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More "Aback" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... affectionate and genial. The American, properly introduced, was sure of a generous welcome, for it was hard to find a German who had not many relatives beyond the Atlantic. There were courteous observances which at first put one a little aback. Sneezing, for instance, was not a thing that could be done in a corner. If the family were a bit old-fashioned, you would be startled and abashed by hearing the "prosits" and "Gesundheits" from the company, wishes that it might be for your advantage and health ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... repentance and ultimate salvation. Though, I trust, a sincere Christian, I am nothing of a theologian, and the question touching on a topic which had not occurred to my mind since childhood, and which seemed to savour rather of medieval romance than of practical religion, took me for a moment aback. I hesitated for an instant, and then replied that the means of salvation offered man were undoubtedly so sufficient as to remove from one truly penitent the guilt of any crime however dark. My hesitation had been but momentary; ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... said Sir Norman, considerably taken aback, "it strikes me you are the person to answer that question. If I don't greatly mistake, somebody told me you were going ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... there was more luck than sense to it. A good or bad puff of wind foils all kinds of skill one way or the other—and this time when I saw the little squall cat's-pawing to windward—I thought that I would ware ship and see if the Britisher wouldn't get taken aback. The old saying that 'Discretion is the better part of valor' may, I think, be changed to 'Impudence is—or may be, sometimes—the ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... Mr. Pyecroft interrupted in his pleasant tone, "was due to his amazement at the utter grotesqueness of the situation. He was for a moment utterly taken aback. That's ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... Julien, somewhat taken aback, endeavored to be agreeable, but although they felt too embarrassed to remain any longer, they did not know exactly how to take their leave. The marquise herself put an end to the visit naturally and simply by bringing the ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Lovice. One night, when he 'd been there once, and she 'd hid, as she always done, he come back a second time, and she went to the door, not mistrusting it was him. 'Did you forget anything?' says she, sparkling out at him through a little crack. He was all taken aback by seeing her, and he stammered out, 'Yes, I forgot my han'k'chief; but it don't make no odds, for I didn't pay out but fifteen cents for it two year ago, and I don't make no use of it 'ceptins to wipe my nose on.' How we did laugh over that! ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... aback, Mary Antony's ready tongue failed her. She stood stock still and stared at the Bishop. Her gums began to rattle and she clapped her knuckles against them, horror and ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... triumphs that he supposed that they had assembled in honor of his arrival. "Strange as it may seem," he says, "they took no more notice of me than if I had been Dick Johnson, the wool-grower. This took me somewhat aback;" and he inquired what was the ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... you!" said Pinocchio, a little taken aback by this reception, and he moved on toward a woman with a baby ...
— Pinocchio in Africa • Cherubini
... afternoon, and I'm helping Jane get out all the old bits of furniture that used to belong in his room before ever he went abroad. 'Twas his only sending a telegram yesterday so sudden like, and no letter nor nothing to prepare us, that has taken us so aback. He's to have his old room, the one at end of the passage. It's going to rain, so you'd best stay in the nursery this afternoon, and I shall ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... felt hat and dressing-gown with a bed-candle to look for it—and about that dream of mine, did I tell you? I dreamt the comet came into our drawing-room, and the leg of a Chinese table turned into a snake and snorted at it, and the comet looked so taken aback that I woke myself with a shout of laughter. And then we talked of popular superstitions about comets, and dreams, and ghosts— particularly ghosts, and I told a number of creepy stories, and one old gentleman pretended he didn't believe in them, but he did, and so did the other without ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... camel's-hair,"—("Poor-lookin', in a camel's-hair shawl!" was my inward ejaculation; "don't I wish, ma'am, I could catch you and 'Letishy' in my composition class, once!")—"she come up to the table an' saw that, an' seemed to feel quite taken aback to find she'd lost her chance at it. Letishy showed her some elegint shell-vases with artificial roses; but that wouldn't do. I told Letishy," continued Miss Mehitable, "that she'd ought to ha' been smart an' taken down the lady's name; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... little taken aback; but he made the best of it. "I can't charge my memory, Sergeant," he said, ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... moment Madison was taken aback by the very impudence of the question. He glared at his questioner, and half rose from his seat with a threatening gesture. But noting the cool and composed manner of the broker, he merely shrugged his shoulders. Clenching his teeth, he ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... and the sight of drawn swords (to oppose which they had no weapons but short cudgels), appeared to take them aback for the moment. The press, however, closing on us, as we backed to cover the Mayor's retreat, offered less and less occasion for sword play; and, the seamen still advancing and outnumbering us by about three to one, the whole affair began ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... answered, rather taken aback. "But if I ask Edgar, he'll always come with us, and ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... board the Lusitania must be a son of that brother of your husband who died in China some years ago?' and I said: 'What in the world are you talking about, Mrs. Harvey?' so she showed me the newspaper, and I was that taken aback that I revoked in the next hand, and the only mean player we have in the club claimed three tricks 'without,' and went game, being a woman herself who hasn't chick nor child, but devotes far too much time and money to toy dogs; anyhow, I couldn't give my mind to cards any more that day, so off ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... the generosity of the Major's good-humour. On the contrary, it quite took aback and disappointed poor Pen, whose nerves were strung up for a tragedy, and who felt that his grand entree was altogether baulked and ludicrous. He blushed and winced with mortified vanity and bewilderment. He felt immensely inclined to begin to cry—"I—I—I ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Burchill, taken aback by the sudden onslaught of Davidge's satellites, drew himself up indignantly and looked down at his bands, around the wrists of which his captors had snapped a pair of handcuffs. He lifted a face white with rage and passion and glanced at ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... three great nobles, had roused themselves; and to the ordinary bustle of camp life were added the noisy greetings of those who, once comrades, had not seen each other for years; or who, strangers until a few hours aback, were now boon companions. Around the inn, however, there was strict order; but whether disturbed by the general confusion, or because their brains were too busy for slumber, the lords were early astir. Yet, whatever worry there may ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... so manly the previous night and that morning, was the schoolboy again, completely taken aback, and for a few moments stood staring blankly at the inquiring eyes before him. Then, as the Prince raised his brows as if about to say, "Why don't you ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... nose, even Vance was taken aback. Pope says that Lord Bolingbroke had "the nobleman air." A great comedian Lord Bolingbroke surely was. But, ah, had Pope seen Gentleman Waife! Taking advantage of the impression he had created, the actor ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with a few troops he arrived at a place called Dara. That great slave trader Suleiman, who had given Sir Samuel Baker so much trouble, was there at the head of 6000 men. Gordon rode into the place nearly alone, and told the commander to come and talk with him. Utterly taken aback the man did as he was requested, and afterwards ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross
... country, separated from our own people. Agreeably to the instructions they had received, on arriving at a short distance from our encampment, they sent to inform us of their arrival, and requested permission to present themselves before us. I was never so much taken aback as at the sight of these Europeans wearing the Abyssinian gala dress, silk shirts of gaudy colours, trousers of the same material, the shama thrown over the left shoulder, many with naked feet, several without covering to their head. They had been so long ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... "Not a bad idea. Do me a lot of good. I was feeling awfully down, Vivie, when you came. I wasn't altogether taken aback at your coming, dearie, 'cos Praddy had given me a kind of a hint you might turn up. But somehow, though everything goes well in business—we seldom had so busy a time as during this last Humanitarian Congress of the Powers—all ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... as he cried the whistling North fell on with sudden gale And drave the seas up toward the stars, and smote aback the sail; Then break the oars, the bows fall off, and beam on in the trough She lieth, and the sea comes on a mountain huge and rough. These hang upon the topmost wave, and those may well discern The sea's ground mid ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... a little taken aback, lights his cigar at one of the tables.] Tell me this, mister George, you're a kind of a ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... his own personal guard of stalwart troopers with orders that both they and the rest of the horsemen should charge at full gallop, (6) and not give the enemy the chance to recoil. The Thessalians were taken aback by this unexpected onslaught, and half of them never thought of wheeling about, whilst those who did essay to do so presented the flanks of their horses to the charge, (7) and were made prisoners. Still Polymarchus of Pharsalus, the general in ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... explain that it might become necessary to bring out all the force at his command. Coleman, though considerably taken aback, recovered himself and listened without comment. He realized that Sherman and the other men were ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... was little time to think of themselves. On board the bark the sails were still set. The squall struck the "Lady Letty" squarely aback. She heeled over upon the instant; then as the top hamper carried away with a crash, eased back a moment upon an even keel. But her cargo had shifted. The bark was doomed. Through the flying spray and scud and rain Wilbur had a momentary glimpse of Kitchell, hacking ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... opened his small eyes in amazement,—he was completely taken aback. He tried to grasp the bearings of this new aspect of the situation thus presented to him, but could not realise anything save what in his own mind was he pleased to call a ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... The Professor, rather taken aback, argued on Barron's behalf. Would it have been seemly or right for a man—a Churchman of Barron's prominence—to keep such a thing to himself at such a critical moment? Surely it had an important ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Toady was so taken aback by this explosion that he let go his shoe-strings, fell over with a crash, and lay flat, with shovel and tongs spread upon him like a pall. In rushed Mrs. Snow and Polly, to find the boy's spirits quite quenched, for once, and Aunt Kipp in a towering passion. It all came out in one ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... three-thousand word review of "The Rise of Silas Lapham," which I told him was one of the greatest novels in any language. He stared at me and asked if I hadn't some fresher book in mind, and I, somewhat taken aback, told him that I was just finishing Frank Norris's "McTeague" and was about to begin on Mrs. Wharton's "House of Mirth." With a brutality characteristic of editors he asked me whether I didn't care to write a review of Homer's Iliad and the book of Deuteronomy. I told ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... Pisa, to pass over into Sicily. Innocent did everything in his power to check the conqueror. He excommunicated him (August, 1210); in conjunction with Philip Augustus of France, the old ally of Henry VI, he roused disaffection against Otto among the German nobles. Innocent was somewhat taken aback when Otto's subjects, finding that the Pope in his anathema had absolved them from their fealty to the King, held Otto as deposed, and proceeded to elect in his place the young Frederick Roger, Henry ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... has taken me so aback that I cannot well reconcile myself to it; I belong to the years wherein we kept another kind of account. So ancient and so long a custom challenges my adherence to it, so that I am constrained to be somewhat heretical on that point incapable of any, though corrective, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... of the powerful Indian chieftain, was an important event. They did not quite know what to expect. Vague ideas of some Eastern queenly beauty, such as the Queen of Sheba or Semiramis, had led them to look for a certain royal magnificence of bearing and of garments, and they were taken aback to behold this slim young creature whose clothing in the eyes of some of them was inadequate. Nevertheless, they soon discovered that though she wore no royal purple nor jewels she bore herself with a dignity that was both maidenly ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... Words which took Stormonth aback, for even he saw there was here a necessity as strong as his own; yet the power of invention ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... I was gone before you arrived with the message. [He hurries out. The other three, too taken aback to stop him, stare after him ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw
... returning on shore, for she disappears from my recollection. While the gentleman was on deck, as I was afterwards told by Jack Headland, he suddenly, looking at the mate, asked him if he was not somebody he had known in England. The mate seemed for a moment taken aback, but, recovering himself, replied quite quietly that the gentleman was mistaken; that he had never heard of such a person, and that his name was Michael Golding, which, as Jack said, as far as he knew to the contrary, was the case, for that was ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... paused in the Creek country to garner the fruits of his late victory. A council of the surviving chiefs was assembled and a treaty was presented, with a demand that it be signed forthwith. The terms took the Indians aback, but argument was useless. The whites were granted full rights to maintain military posts and roads and to navigate the rivers in the Creek lands; the Creeks had to promise to stop trading with British and Spanish posts; and they were ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... considerable sum prescribing for the ailments of my fellow passengers. One little thin woman on board has just confided to me, "Why, miss, I found myself in my stomach three times last week"—and looked up for advice. As for me, I was "taken all aback," and hastened to assure her that nothing approaching so astonishing an event had ever come within the range of my experience. I hated to suggest it to her, but I have a lurking suspicion that the catastrophe ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... Horn early in November. Monday, November 17, was a black day in our calendar. At seven in the morning we were aroused from sleep by the cry of "All hands, ahoy! A man overboard!" This unwonted cry sent a thrill through the heart of everyone, and hurrying on deck we found the vessel hove flat aback, with all her studding sails set; for the boy who was at the helm left it to throw something overboard, and the carpenter, who was an old sailor, knowing that the wind was light, put the helm down and hove ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... they had filled three huge bowls with ale from his great brewing-kettle. Hymer ate and drank very fast, and wished to make his guests fear him, because he could eat so much. But Thor was not to be taken aback in this way; for he at once ate two of the oxen, and quaffed a huge bowl of ale which the giant had set aside for himself. The giant saw that he was outdone, and he arose ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... said, taken far aback by the girl's sudden onslaught. His immediate impulse was to unwind Kathy and set her back on her own feet, some little distance away, after which he could start again on a more leisurely basis. After all, he ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... you something. You mustn't blame her too much. She repented of her ill-natured manner last night, and came to me as pretty as you please this morning, and asked me to breakfast with her. I was taken aback, but she came round me, and we went to Harrison's and had a topping meal. Then she spoke to me very sensible, and explained that she wanted more 'parlez-vooing' and more 'pi-annofortying,' and all the rest of the so-called ladies' accomplishments. She consulted me very pretty ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... similar experience with regard to the same subject, which again put me in a temporary state of uncertainty. When Adolf Stahr gravely raised the same objection to the solution of the Lohengrin question, I was really taken aback by the uniformity of opinion; and as, owing to some excitement, I was just then no longer in the same mood as when I composed Lohengrin, I was foolish enough to write a hurried letter to Stahr in which, with but a few slight reservations, I declared him to be right. I did not ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... see," I returned lamely, though I didn't see at all. The indifferent way in which he spoke of centuries in connection with this brilliant and apparently fresh-painted picture rather took me aback. ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... Pen, who did not look the least taken aback. "I saw by your faces that you were up to fun, and I thought I'd like to be in it. It is well I comed. I am willing to talk to you about everything. Call me a mouse if you like. I don't care. I meant to listen. I am glad ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... no little uneasiness her father's hurried coming, flushed with relief and shy delight at this unlooked-for welcome; and Jeannie Bruce, to use her own expression when telling of it afterward, was "all taken aback." She and Mrs. Miller had between them planned that Mr. McLean should walk over with the latter, early in the afternoon, just as though out for a little airing and to try his legs after their unaccustomed rest. Nellie and Miss Bruce were to happen ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... in the doorway beckoning. I went to him, and he-said, 'I want you, Tim; wash your hands and come into the parlor.' I had never been asked to do that before, and it struck me all of a heap; but I did what he asked, and was so taken aback at the looks of the lady I saw standing up on the floor with the handsome gentleman, that I stumbled over a stool and made a great racket, and didn't know much where I was or what was going on, till I heard Mr. Stebbins say 'man and wife'; and then it came over me in a hot kind of ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... officer was utterly taken aback, and it was his turn now to look askance at this dried-up, sinister-looking under-officer. If the unfortunate and aged guard who had fired that shot had been remiss in making a rapid report—remissness excusable enough considering the violence of the Sergeant—the latter had been more remiss ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... for the moment was taken aback. His face and lips worked, but he could say nothing. Duncan coolly pulled at his cigar and glanced aft at the rising ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... window, a beauty such as he had never beheld in all his life, black-eyed, and with skin white as snow illumined by the dawning flush of the sun. She was laughing heartily, and her laugh enhanced her dazzling loveliness. Taken aback he gazed at her in confusion, abstractedly wiping the mud from his face, by which means it became still further smeared. Who could this beauty be? He sought to find out from the servants, who, in rich liveries, stood ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... fastened ourselves to a shoal about four leagues past Kossir, and set sail from thence at noon. The 19th, about half an hour past eight o'clock, while proceeding with fine weather, we were suddenly taken aback by a fierce gust at N.N.W. which obliged us to take shelter in an island called Suffange-al-bahar[311] or Saffanj-al-bahr, losing 4 or 5 leagues of way that we had already advanced. The name given to this island ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... Captain received Mr Toots. 'I'm took aback, my lad, at present,' said the Captain, 'and will only confirm that there ill news. Tell the young woman to break it gentle to the young lady, and for neither of 'em never to think of me no more—'special, mind you, that is—though ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... "mayor" of Go-ko-khi was a Christian now, and on the wall of his house was pasted a large sheet of paper with the ten commandments printed on it. He pointed to this and said: "I am determined to abide by these." The officer was taken aback. He was scarcely prepared to defy the headman, and he went away to stir up the villagers. But everywhere the soldiers met with opposition. There seemed no one who would take their part. The officer ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... slow and painful is the process of mastering a technique, whether of handicraftsmanship or of art, so imbued are we with the need of education for the acquirement of knowledge, that we are taken aback by the realization that all around us are creatures carrying on the most elaborate technique, going through the most complicated procedures and apparently possessed of the surest knowledge without the ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... not easy to disconcert Billie Dore, but she was taken aback. She had been expecting ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... And that was Hargus, that wretched, broken—whew! I don't want to think of it, Sam!" And Jadwin, taken all aback, sat for a ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... I am finished," said Lola. "To-morrow you shall see my work." Jane felt taken aback. It had been work, then; not simple play. She awaited what should follow with ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... cutter was proceeding to her station at Key West, she sighted a schooner, which, by signal flags, reported that she had that morning passed a bark flying the reversed ensign, with her yards awry and her sails aback. On running close to the schooner the Miami learned that the bark had changed her course when the schooner approached, and when the schooner fell on her course the bark came aback again. A second time the schooner went to her relief, and again the bark ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... was so taken aback at this rebuke from the mouth of a child that he dropped his whip, and, fumbling in his pocket, produced some money, which he offered to Hans to make up ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... they were taken aback by the suddenness of our assault and its result, they were not eager to advance into the night, and, as I guessed, waited awhile after landing ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... father should not like them meeting men was ever given, and Rosalie, ceaselessly disturbed by the concealment, could never imagine what the reason could be. There could be no reason that she could imagine; and she was thus immensely taken aback when one evening at supper her father made a most surprising statement: "The girls have no chance of ever meeting men in ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... to the fort, where she was warmly congratulated by her husband for the tact and courage she had displayed in presence of the savages. She replied, "the Indians seemed completely taken aback when I jumped into the boat and had not recovered from their surprise when they parted from me, and while I was sitting in the boat, the deep, black eyes of the tall, muscular fellow looked straight and steady at me, and ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith
... it with great admiration as it glittered in the moonlight; but her next question fairly took Horace aback. ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... mass of fire appeared over the vessel, completely blinding the spectators." The fiery mass fell into the sea. Its size may be judged by the volume of water cast up by it, said to have rushed toward the vessel with a noise that was "deafening." The bark was struck flat aback, and "a roaring, white sea passed ahead." "The master, an old, experienced mariner, declared that the awfulness of the sight ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... so taken aback that for a moment we could say nothing. My friend stammered out an apology about having mistaken the house, and rejoined me. At the corner we burst out laughing almost simultaneously. And then my friend suddenly stopped and ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... of her before the people on board seemed to see us. When she did, evidently taken by surprise, she put her helm down, and throwing all her sails aback, snapped some of her lighter spars, thus throwing everything into confusion—confusion made worse by the fact that, with the view of immediate landing, two hundred or three hundred of the niggers had been freed from their confinement and were crowded on the deck. Taking advantage ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... now I see why—you scoundrel!" He turned upon Chatelard with contemptuous fury. "For once you were caught, eh? These ladies are much alike—that is true. So much so that I myself was taken aback the first time I saw Miss Redmond. You thought Miss Redmond was the ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... taken a little aback, hesitated a moment; then he replied, 'Why, to preach and read the service, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... rested upon the gate, a guard stepped from behind a bower of iris and gently opened it for her. She was somewhat taken aback by his presence. The stalwart guard strode after her; she, noticing it, turned about and said sweetly for him to hold the gate open 'til she returned, that she would only be gone a ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... while they listened to the Ancient, who was holding forth, snuff-box in hand, yet every eye was turned towards the smithy, and in every eye was expectation. At our appearance, however, I thought they seemed, one and all, vastly surprised and taken aback, for heads were shaken, and glances wandered from the smith and myself to ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... while her mother introduced her to the new-comers, who all looked a little taken aback, as though the resuscitated Grecian heroine were indeed among them, and stood silently alert near the tea-table, handing the cups of tea, the cakes and scones, for Jack and Sir Basil to pass round. Her arms were bare ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... cab he made his way to the house with the red pillars, but on arriving was considerably taken aback, for the place had every appearance of being deserted. There were no blinds to the windows, and on the steps were muddy footmarks and bits of rag and straw which seemed to be the litter of a recent removal. Indeed, there on the road were the broad wheelmarks of the van which had carted ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... Susan launched into a narration of the events that had taken place while he was in Mexico, to which he listened with the composure of a man who, having had his share of the vagaries of fate, is not to be taken aback by new surprises, however singular or tragic. Susan expected an expression of regret—by look or word—over the loss of the marquis' fortune, but either he simulated indifference or passed the matter ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... I was taken all aback by this mass of odd-looking little notes. I had spent the afternoon in drilling Singelton, the kindest of friends, as to what he should do in any probable contingency of news of the next forty-eight hours, for I did not intend ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... Natasha in a short dress, with dark eyes shining from under her curls and boisterous, childish laughter, as he had known her four years before; and so he was taken aback when quite a different Natasha entered, and his face expressed rapturous astonishment. This expression ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... him somewhat aback. He hardly knew what to reply. Pushing the pea-pod off, he turned her toward ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... if to protect it from cold, wouldn't it be nice to be able to say at once that it had lived only in the snow, and that some one must have gone all that way up there above the snow line to pick it?" The children, taken aback by this unfair introduction of a floral stranger, were silent. Cressy thoughtfully accepted botany on those possibilities. A week later she laid on the master's desk a limp-looking plant with a stalk like heavy frayed worsted yarn. "It ain't much to look at ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... strongly about it, and on the man's side; and when I told him that Roger had just arrived and was coming to take counsel with you and me this afternoon, he suddenly asked if he might come, too. I was rather taken aback. I told him that we were going, of course, to consider the case entirely from the English point of view. He still said, 'Let me come; I may be of use to you.' So I could only reply it must rest with Roger. They'll show ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... or not, he failed, she thought, to attach any special significance to that last comment of hers. He said that John had been very nice about it, though he was, as any father would be under the circumstances, taken aback. He had consented to regard the arrangement as an accomplished fact and would, March hoped, in time be fully reconciled to it. Then he went back rather quickly to ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... organ, so you must draw up a specification of the repairs and additions required, and understand that anything you suggest shall be done. In the meantime pray order at once the water-engine and new pedal-board of which you speak, and inform me as to the cost.' He took me quite aback, and was gone before I had time to say anything. It puts me in a very equivocal position; I have such an antipathy to the man. I shall refuse his offer point-blank. I will not put myself under any obligation to such ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... Mr. Burton, however, seemed to be taken aback at being treated with such scant ceremony. "This is Mr. Hollings, the clerk; and this ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... precisely, with frost in his tones, staring balefully into my eyes. So taken aback was I by this unleashed hostility that for a moment I had nothing ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... not know," whispered Stella lamely. She was so taken aback at the preposterous fact that a stranger should have addressed her at all, even in a manner of indifference and respect, that she knew not ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... luffed up into the wind to deaden his headway. But even then the bark drifted ahead so rapidly that it was hard work for our boat to catch it by rowing in such a heavy sea. The stranger then lowered his top-gallant sails and hauled his foreyards aback, and in about twenty-five minutes Mr. Gilbert was alongside. He sprang lightly up the side of the big vessel, and, standing before the captain, with all the characteristic politeness of the French people, presented Captain Baker's compliments and asked for ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... and stared at him, while her more timid sister was too much taken aback to move. In the forty-odd years of their acquaintance with this agreeable product of the mid-Victorian era, this was the first time they had heard an oath pass his lips—without an immediate apology; and the apology ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... Being taken aback I made no answer, but William Bull, who, if a rough fellow, had a tongue in his head and a ready ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... In mathematics he especially excelled, and the Master, who prided himself on being able to give problems no one could solve but himself, found that he was put to the strait of giving a problem nobody could solve. He was somewhat taken aback when little Isaac declined to work on it, and coolly pointed out the fallacy involved. The only thing for the teacher to do was to say he had purposely given the proposition to see if any one would detect the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... picked up a few hours before in a hay-field near the village, and which was stranger to all who had seen it. As he began to undo the box I expected to see some of our own rarer birds, perhaps the rose-breasted grosbeak or Bohemian chatterer. Imagine, then, how I was taken aback when I beheld instead a swallow-shaped bird, quite as large as a pigeon, with a forked tail, glossy black above and snow-white beneath. Its parti-webbed feet, and its long graceful wings, at a glance told that it was a sea-bird; but as to ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... Harwood was taken aback by the directness of the question. Bassett had always spoken of Thatcher with respect, and he resented the new direction given to this conversation in Bassett's own office. Dan straightened himself with dignity, but before he ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... road to success. Up to the moment at which he had entered the room he had thought that he was progressing favourably. His Cecilia was becoming tame in his hands, as was necessary. He had then been altogether taken aback and surprised by her statement to him, and could not for some moments get over his feeling of amazement. At last he uttered a low whistle, and then walked slowly out of the house. At the front door he found his horse, and, mounting it, rode back into Exeter. As he did so he began to inquire of ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... ultimate sea, In the gloom of the mountain a ship lies at rest, And one sails away from the lea: One spreads its white wings on a far-reaching track, With pennant and sheet flowing free; One hides in the shadow with sails laid aback,— The ship that is ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... curious lot of men appeared, who, notwithstanding the remonstrances of Sadek and Haji, broke into the house in a most boisterous manner, demanding food of the landlord. They were armed with revolvers and old Martini rifles, and had plenty of cartridges about their persons. They seemed quite taken aback to find a European inside the room. They changed their attitude at ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... quite taken aback by the question. I will not say that she had forgotten herself, and her own love in thinking about John Bold, and while conversing with Mary: she certainly had not done so. She had been sick at heart to think that a man of whom she could not but own to herself that ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... definite opinion on the subject, but I felt so taken aback by this unexpected question that at first I could make ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... a glimpse of him, but it was sufficient to startle her considerably. He was a small man wearing a tweed cap and a tweed travelling ulster of a vivid brown. It was not these details, however, which took her aback. It was the fact that in the glimpse she had had of the man's face she had seemed to recognize the features of Mr. ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... SIR HOWARD (taken aback). I must say, Cicely, I think you might have chosen a more suitable moment to mention ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... to a little I'll strike. Though the tempest topgallant-mast smack smooth should smite And shiver each splinter of wood, Clear the deck, stow the yards, and house everything tight, And under reef foresail we'll scud: Avast! nor don't think me a milksop so soft, To be taken for trifles aback; For they say there's a Providence sits up aloft, To keep watch for the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... boom-tackles!" Dolores commanded, and four men flew to each as it was hooked to the rigging. "Haul away! Boom the sails square out!" The great sails filled with a crash as the gale took them on the fore side, flinging them violently aback. ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... you it's true, my dear. I was with Mrs Hearn just now, and she had it direct from Mrs Dale's own lips. Mrs Hearn said she'd never been taken so much aback in her whole life. There's been some quarrel, you may ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... calm and mild, so simple and bare and dispassionate that Ursula was somewhat taken aback, rather attracted. It pleased her almost like a wickedness. There was some delightful naked irony ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... what was the lock then - one Friday afternoon; and the remarkable thing about it is that I caught him with a fly. I'd gone out pike fishing, bless you, never thinking of a trout, and when I saw that whopper on the end of my line, blest if it didn't quite take me aback. Well, you see, he weighed twenty-six pound. Good-night, ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... the tyrant Governor Tryon turned hangman, and the battle of the Great Alamance had left me fatherless. Moreover, I had drunk a cup of wine with him at the Mecklenburg Arms no longer ago than yesterweek—this to a renewal of our early friendship. Hence, I must needs be somewhat taken aback when he drew rein at my door-stone, doffed his hat with a sweeping bow worthy a courtier of the great Louis, and said, after the best manner of ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... the familiar umbrella, and I was already taken aback, and I stood stiff and erect, like a schoolboy, waiting for my father to thrash me, but he saw the glance I cast at the umbrella and this probably ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... I did? I went straight up to her and looked her full in the face. But d'you think she moved a muscle? She simply looked at me as if she'd never set eyes on me before. Well, I was taken aback, I can tell you. I thought she'd faint. Not a bit ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... had no intention of obeying; he had played poker himself for some fifty odd years and knew what bluff meant. But for just one brief instant he was taken aback, fairly shocked into a fluttering indecision by the thunderous voice. Then, before he could recover himself the big man had flung a heavy wet coat into Adams's face, a gun had been fired wildly, the bullet ripping into the ceiling, and Buck Thornton ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... rather taken aback at his words, and yet did not just then by any means realize their full import. I was thinking only about my name; for without having penetrated into any perfectly savage country, I had been about the world a great deal ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... one on the starboard hand." He then let go my arm and shot ahead. He had no sooner done so than the youngest of them exclaimed, "Why, my dear George, is that you?" "Yes," he replied, "my dear Emily, and my dear mother, too; this is, indeed, taking me aback by an agreeable surprise. How long have you been here?" They were his mother and only sister, who had arrived that morning and were going to the Admiral's office to gain information respecting the ship to which he belonged. His mother was a genteel woman, ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... whaler, who was in charge of the boat, not liking the looks of the excited natives who swarmed around the newcomer, bade him a hurried farewell, and pushed away to the ship, which lay-to off the passage with her fore-yard aback. Then the clamorous people pressed more closely around Probyn and his wife, ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... a labourer in corduroys came into the room, and seemed taken aback at finding a gentleman there. He was the owner of the broiled potatoes, but apologised for taking possession of them. Morgan bade him sit down and have his meal, but the man, his face shining with good-humour, insisted he must not disturb him, but would go and stand at the bar. ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... roses. Nan stopped; glanced at her, and recognised her; and then, to the wonder of the crowd, they saw the young bride take the basket with her trembling white-gloved fingers, while the other hand was boldly put forward to shake hands with the country lass. Singing Sal was greatly taken aback; but she took Nan's hand for the briefest second, and managed to say something quite incoherent about 'long life and happiness, Miss—I beg your pardon, Miss—Ma'am;' and then the gleaming procession ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... Clemenceau appeared at the Conference door, and seemed taken aback by the large number of unfamiliar faces and figures behind Mr. Balfour, toward whom he sharply turned with the brusque interrogation: "Who are those people behind you? Are they English?" "Yes, they are," was the answer. "Well, what do they want here?" "They have come on the same errand ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... custom Janetta offered no word of excuse or apology. She was too much taken aback to speak. She stood and looked at her stepmother with slightly dilated eyes, ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... the bedside of Long John Wise at Run-by-Guess—and from many a bedside and wretched hearth by the way—the doctor and I strapped our packs aback and heartily set out from the Hudson's Bay Company's post at Bread-and-Water Bay in the dawn of the day before Christmas: being then three weeks gone from our harbour, and, thinking to reach it next day. We were to chance hospitality for the night; and this must be (they told us) at ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... remained overcast. The two schooners, under all sail and joined by a third, could be seen making back. A veer in the wind induced them to slack off sheets, and five minutes afterward a sudden veer from the opposite quarter caught all three schooners aback, and those on shore could see the boom-tackles being slacked away or cast off on the jump. The sound of the surf was loud, hollow, and menacing, and a heavy swell was setting in. A terrible sheet of lightning burst ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... after having screwed up her spirit to the point of facing Fownes in his fortress, the stable, Miss Meredith's courage deserted her on almost stumbling over him a hundred yards nearer than she expected. So taken aback was she that all the glib explanation she had planned was forgotten, and she held out the miniature to him ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... greater part of the day along the banks of the Tarn. One evening I met him by the river, and he stopped me to quote a passage from the Georgics which he had recalled to mind. His face beamed with satisfaction. I knew that he had not been brought up to cow-tending, but was, nevertheless, taken aback when the unfortunate old bachelor wished me to share the pleasure he felt in having brought to mind a long-forgotten passage of Virgil. The surprises of real life never cease to be startling. Speaking to me afterwards of the growing ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... a person just by hearing what he's like." Then there was no denying that the conduct of the Hermit would excite suspicion. He was camping alone in the deepest recesses of a lonely tract of scrub; he had been there some weeks, and she had had plenty of proof that he was taken aback at being discovered and wished earnestly that no future prowlers might find their way to his retreat. She recalled his shrinking from the boys, and his hasty refusal to go to the homestead. He had said in so many words that he desired nothing so much ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... what they wanted. After the secretary had been through the line, he went in, and then came back to the door and motioned for me. I went up to that anteroom, and the secretary said: "That is the President's door right over there. Just rap on it and go right in." I never was so taken aback, friends, in all my life, never. The secretary himself made it worse for me, because he had told me how to go in and then went out another door to the left and shut that. There I was, in the hallway by myself before the ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... Vizard was taken aback by the suddenness of this return to a topic he was simple enough to think she had abandoned. However, he said, "She is safe enough. I have taken care of that, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... Peruvian rivermen. In fact, their owners had been at some pains to keep them as clean as possible, folding them each morning with military precision and stowing them carefully. Wherefore they were somewhat taken aback when informed that nice white nets were decidedly not the thing in this part ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... low fizz and its fumes took them aback, allowing me to shoot away over the bridge and down into Bristol, much wiser ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... something to think about. She had been quite taken aback by Marjory's apology, and for a little while the real Mary Ann had shown herself. She was not a bad-hearted girl in reality, but she had been spoiled by those who should have known better; and although every now and then, at moments such ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... about it. We were both taken aback, and after the first shock we realized that to acknowledge a previous meeting was not to either of our advantages. You were ashamed; and I—well, you ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... gave such a jar to the ill-set vehicle, that one of the boards danced out that composed the bottom, and a sack of flour and bag of salted pork, which was on its way to a settler's, whose clearing we had to pass in the way, were ejected. A good teamster is seldom taken aback by such ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... across the space between them—No-Man's Land, they called it then—it was only thirty-five yards—to the German trench. So fast they rushed, and so unexpected was their coming, with no curtain of artillery to shield them, that the Germans were for a moment taken aback. Not a shot was fired for a space of time almost long enough to let the Americans reach the trench, and then the rifles broke out and the brown uniforms fell like leaves in autumn. But not all. They rushed on pell-mell, cutting wire, pouring irresistibly into the German trench. ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... behind us. But let us revert to the merry meeting previously alluded to. It is half-past two in the afternoon, we are gaily going through the figures of a country-dance, 'Speed the plough' perhaps, when the music stops short, everyone is taken aback, and wonders at the cause of interruption. The arrival of two prelates, Bishop Plessis and Bishop Mountain, gave us the solution of the enigma; an aide-de-camp had motioned to the bandmaster to stop on noticing the entrance of the two high dignitaries ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... them whole for this meal, and they had filled three huge bowls with ale from his great brewing-kettle. Hymer ate and drank very fast, and wished to make his guests fear him, because he could eat so much. But Thor was not to be taken aback in this way; for he at once ate two of the oxen, and quaffed a huge bowl of ale which the giant had set aside for himself. The giant saw that he was outdone, and he arose from the ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... and ne'er takes wing, But with a silent charm compels the stern 30 And tort'ring Genius of the bitter spring, To shrink aback, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... men more taken aback. They stopped dead where they were, when they saw me; and Bauldy, who had one hand in the air, having been laying down the law, as was usual with him, kept it there stiff as if he had been frozen where ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... devil was he? What was he, Morrison, doing there, talking like this? Morrison knew no more of Heyst than the rest of us trading in the Archipelago did. Had the Swede suddenly risen and hit him on the nose, he could not have been taken more aback than when this stranger, this nondescript wanderer, said with a ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... pard'n, sir, an' makin' so free as to mention et," began Peter at length, pulling off his hat and twirling the brim between his fingers, "but us was a bit taken aback, not understandin' as fash'nubbleness was to begin so smart; or us wou'dn't have introoded—spesh'ly Tamsin. Tamsin was thinkin' this mornin' as a pound of fresh butter might be acceptable to the gentl'm'n down at Kit's House, ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... not swear that black is white, But I suspect in fact that white is black, And the whole matter rests upon eye-sight:— Ask a blind man, the best judge. You'll attack Perhaps this new position—but I'm right; Or if I'm wrong, I'll not be ta'en aback:— He hath no morn nor night, but all is dark Within—and what seest thou? ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... shaking and thundering, while the sheets lashed to and fro across the deck. Then somewhere those sheets jammed and held fast, and as if the canvas had been flattened in of set purpose, she luffed, until with a great clap of the sail against the mast, the whole of her upper canvas was aback, and she was hove to helplessly. Maybe she was a furlong from us at ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... was the night as pitch or as the coal, And at the window she put out her hole, And Absolon him fell ne bet ne werse, But with his mouth he kiss'd her naked erse Full savourly. When he was ware of this, Aback he start, and thought it was amiss; For well he wist a woman hath no beard. He felt a thing all rough, and long y-hair'd, And saide; "Fy, alas! what have I do?" "Te he!" quoth she, and clapt the window to; ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... Gregory was slightly taken aback. He couldn't have defined Miss Woodruff's manner as assured, yet it was singularly competent; and no one could have been in less ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... had taken M. de Bois aback, chiefly because he was confounded by a new proof of his own awkwardness (stupidity, he plainly termed it) in leaving his handkerchief behind him, as a witness of his presence at the chalet. But there was no such confusing testimony to destroy his composure ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... remained with the general of the army. I went up to the Secretary of War, showed him the telegraphic correspondence, and pointed out the existing law in the Revised Statutes. General Belknap was visibly taken aback, and explained that he had supposed the right of appointment rested with him, that Ward was an old rebel Democrat, etc.; whereas Ward had been in fact the sutler of Fort Laramie, a United States military post, throughout the civil war. I told him that I should revoke ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... noise was the great point. That was the thing that took Martin and Barney quite aback, although it was by no means new to them; but they could not get used to it. And no wonder! Ten thousand paroquets shrieking passionately, like a hundred knife-grinders at work, is no joke; especially when their melodies are mingled with ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... woman and he had suddenly found her openly singling out before his eyes another man equally unknown to her—it would be hard, I say, to find such a young man (living, of course, in the great world and accustomed to indulge his self-love) who would not have been unpleasantly taken aback in such a case. ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... rampart of dead? White went his hair on the wind like the ragged drift of the cloud, And his dust-driven, blood-beaten harness was the death-storm's angry shroud, When the summer sun is departing in the first of the night of wrack; And his sword was the cleaving lightning, that smites and is hurried aback Ere the hand may rise against it; and his voice ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... and the contest was about equal. My resistance was entirely unexpected, and Covey was taken all aback by it, for he trembled in every limb. "Are you going to resist, you scoundrel?" said he. To which, I returned a polite "Yes sir;" steadily gazing my interrogator in the eye, to meet the first ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... suddenly sprang up when this insult fell on his ear. Bill of 1886 not a tempting topic; led to downfall of his Ministry; but to hear it publicly called a "buffer," more than he could stand—or, rather, sit. Leaped to feet, and, with thrilling energy, repudiated gross imputation. Prince ARTHUR taken aback; hadn't meant anything particular. To call a thing or a person a buffer not necessarily a term of opprobrium. Everything depends on inflection of tone. Suppose, now, leaning across the table, he had addressed Mr. G. as "old buffer," that would ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... and, stupefied, recognised a pair of old boots which he had, some time back, thrown into a corner of his attic. He was so taken aback that he ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... not pretend to be a judge of these matters, but really I believe Salina was a little taken aback, when she came forth into the porch, with her dress nicely tucked up, and her shawl folded in a fashion that left one arm at liberty, and saw uncle Nathan sitting there in the dark, instead of standing by the cheese-press, hat in hand, determined to escort her as a man of spirit ought to have ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... question took me aback: and, indeed, the whole conduct of the man was so strange that I was heartily frightened, and longed greatly to run away. There was no help for it, however, so I ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... MISS GILPIN (taken aback by his violence for a moment, finally bursts into a laugh of helplessness which is close to tears). I? I know nothing—absolutely ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... so much taken aback by the charge, that the unexplained mystery of the Long Vacation went out of his head. He said he was "very sorry," and "obliged;" and tried to recollect what he could have said to give ground to Mr. Vincent's remark. Not ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... myself, "Here's a chance to hear this Walkover opera. So now or never." I went in, and, planking my dollar down, I said, "Give me the best seat you have." "Other box-office, on 40th Street, please, for gallery." I was taken aback. "What!" I exclaimed, "do you ask a whole dollar for a gallery seat? How much, pray, for one down-stairs?" The young man looked at me curiously, but politely replied, "Five dollars, and they are all sold out." I went outside and took off my hat to cool my head. Five good dollars—a ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... party of six are seated in a carriage, the chances are that one given person will be next to or opposite to any other given person. Madame Max had remembered this, and had prepared herself, but Phineas was taken aback when he found how close was his neighbourhood to the lady. "Get in, Phineas," said his lordship. Gerard Maule had already seated himself next to Miss Palliser, and Phineas had no alternative but to take the place ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... slight consequence. To a girl of your daughter's age they are poisonous. If you, her father, know the whole truth, you can regulate your actions so as to defeat the scandalmongers. That is why I am here to-day. That is why I came here yesterday, but your attitude took me aback, and I was idiot enough to go without a word of explanation. I was too shaken then to see my clear course, and follow it regardless of personal feelings. This morning I am master of myself, and I insist that you listen now while I tell ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... replied Spurge. "I know a man just aback of here that'll run up to the town with a message—chap that can be trusted, sure and faithful. 'Bide here five minutes, sir—I'll send a message to Mr. Vickers—this chap'll know him and'll find him. He can come down with the rest—and the police, too, if he likes. Keep ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... later, I heard a great noise of hauling on deck, followed by the threshing of our sails, as though they had suddenly come aback. I knew enough of the sea to know that if we were tacking there would be other orders, while, if the helmsman had let the ship come aback by accident I should have heard the officers rating him. I heard neither nor orders; something else was happening. A glance out of the stern windows ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... guests for the week-end, but Marcia Van Wyck, with an air of hospitality that quite took me aback, welcomed me warmly, confessed herself much honored by this mark of my attention and took me to see her garden. Oh, she was clever. Spring flowers, youth, grace, the sweetness of the warm, scented paths, her symbolic white frock to set the scene for innocence. But I ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... the Peacocks was taken aback by this bold speech, and had half a mind to send them all away together; but his Prime Minister declared that it would never do to let such a trick as that pass unpunished, everybody would laugh at him; so the accusation was drawn up against them, that they were impostors, and ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... (Gammon) was the only member of the firm that had a real disinterested regard for him, and so acquire a valuable control over him! Thus occupied, the observation of Quirk had completely taken Gammon aback; and he lost his presence of mind, of course in such case his temper quickly following. "Will you favor me, Mr. Quirk, with an explanation of your extraordinarily absurd and offensive observation?" said he, reddening more and more as ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... of Alderman Crood, he remembered Alderman Crood's niece; her request to him; his promise to her. He had been puzzled, not a little taken aback by the girl's eager, anxious manner. She had been quiet and demure enough as she sat by Simon Crood's fire, sewing, in silence, a veritable modest mouse, timid and bashful; but in that big, gloomy hall her attitude had changed altogether—she had been almost compelling in her eagerness. And Brent ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... angry to find your fingers soiled." [6] "Well and good, my lad, well and good," said the king, "only feast away yourself and make good cheer, and we shall send you back to Persia a fine strong fellow." And with the word he had dishes of meat and game set before his grandson. The boy was taken aback by their profusion, and exclaimed, "Grandfather, do you give me all this for myself, to do what I like with it?" "Certainly I do," said the king. [7] Whereupon, without more ado, the boy Cyrus took first one dish and then another and ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... at him an instant in amazement, evidently taken completely aback. Then a light of cunning comprehension flashed into ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... quarrels and flagrant impertinences, he left his office, sped across the channel, rode post haste across England, flung himself, all mud-bespattered into the presence of his mistress in her chamber, and prayed for pardon. For the moment, she was too utterly taken aback to be herself; he left her thinking he had won. But the outrage was too gross. That evening he found himself under arrest. His enemies' policy of "giving him rope enough" had been more completely successful than they could have hoped. He had set the noose about his ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... fine fellow! With rings and a chain—a rich man! You are a dear boy," and Raskolnikoff gave a short, nervous laugh, right in the face of Zametoff. The latter was very much taken aback, and, if not offended, seemed a ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... dead? And that was Hargus, that wretched, broken—whew! I don't want to think of it, Sam!" And Jadwin, taken all aback, sat for a ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... to block the road up," the driver said, quite taken aback, his color mounting to his cheeks. ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... you here," said Mrs. Bilkins, somewhat taken aback. "His wife!" she thought; "it's a mother the poor ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Roy, taken aback, nearly gave himself away—but not quite. "I gather she acted with Sir Lakshman Singh's approval," ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... might reasonably expect to find some inn within a league or two. Going along, then, in this way, the night dark, the squire hungry, the master sharp-set, they saw coming towards them on the road they were travelling a great number of lights which looked exactly like stars in motion. Sancho was taken aback at the sight of them, nor did Don Quixote altogether relish them: the one pulled up his ass by the halter, the other his hack by the bridle, and they stood still, watching anxiously to see what all this would turn out to be, and found that the lights were approaching them, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... to go out he told his foot man to follow him. The footman, who had his instructions, replied that he had no time, and that he was busy carrying out my orders, and he must obey me first. For the moment the child was taken aback. How could he think they would really let him go out alone, him, who, in his own eyes, was the most important person in the world, who thought that everything in heaven and earth was wrapped up in his welfare? However, he was beginning to feel his weakness, he perceived that he should find ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... she had lived to see in the management of hospitals— in drainage, in ventilation, in sanitary work of every kind. There was a pause; and then, 'Do you think you are improving?' asked the Aga Khan. She was a little taken aback, and said, 'What do you mean by "improving"?' He replied, 'Believing more in God.' She saw that he had a view of God which was different from hers. 'A most interesting man,' she noted after the interview; 'but you could never teach ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... he howled, springing from the rail, and recovering his wits instantly. "Beg pardon, mum, but you took me aback all standin' as the saying is. Christopher, didn't that match ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... moment lost his presence of mind. He did not even think of calling to his picked guard, so completely taken aback was he by this unforeseen move on the part of Sir Percy. Yet, obviously, he should have been ready for this eventuality. Had he not caused the town-crier to loudly proclaim throughout the city that if ONE female prisoner escaped from Fort Gayole the entire able-bodied ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... black day in our calendar. At seven in the morning we were aroused from sleep by the cry of "All hands, ahoy! A man overboard!" This unwonted cry sent a thrill through the heart of everyone, and hurrying on deck we found the vessel hove flat aback, with all her studding sails set; for the boy who was at the helm left it to throw something overboard, and the carpenter, who was an old sailor, knowing that the wind was light, put the helm down and hove her aback. The watch on deck were ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... arms wide to facilitate the search. Evan, taken aback by his assurance, waited the result anxiously. The patrolman thrust his hand in ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... looked like a gun on it. I opened fire at once and put my first two shells at 6,000 yards right into some groups of horsemen; we saw them tumbling about, so after about a dozen shots from my gun off they went like greased lightning, seeming to sink into the earth and evidently quite taken aback to find we had a gun in such a position. In a few minutes not a sign of them was left, and the Commander-in-Chief riding up appeared much pleased and congratulated us on our straight shooting; he seemed ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... at length he detected a faint smell of wood smoke. He halted, and told the rest, in a whisper, that they were approaching a settlement. From this point they advanced still more slowly and cautiously. Then, with a suddenness that took them aback, they came to the edge of a clearing. At first Tom was not sure whether it was the same that he had seen before. He had indeed approached it from a different direction. But a glance around satisfied him on this point, and the party stood within the shelter of the trees while Underhill gave his ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... took Stormonth aback, for even he saw there was here a necessity as strong as his own; yet the power of ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... yielding nature, I was a little taken aback to find that a new enemy had turned up. The celery had just rubbed through the fiery scorching of the drought, and stood a faint chance to grow; when I noticed on the green leaves a big green-and-black worm, called, I believe, the celery-worm: but I don't know who called him; ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... almost alongside of her before the people on board seemed to see us. When she did, evidently taken by surprise, she put her helm down, and throwing all her sails aback, snapped some of her lighter spars, thus throwing everything into confusion—confusion made worse by the fact that, with the view of immediate landing, two hundred or three hundred of the niggers had been freed from their confinement and were crowded on the deck. Taking advantage ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... completely taken aback by this sudden rain of missiles almost from the skies, immediately scattered to the opposite side of the road and took refuge in the gardens there. Not one of them had his rifle to hand, for their arms had been stacked against ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... won't be so taken aback as if she wasn't afraid; and if Jem's all right, why, she'll only ...
— Saved at Sea - A Lighthouse Story • Mrs. O.F. Walton
... He was taken aback, and not for the first time, either. She had startled and discomposed him several times in the course of their brief acquaintance; and he always resented it, priding himself in private, as he did, upon his coolness and immobility. He could not think of the right thing to say just now, so he was ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... "Thou hast thought in thy folly that the Gods have friends and foes, That they wake, and the world wends onward, that they sleep, and the world slips back, That they laugh, and the world's weal waxeth, that they frown and fashion the wrack: Thou hast cast up the curse against me; it shall aback on thine head; Go back to the sons of repentance, with the children of sorrow wed! For the Gods are great unholpen, and their grief is seldom seen, And the wrong that they will and must be is soon as it ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... with their father's idea of courtesy, shook hands with the clerk, who was not at all taken aback by the unexpected honor. ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... (his tutor) "that I was not going out in mathematics, he was taken aback, and seemed very sorry. He urged me to read law, but still to go out as a high senior optime, which he says I could be, without reading more than a very small quantity of mathematics every day. My objection to this was that I knew myself better than he did; that were I to go in for ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... recovered!" And Susan launched into a narration of the events that had taken place while he was in Mexico, to which he listened with the composure of a man who, having had his share of the vagaries of fate, is not to be taken aback by new surprises, however singular or tragic. Susan expected an expression of regret—by look or word—over the loss of the marquis' fortune, but either he simulated indifference or passed the matter ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... was certainly rather taken aback when I heard they were engaged. Cusins is a very nice fellow, certainly: nobody would ever guess that he was ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... flat the moment the punching was remitted. I did all I could for them, but, having Daniel in tow, dared not sail too near the edge of the Doldrums, lest he should drop into sympathetic stagnation and be taken preternaturally bashful, with his sails all aback, just as I wanted to carry him gallantly into action with some clipper-built cruiser of a nice young lady. Finally, Lu bethought herself of that last plank of drowning conversationists, the photograph album. All the ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... Arkady, with the confidence of a practised chess-player, who has foreseen an apparently dangerous move on the part of his adversary, and so is not at all taken aback by it. ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... this piece of information in subdued silence. It took him all aback. He had not taken the trouble to ascertain whether there was force and ability behind his chief's placid, silent exterior, and the lesson he received was salutary and lasting. He watched with a critical eye the management and navigation as the Boadicea was pressed through ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... took me aback to see his poor haggard face, and the way in which he took the trouble, for it was plain enough to see how he was cut to the heart by Miss Ross's treatment of him. But for all that, he was the officer ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... appeared to be taken aback, and made a vigorous denial. It was therefore pointed out to him that if nothing had changed in the negative attitude of Germany, the terms of the suggested "note to the Press" were excessive, and likely to give French opinion ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... craft along; "a bloody revenue cutter, as I'm a wicked sinner! There she lies, sir, within musket shot of the shore, hid behind the point, as it might be in waiting for us, with her head to the southward, her helm hard down, topsail aback, and foresail brailed; as wicked looking a thing as Free Trade and Sailor's Rights ever ran from. My life on it, sir, she's been put in that precise spot, in waiting for the Molly to arrive. You see, as we stand ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... you look as though you'd been standing double watch for a week of Sundays! I never see the beat! Has that crazy gal coming here set ye all aback this way?" ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... mother," he said. And Lady Kynaston owned afterwards that she never felt so taken aback and so utterly struck dumb with astonishment in ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... was, to use a sailor's term, completely taken aback; indeed he was nearly capsized by the unexpected assault. For a short time he could not discover what it was; at last, by turning his head over his shoulder and putting his hand behind him, he ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... depend upon your keeping my secret when I've told you all about it." He then proceeded to lay the story of Jane's troubles before his deeply interested and sympathising hearers. When he had brought his account to an end, he said, "Now, you can understand why I was so taken aback at seeing my mother's name in this Bible, and why I'm so anxious to know how you came by it. Why, this is the very Bible which was restored, or, at any rate, meant to be restored to Jane by John Hollands three or four months ago. But, then, how did it get here? ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... above all it was his task to see that Congress concentrated on the currency revision and the tariff reform. It is recorded that the President was somewhat taken aback when Miss Paul addressed him during the course of the interview with this query, "But Mr. President, do you not understand that the Administration has no right to legislate for currency, tariff, and any other reform without ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... endeavour was to "tack" his course by such currents as he should find, in the manner attempted by his father, and at starting the ground current blew favourably from the W.S.W. He, however, allowed his balloon to rise to too high an altitude, where he must have been taken aback by a contrary drift; for, on descending again through a shower of snow, he found himself no further than Ben Howth, as yet only ten miles on his long journey. Profiting by his mistake, he thenceforward, by skilful ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... day by day still bears The burden on my back, With weeping eyes and wat'ry tears, To hold my hope aback. ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... to hear it till this day. It's quite took me aback. Poor dear gentleman, what an end for him—to go out all that way only to be drowned! I do seem to be told of nothing but deaths and dying this morning, for Binney's just 'eard that poor old Mr. Tapling, at No. 5 opposite, ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... taking off the ring with one hand while holding the puzzle in my pocket. A friend to whom I showed the little feat set about accomplishing it himself, and when I met him some days afterwards he exhibited his proficiency in the art. But he was a little taken aback when I then took the puzzle from him and, while simply holding the medal between the finger and thumb of one hand, by a series of little shakes and jerks caused the ring, without my even touching it, to fall off upon the floor. The following little poser will probably prove ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... fired the oven and set the leaven in the meal long before the child was hungry; she looked ahead and the bread was ready. Is not this written also in the teaching of Jesus—"your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things" (Matt. 6:32)? God, he holds, is as little taken aback by his children's needs as Mary was by hers, and the little boys did not did not confine their demands to bread—they wanted eggs and fish as well (Matt. 7:10; Luke 11:11, 12; and cf. John 6:9)—there ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... say that the "Pilgrim's" crew, before quitting her, had brought the ship's sails aback. In other words, the yards were braced in such a manner that the sails, counteracting their action, kept the ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... taken all aback with this mark of confidence. He would decline the offer, sure that it sprang ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... heaving-line down to us, by which we may be able to send them a hawser with a bosun's chair and hauling lines attached. If it is not troubling you too much, perhaps you will kindly hail them and explain my intentions, presently. I shall shave athwart her stern, as closely as I dare, with my main-topsail aback, so that you may have plenty of time to tell them what, our plans are, and what we want ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... my neck, I was taken too quickly aback to stir; but stood like a stuck pig, while the ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Bob said, a little taken aback; "but I don't know how you guessed it. It is a young lady I knew ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... had a surprise. The Alvina was not there. One old roustabout told me he thought she had gone to sea. I was duly taken aback. Had I made the two-hour trip for nothing? Then another came to my aid. "There she is, up in the bight," he said. I followed his gesture, and saw her—a long, slim white hull, a cream-coloured funnel with a graceful rake; the Stars and Stripes fresh painted in two places on ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... Gabriel was somewhat taken aback. "'Tis the infallibility of the Pope that is shaken," he explained. "But in itself the Christian faith is more abhorrent to Reason than the Jewish. The things it teaches about God ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... must some day die, and do hope when I do die to get to heaven, I was so taken aback with the hussy's cunning I could do naught but stand and stare ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... merchant ships that are rated A1 for insurance. "First-rate," on the other hand, comes from the Navy, and means ships of the largest size and strongest build, like the super-dreadnoughts of to-day. If you make a mess of things people say you are "on the wrong tack," may "get taken aback," and find yourself "on your beam ends" or, worse still, "on the rocks." So you had better remember that "if you won't be ruled by the rudder you are sure to be ruled by the rock." If you do not "know the ropes" you will not "keep on an even keel" when it's "blowing great guns." If ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... He had expected to be ushered into some princely dwelling, for he had judged his interlocutor to be some rich and eccentric noble, unless he were an erratic scamp. He was somewhat taken aback by the spectacle that met his eyes. The furniture was scant, and all in the style of the last century. The dust lay half an inch thick on the old gilded ornaments and chandeliers. A great pier-glass was cracked from corner to corner, and the metallic backing seemed ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... "Oh, wasn't Donald taken aback! This was more than he had expected. Neil hadn't been courting Nancy very long, and Donald never dreamed he would propose to her QUITE ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... having given any kind consent, but I was very willing to have it assumed, and I was glad to see that Mr Fisher, though Mr Abney did not observe it, was visibly taken aback by this piece of information. But he made ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... who bore so high a commission as his own. He had, how ever, sufficient time to recollect in whose presence he stood, ere he replied, for the stranger had again placed the helm a-lee, and caused the foresail to be thrown aback;—a change that ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... Smallbones, at the baying of the dog, he started up on his knees, and looked at it as if it were an apparition, with every demonstration of terror in his countenance; his eyes glared upon the animal with horror and astonishment, and he fell down in a swoon. The whole of the ship's company were taken aback—they looked at one another and shook their heads—one only remark was made by Jansen, who muttered, "De tog is ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... complained, "were like his wines, all sparkle and outside—no body to them. Two thousand pounds indeed! Why, we shall be lucky if we clear four hundred!" The man's coolness absolutely took me aback. For a moment I simply stared at him. "He'll be round to see you this morning, sometime, about my character," ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... got it here. Old woman lost hers and Knight bought her another—he'd bring her a herd if she wanted it. All the way from the market the boys kept up a running fire of criticism. When the ringleader came too near, Knight sprang at him with a yelp like a dog's. The boy was so taken aback that he ran. Then Knight roared with laughter, and in an instant the whole crowd were his friends—two of them helped him get the calf out of town. When a French crowd laughs with you you can do anything ...
— The Man In The High-Water Boots - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... suddenly to 21/2 fathoms; and before the helm was put down the ship touched upon a rock, and hung abaft. By keeping the sails full she went off into 3 fathoms, but in five minutes hung upon another rock; and the water being more shallow further on, the head sails were now laid aback. On swinging off, I filled to stretch out by the way we had come; and after another slight touch of the keel we got into deep water, and anchored in 4 fathoms, on a bottom of blue mud. The bad state of the ship would have made our situation amongst these rocks very alarming, had we not cleared ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... peeped out from inside the door, perceived the lictors and policemen go by two by two; and when unexpectedly in a state chair, was carried past an official, in black hat and red coat, she was indeed quite taken aback. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... seas, and, sailing up the coast in a native craft, you may almost fancy yourself one of the early explorers skirting the lovely shores of some undiscovered country. As you sprawl on the bamboo decking under the shadow of the immense palm leaf sail—which is so ingeniously rigged that, if taken aback, the boat must turn turtle, unless, by the blessing of the gods, the mast parts asunder—you look out through half-closed eyelids at a very beautiful coast. The waves dance, and glimmer, and shine in the sunlight, ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... . . . . As for me in all weathers, all times, tides and ends, Nought's a trouble from duty that springs, For my heart is my Poll's, and my rhino my friend's, And as for my life it's the King's; Even when my time comes, ne'er believe me so soft As for grief to be taken aback, For the same little cherub that sits up aloft Will look out a good ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... you know I want the empty attic?" Edwin repelled the onslaught; but he was considerably taken aback. It was a mystery to him how those girls, and Clara in particular, got wind of his ideas before he had even formulated them definitely to himself. It was also a mystery to him how they could be so tremendously interested in matters ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Marmaduke, taken aback by her sharp tone, gave a long whispered whistle, and pretended to hide under the table. He had a certain gift of drollery which made it difficult not to laugh even at his most foolish antics, and Marian was giving way in spite of herself when she found Douglas ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... looked taken aback for a moment. There was a confidence in Sir Oliver's manner that did not appear to be assumed. He would have preferred another aspect in ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... And Susan launched into a narration of the events that had taken place while he was in Mexico, to which he listened with the composure of a man who, having had his share of the vagaries of fate, is not to be taken aback by new surprises, however singular or tragic. Susan expected an expression of regret—by look or word—over the loss of the marquis' fortune, but either he simulated indifference or passed the matter by with ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... south-west,—the nor-wester of that hemisphere,—and it was fresh and howling enough, on the other side of the island. After Roswell had made a stretch out into the bay of about a mile, he laid his foretopsail flat aback, hauled over his jib-sheet, and put his helm hard down, in waiting for the other schooner to come out and join him. In a quarter of an hour, Daggett got ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... by the fountain in the center. Her delight was quite equal to Rachel's, and the thin, wrinkled face assumed a more peaceful expression than it had carried for many a day, so that when Hooper came to summon her to luncheon, he was fairly taken aback at ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... looked somewhat taken aback at this new question. "Oh," she stammered, "I suppose I must arrange something. I must talk to your father about it when I get out to him. In the meantime I daresay Cousin Charlotte will be able to help you a little with a few lessons. She has been a schoolmistress ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... takes him aback. He expected to find her defiance disappear with the cause of it. But pig-headed, as all Bennets, her opposition only drives him on]. Your ladyship ...
— Fanny and the Servant Problem • Jerome K. Jerome
... from 10 to 14 fathoms marked within two or three miles of it, and no mention of any shoal lying in the way, I intended to stand on half an hour longer; but in ten minutes, felt the ship lifting upon a bank. The sails were immediately thrown aback; and the weather being fine and water smooth, the ship was got off without having received any ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... was utterly taken aback, and it was his turn now to look askance at this dried-up, sinister-looking under-officer. If the unfortunate and aged guard who had fired that shot had been remiss in making a rapid report—remissness excusable enough considering the violence of the ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... made Lucien the happiest of mortals. But in the middle of the fantastic reasonings, with which Louise convinced him that they two were alone in the world, in came M. de Bargeton. Lucien frowned and seemed to be taken aback, but Louise made him a sign, and asked him to stay to dinner and to read Andre de Chenier aloud to them until people arrived for ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... aye, when the famine was upon you, did the Shaman bring reward to your hunters? did the Shaman put meat in your bellies? Again I say, the Shaman is without power. Thus I spit upon his face!' Though taken aback by the sacrilege, there was no uproar. Some of the women were even frightened, but among the men there was an uplifting, as though in preparation or anticipation of the miracle. All eyes were turned upon the two central figures. The priest realized the crucial moment, felt his power ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... had taken him somewhat aback. He hardly knew what to reply. Pushing the pea-pod off, he turned ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... of the Apple was taken aback by this arbitrary demand. He replied with dignity that his ancestors had dwelt in that village for as many years as there were hairs in his head, and that it was good that he and his people should continue there. This reasonable answer threw Chopart ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... customers. They all gave way to me. I made purchases worthy of my appearance and carriage, half an ox tail and some chitterlings. Then I proffered a handbill. The man in blue accepted it and, before I had opened my lips, returned it to me wrapped round the ox tail. I was too taken aback to explain. In fact, when he held out his hand, I mechanically gave him another bill for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... and Portsmouth no obstacle, apparently, was offered to the invaders. At Brighton the enemy were permitted to land unharmed. Scarborough, taken utterly aback by the boyish vigour of the Young Turks, was an easy prey; and at Yarmouth, though the Grand Duke received a nasty slap in the face from a dexterously-thrown bloater, the resistance appears to have ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... full dry. Dark was the night as pitch or as the coal, And at the window she put out her hole, And Absolon him fell ne bet ne werse, But with his mouth he kiss'd her naked erse Full savourly. When he was ware of this, Aback he start, and thought it was amiss; For well he wist a woman hath no beard. He felt a thing all rough, and long y-hair'd, And saide; "Fy, alas! what have I do?" "Te he!" quoth she, and clapt the window to; And Absolon ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... breezes and fair weather until near 5 o'Clock in the A.M., when a heavy Squall from the South-West, attended with rain, took us all aback, and obliged us to put before the wind, the better to take in our Sails; but before this could be done the Foretopsail was split in several places. By 6 o'clock the Topsails and Mainsail were handed, and we brought too under the Foresail and Mizen; at 8 it fell more moderate, and ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... the absurd emotion that led her to shirk her companion's scrutiny: she was so taken aback by this unexpected complaisance in a quarter where she was prepared for opposition that she turned and laid a grateful hand on ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... to her station at Key West, she sighted a schooner, which, by signal flags, reported that she had that morning passed a bark flying the reversed ensign, with her yards awry and her sails aback. On running close to the schooner the Miami learned that the bark had changed her course when the schooner approached, and when the schooner fell on her course the bark came aback again. A second time the schooner went to her relief, ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... icily. But presently, in a more softened tone, she added, "I do feel badly about Thorny! I oughtn't to have left her. It was all so quick! And she DID have a date, at least I know a crowd of people were coming to their house to dinner. And I was so utterly taken aback to be asked out with that crowd! The most exclusive people in the ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... Though the tempest topgallant-mast smack smooth should smite And shiver each splinter of wood, Clear the deck, stow the yards, and house everything tight, And under reef foresail we'll scud: Avast! nor don't think me a milksop so soft, To be taken for trifles aback; For they say there's a Providence sits up aloft, To keep watch for the life of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... Plume was so taken aback that his face became a blank. Then, whether it was that the very frankness of the speech struck home to him or that he wished to secure a fragment of esteem from Keith, he ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... for the Viscount Auberley to join the king at once at Oxford, and bring with him all his gathering. Having gathered no men yet, but spent the time in plucking roses and the wild myrtles of Devonshire love, the young lord was for once a little taken aback at this order. Moreover, though he had been grumbling, half a dozen times a day—to make himself more precious—about the place, and the people, and the way they cooked his meals, he really meant it less and less as he came to know the neighbourhood. ...
— Frida, or, The Lover's Leap, A Legend Of The West Country - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... But I never noticed anything. No; honestly I never noticed anything!" And just as her behaviour in the restaurant had shaken Chirac's confidence in his knowledge of the other sex, so now the singular behaviour of Chirac shook hers. She was taken aback. She was frightened, though she ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... tact." And then he paused for a moment, and continued in an amused voice, "The world is a very small place after all. I have lived long enough in it not to be surprised at running against all sorts of odd people in all sorts of odd places, but I must own I was a little taken aback when you brought Miss Sefton into my ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Monday that they found Eugene Wobbles, and that voluntary expatriate was almost as much taken aback as ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... fresh wind on our starboard quarter, and for some time spanked along at a great rate, never dreaming of danger, for indeed we saw not the slightest reason to apprehend it. All at once we were taken aback by a breeze from over Helseggen. This was most unusual—something that had never happened to us before—and I began to feel a little uneasy, without exactly knowing why. We put the boat on the wind, but could make no headway at ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... times on the boards of the Comedie Francaise, and after I had acted as interpreter for a quarter of an hour or so, she suddenly turned upon the master and, to the surprise of all of us, addressed him in perfect French. It was this which broke the spell. Though M. Zola was taken aback, he responded politely enough, and the conversation went on in French for some minutes, but I could already tell that he had renounced his intention of renting the house. When we drove away, after promising the lady a decisive answer within a day or ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... however, dashed aft and did this with most commendable promptitude; after which he, with the assistance of Joe and San Domingo, lost not a moment in counter-bracing the yards, when we successfully brought the ship to on the larboard tack, with her fore-topsail aback. This done, and with Joe at the wheel, Forbes and I clambered into the maintop and peered long into the fast gathering gloom, in the faint hope that even yet we might catch sight of one or both of the missing men, and be able to do something to save them; but ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... and looking aloft to see what could be done to help his craft along; "a bloody revenue cutter, as I'm a wicked sinner! There she lies, sir, within musket shot of the shore, hid behind the point, as it might be in waiting for us, with her head to the southward, her helm hard down, topsail aback, and foresail brailed; as wicked looking a thing as Free Trade and Sailor's Rights ever ran from. My life on it, sir, she's been put in that precise spot, in waiting for the Molly to arrive. You see, as we stand on, it places her as handsomely ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... resembled a map of the coast of some smooth, romantic country not mentioned in geographies. When she looked at him—well, the effect on him astonished him; but it enchanted him. He was discovering for the first time the soul of a girl. If he was a little taken aback he is to be excused. Younger men than he have been taken aback by that discovery. But James Ollerenshaw did not behave as a younger man would have behaved. He was more like some one who, having heard tell ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... came another knock at the door, and who should enter the room but John Eames. Lily for a moment was taken aback, but it was only for a moment. She had been thinking so much of him that his presence disturbed her for an instant. "He probably will not know that I am here," she had said to herself; but she had not yet been three hours in London, and he was already with her! At ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... last he summoned up courage to pay a visit to the object of his adoration with due formality, but was scornfully repulsed by the lady herself. "Did he think she received visits from gentlemen?" That took him woefully aback. "When she's got the house full of men boarders!" ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... Tom were taken aback at the sight of the weapon. But they had seen such arms before, and had faced them, consequently they were not as greatly alarmed as they right otherwise have been. They knew, too, that Dan Baxter ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield
... feel lonely and unhappy in his country, separated from our own people. Agreeably to the instructions they had received, on arriving at a short distance from our encampment, they sent to inform us of their arrival, and requested permission to present themselves before us. I was never so much taken aback as at the sight of these Europeans wearing the Abyssinian gala dress, silk shirts of gaudy colours, trousers of the same material, the shama thrown over the left shoulder, many with naked feet, several without covering to their ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... a coward too. I'se warrant there waur plenty o' room 'twixt his carcase and the wa'. That I'd bin there i'stead! There shouldn't ha' bin room to cram a herrin' tail atween me an' the ghost's substance. I would ha' hedged him up thus, an' then master ghost, taken aback, says, 'Friend, by yere sweet leave I would pass;' but I make out elbows, and arms this'n, facing ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... Smith wore a strained, desperate look. Madden stared at him for several seconds, quite taken aback by finding him in such an unexpected place. One thing, however, filled the American with deep gratification. The man ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... getting into our saps were instantly killed; the remainder were dealt with by bomb and rifle fire from the 7th and 8th Light Horse. By 2 A.M. the enemy broke, and many were killed while withdrawing. The enemy's attack was strongest on his right. They were completely taken aback by a concealed sap constructed well ahead of our main line, and the dead are lying thickly in front of this. Some got into the sap and several across it; all these were wiped out by fire from the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... delay, to deprive the Russians of their beards and the tails of their coats. He had scarcely arrived before the boyars and leading citizens of Moscow, who flocked to congratulate him on his return, were taken aback by the edict that whiskers were condemned, and that the razor must be set at work without ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... full height. He buttoned his coat quickly, and drew the strap of his cap firmly under his chin. "If I stay," he said to the councilman, as he turned to go, "remember my father, my brother's wife and the children." The councilman was taken aback. The young man's "if I stay" sounded like "I shall stay." A presentiment came over the friend that here was something that had to do with the salvation of Apollonius' soul. But the expression on Apollonius' face was no longer one of suffering; nor was it anxious ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... came within a few hundred yards, Vincent stood up and waved his cap, and a minute later the ship was brought up into the wind and her sails thrown aback. The captain appeared at the side and shouted to the boat, now but fifty ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... stepped into the office, Fru Falkenberg was there. I was taken aback at finding her there. I made a bow and ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... McCOMAS (taken aback, but rallying his humor to meet the emergency). Because eighteen years is too long for a solicitor to go without having ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... Stuart was taken aback. This difficulty had not occurred to him. It was true. Not only the boys, but practically nine men out of ten in Haiti go barefoot. This Stuart could not do. Accustomed to wearing shoes, he would cut his feet on the stones at every step he took ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... her say she did not dance, that dancing was an insipid pleasure. With that, he started away from the railing, went up to the Canadian, and in a peculiar, fiery German manner ruthlessly drew her away from the young American, who was completely taken aback. It was evident that the delicate, exotic woman, whose breast rose and fell convulsively, took pleasure in that strong conqueror's arm as they ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... stopped playing, Nelly was regarding me with round open eyes, and Kenneth took me quite aback by saying, with cool deliberation, 'There are moments, Goody Two-Shoes, when you and your fiddle are before my eyes, that I think I should like to marry you and take you away with me somewhere where you should charm me with those strains continually. Don't look ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... seemed a trifle taken aback, but concealed his emotion and passed the menu to Jimmy Doon. Mr. Doon, it was clear, found in this choosing of a dish an intellectual crisis of the ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... of the Greek land, Called Thersites, if ye will me know: Aback, give me room, in my way do ye not stand; For if ye do, I will soon lay you low. In Homer of my acts ye have read, I trow: Neither Agamemnon nor Ulysses I spared to check: They could not bring me to be at their beck. Of late from the Siege ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... if you've wished to say something special?" He spoke as if she might have seen he had been waiting for it—not indeed with discomfort, but with natural interest. Then he saw that she was a little taken aback, was even surprised herself at the detail she had neglected—the only one ever yet; having somehow assumed he would know, would recognise, would leave some things not to be said. She looked at him, however, an instant as if to convey that ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... personal interest in him, but a desire to see whether I dare let him wait on me again. So, recalling that a caster was off a chair yesterday, one is entitled to make sure that it is on to-day before sitting down. If the expression is not too strong, I may say that I was taken aback by William's manner. Even when crossing the room to take my orders he let his one hand play nervously with the other. I had to repeat "Sardine on toast" twice, and instead of answering "Yes, sir," as if my selection of sardine on toast was a personal gratification to ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... the girl replied, though somewhat taken aback by the suddenness of the encounter. The man spoke slowly and with evident refinement. His voice was the same she had heard at Nice on that memorable night of gaiety. She recognized ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... the colonel, and he asked me how Ray was behaving, and was beginning something about not letting him drink, when I could hold in no longer, and told him flatly that Ray hadn't taken as many drinks in a month as he had in a day. You ought to have seen him; he was struck all aback, and stammered something about his having been led to suppose Ray was doing a good deal of that sort of thing. I replied that that wasn't the only thing he had been misinformed about by a jugful, and he looked as though he'd like to put me in arrest too—the old ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... overhead became covered over with those long wavy white lines which go by the name of "mares' tails," and which always betoken wind. Still we stood on as before. Every now and then, however, a puff would come which threw the sails aback; but it quickly passed away, to be succeeded shortly by a stronger and more continuous one. At last the breeze headed us altogether, freshening up rapidly, till Mr Ronald called all hands to reef sails. The wind soon got the sea up, and ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... either that she had already met the squire of Rushbrooke Grange or that she expected to meet him here to-night; so that, when presently a tall man of about thirty-five with brick-dust cheeks came into the close, he was not taken aback when Esther greeted him by name with the assurance of old friendship. Nor was he astonished that even in the wan light those brick-dust cheeks should deepen to terra-cotta, those hard blue eyes glitter with recognition, and the small thin-lipped mouth lose for a moment its ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... we lost the trade-wind, and were suddenly taken aback, with the wind from the N.N.W. At this time our latitude was 29 deg. 50', and our longitude 170 deg. l'. As the old running ropes were constantly breaking in the late gales, we reeved what new ones we had left, and made such other preparations ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... very severe. McDuffie replied, and was equally caustic, and this to the astonishment of every one; for all supposed the young member was annihilated—as so many before had been by Randolph—and would not reply. His antagonist was completely taken aback, and evidently felt, with Sir Andrew Ague-cheek: "Had I known he was so cunning of fence, I had seen him damned ere I had fought him." But he was in for it, and must reply. His rejoinder was angry, and wanting in his usual biting sarcasm. ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... very intimate with the old fellow. You could not help it. He had a way about him that drew you out. I told him I was going to New Orleans to pay a visit to friends there. He said, 'Got a sweetheart there?' I was rather taken aback; but I told him, 'Yes.' He said he knew it as soon as I spoke to him on the platform. He asked me who she was, and I told him her name. He said to me, 'Ah! you lucky dog.' I told him I did not know ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... about the Barnes story—"feels, so I gathered, very strongly about it, and on the man's side; and when I told him that Roger had just arrived and was coming to take counsel with you and me this afternoon, he suddenly asked if he might come, too. I was rather taken aback. I told him that we were going, of course, to consider the case entirely from the English point of view. He still said, 'Let me come; I may be of use to you.' So I could only reply it must rest with Roger. They'll show him first ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was not disagreeable to either. Bridget was taken aback, to begin with, by some very liberal proposals of Sarratt's on the subject of her and Nelly's joint expenses during his absence. She was to be Nelly's guest—they both wished it—and he said kindly that he quite understood Nelly's marriage had made a difference to her, ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... White, there were several things I wanted to talk to you about," said Pinto, taken aback by her calm. "Have you ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... Samuels, rather taken aback, stared uncertainly. He had been lured from his vantage ground of force to that of argument; how he scarcely knew. It had ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... river, I found M.M., le Directeur de la Quarantine, and general manager of all the other departments. He accompanied me to the hotel, which, though not exactly first-rate, appeared luxurious after my three months of khans and tents. I was somewhat taken aback at finding that the steamer to Belgrade was not due for two days, and moreover that the fogs had been so dense that it had not yet passed up on its voyage to Sissek; whence it would return to Belgrade, calling at Brod, and other places ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... was never taken aback. "Ah, my darling, and how are you? come to see we are drinking parliament and ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... endeavoured to get the courses hauled up, and the top-gallant-sails clewed up, neither of which we could do, as we had neither clue-garnets, bunt-lines, or leach-lines left. However, we got the top-gallant-sails down, with most of the stay-sails, and the mizen-topsail aback; but finding we still outsailed him, I had no other method left but that of sheering across his hawse, first on one bow, then on the other, raking him as we crossed, always having in view the retarding his way, by obliging him ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... is. It is 'the situation of the sails when their surfaces are flatted against the masts by the force of the wind.' I do not understand, though. The sails are said to be 'taken aback.'— Oh, I have heard mother say that. What could she mean? I have heard her ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... moment was taken aback, and Mrs. Witham got fiery red and turned away; but the doctor was a frank and ready man, and he answered ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... was a reason for her changing, and ever since, every day and every night, I've been trying to make out what it could have been. I've thought the idea might come to me. But it never has. That's partly why I'm so anxious to find her—to make her explain. I was too taken aback, too—sort of stunned—to go about it the right way when she changed to me at the last minute there on the dock. Once I could understand, why, I might start with her again at the beginning and work up. It would give me a chance—the chance I once thought I ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... though you'd been standing double watch for a week of Sundays! I never see the beat! Has that crazy gal coming here set ye all aback this way?" ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... all aback by this mass of odd-looking little notes. I had spent the afternoon in drilling Singleton, the kindest of friends, as to what he should do in any probable contingency of news of the next forty-eight hours, for I did not intend to be absent on a wedding tour even longer than that ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... of this anecdote, I am so taken aback that, for a moment, I am unable to utter. Seeing, however, that some comment is expected from me, I stammer something about its being a great age. He, however, imagines that I am asking whether they were ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... must provide himself with all the necessaries for such an important and lofty position; and he assured his master that he would bring along his very best donkey. The mention of this ignoble animal somewhat took the knight aback. He ransacked his memory for any instance in which any other mount than a horse had been used, but he could recall none. However, he could not very well have an attendant on foot, so he decided to ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... I was taken aback with the vision of the Wolf figure in the grimy passage, a fiend in the intoxication of opium, and ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... magnificent. I had had the platform carried forward to our "Frozen Deep" point, and my table and screen built in with a proscenium and room scenery. When I went in (there was a very fine hall), they applauded in the most tremendous manner; and the extent to which they were taken aback and taken by storm by "Copperfield" was really ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... for they were old hands who had sailed with him many years. There were dark looks and murmurs among them too, and one of them openly declared that the ship was haunted. Harton helped to lay the poor skipper out, and we did him up in canvas between us. At twelve o'clock the foreyard was hauled aback, and we committed his body to the deep, Goring reading the Church of England burial service. The breeze has freshened up, and we have done ten knots all day and sometimes twelve. The sooner we reach Lisbon and get away from this accursed ship the better pleased ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... tight little craft! Come, come, she's not for you, Dick, and yet—she's fit to marry Lord Nelson! By the Flag of Old England, I can't look at her unmoved. ROSE. Sir, you are agitated— RICH. Aye, aye, my lass, well said! I am agitated, true enough!—took flat aback, my girl; but 'tis naught—'twill pass. (Aside.) This here heart of mine's a-dictatin' to me like anythink. Question is, Have I a right to disregard its promptings? ROSE. Can I do aught to relieve thine anguish, for it ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... brow-beating and examination of the counsel, and sometimes give such replies as turn the sting upon their examiners; having like the Irish a sort of tact for repartee, they are not often to be taken aback; the lower classes in Paris are naturally extremely shrewd and penetrating, they recognise a foreigner instantly, before he speaks, as a friend of mine found to his cost, who although an Englishman would anywhere in his own country ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... Horncastle was taken aback by the audacity of the woman before her. She knew the simple confidence and boyish trust of Barker in his wife in spite of their sometimes strained relations, and she knew how difficult it would be to shake it. And she had ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... and, sure enough, his hand was red with blood. Billy Fish and two of his matchlock men catches hold of Dan by the shoulders and drags him into the Bashkai lot, while the priests howls in their lingo, 'Neither God nor Devil, but a man!' I was all taken aback, for a priest cut at me in front, and the Army behind began firing into the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Taken aback by this, I was on the point of giving him a jolly good blowing up, but her ready acquiescence caused me to desist. Really, I began to wonder if he had her hypnotized; and, furious—indeed, quite a good deal hurt—by the cool way she obeyed him and began ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... story of destitution and want, and concluded by requesting the usual trifle. I replied, with some severity, that if I gave him a dime he would probably spend it for drink. "Be Gorra! but you're roight—I wad that!" he answered promptly. I was so much taken aback by this unexpected exhibition of frankness that I instantly handed over the dime. It seems that Truth had survived the wreck of his other virtues; he did get drunk, and, impelled by a like conscientious sense of duty, exhibited himself to me in that state a few hours after, to show that my bounty ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... that divell's damned charmes, Aback did Robin come at last, And Madge, ye hoyden, sprad her arms and gave a cry and held him fast; And as she clong to him and cried, her patient harte with joy did brast, ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... you doing?" said Emile, checking his movement. "Gentlemen," he added, addressing the company, who were rather taken aback by Raphael's behavior, "you must know that our friend Valentin here—what am I saying?—I mean my Lord Marquis de Valentin—is in the possession of a secret for obtaining wealth. His wishes are fulfilled as soon as he knows them. He will make us all rich together, or he is a flunkey, ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... sorrow. All Sat with unbraided hair and pitiful breasts Scored with their fingers. On their cheeks there lay Stains of dried tears, and streamed thereover now Fresh tears full fast, as still they gazed aback On the lost hapless home, wherefrom yet rose The flames, and o'er it writhed the rolling smoke. Now on Cassandra marvelling they gazed, Calling to mind her prophecy of doom; But at their tears she laughed in bitter scorn, In anguish for the ruin of ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... six feet tall, and leggy—was to fasten with a good grip on to her tail, that he might serve not only as a 'drag,' as our commander phrased it, but as a pilot as well, 'if she should get to yawing or be suddenly taken aback, and be unable to come up into the wind promptly,' while I was held in reserve to guard against emergencies. I did not quite like the position assigned to me, and so intimated to the captain, but he said no ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... environed by dint of his massive shoulders; "ay, brother, and a man, know-much or know-nothing, who would never advise his officer to keep so much after-sail on a ship, when there was the likelihood of the wind taking her aback." ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... out of the shop. Before he could find himself, a superb serjeant-major strode up, saluted in the highest and strictest perfection, and passed. The encounter was unfortunate. George, taken aback, muddled his share of the rite. Further, the self-consciousness of the potential Vice-President of the Royal Institute of British Architects was so extreme in uniform that it could scarcely have been more extreme had he been thrust by destiny into Oxford Street naked. He returned ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... gave this proof of having those linguistic attainments which all bad spirits possess, he and those with him would be convinced that the possession was genuine and no deception. Barre, without being in the least taken aback, replied that he would make the demon say it if God permitted, and ordered the spirit to answer in Gaelic. But though he repeated his command twice, it was not obeyed; on the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... my bein' taken in by it," Mr. Cheeseman went on, "and I wonder myself. But I was startled, you see, and took aback, and—well, that's all over. Now, what are you goin' to do about ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... affairs, ensued upon Liegnitz; everything taking the backward course, from which it hardly recovered, or indeed did not recover at all, during the rest of this Campaign. Details on the subsequent Daun-Friedrich movements—which went all aback for Daun, Daun driven into the Hills again, Friedrich hopeful to cut off his bread, and drive him quite through the Hills, and home again—are not permitted us. No human intellect in our day could busy itself with understanding these thousand-fold ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... to happen, and pressed it to her eyes. There was an interval of silence. The Master closed his book and laid it on the table. The Young Astronomer did not look as much surprised as I should have expected. I was completely taken aback,—I had not thought of such a sudden breaking up of our ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... for the numerous progeny we left behind us. But let us revert to the merry meeting previously alluded to. It is half-past two in the afternoon, we are gaily going through the figures of a country-dance, 'Speed the plough' perhaps, when the music stops short, everyone is taken aback, and wonders at the cause of interruption. The arrival of two prelates, Bishop Plessis and Bishop Mountain, gave us the solution of the enigma; an aide-de-camp had motioned to the bandmaster to ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... see you all," I said, shaking hands with each one till I came to the Fish, who held out a fin. "Er-er-how do you do?" I stammered, somewhat taken aback by this strange proceeding. ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... the signal to raise the curtain. The bell tinkled, and the curtain slowly rose, revealing the gorgeous scene and the actors standing in a blaze of light. Instantly the tumult ceased, and a deep sudden hush succeeded. Those roughs were evidently taken aback by the dazzling splendor that burst upon them. It was a new revelation to them, and for the moment they seemed to forget the object of their coming, and to be wholly absorbed in ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... was the husband and house-master, into the saloon and made him sit down congratulating herself on her cunning contrivance. Presently in walked the lady, who no sooner set eyes on her husband sitting by the old trot than she knew him and guessed how the case stood; nevertheless, she was not taken aback and without stay or delay bethought her of a device to hoodwink him. So she pulled off her outer boot and cried at her husband, "Is this how thou keepest the contract between us? How canst thou betray me and deal thus with me? Know that, when I heard of thy coming, I sent this old woman ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
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