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Tale   /teɪl/   Listen
Tale

noun
1.
A message that tells the particulars of an act or occurrence or course of events; presented in writing or drama or cinema or as a radio or television program.  Synonyms: narration, narrative, story.  "Disney's stories entertain adults as well as children"
2.
A trivial lie.  Synonyms: fib, story, taradiddle, tarradiddle.  "How can I stop my child from telling stories?"



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"Tale" Quotes from Famous Books



... Government to promote peace and welfare among these Republics, efforts which are fully appreciated by the majority of them who are loyal to their true interests. It would be no less unnecessary to rehearse here the sad tale of unspeakable barbarities and oppression alleged to have been committed by the Zelaya Government. Recently two Americans were put to death by order of President Zelaya himself. They were reported to have been regularly commissioned officers ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft

... morning. Not now, with this fire of impotent resentment burning in her, would she take out those memories and look at them. Those were not thoughts to be dragged through the litter of unbleached cotton cuttings. She worked on doggedly, completed the tale of hot heavy little garments, gathered up the pieces into the waste-paper basket and ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit

... mixture of flowing locks before, and prim purse behind, was an exact counterpart of the life and character of its inventor. He had had no intention of being symbolic in his contrivance; it had been solely designed to conceal the little tell-tale lines that were just about to indent the smooth surface of his white forehead. He bent his proud head, while the hair-dresser placed the wonderful wig, and then fell to studying its effect. Here he drew a curl forward, there he gently removed another; placing each ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... assured her that she did want to know; whereupon Elizabeth-Jane told the tale of her life as she understood it, which was in general the true one, except that the sale at the fair ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... he began to want to hit the trail for home. I helped him out of town an' started him back for camp, where, I reckon, his old lady was waitin' to give him fits for forgettin' the calico and beads." The captain paused as if his tale was completed. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... the cave, and bade the beast go whither he would. He yet lingered about the place, and looked all around him and found naught to help him, and could frame in his mind no intent of a deed then, nor any tale of a deed he should do thereafter. Yet belike in his mind were two thoughts, and though neither softened his grief save a little, he did not shrink from them as he did from all others; and these two were of his home at Upmeads, which was so familiar to him, and of the Well ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris

... it be urged, that the hostility of this tribe to foreigners, and the hereditary feuds they carry on against their fellow-islanders beyond the mountains, are facts which contradict me. Not so; these apparent discrepancies are easily reconciled. By many a legendary tale of violence and wrong, as well as by events which have passed before their eyes, these people have been taught to look upon white men with abhorrence. The cruel invasion of their country by Porter has alone furnished them with ample provocation; and I can sympathize in the spirit which prompts ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... Jim, and reluctantly he brought the tale to its final conclusion, adding his theory of the loss of the child by the Indians on their hunt, and bearing down hard on the one little speech that the tiny foundling had made ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels

... The saint resumed the tale, her gentle voice barely audible. "The GHAT was deserted, but my guru cast round us an aura of guarding light, that no stray bathers later disturb us. He initiated me into a KRIA technique which frees the body from dependence on the gross food of mortals. ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... stationed at the chains of the drawbridge in readiness to hoist it should the order be given. The English archers were on the wall beside Sir Eustace, as their arrows commanded the ground beyond the outwork. Half an hour after the first alarm was given the tale of the tenants was found to be complete, and the guards on the other two roads had also ridden in. Guy, to his great satisfaction, had been ordered by Sir Eustace to don his armour and to ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty

... She had set her whole heart and soul upon going up to the top of the mountain, and to the top of the mountain she determined to go. This resolution was formed, in direct opposition to her husband's wishes; and with a perfect knowledge of the tale of the dog Ball, which had been one of her father's stock stories, the catastrophe of which she had known from a child. Lyndsay did not tell her positively she should not go without him; and unable to control her impatience, she gave him the slip, and set off with Jim, who ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... will pardon me when I say that I am surprised beyond measure that you should have come to me with a schoolboy's tale like that. The eternal order of things cannot be interrupted in such a ridiculous fashion. Again, I trust you will forgive me when I express my regret that you should have wasted so much of your own time and mine on an errand which should surely ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith

... high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Specter of Communism with a Manifesto of ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx

... well-understood and established type. That most fertile and meritorious of writers, for instance, Mr. G. P. R. James, invariably makes his jeun premier at least moderately athletic; so much so, that when he has the villain of the tale at his sword's point we feel a comfortable confidence that virtue will triumph as it deserves. As such a contingency is certain to occur twice or thrice in the course of the narrative, a nervous reader is spared much anxiety and trouble of mind by this satisfactory arrangement. Nous avons change ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... soliciting new examination from him: none surer than he to recognize it at last, and to pay it all his dues, with the arrears and interest on them. Goethe, who figures as some absurd high-stalking hollow play-actor, or empty ornamental clock-case of an "Artist" so-called, in the Tale of the Onyx Ring, was in the throne of Sterling's intellectual world before all was done; and the theory of "Goethe's want of feeling," want of &c. &c. appeared to him also ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... whistle, unheard at any other time. He saddens with the season, and, as summer declines, he changes his note to eheu, pewee! I as if in lamentation. Had he been an Italian bird, Ovid would have had a plaintive tale to tell about him. He is so familiar as often to pursue a fly through the ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... faith in this fairy-tale of her royal heart; she believed in those dreams with which her tender conscience lulled her to repose, whenever she reproached herself, that she, the subject, now walked and gave orders as mistress in this ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach

... my nature to be very tender," said Anna, shrugging her shoulders. "I read in one of my books lately a fairy tale, in which there was a young girl, of whom it was said that a bad fairy had bound her heart in iron, to prevent its full play; the girl was constantly bewailing this fatality, saying, 'I can only like, but never love.' Perhaps it is thus with me, but I do not weep over it, like the ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... the single exception was not a man, being our bold-hearted Kate. She was the only sailor that refused to leave her captain, or the king of Spain's ship. The rest pulled away for the shore, and with fair hopes of reaching it. But one half-hour told another tale: just about that time came a broad sheet of lightning, which, through the darkness of evening, revealed the boat in the very act of mounting like a horse upon an inner reef, instantly filling, and throwing out the crew, every man of whom disappeared ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... the King richly endowed. It has been one of the favorite legends of English history, that the Queen traced her out in her retreat by a ball of silk that had entangled itself in Henry's spurs, and that she offered her the choice of death by the dagger or by poison; but this tale has been refuted by sober proof; there is no reason to believe that Eleanor was a murderess; and it is certain that Rosamond, on learning how she had been deceived, took refuge in the nunnery, where she ended ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... brass. The next morning Asquith was split into factions and rent by civil strife, and the porch of the inn was covered by little knots of women, all trying to talk at once; their faces told an ominous tale. Not a man was to be seen. The Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Chicago papers, all of which had previously contained elaborate illustrated accounts of Mr. Cooke's palatial park and residence, came out that morning bristling with headlines about the ball, incidentally holding up the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... tell a good tale as it should be told, but he has the right gipsy magic, and the great fight which comes towards the end of the story is almost, if not quite, as fine as the epic contest between Lavengro and ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace

... the major got in, and brought a worse tale than I had, though he stated the same facts as far as I went. This seemed to put our colonel all into a fidget; and it convinced me clearly of one of the hateful ways of the world. When I made my report, it wasn't believed because I was no ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... up to see how fur I was gettin' toward the top, so, all of a suddent-like, the tree top begun to bend over with me an' sumpin' snapped. 'Twarn't my galluses, neither!" crowed Long Jerry, very much delighted by his own tale. "I knowed that, all right. Sna-a-ap! she went again, and I begun ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson

... sufferings undergone by an unhappy family in finding servants, or to tell how the winter was passed with miserable makeshifts. Alas! is it not the history of a thousand experiences? Any one who looks upon this page could match it with a tale as full of heartbreak and disaster, while I conceive that, in hastening to speak of Mrs. Johnson, I approach a subject of ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells

... Harriot Byron's worked chairs and fine china, yet I own I like to hear something of the preparation for a marriage, as well as of the mere wedding. I like to hear how people become happy in a rational manner, better than to be told in the huddled style of an old fairy tale—and so they were all married, and they lived very happily all ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth

... themselves. The teachers of the other schools in that neighbourhood could give similar examples, for during the winter months there used to be no less than 300 evening scholars under instruction in the different schools. The Bethesda booksellers could tell a tale that would surprise our English friends. I have been informed by one of them that he has sold to young quarrymen an immense number of such works as Lord Macaulay's, Stuart Mill's, and Professor Fawcett's; and it is no uncommon ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... began suddenly talking of himself. In broken sentences, shapeless phrases, half finished thoughts, he unfolded a strange tale. Claire was glad that Philip was away at work with his traps. She sat beside Lawrence, her hands clasped, and ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades

... public library of the University of Cambridge is preserved the manuscript of the finest and most ancient ballad. This, which is known as "A Tale of Robin Hood", may be cited in its quaint and dramatic picturesqueness as the most perfect and complete example of song literature extant. It begins with Robin's desire to attend church at Nottingham, since "It is a fortnight and more sin' I my Saviour saw". Little John accompanies ...
— The Dukeries • R. Murray Gilchrist

... inspiriting, exhilarating; cardiac, cardiacal^; pleasing &c 829; palmy. Adv. cheerfully &c adj.. Int. never say die!, come!, cheer up!, hurrah!, &c 838; hence loathed melancholy!, begone dull care!, away with melancholy!, Phr. a merry heart goes all the day [A winter's Tale]; as merry as the day is long [Much Ado]; ride si sapis ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... tale was ended, the modern Griselda, who was determined to oppose as strongly as possible the charms of spirit to those of sensibility, burst furiously forth into an invective against the meanness of her namesake, and the tyranny ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... events are looked for in a few days. But if all of Longstreet's corps be sent up, we leave the southern approach to the city but weakly defended. Hooker must have overwhelming numbers, else he would not venture to advance in the face of Lee's army! Can he believe the silly tale about our troops being sent from Virginia to the Carolinas? If so, ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... with its vaults and galleries hung with glittering crystals, its underground river and dark lake, was so like a fairy tale, that Johnnie felt as if she must go right back and tell the family at home about it. She relieved her feelings by a long letter to Elsie, which made them all laugh very much. In it she said, "Ellen Montgomery didn't have any thing half so nice ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... moral reflections interspersed, is given by Professor E. B. Cowell in the "Journal of Philology," 1876, vol. vi. p. 193. The great Persian mystic tells another story of a Dream of Riches, which, though only remotely allied to our tale, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... Fairer-than-a-Fairy now drew out her third present, and on opening the crystal scent-bottle a little syren flew out, who silenced the violins and then sang close to the Prince's ear the story of all his lady love had suffered in her search for him. She added some gentle reproaches to her tale, but before she had got far he was wide awake, and transported with joy threw himself at the Princess's feet. At the same moment the walls of the room expanded and opened out, revealing a golden throne covered with jewels. A magnificent Court now began ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang

... present to him; and I could think of him as even delighting to go over with me those last hours of his life that we spent together, not with any shadow of dread or shrinking, but just as it pleased Odysseus to tell the tale of how he sped down the whirlpool, with death beneath and death above, facing it all, taking it all in, not cherishing any delusion of hope, and yet enjoying it as an adventure of real experience which it was good to have tasted ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson

... on the German stage. The libretto is an adaptation by Mosenthal (author also of Goldmark's "Queen of Sheba") of a drama by Otto Ludwig. In the drama as well as some of its predecessors some liberties have been taken with the story as told in Maccabees II, chapter 7. The tale of the Israelitish champion of freedom and his brothers Jonathan and Simon, who lost their lives in the struggle against the tyranny of the kings of Syria, is intensely dramatic. For stage purposes the dramatists have associated the massacre ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... placed a hand on his shoulder. But Elden was himself again. The curtains of his life, which he had drawn apart for a moment, he whipped together again rudely, almost viciously, and covered his confusion by plunging into a tale of how he had led a breed suspected of cattle rustling on a little canter of ten miles with a rope about his neck and the other end tied to the saddle. "He ran well," said the old man, chuckling still at the reminiscence. "And it was lucky he did. ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead

... stupid tale. "For her sins," the Russian lady made a long retreat in a neighboring convent; whence she did not emerge until November was sweeping the leaves down the Cascine, and the world was once more at home. When ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... his intention of telling his friend of his love for Violet, and had come to perceive that he could not for the present carry out that intention. After what had passed it would be impossible for him to go to Lady Laura with a passionate tale of his longing for Violet Effingham. If he were even to speak to her of love at all, it must be quite of another love than that. But he never would speak to her of love; nor,—as he felt quite sure,—would she allow him to do so. But what astounded him ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... and ending a controversy, which he knew would be fruitless, Lowell made another searching personal examination of the scene. He examined the stakes, having in mind the possibility of finger-prints. But no tell-tale mark had been left behind. The stakes were too rough to admit the possibility of any finger-prints that might be microscopically detected. The road and prairie surrounding the automobile were examined, but nothing ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman

... the emigration of a people has been often repeated since the world began. The Israelites of old, with their wanderings of forty years, furnish the theme of an inspired poem as old as history itself. The dreadful tale of the Kalmuck Tartars, in 1770, fleeing from their enemies, the Russians, over the desolate steppes of Asia in mid-winter; starting out six hundred thousand strong, men, women, and children, with their flocks and herds, and reaching the ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... passed in review before me as I stood there thinking; and to-day I think no one lives to tell the tale of that gathering. ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett

... the Black War. This campaign of a month supplied many adventures and many an amusing tale, and, notwithstanding the gravity of his Excellency, much fun and folly . . . . Five thousand men had taken the field. Nearly L 30,000 had been expended, and probably not much less in time and outlay by the settlers, and two persons only ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... tale from the hills. Colorado women feel that they have done well but have made only a beginning. The fact that women are factors in politics underlies and overrules many things not directly connected with the results ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... end's come now; ain't it, Steve, ol' pardner? But to get this tale tol' an' the money in your hands: I didn't know who'd tried to do for me, but I guessed it must have been some one who'd found out somehow about the ten thousan' an' thought I had it on me. When I come to at the cabin an' firs' ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory

... they judge of nappy ale, And tell at large a winter tale; Climb up to the apple loft, And turn the crabs till they be soft. Tib is all the father's joy, And little Tom the mother's boy. All their pleasure is Content; And Care, to pay their ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various

... story seems an Arabian tale, perhaps partly founded upon some real revolution in the government of Malabar. But it would much exceed the bounds of a note to enter upon disquisitions relative ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr

... Church-Papists, {55} but now, commanded by the Pope's express Catholic Church, their mother, they separate themselves; so it seems the Pope had then his aims to take a true number of his children; but the Queen had the greater advantage, for she likewise took tale of her opposite subjects, their strength and how many they were, that had given their names to Baal, who {56} then by the hands of some of his proselytes fixed his bulls on the gates of St. Paul's, which discharged her subjects of all ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton

... brow of the hill—a figure kneeling on the ground with his face towards the village. Ulrich stole closer. It was the Herr Pfarrer, praying volubly but inaudibly. He scrambled to his feet as Ulrich touched him, and his first astonishment over, poured forth his tale of woe. ...
— The Love of Ulrich Nebendahl • Jerome K. Jerome

... writing for juveniles. I'll sit right down to-night and knock off a short story about 'Tommy and the Huckleberry-tree.' I don't know whether huckleberries grow on trees or on huckles, but that will make the tale all the more interesting. If they don't grow on trees people will regard the story as romance. If they do grow on trees it ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs

... French-Cooks have done their utmost for it!—Nay what a shallow delusion is this we have all got into, That any man should or can keep himself apart from men, have 'no business' with them, except a cash-account 'business'! It is the silliest tale a distressed generation of men ever took to telling one another. Men cannot live isolated: we are all bound together, for mutual good or else for mutual misery, as living nerves in the same body. No highest man can disunite ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... night. Bill Banney and Rex Krane had joined us now, for every hour we were learning to keep closer together. Jondo threw more wood on the fire, and we nestled about it in snug, homey fashion as if we were to listen to a fairy-tale—three children slipping fast out of childhood into the stern, hard plains life that tried men's souls. As we listened, the older men told of the perils as well as the fascinating adventures of trail life, ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter

... lady, there's no tale to tell," cried the maid. "We are not of the gossiping sort, my lady, neither me nor Mr. Brown." Lady Mary laughed, and watched while the candles were put out, the fire made a pleasant flicker in the room,—it ...
— Old Lady Mary - A Story of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant

... bright, cheery tale with the scenes laid in Indiana. The story is told by Little Sister, the youngest member of a large family, but it is concerned not so much with childish doings as with the love affairs of older members of the family. Chief ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford

... treads all tearless on her hallowed grave; Invoke the spirits of the past, and shed The voice of your strong bidding on the dead! Lo! from a thousand crumbling tombs they rise— The great of old, the powerful and the wise! And a sad tale which none but they can tell, Falls on the mournful silence like a knell. Then mark yon lonely pilgrim bend and weep Above the mound where genius lies in sleep. And is this all? Alas! we turn in vain, And, turning, ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer

... who eagerly and impatiently dispatches the story thus, in order to introduce the subsequent account of the synod at Bapchild, so important in his eyes. Hoveden and Wallingford and others have repeated the idle tale; but I have not hitherto found it ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown

... The Pasha has, with all humility, declined the conditions of the Sultan's Hatti-sherif, and the whole thing remains still to be adjusted. Nobody, however, cares or thinks much about it at all, for the Eastern business is become as tedious as a twice-told tale. No more danger to the peace of Europe is apprehended from it; nobody cares a straw for Sultan or Pasha, and still less for the repose of the countries they misgovern or the happiness of ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... was to fall into the habits of a country. Gladstone is as unoriental as any man well can be, yet his calling on Lacaita to recite was really just the same thing that every Pasha does after dinner, when he orders his tale-teller to repeat a story. The ladies meanwhile were packed off to the harem for the night, Lady Bowen acting as their interpreter. My L.H.C., his two secretaries, his three aide-de-camps, Captains Blomfield and Clanricarde, and the vice-consul, all slept in the same room, and that not a large ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... a tale of those old fears, even of those emptied hells, And none but you shall understand the true thing that it tells— Of what colossal gods of shame could cow men and yet crash, Of what huge devils hid the stars, yet fell at a pistol flash. The doubts that were so plain ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton

... asked the young man gravely, but with a merry little twinkle in his eyes that would have made one think of the waves sparkling in the sunlight. "Let us see whether you or I can tell the greatest tale." ...
— The Book of Nature Myths • Florence Holbrook

... superior as it was in every circumstance of force excepting the moral energies employed to wield it. While the history of the year 1588 in all its details must ever form a favorite chapter in the splendid tale of England's naval glory, it will here suffice to mark the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... of gold, to be used as evidence, he said. He had taken the money, just as it was in the little sack, a smear of blood on it, after counting it before witnesses and giving her a receipt for the amount. Two thousand dollars; one hundred pieces of twenty dollars each. That was the tale of the contents of the canvas bag which had lain grinning on Isom's pulseless heart. It was not a great amount of money, considering Isom's faculty for gaining and holding it. It was the general belief that he had ten, twenty, times that amount, besides his loans, hidden ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... see. I had this adventure from old Conrad himself, and I saw him receive a thousand ducats for the horse. In the joy of his foolish old heart, he told me the whole story; and as he saw the deep interest which I felt in the tale, he invited me to his house, where I saw the beautiful Marianne, with ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... a long tale, for it began as far ago as last August, when his father had come back from giving evidence before the justices at Derby on a matter of witchcraft, and had been questioned again about his religion. It was then that Robin had seen moodiness succeed to anger, and long silence to moodiness. He ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson

... passengers before the smallish gentleman could catch the eye of its operator, flew suddenly upward in the echo of a gate slammed shut in his face; and all the other cars were still at the top, according to the bronze arrows of their tell-tale dials. The late arrival held up patiently; but after an instant's deliberation, doffed his hat, crushed it flat, slipped out of his voluminous cloak, and beckoned ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... lace; there were the three kings, gorgeously apparelled, and the ox and the ass and the shepherds; there was the Baby in the manger, and a group of angels, singing; there were camels and leopards, held by the black slaves of the three kings. Our tree became the talking tree of the fairy tale; legends and stories nestled like birds in its branches. Grandmother said it reminded her of the Tree of Knowledge. We put sheets of cotton wool under it for a snow-field, and Jake's pocket-mirror for ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather

... most terrifying warriors of history have been peace-loving nations hounded into hostility by outraged ideals. Certainly no nation was ever more peace-loving than the American. To the boy of the Middle West the fury of kings must have read like a fairy-tale. The appeal to armed force was a method of compelling righteousness which his entire training had taught him to view with contempt as obsolete. Yet never has any nation mobilised its resources more ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson

... of a tale what I hyard my mammy tell 'bout de Issue Frees of Edgecombe County when she wuz a little gal. She said dat de Issue Frees wuz mixed wid de white folks, an' uv cou'se dat make 'em free. Sometimes dey stay on de plantation, but a whole heap uv dem, long wid niggers who had done runned ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various

... another opening leading back to the original direction. Upon holding tight and peering round a sharp corner Aleck found that he was gazing into black darkness; but a breath of cool, moist air and the peculiar odour told their own tale of what was beyond, and to endorse this came the soft, sighing, whispering rush of waves sweeping over ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn

... and most astonishing scene in the evening's fairy-tale—a luminous and weird scene, with fantastic distances lighted up by the moon, with the gigantic trees, the sacred cryptomerias, elevating their sombre boughs into a ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti

... offered her his arm, which she took shyly, glancing at him from time to time out of her deer-like eyes with the long-fringed lashes. Ragged and untidy as she was, she looked like a princess; and he in his fine clothes, soiled and torn as they were, looked nevertheless like a real fairy-tale prince! ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt

... remov'd towards Soho. In this Perplexity she quite forgot her Trunk and Money, &c, and wander'd in her Hackney-Coach all over St. Anne's Parish; inquiring for Madam Brightly, still describing her Person, but in vain; for no Soul could give her any Tale or Tidings of such a Lady. After she had thus fruitlessly rambled, till she, the Coachman, and the very Horses were even tired, by good Fortune for her, she happen'd on a private House, where lived a good, discreet, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... heard the literati wont to gather there ridiculing the Bible, and had guessed that they knew little of it. Upon this evening he observed that he would much like to have the judgment of the assembly on a certain Eastern tale he had lately come across, unknown probably to most of those there present, though long ago translated into their own tongue. Whereupon, drawing from his pocket a copy of the Bible, he had a Parisienne, let into the secret, read in her sweet tones the book ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton

... paltry and pitiable: nevertheless, St. Genis, as he warmed to his tale, lost the shame of it; only wrath remained with him: anger that he should be forced into this despicable role through the intrigues ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

... too great," she confessed, "after I saw your name on the tell-tale suit case; own the truth now, that as Mrs. Dana, you would never have ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... does a protector begin to change into a tyrant? Clearly when he does what the man is said to do in the tale of the Arcadian temple ...
— The Republic • Plato

... he was to render any relief to his family, there being five Indians, he ran with the utmost speed to the station of his brother, a distance of five miles. As he approached the station, his undressed condition told the tale of his distresses, before he was able to tell it himself. Almost breathless, and with a faltering voice, he could only say, his wife and children were in the hands of the Indians. Scarcely was the communication made when he obtained ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous

... it is at least certain that the tree was well represented in former times, if now it be the last of its race. It was first known to Kmpfer in 1690, and described by him in 1712, and was introduced into this country in the middle of the eighteenth century. Loudon relates a curious tale as to the manner in which a French amateur became possessed of it. The Frenchman, it appears, came to England, and paid a visit to an English nurseryman, who was the possessor of five plants, raised from Japanese ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various

... would in all probability be of no great account in any case, suggested that those battleships and cruisers would be transmogrified into submarines at a very early stage of the proceedings. One wondered if the Ministry of Marine away south by the Tiber had heard the tragic tale of the Hogue, the Cressy and the Aboukir. Nor was that all. The Italian naval delegates put forward requests that fairly substantial assistance in the shape of war-craft of various types should be afforded them within the Adriatic by ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... apple, sent as furtive love-token by the wooer, which outleapt from the virgin's chaste bosom; for, placed by the hapless girl 'neath her soft vestment, and forgotten,—when she starts at her mother's approach, out 'tis shaken: and down it rolls headlong to the ground, whilst a tell-tale flush mantles the face ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... thence be thrown upon the pages of modern learning! To trace genius to its source, or to see how she has been influenced or modified by the lore of past times, is both a pleasing and profitable pursuit. To see how Shakspeare, here and there, has plucked a flower from some old ballad or popular tale, to enrich his own unperishable garland;—to follow Spenser and Milton in their delightful labyrinths 'midst the splendour of Italian literature; are studies which stamp a dignity upon our intellectual characters! But, in such ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... be the most touching and edifying fairy-tale imaginable, this true story of H.M. Albert ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... his work contains much food for reflection on our relations with the East, besides vividly relating a tale second to none in dramatic interest, no one who peruses it can doubt. Carefully compiled from authentic sources and forcibly and graphically written, it is a work of far more ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie

... favourite among the Ibans (Sea Dayaks) of the Batang Lupar, will serve to illustrate, with its many heterogeneous features, the myth-making faculty of this imitative and fun-loving people. It will be noticed that the story combines the characters of a creation-myth, an animal fable, and a fairy tale: — ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... and chasm of time, every mouldering tint and weather-stain, is gone; the marble resumes its original whiteness; the long colonnades brighten in the moonbeams; the halls are illuminated with a softened radiance,—we tread the enchanted palace of an Arabian tale! ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner

... But his interest was aroused at this whispered tale of armed bandits and of a big stolen car. Pee-wee completed the tale in breathless excitement. He told all, from the beginning. "They locked it in," he concluded, "and went away; but one of the doors, the big one, was locked on the inside ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... thing that struck me as a painful void was, the absence of any public monument of the past events of the wonderful history of the Vaudois. It is true, in one sense, that the whole place is a museum of relics; that every rock has some thrilling tale, every mountain slope and hill-side graven upon it the memory of saints and martyrs. Yet I confess that those who do remember what has passed, and that those who wish that generations yet to come may know the history ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold

... Innes and Lieutenant Lumsden, succeeded in breaking their way down a side lane, and thence, rushing to the wall, leapt down into the moat, and swimming across, succeeded in making their escape, and in carrying the news of the massacre to the camp of Gustavus, where the tale filled all with indignation and fury. Among the Scotch regiments deep vows of vengeance were interchanged, and in after battles the Imperialists had cause bitterly to rue having refused quarter to the Scots ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty

... unreasonable and uncharitable. Nor, I think, will that reader grasp the way to see the truth who cannot teach himself what has in Cicero's case, been the effect of daring to tell to his friend an unvarnished tale. When with us some poor thought does make its way across our minds, we do not sit down and write it to another, nor, if we did, would an immortality be awarded to the letter. If one of us were to lose his all—as Cicero lost his all when he was sent into exile—I think it might ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope

... With certain very ugly features, the thing has altogether a good, hopeful aspect, together with very fair proportions. It is not given to any Chancellor of the Exchequer to make a budget fascinating as a fairy tale. Nevertheless, there are visions of wealth and comfort in the present budget that mightily recommend it to us. It seems to add color and fatness to the poor man's beef; to give flavor and richness to the poor man's plum-pudding. ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook

... readers it is unnecessary to state that these little tales are deduced from every day life, as they are easily recognizable. To those not yet favored by a residence in this Northland I would say that I have written each tale with a well defined purpose. With truthfulness could each one have been more vividly, yes startlingly, told; but I have no wish to unduly disturb my readers. It has been my aim, however, to picture not only character, but also ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan

... Monsieur le Duc himself. My name is Gaubert—Fabre Gaubert." And as he introduced himself he rose out of respect for Garnache, who had remained standing. Garnache knew him not at all, yet never doubted that his tale was true; the fellow had a very courtly, winning air; moreover, Garnache was beginning to feel lonely in the wilds of Dauphiny, so that it rejoiced him to come into the company of one whom he might regard as something of a fellow-creature. ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini

... mine was wrenched With a woeful agony, Which forced me to begin my tale; And then it ...
— The Rime of the Ancient Mariner • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... pressed between the leaves of one book; some bees, some leaves and moths in another, but, hidden away in the pocket of the note-book which Livingstone used during the longest and most painful illness he ever underwent lies a small scrap of printed paper which tells a tale in its own simple way. On one side there is written in ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... without incurring the danger of a personal interview, which might lead to an indiscreet avowal of the passion which consumed him, and place him in the power of his fair enslaver. He hovered around her path, and at church disturbed her devotions by never removing his eyes from her face; but the tale of his love remained untold, and was scarcely acknowledged ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... daylight tells A tale of shame so crushing, That some turn white as sea-bleached shells, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... dying, except only in the case of birds in cages, who, again, are compelled to die with observation. The woodland is guarded and kept by a rule. There is no display of the battlefield in the fields. There is no tale of the game- bag, no boast. The hunting goes on, but with strange decorum. You may pass a fine season under the trees, and see nothing dead except here and there where a boy has been by, or a man with a trap, or a man with a gun. There ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell

... have sacrificed my honor and my reason both to you, you will perhaps believe in my loyalty. The tale which was related to you in Madame's apartments, and by Madame herself, is utterly false; and that which I ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... 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 ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold

... brought a tale of disaster. His enemies, bent on ruining the enterprise, had given out that he was embarked on a harebrained venture, from which he would never return. His creditors, excited by rumors set afloat to that end, had seized on all his property in the settled parts of ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... of those far-off days will you accept a tale that deals with one of them, that of the marvellous Incas of Peru; with the legend also that, long before the Spanish Conquerors entered on their mission of robbery and ruin, there in that undiscovered land lived and died a White God ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard

... also. Ogy. It shalnat repente you of your iornay. Me. Spryngithe ther no holy oyle? Ogy. I trowe you dote, that spryngythe nat but owt of the sepulchres of sayntes, as saynt Andrew, & saynt Katere, owr lady was nat beried. Me. I graut I sayd amysse, but tell on your tale. Ogy. So moche more as thay persayue youre deuocyo, so moche larger reliques wyl thay shew to you. Me. Ye and peradueture that thay may haue larger offerynges, as is sayd that, many lytle offerynges makythe a heuy ...
— The Pilgrimage of Pure Devotion • Desiderius Erasmus

... exactly," asserted Beth. "It's like hearing a tale of an ancestor, Thursday, or of some member of your family who lived before you. You cannot be responsible, in any ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne

... Baldur, are a man among men who will appreciate what I may show you. You love, you understand, perfumes. You have even wished for a new art—don't forget that there are others in the world to whom the seven arts have become a thrice-told tale, to whom the arts have become too useful. All great art should be useless. Yet architecture houses us; sculpture flatters us; painting imitates us; dancing is pure vanity; literature and the drama, mere vehicles for bread-earning; while music—music, the ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... sail as a privateer in the St. George, to prey on French and Spanish ships, the terms being: "No purchase, no pay." Sailing as his consort was the Cinque Ports, whose master was Alexander Selkirk, the original of Robinson Crusoe. This voyage, fully recounted in Dampier's book, is a long tale of adventure, hardship, and disaster, and the explorer eventually returned to England a beggar. However, his travels made a great stir, and he was allowed to kiss the Queen's hand and to have the honour of relating ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse

... finish the Doctor's story. If I were writing fiction the tale would be scouted as improbable, yet I am going to state plain facts. A firm of lawyers hunted up the Doctor, and informed him that he had succeeded to the sum of L30,000. There was no mistake about the matter; ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman

... and, very rarely, white men. At no very distant intervals were observed human skeletons and bones, while they were scarcely ever out of sight of the remains of horses or wild animals; all of which told their tale of the scenes of violence that had taken place in that highway ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne

... his own most brilliant generalisations; and a sound of clapping hands went round the circle. Lady Dunstable, a little flushed and panting, smiled and was silent. Meadows, meanwhile, was thinking—"How often has she told that tale? She has it by heart. Every touch in it has been sharpened a dozen times. All ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward

... barrier," he said, pointing to a board with "Terrain reserve" upon it—Reservee pour la chasse de Monsieur le President, "The barrier which Love keeps—and I want to take him with us as the prince and princess did in the fairy tale." ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn

... a farmer in Cornwall about the year 1800, having lost many cattle by disease, and tried many remedies in vain, consulted with some of his neighbours and laying their heads together "they recalled to their recollections a tale, which tradition had handed down from remote antiquity, that the calamity would not cease until he had actually burned alive the finest calf which he had upon his farm; but that, when this sacrifice was made, the murrain ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... began, "I have had the greatest luck! I call it nothing short of a fairy tale." He pointed at his neckscarf. Coming near, Trudy bent over and gave way to a shrill scream. A handsome diamond pin ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley

... this head the tale is soon told. Appropriation from the A. M. A. exhausted. The last check for this fiscal year from the office in New York came to me on the 1st of March. The bills for April are provided for, however. As to May, June, July and August, bills, which if the work were done as it should ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 2, June, 1898 • Various

... held up in supplication, Philip's passion shook him from limb to limb. His impulse was to march straight into Mr. Morton's shop and gripe him by the throat; and the indignation he betrayed encouraged Sidney to colour yet more highly the tale of his ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... seen Raffles Holmes for some weeks, nor had I heard from him, although I had faithfully remitted to his address his share of the literary proceeds of his adventures as promptly as circumstances permitted—$600 on the first tale, $920 on the second, and no less than $1800 on the third, showing a constantly growing profit on our combination from my side of the venture. These checks had not even been presented for payment at the bank. Fearing from ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs

... Cora Waters tried to soothe the fears of the poor young maid, who, in her hour of affliction, childlike, had flown to her friends with her tale of woe. ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick

... looked at the little boy and saw his eyes. They were the eyes that children have for all strange and sudden cruelties. They held her so that she did not stoop and pick him up. He picked himself up and ran to his mother, sobbing out his tale, telling her that he was a ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair

... than any she had ever imagined. When it had all happened she knew not; surely very long ago! But the names she knew, Chelsea, Lambeth, the Tower—these gave a curiously fantastic reality to the fairy tale. And one thing she saw with uttermost distinctness: that boat going down the stream of Thames, and the dear, dreadful head dropped into it from the arch above. She would go and stand on the bridge ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing

... her own. She swore she would not leave Granville, and it galled her to stay. It was a losing fight, and she knew it even if she did not admit the fact. If she could have poured the whole miserable tale into some sympathetic ear she would have felt better, and each day would have seemed less hard. But there was no such ear. Her ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... statesmen say, regarding any important measure for public welfare, the time is not yet ripe. Besides, the young man I am describing had never heard of the Nana Sahib's ruby, unless vaguely in some Sepoy Mutiny tale. ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath

... did DANTE manage to indite His admirable tale of Hell, Or BUONARROTI sculp his sombre "Night" Without the kodak's magic spell— No Press-photographer, a dream of tact, To snap the artist in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various

... Some of the officers were sitting, others standing, all motionless and rigid, and each one in the position he occupied when last awake. The king held a goblet filled with wine, for he had been giving a toast. The chamberlain had his throat half filled with a lying tale, which there had been no time to finish. One had the end of a joke upon his lips, another a dainty morsel between his teeth, or a tale ready cooked upon ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko

... French peasants by one of his old soldiers—a man named Goguelat. It covers more time chronologically than the Russian story does, and deals much more fully and circumstantially with historical incidents and events: but it seems to me to be distinctly inferior to the Russian tale in power of creative imagination, unity of conception, skill of artistic treatment, and depth of human interest. The French peasant regards Napoleon merely as a great leader and conqueror, "created to be the father of soldiers," and aided, if not directly sent, by God, ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof



Words linked to "Tale" :   cock-and-bull story, substance, tearjerker, content, nursery rhyme, fairy story, sob stuff, song and dance, tell, message, subject matter, lie, sob story, prevarication



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