they have ceased tugging at their oars, and hold them, blades suspended. Almost the same is their breath. One alone, at length, musters ... — The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid Read full book for free!
... young supercargo, it was his second voyage in such capacity, and he suffered much secret worry from his lack of experience in pricing pearls. But when Mapuhi exposed the pearl to his sight he managed to suppress the startle it gave him, and to maintain a careless, commercial expression on his face. For the pearl had struck him a blow. It was large as a pigeon egg, a perfect sphere, of a whiteness that reflected opalescent lights from all colors about ... — South Sea Tales • Jack London Read full book for free!
... letter as good as the best that has been, I do not think you will find much scope for development of it; I would therefore put in a word for some form of gothic letter for use in our improved printed book. This may startle some of you, but you must remember that except for a very remarkable type used very seldom by Berthelette (I have only seen two books in this type. Bartholomew, the Englishman, and the Gower, of 1532), English black-letter, since the days ... — The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris Read full book for free!
... we may be with the nervous little seedpods of the touch-me-not, which children ever love to pop and see the seeds fly, as they do from balsam pods in grandmother's garden, they still startle with the suddenness of their volley. Touch the delicate hair-trigger at the end of a capsule, and the lightning response of the flying seeds makes one jump. They sometimes land four feet away. At this rate of progress a year, and with the other odds against which all plants ... — Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan Read full book for free!
... fellow would fall into my hands," replied my companion. "If so, then revelations will be made that will startle Europe." ... — The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux Read full book for free!
... those days it was the fashion for young ladies to be frail and delicate and the least noise was apt to startle them and ... — The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm Read full book for free!
... home late at night, and even if they startle me a little when I'm in bed, the pleasure of going to sleep again is all the greater. But in the morning I awaken them, when I put my room in order. Then they scold a little and go." I had been observing him in the mean time. His clothes were scrupulously ... — The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke Read full book for free!
... happened to disturb you?—anything remarkable in Cousin Hepzibah's family?— An arrival, eh? I thought so! No wonder you are out of sorts, my little cousin. To be an inmate with such a guest may well startle an ... — The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne Read full book for free!
... to those who are not familiar with French churches. As the priest passes the dish to each row the official brings his metal-headed staff down upon the pavement with a noisy bang that is calculated to startle the unwary into dropping their money anywhere else than in the plate. In time the bell rings beside the altar, and the priest robed in white and gold elevates the host before the kneeling congregation. Once more the man in the cocked hat becomes ... — Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home Read full book for free!
... emergency, were charging the bunch intrepidly. Others made shift with flat sirup-cans with pebbles inside. A few, like Pink and the Silent One, flapped their slickers till their arms ached. Anything, everything that would make a din and startle the cattle out of their lethargy, was pressed ... — Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower Read full book for free!
... on Jacques called out anxious protests from men like rollicking Soldier Joe, who said to her one night, "Blanche, there's a devil in Jacques. Some day you'll startle him, and then he'll shoot you as cool as he empties the pockets ... — The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker Read full book for free!
... her with parted lips. He seemed afraid to breathe lest he startle away some hesitant hope. "I?" ... — Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt Read full book for free!
... circumstances was born a child who was destined to excite the wonder of European courts—to startle and thrill and utterly amaze great audiences by her dramatic genius. But for ten years the family—which grew until it consisted of one son and five daughters—kept on its wanderings through Switzerland and Germany. Finally, they settled down in Lyons, where the mother ... — Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr Read full book for free!
... playing and quarrelling, and, further away, the low, dull, continuous roar of traffic in the Edgware Road. Then she would drop back again, to crouch against the wall, drawing the quilt about her, and remain motionless until a step on the stair or the banging of a door below would startle her once more. ... — Fan • Henry Harford Read full book for free!
... and the wild ponies stood and stared boldly at the solitary boy, without fleeing from his path, as if they had long since forgotten how the bilberry gatherers had delighted in frightening them. Stephen was too grave and manlike to startle them into memory of it, and he plodded on mile after mile with the three notes in his pocket and his hand closed upon them, pondering deeply with what words he should speak to the unknown clergyman ... — Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton Read full book for free!
... undaunted toils, Sails unknown seas to unknown soils, With various wonders feasts his sight: What stranger wonders does he write! We read, and in description view Creatures which Adam never knew: For, when we risk no contradiction, It prompts the tongue to deal in fiction. Those things that startle me or you, I grant are strange; yet may be true. 10 Who doubts that elephants are found For science and for sense renowned? Borri records their strength of parts, Extent of thought, and skill in arts; How they perform the law's decrees, And save the state the hangman's fees; ... — The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville Read full book for free!
... closing the door behind her as she went. She did not want to be obliged to go over the details of the story which she had heard; she had made her statement, one which she knew must startle and horrify her son, with his high ideals of womanly purity, and she left him to review the situation in silence. It was several hours before the ... — An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox Read full book for free!
... great intoxication among the Indians; finally, the apprehension lest my younger children should be caught by that singular charm, so dangerous at their tender years; are the only considerations that startle me. By what power does it come to pass, that children who have been adopted when young among these people, can never be prevailed on to readopt European manners? Many an anxious parent I have seen last war, who at the ... — Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur Read full book for free!
... characteristics of hypnotism in which even the subjective idea of sleep is entirely absent, for instance, all those which are usually called states of fascination. A certain shining light or a glimpse of an uncanny eye may startle and upset the imagination of the subject and throw him into a state of abnormally increased suggestibility. It is well known that whole epidemics of such captivation have occurred and have resulted in hysterias of the masses in which the subjects become the slaves ... — Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg Read full book for free!
... shaky voice. "Say, you gave me an awful scare! I thought it must be some old tramp that grabbed me, sure I did. It's all right now, Hugh, and I'm not wanting to clear out, since I know who you are. That's Thad, too, I reckon, holding my little flash-light. How you did startle me, though. I never dreamed anybody was around here when I started to ... — The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson Read full book for free!
... day trying for a predetermined point, but generally emerging into some unknown and delightfully unsuspected valleys of quietness; Sleepy Hollows down which no headless horsemen had ever thundered to startle the wild-fowl sailing low in the evening twilight, and over which the moon would later pour her serene, unearthly radiance; while we, footsore, hungry, thirsty, and quite absurdly elated at our success, would press on towards some twinkle of light in the distance, which told ... — Aliens • William McFee Read full book for free!
... ivy-clad ruin could barely be distinguished; presently, a burst of music from the band was immediately followed by a remarkably strong beam of light, which shot into the darkness with such effect as to fairly startle those present. Then it rested on the grey walls of the huge pile, bathing in brightness the massive stones and clinging ivy, the respective colours of each being vividly apparent. But the most striking feature was yet to come. The hundreds of ... — A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes Read full book for free!
... psychological grounds of their possibility; whether lying in any peculiarly vicious education, early familiarity with bad models, corrupting associations, or other plausible key to effects, which, taken separately, and out of their natural connection with their explanatory causes, are apt rather to startle and revolt the feelings of sober thinkers. Except, perhaps, in some chapters of Italian history, as, for example, among the most profligate of the Papal houses, and amongst some of the Florentine princes, we find hardly any parallel to the atrocities of Caligula ... — The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey Read full book for free!
... blast of fire Blew them together; and round its lords that met Paused all the reeling battle; two main waves Meeting, one hurled sheer from the sea-wall back That shocks it sideways, one right in from sea Charging, that full in face takes at one blow That whole recoil and ruin, with less fear Startle men's eyes late shipwrecked; for a breath Crest fronting crest hung, wave to wave rose poised, Then clashed, breaker to breaker; cloud with cloud 1550 In heaven, chariot with chariot closed on earth, One fourfold flash and thunder; yet a breath, And with the ... — Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne Read full book for free!
... comparatively easy task, for the coming of the boat was sufficient as a rule to startle the timid fish, which in turn scared those in front, the beating with the poles at either side sending forward any which might be disposed ... — Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn Read full book for free!
... have the temerity so to interrupt the progress of science. I had about deduced from certain astronomic phenomena I have had under minute observation during the past several tropic nights an entirely new nebular hypothesis which will unquestionably startle the scientific world. I wish to consult a very excellent monograph on Laplace's hypothesis, which I understand is in a certain private collection in New York City. Your interference, Mr. Philander, will result ... — The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs Read full book for free!
... the spirit of "gramarye" in Buerger's Lenore, etherealised and refined it. Scott and Lewis gloried in the gruesome details and spirited rhythm of the ballad, and in their supernatural poems wish to startle and terrify, not to awe, their readers. Those who revel in phosphorescent lights and in the rattle of the skeleton are apt to o'erleap themselves; and Scott's Glenfinlas, Lewis's Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene and Southey's Old Woman of Berkeley fall into ... — The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead Read full book for free!
... all you do will be appropriately executed, and in a manner that will not startle me very greatly, and excite as little comment as possible, again I shall leave all in ... — Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley Read full book for free!
... the secret survival of a more ancient religion. Voodoo, whether practiced, as it is to-day, in Philadelphia, New York, Havana, or Senegambia, deals with alleged devils, poisons, chicken bones, the ivory root, unnatural orgies,—all, in short, that can startle and astonish ignorant natures; it is the combination of the oldest faith with its successor. Far higher forms are those of the magic of the black Takowri whom one meets divining about the streets of Cairo, or of the Arab proper, ... — The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland Read full book for free!
... minutes after I saw how darkness and fancy can combine to startle one who wakes suddenly from sleep, for the man who had been Mr Raydon's companion on the previous day suddenly made his appearance silently at the door and walked in, his deerskin moccasins making no sound as he came towards us. He was followed by a great fierce-looking ... — To The West • George Manville Fenn Read full book for free!
... wrapped in slumber. I hesitated to pull the bell: no, it would startle Mrs. Sloman. Bessie was coming: she would surely not make me wait. Was not that her muslin curtain stirring? I would wait in the porch—she ... — On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell Read full book for free!
... bold were they sometimes, that on a Sabbath morning, when the bell of Sandwick Church, hard by, had been ringing for divine service, I have seen the animals collect in numbers on the beach to listen to the strange sound, which held them so fixed and charmed, that it required an effort to startle them away. Now, however, the seals seemed to have deserted the place, and I was not sorry when Tom Kinlay proposed that we should give up our search for ... — The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton Read full book for free!
... knew something and feared lest it should come to his knowledge. Therefore he resolved to startle her by a blunt question. "I never knew you were ... — The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume Read full book for free!
... white figure, the deep silence, broken only by the faint murmur of the river and the distant singing of a nightingale, the gleam of the glowworms, compose a scene of fantastic beauty. The slightest sounds startle her, whether it be a fish leaping at the surface of the water to seize a fly, the gurgling of a little eddy, or the shrill cry of a bat. There is a certain voluptuous beauty in the very sound of the words that describe the little nymph, kissed ... — Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer Read full book for free!
... in the habit of praying with and for people in great misery, as well as in great sin, so the request did not startle her as it might have startled many. She read, from the Prayer Book, the Confession, and then chose the concluding portion of the Litany, feeling sure that almost any part of that list of petitions was suitable both for Howel and ... — Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale Read full book for free!
... was absolute, a couple or more of prairie-wolves lurking in the vicinity, without the faintest note of prelude, would startle the calm of night with their peculiar commingling of barks, howls and wails,—a racket all their own. It was the habit of these night prowlers of the desert to come as near to the camp as their acute ... — Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell Read full book for free!
... chambers were cold and gloomy, and when she left her own little room to while away the tedious hours, and sat in one of them, she was still and motionless as their inanimate occupants, and had no heart to startle the echoes—hoarse from their long silence—with ... — The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens Read full book for free!
... less extent spring up within them. These doubts enter into the mind at first almost imperceptibly: they exist only as vague indistinct surmises, and by no means take the precise shape or the substance of a formed opinion. At first, probably, they even offend and startle by their intrusion: but by degrees the unpleasant sensations which they once excited wear off: the mind grows more familiar with them. A confused sense (for such it is, rather than a formed idea) of its being desirable that their doubts should prove well founded, ... — A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce Read full book for free!
... companion stopped a minute—and in the pause we could hear the old trees wave very solemnly above us, and a nut, or burr, or sycamore ball, came rattling down the old kirk roof as we stood there in the graves, to startle us the more, and then ... — Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend Read full book for free!
... her annual holiday in the Highlands of Scotland, the land which is peculiarly dear to her. No sounds of widows weeping for their slain husbands and sons—no fierce battle-cries—no terrible wailings over slaughtered families and ruined homes—startle the still air. But, instead, the children sing the national anthem, as if they knew all that it means; and wherever, on this or the other side of the Tweed, the dear familiar face, with its crown of silvering hair, is seen, the ... — Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope Read full book for free!
... does not startle Addison, or cause him any misgiving; on the contrary he boldly asserts (Spectator, No. 135), "The same single letter 's' on many occasions does the office of a whole word, and represents the 'his' or ... — English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench Read full book for free!
... pistol from his belt. "You won't hit me!" yelled Davis, gnashing his teeth and trying to startle the captain by rolling his eye-balls hideously. The latter fired, and whoever was looking at Davis at the moment saw a bloody star on his forehead where the bullet entered. The pirate suddenly grasped the handle of his hammer with both ... — The Corsair King • Mor Jokai Read full book for free!
... cottage, although strengthened, enlarged, and made more comfortable through the good fortunes of the Bunkers, was no longer sheltered by the cliff, but was exposed to the full strength of the Pacific gales. There were long nights when she could hear the rain fall monotonously on the shingles, or startle her with a short, sharp reveille en the windows; there were brief days of flying clouds and drifting sunshine, and intervals of dull gray shadow, when the heaving white breakers beyond the Gate slowly lifted themselves and sank before her like wraiths of warning. ... — Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte Read full book for free!
... examine the grounds of our belief in that order. With a vigour of logic rarely equalled, and with a confidence in its conclusions never surpassed, he disposes of this belief in a manner calculated to startle those who, without due examination, had come to the conclusion that the order of nature was secure. What we mean, he says, by our belief in the order of nature, is the belief that the future will be like the past. There is not, according ... — Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall Read full book for free!
... rose, and as he rose, a twig snapped beneath one of his great, padded paws. Like a shot from a rifle he charged upon the filly; but the snapped twig had been enough to startle the timorous quarry, so that they were in instant flight ... — Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs Read full book for free!
... matter of course. As the tree of knowledge sprouts and expands within him, shooting out leaf after leaf of practical experience, the succession of surprises dulls his faculty of wonderment. It takes a great deal to startle... — The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum Read full book for free!
... from idleness or curiosity, while they strive to find evil in everything, they do not comprehend that others still believe in the good. Therefore they have to be so nonchalant as to stop their ears, lest the hum of the busy world should suddenly startle them from sleep. The father allows his son to go where so many others go, where Cato himself went; he says that youth is but fleeting. But when he returns, the youth looks upon his sister; and see what has ... — Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset Read full book for free!
... ascertained. Unless I came down suddenly as a summer's storm upon them, the very people who were robbed by our messengers would not confess the robbery, fearing the ill-will of the men. It was necessary to startle them into the revelations which I required them to make for their own good. And I did startle them. I became thoroughly used to it, and soon lost my native bashfulness;—but sometimes my visits astonished the retiring inhabitants of country houses. I did, however, ... — Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope Read full book for free!
... up an' s-startle a lady that-a-way," she said with grave rebuke, and Hale looked humbled. "Now you just set there and ... — The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr. Read full book for free!
... Frederick, so- called the Great, and exalt him into a hero; or find in the cold heart and mean sordid soul of a Turner an ideal, because one of those strange physiological freaks that now and then startle the world, the artist's temperament and artist's skill, were his beyond those of any man of his age. But as our object here is to attempt placing her before the reader as asserting and illustrating the highest life of humanity, as a true preacher of the doctrine of the Cross, ... — The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown Read full book for free!
... so to speak, if Mr. Narkom will lend us his motor to hurry us there? Could, eh? That's good. I think I'd like to have a look at that lion and, if you don't mind, an introduction to the parties concerned. No! don't fear; we won't startle anybody by revealing my identity or the cause of the visit. Let us say that I'm a vet, to whom you have appealed for an opinion, regarding Nero's queer conduct. All ready, Mr. ... — Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew Read full book for free!
... Congress. Mr. Schneidekoupon was rich, and about thirty years old, tall and thin, with bright eyes and smooth face, elaborate manners and much loquacity. He had the reputation of turning rapid intellectual somersaults, partly to amuse himself and partly to startle society. At one moment he was artistic, and discoursed scientifically about his own paintings; at another he was literary, and wrote a book on "Noble Living," with a humanitarian purpose; at another he was ... — Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams Read full book for free!
... startled enough for me to suppose anything, and it spun away from your grasp very suddenly. Oh," he added, as he glanced it through, "rather ghostly, I must confess, or would be if one were inclined that way; but I imagined your nerves were stronger. Did the pronoun startle you?" ... — Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden) Read full book for free!
... Peruvian. I know it ees better for you, as vell as for myself, dthat you marry me. You haf nefer been so gentle and so gude as since I hold you near dthat baranca. But you did not like it! You loaf me, but you air like a vild deer; you air so easy startle, and so hard to hold. But I vill be zo gude to Blanca, I vill make her glad I vas so strong not to let her haf her own way. If you keess me and zay before God you marry me, I take you back to Casa 47—if not, Madame Steele ... — Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins Read full book for free!
... the look upon her face could not but startle him. He was red, rather frightened. He said mumblingly, "Well, mother, you've never ... — This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson Read full book for free!
... themselves by day under the broad leaf-blades of Heliconiae and other plants which grow in shady places; others cling to the trunks of trees. While walking through the forest in the daytime, especially along gloomy ravines, one is almost sure to startle bats from their sleeping-places; and at night they are often seen in great numbers flitting about the trees on the shady margins of narrow channels. I captured altogether, without giving especial attention to bats, sixteen ... — The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates Read full book for free!
... care-worn faces in the city are to be seen on this street. Women clad in the richest attire pass you with unquiet face and wistful eyes, and men who are envied by their fellows for their "good luck," startle you by the stern, hard set look their features wear. The first find little real happiness in the riches they have sold themselves for, and the latter find that the costly pleasures they courted have been gained at too dear ... — Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe Read full book for free!
... runs all right," he answered. "Only I thought the announcement that the pole-star had thrown up its job might startle you a bit. But I see it doesn't. So far as practical results go, it accounts for the warmer climate and the decreased inclination to the plane of the ecliptic; or, ... — Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England Read full book for free!
... were not 200 sworn United Irishmen, and which Lord Edward Fitzgerald had altogether omitted from his official list of counties organized in the month of February. In that brief interval, the Government policy of provocation had the desired effect, though the explosion was of a nature to startle those who ... — A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee Read full book for free!
... supposed you had retired. I came for my scissors, and finding you here alone, thought I would startle you, but you have not told me yet of what you ... — Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes Read full book for free!
... task, and it was made the more difficult by the fact that the Malays began firing at him with their brass gun, a fact enough to startle the strongest nerves. ... — Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn Read full book for free!
... your pardon, miss; I hope I did not startle you; but there is a young lady in the first-class compartment who, I take it, would be the better for a bit of company; and as I saw you were alone, I thought you might not object to change ... — Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey Read full book for free!
... the younger ones slipped up to him in his retreat, he kept taking things out of his pockets; penny dolls, a wooden clown, a balloon pig that was inflated by a whistle. He beckoned to the little boy they called Jan, whispered to him, and presented him with a paper snake, gently, so as not to startle him. Looking over the boy's head he said to me, "This one ... — My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather Read full book for free!
... at once be remarked that it would startle those unaccustomed to Freeland ideas to hear the amounts of these allowances. In the first year the maintenance unit reached 160L; therefore an unmarried woman or a widow received 48L; a married woman 24L; a family with three children and a wife 48L; an old man ... — Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka Read full book for free!
... Flint's conscience got the better of him, and he rose and closed the window noisily enough to startle the speakers below, as he perceived with ... — Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin Read full book for free!
... He died in Baltimore on Sunday, October 7th. This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it. The poet was known, personally or by reputation, in all this country; he had readers in England and in several of the states of Continental Europe; but he had few or no friends; and the regrets ... — The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe Read full book for free!
... and barns in the new town, they quite startle you with their strangeness: you observe that some of the latter, instead of having one stable-door have five or six,—a fact which puzzles you very much indeed. You observe further that the houses many of them have balustrades upon the top, which seems to you a very wonderful adaptation ... — Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell Read full book for free!
... so much as the manner in which I received his confidences. He half expected to startle me by his boldness, but was himself confounded by my words. I told him that in my country self was the chief consideration, self-preservation the law of nature; death the King of Terrors; wealth the object of universal ... — A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille Read full book for free!
... some mighty genius of color who will deluge the sky with pyrotechnical symphonies! Color that will soothe the soul with iridescent and incandescent harmonies, that the harsh, brittle noises made by musical instruments will no longer startle our weaving fancies. Yet if Shelley had not sung or Chopin chanted, how much poorer would be the world today. But that is no reason why school children should scream in chorus: "Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, stains the white radiance of eternity," or that tepid misses ... — Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker Read full book for free!
... Bell- mont, with his laborers, were in sight, though unseen by Frado. They paused to see what she was about to do. Should she by any mishap lose her footing, she must roll into the stream, and, without aid, must drown. They thought of shouting; but they feared an unexpected salute might startle her, and thus ensure what they were anxious to prevent. They watched in breathless silence. The willful sheep came furi- ously leaping and bounding far in advance of the flock. Just as he leaped for the dish, she ... — Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson Read full book for free!
... the indentures in the sand of his small, moccasined feet. He wondered whether it was possible that his eyes had gone bad on him, or that his mind had slipped out of its normal groove and was tricking him with weirdly absurd hallucinations. So what happened in almost that same breath did not startle him as it might otherwise have done. It was for a brief moment simply another assurance of his insanity; and if the mountains had suddenly turned over and balanced themselves on their peaks their gymnastics ... — The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood Read full book for free!
... Haviland Hicks, Jr., was actually returning to old Bannister; and he was bringing "The Prodigious Prodigy," whatever that was, with him. Knowing the cheery Senior's intense love of doing the dramatic and his great ambition to startle his Alma Mater with some sensational stunt, they could hardly wait for old Dan Flannagan's jitney-bus ... — T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice Read full book for free!
... shots, every one of which told, fired suddenly from a cover close to their rear, were enough to startle even the best troops, much more so our Mexican dons, who, already sufficiently inclined to a panic, now believed themselves fallen into an ambuscade, and surrounded on all sides by the incarnate diabolos, as they called us. The cavalry, who had not yet recovered the thrashing we had given ... — Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various Read full book for free!
... man's dominion Has broken nature's social union, An' justifies that ill opinion Which makes thee startle At me, thy poor earth-born ... — The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various Read full book for free!
... chamber of the Sangraal, Rowena IV was arranging the red samite cover around the Grail. She jumped when she saw him. "Marry! fair sir, ye did startle me. Methinketh ye be asleep ... — A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young Read full book for free!
... have stood in the Forum and seen the Coliseum. Penini says: 'The sun has tome out. I think God knows I want to go out to walk, and so He has sent the sun out.' There's a child who has faith enough to put us all to shame. A vision of angels wouldn't startle him in the least. When his poor little friend died, and we had to tell him, he inquired, fixing on me those earnest blue eyes, 'Did papa see the angels when they took away Joe?' And when I answered 'No' (for I never try to deceive him by picturesque ... — The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning Read full book for free!
... for ratification and agreement, Mary would set about her personification, shed her apron lest its damaged appearance convict her in older eyes, and speed toward her goal. But the mad bull's shrieks of protest and repudiation would startle every bit of chivalry for miles ... — New Faces • Myra Kelly Read full book for free!
... trumpet extend the sense of the unbearable beyond all possible bounds. Thus, sir, the circulation of the blood and the fluids of the body will not give me pause; you shall hear them flow with the impetuosity of cataracts; you shall perceive them so distinctly as to startle you; the slightest irregularity of the pulse, the least obstacle, is striking, and produces the same effect as a rock against which the waves ... — Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne Read full book for free!
... a shot over the head of the fleeing man, then started in pursuit. The Indian slashed the tether of Buckey, Stacy Brown's mustang, and with a yell to startle the animal, leaped on ... — The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin Read full book for free!
... Every distracting thought must be avoided, and the utmost care taken that no agitating topic is discussed in his presence. These precautions may do much; but should they have no effect, which I think possible; as a medical man, I should then recommend, what as a member of his family may startle you. My advice would be, that if it be ultimately found, that his feelings as regard this young girl, are such as are likely to prevent or impede his mind's recovery; why I would then at once allow him to make her any reparation he ... — A Love Story • A Bushman Read full book for free!
... from Margaret's cheek for an instant. The statement was too horrible and sudden not to startle her, but it was also too absurd to have more than an instant's effect. Her quick recovery of herself reassured Mr. Slocum. Would she meet Mr. Taggett's specific charges with the like fortitude? Mr. Slocum himself had been prostrated by them; he prayed to Heaven that Margaret might have more ... — The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich Read full book for free!
... has been most malignantly traduced by the third-rate English Colony in Paris—all his faults exaggerated, none of his good qualities even hinted at. The good British public has so long been used to look upon him as a minotaur that it will perhaps startle and amuse it to be told that he had ... — Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse Read full book for free!
... Westphalia, and in which the solemn trial and execution of his own son and successor, with the transformation of the monarchy of the Tudors and Stuarts into a British republic, were simultaneously to startle the world. But it hardly needed the gift of prophecy to inspire James ... — The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley Read full book for free!
... descended to the breakfast room on the morning following her arrival in Sequoia, the first glance at her uncle's stately countenance informed her that during the night something had occurred to irritate Colonel Seth Pennington and startle him out of his customary bland composure. He greeted her politely but coldly, and without even the perfunctory formality of inquiring how she had passed the night, he came ... — The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne Read full book for free!
... like being startled," said Betty, pettishly. "Yes, you did startle me—you did—you did! And then you begin to contradict before I've said a word! I'm sure you've been contradicting all the way upstairs—and why don't you say 'How do you do?' ... — Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward Read full book for free!
... all, it were most sweet to rest my head On the cold clod, and sleep the sleep of Death. But if the Archangel's trump at the last hour Startle the ear of Death and wake the soul To frenzy!—dreams of infancy! fit tales For garrulous beldames to affrighten babes! I have been guilty, yet my mind can bear The retrospect of guilt, yet in the hour Of deep contrition to THE ETERNAL look For mercy! ... — Poems • Robert Southey Read full book for free!
... "land of Mizraim." Where nature is most tame and commonplace, man is tempted to his highest flights of audacity. As in the level Babylonia he aspired to build a tower that should "reach to heaven" (Gen. xi. 4), so in Egypt he strove to startle and surprise by gigantic works, enormous undertakings, enterprises that might have seemed wholly beyond his powers. And these have constituted in all ages, except the very earliest, the great attractiveness of Egypt. Men are drawn there, not by the mysteriousness of ... — Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson Read full book for free!
... dodging bricks hurled by a San Francisco earthquake, but never got quite used to rocks descending from a source altogether out of sight. Small wonder, after all! Later we were to experience more of this thing, and on a scale to startle... — Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb Read full book for free!
... heard Miss Bax talking as it were an immense way off as he floated away on the wings of his dream—"that my views would startle... — The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker Read full book for free!
... animates the nature of Holland with a varied and fantastic life, and by the act of reproducing it the struggle passed into their minds, and then, instead of imitating, they created. Then they themselves made the two elements contend; they increased the darkness to startle and disperse it with every manner of luminous effects and flashes of light; sunbeams stole through the gloom and then gradually died away; the reflections of twilight and the mellow light of lamps were delicately blended into mysterious shadows, which were ... — Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis Read full book for free!
... the situation is governed by Art. 19, the text of which has been several times set out in your columns, of the old Convention of 1799. This may startle those who are acquainted with what occurred at The Hague in 1907, and I have seen no reference to what must be the gist of the German argument on the point. They no doubt argue that the old Convention remains unrepealed ... — Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland Read full book for free!
... Crowl saw Edith get on the same train as himself, he determined to watch her, and startle, if possible, his small squad of admirers with a new proof of his right to lead as chief scandal- monger. The scene in the jewelry store thus became a brilliant stroke of fortune to him, though so severe a blow to Edith. (The number of people who are like wolves, that ... — What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe Read full book for free!
... the northern ice have brought in such a chance waif that has become body amongst them. How wild and frightened they become! And quite naturally! Ghosts dropping out of the air becoming flesh and blood might startle a rational being into a rigid course of religious practices, not to say superstition. But look, how ... — The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap Read full book for free!
... God can express His idea only in fragments. We can bring together apparent contradictions in those fragments whereby a greater truth is suggested. If we do this in a sudden or incongruous manner we startle the unprepared and arouse the cry of paradox. But if we will not do it we shall miss ... — Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward Read full book for free!
... and ran up to find it. There was no light in the room, and Virginia and Sir Roger were on the balcony. Of course, I didn't mean to listen, but I couldn't find the fan at first, and I didn't like to startle them by suddenly switching on the light, so I—er—I overheard a little of the conversation. Sir Roger was telling her the story of that unfortunate Maxime Dalahaide—why, Marchese, how you must have loved him! The very mention of ... — The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson Read full book for free!
... insensibly have been either famished or poisoned. In this spiritual distress, the expiring faction was revived, and united, and perpetuated, by the labors of a monk; and the name of James Baradaeus [129] has been preserved in the appellation of Jacobites, a familiar sound, which may startle the ear of an English reader. From the holy confessors in their prison of Constantinople, he received the powers of bishop of Edessa and apostle of the East, and the ordination of fourscore thousand bishops, priests, and deacons, is derived from the same inexhaustible source. The speed of the ... — The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon Read full book for free!
... give no aid to the whilom?? Governor against this new general and army, but if ships should bring the Red Coats they were to withstand them. There is little wonder that "this bugbear did marvellously startle" that body of Virginia horsemen, those progressive gentlemen planters, and others. Yet in the end, after violent contentions, the assembly at Middle Plantation drew up and signed a remarkable paper, the "Oath at Middle Plantation." Historically, it is linked on the one hand with that ... — Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston Read full book for free!
... meant to startle her by the sudden action, he amply succeeded. At the first sight of the murderous weapon she shrank back, and a horrified, but quickly suppressed shriek, burst from her lips. "Oh, no, no!" she moaned, flinging ... — The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green Read full book for free!
... you. The objections are not made by Tyndall or Huxley; but they are objections made by me, which I stated to them, and in which they agreed—Tyndall expressing the opinion that I ought to make them public. I name this because you may otherwise some day startle Tyndall or Huxley by speaking to them of their objections, and giving me as the authority for so affiliating them.—Very ... — Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant Read full book for free!
... came, Brussels was an imitation Paris— especially along the inner boulevards she was Paris at her best. And her great parks, her lakes gay with pleasure-boats or choked with lily- pads, her haunted forests, where your taxicab would startle the wild deer, are the most beautiful I have ever seen in any city in the world. As, in the days of the Second Empire, Louis Napoleon bedecked Paris, so Leopold decorated Brussels. In her honor and to his own glory he gave her new parks, ... — With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis Read full book for free!
... even now, when recounting, as he often did, the scenes of the battle field, his eye would burn with savage fire, lighting up his whole countenance with the fiercest kind of bravery, and often with a hideous yell that would startle our very souls, he would burst from the room and bound over the fields and forest, with the fleetness of a deer—making the woods ring with his frightful war-cry, until the blood seemed ready to curdle in our veins. He had also been one of the famous Tecumseh's braves; and ... — Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward Read full book for free!
... Conroyal's lips tightened. "But the devilish cunning of it! They knew that whoever had the buckskin bag would not be apt to sleep with it on him; and they calculated that the sudden alarm of fire, coming when all were sound asleep, would so startle, that, for the moment, even the skin map would be forgotten and all would rush out to help put out the fire, and give them a chance to search the house. Cunning, but as devilish as it is cunning! Think ... — The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil Read full book for free!
... elms and oaks. Several graceful fawns, and a noble elk, were stalking in the shade of the trees, apparently unconscious of the presence of a few dogs, and not caring for the numerous turkeys, geese, and other domestic animals that gabbled and screamed around them. Nor did my own approach startle the wild, beautiful creatures, that seemed as docile as ... — John James Audubon • John Burroughs Read full book for free!
... sat watching her. She knew it was Richard who came in, for she had heard his voice in the hall, and greeting him quickly, arose and left the room, whispering: "If she wakes, don't startle her. Probably she will not ... — Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes Read full book for free!
... the thirst of the human heart for the beauty of God's working—to startle its lethargy with a deep and pure agitation of astonishment—are their higher missions. They are as a great and noble architecture, first giving shelter, comfort, and rest; and covered also with mighty sculpture ... — Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby Read full book for free!
... it, and it crept on slowly, slowly, like a living thing, and growing as it came, to my very feet. I cannot say how long I might have stood there, fascinated by it, had not something suddenly occurred to startle me into my senses again; for full upon the back of my right hand fell, with a sullen, heavy sound, a second drop of blood. It stung and burnt my flesh like molten lead, and the sharp, sudden pain it gave ... — Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford Read full book for free!
... did startle the poor old parish clergyman effectually by calling on him to publish the banns of marriage between Dermot Edward St. Glear Tracy and Lucy Percy Alison, both residing in this parish. He evidently ... — My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge Read full book for free!
... gleams through the woods in the morning sun? Hear it nearer and nearer draw! It winds in and out in columns dun, And the trumpet-notes on the roused winds run, And they startle the soul with awe. Should you of the comrades black demand— That is Luetzow's wild ... — The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various Read full book for free!
... soon attracted all the birds of the neighbourhood—red-breasts, white-throats, black-caps, nightingales, fig-peckers of all sorts. And when a numerous company of them was gathered together Leo XIII, seated out of sight and watching, would suddenly clap his hands and startle the birds, which flew up and were caught by the wings in the meshes of the nets. All that then remained to be done was to take them out of the nets and stifle them by a touch of the thumb. Roast ... — The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola Read full book for free!
... to escape. But we were too securely fixed there for his strength to be of any avail; our roots were the growth of years, and, besides, we clasped him so tightly—for unity is indeed strength—that at last the cowardly fellow roared aloud with mingled pain and fright; perhaps he thought to startle us, and make us lose our hold. But we knew better than that—we only gripped him the faster; but the noise aroused Dash, who came bounding to the spot (he was always unchained at night), and, flying at Mr. Reynard's throat, he soon pinned ... — Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer Read full book for free!
... and profoundest sense of the word believe, the pagans could not be said to believe in any gods: but, in the ordinary sense, they did, and do, and must believe, in all gods. As this proposition will startle some readers, and is yet closely involved in the main truth which I am now pressing, viz. the meaning and effect of a simple cultus, as distinguished from a high doctrinal religion, let us seek an illustration from our Indian empire. The Christian ... — Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey Read full book for free!
... a bank of rough, broken ground, grown with coarse grass and bramble, and as we peeped over this bank the ruined house stood before us—so near as to startle me by its proximity. It must have been a large house originally—if, indeed, it was ever completed. Now it stood roofless, dismantled, and windowless, and in many places whole rods of brickwork had ... — The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison Read full book for free!
... weather, when even the hardiest soldiers were wrapping themselves up, he would go about in his shirt sleeves just as if it were summer; and very often he would be up before any one else in the camp was astir, and startle the first officer whom he saw coming out of his tent by crowing like a rooster as loud as he could, just as if to say, "You ought to have been out before." Then, too, Count and General though he was, dining with the Empress herself ... — Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various Read full book for free!
... exhibit all the symptoms of fear long before they can have any knowledge or experience of the disagreeable and the harmful effects of the things that frighten them. Thus a sudden noise will make the child start and tremble and even scream. And all through life an unexpected and loud noise is likely to startle us. An investigation has shown that thunder is feared much more than lightning. Children will laugh at the flashes of lightning, but will cower before ... — Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg Read full book for free!
... unreasonableness of her temper. Her daily tasks distress her sorely. She can no longer sit still and sew or read. Conversation no longer interests, or it even troubles her. Noises, especially sudden noises, startle her, and the cries and laughter of children have become distresses of which she is ashamed, and of which she complains or not, as her nature is weak or enduring. Perhaps, too, she is so restless as to want to be in constant motion, but that seems to ... — Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell Read full book for free!
... one thing about you that is comforting," I sniffed. "You said precisely the same thing to me at three o'clock this morning. You never startle me by saying ... — When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart Read full book for free!
... and with each petal decorated by an "eye" exactly like those on the great Cecropia or Polyphemus moths, so that their effect is that of a flock of gorgeous butterflies come to rest. They hover over the meadows poised. A movement would startle them to flight; only the ... — The Mountains • Stewart Edward White Read full book for free!
... and in quick succession, a heavy crushing pressure, either on the limbs or body, which had the effect, not only to startle them from their sleep, but caused ... — The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid Read full book for free!
... figure of speech to say that the world heard the crash. Hundreds, ay, thousands of miles did the sound of that mighty upheaval pass over land and sea to startle, more or less, the nations of ... — Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne Read full book for free!
... their neighbors and the distresses of their country. Bubbles that, bursting, impoverish multitudes, will be blown up by cunning knavery, with stupid credulity as its assistants and instrument. Huge bankruptcies, that startle a country like the earthquakes, and are more fatal, fraudulent assignments, engulfment of the savings of the poor, expansions and collapses of the currency, the crash of banks, the depreciation of Government securities, prey on the savings ... — Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike Read full book for free!
... regaining the ledge, neither of the boys spoke, lest their voices should startle him, and make him fall; but now they both cried out, "Are ... — Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar Read full book for free!
... hiding the details in the thickets, and all the hot day, he had been thrusting his way through thicket after thicket, in obedience to the instructions of the foresters. He had struck trees with his short club and had grunted and squealed, to startle the khada into flight. A few of the ugly beasts had come out, charging into the open, to be run down and speared by ... — Millennium • Everett B. Cole Read full book for free!
... characteristics upon it. It is almost prophetic from its knowledge of history; it is almost heart-searching from its knowledge of human nature; it has almost supernatural charity from its freedom from littleness and prejudice; it has almost the repose of faith, because nothing can startle it; it has almost the beauty and harmony of heavenly contemplation, so intimate is it with the eternal order of things and the music ... — English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.) Read full book for free!
... upon the Ghetto, heralded by a month of special matins and the long-sustained note of the ram's horn. It was in the midst of the Ten Days of Repentance which find their awful climax in the Day of Atonement that a strange letter for Hannah came to startle the breakfast-table at Reb Shemuel's. Hannah read it ... — Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill Read full book for free!
... of his heart, he will begin by sharing her pursuits only as a means to an end, for when love-making once steps in other pursuits are neglected, if not totally shelved, for the time being. This transition stage requires great tact. He must not startle her by too sudden a development. Some women may like to be taken by storm, to be married by capture as it were, but the average girl likes to have time to enjoy being wooed and won. She basks in the gradual unfolding of his love; she rejoices over each new ... — The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux Read full book for free!
... family—wives, sisters, sons and so forth, whose remains lie "in the vault beneath." After perusing these numerous testimonials to the truly wonderful virtues of an aristocracy whom we are permitted to survive, and after dropping some shillings in the charity-box, which rather startle us by the noise they make, we pass out of the cool abbey into the hot churchyard, and read on a lonely stone which stands in a corner by the gate that here lies the dust of Mary Ann Brown, "for thirty-five years faithful servant ... — Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various Read full book for free!
... The stranger addressed Bessie with the utmost familiarity, in a deliberate, explanatory tone. "I didn't want to startle the old man." He lowered his voice as though he had known her for years. "I dropped into a barber's on my way, to get a twopenny shave, and they told me there he was something of a character. The old man has been a ... — To-morrow • Joseph Conrad Read full book for free!
... continuous roar of traffic in the Edgware Road. Then she would drop back again, to crouch against the wall, drawing the quilt about her, and remain motionless until a step on the stair or the banging of a door below would startle her once more. ... — Fan • Henry Harford Read full book for free!
... declared slowly, "marks an epoch. What Naudheim said was remarkable because of what he left unsaid. Couldn't you feel that? Didn't you understand? If that man had ambitions, he could startle even this matter-of-fact world of ours. He could shake it ... — The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim Read full book for free!
... have some partiality for living flies, but none for dead ones; but Susy does not trouble herself to apologize for Sour Mash's eccentricities of taste. This Biography was for us, and Susy knew that nothing that Sour Mash might do could startle us or need explanation, we being aware that she was not an ordinary cat, but moving upon a plane far above the prejudices and superstitions which ... — Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain Read full book for free!
... no longer divided him from Darrow, or Gideon Vetch, or the man who could not look at anything but the hole in the carpet. Never again could he take his inherited place in the world of which he had once been a part. For an instant a nervous impulse to protest, to startle by some violent gesture that look of gentle self-esteem from the faces before him, jerked over him like a spasm. Then the last habit that he would ever break in his life, the very law of his being, which was the law of order, of manners, of ... — One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow Read full book for free!
... impress a man of that sort. If the world had been full of such men, life would have probably appeared to Jukes an unentertaining and unprofitable business. He was not alone in his opinion. The sea itself, as if sharing Mr. Jukes' good-natured forbearance, had never put itself out to startle the silent man, who seldom looked up, and wandered innocently over the waters with the only visible purpose of getting food, raiment, and house-room for three people ashore. Dirty weather he had known, of course. He had been ... — Typhoon • Joseph Conrad Read full book for free!
... replied the artist, laying down his weapons and grasping Gibault's proffered hand with a sigh of evident relief, "I am well, excellently well. You did, indeed, startle me by your sudden appearance; but no harm is done, and where none was intended no apology is necessary. You are a ... — The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne Read full book for free!
... ambiguities that we are to ascribe the comparative oblivion into which so remarkable a book has fallen; but also to the fact that its noteworthiness is perhaps more evident and relative to us than to our forefathers. It cannot but startle us to find doubts that we hastily look upon as peculiarly "modern," set forth in their full strength and wrestled with and overthrown by an unlettered recluse of the fourteenth century. In some sense they ... — The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell Read full book for free!
... seduce the reader into an utter debauch of spelling. But a sudden Maenad dance of the letters on the page, gleeful and iridescent spelling, a wild rush and procession of howling vowels and clattering consonants, might startle the half-won reader back into orthodoxy. Besides, there is another reader—the printer's reader—to consider. For if an author let his wit run to these matters, he must write elaborate marginal exhortations to this authority, begging his mercy, to let the ... — Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells Read full book for free!
... What is there to startle thee in that? Have not a thousand galleys lain in Loch Etive since I built this ... — Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell Read full book for free!
... of window, and the height of the sun seemed suddenly to startle her. Her more gentle look suddenly vanished and one of irritability swiftly ... — The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum Read full book for free!
... he replied, "and I'm sorry, Ada, but cannot help it now. This will I say, however: I had no wish or intention to hear when I hid myself. My desire was only to startle thee and Hilda, and before I thought what thou wert talking of the thing was out, and now I have got it ... — Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne Read full book for free!
... composure, and thy heart dismay? Perhaps some murderer's cruel eye agleam Is fixed upon me, or some monstrous dream Might bring such fearful guilt upon the head Of my unvigilant soul as would arouse The Borgian snake from her envenomed bed, Or startle Nero ... — The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck Read full book for free!
... is an Industrial Congress in which women occupied in every branch of labor are to be represented, you may think this question could not legitimately come before you. And even if it could, you may not think best to startle the timid or provoke the powerful by the assertion that a fair day's wages for a fair day's work and the dignity of labor, alike depend on the political status of the laborer. Perhaps in your country, where the right ... — History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage Read full book for free!
... will kill herself," I answered, thinking that this resolve would startle Henriette. But when she heard it a disdainful smile, more expressive than the thoughts it conveyed, flickered on her lips. "My dear conscience," I continued, "if you would take into account my resistance and the seductions that led ... — The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac Read full book for free!
... "So sorry to startle you all," Norgate said apologetically. "Of course, you haven't seen the afternoon papers. It was my valet who was found dead in my rooms—a most mysterious affair," he added, his eyes meeting Selingman's. "The inquest is to be ... — The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim Read full book for free!
... ambition is not to perform feats which startle the world and give him fame, but rather to live the life of the moderate and harmonious one; yet how often for lack of true discernment he fails! This middle path is not, however, hidden from the sincere ... — The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various Read full book for free!
... State, nor with more firmness of mind. They might need a preparatory discourse on the text of 'Prove all things, hold fast that which is good,' in order to unlearn the lesson that reason is an unlawful guide in religion. They might startle on being first awaked from the dreams of the night, but they would rub their eyes at once, and look the spectres boldly in the face. The preacher might be excluded by our hierophants from their churches and meeting-houses, but would be attended in the fields by whole ... — Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson Read full book for free!
... off, there's a man could Be happy here, Or one of the gods perhaps, were they Not of inhuman stature dire, As poets say Who have not seen them clearly; if At sound of any wind of the world In grass-blades stiff They would not startle and shudder cold Under the sun. When gods were young ... — Last Poems • Edward Thomas Read full book for free!
... is a charm and a joy. But their primary value to us is that they are among the rare beings who have possessed "the vision and the faculty divine," who, to quote Ruskin, can "startle our lethargy with the deep and pure agitation of astonishment." There is about them nothing incomprehensibly transcendental, nothing "unpractical," nothing aloof from the life we live—if we live it fully—but wholly the contrary. ... — Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker Read full book for free!
... shining on the little white figure, the deep silence, broken only by the faint murmur of the river and the distant singing of a nightingale, the gleam of the glowworms, compose a scene of fantastic beauty. The slightest sounds startle her, whether it be a fish leaping at the surface of the water to seize a fly, the gurgling of a little eddy, or the shrill cry of a bat. There is a certain voluptuous beauty in the very sound of the words that describe the little nymph, kissed ... — Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer Read full book for free!
... night, too much the ghosts come through Your crazy doors, to vex and startle me, Touching with curious fingers cold as dew Kissing with unloved kisses fierily That dwell, slow fever, through my veins all day, And fill my senses as the dead their graves. They are builded in ... — The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor Read full book for free!
... seen trotting one day about two bow-shots from the party. With characteristic eagerness Oliver Trench hastily let fly an arrow at them. He might as well have let it fly at the pole-star. The only effect it had was to startle the deer and send them galloping into ... — The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne Read full book for free!
... the little flowers just peeping above the ground; and at the foliage, with its many-shaded green; and occasionally I looked at the body stretched upon the bed. And each time that I looked it seemed to me that it gently stirred. This did not startle me at all, for I was accustomed to the appearance of death. Who that has lost a friend does not find it impossible to realize that the form is utterly without life? And who has ever gazed long at a corpse without fancying that it moved? So again and again I looked at Miriam, ... — The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various Read full book for free!
... dream in halftones that he gives us, gray and green and steely blue; and just that, and some homely magic of his own, hint the commerce of another world with man's discarded domain. Men and women are asleep, and as in an early walk you may startle the hares at their play, or see the creatures of the darkness—owls and night-hawks and heavy moths—flit with fantastic purpose over the familiar scene, so here it comes upon you suddenly that you have surprised Nature's self at her mysteries; ... — Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard Read full book for free!
... what he thought of the whole performance; but a friend of the lean man, who sat just in front of Arick, tells me what seemed to startle him most. The first thing was when two of the officers came out with blackened faces, like minstrels, and began to dance. Arick was sure that they were really black, and his own people, and he was wonderfully surprised to see them dance in ... — The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson Read full book for free!
... an explosion, differing much in sound from those which continued to startle the night, rang suddenly out of the distance. It arose from a spot on the confines of the orchard, and was sharp in tone—sharp almost as the human cries which followed it. Then the distant lights hastened ... — Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts Read full book for free!
... called out Spike, in a voice of thunder, loud enough to startle even Mrs. Budd and Biddy in ... — Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper Read full book for free!
... not so near as to startle her friend. A tall brass candlestick, with a lighted tallow candle in it, stood on the table in the parlor window; but the room in which Letty sat was unlighted save by the fire on the hearth, which gleamed brightly ... — The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin Read full book for free!
... Three boys are also working; but they're big babies, with young-chicken-coloured hair and merry, heather-mixture eyes. They talk no language but slang. They come to grief in a preposterous automobile about every ten miles and attract their idol's attention and startle horses by giving vent to S. O. S. yells. Whenever they have to enter a room they plunge in as if the door had broken away before them. Their only conception of a "good time" is ragtime. If one of them shows signs for a moment of having been trained ... — The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel) Read full book for free!
... source of puzzling surprises. While she was from the South, she was not Southern in speech, sentiments, ideas, or ideals. Her voice was not Southern and, while she elided final consonants, her intonation was not of the South. Indeed she would startle him every now and then by dropping some archaic word or old form of expression that made him think of Chaucer. Her feeling toward the negro was precisely what his was, and once when he halted in some stricture on ... — In Happy Valley • John Fox Read full book for free!
... investigating, arranging, teaching. It is an honest task to shame the 'broidered youth from meditation on waistcoats and the display of polka steps into manly pursuits. It is an angel's mission (oftenest the work of love) to startle a sleeping and unconscious genius into the spring and victory of a roused lion. But it is worse than useless to establish new associations and orders without well considering first whether the same machinery do not already exist ... — Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis Read full book for free!
... correctly in billions of dollars the actual value of all the property represented in this community of interests, might startle the imagination to some sense of the magnitude of the wealth of these men. But money is no true measure of power. The total capitalization of all they own would not bring home to us the influence of Morgan and his associates, ... — Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling Read full book for free!
... fine arms and hands, and small beautifully-formed feet. All that is best of Indian and Spanish, "of dark and bright," seems united in her. C—-n says he has seen peasant women in Andalusia in the same style of beauty, and quite as handsome. She is only nineteen. Such beauties as these startle one every now and then in some remote village. She belongs, no doubt, to the mestizos—the descendants of whites and Indians, the ... — Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca Read full book for free!
... who I believe has been most malignantly traduced by the third-rate English Colony in Paris—all his faults exaggerated, none of his good qualities even hinted at. The good British public has so long been used to look upon him as a minotaur that it will perhaps startle and amuse it to be told that he had ... — Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse Read full book for free!
... squirrel or a wild-turkey, and, as he crept noiselessly along with bated breath and eyes peering eagerly through the tree-tops or the underbrush, she would step like a dryad from behind some tree at his side, with a ringing laugh at his discomfiture. Again, she might startle him by running lightly along the fallen trunk of a tree that lay across a torrent, or, in a freak of wilfulness, would let herself down the bare face of some steep cliff. If he scolded her, she laughed. If he grew angry, she ... — A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr. Read full book for free!
... thought Thad whirled over to the exit, and crawled out. And what his eyes beheld was enough to startle anybody, let alone a boy. If a genuine cyclone had not struck the camp on the Little Machias, then something almost as bad must have dropped down upon them, Thad thought, as he stared, hardly able to believe his eyes, or ... — The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter Read full book for free!
... lay through the desolate garden, and Wolfert's nerves had arrived at so sensitive a state that the flitting of a bird, the rustling of a leaf, or the falling of a nut was enough to startle him. As they entered the confines of the garden, they caught sight of a figure at a distance advancing slowly up one of the walks and bending under the weight of a burthen. They paused and regarded ... — Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving Read full book for free!
... sleeve whose brightness, when they were let off, would penetrate even to the most cloistral abode—he had, that is to say, his Royal Commission to work on, and the preparation of a minority report which could not fail, when it was divulged, to startle the world. He was even beginning to have hopes that three or four others would sign it; for to be in a minority with ... — King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman Read full book for free!
... That would startle Luke, He thought. But Luke said, "We all wanted to, very much. But that would have been foolish, Master. Then we would not have had all the other things. And besides, there would not have been enough of ... — The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight Read full book for free!
... man's ambition is not to perform feats which startle the world and give him fame, but rather to live the life of the moderate and harmonious one; yet how often for lack of true discernment he fails! This middle path is not, however, hidden from the sincere and pure; even common men and women may know it, though in its highest ... — The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various Read full book for free!
... great events travel from one end of the Dark Continent to the other, and if the tales told me of the passage of news from South to North Africa during the recent war were not so extravagant as they seem at first hearing, I would set them down here, well assured that they would startle if they could not convince. In the south of Morocco, during the latter days of my journey, men spoke with quiet conviction of the doings of Sultan and Pretender in the North, just as though Morocco possessed a train or telegraph service, or a native newspaper. It does not seem unreasonable ... — Morocco • S.L. Bensusan Read full book for free!
... been so much excited and agitated that her nerves were all quivering, and it was long before she even grew drowsy. There were so many strange, incomprehensible noises in the great, empty house to disturb and startle her; and in her own room, the cracking of the furniture, the ticking of a death-watch in the wall near her bed, the gnawing of a rat behind the wainscot, the snapping of the fire. At each fresh sound she started up in terror, with her poor heart throbbing as if it would burst ... — Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier Read full book for free!
... bear, Till time to dust their frames should wear; A wood like that enchanted grove In which with fiends Rinaldo strove, Where every silent tree possessed A spirit prisoned in its breast, Which the first stroke of coming strife Would startle into hideous life: So dense, so still, the Austrians stood, A living wall, a human wood! Impregnable their front appears, All horrent with projected spears, Whose polished points before them shine, From flank to flank, one brilliant line, Bright as the breakers' ... — The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various Read full book for free!
... day. He generally began a painful interview with this question. The method had distinct advantages. If the criminal were of a nervous disposition, he would give himself away upon the instant. In any case, it was likely to startle him. 'For what purpose?' repeated the Headmaster, fixing Smith with ... — Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse Read full book for free!
... painted drab, and in the center were the sun and solar system depicted in yellow. But that six-rayed yellow sun, the size of a large dinner plate, with its group of lesser six-rayed orbs as large as saucers, did not startle Patience as much as the rug beside the Squire's bed. That was made of a brindle cow-skin with—the horns on. The little girl's fascinated gaze rested on these bristling horns and could not tear itself ... — The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Read full book for free!
... not from his worse but his better nature, it seems as if there could be no warning to him from within of his danger: for even the impassioned joy which he draws at times from the works of nature, and from those of her mightier sons, and which would startle him from a dream of unworthy passion, serves only to fix the infatuation:—for those deep emotions, proving to him that his heart is uncorrupted, justify to him all its workings, and his mind, ... — The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth Read full book for free!
... in the hall with Bob," she directed her youngest daughter. "You won't be afraid with Bob, will you, dear? I don't want too many to go down or we may startle Libbie." ... — Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson Read full book for free!
... the valley. You remember there was a dance? I had left my fan in our sitting-room, and ran up to find it. There was no light in the room, and Virginia and Sir Roger were on the balcony. Of course, I didn't mean to listen, but I couldn't find the fan at first, and I didn't like to startle them by suddenly switching on the light, so I—er—I overheard a little of the conversation. Sir Roger was telling her the story of that unfortunate Maxime Dalahaide—why, Marchese, how you must have loved him! The very mention of his name turns ... — The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson Read full book for free!
... water's brim are quiet. It is a dream in halftones that he gives us, gray and green and steely blue; and just that, and some homely magic of his own, hint the commerce of another world with man's discarded domain. Men and women are asleep, and as in an early walk you may startle the hares at their play, or see the creatures of the darkness—owls and night-hawks and heavy moths—flit with fantastic purpose over the familiar scene, so here it comes upon you suddenly that you have surprised Nature's self at her mysteries; ... — Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard Read full book for free!
... sulphurous smoke, which gives perpetual warning of those smouldering forces ever ready to devastate the surrounding country. Subterranean activity increases during the rainy season, and tremors of earthquake occasionally startle the equanimity of those unused to the perils of existence on this thin crust of Mother Earth, for Java's teeming soil and population rest upon an ominous fissure of the globe's surface, and twelve of the forty-five volcanos on this island of terror and beauty are still moderately active, sometimes ... — Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings Read full book for free!
... the dull thread of many thousand feet and the rough rattle of an occasional carriage. Rarely, the harsh tones of a peasant, or the clear voices of a knot of strangers, unused to such oppressive silence, startle the ear, causing hundreds of eager, half-suspicious, half-wondering eyes to turn in ... — The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford Read full book for free!
... and complexity of those perpendicular streets anything may dwell or happen, and it is in one of them, I believe, that the inquirer may find the offices of the Club of Queer Trades. It may be thought at the first glance that the name would attract and startle the passer-by, but nothing attracts or startles in these dim immense hives. The passer-by is only looking for his own melancholy destination, the Montenegro Shipping Agency or the London office of the Rutland ... — The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton Read full book for free!
... nations, and the limbs of its corpses tossed out of its whirling, like water-wheels. Bat-like, out of the holes and caverns and shadows of the earth, the bones gather, and the clay heaps heave, rattling and adhering into half-kneaded anatomies, that crawl, and startle, and struggle up among the putrid weeds, with the clay clinging to their clotted hair, and their heavy eyes sealed by the earth darkness yet, like his of old who went his way unseeing to the Siloam Pool; shaking off one by one the dreams of ... — The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin Read full book for free!
... of the earliest, if not the first remarkable animal to startle a stranger on arriving in Ceylon, whilst wending his way from Point-de-Galle to Colombo, is a huge lizard of from four to five feet in length, the Talla-goy[a] of the Singhalese, and Iguana[1] ... — Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent Read full book for free!
... apt to startle an Imagination, which has not been raised and qualify'd for such a Description, by the reading of the ancient Poets, and of Homer in particular. It was certainly a very bold Thought in our Author, to ascribe the first Use of Artillery to the Rebel Angels. But as such ... — The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele Read full book for free!
... short method of denying absolutely all blameable facts, I should recommend to pupils as the best; and if in the beginning of their career they may startle at this mode, let them depend upon it that in their future practice it must become perfectly familiar. The nice distinction of simulation and dissimulation depends but on the trick of a syllable; palliation and extenuation ... — Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth Read full book for free!
... of the heat of the weather, the performances of Dick and Jack upon strong venison essence and roast gazelle were enough to startle any housekeeper of small income and an anxiety about the state of the butcher's bill. But of course the outdoor life and constant exertion produced a tremendous appetite; and as Mr Rogers noted the change in Dick, whose palate had ... — Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn Read full book for free!
... had expected to startle him, she certainly succeeded; but only in turn to be startled herself. With a tiger spring he turned on her, and his right hand was feeling for her throat. At the same instant with the other hand he crumpled ... — The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Read full book for free!
... my heedless feet from under Slip the crumbling banks for ever: Like echoes to a distant thunder, 55 They plunge into the gentle river. The river-swans have heard my tread. And startle from their reedy bed. O beauteous birds! methinks ye measure Your movements to some heavenly tune! 60 O beauteous birds! 'tis such a pleasure To see you move beneath the moon, I would it were your true delight To sleep by day and ... — The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge Read full book for free!
... the young student—'Semele' appears to have been written at the academy—had learned, through, his occasional visits to the opera, how to manage a conventional theme and conventional machinery in such a way as to startle and thrill. ... — The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas Read full book for free!
... went from Margaret's cheek for an instant. The statement was too horrible and sudden not to startle her, but it was also too absurd to have more than an instant's effect. Her quick recovery of herself reassured Mr. Slocum. Would she meet Mr. Taggett's specific charges with the like fortitude? Mr. Slocum himself had been prostrated by them; he prayed to Heaven that Margaret ... — The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich Read full book for free!
... solemnly at it, as if they had never seen it before, and then one of them turned on me quickly, as if to startle me. "Vous etes une ... — On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich Read full book for free!
... Secret of the World, in which he too believes, though his studies have led him far more scientifically than me; and yet in his hours of thought, I know that a vision of beauty and a sweet voice will often startle him, and he rises then into scenes of his loftiest, ... — The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair Read full book for free!
... own interest. But a very brief interval convinced both nobles and people that a new era was dawning for them. In the short period of eighteen months, the wise administration of Isabella and Ferdinand, had effected a sufficient change to startle all ranks into the conviction that their best interests lay in prompt obedience, and in exerting themselves in their several spheres, to second the sovereign's will. The chivalric qualities of Ferdinand, his undoubted wisdom and unwavering firmness, excited both love and fear; while devotion ... — The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar Read full book for free!
... goes out. I cannot catch a glimpse of her," he returned, hurriedly. "Miss Challoner, I am going to startle—shock you, perhaps; but I have thought about it all until my head is dizzy, and there is no other way. Please give me your attention a moment," for Phillis, with a vague sense of uneasiness, had looked around for Jeffreys. "I must see you alone: I must speak to you where ... — Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey Read full book for free!
... not listen to this reasoning; they were too careful of the lives of the citizens, the nuns included; down the edifices must come. The Commune of Paris over again. The ladies of Cadiz, those who pass to and fro, prayer-book in hand, in the streets, and startle the flashing sunshine with their solemn mantillas, were wroth with the municipality. They saw through its designs, and they resolved to defeat them. To the number of some five hundred they formed a procession, and marched four deep to the Town-house to beg ... — Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea Read full book for free!
... ernist with her to be a witch & if she would not he would tear her in pieces, then she again shreekt out now saith shee I see him & lookt wistly & said there he is just at this time to my apearance there seemed to dart in at ye west window a sudden light across ye room wch did startle and amase me at yt present, then she tould me yt she see ye deuill in ye shape of a white dogg, she tould me that ye deuill apeared in ye shape of these three women namly goody Clawson, goody Miller, & ye woman at ... — The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor Read full book for free!
... Anna, somewhat grieved at the shock, that Minnie had received, "did thee startle her by so suddenly claiming her in the street? Would it not have been better for thee to have waited and found out where she lived, and then discovered thyself ... — Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Read full book for free!
... is sent directly by God himself, as David intimates in the Psalm, "out of His secret places." As to the hailstorm, he lays great stress upon the plague of hail sent by the Almighty upon Egypt, and clinches all by insisting that God showed at Mount Sinai his purpose to startle the body ... — History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White Read full book for free!
... much good sense,' admitted the other. 'I think she is in as little danger as any girl we know. But it wouldn't startle me if she made the most lamentable mistake. Certainly I don't fear it. The girls of our class are not like the uneducated, who, for one reason or another, will marry almost any man rather than remain single. They have at all events personal delicacy. ... — The Odd Women • George Gissing Read full book for free!
... trumpeter hail them," urged Cranston, "then they'll answer." But Chrome said that wouldn't do; it would wake up or startle everybody in camp, ... — Under Fire • Charles King Read full book for free!
... she walked with a cane, having had a severe attack of rheumatics since her arrival in "the great Norrurd," and at every step she hit the pavements in such a manner as to startle the rising generation of Abolitionists, and it had the good effect of preventing any of them from calling out to her, "Where did you get your face painted, you black nigger, you?" which would ... — Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman Read full book for free!
... the house, making certain arrangements so rapidly as to startle the languid Hili-lites. In ten or fifteen minutes they had removed to the cellar all the necessary furniture of a comfortable room, including a bedstead for Lilama, and another for her two maids. Three lamps were taken to the cellar, lighted, and oil sufficient for a week's ... — A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake Read full book for free!
... body; that a light has been found which can penetrate, so as to make a photographic record, through everything from a purse or a pocket to the walls of a room or a house, is news which cannot fail to startle everybody. That the eye of the physician or surgeon, long baffled by the skin, and vainly seeking to penetrate the unfortunate darkness of the human body, is now to be supplemented by a camera, making all the parts of the human body as visible, in a way, as the exterior, appears certainly ... — McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various Read full book for free!
... lower than the historic credibility of this writer. And to parody his title to be regarded as the 'Father of History,' by calling him the 'Father of Lies,' was an unworthy insult offered to his admirable simplicity and candour by more critics than one. But two points startle the honourable reader, who is loathe to believe of any laborious provider for a great intellectual interest that he can deliberately have meant to deceive: the first point, and, separately by itself, an ... — The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey Read full book for free!
... was heard, and looking toward the sound, I perceived the Chancellor cantering down the road. When abreast of the carriage he dismounted, and walking up to it, saluted the Emperor in a quick, brusque way that seemed to startle him. After a word or two, the party moved perhaps a hundred yards further on, where they stopped opposite the weaver's cottage so famous from that day. This little house is on the east side of the Donchery road, near its junction with that to Frenois, ... — Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan Read full book for free!
... through to its four corners like lightning. It became the one topic of spirited conversation. We had always voted the doctor a jolly good fellow, but now he was the hero of the hour. When he next came into the camp he received such a thundering and spontaneous ovation as to startle him, until at last the reason for this outburst dawned upon him. But he turned it off with his characteristic laugh ... — Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney Read full book for free!
... devil, trials, temptations, the wind, lightning, burglars, and a thousand other things. Their days are haunted by fear of this thing or that. Their peace is marred and their hearts are troubled. For all this, trust is the cure. I do not mean to say that if you trust, nothing will ever startle you or frighten you, or that you will never feel physical fear in time of danger; but in such times trust will bring to us a consciousness that the Lord knows and cares, and that his helping presence is ... — Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor Read full book for free!
... awoke to the fact that he owned a good voice, and that one of the enemies for whom he and the rest of the Pawnees were hunting, was much nearer than was supposed. He emitted a screeching yell, enough to startle all who heard it, and, looking around and seeing nothing of the white archer, he stopped and again signaled for the rest to hasten while it was ... — Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis Read full book for free!
... assuredly, in their possessive instincts, and as little proof against the inroads of beauty and passion as Swithin, Soames, or even Young Jolyon. And if heroic figures, in days that never were, seem to startle out from their surroundings in fashion unbecoming to a Forsyte of the Victorian era, we may be sure that tribal instinct was even then the prime force, and that "family" and the sense of home and property counted as they do to this day, for all the recent ... — Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy Read full book for free!
... the requirements of those who are sensibly reassured by the spectacle of careful conventionality allied to feminine charm—a pleasant conversability that may be trusted to soothe and counted on never to startle. Hermione would almost as soon have stood on her head in Piccadilly as have said anything original, though to her private consternation such perilous stuff had been known to harbour an uneasy instant in her bosom. She carried such inconvenient cargo as carefully hidden ... — The Convert • Elizabeth Robins Read full book for free!
... the Milton boys who had many bunches of fire-crackers, good-naturedly thought they would startle little Washee-washee-wang at his work. So they stole around a corner of the garden, where he was busy in his neat little cabin, and "lit" a whole bunch and threw it over the fence, at a point where all would "go off" ... — Little Sky-High - The Surprising Doings of Washee-Washee-Wang • Hezekiah Butterworth Read full book for free!
... Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty; And if I give thee honour due, Mirth, admit me of thy crue To live with her, and live with thee, In unreproved pleasures free; 40 To hear the Lark begin his flight, And singing startle the dull night, From his watch-towre in the skies, Till the dappled dawn doth rise; Then to com in spight of sorrow, And at my window bid good morrow, Through the Sweet-Briar, or the Vine, Or the twisted Eglantine. While the Cock with lively din, Scatters the ... — The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton Read full book for free!
... elapsed since the ship had begun to move, having occasion to ask the mate (he stood by my side) to take a compass bearing of the Pagoda, I caught myself reaching up to his ear in whispers. I say I caught myself, but enough had escaped to startle the man. I can't describe it otherwise than by saying that he shied. A grave, preoccupied manner, as though he were in possession of some perplexing intelligence, did not leave him henceforth. A little later I ... — 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad Read full book for free!
... fantastic life, and by the act of reproducing it the struggle passed into their minds, and then, instead of imitating, they created. Then they themselves made the two elements contend; they increased the darkness to startle and disperse it with every manner of luminous effects and flashes of light; sunbeams stole through the gloom and then gradually died away; the reflections of twilight and the mellow light of lamps were delicately blended into mysterious shadows, which were animated with confused forms ... — Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis Read full book for free!
... warm, the moonlight shining on the little white figure, the deep silence, broken only by the faint murmur of the river and the distant singing of a nightingale, the gleam of the glowworms, compose a scene of fantastic beauty. The slightest sounds startle her, whether it be a fish leaping at the surface of the water to seize a fly, the gurgling of a little eddy, or the shrill cry of a bat. There is a certain voluptuous beauty in the very sound of the words that describe the little ... — Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer Read full book for free!
... section of the tapestry that, when it came to Paris, had power to startle Napoleon, ever superstitious, ever ready to read signs. The star over Harold's head reminded him of the possible brevity of his ... — The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee Read full book for free!
... then add the not less important business of making herself a rational person, instead of a more or less tastefully decorated doll with a passion for a great deal of money. She might awaken to the fact, which would at first startle her very much no doubt, that there is a great portion of a universe outside her own circle and her own mind. This simple discovery would of itself effect a revolution that might transform her from being an insipid idiot into a tolerably ... — Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous Read full book for free!
... me to startle you like that," he acknowledged. "Please forgive me. I caught sight of you both through the trees and declared myself ... — The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler Read full book for free!
... His hearers for what is coming by putting it in the gentle form of an hypothesis. The frequency with which 'If' occurs in this section is very remarkable. He will not startle them by the bare, naked statement which they, in that hour of depression and agitation, were so little able to endure, but He puts it in the shape of a 'suppose that,' not because there is any doubt, but in order to alleviate ... — Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren Read full book for free!
... experimentation along the materialistic lines of the 'regular' school, of curtailing their liberties, and forcing their necks under the yoke of medical tyranny, should come to them with the insistence of a clarion call, and startle them into such action that the subtle evil which lurks behind this proposed legislative action would be dragged out into the light and exterminated! To permit commercialism and greed, the lust of mammon, and the pride of the flesh that ... — Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking Read full book for free!
... sorry man's dominion Has broken Nature's social union, An' justifies that ill opinion Which makes thee startle At me, thy poor earth-born companion, ... — Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester Read full book for free!
... finish his dinner with another bit of bread. "Appetiva le rape," says his good son; videlicet, he was fond of turnips. In his fourth Satire, he mentions as a favourite dish, turnips seasoned with vinegar and boiled must (sapa), which seems, not unjustifiably, to startle Mr. Panizzi.[39] He cared so little for good eating, that he said of himself, he should have done very well in the days when people ... — Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt Read full book for free!
... conceal the pleasure she received from listening to her seductive admirer, who was trying all his trained skill upon his artless companion. Murray Bradshaw felt sure that the game was in his hands if he played it with only common prudence. There was no need of hurrying this child,—it might startle her to make downright love abruptly; and now that he had an ally in her own household, and was to have access to her with a freedom he had never before enjoyed, there was a refined pleasure in playing his fish,—this gamest ... — The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Read full book for free!
... grew soft, He left the hall he could not bring away, And grateful millions blessed the happy day! Whate'er contention in that hall is heard, His sovereign State has still the final word: For disputatious statesmen when they roar Startle the ancient echoes of his snore, Which from their dusty nooks expostulate And close with stormy clamor the debate. To low melodious thunders then they fade; Their murmuring lullabies all ears invade; Peace takes the Chair; the portal Silence keeps; No motion stirs the dark Lethean deeps— Washoe ... — Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce Read full book for free!
... to her now, one that she could utter, was able to utter. 'I couldn't live in America. Yes, you did startle me. But I ... — Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick Read full book for free!
... of time, to influence me, was the New Testament, and in particular the Gospel according to St. Matthew. I believe it would startle and move any one if they could make a certain effort of imagination and read it freshly like a book, not droningly and dully like a portion of the Bible. Any one would then be able to see in it those truths which we are all courteously supposed to know and all modestly ... — Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson Read full book for free!
... came out gradually before me. Nor did I feel as I ought to feel in their behalf until, in my own person and purse, I became the victim of a system of tyranny which cries from earth to heaven for relief. Were I to narrate my own story it would startle many of the Protestants of Ireland. There are good landlords—never a better than the late Lord Downshire, or the living and beloved Lord Roden. But there are too many of another state of feeling and action. There are estates in the north where the screw ... — The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin Read full book for free!
... governed Froude's whole nature. In the wild and rough heyday of reform, he was a Tory of the Tories. But when authority failed him, from cowardice or stupidity or self-interest, he could not easily pardon it; and he was ready to startle his friends by proclaiming himself a Radical, prepared for the sake of the highest and greatest interests to sacrifice ... — The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church Read full book for free!
... this is true, the prophet's aspirations are founded on the facts of human nature too, and judgments do sometimes startle those whom kindness had failed to touch. It is an awful thought that human nature may so steel itself against the whole armoury of divine weapons as that favour and severity are equally blunted, and the heart remains unpierced by either. ... — Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren Read full book for free!
... said he fiercely: "will you let the stagnant gore ooze and rot into the boards, to startle the eye, and still the heart with its filthy, and ... — Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton Read full book for free!
... of her enervated and almost decaying manner. Her beauty was of the dropping-to-pieces type, bound together by wonderful clothes of a fashion peculiar to herself and very effective. But they had the energy, the ruthlessness, and the indifference to opinion of their father, and loved to startle the world he had won for himself. They were shameless, ultra-smart, with a sort of half-condescending passion for upper Bohemia. And as neither their mother nor they cared about anybody's private ... — The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens Read full book for free!
... believe it, dear, I wish I didn't. I think I know a little bit how you feel. I'm not so hot and hasty and passionate as you, and oh, I'm not half, nor a quarter, so clever, but still, I do know how you feel; I—Polly, you startle me." ... — Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade Read full book for free!
... read to an end. Even in a corner of it, in a private park, or in the neighbourhood of a single hamlet, the weather and the seasons keep so deftly changing that although we walk there for a lifetime there will be always something to startle and delight us. ... — The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson Read full book for free!
... nailed against the oak as a warning to malefactors—extended itself in a kind of grim appeal to everybody. It seemed to possess strange fascinations for all seafaring folk; and when there was a man-of-war in port the rat-tat-tat of that knocker would frequently startle the quiet neighborhood long after midnight. There appeared to be an occult understanding between it and the blue-jackets. Years ago there was a young Bilkins, one Pendexter Bilkins—a sad losel, ... — Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various Read full book for free!
... taken in by customers for pins, sooner than by a direct bribe of ten times the value; especially if pretenders to conscience: for the offer of a bribe would not only give room for suspicion, but would startle and alarm their scrupulousness; while a high price paid for what you buy, is but submitting to be cheated in the method of the person makes a profession to get by. Have I not said that human nature is a rogue?**—And do not ... — Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson Read full book for free!
... the other, "you looked so comfortable. I didn't mean to startle you. I thought you must have heard me coming ... — The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole Read full book for free!
... in the end. She exists independently of us, but yet she exists to suggest to us what we may become, to awaken in us dim longings and desires, to surprise us into confession of our inadequacy, to startle us with perceptions of an infinitude we do not possess as yet but may possess; to make us feel our ignorance, weakness, want of finish; and by partly exhibiting the variety, knowledge, love, power and finish of God, to urge us forward in humble ... — The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke Read full book for free!
... now of the so-called "realm of the occult," nor of those extraordinary occurrences which startle and perplex the world from time to time, nor of those complicated and subtle problems of crime which are set to puzzle us. I am thinking of much more human and familiar things, quite natural and inevitable as it seems, which make us feel that life is threaded through and through ... — The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke Read full book for free!
... despised and oppressed negro is not so ill off as he is made out to be, especially in carnival time. As I enter, our grulla thinks it must be six o'clock, and essays to shriek that hour, as is her custom; but I startle her in the middle of her fourth chime, and she stops at half-past three. Then I climb into my aerial couch, in whose embrace I presently invoke that of the ... — The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman Read full book for free!
... at this late day, no such excitement can be created by any human invention, but the sight of a creature speeding over the country, impelled by steam, and bearing such a grotesque resemblance to a gigantic man, could not but startle all who should see ... — The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis Read full book for free!
... he could lay down his life with as much ease and willingness as another man could put off his clothes. He even wished, every step of his journey, to meet with the wild beasts; and though that death was most shocking and barbarous, and presented the most frightful ideas, sufficient to startle the firmest resolution; yet it was incapable of making the least impression upon his courageous soul. The perfect mortification of his affections appears from his heavenly meekness; and he expressed how perfectly he was dead ... — The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler Read full book for free!
... courtship, for he believed that he had a clear field before him, and he was too sagacious to startle Clara by overmuch energy. Meantime he began to be conscious that an influence from her was reaching his spirit. He had hitherto considered her a child; one day he suddenly recognized her as a woman. Now a woman, a beautiful woman especially, alone with one in the desert, is very mighty. ... — Overland • John William De Forest Read full book for free!
... seventeen," its vitality, discretion and general maturity of tone seem little short of amazing. Realism is the note of it. The modern schoolboy, as Mr. WAUGH paints him, employs, for example, a vocabulary whose frequency, and freedom may possibly startle the parental reader. Apart from this one might call the book an indictment of hero-worship, as heroism is understood in a society where (still!) athletic eminence places its possessor above all laws. This in itself is so ... — Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various Read full book for free!
... trivial subtleties of the rabbis, that it had never entered their heads that there could be any other way of teaching religion than boring men with interminable pedantries about trifles of ritual or outward obedience. This new Teacher would startle all, as an eagle suddenly appearing in a sanhedrim of owls. He would shock many; He would fascinate a few. Nor was it only the dissimilarity of His teaching, but also its authority, that was strange. The scribes spoke with authority enough of a sort, lording it over ... — Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren Read full book for free!
... It used to startle strangers to hear "The Hardy Norseman," "The Cuckoo," and such-like songs from the lips of little Chinese boys. Every Saturday evening they came to the house to practise the hymns and chants for Sunday; I had an harmonium in the dining-room. On ... — Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall Read full book for free!
... silent for an instant; then he said, "Mother, I'll try. Give me time, for all these things startle me. To think of Susan having to do ... — Lizzie Leigh • Elizabeth Gaskell Read full book for free!
... than any natural hand without it. In the sublime of sacred poetry, "Who is this that cometh from Edom? with dyed garments from Bozrah?" Would "the comer" be poetical without his "dyed garments?" which strike and startle the spectator, and identify ... — Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore Read full book for free!
... to light the flames of civil war, to murder by the hands of her own sons that unhappy country, which, deserted by all the nations of the earth, has again and again risen from her bloody grave to startle her oppressors with the old hymns of faith and triumph. But, if uncultured, because the iron heel of the tyrant has been on the heart of the murdered mother, the Polish peasant is faithful and devoted. He knows the nature of Russian rule. He has seen women knouted, childred ... — Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various Read full book for free!
... stalking in the shade of the trees, apparently unconscious of the presence of a few dogs, and not caring for the numerous turkeys, geese, and other domestic animals that gabbled and screamed around them. Nor did my own approach startle the wild, beautiful creatures, that seemed as docile as any of ... — John James Audubon • John Burroughs Read full book for free!
... lady was in a quandary. She had heard all the rumours that were going about, but she knew that they had been kept from Mary Grant, and she thought that if Blake meant to talk business he might shock or startle the girl terribly. ... — An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson Read full book for free!
... very house, sir, would run mad. You know it, How scrupulous he is, and violent, 'Gainst the least act of sin. Physic, or mathematics, Poetry, state, or bawdry, as I told you, She will endure, and never startle; but No ... — The Alchemist • Ben Jonson Read full book for free!
... order that the vigour of the rising generation can alone be trained. Undoubtedly, in the mixed qualities of human nature, there might now and then be formidable displays; the development of the heart might often startle the eye which looked to it for healthy action; the machinery of the mind would require to be examined with the hand of charity as well as the hand of science: but the general result must be knowledge—always interesting, ... — Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various Read full book for free!
... he often felt that if he could but look round swiftly enough he would catch a glimpse of the thing, and that nothing that he could see would be so fearful as that which was unseen; and so it came to pass that, as he sate with his mother, though he bore the presence long that he might not startle her, yet after a time of patient agony he could bear it no more, but looked swiftly behind him; he grew pale and ill, and even the men of the place noticed how often he turned round as he walked; till at last he would not even walk abroad, except early and late when there ... — Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson Read full book for free!
... changing old for new. Take from the one his robe of costly red, He'll not refuse to dress, or keep his bed; Clothed as you please, he'll walk the crowded street, And, though not fine, will manage to look neat. Put purple on the other, not the touch Of toad or asp would startle him so much; Give back his blanket, or he'll die of chill: Yes, give it back; he's too absurd ... — The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace Read full book for free!
... her dwelling, And our prince[122] in his trim, They might vainly aspire Without rifle and fire To ruffle or nigh her, Her mantle to dim. Stark-footed, lively, Ever capering naively With motion alive, aye, And wax-white, in shine, When her startle betrays That the hounds are in chase, The same as the base Is the rocky decline— She puffs from her chest, And she ambles her crest And disdain is express'd In her nostril and eye;— That eye—how it winks! Like a sunbeam it blinks, And it glows, and it sinks, And is jealous and shy! A mountaineer ... — The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various Read full book for free!
... Bendocdar? It is necessary that we should learn, in order to comprehend the events that were ere long to startle and ... — The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar Read full book for free!
... that I startle from its shaded restin' place, Seems a furry shaft o' silence shootin' into noiseless space, An' a rattlesnake a crawlin' through the rocks so old an' gray Helps along the ghostly feelin' in a rather startlin' way. Every breeze that dares to whisper does it ... — Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various Read full book for free!
... matter with him?" The stranger addressed Bessie with the utmost familiarity, in a deliberate, explanatory tone. "I didn't want to startle the old man." He lowered his voice as though he had known her for years. "I dropped into a barber's on my way, to get a twopenny shave, and they told me there he was something of a character. The old man has been a ... — To-morrow • Joseph Conrad Read full book for free!
... a glimpse into Bakounin's mind is likely to startle the reader. But there is no fiction here; he is what Carlyle would have called "a terrible God's Fact." He was a very real product of Russia's infamy, and we need not be surprised if one with Bakounin's great talents, ... — Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter Read full book for free!
... market-place presented to the Boy a picture of desolation which chilled him. He was about to turn away with a last cursory glance at the other solitary figure, when something suddenly occurred which arrested his attention. It seemed to startle him too, for he sprang back, with prompt agility, into a dark doorway behind him, from whence he watched what followed with the keenest interest, being careful, however, to conceal himself the while. He had not felt any movement of pity or kindly compassion for the girl; perfect indifference ... — The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand Read full book for free!
... own eyes. We stood Together in a ball-room, when a lady, To me unknown, came up, regarded me With strange compassion in her curious glance, And then, with something less divine than pity, Looked down on my betrothed, and moved away. I turned to Anna, but upon her face, There was a look to startle like a ghost; Defiance, deadly fear, and murderous hate Were all so wildly blended! But 'twas gone— Gone like a flash before I well could mark it; And in its place there came a luminous smile, ... — The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent Read full book for free!
... read that the police bullied suspected persons in this way. If you make a guilty person believe that you know him to be guilty, you can also get him to confess if you startle him sufficiently. It occurred to me that this was what these men were doing, especially as they had not been sure of me when I ... — Jim Davis • John Masefield Read full book for free!
... down to the station platform, began to pace up and down it. If I had only dared, I could have put my finger through the crack of the planks and touched her foot as she walked over my head, but I was afraid it might startle her into a shriek, and there was no explaining to her what it meant without telling the cowboys how close they were to ... — The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford Read full book for free!
... Ned put them all on the alert. Each one had a station assigned to him, which he was expected to hold, in case of a renewal of hostilities; while Jimmy might bemoan the fact that he could not have a bucket of boiling water with which to startle the intended boarders, he evidently did not intend to let that deficiency keep him from doing his duty. Crouching there at a point where he could fire through the breach in the stern of the wreck, he only waited for the word to be given, when he evidently meant ... — Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson Read full book for free!
... surrender of self to the impression, whether spiritual or sensual, of the moment. It is a quality, perhaps, in which the young poet is richer than the mature, his very inexperience making him more venturesome in those leaps of language that startle us with their rashness only to bewitch us the more with the happy ease of their accomplishment. For this there are no existing laws of rhetoric, for it is from such felicities that the rhetoricians deduce and codify their statutes. It is something which cannot be improved ... — Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell Read full book for free!
... to Riversley. My servants mentioned his name. I thought it adviseable not to trouble the ladies with it to-day.' He meditated. 'I hoped I should find her at the Grange in the morning, Harry. I slept on it, rather than startle the poor ... — The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith Read full book for free!
... bell Shall startle slumber; and all men agree That whatsoever other things may be A cause of sorrow, this at least ... — The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray Read full book for free!
... began the descent through the woods, the moccasined feet of our dusky allies falling noiselessly upon the pine quills. We almost held our breath, lest the least noise, the accidental breaking of a twig, should startle the enemy. Though this was to be my first real Indian fight, I felt no fear and not so much excitement as when stalking my first buck. As we neared the edge of the wood and were almost prepared for the rush, the Indians on the other side raised the yell. Led on by their eagerness they had come ... — Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson Read full book for free!
... into the Joys like this: most of them cannot endure me. But I have here the thick veil with which I cover myself when I visit happy people.... (She unfolds a long veil and wraps herself in it carefully.) Not a ray of my you! must startle them, for there are many Happinesses that are afraid and are not happy.... There... like this, even the ugliest and coarsest of them ... — The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts • Maurice Maeterlinck Read full book for free!
... we are apt to study the dim past for the wonderful and sublime, forgetful of the fact that the present is a constant romance, and that the happenings of to-day which we count of little importance are sure to startle somebody in the future, and engage the pen of ... — The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman Read full book for free!
... go for Dr. Tudor meanwhile. I do hope you will find Piers. Tell him to bring two men, and something that they can carry him on. Jeanie dear, you run home to your mother and tell her how it is that we shall be late for tea. You won't startle her, I know." ... — The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell Read full book for free!
... great—a great war or a love-story. And in the darkest of the books of God there is written a truth that is also a riddle. It is of the new things that men tire—of fashions and proposals and improvements and change. It is the old things that startle and intoxicate. It is the old things that are young. There is no sceptic who does not feel that many have doubted before. There is no rich and fickle man who does not feel that all his novelties are ancient. There is no ... — The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton Read full book for free!
... is true, every day had its history, and every rising and setting sun found something added to the volume of my life. But there seems so little to describe! I could go on for ever, giving utterance to thoughts that used to crowd in my young brain, thoughts that would startle as well as amuse,—but I fear they might ... — Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz Read full book for free!
... he failed of his purpose, or the observation she immediately made was a strange coincidence. I believe she understood, for, while young women educated by their mothers are usually ignorant upon all the more masculine subjects, those who have long been their father's companions are ever prone to startle one with the most unexpected flashes of intelligence. "I am in rather a high state of tension now," she said, turning calmly to Maitland; "but when alone the expression which has been denied me here will afford relief." Maitland glanced at her quickly, ... — The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy Read full book for free!
... called to my friend; 'here's such a magnificent cat!' for I feared the approach of the phaeton would startle it away before he had ... — Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell Read full book for free!
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