"Tale" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... credit of having done more than his neighbour for the general good. Nor do I conceive there is reason to doubt their personal courage, though they are too good-natured often to excite others to put that quality to the test. It is true, they will recoil with horror at the tale of an Indian massacre, and probably cannot conceive what should induce one set of men deliberately and without provocation to murder another. War is not their trade; ferocity forms no part of the disposition of the Esquimaux. ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... continuous bombardment with showers of bombs, rifle grenades, and artillery, mostly 5.9 howitzers, and with infantry onsets at close quarters. They stormed with dash and determination, backed by good artillery and an apparently inexhaustible stock of grenades. The tale of the German losses was high. One communication trench packed with men was raked from end to end with a British Lewis gun till it was a graveyard. On this occasion the British artillery was overwhelming in amount and volume; ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... which we may determine whether it be very imagination or no, and unmask all impersonations of it, and this chiefly with respect to art, for in literature the faculty takes a thousand forms, according to the matter it has to treat, and becomes like the princess of the Arabian tale, sword, eagle, or fire, according to the war it wages, sometimes piercing, sometimes soaring, sometimes illumining, retaining no image of itself, except its supernatural power, so that I shall content myself with tracing that particular form of it, and unveiling those ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... look, in brusque language, with threatening gestures" and fixed bayonets, surround the amphitheatre, and, mingled with the soldiers and civil cut-throats, shout out their orders. Such are the supporters of the slanderous tale cooked up by the Directory. The voters need such arguments to make themselves believe in the grand conspiracy which it denounces, to associate Barthelemy, Carnot, Simeon, Barbe-Marbois, Boissy d'Anglas, Mathieu Dumas, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... person will find delightful, and which he certainly ought not to surrender just because nobody else is able to find as much in the beloved volume. There is on our book-shelves a little pre-Victorian novel or tale called "The Semi-Attached Couple." It is told with much humor; it is a story of gentlefolk who are really gentlefolk; and to me it is altogether delightful. But outside the members of my own family I have never met a human being who had even heard ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... The tale of rabbits being incomplete, M. returned to his former occupation, but S. fished again, continually finding sport of the miscellaneous kind, such as a chub with cheese paste, perch with dew worm out of the milk-prepared moss, roach rod ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... books are Mr. Kipling's two Jungle Books. Two other beast stories by Mr. Kipling are "Moti Guj, Mutineer," the tale of a truant elephant, which is in Life's Handicap and "The Maltese Cat," a splendid tale of a polo pony, which is in The Day's Work. Next to these comes Mr. E. Thompson-Seton's Wild Animals I Have Known. ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... (I will have it love-tale, in spite of Warton's comment.) But I suppose it does not make so much difference, for love transmutes the fruit in Huldy's lap into the apples ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... more than worried ever since Sam came back with his sad tale," said James Morris. "In the future, Henry, you must be very careful when you go hunting; otherwise I shall not want to leave you out of ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... sing, is not The strong-hold pres Marseilles, Where Monte Christo brewed his plot For DUMAS' magic tale: It's one we all inhabit oft, The residence of most, And not peculiar ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... glorious windows of Fairford Church—the most beautiful specimens remaining to us of glass of the early part of the sixteenth century—and to many an ancient church and mediaeval manor house still standing throughout this wide district, "to point a moral of adorn a tale," that we must look for traces of the exquisite workmanship of English hands in bygone days, "the only witnesses, perhaps, that remain to us of the faith and fear of nations. All else for which the builders sacrificed has passed ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... all our cities and towns, and a librarian in one large city loves to tell the tale of a poor woman in the slums with her door barred with furniture for fear of the drunken raiders in the house, quietly reading a book from the ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... proprietors, for twenty-five and thirty-five thousand pounds. If Robert 'could but write bad enough,' says the learned publisher, he should recommend one of them. But even Charles Reade was found too good, and the sale fell ten thousand in a few weeks on account of a serial tale of his, so he had to make place to his worses. Chapman hears of a 'comprehensive review' being about to appear in the 'Westminster' on 'Aurora,' whether for or against he cannot tell. The third edition ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... out. They remain a joint mystery for all time. In the end they become a sort of tradition, and years hence, when two of the ushers meet, they will cackle over old dreadnaught and her six cruisers. The bride, grown old and fat, will tell the tale to her daughter, and then to her granddaughter. It will grow more and more strange, marvelous, incredible. Variorum versions will spring up. It will be adapted to other weddings. The dreadnaught ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... through a distant pass whose misty blue he pretended was the ocean. Once he heard there were moonshiners back in the hills. He talked to bearded Dunkards and their sunbonneted wives; and when he found a Confederate veteran he listened to the tale of the defense of Richmond, delighted to find that the Boys in Gray were not merely names in ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... here king Shudraka the tale imparts Of love's pure festival in these two hearts, Of prudent acts, a lawsuit's wrong and hate, A rascal's nature, and the ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... That is His way—to meet the man who has discovered his own insufficiency—to intervene at the desperate minute—to reveal to incarnate weakness His eternal strength—to give a strange assurance that He Himself is about to enfold the man or woman in His power, and tale charge of the future. And when that has happened a man knows what to do with his past. He can leave it with God, and then it loses at once all power to haunt him or put him to shame. It was unclean, but the cleansing fires of the divine love have taken it in charge, and its power ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... complied, the tale which he had told Poppy serving him as far as Riga; after which a slight collision off the Nore at night between the brig which was bringing him home and the Golden Cloud enabled him to climb into the bows of that ill-fated vessel ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... story, forsooth!" said he, when he had heard. "A poor English potter comes into my court, and murders my men under my very eyes for mere sport. I do not believe you, rascals! You, churl," and he spoke through an English interpreter, "tell me your tale, and justice you shall have or take, as you deserve. I am the King of England, man, and I know your tongue, though I speak it ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... unhappy Omar was hidden in the desolate solitude of his ravished harem. To the Englishman, before whom he could speak openly the old man had revealed the whole terrible story with vivid dramatic force and all the flowery eloquence of which he was master. It was a tale of misplaced confidence and faithlessness that, detected and punished with oriental severity, had led to swift and dastardly revenge. A headman of the tribe whom both the Sheik and his elder son trusted implicitly had proved guilty of grave indiscretion that undetected might ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... which Mr Walcot had helped them to gather, while Mrs Rowland and Matilda would draw down their black crape veils, and walk on with scarcely a passing salutation. Every such meeting with the lady, every civil bow from Mr Walcot, every tale which Mrs Grey and Sophia had to tell against the new surgeon, seemed to do Hester good, and make her happier. These things were appeals to her magnanimity; and she could bear for Edward's sake many a trial which she could not otherwise have endured. All this told ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... thoughts dwelt upon the soldier's reticence, his disinclination to make acquaintances, and the coldness with which he had received his, Mauville's, advances in the Shadengo Valley. Why, asked Mauville, lying there and putting the pieces of the tale together, did not Saint-Prosper remain with his new-found friends, the enemies of his country? Because, came the answer, Abd-el-Kader, the patriot of Algerian independence, had been captured and the subjection of the country had followed. Since Algeria had become a ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... of scorn. The next ballad is less gloomy than that of the willow-tree, and in it the lovely writer expresses her longing for what has charmed us all, and, as it were, squeezes the whole spirit of the fairy tale into a ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... crush the Imperial troops. With a thrill we saw these brave warriors pass, but a brief period sufficed to dispel "the great illusion," and twelve hours later the same men were dashing back to Taiyueanfu, carrying a terrible tale. "Had we stayed longer we should have been dead men; the bullets were falling in our midst." The officer, however, gave a different explanation of their return. "Poor chaps, they are worn out, and I must take them back to get a night's rest," ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... the falls behind him, and then a loud shout, and either an echo or one in answer; but that was all; and a horrible feeling of misery and despair at his helplessness came over the lad, as he thought the worst, and of how terrible it would be to go back to the castle and tell the tale. ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... receiving annually 15 per cent.; which he continued to pay with the utmost regularity. Her son being in want of money applied for a loan of a thousand pounds, which King granted at the rate of 80 per cent.; lending him of course his mother's money. In a moment of tenderness the young man told his tale to her, when she immediately went to King and upbraided him for not making her a party to his gains, and demanded her money back. King refused to return it, saying that he had never engaged to return the principal; and dared ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... electricity had carried the tale over all the wires of the continent and under the sea; and in all villages and towns of the Union, from the. Atlantic to the territories, and away up and down the Pacific slope, and as far as London and Paris and Berlin, that morning the name of Laura Hawkins was spoken by millions and ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 6. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... of the bells, I could make you a list of all the famous bells, living and dead, that haunt the city, and the tale of what they have done would be a history of France. The bell of the St. Bartholomew over against the Louvre, the tocsin of the Hotel de Ville that rang the knell of the Monarchy, the bell of St. Julien that ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... tale to Georgiana, that evening in the city. Her college days had been spent in a small college town which, though it had lain not many miles away from this same great metropolis, had seldom seen her leave it for the privileges which richer girls enjoyed ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... to the pure Christian rule of morals,—yet when he ascribes to a negro slave, to whom legal marriage was denied, such great criminality for laxity of this sort, and professes to be so exceedingly shocked and amazed at the tale he himself relates, he must, I am confident, have had a farther object in view than the information of Mr. Taylor or Sir Patrick Ross. He must, it is evident, have been aware that his letter would be sent to Mr. Allen, and accordingly adapted it, as more important documents ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince
... rides he passed the remains of ninety Chinamen who had been killed by the Indians, only one escaping to tell the tale. Their bodies lay bleaching in the sun for a distance of more than ten miles from the mouth of Ives Cañon to Crooked Creek. This was Pony Bob's last experience as Pony Express rider. His successor, Macaulas, was killed by the Indians on ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... rushed out upon us, laid hold of our horses' reins, and commenced rummaging my luggage. I expected nothing but an order to dismount, and already saw my little property lost. They talked with my guide, who told them the tale which I had imposed upon him—that I was a poor pilgrim, and that the English consuls or missionaries paid all my travelling expenses. My dress, the smallness of my baggage, and being alone, agreed perfectly with this; they believed him, and my silent supplicative look, ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... there's a tree, of many one, A single field which I have look'd upon, Both of them speak of something that is gone: The pansy at my feet Doth the same tale repeat: Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... danger he was running? Why, if there was nothing in it, did he examine him so carefully just now, paying special attention to his face and jaw? It had certainly given the impression that he suspected the beginning of certain tell-tale symptoms. Had he done it in order that later the eye-witnesses could recall every detail and make it appear like a purely accidental seizure? Then that bit of white something which Sartorius had dropped into the fire. It might have been ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... scenes which I had before read of: narratives which from my very childhood had always possessed particular charms for me; and at this time I was not only looking on the very spot the hero of my imagination, Cook, had trod, but was hearing the tale from one who had actually seen him; and was listening to every particular concerning the transactions of Marion and his men, as though ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... compelled by law to give evidence against himself," answered the admiral, laughing. "I give the tale current at the time, and happened to have been informed of the facts which solved the mystery. I should say that Jerry Hazledine had nothing to do with it, as it was before his day. He has a good many things set down ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... something elemental in their decay, I continued to brood over the manuscript which was to be a kind of autobiography, the blended story of the vicissitudes of the Garlands and the McClintocks. At times I worked upon it to the exclusion of all else, and when I read a part of the tale to Mary Isabel and found that she understood it and liked it, I ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... The tale was told once again, other Rangers crowding round to hear. Pringle was naturally the spokesman, and Fritz, singling out from the group a man whom he had known before, asked him who the gallant-looking stranger was who seemed like the ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... extent; consequently a great continent, or assemblage of subcontinental masses of land must have existed at some former time, and that at a recent period, geologically speaking, in the area of the Pacific. But if that continent had contained Mammals, some of them must have remained to tell the tale; and as it is well known that these islands have no indigenous Mammalia, it is safe to assume that none existed. Thus, midway between Australia and South America, each of which possesses an abundant and diversified ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... lady of this house took up the tale, and told in words singularly choice and simple the story of the sacred relic as the family knew it. I had only once before heard a woman speak, no less a woman than our great and dear Julia Ward Howe, and it seemed to me that ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... His mother pooh-poohed his tale, though he described the street exactly as it struck him on reflection, and it bore a curious resemblance to the palace of Aladdin that Reddy had told him about, leaving his imagination to fill in the details, ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... hide would encompass. The request was thought too moderate to be denied. She then cut the hide into the smallest thongs; and, with them, encompassed a large tract of ground, on which she built a citadel called Byrsa, from the hide. But this tale of the hide is generally exploded by the learned; who observe that the Hebrew word Bosra, which signifies a fortification, gave rise to the Greek word Byrsa, which is the name of ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... and her violet eyes, Dreaming the sweet old dreams of love, While her lover is walking in Paradise; God strengthen her heart as the days go by, And the long, drear nights of her vigil follow, Nor bird, nor moon, nor whispering wind, May breathe the tale of the hollow; Alas! alas! The secret is ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... from a little harbor to the southward where a handful of fishermen had just salvaged two chests of good French gold from a wreck. He told the whole story of the wreck and of the subsequent fight in which his companion had been killed. To add reality to his tale he described several of ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... a similar statement in the Tale of the Two Brothers, where we are told that the younger brother, having declared his innocence to the elder brother, out off his phallus and threw it into the river, where it was devoured by the ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... the Red Branch cycle of tales, including the epic tale of the Tain or Cattle-spoil of Cualnge, which has gathered round itself a number of minor tales, had some basis of historical fact, and arose in the period of Ulster's predominance to celebrate the deeds of a band of ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... take the sentiment o' this yere round-up on believin'. O' course, as a square man I'm boun' to admit the Bible tells some pow'ful queer tales, onlike anythin' we-'uns strikes now days. Take that tale about a fish swallerin' a feller named Jonah; why, a fish 't could swaller a man 'od have to be as big in the barrel as the Pecos River is wide an' have an openin' in his face bigger'n Phantom Lake Cave. Nobody on the Pecos ever see such a fish. But I wish you fellers ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... This tale might or might not be true; it was not improbable, at all events. And after this it was circulated and generally believed in the Quartier that Gervaise ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... began talking now, telling how if something or other hadn't interfered they would have made their record catch; which has been the tale of woe of all hunters and fishers from Esau's ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... fantastic tale about one of our own lot. Indeed about one wearing strawberry leaves and with two very young sons growing up, and she, apparently imagining the younger to be the living likeness, growing plainer every day, of a ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... "Is that tale true you told me before dinner about Jim Donald?" said Lord Buntingford abruptly. "You're sure ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "That tale is singularly reminiscent of those dear old stories about the man who took cold through sitting at a window that was composed of one solid sheet of glass, so clean that he thought it was no glass at all; and the men who, awaking in the night, stifling for want of fresh air, broke ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... assassins were employed by Messalina, Claudius's wife, to strangle him, as Britannicus's rival, whilst he was taking his noon-day repose. In addition to the story, it was said that they were frightened by a serpent, which crept from under his cushion, and ran away. The tale was occasioned by finding on his couch, near the pillow, the skin of a snake, which, by his mother's order, he wore for some time upon his right arm, inclosed in a bracelet of gold. This amulet, at last, he laid aside, from aversion to her memory; but he sought ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... between the gruesome bundle and the gloomy face of his black-browed host. Incredulity and suspicion shone plainly in his eyes. Sprudell's imagination was a winged thing, and now it spread its startled pinions. Penned up with a murderer—what a tale to tell in Bartlesville, if by chance he returned alive! The fellow had him at his mercy, and what, after all, did he know of Uncle Bill? Even fairly honest men sometimes took desperate chances for so fat a purse ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... pads, and his track in the snow has little of the sharp, articulated expression of Reynard's, or of animals that climb or dig. Yet it is very pretty, like all the rest, and tells its own tale. There is nothing bold or vicious or vulpine in it, and his timid, harmless character is published at every leap. He abounds in dense woods, preferring localities filled with a small undergrowth of beech and birch, upon ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... fire was lit by thee. That thou wouldst burn old Rome to build a new, A Rome more glorious issuing from the flames: This tale hath maddened all the common folk Who, from their smouldering homes, curse ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... and answered that perhaps the good God had touched his heart; but thought to herself that perhaps it had been the good influence of another. The tale flew. Christina found herself besieged on every hand, and, finding her intercessions invariably successful, grew day by day more pleased with herself, and by consequence more pleased with Nicholas Snyders. For Nicholas was a cunning old gentleman. Jan's soul ...
— The Soul of Nicholas Snyders - Or, The Miser Of Zandam • Jerome K. Jerome
... of the widow, the fatherless, and the unfortunate; to delicacy in the treatment of women; to unjust judgments; to bribery and corruption; to revenge, hatred, and covetousness; to falsehood and tale-bearing; to unchastity, theft, murder, and adultery,—can never be gainsaid, and would have been accepted by Roman jurists as readily as by modern legislators; yea, they would not be disputed by savages, if they acknowledged ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... our tale, and have only to inform our little readers what were the after-lives of the ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... enticing shore was first revealed to the astonished Conquistadores, where every form of Nature was wholly different from anything their past experience afforded, they were childishly receptive to every tale, however preposterous, of fountains of youth, of magical lakes, or enchanted cities with mountains of gold in the depths of the frowning jungle. They had come with their thought attuned to enchantment; ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... that he could not sleep in more than one bed at a time. Still holding the shoe, he looked at the array of horsehair bridles on the walls. Then, carrying the shoe, he got up and solemnly counted them, journeying into the two adjoining rooms to complete the tale. Then he came back to the bed ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... the best way to get a full sense of the storied antiquity, forming as it were the background to those mediaeval documents which in Mr. Nash's eyes pretty much begin and end with themselves, is to take, almost at random, a passage from such a tale as Kilhwch and Olwen, in the Mabinogion,—that charming collection, for which we owe such a debt of gratitude to Lady Charlotte Guest (to call her still by the name she bore when she made her happy entry into the world of letters), and which she ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... that descended to the water's edge," pursued Jocelyne, her eyes sparkling and her cheek now flushed with the animation of her tale. "Alayn aided me, although unwillingly, with cord and linen. I reached the mill—the boat. The miller rowed me to the shore. I knew I could not approach the king; but I bethought me of you, madam—for they say—they say, you love him well." At these words Jocelyne hesitated, with a mixture ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... been counted to you for your brightest righteousness. But you have deliberately chosen the part of the man from Honolulu, and you have played it with improvements of your own. The man from Honolulu—miserable, leering creature—communicated the tale to a rude knot of beach-combing drinkers in a public-house, where (I will so far agree with your temperance opinions) man is not always at his noblest; and the man from Honolulu had himself been drinking—drinking, we may charitably fancy, to excess. It was to your 'Dear Brother, ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tale of "The Goblins' Christmas" that the moonbeams told, as they heard it from the Fairy-Queen, who declares that every word of it ...
— The Goblins' Christmas • Elizabeth Anderson
... last angle which destroyed any chance of anybody believing in such fairy-tale objects as ships loaded down with grain. Calhoun had shattered Dara's feeble hope of resistance. Weald had some ships and could build or buy others faster than Dara could ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... usually been applied to any simple tale told in simple verse, though attempts have been made to confine it to the subject of this article, namely, the literary form of popular songs, the folk-tunes associated with them being treated in the article SONG. By popular songs we understand what the Germans call Volkslieder, that ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... there were two parties. On one side were the young warriors, men of the chiefs age, who probably had been brought up in the valley; on the other was a larger number of older men, whose lowering looks told a tale ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... yet, in spite of all his open-handedness, he was not a man to be imposed upon. In vain the sturdy beggar cringed at his gate, and in vain the crafty letter-writer poured out a thousand fabulous woes upon paper. Robert was astonished when he brought some tale of trouble to the Hall to observe how swift was the perception of the recluse, and how unerringly he could detect a flaw in a narrative, or lay his finger upon the one point which rang false. Were ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... pathetic—sort of unconscious hypocrisy. I think that people who read your magazine, as well as Science Fiction magazines in general, are people with the ingrained human love for wonder and mystery; but some of them are afraid to accept and enjoy anything—even a fairy tale—that is not couched in the diction of modern materialistic science, with a show of concern for verified credibilities. Probably, in most cases, they would like and prize the very stories that they condemn if the writer ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... Aztecs de Garcia would be their enemy and mine, and I might meet him in war and kill him there. But if I succeeded in reaching the Spanish camp, then it was almost sure that he would bring about my instant death. Doubtless he had told such a tale of me already, that within an hour I should be hung as a spy, or otherwise made ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... The tale of the gold robbery and the shooting of Mr. Jack Bradby, as the reader will readily understand, passed into the police records and thus became matters of history. Though no definite statement has been left us, Mr. Bryce must have first come ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... Conversations," a mystical tale, in which the birds, coming together to choose their king, resolve on a pilgrimage to Mount Kaf, to pay their homage to the Simorg. From this poem, written five hundred years ago, we cite the following passage, as a proof of the identity ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... in its turn that Ireland still remained unpacified. Then came a terrible famine, followed by evictions on a scale so vast and cruel that the late Sir Robert Peel declared that no parallel could be found for such a tale of inhumanity in "the records of any country, civilized or barbarous." Another generation, pluming itself on its enlightened views and kind intentions, passed the Encumbered Estates Act, which delivered the Irish tenants over to the ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... remember him only as one who had known her mother, while she went on to relate some little facts in the history of her mother's last days; and she rose into a higher, serener atmosphere, inaccessible to his resentment or his regret, as she spoke of her loss. The simple tale of sickness and death inexpressibly belittled his passionate woes, and made them look theatrical to him. He hung his head as they turned at her motion and walked away from the picture of Don Ippolito, and down the stairs toward the street-door; the people before the other ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... originated—among the hunters of Scandinavia. But the odd story once told was too good to be lost; and every traveller, since the first teller of it, has taken care to embellish his narrative about bears with this selfsame conceit; so that, like the tale of the Amazon women in South America, the natives have learnt it from the travellers, and not the ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... ship for the Pembroke, none of his time was spent in London. There is a story that he was godfather to his wife, and at her baptism vowed to marry her, but as at that time, 1741, Cook was assisting his father on Airy Holme Farm, the tale is too absurd, but has for all that been ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... Such was the tale of the messenger. The lively credulities of the people believed its truth, and in calmer times dedicated a temple to the deity, venerated him with annual sacrifices, and the race ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... treasure?" I asked with apprehension. For ever since I once made a tale (of friction) out of one of Bunt's stories of real life, he has been ambitious for me to write another, and is forever suggesting motifs which invariably—I say invariably—imply the discovery of great treasures. With him, fictitious ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... parishes of Stepney and Whitechappel; but I could not carry my list oil, for when the violent rage of the distemper in September came upon us, it drove us out of all measures. Men did then no more die by tale and by number. They might put out a weekly bill, and call them seven or eight thousand, or what they pleased; 'tis certain they died by heaps, and were buried by heaps, that is to say, without account. And if I might believe some people, who were more abroad and ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... he selected from a bunch. From the interior of the safe he removed a cedarwood box, also locked. He threw back the lid and removed one by one three check books and a pair of gloves of some thin, transparent fabric. These were obviously to guard against tell-tale finger prints. ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... her tell the tale that was not new to him. Cultured, highly-bred women had made such appeals to him before, and without shame. How should this little vulgar creature be expected to have more conscience ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... my cousin, tell me all the tale. I know not rightly how the treasure was lost, and I have never heard of the gipsy folks or their hatred to our house. It behoves me to know all ere ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... and smouldering fire. Yes, somewhere in the back of his mind he had known the whole, shameful truth; had known the purpose of those silent, stealthy excursions, and equally silent returns,—and more than once the broken heads and bandaged arms that coincided so oddly with some new tale of a daring hold-up that he was sure to hear of, the next time that he chanced to ride into Monterey. For three years, young Ramerrez had known that sooner or later he would be facing such a moment as this, called upon to ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... removed, he began to question the Captain on the subject. The latter, having no particular motive for secrecy now that his agent was dead, in the course of the breakfast revealed the following circumstances, which will serve to clear up some of the minor incidents of our tale. ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... hours as Mr. Hudson writes of form a mere tale of emptiness, in which nothing happens, nothing is gained, and there is nothing to describe. They are meaningless and vacant tracts of time. To him who feels their inner secret, they tingle with an importance that unutterably vouches for itself. I am sorry for the boy or girl, or ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... Written because you asked it, first read aloud to beguile our ride across the great American desert, and finally printed because you wished a copy as a souvenir of our journeyings, no one can so naturally be called upon to stand sponsor to the little tale. Should the story but give its readers a fraction of the pleasure I owe to your ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... tale to tell; one that philanthropists have grieved over so often. Gold-washings are soon exhausted, but they frequently lead to the discovery of silver mines, which become so profitable as to drive away the very memory of the gold-washings. Thus the fact that gold-washings ever existed in Mexico, or ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... imagination required for continuous dictation. By patience, however, I succeeded in obtaining many curiosities of oral literature,—representing a group of stories which, whatever their primal origin, have been so changed by local thought and coloring as to form a distinctively Martinique folk-tale circle. Among them are several especially popular with the children of my neighborhood; and I notice that almost every narrator embellishes the original plot with details of his own, which he varies ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... tale, was as truly a part of the Southern Confederacy as the greater Jeff at Richmond. Indeed, were it not for the humbler Jeff and the class he represented, the other Jeff would ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... it known, but though she called me tattle-tale, I'm no such thing," replied Janice, who in truth was still hot with indignation at Miss Drinker, and wellnigh bursting to confide her grievance against her whilom friend to this most delightful of men. "Doubtless, you observed that ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... ended his love-tale—which, considering that for all his outward fortitude he was inwardly quaking, he told full eloquently—Mrs. Hanway-Harley composed herself for reply. She hardly required those warnings of Senator Hanway; there was no wish now to insult or humble him. In truth, Mrs. Hanway-Harley ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... derived from a Spanish version of "The Forty Thieves," but like all the stories of this collection, it is from an oral version of the Tagalog tale. ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... to the Tale of Tamlane The Young Tamlane Erlinton The Twa Corbies The Douglas Tragedy Young Benjie Lady Anne Lord William The Broomfield-Hill Proud Lady Margaret The Original Ballad of the Broom of Cowdenknows Lord Randal Sir Hugh Le Blond ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... appeared on the Arminian side. The very titles of some of the works published sufficiently indicate their character. 'Farrago Double Distilled,' 'An Old Fox Tarred and Feathered,' 'Pope John,' tell their own tale. ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... the absence of many years, had returned and claimed his friendship, and had received his confidences. To him he had poured out the grief of his heart—the confession of life-long sorrows which had been wrought by the very man to whom he told his tale. And this was the man who, under the plea of ancient friendship, had bought his son for gold! Great Heaven! the son of the woman whom he had ruined—and for gold! He had drawn away his wife to ruin—he had come and drawn away his son—into what? into ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... through which the journey led them that, had one tithe of the treason which they came to punish, ever existed, save in the diseased imagination of their monarch, not one man would have been left to tell the tale. Egmont, had he really been the traitor and the conspirator he was assumed to be, might have easily organized the means of cutting off the troops before they could have effected their entrance into the country which they had doomed to destruction. His military experience, his qualifications ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... doctors, like Professor Vulpius, actually steal money; but of all the types of Boche doctors, the most hideous is the hero of the following tale, taken from the deposition of Dr. Bender. "A French soldier, at Stenay, was under my treatment. He had a wound in his foot—not very severe, which did not need an operation at all. What was my astonishment to find that ...
— Their Crimes • Various
... her! 'twere a fruitless task, For, woman-like, she would make me believe Some well-told tale; and sigh, and seem to grieve, And call me cruel. Nay, ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... well. Jovial, funereal, violent, tender, impetuous, affectionate, he assumed at will a deep or a piping voice; he sighed, he roared, he laughed, he wept. He could transform himself, like the man in the fairy-tale, into a flame, a river, a ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... preparations for a general election, which was to take place in October. The readers of this story have not as yet been troubled on this head, there having been no connection between that great matter and the small matters with which our tale has concerned itself. In the Parliament lately dissolved, the very old borough of Percycross,—or Percy St. Cross, as the place was properly called,—had displayed no political partiality, having been represented ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... about to-morrow all the same. If you had been sensible I would have told you my reasons; but you chose to aggravate me, and I said a precious lot more than I meant. There, go to sleep and forget it"—evidently a rough attempt to be conciliatory; but Leah's sad and weary face told its own tale the ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... occupies some hundred pages, is n good example of those prolix detached episodes and histories peculiar to this school, which by their perpetual crossing and intertwining render the consecutive reading of a heroic romance so confused and difficult a task. Yet in this particular instance the tale is extraordinarily well told and highly interesting. Mrs. Behn has altered the names for the better. Barzanes in the novel becomes Honorius in the play; Euardes, Ismenes; Phrataphernes, Artabazes; Beliza, Semiris; whilst La Calprenede ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... reconnaissance over the sea, were eventually assigned wholly to the Naval Wing. No very swift progress was made with these in the years before the war. The expenses of adequate experiment were enormous, and the long tale of mishaps to Zeppelins seemed to show that the risks were great. The experts who were consulted pointed out that the only way to test the value of the larger type of airship was to build such airships ourselves, that Germany had patiently persevered ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... exclaimed Belle. "Isn't that like a tale of the olden times—for a young man to run away to rescue a lady! Now, what in the world is she being rescued from? Exactly. That's the impossible Leland. Never says who she is, what she is, or what about her. Now, as if we could put a story like that together!" She sank back as if mentally exhausted ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... a certificate, on the 16th day of December, in the year of grace, 1875; the man who wrote them being over thirty years of age and having taught school for more than half a decade! This is a truthful tale, if nothing else. ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... for the Admiral's table. Taking a crossbow he passed alone through the palms into the deeper wood. He was gone an hour, and when he returned it was in haste, with a chalk face and great eyes. I was seated in the boat with the master of the Cordera and heard his tale. He had found what he thought a natural aisle of the forest and had stolen down it, looking keenly for pigeon or larger bird. A tree with drooping branches stood across the aisle, he said. He went around the trunk, which was a great one, and it was as though he had turned into the nave ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... further, whispering his tale into the attentive ear of Knight of the School House, who ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... Levy, with great composure, "you need not threaten me, for what interest can I possibly have in tale-telling to Lord L'Estrange? As to hating you—pooh! You snub me in private, you cut me in public, you refuse to come to my dinners, you'll not ask me to your own; still there is no man I like better, nor would more willingly serve. When do you ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... you must ask of those wiser than I, for I am only the story-teller, sitting in the shadow of the market-place, passing on the tale that comes to my ears. But I can remind you that May Eve is one of the most bewitched and bewitching times of the whole year—reason enough to account for any number of strange happenings; and I can point out to your notice that Margaret MacLean, in charge of Ward C at Saint ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... Yes, I repeat: this had to be the case. One part of Captain Nemo's secret life had been unveiled. And now, even though his identity was still unknown, at least the nations allied against him knew they were no longer hunting some fairy-tale monster, but a man who had sworn ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne |
