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More "Stillness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had gone to bed long before. I was so interested that I forgot what I was doing and ran into the hedge so that I nearly came down. There was the noise of the scrape and drag of the machine which must have sounded very loud in the stillness. It startled him, for he looked all round, but he didn't see me, for I was under the hedge. Then suddenly he started running. He ran as if the devil was after him. I saw him squash down his Trilby hat so that it was shapeless. Then he disappeared along ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... it afterwards appeared to have attracted the attention of no one else in the family. Supposing that some article of furniture had accidentally fallen, the noise of which had been rendered more noticeable by the perfect stillness of the night, I pursued my occupation, until I felt disposed for sleep. On the following night, while engaged in the same way, and at the same midnight hour, came the same heavy, sharp, distinct thud upon the floor directly above my head. I was disposed to philosophize on the subject, ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... nearly two hours, there was absolute stillness once more in this miserable house. Bessie had sunk, half fainting, on a chair by the bed, and lay there, her head ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... times. Fine thoughts were never spontaneous with him, never unexpected, never unwaited for,—never, certainly till long after he had got his growth. In fact, some of the happiest passages we have seem to be engraved, letter by letter, instead of being written at once, or launched away into the stillness, like a red-hot thunderbolt. Well do I remember a little incident which occurred in Baltimore, soon after the failure of Pierpont and Lord—and Neal, when we were all dying of sheer inaction, and almost ready to hang ourselves—in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... formation. No city fills a more prominent page in the records of the Middle Ages, or is more enshrined in romance and poetry. It is a city of a hundred thousand inhabitants, and yet what comparative stillness reigns over all, solemn and strange especially to the newly arrived traveller. There is no rattling of wheels, no tramp of horses' feet upon the streets; wheels and horses are unknown; only the gondola serves ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... one side. The red irritable motor kept up a red irritable "tip-tip-tip-tip-tip-tip." The whine of the saw rose till it simulated the shriek of a fire-alarm whistle at night, but always at the end it gave a lively metallic clang, and in the stillness she heard the flump of the cut ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... time the whole after-part of the vessel was shrouded in smoke that had been oozing out from the door and windows of the cabin, and which, in consequence of the stillness of the night, was not carried away. Slowly it ascended into the air, and so straight upwards that the edge of the cloud had not yet approached the main-deck—although the whole of the mizen-mast was enveloped by the thick smoke and invisible to its very peak. Most ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... great peace, of which we are so proud, was more like the stillness of stagnant pools than the calm ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... acquiescence, amidst a stillness which, when he surveyed the lowering brows of one party at least of those who were in the church, boded no peaceful termination to this fated day. The father motioned to the messenger to show him the way, and proceeded on his mission, attended ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... is not so much the doctrine of the Divine voice as that of the preliminary stillness, the closure against other voices and the reduction of the mind to a condition in which it can LISTEN, in which it can discern the merest whisper, inaudible when the world, or interest, or ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... he knew that he must be a considerable distance westward of the line of the camp. His training during the winter in holding a line of march helped him now to maintain his course steadily in one direction. The temperature was still dropping rapidly. Over the woods hung a dead stillness, except for the lonely call of an occasional crow or for the scream of the impudent whiskey-jack. But soon even these became silent. As he surmounted each hill top Cameron took his bearings afresh and anxiously scanned the sky for weather signs. In spite of himself there crept over him ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... white little face,' she tremblingly cries, 'It cannot be yours, that white little face; O when did you get those far-seeking eyes? And the stillness in lieu ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart
... above, and then Miss Letty's voice, a very little voice suited to the dusk and stillness, came ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... sweetly-toned instrument! It is thrown to the air, and in its plaint makes sweet music of its melancholy. Like harmonious spirits chanting in their invisibility, making vocal the very atmosphere, it died away as though going to a great distance, and stillness was in the whole house. He stole gently to the door. There seated was Alice; her elbow on her instrument, and her brow upon her hand. The bell rang for dinner. The repast is over, and a glass of generous wine sent the rose to the cheeks of Alice, but enlivened not her eye. Her heart ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... this only happens once in ten years. Good God, listen!" Like a savage beast the wind seemed to skulk, and to crouch.... It sprang forward and seized the house and shook it. Then it died away, and there was stillness ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... chimney. Alma had been in earnest when she had said she meant to be economical. Her firm will was now set in that direction. Coin after coin was dropped into the chimney, as swallow after swallow sinks into similar quarters when a summer night comes on. The accumulating store lay in secrecy and in stillness, save when Alma now and then made the little house shake as if an earthquake threatened it with destruction, while she listened delightedly to the jingling and rattling within. She wished often that she had asked Nono to make real windows with glass in them, through ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... a stillness on his spirit fell, Before th' unearthly train; For he knew Valhalla's daughters well, ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... learned to handle his two heavy clubs in complex curves that seem to you inexplicable, tracing in the air a device as swift and tangled as that woven by a swarm of gossamer flies above a brook, in the sultry stillness of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... can have things as definite as you wish; out-doors you will find a continual play of varying color and light. The shadows do not fall where you expect them to. The values are less marked. The stillness of the pose is interfered with by the constant movement of nature. The color is influenced by the diffused color of the atmosphere and the reflected color of the grass, the trees, and the sky. The light does not fall on the face so much as it ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... tons of stone heaped up, within a circular wall of stone, itself surrounded by a great outer circle of standing stones, thirty in number, like gray sentinels guarding the shrine. In the very heart of the pyramid, hushed in perpetual stillness and peace, is the inmost sanctuary, a chamber formed like a cross, domed with a lofty roof, and adorned with mysterious tracings on the rocks. Shrines like this are found in many lands, whether ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... sound broke the death-like stillness of the room as he sat down, and I noticed that every face within my view was turned away from the prisoner's chair and the old man who sat near it. The tense strain of the moment was broken by the prisoner's counsel, who arose and began a motion for ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... she added, with a glance at him which took in the dust, and the stains of salt-water on his clothes, the fatigue he sought to conceal by a rigid stillness, and the tension that was left by the dangers he had ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... winds from the sea had lulled, and for once the house was utterly quiet—so quiet that the stillness became oppressive. Meanwhile the young girl sat in her bower of luxury, softly humming a favorite air, and very happy in thoughts of her approaching marriage. While deep in her smiling reverie, a stealthy footstep distinctly ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... of her foremothers and let herself drift out on her own troubled waters. Wrapped in the compassionate darkness she was giving way to the luxury of letting the controlled tears rise to her eyes and the sobs that her white throat ached from suppressing all day were echoing on the stillness when a voice came from the little cot by her bed and the General in disheveled nightshirt and rumpled head rose by her pillow and stood with uncertain feet on his ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... night, I again betook myself to the street in which Shunah Shoo lived, but not by the ordinary route. I cautiously approached his house. All was stillness and quiet: no light appeared to be burning in Veenah's room, nor indeed in any other part of the house. I hence concluded that they had now deprived her of light, as well as of pen and ink. I continued ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... which indeed were never high. She said she enjoyed the walk, which she and Lois took in company, Madge having gone with her grandmother and Charity in Mrs. Marx's waggon. The winter evening was falling grey, and the grey was growing dark; and there was something in the dusky stillness, and soft, half-defined lines of the landscape, with the sharp, crisp air, which suited the mood of both ladies. The stars were not visible yet; the western horizon had still a glow left from the sunset; and houses and trees stood like dark solemn ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... the time our pilot came on board, and as we entered the harbour the town lay deep in the stillness of the afternoon. We had cast anchor, and I was reflecting on my next course of action when I heard my name called from under the ship's side. Looking down, I spied a tall, grave gentleman seated in a boat. I replied as well as I could for the noise, and presently ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the life That but an instant off stirred the warm air With murmurs multifarious, and the waves Of great humanity, sunk silenced there, With stillness so supreme, that pulses beat More quickly from the contrast, and the soul Hearkened to listen, humbled and subdued As when the Saviour uttered 'Peace, be still.' The tardy laborer, walled within the town, Brought the uplifted hammer noiseless down, And ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... We made good speed, for the family mule, homeward bound, stepped on briskly under its double burden. Sometimes we kept up with the party, joining in the talk of the good peasants; at others, falling behind to enjoy the stillness of the scene, and abandon ourselves to the contemplation of its ever-varying features. Now we threaded the bank of a mountain torrent far beneath in shade, the depth of which the eye was unable to penetrate as we plunged downwards through the thickets; then, crossing the stream and scrambling ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... nightfall came and the Americans were resting in Calumpit after their two days' hard fighting, the whole district was illuminated for miles around by the flames from the burning villages and groups of huts, whilst the snapping of the burning bamboos echoed through the stillness like volleys ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... the spirit of slumber had not yet taken possession of the place. But these soon ceased. The wind moved the tall laburnums in the lane without a sound, and the murmur of running water alone broke the stillness, as the gurgle of the burn, and the rush of the distant mill-dam met and mingled in the air of the ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... that four-hundred foot gash in the earth; the sinking moon lightened only a strip along the east wall, near the top; lower down, smoke mingling with the natural gloom cast an impenetrable veil from bank to bank; not a breath of air stirred the tomblike stillness. Directly in front of us a horse coughed. We dropped on all fours, listened a moment, then crept forward. Without warning, we found ourselves foul of a picket-line, and the vague forms of grazing horses loomed close by. Piegan halted ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... But the stillness remained unbroken and the shadows deepened, until he saw that the night was fully come, and he could move about without danger of being fired upon from a distance. The moon was late in rising, so that the gloom was ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... Badger, or else Badger got to know of it somehow, so I came straight off here, through the Wild Wood and the snow! My! it was fine, coming through the snow as the red sun was rising and showing against the black tree-trunks! As you went along in the stillness, every now and then masses of snow slid off the branches suddenly with a flop! making you jump and run for cover. Snow-castles and snow-caverns had sprung up out of nowhere in the night—and snow bridges, terraces, ramparts—I ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... now side by side, now, where the way was narrow, one before the other. The blue clouded over, there sprang a wind. The trees bent and shook, the deep glen grew gray and dark. That wind died and there was a breathless stillness, heated and heavy. Each heard the other's ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... opened, doors all but slammed, vague whisperings and drawn breaths had hovered impalpably about the whole place; but now all was utterly quiet. His own regular footfall alone disturbed the unnatural stillness of ...
— In The Valley Of The Shadow • Josephine Daskam
... intense stillness that followed the noise that Bert Dodge made in shifting his feet on the floor sounded loud, indeed. Anstey was a trifle paler than usual, but he was working under an intense conviction, and the grit and dash of his Revolutionary forbears was quite sufficient to carry him on ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... brought a song to the great Springfield assembly. He sang it when the people were in a receptive mood. It voiced their hearts, and its influence was electric. As he rose before the assembly on that August day under the prairie sun, and sang: "Hark! hark! a signal-gun is heard," a stillness came over the great sea of the people. The figures of the first verse filled the imagination, but the ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... during their absence. McMillan had also been notified to support the movement of Grover's brigades. Emory himself was up and dressed, the horses of his staff were saddled, and his own horses were being saddled, when from the left a startling sound broke the stillness of the morning air. ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... the pit! Bushes with twisted and fantastic arms, growing, they or their ancestors, from time immemorial in the clefts of the rock, reach towards the light, and the elfish hart's-tongue fern, itself half in darkness, points down with frond that never moves in that eternal stillness which all the winds of heaven pass over, to a thicker darkness whence comes the everlasting wail and groan of ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... had not gone at once to Lockhaven; they spent a fortnight in wandering about through the mountains on horseback. The sweet June weather, the crystal freshness of the air, and the melodious stillness of the woods and fields wrapped those first heavenly days of entire possession in a mist of joy. Afterwards, John Ward felt that it had blinded the eyes of his soul, and drifted between him and his highest duty; he had not been able to turn away from the gladness of living in ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... weary, and towards midnight only a few intermittent notes broke the stillness. Soon all was silent as the grave, save for the occasional cry of some animal prowling in search of food upon ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... at length out into the darkness of the barrack-square stalks the trumpeter on duty, and the shrill notes of the reveille echo through the stillness of the yet dark night. On an ordinary morning the reveille is practically negatived, and nobody thinks of stirring from between the blankets till the "warning" sounds quarter of an hour before the ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... The stillness was broken by a piercing scream that caused every head to bob up, and the blankets to be ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... women, like waggon-tilts, their cotton gowns and checked shawls, mixed with the carters' smockfrocks; for they, too, entered into the hiring. Among the rest, at the corner of the pavement, stood an old shepherd, who attracted the eyes of Lucetta and Farfrae by his stillness. He was evidently a chastened man. The battle of life had been a sharp one with him, for, to begin with, he was a man of small frame. He was now so bowed by hard work and years that, approaching from behind, a person could hardly see his head. He had planted the stem of his crook ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... again the horizon. How sweet the soft breezes off the moist prairies! How weird, how very near, the crimson and green and black and yellow sunsets! How dream-like the land and the great, whispering river! The profound stillness and breath reminded the old German, so he said, of that early time when the evenings and mornings were the first days of the half-built world. The barking of a dog in Fort Plaquemines seemed to come before its turn in the panorama of creation—before ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... stillness and seclusion, By guardian angels led, Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution, She lives, whom ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... heavy, difficult to breathe, and surcharged with electricity; and to Drake, intimately acquainted as he was with these seas, it seemed that a typhoon was more than probably brewing. There was a sense of discomfort and uneasiness in the atmosphere which communicated itself to man and beast, for in the stillness of the night, in the pauses in the singing and uproar, the horses in their stalls on board the transports could be heard whinnying and neighing, as though not altogether at ease. Little balls of electricity came and went ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... Brief but yet endless; From Heaven, eyes behold you In eternity's stillness. There all is fullness, Ye brave to reward you; Work and ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... imprisoned steam at intervals of a half minute or more threw the mud in small fig-like masses from five to forty feet in air with a dull, booming sound, sometimes loud enough to be heard for miles through the awful stillness of these lonely hills. It is clear, from the fact of our finding these mud-patches at least one hundred yards from the crater, that at times much more violent explosions take place. The constant plastering of the slopes of the crater which these explosions cause tends to seal up its vent, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... noise behind me, and turning suddenly saw the flapping white tail of a rabbit vanishing up the slope. I jumped to my feet. The apparition of this grotesque, half-bestial creature had suddenly populated the stillness of the afternoon for me. I looked around me rather nervously, and regretted that I was unarmed. Then I thought that the man I had just seen had been clothed in bluish cloth, had not been naked as a savage would have been; and I tried to persuade ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... stood there dreaming, he suddenly became conscious of sounds in the room overhead. Or rather in the now absolute stillness of the rest of the house he realized that the movements and voices above him, which had really been going on since he entered his room, persisted when ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... where he contrived all sorts of wonderful things, devoting more time to them than to his legitimate lessons, which his soul abhorred. But though she was invariably cheerful, ever ready to share and sympathise with all the varied interests of the house, there was a stillness of manner, a 'dreamy far-offness,' as Mina expressed it, which indicated that sometimes ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... canal, and the troops, on their line of march, enlivened much the scene. Bruges, formerly the grand mart and emporium of the commerce of the East, not only for the Low Countries, but for all the North of Europe, seems, if we may judge from the state of the buildings and the stillness that prevails, to be also in a state of decline. We however had only time to visit the Hotel de Ville and to remark the immense height of the steeple on the Grande Place. We observed a number of pretty women in the streets and in the shops employed in lace making. ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... hushed and dim beyond the fringe; whispering leaves and crackling twigs sounded sharp as a shower of stones in the stillness. Great trees reared their majestic heads to mingle their foliage and shut out the light; every creeping, flying, walking creature seemed awed into a vague murmuring that was deeper than silence. The Grove of Mysteries was a semicircular space of ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... letter unfolded, and a tress of shining hair dropped on the old man's hand, clinging lovingly, as it were, about his fingers, while a low, deep cry broke the stillness of the room. He knew it in a moment—knew it was Fannie's hair—the same he had so oft caressed when she was but a little girl and he a grown-up man. It was Fannie's hair, come to him over land and sea, and his eyes grew dim with tears, which rained over his thin, dark face ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... for them, speaking to the elder, whom she had not yet seen, as if they were already acquainted. There was moreover in the air of that personage at this juncture little to invite such a confidence: he appeared to have been startled, in the oddest manner, into stillness and, holding out no hand to meet her, only stared rather stiffly and without a smile. An observer disposed to interpret the scene might have fancied him a trifle put off by the girl's familiarity, or even, as by a singular effect of her self-possession, stricken into deeper diffidence. ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... the end those three Shall perish and their hands be still, And with the master's touch shall flee Their incommunicable skill. A stillness absolute as death Along the slacking wheels shall lie, And, flagging at a single breath, The fires shall moulder out and die. The roar shall vanish at its height, And over that tremendous town The silence of eternal night Shall gather close and settle down. All its grim grandeur, tower and hall, ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... Again a stillness ensued. Mehetabel could hear her heart beat. She could hear no other sound. She looked through the room towards the clock. It ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... down the parlor. Then, the drip,—drip,—was broken by longer blanks, and stopped. The cotton wood leaves ceased to rustle and flutter. Only the twang of the night hawk's wing hummed through the stillness; and the distracted tread no longer paced the Mission Parlor. When Eleanor came back from across the hall, she shut the Library ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... forest districts; for nothing contributes so much to bring forth the loving principle of the affections as the silent melancholy of the umbrageous woods, and the soft and perfumed breezes that pervade them. Here, in the dusk and stillness of the summer evenings, these wood-nymphs hear in the lofty branches of the linden, the endearing love songs of the feathered tribe, and when night throws its charitable gloom over their blushing cheeks, they whisper at the trysting place what they have heard ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... Maitland, the daughter of Lady Rothes (they were the nearest neighbours of the Stair family in Wigtownshire), and I afterwards heard the tradition from others in that country. It was to the following effect, that when, after the noise and violent screaming in the bridal chamber, comparative stillness succeeded, and the door was forced, the window was found open, and it was supposed by many that the lover (Lord Rutherford) had, by the connivance of some of the servants, found means, during the bustle of the marriage feast, to ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... again, and we took a last look at El-Kerak. The moon was beginning to rise above the rim of the Moab Hills. The land beyond the Dead Sea was wrapped in utter silence. Over to the south-east you could make out one dot of yellow light, to prove that men lived and moved and had their being in that stillness. Otherwise, you couldn't believe it was real country. It looked like a vision of the ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... he could hear, in the mild December stillness, his horse's feet coming and going on the gravel. Her horse, led up and down by her servant, at the door of her house!... The sound symbolized his whole future...the situation his marriage had made for him, and to which he must henceforth bend, unless he broke with it then and there.... ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... mocking; callow and alien youth, having to be looked after and studied and taught, as though nothing but it mattered, term after term—and now, all of a sudden, in mid-term, peace, ataraxy, a profound and leisured stillness. No lectures to deliver to-morrow; no "essays" to hear and criticise; time for the ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... the village takes its name, are suffered to stand, unscathed by the woodman's axe. The "iron horse" has never disturbed the inhabitants by his shrill voice, and the rattling of cars has not broken upon the stillness of a summer-day. The village is not on the direct route from any of the principal cities to others, consequently the inhabitants suffer little apprehension of having their fine farms cut up by rail-road tracks. The ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... dipped down to a low marshy place, where a stream soaked through the path. The rock, which seemed like a little pinnacle, rose sharply on their left clear of the bushes: all else was forest, except that a little path or clearing led up to the left, among the trees. There was an utter stillness in the air, which was all full of a golden light. The swords came merrily out of the scabbards with a sudden clang. The troopers closed in about them; but then, with a sudden dark rush out of the wood, ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... hatchways, and gathering their firemen at quarters. But they would not withdraw their ships a single yard! At ten o'clock the great French ship blew up with a flame that for a moment lit shore and sea, and a sound that hushed into stillness the whole tumult of the battle. Out of a crew of over a thousand men only seventy were saved! For ten minutes after that dreadful sight the warring fleets seemed stupefied. Not a shout was heard, not a shot fired. Then the French ship next the missing flagship broke into wrathful fire, ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... with satisfaction, "I was about to ask you what you thought the distance was. Two miles is about what I had estimated. We can't say very exactly, for sound is likely to travel far in this still air. But let us make a liberal allowance for the stillness. I think we are safe in saying that the sound comes from a point not more than four miles distant from this island. Now, the next question is, from what direction does ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... been constructed beneath it for the accommodation of the foot-traveler, or, perchance, some idle dreamer like myself. It seemed to look round with a lordly air upon its old hereditary domain, whose stillness was no longer broken by the tap of the martial drum, nor the discordant clang of arms; and, as the breeze whispered among its branches, it seemed to be holding friendly colloquies with a few of its venerable contemporaries, who ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... berth with an armful of pistols and something of a heavy heart, and set open the window where I was to watch. It was a small part of the deck that I could overlook, but enough for our purpose. The sea had gone down, and the wind was steady and kept the sails quiet; so that there was a great stillness on the ship, in which I made sure I heard the sound of muttering voices. A little after, and there came a clash of steel upon the deck, by which I knew they were dealing out the cutlasses, and one had been let fall; and after ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... force a theory fitted for poetry on sculpture and architecture would rob these of their distinctive aesthetic values; in the one case, of the plastic beauty of finely moulded marble surfaces as realized by imaginative excursions of the hand; and in the other case, of the perfect stillness and stability which give to great structures their ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... succeeded the happening of these events; but it was as the solemn stillness which precedes the eruption of an earthquake, when a volcanic explosion has given notice of its approach;—rendered more awful by the uncertainty where its desolating influence would be felt. It was however, a stillness ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... beating our clothes white on stones in the tank. In the village the women are grinding corn; the oxen are drawing water from the well. The wood-smoke hangs in wisps on the hot air, and the song of the boys bringing home the cattle comes to me distinctly in the stillness. The sunset colours are fading into the deep blue of the Indian night, and the faithful are ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... almost count the stones. In front of us, between these two enormous headlands, lay the sea as calm as when the Madonna stayed the tempest, and all along the great curve of the shore little waves were lazily playing in the morning stillness. I asked the sceptical guard what part of ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... World, give answer! They are whimpering to and fro— And what should they know of England who only England know?— The poor little street-bred people that vapour and fume and brag, They are lifting their heads in the stillness to yelp at ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... the many-hued marble floors; and, as she passed, a vase of great white lilies caught in her draperies of cramoisie and fell. She gave no heed, but swept on, and faced him in the sunny silence. Across the pause the Angelus sounded from a church hard by: Hilarius crossed himself devoutly; and the stillness fled before a ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... apparent, from the above accounts of the experiences of each vessel, that the failure of the greater part of the fleet to pass was principally due to other circumstances than the Confederate fire. The darkness of the night, the stillness of the air, which permitted the smoke to settle undisturbed, the intricacy of the navigation, the rapidity of the current, then running at the rate of five knots, the poor speed of the ships, not over ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... least brought temporary relief to his sufferings), it would have sufficed, had Odette only permitted him to remain in her house while she was out, to wait there until that hour of her return, into whose stillness and peace would flow, to be mingled and lost there, all memory of those intervening hours which some sorcery, some cursed spell had made him imagine as, somehow, different from the rest. But she would not; he must return home; ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... thus engaged, standing on a bridge which carried a by-road over the stream, a shock passed through him: the stillness was broken as by thunder, the vision fled, and the entanglements fell over him like a gladiator's net. A motor, coming round a dangerous bend, had just missed him; and he stood covered with dust. Chandrapal saw and ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... gown, white muslin neckerchief and cap, after that exquisitely neat and quaint fashion. Then the Hutchinsons sang a hymn, in which all were requested to join. Afterward Mrs. Stanton came to the front of the pulpit, the house was hushed, to a reverential stillness, and I never yet heard anything so solemn and impressive as her reading of the Declaration of Rights of the Women of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... hour passed with nothing to indicate the reason for these most peculiar actions. Half an hour that was interminable to Mr. Weil, torn with a thousand fears as to what it might all portend. At last, however, a faint sound broke the stillness. Some one was approaching. Roseleaf touched the shoulder of his companion to indicate the ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... not there. But something was there, by the porcelain basin—something which might have sent me scurrying upstairs two steps at a time, but which as a matter of fact held me to the spot. My heart seemed to stand still—so still! And in the stillness I remember setting down the brass candlestick on a tall nest ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... silently thinking of Poppy, not quite free from the fear that she might have followed him to New Zealand by another boat. The idea made him nervous, and the suspense became unendurable. He took up his cap and strolled out into the stillness of the evening. Sea-bridge seemed strange to him after his long absence, and, under present conditions, melancholy. There was hardly a soul to be seen, but a murmur of voices came through the open windows of the Thorn, and a clumsy cart jolted and creaked ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... against the window-panes, the gale whistled mournfully among the stunted trees, but within this room not a sound stirred the deadly stillness of the air, and yet at this moment hatred and love, savage lust and sublime self-abnegation—the most power full passions the heart of man can know—held three men here enchained; each a slave to his dominant passion, each ready to stake ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... now was closed; a serene stillness reigned; and the chaste Queen of Night with her silver crescent faintly illuminated the hemisphere. The mind of Montraville was hushed into composure by the serenity of the surrounding objects. "I will think on her no more," ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... his joke and making another echo ring sharply over the still face of the water, the red man strode off through the gap fifty yards distant. Then in the stillness Mark heard the purr of a machine. He had evidently departed upon a motor bicycle to the main road half a ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... look for me, now I was not there? I waited, and a strange, unearthly tremor shook both blood and nerves, until tears were wrought out, and came dropping down, and in the stillness I heard one ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... my study, my head bent, and my hands loosely clasped in my lap, living it over and over again. Out of doors, the soft gray dusk had hushed the tired world in its arms. Within, the stillness of night had settled down upon the room. By and by the moon rose above the great waters of the lake, and on shore the trees were casting silent, solemn shadows, made visible by the soft, hazy light that lay between them. Once in a while ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... amongst the minor works must I omit to notice Miss Stuart-Wortley's view on the river Cherwell, taken from the walks of Magdalen College, Oxford,—a little picture marked by great sympathy for the shade and coolness of green places and for the stillness of summer waters; or Mrs. Valentine Bromley's Misty Day, remarkable for the excellent drawing of a breaking wave, as well as for a great delicacy of tone. Besides the Marchioness of Waterford, whose brilliant ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... sound, only a rush of wind from the valley below. Everything lapsed again into its awful stillness. As the cloud lifted from where the mill had stood, the moon shone only upon empty space. There was a singular murmuring and whispering from the woods beyond that increased in sound, and an hour later the dry bed of the old mill-stream was filled ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... they thought they heard distant sounds, these might be caused by the passage of a wild animal through the bushes. The sentries were all vigilant. It was the first time that the Sussex lads had been in face of an enemy, and the stillness of the night, the sombre forest in front of them, and the possibility of a savage and unknown foe lurking there, kept them thoroughly on the alert. Once or twice Wulf and Osgod went forward to examine some bush that had seemed to the imagination ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... darker; in the west still lingered the last sunset hues of pink and saffron and green; and overhead in the deep blackening blue of night the stars were just becoming visible. We had strolled on in silence for some time, hushed by the solemn stillness of the evening. At last Dr. Armitage exclaimed, "Ah, Isabel, how I sometimes long for rest and peace, and sweet wholesome surroundings! How beautiful life might be passed with a companion such as you. The earth is beautiful, ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... described, varying from grandeur to tameness, from fertility to barrenness, from extreme beauty to extreme ugliness, but always possessing, at least, the recommendation of being new, the wanderers in the Bush are delighted to range. There is a charm to enterprising spirits in the freedom, the stillness, and even in the dangers and privations, of these vast wilds, which, to such spirits, scenes of a more civilised character can never possess. If it be true,—and who has never felt ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... to have possessed them both, for with very few words they left the boat and took their places, and with no words at all for some time the hooks were baited and the lines thrown. Profound stillness — and then the flutter of a poor little fish as he struggled out of his element, or the stir made by one of the fishers in reaching after the bait-basket — and then all was still again. The lines drooped motionless in the water; the eyes of the fishers wandered off ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... glittering stars were spread thick; the brilliant moon poured down its silver light over the whiteness of the sloping roof-tops, and upon the ghostly white, silently drooping trees. A heaviness hung in the frosty air—a stillness broken only by the tinkling of sleigh-bells or sometimes by the ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... of the stillness of the moonlit world and the insane intrusion of the war into it has not, I think, been suggested so expressively ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... while, Juliette had neither moved nor uttered a sound. Little more than a minuted had elapsed since the moment when the first peremptory order, to open in the name of the Republic, had sounded like the tocsin through the stillness of the house. Droulde's kisses were still hot upon her hand, his words of love were still ringing in ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... and the horses stretched their stiff limbs into a feeble lumbering gallop. Ezra and the sergeant shot to the front, and the others followed as best they might. Suddenly in the stillness they heard far away a dull rattling sound like the clatter of distant castanets. "It's their horses' hoofs!" cried Ezra; and the troopers behind raised a cheer to show that they too understood ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... between us and either sky or earth. This is a new and somewhat larger bedroom than I have been used to. But with no house within twenty miles we are unmolested. What a place! I listen. "All the air a solemn stillness holds." I look. "So lonesome it is that God himself scarce seems to be there." But the clear air and quiet night soon lull me into unbroken slumber. Thus we travel until we reach Park St. Church Station, where we find our comfortable log house of one room ready to receive us. Though we ...
— American Missionary, Volume 44, No. 1, January, 1890 • Various
... of the boat ceased, and an awful stillness seemed to sink down upon her as she glided into a little creek or bay, which was ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... of the clock are moving. The world seems to be on tiptoe, listening for a thunderstroke of Fate. The Ministers at length sit silent, rigid, almost petrified, looking fixedly at floor or ceiling. Then through the awful stillness of the room and the park outside comes the deep boom of "Big Ben." Boom, boom, boom! No one moves until the last of the eleven strokes has gone reverberating through the night. Then comes a voice, heavy with emotion, yet ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... of heart, his mind reverted to the long future before him that was now so terribly vague and dark. In the consciousness of solitude and in order to break the oppressive stillness, he spoke aloud at intervals between his paroxysms of pain. "After all, what is dying? I know how deeply rooted in the human mind is the belief that it is only a departure to another place and a different condition of life. Can a conviction ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... it, lifted the bar, threw open the door and they went in. George Fennell was lying on the straw upon the floor. He had raised himself on one elbow, and was looking apprehensively to see what the opening of the door would reveal as the cause of this interruption to the usually sepulchral stillness of the jail. Reuben was standing in the middle of the floor, eagerly gazing in the same direction. Perez sprang to his brother's side, his face beautiful with the joy of the deliverer. If he had been a Frenchman, or an ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... day do I become the envied bride of PETER, justly surnamed PARAGON; and much I wonder what in me he found (he, who Perfection so personifies) that he could condescend an eye to cast on faulty, feather-headed EMILY! How solemn is the stillness all around me! (A loud bang is heard behind screen.) Methought I heard the dropping of a pin!—perhaps I should arise and search for it.... Yet why, on second thoughts, disturb myself, since I am, by my settlements, to have a handsome sum allowed for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... letter in his hand. Then without a sign, Lady Cicely passes out. There is a great stillness in the house. Mrs. Harding has watched Lady Cicely and Sir John in amazement. Sir John has sunk into a chair. She breaks out, "John, for God's sake what does it mean—this woman—speak—there is something awful, I ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... of the victim's brother, when after a time he dared to look on this revolting punishment. Save an ill-repressed sob, or half-muttered interjection from the suffering man, no other sound broke the stillness of the place, where a thousand horsemen stood in close order, but the sputtering of the torches, in the red light of which our breaths were ascending like steam. Yes! there was one other sound, and it was a horrible one—the monotonous ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... Private Bain, lulled to a sense of false security by the stillness of the night, had opened his eyes, which had been closed for purposes of philosophic reflection, to find himself surrounded by four ghostly figures in greatcoats. With creditable presence of mind he jerked his alarm-cord. But, alas! the cord came ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... then goodbye to form and desk And sudden floods of noise When fifteen minutes' fun and frisk Make happy girls and boys. As shrill as swifts in upper air Was our young shrillness: 'Twas joy of life, 'twas strength to fare Broke the morning stillness. ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett
... in the full glow of the setting beams of our imperial joy and chant out our farewell, and quite another to live alone in the darkness. For a little while memory may support us, but memory grows faint. On every side is the thick, cheerless pall and that stillness through which no sound comes. We are alone, quite alone, cut off from the fellowship of the day, unseeing and unseen. More especially is this so when the dungeon is of our own making, and we ourselves have shot its bolts. There is a natural night that comes to all, and in its unwavering course swallows ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... he liked to have his models under his hand. Presently, after loud yawning, the natives went away to sleep, and Strickland and I were left alone. I cannot describe to you the intense silence of the night. On my island in the Paumotus there is never at night the complete stillness that there was here. There is the rustle of the myriad animals on the beach, all the little shelled things that crawl about ceaselessly, and there is the noisy scurrying of the land-crabs. Now and then in the lagoon you hear the leaping of a fish, and sometimes a ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... of dreadful black and dazzling silver, the stillness that was yet indescribably electric, the unreality that was allegorically real, she felt it all as a vague accompaniment to the heartache that never left her—the scornful mockery of the goddess she ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... this was one of the few spots on the wide earth to which he could say farewell with regret. "Thy majestic hills have impressed themselves upon my soul, as a seal upon wax. The quiet beauty of thy lake shall be to me forever an image of peace and purity and stillness, and that inscription in thy little churchyard, a sentence of wisdom ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... strong in flight, And years rolled swiftly by; And Autumn's falling leaves proclaimed This good old man must die! He laid him down right tranquilly, Gave up life's latest sigh; And mournful stillness reigned around, And tears bedewed each eye, For this fine old English gentleman All of the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... having thanked the Creator of all for his never-failing mercy, I closed my eyes, and was passing away into the world of dreaming existence, when suddenly there burst on my soul the serenade of the Rosebreasted bird, so rich, so mellow, so loud in the stillness of the night, that sleep fled from my eyelids. Never did I enjoy music more: it thrilled through my heart, and surrounded me with an atmosphere of bliss. One might easily have imagined that even the Owl, charmed by such delightful music, remained reverently silent. ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... reached the end of my 'beat', and had stopped to relight my pipe, when drama broke loose with the swift unexpectedness which was characteristic of the place. The stillness of the night was split by a sound which I could have heard in a gale and recognized among a hundred conflicting noises. It was a scream, a shrill, piercing squeal that did not rise to a crescendo, but started at its maximum ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... broke the stillness but the "click, click" of the sharp knives, at the touch of which the tall grass quivered ...
— Uncle Robert's Geography (Uncle Robert's Visit, V.3) • Francis W. Parker and Nellie Lathrop Helm
... of this hat," said Sam Holly, meditatively. He had taken the hat from Hackett's head and was holding it in his hand, looking dubiously around at the shadows beyond the firelight where now absolute stillness reigned. "What do you ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... during her repast; and waiting on her, afterwards, until she finished rinsing her mouth, she issued certain directions to Feng Erh, and crossed over at length to T'an Ch'un's quarters. Here she found the courtyard plunged in perfect stillness, for the various inmates, who had been assembled there, had already taken ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... to return, and to have left a kind of deposit of melancholy resignation. The streets are clean, bright, and airy; but this fact seems only to add to the intense sobriety. It implies that the unobstructed heavens are in the secret of their decline. There is something ghostly in the perpetual stillness. We frequently hear the rattling of the yards and the issuing of orders on the barks and schooners ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... her as she sat there. Bits of her childhood flashed back at her out of the eternal stillness, "even as the beads of a told rosary." Since the day she met Alden's father, everything was clear and distinct, for, with women, life begins with love and the rest is as though it had ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... down by the hands, and dropped into the lane. He looked up to see that the scarf was hanging all right; it was within easy reach of both hands; he gave it a pull to try it, and being satisfied, got over into the field, and started at a jog-trot for the gravel-pits. It was glorious; utter stillness—the clear sheet of ice flooded with the moonbeams, a romantic sense of solitude, and a touch of triumphant feeling in having got the best of the world, and utilising such a magnificent time, while others were wasting ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... capital, was a straggling village, somewhat overweighted with the public buildings and those of the college. It would light up into life and vivacity during the season of politics and society, and then relapse again into the country stillness. Outside of Williamsburg and Norfolk there were various points which passed in the catalogue and on the map for towns, but which in reality were merely the shadows of a name. The most populous consisted of a few houses inhabited by storekeepers and ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... slay the helpless girl, the Shawnee leaned several inches further forward, thereby discovering one-half of his shaven head. Ere he could draw it back, the whip-like crack of another rifle broke the stillness, and he fell forward on his face, pierced through and through ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... with great thick walls plastered inside and outside with mud; and the cold which came upon them was a living thing, a demon-presence in the room. They would waken in the midnight hours, when everything was black; perhaps they would hear it yelling outside, or perhaps there would be deathlike stillness—and that would be worse yet. They could feel the cold as it crept in through the cracks, reaching out for them with its icy, death-dealing fingers; and they would crouch and cower, and try to hide from it, all in vain. It would come, and it would ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... oak umbrella-stand. Beyond this there was no atom of furniture in the hall. It was impossible to see beyond the dining-room door, for a heavy red velvet curtain was drawn across. David's first impression was the amazing stillness of the place. It gave him a queer feeling that a murder had been committed there, and that everybody had fled, leaving the corpse behind. As David coughed away the lump in his throat ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... arch of light now spans These fields by night no longer Man's! Their ancient Master is abroad, Walking beneath the moonlight cold: His presence is the stillness, He Fills earth with ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... thane of God, an angel from on high, called unto Abraham with a loud voice. In stillness he abode the herald's message and answered the angel. Swiftly the glorious minister of God addressed him ...
— Codex Junius 11 • Unknown
... and truest beginning of all blessings, I had been taught the perfect meaning of Peace, in thought, act, and word. Angry words, hurry, and disorder I never knew in the stillness of my childhood's home. Next to this quite priceless gift of Peace, I had received the perfect understanding of the natures of Obedience and Faith. I obeyed word or lifted finger of father or mother, simply as a ship her helm; not only without idea of resistance, but receiving ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... gone to Anahuac, and would not be back for two or three days; but he might have sent a couple of his lazy negroes. Or, if he had only fired a shot or two as a signal. I stopped and listened, in hopes of hearing the crack of a rifle. But the deepest stillness reigned around, scarcely the chirp of a bird was heard—all nature seemed to be taking the siesta. As far as the eye could reach was a waving sea of grass, here and there an island of trees, but not a trace of a human being. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... ceased; the conversation dropped; and in the awful stillness the senses of each man confirmed the report ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... appeared gradually to die out of that mysterious region, for when they chanced to pause for a moment to recover breath, or to gaze downward, each appeared unwilling to break the excessive stillness, and all seemed to listen intently, as it were, to the soundlessness around— hearing nought, however, save the beating of their own pulsations. In such a spot, if unaccompanied by guide or friend, one might perhaps realise, more than in other parts of earth, ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... alone he locked the door, and kneeling beside the dead, offered up prayers for the friend he had lost, and there remained some time in stillness and silence, till Sheelah knocked at the door, to let him know that the priest was come. Then retiring, he went to the other end of the house, to be out of the way. The room to which he went was that in which they had been reading ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... died away, as if she could not bear the pain of hearing him, and her hand had gradually crept to his lips. For a little while there was a dead silence and stillness; and he remained shrunk in his chair, and she remained with her arm round his neck and her head bowed down upon ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... about their steps; the air grew less keen; the trees multiplied, gathering them in with fingers of mist and shadow. Only the clatter of their boots on the rocky path, and the heavy bass of the clergyman's voice shouting instructions from time to time, broke the stillness. Spinrobin followed the big dark outline in front of him as best he could, stumbling frequently. With countless little hopping steps he dodged along from point to point, a certain lucky nimbleness in his twinkling feet saving ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... knocking a tool from the running-board beside him. His eyes, half-startled, half-fierce, fixed themselves on me; his hand went toward his pocket in a most significant way. In a minute he would be shooting me, I reflected grimly. And upstairs the very stillness of Van Blarcom shrieked suspicion; he could not have helped hearing the clatter that the falling tool ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... the unaccustomed silence. As he lay with his eyes open, his first thought was that all things had stopped—the world had come to its end. Then remembrance came, and he stretched in lazy enjoyment of the stillness and the soft feather bed upon which he had slept. Finding himself too wide awake for more sleep, he went over to the little gable window and looked out. The unfermented wine of another spring day came to his eager nostrils. ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... The extreme stillness of the woods was broken by the report of our guns in quick succession. A very cloud of pure white birds arose, as if Nature had taken to snowing upwards in rather large flakes, and seven victims ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... and the long musket that was borne in a hollow of an arm, was just discernible, diverging from the line of the figure. The Arab, for such it could only be, was evidently gazing on the wreck, and presently he ventured out more boldly, and stood on the spot that was clear of bushes. The death-like stillness on the beach deceived him, and he advanced with less caution towards the spot where the two officers were in ambush, still keeping his own eye on the ship. A few steps brought him within reach of Captain Truck, who drew back his arm until the elbow ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... roots and berries there, nor any plant that he had ever seen before. It was all strange and gloomy, and very silent. Not a leaf trembled; for if one had trembled near him he would have heard it whisper in that profound stillness that made him hold his breath to listen. But sometimes at long intervals the silence would be broken by a sound that made him start and stand still and wonder what had caused it. For the rare sounds in the forest were unlike any sounds he had heard before. Three or four times ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... across their shoulders. They seized every opportunity to impress us with the necessity of being accompanied by a government representative. In some lonely portion of the road, or in the suggestive stillness of an evening twilight, our Turkish Don Quixote would sometimes cast mysterious glances around him, take his Winchester from his shoulder, and throwing it across the pommel of his saddle, charge ahead to meet the imaginary enemy. But we were ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... these words produced the only perfect stillness the meeting observed during the evening, for the French-Canadians have a custom of talking among themselves throughout any ordinary debate. Their respect for Chamilly was striking. L'Honorable listened with a smile of pleasure; Zotique looked all loyalty: and the young men beamed their over-flowing ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... silently resumed his seat beside her on the rustic bench by the wayside. Over-against them on the eastern side of the valley the hills were already sunset-flushed and the stillness all about was of that peculiar quality that foretells the twilight. Something of its mysterious and significant solemnity had imparted itself to the man's mood. In the spiritual, as in the material world, are signs and presages of night. Rarely meeting ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... East a grey streak marked the advent of another day, and upon all things was a solemn hush, a great, and awful stillness that was like the stillness of Death. The Earth was a place of gloom, and mist, where spectral shadows writhed, and twisted, and flitted under a frowning heaven, and out of the gloom there came a breath, sharp, and damp, ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... that the fever had bequeathed to him, but even though he could scarcely sit upright in his saddle his mind dwelt complacently on the day's sport and looked forward to the snug cheery comfort that awaited him at his hunting box. There was a charm, too, even for a tired man, in the eerie stillness of the lone twilight land through which he was passing, a grey shadow-hung land which seemed to have been emptied of all things that belonged to the daytime, and filled with a lurking, moving life of which one knew nothing beyond the sense that it was there. There, ...
— When William Came • Saki
... especially those who dwell within the forest districts; for nothing contributes so much to bring forth the loving principle of the affections as the silent melancholy of the umbrageous woods, and the soft and perfumed breezes that pervade them. Here, in the dusk and stillness of the summer evenings, these wood-nymphs hear in the lofty branches of the linden, the endearing love songs of the feathered tribe, and when night throws its charitable gloom over their blushing cheeks, they whisper at the trysting place ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... the hall. There were a great many spectators, but the whole ceremony was ordered with regularity and decency, which is more than can be said for those of the Vatican. I walked to-night to St. Peter's, to look at it by moonlight. From every point of view it is magnificent; the stillness of the night is broken only by the waters of the fountains, which glitter in the moonbeams like sheets of molten silver. The obelisk, the facade, the cupola, and the columns all contribute to the grandeur and harmony of the scene: ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... paint. The window curtains were of inexpensive materials, but chosen so as to produce a generally happy result; the furniture was not too crowded and judiciously placed. Any one on going into this home could not resist a sense of sweet peacefulness, produced by the perfect calm, the stillness which prevailed, by the unpretentious unity of color, the keeping of the picture, in the words a painter might use. A certain nobleness in the details, the exquisite cleanliness of the furniture, and a perfect concord of men and things, all brought the word "suavity" ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... the portieres flying about like phoenixes with variegated plumage. Gold and silver glistened with splendour. Pearls and precious gems shed out their brilliant lustre. The tripod censers burnt the Pai-ho incense. In the vases were placed evergreens. Silence and stillness prevailed, and not a man ventured so much as ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... lightning did not strike. Alwin glanced up, amazed. While he stared, a subtle change crept over the chief. Slowly he ceased to be the grim curt Viking: slowly he became the nobleman whose stateliness minstrels celebrated in their songs, and the King spoke of with praise. A stillness seemed to gather round them. Alwin felt his anger cooling and ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... in the stillness; a measured beat that one could not well mistake, as of a ship's ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... away. It's good to hear the piano going again. And, between ourselves, I'm beginning to feel depressed by the stillness of the house. It's difficult to believe that this is home since we took on hospital work. Between ourselves, I sha'n't be sorry when Ormsby says good-bye. As a strong man and a soldier, I like him; but, as a sick man, I've had enough of him. Never had a fancy for ambulance ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... enabled both the girl and Lennon to suck at lumps of raw bacon. They lay silently mouthing and chewing the greasy fat, their rifles ready and their ears alert for the slightest thud of approaching hoofs. But no sound broke the deathlike stillness of the ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... knowing as he did that the miscalled "cyclone" almost invariably finds birth in the southwest. Then, too, nearly all the other symptoms were noticeable,—the close, "muggy" atmosphere; the deathlike stillness; the lack of oxygen in the air, causing one to breathe more rapidly, yet with far ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... narrow escape from stumbling on a Boer picket. The sentry heard if he did not see the line of crouching figures that passed him like ghosts in the darkness with stealthy steps that must have sounded weird across the night stillness. In a voice huskily vibrant, he challenged, "Wie kom dar?" Getting no reply, he called again twice in louder tones, and then fired his rifle at nothing in particular. Then, the whole picket waking, or beginning to realise that ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... with the French. November 9th, at Merseburg, in all stillness, Duke Ferdinand got his Britannic Commission, his full Powers, from Friedrich and the parties interested; in all stillness made his arrangements, as if for Magdeburg and his Governorship there,—Friedrich hastening off for Silesia the while. Duke Ferdinand did stay six days ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... thirty-seven miles away. It was growing dark, and my road lay through heavy sage-brush, high enough in some places to conceal a horse. I kept a bright lookout, and closely watched every motion of my poor pony's ears, which is a signal for danger in an Indian country. I was prepared for a fight, but the stillness of the night and the howling of the wolves and coyotes made cold chills run through me at times; but I reached Sand Springs in safety and reported what had happened. Before leaving, I advised the station-keeper to come with me to the Sink of the Carson, for I was sure the Indians ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... grew more calm; his hands relaxed, the muscles of his brow smoothed out, he breathed more slowly and deeply; his set lips parted and a profound sigh whispered in the stillness. A great weariness upon him, he rose slowly and heavily from the floor, and stood erect, free at last and forever from that ancient evil which so long had held his soul ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... prince, Ivan IV., was but seven years of age at the death of his mother Helene. For several days there was ominous silence in Moscow, the stillness which precedes the storm. The death of the regent had come so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that none were prepared for it. A week passed away, during which time parties were forming and conspiracies ripening, while Telennef was desperately endeavoring to retain that power ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... of the house. Only at intervals the silence was faintly disturbed, when the restless turning of one of the girls in her bed betrayed itself by a gentle rustling between the sheets. In the long intervals of stillness, not even the softly audible breathing of young creatures asleep was ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... fire-place with its meagre embers. The night was balmy and still; only occasionally a wandering breeze searching the hidden places of the swamp, or the call and song of night birds, jarred the stillness. Long they sat, until the silence crept into Bles's flesh, and stretching out his hand, he ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... directed my attention. As we approached, methought there issued from it a slight humming noise as from one of your Spaceland bluebottles, only less resonant by far, so slight indeed that even in the perfect stillness of the Vacuum through which we soared, the sound reached not our ears till we checked our flight at a distance from it of ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... wrote with his hand upon the marble, the songs of Zion's chimes. The angels watch through the stillness until the morning time. ...
— The Secret of the Creation • Howard D. Pollyen
... Atma rested beside a pool. It was a sequestered spot surrounded by thickets. The rushes grew rank and tall on the margin and in the water. The soft cooing of the doves hidden in the wood broke the stillness. He ate of the slender fare which he carried, and reclined on a flower couch until sleep closed his eyes. The doves cooed on, ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... gold, and the air was fresh and cool, and a silence, even more complete than that of the night, seemed to reign, there came a change. The eyes they had seen closed for so many hours were opened, and the soft voice broke in upon the perfect stillness of the room:— ...
— Mere Girauds Little Daughter • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... knew the depth where no hope was, and darkness lay on the face of all things. Then love came and set my soul free. Once I knew only darkness and stillness. Now I know hope and joy. Once I fretted and beat myself against the wall that shut me in. Now I rejoice in the consciousness that I can think, act and attain heaven. My life was without past or future; death, the pessimist would say, "a consummation ...
— Optimism - An Essay • Helen Keller
... from their panic; and, having received large re-enforcements, advanced again, under Sykia Wongee, third minister of state. The jungles were animated with living masses, and their tumultuous preparations for battle contrasted strangely with the stillness and quiet of the British lines. Our troops at this time had been much diminished by sickness and death; but they were recruited by the eighty-ninth British regiment from Madras, and the detachments that had been sent to the capture ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... armful of pistols and something of a heavy heart, and set open the window where I was to watch. It was a small part of the deck that I could overlook, but enough for our purpose. The sea had gone down, and the wind was steady and kept the sails quiet; so that there was a great stillness on the ship, in which I made sure I heard the sound of muttering voices. A little after, and there came a clash of steel upon the deck, by which I knew they were dealing out the cutlasses, and one had been let fall; and ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... dead stillness, then a hiss like that of escaping steam, and a man who had been running towards ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... in the velvet stillness The wide sown fields fall to the faint horizon, Sleeping in starlight. . ...
— Rivers to the Sea • Sara Teasdale
... solitary-looking semi-deserted row of red-brick houses that occupied one side of a wild-looking, furze- grown common, which I could perceive faced the sea; the sound of the low murmurs of the waves on the beach alone breaking the stillness of the ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... above his head, making the walls tremble and the windows rattle suddenly interrupted the stillness. The emperor rose from his seat and shouted "Roustan!" The door of the adjoining room opened and the Mameluke appeared ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... fu' o' grand promises, sir. I hae had a glint inside spacious halls o' delightfu' stillness and wonderfu' wisdom. I'll ne'er forget the joy ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... was extremely doubtful, and the noise and horrid riots were at times so boisterous, that frequently we could not, though so near them, distinguish a word the King and Queen said; and yet, whenever the leaders of these organized ruffians spoke or threatened, the most respectful stillness ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... "Then a stillness on his spirit fell, Before th' unearthly train; For he knew Valhalla's daughters well, The chooser ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... punisher of evil, must exhibit itself in the boy as the wild instinct of nature; and the mythus makes him kill his tutor Linus with a blow of the lyre. When sent away by Amphitryon, he prepares himself, in the stillness and solitude of the shepherd's life, by feats of strength and courage, for his future task of purifying ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... an unnatural stillness everywhere, amid which the crunching of the dry snow sounded with a distinctness that almost frightened the boy who was simply going to his uncle Robert's to spend a day or two. But finally Dan was on the main road, where the snow was frozen ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... taper. Then came the mass, celebrated by a bishop and his acolytes gorgeously attired, with the swinging of censers, not only toward the ecclesiastics, but toward the persons of importance present, among whom we were evidently included. Suddenly there came a dead stop, stillness, and an evident atmosphere of embarrassment. Then the ceremony began again, and again the censers were swung toward us, and again a dead stop. Everything seemed paralyzed. Presently there came softly to my side a gentleman ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... gazed in mournful silence on the touching scene before them. Clarence was on his knees, regarding with fear and wonder the unnatural stillness of his mother—the child had never before looked on death, and could not recognize its presence. Laying his hand on her cold cheek, he cried, with faltering voice, "Mother, can't you speak?" but there was no answering light in the fixed stare of those glassy ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... half an hour—after it rolled away from the Grantham Hotel there was absolute stillness in Miss Sherwood's limousine, which she had assigned to Maggie and her father. Maggie was near emotional collapse from what she had been through; and now she was sitting tight in one corner, away from the dark shadow in the other corner ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... me the only really pleasurable nobleman's mansion that I have ever been over; the view from the top is superb, and then the row home to Arona, the twinkling lights softly gleaming in the lake, the bells jangling from the tall and gaudy campaniles, the stillness of the summer night—so warm and yet so refreshing on the water; hush, there are some people singing—how sweetly their voices are borne to us upon the slight breath of wind that alone is stirring; oh, it is a cruel thing to think of war in connection with such a spot as this, and yet from ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... the necessity of affairs requires: if we cast our eyes on the continent, nothing is to be seen but general confusion, powerful armies in motion, the dominions of one prince invaded, of another threatened; the tumults of ambition in one place, and a panick stillness ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... all the others merely gesticulate, and I was quite sure that the silence of the crew would give a lonely and desolate character to the scene and add its to supernatural weirdness. By this means, too, a strong contrast with the single voice of Rip was obtained by the deathlike stillness of the "demons" as they glided about the stage in solemn silence. It required some thought to hit upon just the best questions that could be answered by a nod and shake of the head, and to arrange that at times even Rip should propound a query to himself ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... In the stillness and loneliness of the night, away from medical help, there comes the hoarse barking cough of the child, perhaps, and a case of croup is upon the responsibility of the parents. The struggles and terror of the little patient throws the household into ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... for a week or two at a time, and her return seemed to take place invariably in the night. Sometimes a belated farmer would see the single front window of her cabin lighted at midnight, and hear the dulled sound of voices in the stillness. But no one cared to play the spy upon her movements very closely; her great strength and fierce, reckless temper made her dangerous, and her hostility would have been worse than the itching of ungratified curiosity. So they ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... and stars had grown pale when Ambulinia had retired to rest. A crowd of unpleasant thoughts passed through her bosom. Solitude dwelt in her chamber—no sound from the neighboring world penetrated its stillness; it appeared a temple of silence, of repose, and of mystery. At that moment she heard a still voice calling her father. In an instant, like the flash of lightning, a thought ran through her mind that it must be the bearer of Elfonzo's communication. "It is not a dream!" ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... responsibility, presenting as the only aim of all his glowing desires, the utter absorption of his own individuality in the bosom of the limitless whole—thus reducing the vivid action of his varied life to the stillness of the grave, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... steps to the throne, and seated her upon it. Then the Prime Minister took the crown from its velvet cushion, and placed it on her head, and, turning to the people, said in a voice which sounded in the stillness to all parts of the vast ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... curious opaque blue, from which the peaks rise, phantom-like and pallid, into the grey air, scarcely distinguishable from their background. The pine-forests on the mountain-sides are of darkest indigo. There is an indescribable stillness and a sense of incubation. The wind has fallen. Later on, the snow-flakes flutter silently and sparely through the lifeless air. The most distant landscape is quite blotted out. After sunset the clouds have settled ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... meeting: the mysterious light of the picture gallery, the stillness of the old house, the presence of their elders, all contributed to trace upon their hearts the delicate lines of this vaporous mirage. The many confused thoughts that surged in Marguerite's mind grew calm and lay like a limpid ocean traversed by a luminous ray when Emmanuel murmured ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... doubtful passage, until the whole body, with the exception of the rear-guard, had entered it. Behind them came the baggage-wagons. All was silent, unnaturally silent, for not even the chirp of a squirrel nor the rustle of a prowling ground-animal broke the stillness. The fort was not far distant. The hurrying provincials hoped soon ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... said; but when they left the shrine Great Lords from Rome before the portal stood. In scornful stillness gazing as they past; Then while they paced a city all on fire With sun and cloth of gold, the trumpets blew, And Arthur's knighthood sang ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... evening. And this—well, the gage of battle had been flung in his face and he was no man to refuse the challenge. But his muscles were taut until the soft voice of Naomi broke in on the pregnant stillness— ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... footsteps pacing up and down the parlor. Then, the drip,—drip,—was broken by longer blanks, and stopped. The cotton wood leaves ceased to rustle and flutter. Only the twang of the night hawk's wing hummed through the stillness; and the distracted tread no longer paced the Mission Parlor. When Eleanor came back from across the hall, she shut the ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... her impulse to throw her arms about his neck and bid him weep if he wished on her breast, but feeling his stillness, his nearly unbreathing immobility, she kept herself from him. To those who fall and hurt themselves one runs with comfort; by those who lie dangerously stricken by a disease ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... cleft, not more than eighty feet broad, cut from surface to base of a bed of sandstone one-third of a mile in depth. It was inhabited by an eternal gloom which was like the shadow of the blackness of darkness. The stillness, the absence of all life whether animal or vegetable, the dungeon-like closeness of the monstrous walls, were ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... expected the men would now begin but the same stillness remained. He (the President) now and then said a sentence or two on some common subject and what he said was not amiss. Mr. Jay tried to make a laugh by mentioning the Duchess of Devonshire leaving no stone unturned to ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... princess. "He is very unfortunate; it would be a real work of charity to deliver him from the little life he has, and, when I think properly over the matter, I am of opinion that it will be necessary to do away with him in all stillness!" ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... disturbed Pizarro, who had shared in the general impatience of his men at the tardy movements of the Peruvians. The troops had been under arms since daylight, the cavalry mounted, and the infantry at their post, waiting in silence the coming of the Inca. A profound stillness reigned throughout the town, broken only at intervals by the cry of the sentinel from the summit of the fortress, as he proclaimed the movements of the Indian army. Nothing, Pizarro well knew, was so trying to the soldiers as prolonged suspense in a critical situation like ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... jostling our neighbours, and thinking of the main chance,—to us thou art never so charming as when we meet thee walking in thy gray hood through the emptying streets and among the dying sounds of a city. We love to feel the stillness where all, two hours back, was clamour. We love to see the dingy abodes of Trade and Luxury—those restless patients of earth's constant fever—contrasted and canopied by a heaven full of purity and quietness and peace. We love ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... He could view without emotion a contest of armed men, but he could not, like the population of Rome, see unarmed and unresisting men pulled down by wild beasts. There was a dead stillness in the crowded amphitheatre, then there was a low sound as of gasping breath. One voice alone continued the hymn, and soon that too ceased suddenly. The tragedy was over, and the buzz of conversation and comment again broke out among the spectators. ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... thus whiled away until the hour of eleven had arrived, when the great stillness of the house betokened the time for retiring. Accordingly, the chamber-maid was summoned, and with a candle in each hand, she led the way up a wide stair-case, graced with twisted bannisters and of easy ascent, terminating ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... made one of his effective pauses. There was the stillness of midnight in the crowded court-room. The sound of dashing rain was loud on the window-panes, the hoarse voice of the gray old elm which combed the wind with its high-flung branches, was like the distant ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... satisfaction, "I was about to ask you what you thought the distance was. Two miles is about what I had estimated. We can't say very exactly, for sound is likely to travel far in this still air. But let us make a liberal allowance for the stillness. I think we are safe in saying that the sound comes from a point not more than four miles distant from this island. Now, the next question is, from what ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... and the embers sent only a feeble glow around the Council Rock. Behind them the forest stretched darkly away, and in the stillness that brooded over them the sound of the lapping water beneath came up with a curious distinctness. Oh-Pshaw shuddered as she heard it and drew ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... by this time overcast, the pond was so smooth that I could see where he broke the surface when I did not hear him. His white breast, the stillness of the air, and the smoothness of the water were all against him. At length, having come up fifty rods off, he uttered one of those prolonged howls, as if calling on the god of loons to aid him, and immediately there came a wind ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... queerer when I've done with 'im,' said Ortheris. They were talking in whispers, for the stillness of the wood and the desire of ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... by mists," Trelawney writes, "it was oppressively sultry. There was not a breath of air in the harbor. The heaviness of the atmosphere and an unwonted stillness benumbed my senses. I went down into the cabin and sank into a slumber. I was roused up by a noise overhead, and went on deck. The men were getting up another chain-cable to let go another anchor. There was a general stir amongst the shipping; shifting berths, getting ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... cause the enemy to entreat thee well in the time of evil, and in the time of affliction" (Jer 15:11). For by waters here are typed out the great and mighty of the world, by the flowing of them, their rage; and by their ebbing and returning their stillness and moderation. "And the waters returned." That is, to the sea (Gen 1:9,10). "He gathereth the waters of the sea together as an heap: he layeth up the depth in store houses" ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the telephone to ring. It does not ring, and the fingers of the clock are moving. The world seems to be on tiptoe, listening for a thunderstroke of Fate. The Ministers at length sit silent, rigid, almost petrified, looking fixedly at floor or ceiling. Then through the awful stillness of the room and the park outside comes the deep boom of "Big Ben." Boom, boom, boom! No one moves until the last of the eleven strokes has gone reverberating through the night. Then comes a voice, heavy with emotion, yet ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... At the close of this laborious day I encamped on the right bank, leaving still on the other side however a small party in charge of the horses and carts. The day was extremely hot and the full and flowing river gave an unusual appearance of life and motion to the desert whose wearisome stillness was so unvarying elsewhere. Serpents were numerous and some were seen of a species apparently peculiar to this river. Here they invariably took to it, and one beautiful reptile in particular, being of a golden ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... hoard; an' if ye could ye'd keep the thumbmarks on the door. Ye've got t' weep t' make it home, ye've got t' sit an' sigh An' watch beside a loved one's bed, an' know that Death is nigh; An' in the stillness o' the night t' see Death's angel come, An' close the eyes o' her that smiled, an' leave her sweet voice dumb. Fer these are scenes that grip the heart, an' when yer tears are dried, Ye find the home is dearer ...
— Making the House a Home • Edgar A. Guest
... silence of the winding valley. The absence of all living creatures, except mosquitoes and dragon-flies, is a striking feature; and the occasional whistle or scream of some sea-bird only renders the prevailing stillness more strange; grateful or painful, according to the disposition and ...
— Extracts from a Journal of a Voyage of Visitation in the "Hawk," 1859 • Edward Feild
... was like inhaling oxygen gas. Every appearance of drowsiness deserted the people of both vessels, and every one was instantly busy in making sail. Raoul had a proof into what dangerous proximity to the frigate he had got by the sound of the calls on board her, and the stillness of the sea was yet so great that the creaking of her fore-yard was actually audible to him as the English rounded in their braces briskly while ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... companions, calling them cheats and villains. Up darted the man with the exuberant hair, and up rose Mark and Gubbins. But what was that? A strange noise outside. The dog in the kennel muttered a low growl, and then began to bark furiously; then the approach of footsteps was plain; a deathlike stillness fell on the whole party; the strangers caught up the cards and dice, and looked this way and that, pale and aghast. And now there came a loud and peremptory knocking at the door, as of men who were determined ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson
... coughing sound troubled the stillness, way toward a wooded cape that jutted into the stream a mile distant. All in an instant a fierce eye of fire shot out from behind the cape and sent a long brilliant pathway quivering athwart the dusky water. The coughing grew louder and louder, the glaring eye grew larger ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... Puritanic schismatics; but she lived a devout life, and her quiet and unostentatious piety exemplified the truth of the language of one of the greatest of our divines, the Bishop of Down and Connor 'Prayer is the peace of our spirit, the stillness of our thoughts, the issue of a quiet mind, the daughter of charity, and the sister of meekness.' Optimus animus ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... low, shuddering groan, and in another moment, Harry knew that poor Brindle had ceased to suffer the effects of her gluttonous appetite. Creeping down into the stall, he saw at a glance that the cow was dead, and for a moment, alone there in the stillness and darkness of the spring night, he felt as if he were the principal ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... wires of mental telegraphy between our hearts, and over the mystic, unseen lines our thoughts, bright as hope, dark as sin, lighter than the thistle down, heavily charged with the electricity of doubt and trust, faith and fear, love and longing, flew noiselessly back and forth through the stillness and drew us unconsciously together; and so it happened that he stood upon the doorstep and ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... vague sound, the gurgle of the brook, rose out of the stillness, as it flowed down the gorge from ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... The holy quiet that ought to characterise a funeral procession is too frequently destroyed by the empty pomp and heartlessness which attend it; but in the death-chamber there is nothing of this; the very atmosphere seems impregnated with the stillness of the time when there was no life in the broad earth, and when only "God moved on the face of the waters." Our breath comes slowly and heavily to our lips, and we murmur forth our words as if the spirit watched to record them in the unchanging ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... his wife sat on the lawn, if the patch of brown grass to the side of their little house could be termed a lawn, and awaited the close of the day. Three huge elms, motionless in the still sunshine and, like all motionless things, adding to the stillness, afforded a canopy against the burning rays of the sun. What mattered it that the cool shaded air was infested with mosquitoes and house-flies or that the coarse grass was uneven and unkempt, from the low mounds which ran all over it or, from the profusion of leaves which ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... out upon the glistening surface of the river. Many a strange sound fell upon his ear. Sometimes the whole forest appeared to be alive with voices—the voices of beasts and birds, reptiles, and insects—for the tree-frogs and ciendas were as noisy as the larger creatures. At other times a perfect stillness reigned, so that he could distinctly hear the tiny hum of the mosquito; and then, all at once, would fall upon his ear the melancholy wailing of the night-hawk—the "alma perdida," or "lost soul"—for such is the poetical and fanciful name given by the Spanish ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... trace could be found of the two prospectors, Raikes and Bogle, or their camp. The boys searched long and carefully, and varied their shouts by firing guns at frequent intervals. No reply came back. The stillness of death ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon
... things than the stillness of a summer's noon such as this, a summer's noon in a broken woodland, with the deer asleep in the bracken, and the twitter of birds silent in the coppice, and hardly a leaf astir in the huge beeches ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... things all glued to each other in the city. It looked old and respectable and settled, like, and the sun, just at going down, struck the windows like fire and the clean panes shone. There was that yellow light over everything and that stillness, with now and then a leaf or so dropping quietly down, that makes the fall of the year ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... The open window showed as a greenish oblong set in black, and William knew that in a little while there would come through the stillness of that window the distant sound of violins. That was a moment he dreaded with a dread that ached. And as he lay on his dreary bed he thought of brightly lighted rooms where other boys were dressing eagerly faces and hair shining, hearts beating high—boys ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... the toilette, and begins to gather once more the long hair from her shoulders. Suddenly a low voice at the door breaks the stillness. The Canadian ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... that is a pretty jolly vow of thirteen to a dozen. It is a shame to you, and I wonder much at it, that you do not return unto yourself, and recall your senses from this their wild swerving and straying abroad to that rest and stillness which becomes a virtuous man. This whimsical conceit of yours brings me to the remembrance of a solemn promise made by the shag-haired Argives, who, having in their controversy against the Lacedaemonians for the territory of Thyrea, lost the battle which ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... sundry children, a woman sweeping the parapet, and the gable of a mill. At the extreme end of the next a coal office and a gate met us. Number five street showed up the fading placards of a news shop, and the cold stillness of a Sunday morning factory. Down the sixth avenue we peered eagerly, but "more factory" met us. The termination of its successor consisted of pieces of timber, three arches, and some mill ends. We had hope as to the bottom of the next; ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... forgot about Tara and the Game and the silver watch that made him reliable. He simply lay there in a trance-like stillness, that was not of the West, absorbing it all, with his eyes and his dazzled brain and with every sentient nerve in his body. And again—as when his mother smiled her praise—the Spring sunshine itself seemed to flow ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... chapters iv. and vii.; and also to chapter x. of Madame de Wahl's excellent book. I will only say this shortly, that the three most common causes of ill-filled lungs, in children and in young ladies, are stillness, silence, and stays. ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... From afar, through the stillness that lay along the south road, came the popping of rifles; and then all was still. Then came the sounds of hoofs, and then a riderless horse dashed ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... threatened to break last night still held off, but the spirit of the weather had changed. It was no longer bright and clear, but sunless, airless, heated, silent—the stillness which seems to presage as much sorrow to man as it heralds tumult to Nature. Leam, however—interpenetrated by her love, which gave what it felt and saw what it brought—always remembered this early day as the ideal of peace and softness, where was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... most perplexing problem. There were no closets in the suite of offices. There were no boxes, no desks big enough to conceal a man and Mr. Middleton's brow was beginning to contract as he struggled with the problem, when suddenly the stillness of the room was disturbed by some one smiting the door. Not a sound made he, for his heart had stopped beating as completely as Brockelsby's. What should he do, what should he do? The paralysis of fear answered for him and supplied the best present plan and he did ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... horses. When the latter were secured as well as circumstances would permit, a few guns were fired off to warn the bear, and then there was nothing for it but to watch and wait. The dogs went on barking for more than an hour, but otherwise the camp relapsed into stillness. I spent the remainder of the night sitting on a log before the fire, smoking my pipe with the bowl downwards, for the rain had never ceased, and clouds of steam rose from our camp-fires. The fear was that the powder would get wet. ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... glance at the pious Confraternity della Morte which was instituted in 1551, and regularly established in 1560, by His Holiness, Pius IV. It was chiefly composed of citizens of high rank. Its object was to provide burial for the dead. Solemnly broke upon the balmy stillness of the Roman nights, all these years and centuries since its foundation, its chanting of holy psalmody, and its audible praying for the dead, borne along in its religious keeping. The glare of the waxen torches fell upon ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... Polwarth, so far from being deaf, heard better than most people. His senses, indeed, had been sharpened by his infirmities—all but those of taste and smell, which were fitful, now dull and now exquisitely keen. At the first movement breaking the stillness into which consternation had cast her, ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... In the deathlike stillness only the tramp of horses was heard. This was the Emperors' suites. The Emperors rode up to the flank, and the trumpets of the first cavalry regiment played the general march. It seemed as though not the trumpeters were playing, but as if the army itself, rejoicing ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... mischief now in those dark and tender eyes; there was rather an anxious and wistful questioning. And her heart seemed to go out from her to implore these gentle winds, and the soft colors of the sea, and the dreamy stillness of the woods, that now they should, if ever that was possible to them, bring all their sweet and curative influences to bear on him who had come among them. Now, if ever! Surely the favorable skies would heed, and the secret ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... scarcely two hundred paces separated the rearmost of the pursued from the headmost of the pursuers. The latter still uttered their war-cry, while the former now rode in silence—their breath bound, and their voices hushed in the deathlike stillness of terror. ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... out into the firelight and raised his hand. The long, shrill wail of a tiger from far off toward Mount Ophir seemed to pulsate and quiver on the weird stillness of the night. ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... the piano-forte; a few chords produced stillness and attention. To the sounds of low music there stepped forth from the side-doors three maidens arrayed in white; each wore a long veil depending from the back of her head,—one blue, the other red, and the third white. Each carried in her arms an urn, and thus they represented ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... barn, and opened the door, and listened. She had brought no lantern, but the soft stillness within needed no vigilance. The hay smell from the loft and the mangers, the even breath of the cows, the quiet safety of the place, met her. She was wondering at herself, but she was struggling not at all. It was as if concerning the little boy, something had decided ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale
... resident of the village. This with him was an additional reason for wishing a peaceful termination to our efforts. When we had passed over two-thirds of the distance between our horses and the village, it was thought best to make our presence known. Thus far not a sound had been heard to disturb the stillness of the night. Gurrier called out at the top of his voice in the Cheyenne tongue. The only response came from the throats of a score or more of Indian dogs which set up a fierce barking. At the same time one or two of our party asserted that they saw figure moving ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... a smile. The country life suited her, and her beauty had gained depth from a stillness in which certain ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... absolute stillness in the little room. Then, after what seemed to her several long minutes, ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the Stoic philosophy was sufficient to make one suspected. But, at last, the noble emperor, in order to win himself a hold in the chaos of things, was forced himself to become a Stoic and to flee to the inaccessible stillness of the self-thinking activity and the self-moving will. Stoics and Epicureans had both what we call an ideal. The Stoics used the expression "kingdom"; as Horace says, sarcastically, "Sapiens rex ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... a sudden and complete stillness in that desert spot, which had seen the end of six lives in as many minutes; besides the final falling of the Master, which implied, Finn knew ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... speaking, but continued to smile; and so complete was the stillness, that Soames, whose sense of hearing had become nervously stimulated, heard a solitary rose petal fall upon the corner ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... more observant, she would have wondered at the intense stillness of the bazaar, which, no matter at what hour of the night, is full of little sounds; the song of a woman, or her laugh, or her cry; the crack of a whip; the ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... I sigh for the quiet life we led when first you came amongst us, for the stillness of which your society so agreeably indemnified us. I fear my happy days in Venice are over, and shall be glad if the same remark does not also apply to the prince. The element in which he now lives is not calculated to render him permanently happy, or my sixteen ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... weird tale in his mind in the mystic stillness of midnight would an imaginative man be likely to deny the reality of the spirit world? The chances are that he would be spellbound; or, if he had breath enough, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... lap of the mother-country, and, asserting its rights by means of Patrick O'Fallen Henry and others, place a large and disagreeable fire-cracker under the nose of royalty, that, busting the awful stillness, should jar the empires of earth, and blow the unblown noses of future kings and princes. (This is taken bodily from a speech made by me July 4, 1777, when I was ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... March, while the metallic ring and tension of winter are still in the earth and air, the silence is suddenly broken by long, resonant hammering upon a dry limb or stub. It is Downy beating a reveille to spring. In the utter stillness and amid the rigid forms we listen with pleasure; and, as it comes to my ear oftener at this season than at any other, I freely exonerate the author of it from the imputation of any gastronomic motives, and credit him ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... admiration, which the raising of the veil attracted towards Marie. Lovely she was; but it was the loveliness of a marble statue, not of life—her very lips were blanched, and every feature still, indeed; but a stillness of so peculiar an expression, so inexpressibly, so thrillingly sad, that admiration appeared indefinably and strangely transformed to pain. The wedding ring was placed upon her hand—a thin crystal ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... Mournful Oenone, wandering forlorn 15 Of Paris, once her playmate on the hills. Her cheek had lost the rose, and round her neck Floated her hair or seem'd to float in rest. She, leaning on a fragment twined with vine, Sang to the stillness, till the mountain-shade 20 Sloped downward to her ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
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