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More "Abrupt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... more of Sir John Conroy. She rewarded his past services with liberality: he was given a baronetcy and a pension of L3000 a year; he remained a member of the Duchess's household, but his personal intercourse with the Queen came to an abrupt conclusion. ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... semitone to another; each is different; each, as you go on, requires greater height, wherefore the position of the organs cannot remain the same for several different tones. But, as there should never be an abrupt change audible in the way of singing, so should there never be an abrupt change felt in the sensations of the singer's throat. Every tone must be imperceptibly prepared in an elastic channel and must produce an easy feeling in the singer, ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... came in contact with the enemy opposite Brandenburg, where he crossed; but it made the stand at Corydon Junction, where the road runs between two abrupt hills, across which Colonel Lewis Jordan threw up some light intrenchments. Morgan's advance attempted to ride over these "rail-piles" rough-shod, but lost some twenty troopers unhorsed. They brought up their reserve and artillery, flanked, and finally ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... plain sight, kicked up his heels in derision but finally came to an abrupt halt in front of Ned, and stood with ears pitched forward and forelegs braced back, evidently very ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... does not admit of the introduction of new causes, and that we have no evidence of the sudden change of nature which such introduction would bring about. The fallacy as to new causes involving any breach of continuity, or any sudden or abrupt change, in the effects, has already been shown; but we will further point out that there are at least three stages in the development of the organic world when some new cause or power must necessarily have come ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Greek and Turkish history of Laonicus Chalcondyles ends with the winter of 1463; and the abrupt conclusion seems to mark, that he laid down his pen in the same year. We know that he was an Athenian, and that some contemporaries of the same name contributed to the revival of the Greek language in Italy. But in his ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... some day when he should be abroad. I was encouraged in this resolution by the advice of our Scotch friend, who came about this time from London, on a visit to his fellow-traveller. We thought such an abrupt departure would be less shocking than to stay and take a formal leave of my lover, whose heart was of such a delicate frame, that, after I told him I should one day withdraw myself in his absence, he never came home from the chase, or any other avocation, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... discovered Langhorn shut up in his room, without being able to stir abroad for want of money and decent clothing. After remaining a fortnight, he made a proposal to the Major to accompany him to St. Petersburgh. "No: I esteem you, but no man on earth shall travel with me the way I do," was the abrupt refusal to the man who had gone out of the way several hundred miles to relieve his wants, and given him ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various
... plebeian and a Protestant,—cold, severe, reserved, awkward, abrupt, and ostentatiously humble, but of inflexible integrity and unrivalled sagacity and forethought; more able as a financier and political economist than any man of his century. It was something for ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... back in preceding years. But the abrupt development of the trouble in Egypt was due to an accident; that of the Irish question was of no sudden or casual growth. The Parliamentary difficulty as to procedure of the House was only part of Parnell's deliberate ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... him with a violence that brought his surmisings to an abrupt end. Then, having worked off the first heat of his fury, he turned ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... one of the odd, abrupt notes—very little longer than a Bank note—to which her epistolary efforts were usually limited. She had stated therein that she had fallen into adversity, and was leaving Dover for good, but had quite made up her mind to it, and was so well that nobody need be uncomfortable about her. Agnes ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... whether he could by any means throw a rampart around; but the hill was so bare, and the soil so rough, that neither could a bush be found for cutting a palisade, nor earth for making a mound, nor the requisites for making a trench or any other work; nor was the place naturally steep or abrupt enough to render the approach and ascent difficult to the enemy, as it rose on every side with a gentle acclivity. However, that they might raise up against them some semblance of a rampart, they placed around them the panniers tied to the burdens, building them up as it were to ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... alleged wrong which had thus been done to Patrick Henry during his brief military career, and which had brought that career to its abrupt and painful close, seems to have continued for a considerable time. Throughout the colony the blame was openly and bluntly laid upon the Committee of Safety, who, on account of envy, it was said, had tried "to bury in obscurity his martial talents."[224] On the other hand, the course pursued ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... Advertiser, chronicler of the big and little things of Manhattan's early days. It gives a fine example of old-style journalism. Observe the ingenuity with which a page of narrative is twisted into the first sentence. The last two are the more startling in their abrupt fashion of leaving the reader high and dry. The cow is starred; obviously the man appears ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... in and out among the swiftly moving, ever changing throng of people. In a moment he shot back to a less crowded space near her, where he "shot the duck," balanced himself first on one foot and then on the other, and finally came to an abrupt halt, leaving a trail of ice shavings in ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... shattering effect, and if the shopkeeper declined to revise his tariff her good-humored voice toned so huge a disapproval that other intending purchasers left the shop impressed by the unmasking of a swindler. Her method was abrupt. She seized an article, placed it on the counter and uttered these words, "Sixpence and not a penny more; I can get it in Moore Street for five pence half penny." She knew all the shops having a cheap line in some special article, and, therefore, her shopping was of ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... caused him to bring his tune to an abrupt close, and he turned to see Ray, who had entered hurriedly, leaving the door ajar, and was busy breaking the seal of a small ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... financier brought his speech to an abrupt close. He knew in the Vicomte de Mauleon the writer of articles which had endangered the Government, and aimed no pointless shafts ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... us EXILES one of the greatest pleasures. Often and often whilst wandering amongst these hills do I think of Barmouth, and, I may add, as often wish for such a companion. What a contrast does a walk in these two places afford; here abrupt and stony peaks are to the very summit enclosed by luxuriant woods; the whole surface of the country, excepting where cleared by man, is one impenetrable forest. How different from Wales, with its sloping ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... this plant the envy of all who have desired to obtain good management. Its cost items have been looked on as a result long hoped for, but seldom obtained. It is to be regretted, therefore, that such an abrupt change in methods of removing clogging material and replacing sand has taken place without years of experimental trial on filters not furnishing drinking water to the public, and without an attempt, under such excellent ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXXII, June, 1911 • E. D. Hardy
... ravine might have been a mile and a half, or probably two miles. It wound in every possible direction through the hills (having apparently formed, at some remote period, the bed of a torrent), in no instance proceeding more than twenty yards without an abrupt turn. The sides of this dell would have averaged, I am sure, seventy or eighty feet in perpendicular altitude throughout the whole of their extent, and in some portions they arose to an astonishing ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... were inflated and put where they could be quickly seized on the approach to a bad descent, and at four o'clock we were afloat. The wide horizon vanished. The cliffs, red and majestic, rose at one bound to a height of about 2000 feet on each side, the most abrupt and magnificent gateway to a canyon imaginable. We entered slowly, for the current in the beginning is not swift, and we watched the mighty precipices while they appeared to fold themselves together behind and ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... this point the Chief Justice appears to recoil from this abrupt dismissal of the clear and present danger formula for the more serious cases, and he makes a last moment effort to rescue the babe that he has tossed out with the bathwater. He says: "As articulated ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... this, sir. I wish to know whether Mr. Palliser's abrupt departure from the Manor was due to ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ninth series that the process of habit formation was obscured. It would not be fair to say that the mouse temporarily ceased to profit by its experience; instead it profited even more than usually, in all probability, but the unavoidably abrupt increase in the difficultness of the tests was just sufficient ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... unusually antic seemed impending, he would seize my arm as I lost balance, and as the Elsinore smashed down on her side and heeled over and over with a colossal roll that seemed never to end, and that always ended with an abrupt, snap-of-the-whip effect as she began the corresponding roll to windward. In vain I strove to learn how Mr. Pike forecasts these antics, and I am driven to believe that he does not consciously forecast them at all. ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... advice to Ned, and, although the change of plan was abrupt, he promised to take it. Juana gave him a bag of food which he fastened to his belt under his serape, and at midnight, with the blessing of the Holy Virgin invoked for him again, he started. Fifty yards away he turned ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of the Brehon Law Tracts point out that early laws are handed down "in a rhythmical form; always in language condensed and antiquated they assume the character of abrupt and sententious proverbs. Collections of such sayings are found scattered throughout the Brehon Law Tracts."[128] The sagas contain many verses which partake of the character of legal formulae, and in Beowulf there seems to be a definite example. It occurs in the ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... You know dear Katherine does not do herself justice; her manners are so abrupt. You do ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... episode, when some nerves might be in need of bracing, to sample some phenomenal Monongahela. Then when Harris was through, after saying good-night, he was presently followed by Willett, flushed in face and abrupt in manner. Miss Archer had been spirited off by her mother, and presumably gone to bed. She'd get used to snakes if she stayed long in Arizona, said Willett. What was the sense in scaring her, anyway? Why hadn't Harris quietly given him the tip? He could ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... open doors at either end, fill the summer air with delicious coolness, and the scent of roses mingles with that of newly-mown clover. The breezes, too, bring to Dorris bits of conversation from the hall; but they fall on unheeding ears until an abrupt speech from her uncle ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various
... it was formerly and is now sometimes called,) in situation and aspect partly resembles "majestic Windsor." It has a similar "princely brow," being placed upon an abrupt elevation of a kind of natural cliff, forming the termination of a peninsular hill, the basis of which is red grit stone, but now covered with vegetable mould, well turfed by nature and art, and varied into terraces of different elevation. It has been the seat of the noble ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various
... circle, sometimes in a square, In some cases the living rock forms hart of the enceinte, which has been completed with the help of other blocks frolic elsewhere. It is often difficult to decide where the monument end, and the rock begins. When the escarpment was too abrupt, it was levelled with the aid of a kind of retaining wall, which forms a terrace round the dolmen. The dolmens in the plain seem to have been constructed with even greater care. The enceintes are wider and the slabs of the tables larger." Megalithic monuments are met with even ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... especially from Roddy. Suddenly, her haste was arrested by an unexpected sight. A tiny spot of colour lay right in her pathway on the ground. It was only a yellow rose-leaf, but it brought a catch in Christine's breath and her feet to an abrupt halt. How had it come there? If it had fallen from one of Roddy's roses, it meant that he had been out of doors since she left! That set her hurrying on again, but, as she walked, she reflected that of the many roses left ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... trying to communicate some fact or incident in its past life. It is endeavouring to force this thought through, in the face of great difficulties, and while trying to retain its grasp of the organism. Now, let us suppose that this stream of thought is suddenly interrupted by the sitter asking an abrupt question—referring to another incident altogether, and perhaps related to another time in the communicator's life. Is it not natural to suppose that, labouring under these difficulties, and lacking the inhibitory action of the brain, the communicator's ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... From those abrupt and perilous rocks The Man had fallen, that place of fear! At length upon the Shepherd's mind It breaks, and all is clear: He instantly recalled the name, And who he was, and whence he came; Remembered, too, the very day On which the traveller ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... cattle has obliterated all traces of mounds, and the stones are generally on a level with the surface. On the outside, in close proximity to the others, are ten more, while on the slope of the hill to the northwest—the hill not being so abrupt in its descent at this point—are eighty-six more graves; making a total of one hundred and thirty-six buried on this hill. All are marked in the same manner, the last being covered by a thick growth of blackberry vines and bayberry bushes, and would not be noticed ...
— John Eliot's First Indian Teacher and Interpreter Cockenoe-de-Long Island and The Story of His Career from the Early Records • William Wallace Tooker
... had never occurred to her, and shocked her into abrupt refusal. It would be an impossible adaptation to outgrown conditions. She could not conjure up the idea of herself refitted into the broken frame of her girlhood. She told them she would go on, there was nothing now to go back for. ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... engaged in; but as for Herod, he went in haste against the robbers that were in the caves, and sent Silo away to Ventidius, while he marched against them. These caves were in mountains that were exceeding abrupt, and in their middle were no other than precipices, with certain entrances into the caves, and those caves were encompassed with sharp rocks, and in these did the robbers lie concealed, with all their families about ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... up to London then, where, if the dowager had been angry at the abrupt leave of absence he took, she was mightily pleased at his ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... portion of the Matto Grosso plateau interested me greatly. Each individual spur, taken separately, showed slopes sometimes abrupt, sometimes well rounded, separated from the next spur of hills by a V-shaped or angular, or else a concave hollow. At the bottom of those hollows one did not find the slopes continuing the line of the crater, but the valley was there absolutely flat and cut the line of the slope sharply. It ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... rocked and came to an abrupt standstill. Across the track, scarcely two yards before the nose of the car, had dashed a white object, which, soundlessly, was gone in half a minute—swallowed up in the ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... Throughout the abrupt discourse Terry had endured the frank appraisal of the shrewd black eyes. He experienced a pleasant reaction when the Major again ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... follows: next, because the hearers following the flow of words, and drawn, as it were, down the current of the oration, are then more competent judges, when that impetuosity ceases and gives time for reflection. There should not, therefore, be anything harsh nor abrupt in that ending, which seems calculated for the respite and recreation of the mind and ear. This, too, is the resting-place of the oration, this the auditor expects, and here burst forth all his effusions ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... then." She was astride of the sled and away down the long descent, while he watched her swift flight. He set his teeth and was off after her. A thrill of pleasure possessed him, the joy of swift movement. Near the foot was an abrupt fall to a frozen brook and then a sharp ascent. He rolled over at Leila's feet seeing a firmament of stars ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... little abrupt movement, and he saw the sudden softening of her eyes. There was, however, only a gentle pity in them, and nothing in her manner suggested the deeper feeling he had half-expected. That was also a relief ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... An abrupt ascent, long and steep, formed a pleasant change to the monotony of the rugged plain. Up this 'berg' our ponies wound their way zigzag between the rough boulders of rock which strewed the path. At the top we met several men with their train of ponies, waiting for us to ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... quickly at the Columbia; but they followed this Mad river for twenty days, finding nothing at all to eat, and suffering horribly from thirst. The rocks between which the river flows being so steep and abrupt as to prevent their descending to quench their thirst (so that even their dogs died of it), they suffered the torments of Tantalus, with this difference, that he had the water which he could not reach above his head, while ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... a stunning report was heard. It was loud enough to shake the walls of the apartment, and abrupt enough to throw me into tremors. I dropped the book and yielded for a moment to confusion and surprise. From what quarter it came, I was unable accurately to determine; but there could be no doubt, from its loudness, ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... turn things would have taken with Madelon, had the uninterrupted, monotonous convent life continued to be hers. But long before her mind was prepared for any such influences, early in the third year after her father's death, certain events occurred, which brought this period of her history to an abrupt close. ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... not with the abrupt start of civilized man, but with the swift and comprehensive glide from sleep to waking of the savage. In the night-light he made out a dark object in the midst of the grass and brought his gun to bear upon it. A second croak began to rise, and he pulled the trigger. ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... character of the tract is bare and bleak; the villages are few; and the terraced cultivation, which adds so much to the beauty of the western side, is wanting. In the southern half of the range the descent is abrupt from the crest of the mountain into the Buka'a, or valley of the Litany, and the aspect of the mountain-side ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... stood her in good stead in the various games and sports in which she delighted, and she would not have exchanged her prowess therein for all the pink cheeks and golden locks in the world. Hannah's manner, like her appearance, lacked grace and charm; it was abrupt, forceful, and to the point. She spoke now, chin sunk in her grey flannel blouse, ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... their successors, our worthy selves. In addition to the entrance tower, or porch, on its northern front, John Effingham had also placed a prettily devised conceit on the southern, by means of which the abrupt transition from an inner room to the open air was adroitly avoided. He had, moreover, removed the "firstly" of the edifice, and supplied its place with a more suitable addition that contained some of the offices, while it did not disfigure ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... clamorous from thirst, and Bray was becoming absurdly uneasy. It could not be possible that Eugenia's accident had been repeated! Or had she met him with inquiries? But no! she was already gone. The mystery was presently cleared, however, by the abrupt appearance of Parkhurst running towards them, but WITHOUT HIS PAIL! The cry of consternation and despair which greeted that discovery was, however, quickly changed by a single breathless, half intelligible sentence ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... Jack came to an abrupt stop after that one word. He would not tell the dreadful news to this spirited young ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... accumulation of obstructions, both of the subjective, as the metaphysicians say, and of the objective, order; and indeed it is no small part of the purpose of this little history to set forth her struggle. What seemed paramount in this abrupt enlargement of Mr. Wentworth's sympathies and those of his daughters was an extension of the field of possible mistakes; and the doctrine, as it may almost be called, of the oppressive gravity of mistakes was one of the most cherished traditions of ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... of speech; and yet a certain sense of relief underlay the natural embarrassment caused by a proposal so premature and so abrupt. Nor was the deeper emotion very difficult to analyze. Here at last was a logical explanation of the whole behavior of this man; it was the first that had occurred to her, and, after all, it was the ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... correct your fault. In other words, you will get constructive criticism, and kindly advice, in my office, whereas anything short of perfection shown to a booking agent or possible employer would be apt to insure abrupt dismissal. They would give you no helpful advice, and you would prejudice yourself, for your effrontery, in their eyes for any future ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... understand this sudden revolution in public opinion—this abrupt change from gloom and ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... noise was, to a frame and temper delicate and nervous like Fanny's, an evil which no superadded elegance or harmony could have entirely atoned for. It was the greatest misery of all. At Mansfield, no sounds of contention, no raised voice, no abrupt bursts, no tread of violence, was ever heard; all proceeded in a regular course of cheerful orderliness; everybody had their due importance; everybody's feelings were consulted. If tenderness could be ever supposed wanting, good sense and good breeding supplied its place; and as to the little irritations ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... in high place and put them into effect; but so they will be all the more beneficial. Everything teaches us how gradually nature would have all profound changes brought about; and we can even see, too, where the absolute abrupt stoppage of feudal habits has worked harm. And appealing to the sense of truth and reason, these considerations will, without doubt, touch and move all those of even the Barbarians themselves, who are (as ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... and they turned again upward toward Tacuzama. The trail was abrupt and precipitous, mounting through a dense forest. As night fell, dark and gloomy, Luis once more halted. Before them was a black chasm, bisecting the path as far as ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... year Raphael was summoned to Rome to paint for Pope Julius II. My readers will remember that Michael Angelo in the abrupt severity of his prime of manhood, was soon to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel for the same despotic and art-loving Pope, who had brought Raphael hardly more than a stripling to paint the 'Camere' or 'Stanze' ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... of a great square plastered building wherein a couple of hundred of his swarthy countrymen worked with deft nimble fingers at a rate of pay which no English artisan could have accepted. Within a few months the result of this new competition was an abrupt fall of prices in the trade, which was serious for the largest firms and disastrous for the smaller ones. A few old-established houses held on as they were, others reduced their establishments and cut down their expenses, while ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... manner was peculiar, abrupt, and conversational; and often when he indulged in episodes and anecdotes he convulsed his class with laughter, especially when he used to enforce his descriptions by earnest gesticulation. Frequently, while lecturing, he would descend from his high stool, on which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various
... The cause of this abrupt retirement on the part of the captain was little Kitty among the trees. The captain went out of sight and waited, and kept out of sight and waited, until it occurred to him to beguile the time with another cigar. He lighted it, and smoked ...
— A Message from the Sea • Charles Dickens
... ingenuity, great brilliancy, and great vigour. It is a little too antithetical in the structure of its periods, too dogmatical in the announcement of its opinions. Sir James has, we believe, rejected something of the false brilliant of the one, as he has retracted some of the abrupt extravagance of the other. We apprehend, however, that our author is not one of those who draw from their own resources and accumulated feelings, or who improve with age. He belongs to a class (common in Scotland ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... scarcely an exception, they are severely simple and square. But there is a certain grandeur in the masses of white marble, which is everywhere lavishly employed, and the Capitol stands right well—alone, on the crest of a low, abrupt slope, with nothing to intercept the view from its terraces, seaward, and up the valley of the Potomac. The effect will probably be better when wind and weather shall have slightly toned down the sheen of the fresh-hewn stones, so dazzling now as ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... establish them in some very honourable position. The charm of this early book is its freedom from drag. It moves on always. The reader is hastened along; he has wonderful and unexpected views, which ravish him as the abrupt magnificences of the Pyrenees ravished Gautier. Perhaps you expect a tree, but you see a stream. Now, at last, it must be a great green hill, and behold! you peep down into an echoless mossy depth of glen. ...
— The Song of the Flag - A National Ode • Eric Mackay
... sexual selection. It is no doubt a difficult subject. One difficulty to me is, that I do not see how the constant MINUTE variations, which are sufficient for Natural Selection to work with, could be SEXUALLY selected. We seem to require a series of bold and abrupt variations. How can we imagine that an inch in the tail of the peacock, or 1/4-inch in that of the Bird of Paradise, would be noticed and ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... gate, crossed a lawn, and reached a long, steep flight of steps leading straight up the face of a cliff, to the grounds attached to a villa. With her hand clasped tightly in his, Mr. Dunbar and Beryl slowly mounted the abrupt stairway, and when they gained the elevated terrace, a man who was walking up and down ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... with faces unveiled. Upon seeing my countenance peering in the doorway they one and all give utterance to little screams of dismay, and dart like frightened fawns into an adjoining room. When the men appear, to see what is up, they show no signs of resentment at my abrupt intrusion, but one of them follows the women into the room, and loud, angry words seem to indicate that they are being soundly berated for allowing themselves to be thus caught. This does not prevent the women from reappearing the next minute, however, with their faces veiled behind the orthodox ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... "there must be some explanation of the change in the character of the signatures, and that explanation cannot be the failing eyesight of the writer; for that is a gradually progressive and continuous condition, whereas the change in the writing is abrupt and intermittent." ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... was not Advena. It was not a tall young woman with expressive eyes, a manner which was at once abrupt and easy, and rather a lounging way of occupying the corner of a sofa. "When she sat down," as Mrs Kilbannon said afterward, "she seemed to untie and fling herself as you might a parcel." Neither Mrs Kilbannon nor Christie Cameron could possibly be untied or flung, so perhaps they gave ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... abrupt and unexpected apparition, Diana paled and Ruth flushed slightly, whereupon Sir Rowland might have bethought him, had he been book-learned, of the axiom, "Amour qui rougit, fleurette; amour qui plit, drame ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... Pliny with astonishment. The proposal was very abrupt, especially when the shortness of their acquaintance ...
— Making His Way - Frank Courtney's Struggle Upward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... and he rose instantly. Mrs. Tiffany made no move to accompany them; she sat bent over her yarns, her ears open. And she noticed, at the moment when Bertram made that abrupt movement from his chair, how Kate hesitated in the middle of ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... mule-stealing charge that had landed him safe in the jail and out of the clutches of his wife and Cuspidora Lee. He enjoyed sanctuary in jail for two months and then, threatened with an embarrassing and abrupt release, he concentrated on a hurried mental incubation. Hard pressed, he sought to hatch from the bad egg of circumstance some new enterprise which would take him away, sudden and safe, from where his ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... the more immediate settling of Taahauku and give the salient character of the scene. They are reckoned at no higher than four thousand feet; but Tahiti with eight thousand, and Hawaii with fifteen, can offer no such picture of abrupt, melancholy alps. In the morning, when the sun falls directly on their front, they stand like a vast wall: green to the summit, if by any chance the summit should be clear—water-courses here and there delineated on their face, as narrow as cracks. Towards afternoon, the light falls more obliquely, ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... side sharply with the whip, and, standing motionless, Stutter watched them disappear over the abrupt ledge. Once she glanced shyly back, with a little seductive wave of the gauntleted hand, and then suddenly dropped completely out of view down the steep descent of the trail. Old Mike struck another match, and held the tiny flame ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... The abrupt question coming after the vague memories startled Mabel into sudden rigidness. "I suppose I do," she answered, her white-clad figure mocked her from the glass. "One does love ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... morning, we had the horses already watered and were grazing them along an abrupt slope between the first and second bottoms of the river. The salesman understood his business, and drove the conveyance back and forth on the down hill side, below the herd, and the rise in the ground made our ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... slate, mingled in a way to content the eye of a colorist, cover what little space the windows leave on the outside of the house. All this is surmounted by a roof of red or violet tiles, or tarred plank, interrupted by openings to give light to the attics, and having an abrupt pitch. These steep roofs look well against the background of a northern sky; the rains run off them in torrents, the snow slips from them; they suit the climate, and do not require to be swept in winter. Some houses have doors ornamented with rustic columns, scroll-work, recessed pediments, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... evident that she had been a curious spectator of his abrupt entrance on deck that he was at first disconcerted and confused. But after a second glance at her he appeared to resume his composure, and advanced a little defiantly ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... been there, and I subsided into an inexpressibly pleasing kind of torpor. The rusty alpaca cassocks with their frayed linings, the worn black leather bindings of the books with their metal clasps, the dull-green plants with their carefully watered leaves and soil, and, above all, the abrupt, regular beat of the pendulum, all spoke to me intimately of some new life hitherto unknown to me—a life of unity and prayer, ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... behind her, smiling at her fright. In his arms he held a small white lamb, and it was this little animal's nose that had been pressed to Naomi's neck, and that had brought her day-dreaming to such an abrupt close. ...
— Christmas Light • Ethel Calvert Phillips
... "You are too abrupt, Merrington," said Captain Stanhill, interposing with unexpected firmness. "You have frightened her. Come, Mrs. Rath," he said gently, "can you not give us some explanation as to why you ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... This abrupt termination suggests, amongst other considerations, the truth of the narrative. If it had been the purpose of the writer to exhibit the subject of his story to the admiration of posterity, or to display his own powers, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... the serious problems facing other underdeveloped countries, such as political instability, a top-heavy civil service, and a generally unfavorable climate for business enterprise. The development of the oil sector led rapid economic growth between 1970 and 1985. Growth came to an abrupt halt in 1986 precipitated by steep declines in the prices of major exports: coffee, cocoa, and petroleum. Export earnings were cut by almost one-third, and inefficiencies in fiscal management were exposed. ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... To have gold and silver was to risk the same penalty. The heavy iron money only could be held, and this was without value in foreign parts. The soldier was part of an animated machine. His simple duty was to obey. Speech was repressed. It became abrupt, brief, pithy. Relief was found at the Lesche, near the training-ground, where talk was often free and even merry. The whole aim of the discipline was to form the soldier. Marriage was delayed for the sake of vigorous offspring. The girls were ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... be purchased at any junk store, where various pieces are always strewn about. A piece about 20 in. long and 4 in. in diameter is about the right size. The bend in the metal begins at D and is made according to the requirements. Occasionally where sharp bends or abrupt corners are needed, the metal ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... that my last quarter was cut short in the middle; which untoward event arose from no arrogance or supercilious conceit on my part, as though I had perfected myself in the mysteries of pigeon-wing and balancez, but from the abrupt departure of the professor himself, who, true to the name indicative of his constitutional levity, found it convenient to disappear betwixt two days, with the advance pay of my whole term in his pocket, and without stopping ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... half-suppressed screams by a woman. They were quite eldritch, as if she could not get them out. Then succeeded a lot of utterances as if she were in ecstasy, to which a man responded, "Moio, moio." The utterances, so far as I could catch, were in five-syllable snatches—abrupt and laboured. I wonder if this "bubbling or boiling over" has been preserved as the form in which the true prophets of old gave forth their "burdens"? One sentence, frequently repeated towards the close of the effusion, was "linyama uta," "flesh of the bow," showing that the Pythoness loved ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... warm-hearted and rash. He did not know where the chain went; an idea had thrilled through the recesses within him which had a miraculous effect in raising the power of passionate love lying buried there in no sealed sepulchre, but under the lightest, easily pierced mould. His words were quite abrupt and awkward; but the tone made them sound like an ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... UNDER THE BACK OF THE THROAT OF THE CHIMNEY. This slope, (which will bring the back forward four or five inches, or just as much as the depth of the Fire-place is encreased,) though it ought not to be too abrupt, yet it ought to be quite finished at the height of eight or ten inches above the fire, otherwise it may perhaps cause the Chimney to smoke; but when it is very near the fire, the heat of the fire will enable the current of rising smoke ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... sword, that you grow faint when you walk fast, or get short of breath when you ascend the steps of the Ducal Palace?" "No, by Heaven, no," broke in Falieri upon his friend, as he turned away from the window with an abrupt passionate movement and approached him, "no, I feel no traces of age upon me." "Well then," continued Bodoeri, "take deep draughts in your old age of all the delights of earth which are now destined for you. Elevate the woman whom ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... of a passing snow-storm swept away, he would be overwhelmed by the majesty of the scene and at the same time deeply moved with the appropriateness of the simple native names; for simplicity is always a quality of true majesty. Perhaps nowhere else in the world is so abrupt and great an uplift from so low a base. The marshes and forests of the upper Kuskokwim, from which these mountains rise, cannot be more than one thousand five hundred feet above the sea. The rough approximation by the ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... prison, the first of the thousands who have suffered bonds and imprisonment for Christ, and have therein found liberty. What lofty faith, and what subordination of the fate of the messengers to the progress of the message, are expressed in that abrupt introduction, in verse 4, of the statistics of the increase of the Church from that day's work! It mattered little that it ended with the two Apostles in custody, since it ended too with five thousand ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... forgive me for speaking in this abrupt way, but the moments are few in which to make my request. I hear that in the desert is a beautiful oasis, and many beautiful Arabian horses. I have never seen an oasis, for you see I know nothing of Egypt, but I once had an Arab ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... quite near, and he waved frantically. He fancied he saw movement back of the pilot ports. Faintly he heard the hum of the levitators. Now it turned—no! It yawed, now toward him, now away, purposelessly, like a ship in distress. It made an abrupt downward plunge that scraped a crag, and ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... understand a person airing his talents before ten as before ten thousand persons, but before one! Before beginning to write, I hesitate and reflect, and make out a rough copy of what I shall say; very often I go to sleep over it. A person need only look at these letters with their heavy wording and abrupt sentences to see that they were composed in a state of torpor which borders on sleep. Reading over what I have written, I see that it is poor stuff, and that I have said many things which I cannot vouch for. In despair, I fasten ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... Tinkler, trying to conceal his amazement by a reversion to his abrupt military manner. ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... perpendicular crag, descending in some parts sheer down to the sea, in others a little broken, and giving space for the growth of stunted brushwood. He stood at the highest point, where the precipice was most abrupt. The sea was dashing far beneath; the ripple, dash, and roar were in his ears once more; the wind—such wind as only blows over the sea—was breathing on his face; the broad, free horizon far before him; the field of waves, in gray and brown shade indeed, ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Latium there was quarrelling between the parties, Drances, leader of the peace party, accusing Turnus of bringing on and continuing the hostilities. The approach of Aeneas brought these disputes to an abrupt conclusion, and Camilla, with Turnus, hastened to battle. Many victims fell by Camilla's hand that day, as she rode about the field, her breast bare, her hand clasping her double battle-axe, before Aruns struck her down and ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... his cause in the early and trying days of his candidacy, and that Harvey's support of him was untouched by selfish interests of any kind. In every way he tried to soften the unfortunate impression that had been made on the country by what many thought was an abrupt, ungracious way of treating a friend. An incident in connection with this matter ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... choir were chanting those immortal anthems which had come down from blessed saints and martyrs, when the messenger of the Emperor presented himself before the assembled hierarchy of Rome, and with insolent demeanor and abrupt speech delivered the sentence of the German council." He was left unharmed by the indignant pontiff; but the next day ascending his throne, and in presence of the dignitaries of his Church, thus invoked the assistance of the pretended founder of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... profusion. . . . Dan Burnett leads on, and presently we emerge on the largest and most beautiful of the little prairies through which we have passed. This stretch of open ground lies at the foot of the highest peak, the abrupt sides of which rise in conical shape before us. It is here, Mr. Burnett tells us, that the mountaineers who were searching for Professor Mitchell found the first trace of ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... speakers are afflicted. In the excellent work on Elocution, by Russell and Murdock, the following exercises in breathing are prescribed and explained:—"Attitude of the body and position of the organs; deep breathing; diffusive or tranquil breathing; expulsive or forcible breathing; explosive or abrupt breathing; sighing; sobbing; gasping; ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... Fox had taken me up; that I was going to go. I suddenly remembered it was said of Fox that everyone he took up did "go." The fact was obviously patent to Mr. Polehampton. He unbent with remarkable suddenness; it reminded me of the abrupt closing of a stiff umbrella. He became distinctly and crudely cordial—hoped that we should work together again; once more reminded me that he had published my first book (the words had a different savour now), and was enchanted to discover that we ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... hesitated the stranger, greatly taken aback by this unexpected disclosure and abrupt question. "No, of course not," he added, recovering himself. "I wouldn't steal a raft, or anything else, from a boy, though I might occasionally borrow a thing that I needed very much. But where is this Winn boy now? And where is ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... all these, it must be very plastic. As a limitation we ought to note that this almost plastic material cannot be suddenly and violently dealt with—that is to say, with the exception of some sorts of arches, you cannot form any abrupt or startling feature in brickwork, and you are especially limited ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... proceed with this abrupt logic: they love to bargain with necessity. M. Dupin (session of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, June 10, 1843) expresses the opinion that, "though competition may be useful within the nation, it must be prevented ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... Roque's, and watched whether that extraordinary figure was in search of Nettie—a suspicion which immediately occurred to her—than she could set out upon the district-visiting, to which Lucy now led her forth. But Miss Wodehouse had tremulously taken example by the late rector, whose abrupt retirement from the duties for which he did not feel himself qualified, the good people in Carlingford had scarcely stopped discussing. Miss Wodehouse, deeply impressed in her gentle mind by the incidents of ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... matter so as not to be abrupt; not to tear myself rudely away from the ladies, you see. We were gazing out upon the vast ocean, you see; and a quotation from the poet—ah—a doosed odd sort of a thing, written by the poet—what's his name? ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... terminate these hints, often, I fear, too didactic and abrupt, upon the full use of one's time to the great end of living (as distinguished from vegetating) without briefly referring to certain dangers which lie in wait for the sincere aspirant towards life. The first is the terrible danger of becoming that most odious and least supportable of persons—a ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... other hand they resembled in nothing those at St. Sulpice, where the modern sauces spoilt the very essences of the plain chants. Only the Magnificat of La Trappe, abrupt, and with dry tone, was not so good as the majestic, the admirable ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... hope of a visit. All the time I was strongly tempted to throw myself at her feet, and tell her of my despair. I knew that she would not be insensible to it, and that she would at least express her pity; but her severity and the abrupt manner of her departure recalled me to my senses; I trembled lest I should lose her, and I would rather die than expose myself ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... Illimitable space and pause of sky, Intense as angels' garments blanched with God, Less blue than radiant. From the outer wall Of the garden drops the mystic floating grey Of olive trees (with interruptions green From maize and vine), until 'tis caught and torn Upon the abrupt black line of cypresses Which signs the way to Florence. Beautiful The city lies along the ample vale, Cathedral, tower and palace, piazza and street, The river trailing like a silver cord Through all, and curling loosely, both before And after, over the whole ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... animal in a state of insensibility is no more to be criticized than is the abrupt killing of it, to which no one objects. The confounding of a painful vivisection and an experiment which does not cause pain—either because the experiment itself is painless, like those pertaining to the action of most drugs, or ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... eastern side, the Park bounding the opposite side of the street, and this portion bids fair to be one of the most delightful and desirable neighborhoods in the city. In the vicinity of One-hundred-and-eighteenth street, the line of the avenue is broken by Mount Morris, an abrupt rocky height, which has been laid off as a pleasure ground. Around this the street sweeps in a half circle, and from here to the Harlem River, One-hundred-and-thirty-fifth street, it is lined with pretty ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... at this abrupt suggestion; but Eva's chum Amy, who was used to her ways, only smiled, and said jestingly, 'Where do you mean to take a house, and how ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... that," protested Page. "But it's just because—I don't know, I don't want to—Laura, I should just die," she exclaimed with abrupt irrelevance, "and besides, how would that help any?" ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... silent and discourse of general prosperity. His happy vivaciousness assisted him to feel it by day. Nataly heard him at night, on a moan: 'Poor soul!' and loudly once while performing an abrupt demi-vault from back to side: 'Perhaps now!' in a voice through doors. She schooled herself ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... couple of short steps. His lips were firmly pressed together. The detective watched him narrowly as he came to an abrupt halt. ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... indicative value of gain of weight may be further seen in persons who suffer from some incurable chronic malady, but who are in other respects well. The relief from their disease, even if temporary, is apt to be signalled by abrupt gain in weight. A remarkable illustration is to be found in those who suffer periodically from severe pain. Cessation of these attacks for a time is sure to result in the putting on of flesh. The case of Captain Catlin[10] is a good example. Owing to an accident of war, he ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... high-pitched, a small voice for such a big man, as we thought, and he had an abrupt manner of withdrawing attention that was to us rather disconcerting until we got used to it. His pockets were bulging with newspapers and memoranda, scrawled in the curiously obscure handwriting which I subsequently found much difficulty in learning to read, though it was plain enough when the ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... most abrupt change. I had never seen her furiously angry. She's a typical high echelon Washington secretary, cool, extremely well-mannered, cheerful without being bumptious. But this time she ...
— Tinker's Dam • Joseph Tinker
... irritated at finding himself dragged away in so abrupt a manner by this Englishman, had sought in his subtle mind for some means of escaping from his fetters; but no one having rendered him any assistance in this respect, he was absolutely obliged, therefore, to submit to the burden of his ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... improve, until again it is permanently impaired in old age, when they are finally lost. And so again, if a child lose merely a single tooth from the front of its mouth, lisping will result; or if a supernumerary or irregular tooth be present, the articulation will be abrupt and imperfect:—the former plainly showing the importance of the entireness of the series, and the latter, the necessity of regularity in ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... was duly obeyed, and the poet soon found himself in his little cottage. Patty was frightened to see what a sad change the few days' absence had wrought in her husband. He no longer talked sensibly as before, but addressed her and the children in an abrupt manner, asking for his 'Mary,' and complaining that all his friend's had left him. The poor wife soothed him as best she could, and after some efforts succeeded in calming his mind. At the end of a few days, Clare seemed again sufficiently well to leave the ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... Animals and Plants which have run wild.—In the cases hitherto considered, the reverting animals and plants have not been exposed to any great or abrupt change in their conditions of life which could have induced this tendency; but it is very different with animals and plants which have become feral or run wild. It has been repeatedly asserted in the most positive manner by various authors, that feral ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... was so abrupt and unforseen, that Djalma's servant could not even utter a single cry, a single groan. He tottered—the Strangler gave a vigorous pull at the cord—the bronzed countenance of the slave became purple, and he fell upon his knees, convulsively moving his arms. Then the Strangler threw him quite ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Mr. Tollmidge's formidable assertions relating to herself for the second time, Lady Lydiard's meditations came to an abrupt end. She rose, took the letters in both hands to tear them up, hesitated, and threw them back in the cabinet drawer in which she had discovered them, among other papers that had not been ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... the flamboyant and sticky puree on their plates, annoyed by the color scheme in combination with the soft wild-rose pink of the table bouquets, if not actually sickened by the fluid itself. For the first time since his abrupt seizure that morning she began to hope in her heart that Gaspard's illness might be a matter of days instead of weeks. She served Hildeguard and one of the other waitresses with more soup, and then began to boil some eggs to eke out the chicken, which, owing to her unprecedented ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... of partridges during this morning's march, and they heard the peculiar loud "chuck-a-chuck, chuck-a-chuck," of the red-legs in all directions. As we advanced the hills increased in height, and we passed through a valley, bordered on the right by abrupt cliffs, forming a wall-like summit to the exceedingly steep slope beneath, which had been created by the debris from the wasting face of rock. This flat-topped height may have been about 500 feet above the valley, and the white cliff, which was quite perpendicular ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... discussion on this Bill that the long personal friendship which had existed between Fox and Burke was brought to an abrupt termination.—H. ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... from the northern aisle, Rapid and shrill to its abrupt harsh close; And none gave answer for a certain while, For words must shrink from these most wordless woes; At last the pulpit speaker simply said, With humid eyes ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... as the point where Stony Creek and the Little Conemaugh form the Conemaugh the mountains followed by Stony Creek take an abrupt turn northward, and the waters of the Little Conemaugh flow into the Conemaugh at right angles with ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... queer," he thought, coming to an abrupt halt; "I screwed down that lamp and blew into the chimney in the orthodox fashion, so it couldn't have been that I unconsciously left ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... and character, as in art, has no sharp angles. Its lines seem continuous, so gently does curve melt into curve. It is sharp angles that keep many souls from being beautiful that are almost so. Our good is less good when it is abrupt, rude, ill timed, or ill placed. Many a man and woman might double their influence and success by a kindly courtesy and ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... an entirely different type from any of the scientists whom he had met in the Bureau. In the first place, he was a gem expert by profession, and consequently, more of a mineralogist than biologist. Tall, powerfully built, black-bearded, and abrupt, he gave an impression of volcanic force, and at the same time of great keenness. A scientist of remarkable discernment, he possessed with all his broad views a marvelous capacity for detail, and Colin soon learned that the somewhat slipshod methods of a college laboratory would ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... professing his willingness to deal with him on usual easy terms, demanded a cheque with the order. Alton fancied he recognized the hand of Hallam in this, but there was also something else which troubled him. Some of the men he had business with had been a trifle abrupt in their greetings, and others smiled sardonically when ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... pony's side sharply with the whip, and, standing motionless, Stutter watched them disappear over the abrupt ledge. Once she glanced shyly back, with a little seductive wave of the gauntleted hand, and then suddenly dropped completely out of view down the steep descent of the trail. Old Mike struck another match, and held the ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... our Sovereign, on his days of grand reviews and grand diplomatic audiences. I never saw him more condescending, more agreeable, or, at least, less offensive, than on the day of his last levee, before he set out to be inaugurated a King of Italy; nor worse tempered, more petulant, agitated, abrupt, and rude than at his first grand audience after his arrival from Milan, when this ceremony had been performed. I am not the only one who has made this remark; he did not disguise either his good or ill-humour; and it was only requisite to have eyes and ears to see and be disgusted at ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... trade to such a height That competition, bursting builders' bonds, Starts from the shop, and rushing through the roof, Unites the basement with the floors above; Till, like a giant, that outgrows his strength, The whole concern, struck with abrupt collapse, In one "tremendous failure" totters down!— 'Tis food on which philosophy may fatten. [Turns round, musing, and looks into a ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... sudden fire and energy, and Prescott noticed again that abrupt stiffening of the figure. He saw, too, another curious effect—her eyes suddenly turned from dark-blue to black, an invariable change when she was ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... of the hill they took a careful survey of the situation. The elevation was in the very center of the island. Down toward the other islands the slope was more abrupt than it was in the direction from which they ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield
... pretty discontent, did not harm her on the screen, but helped immensely, for they gave her character. It was delicious to see her eyes narrow with sudden resentment or girlish malice and widen again with equally abrupt affection. She was so pretty that she could afford to ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... . . . Well, to get back to Miles Chandon. . . . He was young—a second son, you'll remember, and poor at that; a second lieutenant in the Navy, with no more than his pay and a trifling allowance. The boy had good instincts," said Miss Sally with a short, abrupt laugh. "I may as well say at once that he wanted to marry me, but had been forced to dismiss ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... initiation of the young boy or girl by some older and more experienced person in whom inversion is already developed, and who is seeking the gratification of the abnormal instinct. This appears to be a not uncommon incident in the early history of sexual inverts. That such seduction—sometimes an abrupt and inconsiderate act of mere sexual gratification—could by itself produce a taste for homosexuality is highly improbable; in individuals not already predisposed it is far more likely to produce disgust, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... see her again. At Burey-le-Petit Joan remained between the end of January until her departure for Chinon, on the 23rd of February; and before taking final leave she asked and received her parents' pardon for her abrupt departure from them. ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... humility, and of his pride Ashamed. And in the coffin lay my wife. On, on, we went. The scene changed, and low hills Began to rise on each side of the path Until at last we came into a glen, From which the mountains soared abrupt to heaven, Shot cones and pinnacles into the skies. Upon the eastern side one mighty summit Shone with its snow faint through the dusky air; And on its sides the glaciers gave a tint, A dull metallic gleam, ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... from his distant conquests, passed the Rubicon, seized the purple, and fallen in the Senate beneath the swords of self-appointed executioners of his country's vengeance? No! nothing of all this. What means, then, this abrupt and fearful silence? What unlooked for calamity has quelled the debates of the Senate and calmed the excitement of the people? An old man, whose tongue once indeed was eloquent, but now through age had well nigh lost its cunning, has fallen ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... Sun-beings worked in those harmonies. Thus this part of man was given its form by the spiritual sounds of the universe; and at the same time the alternation between the clearer state of consciousness during the Sun period, and the duller one, was not so abrupt as was that between the waking state and that of absolutely dreamless sleep in contemporary man. The picture-consciousness was not so clear as the present waking consciousness; but on the other hand, the other consciousness ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... began to count Wethermill's winnings, and Ricardo, curious to know whose small, delicately gloved hand it was which had brought the game to so abrupt a termination, leaned forward. He recognised the young girl in the white satin dress and the big black hat whose nerves had got the better of her a few minutes since in the garden. He saw her now clearly, and thought her of an entrancing loveliness. She was moderately tall, ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... than his own courage had quite dared—putting the absent dots on several i's—he saw new questions swarm. They had been till now in a bunch, entangled and confused; and they fell apart, each showing for itself. The first he put to her was at any rate abrupt. "Have you heard of ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... billy. Have a little decent pride, can't you? Don't bestow attentions when they're unwelcome." Then she addressed herself to Mr. Iglesias, but without looking up. "I beg your pardon, all this must seem rather abrupt. But sometimes one's duty to one's family takes one on the jump, as you may say; and one repairs neglect right away also on the jump. But—but—there's one thing I should like to know—when I told you my name just now—Poppy St. John, Mrs. St. ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... found "much charm in their originality and national colouring," and that "his thoughts and through them the fingers stumbled over certain hard, inartistic modulations." Startling progressions, unreconciled contrasts, and abrupt changes of mood are characteristic of Slavonic music and expressive of the Slavonic character. Whether they ought to be called inartistic or not, we will leave time to decide, if it has not done so already; the Russian and other ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... of hearing, Isaac laughed. The only time he had done it during six years. And what a laugh! How, sublimely devoid of merriment! a sudden loud cackle of three distinct cachinni not declining into a chuckle, as we do, but ending sharp in abrupt and ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... held good in Shere Ali's case," Ralston went on; and there came a change in Linforth's voice. It grew rather stern, rather abrupt. ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... placed, to be shut out from all the world! Urn-like it was in shape, deep as an Urn; With rocks encompassed, save that to the South Was one small opening, where a heath-clad ridge Supplied a boundary less abrupt and close; A quiet treeless nook,[48] with two green fields, A liquid pool that glittered in the sun, And one bare Dwelling; one Abode, no more! It seemed the home of poverty and toil, Though not of want: the little fields, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... much about that," said the optimistic Bones, and took a short cut through the wood, knowing that the grounds made an abrupt turn where they ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... somewhere on the hill." This school was at "Apple Hill," as it was called, in the grounds of the present "Fernleigh," where the Clark residence was built and now stands. Owing to the number of trees and the abrupt slope to the river, it is not likely that a full-sized Base Ball game was ever played within these grounds. But it is pleasant to fancy young Doubleday standing here, surrounded by an eager crowd of boys, amid the golden sunlight and greenery of long ago, as he traces on ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... particular in hands at full liberty either to spot or to spare her, was touching enough to bring tears to all eyes. It perhaps had to do with the sudden emotion with which—using now quite a different manner—Mrs. Brookenham again embraced her, and even with this lady's equally abrupt and altogether wonderful address to her: "Between you and me straight, my dear, and as from friend to friend, I know you'll never doubt that everything must be all right!—What I spoke of to poor Mitchy," she went on to the ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... Guelph and Macaulay a Ghibelline. Macaulay is a most extraordinary man, and his astonishing knowledge is every moment exhibited, but (as far as I have yet seen of him, which is not sufficient to judge) he is not agreeable. His propositions and his allusions are rather too abrupt; he starts topics not altogether naturally; then he has none of the graces of conversation, none of that exquisite tact and refinement which are the result of a felicitous intuition or a long acquaintance with good society, or more probably a mixture of both. The mighty mass of ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... and after lighting a fresh cigar, stretched himself at full length upon the grass which grew on the river's bank, allowing his horse to graze at will. Just behind him rose the abrupt wall of the canon some thirty or forty feet in height which, at this hour of the morning, cast a deep shadow over the spot where he lay and halfway across the river in front of him. It was just the sort of place for an Indian or one of Dick's nature to linger in and dream and ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... and plan of the Timaeus differ greatly from that of any other of the Platonic dialogues. The language is weighty, abrupt, and in some passages sublime. But Plato has not the same mastery over his instrument which he exhibits in the Phaedrus or Symposium. Nothing can exceed the beauty or art of the introduction, in which he is using words after his accustomed ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... the plain and the plateau. Above us, rising ridge beyond ridge, slope beyond slope, spread the mountainous moor-country, bare and bleak for the most part, with here and there a patch of cultivated field or hardy plantation, and crowned highest of all with masses of huge grey crag, abrupt, isolated, hoary, and older than the deluge. These were the Tors—Druids' Tor, King's Tor, Castle Tor, and the like; sacred places, as I have heard, in the ancient time, where crownings, burnings, human sacrifices, and all kinds of bloody heathen rites were performed. ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... clerical gentleman bowed in acquiescence. For him to hear was to obey. But he felt curious to know what was the cause of so abrupt a termination ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... threw them in the dust, and trampled them under her feet. The doctor almost crying, the doctora pelting him with sarcasms, they arrived at the house of Captain Tiago. Linares, who was talking with Maria Clara, was no little disquieted by the abrupt arrival of his cousins. Maria, amid the pillows of her fauteuil, was not less surprised at the new physiognomy ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... one catch the exact moment of an abrupt change in nature. Yesterday, however, I watched a wonderful thing—the oncoming of ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... out, followed by old Roy, the Skye; the spaniel John, who had been cut off at the door by his master's abrupt exit, preceded her. Norah and Bee pushed back ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of filling the vacancy in his affections caused by the abrupt departure of Lola Montez, Fraeulein Schroder, a young actress at the Hof Theatre, endeavoured to comfort Ludwig in his retirement. He, however, was beyond forming any ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... you did not perceive any such abrupt and sudden contrasts in your protege, Jem Deady," I said. "He has realized your ideas of a ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... to find the natural order in which these points should stand. Let no point, to the clear understanding of which some other point is necessary, precede that other. If developing all the points would make your theme too long, study to see what points you can omit without abrupt break ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... that Mrs. Vincent's study was down one flight of stairs and at the other end of the building, she became aware of the uproar and her conversation with Peggy came to an abrupt pause. Then both hurried into the hall to see the tails of Horatio Hannibal Harrison's coat vanishing up the broad stairway and to hear Fraeulein Hedwig wailing, "Oh ze house iss burning up and down I ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... road, where he stood pointing at what we could not possibly see, as it was hid by a promontory of rock. When we f reached the spot where he was stationed, we came full upon the view of Glenthorn Castle: it seemed to rise from the sea, abrupt and insulated, in all the gloomy grandeur of ancient times, with turrets and battlements, and a huge gateway, the pointed arch of which receded in perspective between the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... which was oddly abrupt, I said I liked her very much and thought she was more agreeable ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... be one of those rare exceptions, my dear boy, I can promise you that—Upon my soul!" with an abrupt change of both tone and manner, "I really believe it IS coming ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... because the hearers following the flow of words, and drawn, as it were, down the current of the oration, are then more competent judges, when that impetuosity ceases and gives time for reflection. There should not, therefore, be anything harsh nor abrupt in that ending, which seems calculated for the respite and recreation of the mind and ear. This, too, is the resting-place of the oration, this the auditor expects, and here burst forth all ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... residents who lived here were Isambard Brunel, the engineer; Bramah, of lock fame; Martin, the painter, who was visited by Prince Albert; and Whistler, the artist. Close by Lindsey Row the river takes an abrupt turn, making a little bay, and here, below the level of the street, is a little creeper-covered house where the great colourist Turner lived for many years, gaining gorgeous sky effects from the red sunsets reflected in the ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... Achill Head, and the northwestern and south-western coasts consist of ranges of magnificent cliffs, reaching a height of 800 ft. in the cliffs of Minaun, near the village of Keel on the south. The seaward slope of Croaghaun is abrupt and in parts precipitous, and its jagged flanks, together with the serrated ridge of the Head and the view over the broken coast-line and islands of the counties Mayo and Galway, attract many visitors ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... ten miles north-west. Box-tree flats, of more or less extent, were intercepted by abrupt barren craggy hills composed of sandstone, which seemed to rest on layers of argillaceous rock. The latter was generally observed at the foot of the hills and in the bed of the river; it had in most places been worn by ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... brought into close contact with the free virility of the ancient world, and emancipated from the thralldom of unproved traditions. The force to judge and the desire to create were generated. The immediate result in the sixteenth century was an abrupt secession of the learned, not merely from monasticism, but also from the true spirit of Christianity. The minds of the Italians assimilated Paganism. In their hatred of mediaeval ignorance, in their loathing of cowled and cloistered fools, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... would say that life was a pretty strenuous proposition here, while it lasted. Perhaps they were—" He stopped, then added: "What I can't understand is, how did it happen that their affairs came to such an abrupt end? And why ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... window and the buoyant, inspiring scene to the bed. Stooping over, she kissed the sleeping boy with an abrupt eagerness, and made a little awkward, hungry gesture of love over him, and her face flushed hot with the ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... thirty-seven dead behind, for Ropata gave no quarter, and had not his men loitered to plunder, Te Kooti, who, still lame, was carried off on a woman's back, must have been among their prizes. Pushing on to Ngatapa, Ropata found it a very formidable stronghold. The pa was on the summit of an abrupt hill, steep and scarped on two sides, narrowing to a razor-backed ridge in the rear. In front three lines of earthwork rose one above another, the highest fourteen feet high, aided and connected by the usual rifle-pits and covered ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... "It was abrupt," Mister Masters wrote to his mother, "but it was kind. When I had done blushing and scraping with my feet and pulling my forelock, we had the nicest little talk. And she remembered you in the old days at Lenox, and said why hadn't I told ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... of Age," is admired by his countrymen for its rapid succession of images (a little too mixed or abrupt on some occasions), its descriptive power, and its neatness ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... it too abrupt," he said; "I'll come to it gradually. There's a young lady that I'm now looking forward to spending the whole of ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... I have taken a little flat in Fifty-eighth Street. Seems a little abrupt, but she didn't want to be alone, and she hates hotels. We felt sure ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Abrupt and unprefaced as her speech was, it scarcely produced the effect she had expected it would. Her charge neither flinched nor reddened. He laid a weak, rough hand upon her dress with a feebly pleading touch. "Dunnot yo' turn agen me," he whispered: ...
— "Seth" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... events leading up to the examination of the Lucky Chance mine, it was considered best for a while to pursue very nearly the same line of conduct that had been followed for the last ten days, carefully avoiding any abrupt change which might attract attention. All necessary data had now been secured, and Houston felt that he could better afford to remain quiet for a brief time and reconnoiter the situation, than by any hasty move to excite further suspicion at ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... himself amid a solitude that was accentuated by the noises around, the abrupt turning of keys in the doors of the boxes, the thousand exclamations of an amused crowd. Then suddenly, the freshness of his luxurious surroundings, the Moorish lantern casting strange shadows on the brilliant silks of the divan and walls, reminded him of the ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... that evening, and next day the tragedy of the sheep was a thing of the past. No other circumstance of Hare's four months with the Naabs had so affected him as this swift inevitable sweeping away of the flock; nothing else had so vividly told him the nature of this country of abrupt heights and depths. He remembered August Naab's magnificent gesture of despair; and now the man was cheerful again; he showed no sign of his great loss. His tasks were many, and when one was done, he went on to the next. If Hare had not had many proofs of this Mormon's feeling he would have thought ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... fellows had gone through what I have done," answered Billy, and he gave, not for the first time, an account of the hardships he had endured, the weight he had carried on his shoulders, his hard fare, the steep hills he had climbed, and the abrupt descents down which he had had to ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... music now changes as we enter upon a long drinking-chorus, with solos by the two revellers, Hophni and Phinehas ("For everything there is a Season"). The change from the seriousness of the preceding numbers is very abrupt, and the music of the chorus is decidedly of the conventional Italian drinking-song character. Eli appears and rebukes them, and after a cantabile aria ("Thou shouldst mark Iniquities"), a short chorus of Levites, for tenors and basses, ensues, introducing a simple, but ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... scene ensued, and the abrupt announcement of the second marriage. The anguish and despair of the repudiated wife were portrayed with a vividness, a marvellous eloquence and passionate fervour that surpassed all former exhibitions of her genius, and the ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... walk, he replied, 'No, I cannot; you are telling me to do an impossible thing.' Although Monsieur Bernheim failed in this instance, I could not but admire his skill. After using every means of persuasion, insinuation and coaxing, he suddenly took up an imperative tone, and in a sharp, abrupt voice that did not admit a refusal, said: 'I tell you you can walk; get up.' 'Very well,' replied the old follow; 'I must if you insist upon it.' And he got out of bed. No sooner, however, had ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... there were other questions which Holmes would have wished to put, but the nobleman's abrupt manner showed that the interview was at an end. It was evident that to his intensely aristocratic nature this discussion of his intimate family affairs with a stranger was most abhorrent, and that he feared lest every fresh question would throw a fiercer light ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... purpose beyond that of "trying out" his engine, unless, indeed, the tough and rocky grade were a test. But Burns was still silent, and the other man applied himself to holding on. A mile up the road the car came to an abrupt standstill ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... at last when she thought they ought to get married, and when he saw her blush deeply, even to her neck, he regretted that he had been too abrupt. There was no hurry; she must decide that herself; no need to answer now, not ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... traits that every critic notes in Emerson's writing is that it is so abrupt, so sudden in its transitions, so discontinuous, so inconsecutive. Dislike of a sentence that drags made him unconscious of the quality that French critics name coulant. Everything is thrown in just as it comes, and sometimes the pell-mell is ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Vanderpool, looking at the tall, slim girl swaying toward them with a piled basket of white cotton poised lightly on her head. "Why," in abrupt recognition, "it is our Venus of the ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... cover of the trenches, I made my way in that direction. Several officers tried to persuade me not to go, but knowing it would make an excellent scene, I decided to risk it. On the side of the bank nearest our front line the ground sloped at a more abrupt angle, the distance from the trench to the outpost being about sixty yards. Rushing over the top of the parapet, I got to the edge of the grass road and crouched down. The water up to my knees, I made my way carefully along. Twice I stumbled over dead bodies. At last ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... much of the surface of the slate, punctuation being attended to, the i's dotted, and the t's crossed. In the second, when the communication was in answer to a question addressed to a Spirit the writing was clumsy, rude, scarcely legible, abrupt in terms, and sometimes very vague in substance. In short, one bore the marks of deliberation and the other of haste. This difference we found to be due to the different conditions under which the communications were written. The long messages are prepared by ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... feature in this case. And Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch aggravated that delusion as though he did it on purpose. Instead of laughing at her he began all at once treating Mile. Lebyadkin with sudden respect. Kirillov, who was there (a very original man, Varvara Petrovna, and very abrupt, you'll see him perhaps one day, for he's here now), well, this Kirillov who, as a rule, is perfectly silent, suddenly got hot, and said to Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, I remember, that he treated the girl as though she were a marquise, and that that was doing for her altogether. ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of the same kind of stones, so that they have been obliged to pile them up in walls on both sides of the railroad cut nearest the pond; and, moreover, there are most stones where the shore is most abrupt; so that, unfortunately, it is no longer a mystery to me. I detect the paver. If the name was not derived from that of some English locality—Saffron Walden, for instance—one might suppose that it was called originally ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... general unrest in the vain hope that they might some day regain their heritage. At least, we know one thing definitely: that the attempt on the life of the Emperor Chia Ching in the Peking streets at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century was a Secret Society plot, and brought to an abrupt end the pleasant habit of travelling among their subjects which the great Manchu Emperors K'anghsi and Ch'ien Lung had inaugurated and always pursued and which had so largely encouraged the growth of personal ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... a rickety fancy desk, began to write: "Dear James, my father passed peacefully away at—" Then, with an abrupt movement, he tore the sheet in two and threw it in the fire, and began again: "Dear James, my father died ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... least, she could not say that she did not understand. If the question was ever asked plainly, Bernard Dale had asked it plainly. Shall we be man and wife? Few men, I fancy, dare to put it all at once in so abrupt a way, and yet I do not know that the English language affords any better terms for ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... with hesitation and be resolved on any step which this very anxiety to have done with hesitation led him to believe a right one at the moment. This habit of mind showed itself in private as in public matters, and his children and I were often startled by abrupt decisions on home affairs announced very ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... tributaries of the Rappahannock, but the ravines on that side are not considerable. From the ridge occupied by the first line, the ground falls away to the east, until the valley of another branch of Lewis Creek is reached. The depression here is considerable, and gives an abrupt slope to the Fairview hill, which rises directly from it on the eastern side. From the first line of the creek, extends on both sides of the road a dense forest. From the latter point to Fairview heights, and to Chancellorsville, ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... the Frenchman was, he was not quick enough to quite conceal from the wife that his present obsequious manner had been suddenly assumed for her benefit directly she had entered the room. She had overheard voices, as she reached the landing, and the abrupt manner in which these sounds had ceased was not entirely natural. It had also seemed to her that the valet's tone had had a ring of familiarity about it which she had never known it to have before. Could it be possible that they were discussing ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... rock was near the surface, and in places came through, when the grass was changed for lichens and mosses. Through this rocky meadow now roamed, now rushed, now tumbled one of those Alpine streams the very thought of whose ice-born plenitude makes me happy yet. Its banks were not abrupt, but rounded gently in, and grassy down to the water's brink. The larger torrents of Winter wore the channel wide, and the sinking of the water in Summer let the grass grow within it. But peaceful as the place was, and merry with the constant ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... conversing with Junot about a quarter of an hour he quitted him and came towards me. I never saw him exhibit such an air of dissatisfaction, or appear so much under the influence of some prepossession. I advanced towards him, and as soon as we met, he exclaimed in an abrupt and angry tone, "So! I find I cannot depend upon you.—These women!—Josephine! —if you had loved me, you would before now have told me all I have heard from Junot—he is a real friend—Josephine!—and I ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... everywhere recur under different forms. The minor domes which flank the great dome of the cathedral of Florence enhance and reinforce the latter, and prepare the eye for a climax which would otherwise be too abrupt. The central pavilion of the Chateau Maintenon, with its two turrets, echoes the entire facade with its two towers. Like the overture to an opera, it introduces themes which find a more extended development elsewhere ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... for nearly a mile, when the howl of the hounds began to sound through the woods with more abrupt and fiercer echoes. We knew by this that the moose had been brought to bay, and we hurried forward, eager to have ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... this moment Mr. Force and Leonidas came in, talking eagerly, and their abrupt entrance startled the woman out of her slumber. She sat up, rubbed her eyes, yawned loudly, asked where she was, and expressed a suspicion that ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... insects, that had crawled from the water upon his clothes. During our journey that morning parallel with the valley of the Atbara, I had an excellent opportunity of watching the effect of the storm. We rode along the abrupt margin of the table land, where it broke suddenly into the deep valley; from the sides of this the water was oozing in all directions, creating little avalanches of earth, which fell as they lost their solidity from too much moisture. This wonderfully ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... observed that my last quarter was cut short in the middle; which untoward event arose from no arrogance or supercilious conceit on my part, as though I had perfected myself in the mysteries of pigeon-wing and balancez, but from the abrupt departure of the professor himself, who, true to the name indicative of his constitutional levity, found it convenient to disappear betwixt two days, with the advance pay of my whole term in his pocket, and without stopping to make even one ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... the mountains, where it was impossible to follow them.' Mr Darwin then describes the rugged ravines and forest-clad precipices, wilder than anything he had witnessed in the South American Andes or Cordilleras." Raiatea, Eimeo, and others in the Society group, are composed of vast and abrupt mountain ranges, rising almost abruptly from the sea, and having very little habitable ground, but all covered with the densest vegetation. The most stupendous volcanoes in the world are those of the Sandwich Islands, ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... that girl?" asked Count von Breitstein, in his usual abrupt manner, as the arm of Leopold girdled the slim waist of the Princess, and the eyes of Leopold drank light from another pair of eyes lifted to ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... of Charles, held a clerkship, with some considerable salary, in the South Sea House. I do not retain an agreeable impression of him. If not rude, he was sometimes, indeed generally, abrupt and unprepossessing in manner. He was assuredly deficient in that courtesy which usually springs from a mind at friendship with the world. Nevertheless, without much reasoning power (apparently), he had much cleverness of character; except when he ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... Walker, it was the latter who gave the signal for withdrawing to the lady of the house, by saying, "I think, Lady Thrum, it is quite time for us to retire." Some exquisite joke of Mr. Slang's was the cause of this abrupt disappearance. But, as they went upstairs to the drawing-room, Lady Thrum took occasion to say, "My dear, in the course of your profession you will have to submit to many such familiarities on the part of persons ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was so brilliantly adopted by Darwin, that changes occur by degrees, by "fine shades," by slow variations, as the result of successive adaptations, and that there is no jumping-off place in nature. On the contrary, life often passes suddenly from one form to another, by abrupt and capricious leaps, by irregular and disorderly steps, and it is in the egg that Fabre sees the first lineaments of these mysterious ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... strange yearning in the heart of man, in the way this other touches it. The great rhetorician found a rhetoric here that put his eloquence to silence and he responded to it with sentences as sharp, as brief, as broken, as abrupt, as stinging and wind-driven, as the rushing waves themselves pouring over a ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... feeling in his heart as if pitying tenderness had been the burden of the words it had spoken. Tones were still lingering in his ear, and with effect so soothing that he should probably have fallen asleep again; but in answer to it he heard another voice, so abrupt and stern that he started up wide awake, and, in an instant, was all attention. What passed between the invisible speakers, whom we shall distinguish as the "Stern Voice" and the "Soft Voice," ran, ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... mountains, which dominate the more immediate settling of Taahauku and give the salient character of the scene. They are reckoned at no higher than four thousand feet; but Tahiti with eight thousand, and Hawaii with fifteen, can offer no such picture of abrupt, melancholy alps. In the morning, when the sun falls directly on their front, they stand like a vast wall: green to the summit, if by any chance the summit should be clear—water-courses here and there delineated on their face, as narrow as cracks. Towards afternoon, the ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... alarm of his rector. He requested of the latter, that should he see Mrs. Temple, he would make no allusions to the circumstance, especially as she was at the period in question not far from her confinement, and it was impossible to say what unpleasant or dangerous effects an abrupt mention of so dreadful a circumstance ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... level valley with a river winding through it; it was the valley of the Treja. A precipice, hundreds of feet in height, falls perpendicularly upon the valley, from the site of Civita Castellana; there is an equally abrupt one, probably, on the side from which we saw it; and a modern road, skilfully constructed, goes winding down to the stream, crosses it by a narrow stone bridge, and winds upward into the town. After passing over the bridge, I alighted, with J——- and R——-, . . . . and ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... control over the national economy feel the bitterest regret that it had not been given them to obviate the possible dangers of such a crisis and such a change, or rather to prevent such a crisis and a change so abrupt, by exertions in every way, and on the widest scale, to rescue the people from their ignorance and barbarism, instead of trusting to it for an uncontested undisturbed continuance of their own domination? But they scorned the idea, if it ever occurred, that the many-headed, many-handed ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... couplets, with its hemistichs of equal length, is a very symmetrical and monotonous species of verse, and far better adapted for the expression of antithetical maxims, than for the musical delineation of passion with its unequal, abrupt, and erratic course of thoughts. But the main cause lies in a national feature, in the social endeavour never to forget themselves in presence of others, and always to exhibit themselves to the greatest possible advantage. It has been often remarked, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... such-like. In ten years it'll be a scare-crow of a countryside. I wish one could clear them up and burn them in heaps as one does the dead leaves in autumn." Fatigue fell upon her. She seemed exhausted by the manufacture of so much malice. With an abrupt and listless gesture she pointed her stick at the Castle. "It isn't much, you see," she said apologetically. And indeed there was little enough. There were just the two towers on the summit and the two on the slope of the hill whose ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... cried. "I shall save my credit at Court.—Gentlemen," he went on, with the utmost courtesy and bowing low, "his Majesty the King, disappointed with your abrupt leave-taking, has commanded me to escort you back ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... the fir-woods below were like a green sea, and white clouds above sailed along over the blue sky. The wildness of the region was, as it were, tamed by its uniformity and the simplicity of its elements. Nature, like a true poet, abhors abrupt transitions. Clouds, however fantastically formed they may at times appear, still have a white, or at least a subdued hue, harmoniously corresponding with the blue heaven and the green earth; so ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... creature did work slow in the brain, and in the end loost from me, abrupt, and went back with a leap, so that my hands did be ript from the throat of the Beast. And in one instant it did be back unto me, and gave me no moment to free the Diskos. But I made anew to fight, and ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... actions of this voyage, being full of pleasant variety." But, as well observed by the editor of Astley's Collection, Purchas has rather curtailed than abridged, often leaving out whole paragraphs and inserting others in an abrupt and unconnected manner, passing over places without any mention, and speaking of them afterwards as if they had been mentioned before. We have therefore used the farther liberty of still farther abridging his confused abridgment, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... singing, and the absence of any officer to call ''Vast hauling,' they continued operations until they broke the topsail yard in two, when the sight of the wreckage and the fear of consequences brought the singing to an abrupt conclusion. In my then ignorance I naturally asked: 'Why couldn't you have sung shanties without hoisting the topsail?' and the reply was: 'How could we sing a shanty without having our hands on the rope?' Here we have the whole psychology of the labour-song: the old ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry
... you won't see the old Puritan Sabbath," said Mrs. Makely, with an abrupt deflection from the question of the Sunday papers. "Though you ought to, up in these hills. The only thing left of it is rye-and-Indian bread, and ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... the flat where he was veering, abrupt and nearly hidden; but his eye caught the danger in time, and swinging from it leftward so that two wheels of the leaning coach were in the air, he faced the open again, safe, as the rescue swooped down upon him. The horsemen came at the ditch, a body of daring, ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... to drop here. But COMMERELL, having by this time had another question on other subject put and answered, collected his thoughts, rose and begged to say that "Prince Louis of BATTENBERG served under me, and a more efficient officer——" Here sentence came to abrupt conclusion. Angry cries of "Order!" stormed round gallant Admiral. COMMERELL a man of proved valour, as the Victoria Cross worn on his breast on Jubilee Day and other high festivities testifies. But his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, August 13, 1887 • Various
... the other hand, very little liberty; human multiplicity when near its end will fuse itself into a Unity of Will. Do we not see the beginnings already? Thus, without abrupt mutations, will be effected the reintegration of the complex in the one, of old ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... old Sheikh's graceful and flattering speeches of welcome had all to be passed through Abdul, and probably delivered them in a more gracious form than Margaret was capable of expressing them. Abdul was quite accustomed to the abrupt and mannerless ways of the foreigners and to their crude speech; he knew that it meant no offence nor indicated any lack of ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... reckless of life. He saw himself almost encompassed; he heard the bullets whistling about him, and perceived at a glance that the chances of his escape were a thousand to one against him. With a rapid sweep of his eye he marked the locality. It also was all against him. There was a shoreless lake, abrupt and deep to the very edge, except a slip at the opposite side, lying at his feet. It was oblong, but at each end of it there was nothing like a pass for at least two or three miles. If he could swim across this ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... with stern regard Upon the gentle minstrel bard, And said in tones abrupt, austere— "Why, Bracy? dost thou loiter here? "I bade thee hence!" The bard obey'd, And turning from his own sweet maid, The aged knight, Sir Leoline Led forth ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... finding himself dragged away in so abrupt a manner by this Englishman, had sought in his subtle mind for some means of escaping from his fetters; but no one having rendered him any assistance in this respect, he was absolutely obliged, therefore, to submit to the burden of his own ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... governor-general and commander-in-chief of Canada. He and his wife were popular both in the West Indies and in Canada; and he undoubtedly deserved well of the Empire for having conciliated the French Canadians, who had been irritated by his predecessor, the abrupt and masterful Craig. The very important Army Bill Act was greatly due to his diplomatic handling of the French Canadians, who found him so congenial that they stood by him to the end. His native tongue was French. ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... animals themselves are lifelike, each with the gait and action and flexion of the limbs peculiar to its species. The slow and measured tread of the ox; the short step, the meditative ear, the ironical mouth of the ass; the abrupt little trot of the goat, the spring of the hunting greyhound, are all rendered with invariable success of outline and expression. Turning from domestic animals to wild beasts, the perfection of treatment is the same. The calm strength of the lion in repose, ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... pack, Miki travelled steadily in the direction of the plain. It took him half an hour to reach the edge of it. After that he came to a wide and stony out-cropping of the earth over which he nosed the spoor to a low and abrupt descent into the ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... centuries, and at that day numbered about one hundred thousand inhabitants. Its walls, six miles in circumference, were already two hundred years old. Unlike most Netherland cities, lying usually upon extensive plains, it was built along the sides of an abrupt promontory. A wide expanse of living verdure—cultivated gardens, shady groves, fertile cornfields—flowed round it like a sea. The foot of the town was washed by the little river Senne, while the irregular but picturesque streets ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... hanging about the streets, and it jarred on her to see the rows of well-dressed loungers in the hotels lolling in wooden chairs close against the great windows, a foot or two from the street. It gave her a hint of western characteristics; the people were abrupt, good-naturedly so, perhaps, ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... that a Dictionary of the English Language would be a work that would be well received by the publick[529]; that Johnson seemed at first to catch at the proposition, but, after a pause, said, in his abrupt decisive manner, 'I believe I shall not undertake it.' That he, however, had bestowed much thought upon the subject, before he published his Plan, is evident from the enlarged, clear, and accurate views which it exhibits; ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... conversation came to an abrupt close; the bugle summoning us to supper, and Mick being extremely particular, I found, never to be late at meal-times if he could ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... approach; of a deepening of the atmosphere of his reverence, which yet as it deepened grew more diaphanous. And when now the episode of angelic visitation was over, with his usual wisdom he understood the wrench her abrupt departure must have given his whole being, and allowed him plenty of time to recover himself from it. Once he came upon him weeping: not with faintest overshadowing did he rebuke him, not with farthest hint suggest weakness in his tears. He went ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... obtain access to Cleo, but who had furtively been warned by the traitorous stage manager "to look sharp after their money." The camaraderie that had hitherto subsisted between that gentleman and Cleo had come to an abrupt end, she cutting him short impatiently in the course of some discussion and bidding him not to argue. In further token of his annoyance he had worded a notice she had told him to ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... some time in finding his place in the open book, and then went on. Again he misunderstood her, for though he could not remember saying anything he regretted, he fancied she had brought the conversation to a somewhat abrupt close. He read on, feeling very uncomfortable, and longing for one of those explanations that are impossible between acquaintances and emotional between lovers. He felt also that if he ever spoke ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... over the top of the last pitch. Next moment he struck the logs at the bottom with a jar that left him breathless, and he lay still to recover. His coat was white; indeed, the snow had forced its way inside his clothes, but he must be careful about his background and avoid abrupt movements. ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... not at all satisfied with this abrupt close of the conversation, but too unready to prolong it. He went on his own way slowly, looking back often, till he saw the door open, after which he seemed better satisfied, and ambled out ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... with which it all went and he grew calm, coinciding as it did with the equally abrupt cessation of the humming and pattering outside—I think this was almost the strangest part of the whole business perhaps. For he had just opened his eyes and turned his tired face up to me so that the dawn threw a pale light upon it through the doorway, ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood
... naked hands made out eleven o'clock. The men about him quickened. The legs that had lifted through a dozen strenuous hours lifted in a still swifter pace that was half a run and mostly a running jog. Through a dark spruce-flat they burst upon an abrupt glare of light from many fires and upon an abrupt increase of sound. The great camp lay ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... dirty trucks stopped with an abrupt jerk and noisy jarring of impact. Then it came! Grumbles ceased as if by common consent. There was something indefinable but pregnant, and in tense silence ears were strained intently. Was it only the rumble of a distant cart on hard cobbles or...? Faintly over the damp air came a long, insistent ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... and Junior School the furniture and apparatus can be to a great extent very much the same, their difference lying chiefly in degree. It is a pity to bring the age of toys to an abrupt conclusion; in real life the older children still borrow the toys of the younger ones while there are some definitely their own: such are, jigsaw and other puzzles, dominoes, articles for dramatic representation, playing cards, toys for ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... on heroes in a style resembling either early architecture or utter dilapidation, so loose and rough it seemed. A wind-in-the-orchard style that tumbled down here and there an appreciable fruit with uncouth bluster, sentences without commencements running to abrupt endings and smoke, like waves against a sea-wall, learned dictionary words giving a hand to street slang, and accents falling on them haphazard, like slant rays from driving clouds; all the pages in a breeze, the whole book producing ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... from a mountain summit to a plain; especially when they are connected with one another by a good system of streams; since here the opposite peculiarities of the populations of the highlands and coast-lands(227) tend to produce a nationality both one and varied. Where the transitions are too abrupt, as for instance, in New Holland, they easily impede inter-communication; and, still more, where the several parts of the country are of very great extent; as, for example, the desert of North Africa, the plateau of South Africa or that of Central Asia. Europe ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... secret." I had scarcely sent in my acceptance of the appointment, when I found a letter on my table from my old Israelite friend, Mordecai, congratulating me on "my decision." It was in his usual abrupt style:— ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... had to interfere at this point, for the old man was in the very act of carrying out his threat to punish Rogers bodily, on the bare possibility that he would not pray as he was told to do. And so that extemporized class-meeting came to an abrupt end. ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... sister, you will easily pardon an abrupt conclusion. I believe, by this time, you are ready to fear I would never conclude ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... demand it of her. I haven't been in Philadelphia since I was seven—and that's ages ago. I have no mother, and father is off in South America on business. So, you see, little sister has to tag after big sister. Oh!" She interrupted the recital with an abrupt change of manner. "I'm so sorry you've finished your coffee. Now you'll have ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the 26th Currt was soe short and soe abrupt that I fear you can peck butt little satisfaction out ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... kindly words, vain his confidential reception of the young Englishman, to remove from Arthur's heart the wild torrent of passion called forth by Garcia's allusion to Marie's intense love for her husband. To any one but Morales, his abrupt and unconnected replies, his strange and uncourteous manners, must have excited irritation; but Don Ferdinand only saw that the young man was disturbed and pained, and for this very reason exerted his utmost kindliness of ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... imbued with romantic perversity, would have made himself cut so poor a figure as Borrow here does without cause. The gipsies reappear to save the situation, and a kind of minor Belle Berners drama is played out with Ursula, Jasper's sister. Then the story takes another of its abrupt turns. Jasper, half in generosity it would appear, half in waywardness, insists on Borrow purchasing a thorough-bred horse which is for sale, advances the money, and despatches him across England to Horncastle Fair to sell it. The usual Le Sagelike adventures ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... Paris were brought, at length, for the time being, to a somewhat abrupt termination, by an invitation which he received suddenly at breakfast one morning, from his uncle George, to set off with him the next day for Switzerland. Rollo was very eager to accept this invitation from the moment that it was offered him. It is true that he was not at ...
— Rollo in Paris • Jacob Abbott
... inquiringly on her mother's abrupt entrance, and noted with surprise the flush on her cheek and the angry light in ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... first ridge when a sharp report broke the night-stillness and brought him to an abrupt standstill. It was followed by another, then three, four—a number of shots in succession. It was not loud enough for a 30-30. It was the six-shooter! "For close work!" she had told ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... menace is the wolves, but since we demonstrated that these animals cannot travel faster than about thirty miles an hour, the antelope are perfectly safe unless they happen to be caught off their guard. To prevent just this, the gazelles usually keep well out on the open plains and avoid rocks or abrupt hills which would furnish cover for a wolf. Of course, they often go into the rolling ground, but it is usually where the slopes are gradual and where they have sufficient space in which ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... obstinate, ignorant women can look. When they put on this cast of features, you might as well attempt to soften or convince a brick wall. Margaret Van Eyck tried, but all in vain. So then, not being herself used to be thwarted, she got provoked, and at last went out hastily with an abrupt and mutilated curtsey, which Catherine, returned with an air rather of defiance than obeisance. Outside the door Margaret Van Eyck found Reicht conversing with a pale girl on crutches. Margaret Van Eyck ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... had to get rid of him, and the Canon got him made night-watchman at the Institute. However, as I say, I called him Mr. Reasons, and that's what I call Alexander Quisante. Poor girl!" The last words referred, by a somewhat abrupt transition, to Quisante's wife. ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... fresh burst of grief from the affectionate and sorrowful girl. And she may be pardoned when I state, that, perhaps, the bitterest tears which were shed were those when she threw herself on that sofa where she had remained after the abrupt departure of ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... gradually underwent a complete and most painful change; he became silent and abstracted, his manner to me was abrupt and often harsh, some grievous anxiety seemed ever present to his mind; and under its influence his spirits sunk and his ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... to the Viking's castle," said the stork; "there my young ones and their mother await me. How they will stare! The mother does not speak much; but, though she is rather abrupt, she means well. I will presently make a little noise, that she may ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... owe you an apology for the abrupt manner in which I addressed you last evening, and the inconvenience to which you were subjected by some of my household. If you will honor us with your presence to-day at four o'clock, I will be most happy ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... seemed very lonely to me after my mother-in-law's abrupt departure. I had not dreamed that I could possibly miss the older woman's companionship, especially after her hateful behavior concerning my ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... them could be led, and some had to be driven like Paddy's pig who thought he was going the other way. Some of them had wives who could talk to them, and some—hadn't," said Mrs. Baker, with a queer intonation in her abrupt ending. ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... the liner moving, so abrupt her swoop to the right, that she leaned far over and showed them the red of her huge bilge. Her high speed enabled her to make an especially quick turn. As they gaped, her two stacks swung almost into line. Her ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... the peak that he had seen through his glass the day before. There was little or no vegetation upon that high, wind-swept point. The side toward the distant peak from which the artist had seen the signals, was an abrupt cliff—hundreds of feet of sheer, granite rock. From the rim of this precipice, the peak sloped gradually down and back to the edge of the pines that grew about its base. The ground in the open space ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... retorted John Pendleton, dryly. Then, with one of the curiously abrupt changes of manner peculiar to him, he said, very low: "You have your mother's eyes and smile, Pollyanna; ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... going back had never occurred to her, and shocked her into abrupt refusal. It would be an impossible adaptation to outgrown conditions. She could not conjure up the idea of herself refitted into the broken frame of her girlhood. She told them she would go on, there was nothing now to go back for. Their only course was to keep to the original plan, ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... reference has just been made, Mrs Willders, while seated quietly at her own fireside (although there was no fire there, the month being June), was interrupted in her not unusual, though innocent, occupation of darning socks by the abrupt entrance of her son Frank, who flung his cap on the table, kissed his mother on the forehead, and then flung himself on the sofa, which piece of furniture, being old and decrepit, groaned under ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... Hiram first came to Burnsville he sought to be admitted as a member of Mr. Burns's family, but was met with a cold and abrupt refusal. Now, Mr. Burns not only desired Hiram to come at once to his house, but put his wishes in so decided a form that Hiram could not object. It was in vain, that Sarah interposed. She begged her father ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... however, had to struggle with a great accumulation of obstructions, both of the subjective, as the metaphysicians say, and of the objective, order; and indeed it is no small part of the purpose of this little history to set forth her struggle. What seemed paramount in this abrupt enlargement of Mr. Wentworth's sympathies and those of his daughters was an extension of the field of possible mistakes; and the doctrine, as it may almost be called, of the oppressive gravity of mistakes was one of the most cherished traditions of ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... must he be studious of public welfare and responsive to public opinion. Thus manufacturing, transportation, or banking, when conducted on a large scale, touch life at so many points, that he who seeks to gain power or wealth by means of them will gradually and without any abrupt change of motive approximate the method of disinterested service. So every station in life, from that of the ruler to that of the shopkeeper, has its own characteristic form of the one problem of meeting, adjusting and fulfilling interests. The desire to be successful ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... terror struck at the heart of her content. An abrupt horrible certainty froze her—the certainty that she was not alone. There was some living thing besides herself in the forest, quite near her—something other than the deer and the squirrels and the quiet dainty woodland people. She felt it in every fibre ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails not, I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine, I too walk'd the streets of Manhattan island, and bathed in the waters around it, I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me, In the day among crowds of people sometimes they came upon me, In my walks home late at night or as I lay in my bed they came upon me, I too had been struck from the float forever held in solution, I too had receiv'd identity by my body, That ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... to address a single word to him. In the heat of her passion and resentment, she was nearly exposing all she knew of his infamies to the King, when the coolheaded Princesse Elizabeth opposed her, from the seeming imprudence of such an abrupt discovery; alleging that it might cause an open rupture between the two Courts, as it had already been the source of a reserve and coolness, which had not yet been explained. The Queen was determined never more to commit herself by seeing the Cardinal. She accordingly ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... motionless under the spell that his remarkable personality had cast over me, nor did even his abrupt manner appear at all strange, such perfect harmony of word and action existed in this Martian genius. Indeed, it seemed a fitting conclusion to all that had gone before. Speaking rapidly, as though realizing the loss ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... to time the chief of the band, abrupt and alert, and making sudden turns about the vessel, came to him and whispered in his ear. The old man answered by a nod. It might have been the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... personal appearance was now worse than ever, and the sacrilegious use of Father Pandoza's vestments, coupled with the ghastly scalp that hung from his bridle, so turned opinion against him that he was soon captured, dismounted, and his parade brought to an abrupt close, and I doubt whether he ever after quite reinstated himself in the good graces ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... when he did speak. "I had not intended to be so abrupt as I fear you will think me in that which I am about to say; but I believe you will ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... make such an exhibition of yourself. But you know I couldn't really believe you would do such an inexcusable thing. What will those people think of us? But how did you say it?—I mean the manner of it. I hope you were not abrupt." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... or four days and the little surface thaw, came to an abrupt end in a cold rain that turned to sleet as it fell. Nobody felt like going far afield just then, even after game, but they had set the snare that Nicholas told the Boy about on that first encounter ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... later. The hours passed. Trina kept at her post. The noise of approaching footfalls grew less and less frequent. Little by little Polk Street dropped back into solitude. Eleven o'clock struck from the power-house clock; lights were extinguished; at one o'clock the cable stopped, leaving an abrupt and numbing silence in the air. All at once it seemed very still. The only noises were the occasional footfalls of a policeman and the persistent calling of ducks and geese in the closed market across the ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... was to move aside to let him pass out. It was as though Garstaing's expression of sympathy had at last found a weakness in his armour of reserve. His movement had been abrupt—startlingly abrupt. ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... slate heaps, lined the side of a deep excavation, and came to an abrupt end where some boards, placed crosswise, barred ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... the match-making Dickson came to an abrupt end. He had been riding negligently, his head bent against the wind, and his eyes vaguely fixed on the wet hill-gravel of the road. Of his immediate environs he was pretty well unconscious. Suddenly he was aware of figures on each side of him who advanced menacingly. ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... Merillia again exchanged a glance which was not unobserved by Lady Enid. Then Sir Tiglath, with an abrupt and portentous ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... this same system has been applied for bringing to an abrupt standstill runaway horses, harnessed to vehicles; but knowing the effect of a sudden stoppage under such circumstances, we believe that the remedy would prove worse than the disease, since the coachman and vehicle, in obedience to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... at the foot of abrupt cotes, just where the broad and tranquil river shudders with mysterious deep heavings and meets its dolphin-hued death in the all-devouring sea. Away off in the shimmering distance is the second seaport city ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... under the power of Rome, were panting for freedom; Germany first reforming her religion, and then throwing off her subjection; England first throwing off her subjection, and then compelled to reform herself. The old systems of thought were at an end. The change, like all social ones, was not abrupt, but it was decisive and final. It was the earthquake which shattered for ever the crust of error ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... was for leaving, but being under obligation to the legless man was at pains not to be abrupt. He lingered then a little, ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... brought to an abrupt close, for the train was approaching Glanafon Ferry, and her comrades, busily collecting their various handbags, would lend no ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... a word, my boy. We want your verses, we want your verses. That's right, isn't it? Good verses, good money! Now no more of that," and the good man, in alarm lest he should be thanked further, made an abrupt ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... an abrupt movement and she noticed with surprise and some indignation the relief in his expression. Though the men had not been on very cordial ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... of all these distresses by an abrupt abandonment of smoking and alcohol. Alcoholic relaxation, a necessary mitigation of the unreality of peacetime politics, becomes a grave danger in war, and it was with an understandable desire to forward the interests of his realm that the King decided to set his statesmen an example—which ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... said to her or to his mother that he might join the army, gathering so fast from every Northern city and hamlet; only Sam knew this, and so the mother longing for her daughter was pleased rather than surprised at his abrupt departure, bidding him Godspeed, and lading him with messages of love for Adah and the little boy. Alice, too, tried to smile as she said good-by, but it died upon her lips and a tear trembled on her cheek, when Hugh dropped the little hand he never expected to hold ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... his arms about my neck and bent my head close to his, saying, in his abrupt voice of command, "Barbara must not stay indoors tomorrow and be sad ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... allowance,' said she, 'to be made for him, that lost his son and heir—that would have been heir to all, and a fine youth that he doted upon. But,' continued the old woman, in whose mind the transitions from GREAT to little, from serious to trivial, were ludicrously abrupt, 'that was no reason why the old gentleman should scold me last time he was here, as he did, for as long as ever he could stand over me, only because I killed a mouse who was eating my cheese; and, before night, he beat a boy for stealing ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... had become the common precious property of all the Five Towns. When the aged rector had restored his flock to a sense of decency Mr. Emanuel Prockter had vanished. In that laughter his career as a singer reached an abrupt and final conclusion. The concert also came to an end. And the collection, by which the divine always terminated these proceedings, was the largest in ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... uncurled by the evening damps, and falling over her shoulders and breast, as the wet streamers droop from the mast when the storm has passed away, and left the vessel stranded on the beach. The Dwarf first broke the silence with the sudden, abrupt, and alarming question,—"Woman, what evil fate has ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... tall ship whose lofty prore Shall never stem the billows more Deserted by her gallant band, Amid the breakers lies astrand— Soon his couch lay Rhoderick Dhu, And oft his fevered limbs he threw In toss abrupt, as when her sides Lie rocking in the advancing tides, That shake her frame with ceaseless beat, Yet can not heave her from her seat;— O, how unlike her course on sea! Or his free step on hill and lea!—Lady of ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... the subject that has the smallest pretensions to system, and that is fanciful, involved, irregular, abrupt, and obscure, is PURCHAS HIS PILGRIMS. Even admitting the plan of that work to be in itself excellent; although it may be a General History, so far as it extends, it certainly is in no respect a Complete Collection of Voyages and Travels. In a very large ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... and guiding his every action and emotion; of the unpractical father—a dreamer and an enthusiast, the worst possible example he could have; of the false standards and class distinctions which had warped his early life and which were still dominating him. With an abrupt gesture of impatience she stood still in the path and looked down upon the ground. An ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... are mounted may be seen from an inspection of Figs. 3 to 5. This new arrangement of spiral springs for the purpose is designed to hold the pistons on the table firmly, and at the same time to prevent the shock that their upper ends might undergo in case of an abrupt turn of the winch. Moreover, the forged iron plate, H, is not exposed to breakage as it is in other machines, where it is of cast iron. The bobbins already mentioned revolve upon strong iron rods, and the moving forward of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... in a twenty-foot wall of rocks, massed so as to form huge irregular steps, that led to an abrupt bit of level, whereon the fighting appeared to be taking place. Sounds came to him now that lashed him to a frenzy; the clash of knives and sabres, the thud of many feet; the fierce shouts without which it is impossible for primitive man to ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... next letter respecting Ireland are of infinite value in enabling us to estimate correctly the events that afterwards took place in that country under Lord Fitzwilliam's government, and the circumstances which led to its abrupt termination. Two important facts are authenticated in this communication: the first, that Lord Fitzwilliam, before he assumed the government, and even before his appointment to it was advanced so far as the removal of his predecessor, had not only determined upon the ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... all this sameness rose a hill in that abrupt manner which strikes a peculiar character into this southern landscape, and upon the hill were jutting rocks and a broken mass of strangely-jumbled masonry-roofs rising out of roofs, gables crushing gables, feudal towers, great ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... when, on the morning after her visit to Mrs. Jasher, the Professor announced in his usual abrupt way that he intended to go to London, but would leave Cockatoo in charge of his precious collection. She was somewhat disturbed, however, as, wishing to forward the widow's matrimonial aims, she had invited her to dinner for the ensuing night. This ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... half, when, suddenly, I heard a faint noise, away up the corridor. I was immediately conscious of a queer prickling sensation about the back of my head, and my hands began to sweat a little. The following instant, the whole end of the passage flicked into sight in the abrupt glare of the flashlight. There came the succeeding darkness, and I peered nervously up the corridor, listening tensely, and trying to find what lay beyond the faint glow of my dark-lamp, which now seemed ridiculously ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... it that the man in the stern had an interest in one of them. An abrupt exclamation that he uttered at this moment seemed, to the man rowing stroke, who heard more than his mate, to apply to the thicker and taller man of the two. This one, who seemed to treat his pal as an inferior or subordinate, met his gaze, not flinching. His companion seemed less ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... arranging everything so entirely according to his own fancy, that he is a complete sovereign in his own small way—the tyrant of Tampico. He has in his weather-beaten face such a mixture of bluffness and slyness, with his gigantic person, and abrupt, half-savage manners, that, altogether, I conceive him to be a character who might have been worthy the attention of Walter Scott, had he chanced to encounter him. Old and repulsive as he is, he has lately married a pretty young girl—a subject on which he does not brook raillery. One amiable trait ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... in an exclamatory, abrupt, rhapsodical prose, resembling somewhat the English of Isaiah and others of the books of the prophets. The manners described were heroic, the state of society primitive. The properties were few and simple; the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... from Spanish rule in 1825. Its subsequent history has been marked by a seemingly endless series of coups, counter-coups, and abrupt changes in leaders and policies. Comparatively democratic civilian rule was established in the 1980s, but the leaders have faced difficult problems of deep-seated poverty, social unrest, strikes, and drug dealing. Current issues include encouraging and negotiating ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... change on sight of me. I do not think this change was caused by any personal dislike for me. I believe he would have done the same had any stranger appeared before him in riding boots. The trouble was, probably, that he had expected to be ridden by one of the young ladies, and was shocked by the abrupt discovery that a total stranger was to ride him. This is merely my surmise. I do not claim deep understanding of the mental workings of any horse, for there is no logic about them or their performances. They are like crafty lunatics, reasoning, if they reason at all, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... of Inner Wessex is as varied as the materials that go to make it up, from the bare rolling chalk downs of Salisbury Plain to the abrupt and imposing hills around the Vale of Blackmore. To most who travel in search of the picturesque and the beautiful, the Dorset coast and the country immediately in the rear, will make the greatest appeal. ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... those pictures and made that inquiry. One other word. She is just recovering from a case of fever, induced by wrong conditions of life before I met her. She is not so strong as she appears. Understand you are not to be abrupt. Go very gently! Her feelings and health must be guarded ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... to some to believe that man has two souls; other two distinct powers that always accompany and incline us, the one towards good and the other towards ill, according to their own nature and propension; so abrupt a variety not being imaginable to flow from one and ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... prize. Haste then—pursue him—reach the royal Chief— 520 And how to pass him in yon narrow way Shall be my care, and not my care in vain. He ended; they, awhile, awed by his voice, With more exertion ran, and Nestor's son Now saw the hollow strait mark'd by his sire. 525 It was a chasm abrupt, where winter-floods, Wearing the soil, had gullied deep the way. Thither Atrides, anxious to avoid A clash of chariots drove, and thither drove Also, but somewhat devious from his track, 530 Antilochus. Then Menelaus fear'd, And with ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... this sad business had been disposed of, Anthony Walaeus returned. The Advocate apologized to the preacher for his somewhat abrupt greeting on his first appearance. He was much occupied and did not know him, he said, although he had often heard of him. He begged him, as well as the provost-marshal, to join him at supper, which ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of their domestic wars they appeared as divided clans or abrupt insurgents; they were exposed to the treachery of a more instructed, of an unscrupulous and a compact enemy; they had neither discipline, nor generalship, nor arms; their victories were those of a mob; their defeats were followed ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... emergency we could traverse every apartment without access to the known doors. Trap-doors on a similar construction, communicated with the cellar:—the table, which you saw us sitting around, stood on one of those, which, on your abrupt appearance, as soon as the candles were extinguished, was with its contents, precipitated below, and we made our escape by those secret doors, judging, that although you had seen us, if we could get off, you would be unable to find out any thing which might ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... These people at home here must notice nothing for—for three months, when I shall be—" But he caught an expression now in her face, and something in the abrupt way in which she drew her hand from him, that made him keep back what he had originally intended to say, and he corrected ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... its own different road ever since. Wilhelm was zealously Protestant in those days; as his people are, and as he still is, at the period we treat of. But he went into Papistry, not long after; and made other sudden turns and misventures: to all appearance, rather an abrupt, blustery, uncertain Herr. It is to him that Albert Friedrich, the young Duke of Preussen, guided by his Council, now (Year 1572) sends an Embassy, demanding his eldest ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... opportunity. This was a likeable old sea-dog, and he determined not to impose upon him another moment. Some men, for the sake of the adventure, would have left the truth to be found out later, to the disillusion of all concerned. The abrupt manner in which Miss Killigrew had ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... was originally delivered and the present year there runs a great and broad stream of blood, shed from the veins of Northern and Southern men alike; the whole political and moral constitution of the country has practically suffered an abrupt change; new problems engage the attention of thoughtful statesmen; much is forgotten which was once considered of the first importance; but the 7th of March Speech, battered as it is by innumerable attacks, is still remembered at least as one which called forth more power than it embodied ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... through the maze, bade her forward with her prattle, but in vain; for at this abrupt period she broke off, and with her eyes full of tears, and her face covered with a vermilion dye, she sate down and sighed. Whereupon Aliena and Ganymede, seeing the shepherdess in such a strange plight, left Phoebe with her Montanus, wishing her ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... not set off till near eight o'clock, and after the sun rises, the warmth rapidly increases. We made but a short journey to-day, of two leagues and a half, for the roads were rugged and precipitous, and intersected by several abrupt and broken streams, so that we were obliged to be extremely cautious in our progress, and chary of the services of our mules. We passed some very large ant-hills to-day, from eight to twelve feet in height; the summits ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... he was lazy, irregular in his attendance at college, and not particularly grateful to his benefactors. By his own acts he fell out of favour, the subscriptions that had been collected were returned to the donors, and his career would have come to an abrupt conclusion, if it had not been that Owenson made interest for him with Lady Moira, a distinguished patron of literature, who placed him in the charge of Dr. Boyd, the translator of Dante. Dermody must have had his good points, for he was a favourite with Mrs. Owenson, and the dear ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... ever a nuisance, for ever a calamity,' and then gravely declares (mark the climax!) 'and yet THEY, [these ignorant, helpless, miserable creatures!] AND THEY ONLY, are qualified for colonizing Africa'!! 'Why then,' he asks, 'in the name of God,'—(the abrupt appeal, in this connexion, seems almost profane,)—'should we ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... or two to starboard, and seeming within a stone's throw, is the land we have come so far to seek. A wall of rock, the northern cliff of New Zealand rises abrupt and imposing from the sea, broken here and there into groups of pillared, pinnacled islets, nobly irregular in outline, piled and scarred, indented and projected, uplifted and magnificent. On the ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... the half-open door,—he could see Miss Dandridge at the harpsichord. The room seemed very light. For a moment he ceased to be the master-builder and sank to the estate of the apprentice, awkward and eaten with self-distrust; the next, with a characteristic abrupt motion of head and hand, he recovered himself, waved Joab aside, and boldly crossed ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... turned away; she wandered about the room and went and stood at one of the windows. Bernard found the movement abrupt and not particularly gracious; but the young man was not easy to snub. He followed her, and they stood at the second window—the long window that opened upon the balcony. Miss Evers and Captain Lovelock were leaning on the ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... what he had to offer in the splendour of the great avenues tapering upward to the sunset glories of the Arch—that all he had meant to say when he finally spoke compressed itself at last into an abrupt ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton
... for the time being, acknowledging almost complete defeat. There was only a single consoling thought. At least, he had talked with her intimately concerning his affairs. With an abrupt change of manner, she stood up listlessly, and spoke in such a fashion as might become an old-fashioned wife, although ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... dared—putting the absent dots on several i's—he saw new questions swarm. They had been till now in a bunch, entangled and confused; and they fell apart, each showing for itself. The first he put to her was at any rate abrupt. "Have you heard of ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... when we reached the South Fork of the Big Cheyenne River. The lead was first held by one and then the other herd, but on reaching that watercourse, we all found it more formidable than we expected. The stage of water was not only swimming, but where we struck it, the river had an abrupt cut-bank on one side or the other. Sponsilier happened to be in the lead, and Forrest and myself held back to await the decision of the veteran foreman. The river ran on a northwest angle where we encountered ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... his most Catholic Majesty Alfonzo XIII. can hardly be termed paternal; but that was nothing to me. Politics I abhor, and anarchistic politics I particularly loathe. But as beating an abrupt retreat would have been rude, and as unnecessary rudeness is not one of my characteristics, I made the best of it, and ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... feet were always "used to save his head" (contrary to our grandmothers' teachings). When he made the usual attempt to fly through the window on his first outing in the room, he went feet first against it, and thus saved himself a bumped head. His movements were abrupt in the extreme, and always so unexpected that he frequently threw the whole feathered family into a panic, apparently without the least intention of doing so. Standing beside the cage of another bird, he would wheel ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... shaken by an intellectual tempest of physical discovery, disturbed by an abrupt and undigested enlargement in the material world, in physical science, and in the knowledge of antiquity, was to be offered a fruit of which each might taste if it would, but the taste of which would lead, if it were acquired, to evils no citizen of Europe then dreamt of; ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... incident. Many men would have concealed their disquietude by an affectation of sudden appetite, or by bullying the waiter, or by abrupt departure from the scene. I did neither. I felt I had a right to be confused, and I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... Wethermill's winnings, and Ricardo, curious to know whose small, delicately gloved hand it was which had brought the game to so abrupt a termination, leaned forward. He recognised the young girl in the white satin dress and the big black hat whose nerves had got the better of her a few minutes since in the garden. He saw her now clearly, and thought her of an entrancing loveliness. She was moderately tall, fair of ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... could make out, in spite of its zigzagging and abrupt curves, the course of the stream was decidedly towards the camp, but as they descended lower one thing was very plain, and that was that they were getting into thicker jungle, which grew taller and darker with every ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... the Bird Daughter started, staring in amazement, while an abrupt oath burst from Lame Art. Brian ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... urged, "But look again, sir, there are letters, a rarity." "I dare you to read them," cried Frauelein Linda, and the Professor read painfully and copied roughly in his notebook a short inscription in some Runic alphabet. A scowl followed the reading and the abrupt challenge "Where did you find this piece?" "In the fields, digging, Padrone," was the answer, "where I dug up also this," displaying a bronze clasp of unquestionable Lombard workmanship. "Bravo," exclaimed Linda, ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... are large or small, numerous or scattered, open or closed, lighter or darker than the wood. Note also whether the late wood is very heavy and hard, showing a decided contrast to the early wood, or fairly soft and grading into the early wood without abrupt change. Weigh the piece in your hand, smell a fresh-cut surface to detect the odor, if any, and taste a chip to see if anything characteristic is discoverable. Then turn ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... influence of art, the precautions of prudence, the concessions made to public opinion; but we cannot wholly explain the incredible contradictions of the Holbachs and Renans, without allowing full weight to that need for God which shows itself even in the farthest wanderings of human thought by sudden and abrupt returns. ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... I must keep where I was,—and if I kept where I was, I must keep on at the Woods',—and if I kept on at the Woods', I should keep on feeling just as I did, and perhaps—more so. I resolved, finally, to remain where I was, and to take no abrupt step, (which might cause remark,) but to break off my visits gradually. The first week, I could skip one night,—the next, two,—and so on,—using my own judgment about tapering off the acquaintance gradually and gracefully to an imperceptible point. The way appearing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... and it was there that the chutes and wells for the turbines were located, as well as the spill gates which now were in temporary service. A wide roadway of cement, with vast buttresses on each side, ran along the top of the dam and looked down upon the abrupt surface of its lower face. Here, and there, at either side of the dam, and at the original stream level, stood low buildings of stone, to house the vast dynamos or care for other phases of the tremendous industrial installation of the ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... a somewhat abrupt manner, "I came here with Tematau about the time that the white lady Lucia and her husband came. Tematau is of the same family as myself. And it is of the blood ties between us that we remain together, for we are the ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... by the abrupt opening of the door. Marlowe rushed in. Eustace peered anxiously out of his berth. There was too much cork on his cousin's face to allow of any real registering of emotion, but he could tell from his manner ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... with an abrupt movement. "No, no," he cried, shaking his head in protest. "Do not tempt me. I really cannot listen. I must be at ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... the greatness of the gift is strong all through the prayer. The man's breath is almost taken away, and his words are sometimes broken, and throughout palpitating with emotion. Yet there is a plain progress of feeling and thought in them, and they may serve as a pattern of thanksgiving. Note the abrupt beginning, as if pent-up feeling forced its way, regardless of forms of devotion. The first emotion excited by God's great goodness is the sense of unworthiness. 'I do not deserve it,' is the instinctive ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the abrupt edge of a little hill in a Southern Japanese city. There, in a great tree hanging out over the edge, had hung the bell that called together the faithful retainers of the lord of the province, when they were needed. There, nearly thirty years ago, a little band of Japanese youth, of ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... the author of the stratagem, 'belong rather to you than to me, friend; for by Him that made me, you could give the odds of two brays to the greatest and most skilful brayer in the world; for your tones are rich, your time correct, your notes well sustained, and cadences abrupt and beautiful; in short, I own myself vanquished, and yield to you the palm ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... think fate is as much responsible for that as yourself?" she questioned, smiling as they passed at a good clip the turn which was to have taken them over the pretty Bald Hill drive. Sam had not even thought to apologize for the abrupt change in their program, because she could certainly see the opportunity which had offered itself, and how imperative it was to embrace it. The ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... had sawed for a while Jerry cried: "Hey! She's runnin' out again." He accompanied this remark by an abrupt cessation of effort. As a result the saw stopped in its downward course and Tom's chin came into violent contact ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... In very abrupt words he told the cavalry that he had come to take their place, and they were ordered to report back to their command. Happening to catch sight of me, he asked, "What is this Rebel doing here?" One of the men spoke up and tried to say something in my favor, but the more he said the more ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... grub, and abandoning brilliant cravats, primrose gloves, and tight shiny boots, subsides into the respectable heavy father of genteel comedy, becomes a churchwarden, a patron of charities, a capitalist, and a highly respectable member of society. The Manchester man is abrupt, because his whole soul is in the money-making business of the day; the Liverpool gentleman's icy manners are part of his costume. The "cordial dodge," which has superseded Brummel's listless style in the really fashionable ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... greater entertainment than walking through it. Beyond are various foreign quarters and districts inevitably growing colder and more residential in aspect as they get farther away from the city heart. Beyond the heights where one catches glimpses of the ocean, the city slopes to abrupt cliffs along the outer harbor, and here are mansions whose windy gardens overhang the surf. Beyond Market street is the area described in the phrase, "south of the slot". Superficially drab and gray in aspect, it has been ...
— The Californiacs • Inez Haynes Irwin
... supposed her to be asleep, and the sound of her voice had startled him, though she was given to abrupt explosions of speech after long intervals of ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... lane was marked by some insignificant though very abrupt depressions and elevations of the surface. Occasionally he of the floating apparel was lost to sight; then he would appear all glorious on some small height, while the mind was compelled to revert irreverently to the picture of Moses on Mount Pisgah. ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... with this matronly woman. It was as clear as daylight that he was, and she too appeared to be in love. This interested me infinitely. I watched them clasp each other's hands, and then, with an abrupt and almost awkward movement, the young poet bent over the beautiful hand he was holding and ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... mines must appear obvious on a slight consideration. As no plans existed, it was impossible to tell to what extent or in what direction the underground works were being carried. The crossing of mattocks, that is to say, the actual meeting of the workmen underground, was often the abrupt signal for contention; the driving of narrow headings was a means by which one coal-owner might gain possession of coal which of right belonged to another; and a pit, though sunk at a cost of several thousand pounds, had no secured possession of coal beyond ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... to you, my dear, for my abrupt breaking off in the answer I was writing to yours of yesterday; and which, possibly, I shall not be able to finish and send you till to-morrow or next day; having a great deal to say to the subjects you put ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... of three or four days and the little surface thaw, came to an abrupt end in a cold rain that turned to sleet as it fell. Nobody felt like going far afield just then, even after game, but they had set the snare that Nicholas told the Boy about on that first encounter in the wood. Nicholas, ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... door, they saw the dreadful tidal wave sweeping nearer and nearer in the ashen light of the moon, carrying along the ship, which was a steamer rolling and pounding fearfully in the waters. The whistles were blowing frightfully, sometimes in a prolonged blare, sometimes in abrupt toots, ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... universe. For the Sun-beings worked in those harmonies. Thus this part of man was given its form by the spiritual sounds of the universe; and at the same time the alternation between the clearer state of consciousness during the Sun period, and the duller one, was not so abrupt as was that between the waking state and that of absolutely dreamless sleep in contemporary man. The picture-consciousness was not so clear as the present waking consciousness; but on the other hand, the other consciousness was not so ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... the base of the precipice, where abrupt pathways trace their zigzags of white lightning down the rock, and where no vegetation relieves the harsh stone, the town of Kalaa seems some accursed city in a Dantean Inferno. Seen from the peaks of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... he waited; then the reply came, abrupt, deafening; and he hurled himself at the bolted door, and ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... the liberal movements leavening the whole of mankind, if they have not completely shattered the religious consciousness, have at least, in an important section of Jewry, effected a change in its form; when abrupt differences of opinion with regard to questions of faith and cult are asserting their presence; and traditional Judaism developed in historical sequence is proving powerless to hold together the diverse factors of the national organism,—in these days the keystone of ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... specialization which has been attained. The smaller the piece, within certain limits, and the younger physiologically, the more nearly does it return to embryonic conditions, a fact which can be studied admirably in the hydroid Corymorpha. In some cases the simplification is accomplished by abrupt sacrifice of highly specialized parts, as in Corymorpha, when in a process of simplification connected with acclimatization to aquarium conditions, the large tentacles of well-grown specimens fall away completely from ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... despised little Freshman completed her mortification, by a feeble joke about Kitty Heath's new man-trap. It was only an instant, but it seemed an hour before Fletcher freed her, and snatching up the dusty beaver, left her with a flushed countenance and an abrupt bow. ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... along which the water tinkles a merry tune. What a pity that these pure mountain children should develop to such a maturity as the muddy Missouri! Parallel with this little stream, where it winds into a narrow chasm between abrupt mountain walls, winds a crooked street, with a straggling row of log-cabins on either side, and looking from the mountain-tops very much like the vertebrae of a huge serpent. This is Bannack, so called from the Indian tribe whose homes were in the vicinity. These were the bravest, the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... moment. It commences at the head of Onondaga Lake, having a broad surface where the main part of our city stands, and moderate hill-side boundaries, until we pass two miles south of the city bounds, where the bed of the basin begins to narrow away and the hills on either side to be more abrupt and higher. It continues to decrease in width, until it terminates against Tully Hill, a distance of fourteen miles from the lake. Its beauty of wild scenery is perhaps in greatest perfection in that part known ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.
... from the supper-table, he well-nigh fell backward when Fagon, coming forward, cried in great trouble that all was lost. It may be imagined what terror seized all the company at this abrupt passage from perfect security to hopeless despair. The King, scarcely master of himself, at once began to go towards the apartment of Monseigneur, and repelled very stiffly the indiscreet eagerness of some courtiers who wished to prevent him, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... all others older, brings in many new. The transition is so gradual that we hardly perceive it. The board of directors of the political company has a few slight changes every year, and therefore the shareholders are conscious of no abrupt change. But sometimes there IS an abrupt change. It occasionally happens that several ruling directors who are about the same age live on for many years, manage the company all through those years, and then go off the scene almost ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... twelve times,' can dance to her perfect admiration; when I see that she likes ease of manners—and all sorts of men without an idea in their heads have that—while I turn all colors when I speak to her, and am clumsy; and abrupt, and abstracted, and bad at repartee—Uncle Teddy! sometimes (though it seems so ungrateful to father and mother, who have spent such pains for me)—sometimes, do you know, it seems to me as if I'd exchange all I've ever learned ...
— A Brace Of Boys - 1867, From "Little Brother" • Fitz Hugh Ludlow
... exclaimed Mr. Mountague, with enthusiasm. Helen, struck with surprise, and a variety of emotions, coloured deeply. "I beg your pardon," said Mr. Mountague, changing his tone, "for being so abrupt. You found a letter of Lady Augusta's last night. She is in great, I am sure ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... with which the heels of the worshippers of Ceres in this country are armed. If any one of these intruded on this domain sacred to Mars, he would in his indignation gift them with the feathered heels of Mercury and send them off with an abrupt message for ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... course was a declivity which dropped an estimated depth of sixty to one hundred feet below the narrow, stony flat on which we stood, down into a depressed valley. Abrupt ridges of broken stone formation were on our right and left, inclosing us in a small space of barren, waste earth. The elements had crumbled the rocks down for ages, until what perhaps had been once a deep canyon was now a narrow flat, a mass of debris, terminating at the top of the steep, ragged ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... around me, the pleasant officials, the helpful yet not servile porters. Long Island shocked me by contrast. It had come to its present condition by slow degrees, but to the returning traveler the collapse was so woefully abrupt it seemed ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... to their successors, our worthy selves. In addition to the entrance tower, or porch, on its northern front, John Effingham had also placed a prettily devised conceit on the southern, by means of which the abrupt transition from an inner room to the open air was adroitly avoided. He had, moreover, removed the "firstly" of the edifice, and supplied its place with a more suitable addition that contained some of the offices, while it did ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... been employed by the firm in this capacity for about thirty years. He is a negro, about sixty years old, rather short and stout, with a mincing, noiseless gait, broad African features, beautiful teeth, and small, round, twinkling eyes, the movements of which are accompanied by little abrupt, sidewise turns of the head, like a bird. His manner is a curious mixture of deference and self-importance, his voice a soft, sibilant whisper, and as he was born and bred in Alexandria, Virginia, it seems almost superfluous to add that he and the letter "r" are ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... 11. But yet behold—abrupt and loud, Comes down the glittering rain; The farewell of a passing cloud, The fringes of ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... experiment with falsely and correctly localized after-images proves that before the anaesthesia all localization is with reference to the point of departure, while afterwards it is with reference to the final fixation-point. The transition is abrupt. During the anaesthesia, then, the mechanism of localization is suffering a readjustment. It is proved that during this interval of readjustment in the centers of eye-muscle sensation the way is closed to oncoming discharges ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... addressed the stranger in a manly, business-like way—a transition which, though it might seem a little abrupt, did not appear constrained, and, indeed, served to show that his recent levity was less the habit of a frivolous nature, than the frolic condescension of ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... his compliments to Mr. Germaine, and begs to apologize for the somewhat abrupt manner in which he received Mr. Germaine's polite advances. Mr. Van Brandt suffers habitually from nervous irritability, and he felt particularly ill last night. He trusts Mr. Germaine will receive ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... said nothing; and Susie, pained and mystified that the confidence of other days was refused, bade her friend a rather cold and abrupt adieu. ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... hearing the man's words therefore—which were followed by a stricken silence—I looked sharply at the faces of such of those present as it was possible to suspect, but failed to observe any sign of confusion or dismay, or anything more particular than so abrupt a statement was calculated to produce. Doubting much whether the man was not playing with me, I addressed him sternly, warning him to beware, lest in his anxiety to save his heels by falsely accusing others, he should lose his head. For that if his conspiracy ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... it was certain that Crewne was absent from Hardhack, and it was evident that he had decided who was to be the lady of the cottage, so the season of festivity was brought to an abrupt close, and the digestions of Hardhack were ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... something on them, and he was evidently nervous and upset, for he made ever so many mistakes in the concluding parts of the service, and, to the great surprise and to the satisfaction of the blower, cut the voluntary at the end unusually short, ending it in an abrupt and discordant way, which, I am sorry to say, the blower described as 'a 'owl,' though any shock that the boy's musical taste sustained was compensated for by the feeling that he would be at home at least ten minutes ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... larger cities; heroes like Skrzynecki, Czartoryski, Rozyski, Raminski, were choking the trump of Fame with their complicated patronymics. These are all forgotten now; and this poor negro, who did not even possess a name, beyond one abrupt monosyllable,—for even the name of Turner was the master's property,—still lives, a memory of terror, and a symbol of ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... had in them now less of dreaminess, and more of thought. The abrupt change in her outlook brought Evelyn Desmond's pretty, effective figure to the forefront of her mind. For ten years,—the period of Honor's education in England,—the two girls had lived and learned together as sisters; and, despite natures ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... was quite content now. He had wanted her just as she was, unashamed and untainted. And to preserve her as she was he had gone away. And now for the very first time she was truly glad he had gone in that abrupt, speechless fashion—in spite of the heartache and the long years between them, really and truly glad. Nothing had been spoilt; they had snatched at no stolen joys. And the rapture, (what rapture!) of meeting would blot out all that they had suffered in ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... was too abrupt; at any rate, much as I had expected a tempest I was not prepared for the tornado ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... fifteen battalions were landed without the loss of a man. A strong natural position about a mile from the city was chosen for the encampment; its left rested on the sea, its right was covered by several abrupt hills and defiles through which the river Basoz flowed. The front was, however, much extended, but this mattered the less, as the people from the neighboring villages began to assemble when the landing took place, and welcomed the allies of King Charles with joy. A number ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... us; he was in a cotton suit walking about among his flowers and enjoying the evening. He was a man of about fifty, short, strong, brown, and abrupt. Though it was already evening and one could see little, we knew well enough that his eyes were steady and dark. For he had the attitude and carriage of those men who invigorate France. His self-confidence was evident in his sturdy ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... of this nervous ode, the author has shown equal power of judgment and imagination. Nothing can be more striking than the violent and abrupt abbreviation of the measure in the fifth and sixth verses, when he feels the strong influence ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... to garotte). While at this interesting experiment we heard a voice cry, "Cheese it, cheese it, Harry! there's the 'Screw' looking at you!" which warned us that the prison warder was also taking notes, and my lesson for that day came to a rather abrupt conclusion. ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... exchanging brief sentences in which compliment played no insignificant part. To Brant, as he marked the heightened color flushing her fair cheeks, the experience brought back fond memories of his last cadet ball at the Point, and he hesitated to break the mystic spell with abrupt questioning. Curiosity, however, ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... vied with Pearce in his attention, and the two of them discomfited the others. The situation might have been amusing had it not been so terrible. Always the portent was a shadow behind their interest and amiability and jealousy. Except for that one abrupt and sinister move of Gulden's—that of a natural man beyond deceit—there was no word, no look, no act at which Joan could have been offended. They were joking, sarcastic, ironical, and sullen in their relation to each other; but to Joan each one presented what was naturally or what he ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... came down to breakfast next morning, with a white, wild face, and livid rings round his eyes, he electrified the family by his abrupt announcement: ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... was interrupted over his reports by the almost abrupt entrance of the officer of the day. His face was flushed, and it was evident that only the presence of his superior restrained his excitement. He held ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... with the broad distinctions of climate. In the northern plains the atmosphere is damp and heavy; in the southern mountain region it is dry and rare, and there are abrupt changes of temperature, sharp contrasts between the seasons, and devastating storms; but in both these zones men are hardened by conflict with the roughness of the climate. In Middle Germany, on the contrary, there is little of this struggle; the seasons are more equable, and the mild, soft ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... and entablature everywhere recur under different forms. The minor domes which flank the great dome of the cathedral of Florence enhance and reinforce the latter, and prepare the eye for a climax which would otherwise be too abrupt. The central pavilion of the Chateau Maintenon, with its two turrets, echoes the entire facade with its two towers. Like the overture to an opera, it introduces themes which find a more ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... shock; but her manner was composed, and the finely moulded hand which she rested upon the edge of the table was as steady as my own. Her sad, appealing eyes travelled from one to the other of us with a curiously inquisitive expression. That questioning gaze transformed itself suddenly into abrupt speech. ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... will have to worry along with me; but I shan't worry you more than I can help. I've got mystery and mischief enough here to keep me busy, God knows. Just ask Sloat to come back here to me, will you? And—Wilton, I did not mean to be abrupt with you. I'm all upset to-day. Mr. Adjutant, notify Mr. Jerrold at once that he must not leave the post until I have seen him. It is the colonel's ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... of this fun, they would play with a ball made of paper and wadding evenly wound about with thread or silk of various colors. They sang to the throws a song which seems abrupt because some portions have probably fallen into disuse; ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... according to his own fancy, that he is a complete sovereign in his own small way—the tyrant of Tampico. He has in his weather-beaten face such a mixture of bluffness and slyness, with his gigantic person, and abrupt, half-savage manners, that, altogether, I conceive him to be a character who might have been worthy the attention of Walter Scott, had he chanced to encounter him. Old and repulsive as he is, he has lately married a pretty ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... was probably sorry for his momentary loss of self-control, and gravely, but with eyes bent downward, answered with the abrupt phrase: ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... Peck had been a biscuit-shooter, I could account readily for her conversation, her equipped deportment, the maturity in her round, blue, marble eye. Her abrupt laugh, something beyond gay, was now sounding in response to Mr. McLean's lively sallies, and I found him fanning her into convalescence with his hat. She herself made but few remarks, but allowed the cow-puncher to entertain her, merely exclaiming briefly now and then, "I declare!" ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... she covered her husband's abrupt departure, for Godfrey had gone straight to the door, ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... it?" he inquired "when everybody knows he hasn't a beggarly stitch on earth but that strip of land he thinks so much of." "And whose fault is that, Bill Fletcher?" demanded the young man, throwing the last note down. "Oh, well, I don't bear you any grudge," responded Fletcher, with an abrupt assumption of goodnatured tolerance; "and to show I'm a well-meaning man in spite of abuse, I'll let the debt run on two years longer at the same interest if ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... of some high hills, near the northern extremity of Tres Montes. After breakfast the next morning, a party ascended one of these mountains, which was 2400 feet high. The scenery was remarkable The chief part of the range was composed of grand, solid, abrupt masses of granite, which appeared as if they had been coeval with the beginning of the world. The granite was capped with mica-slate, and this in the lapse of ages had been worn into strange finger- shaped points. ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... city, and the droning mills are dumb; One lone whippowil's shrill ditty calls her mate that ne'er will come. Sadly moans the mighty river, foaming down the fettered falls, Where of old he thundered ever o'er abrupt and lofty walls. Great Unktehee—god of waters—lifts no more his mighty head; Fled he with the timid otters?—lies he in the cavern dead? Hark!—the waters hush their sighing and the whippowil her call, Through the moon-lit mists are flying dusky shadows silent all. Lo ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... from the tailboard of the wagon Bruce Gilhooley reached the yoke, fiercely goading the oxen onward. With an abrupt lurch, in which the vehicle swayed precariously and ponderously from side to side, they started up the steep, snowy bank, and breaking into their ungainly rim were guided into the left fork of the road. It was a level stretch and fringed about with pines, ...
— Who Crosses Storm Mountain? - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... point where there was an abrupt and almost precipitous descent. From this crest of the precipice the eye could wander over a boundless prospect of green forest, terminated in the ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... from opportunity to reply to this outburst by Madame Jouval's abrupt departure. His loss of opportunity had its advantages. An adequate reply to her discharge of such a volley of home truths would have been difficult ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... the half-caste's eyes, as with an abrupt yet tender gesture he placed his huge brown hand on his sister's curly head; then, without a word, he seized a musket and cutlass, and with a farewell wave of his hand to the wondering old man, opened the door at the ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... to say squarely that he had lost. He knew that she was sufficiently distressed as it was, and he did not care to be too abrupt ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... good habits really means a too great emphasis on those virtues which mere custom can ensure, it means too little emphasis on those virtues which custom can never quite ensure, sudden and splendid virtues of inspired pity or of inspired candour. If ever that abrupt appeal is made to us we may fail. A man can get use to getting up at five o'clock in the morning. A man cannot very well get used to being burnt for his opinions; the first experiment is commonly fatal. Let us pay a little more attention to ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... and enemies, of whom either the brilliancy of his achievements or his somewhat abrupt and pointed methods of controversy seem to have made him a great many, have risen up, or rather seated themselves, and written him down—well, an individual who strains the truth. Indeed, only this morning one of these ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... taken by General Shields. It is said that when Colonel Connor, in command of the 12th Georgia Regiment, reported to Jackson at Winchester, and gave rather a sensational account of his defeat, the General looked up, and asked in his abrupt manner: "Colonel, how many men had you killed?" "None, I am glad to say, General." "How many wounded?" "Few or none, sir." "Do you call that fighting, sir?" said Jackson, and immediately placed him under arrest, from which he was not released for several months.) Banks, impressed ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... a hasty explanation of her presence in the luxurious rooms, but the girl waved her words aside with abrupt good humor. "You may not know her well," she insisted, smiling a pleasant wide smile. "But you simply must be some sort of a bob or she wouldn't take to you. Merton is ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... a fact of importance for me in these MSS., I shall be grateful for a communication; but my appeal is rather made to the possessors of old family papers. There must, I think, be many letters—though he was a brief and abrupt correspondent—of the admiral's still existing in the archives of old Puritan families. These are the materials of history of which I am ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... the valses may be danced: the first, second, fifth, sixth, and a few others. The dancing would be of necessity more picturesque and less conventional than required by the average valse, and there must be fluctuations of tempo, sudden surprises and abrupt languors. The mazurkas and polonaises are danced to-day in Poland, why not the valses? Chopin's genius reveals itself in these dance forms, and their presentation should be not solely a psychic one. Kullak, stern old pedagogue, ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... said Baxter, lifting his cap as he glanced at Miss Raven. "Don't think me too abrupt, nor intentionally rude, if I ask you what you and this ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... its purity, its nobility, its utter truthfulness. He knew the qualities of a mind that had no just self-appreciation. He felt, rather than knew, that no thought of his loving her—otherwise than as an elder brother might love a little sister—had ever crossed her consciousness. He felt that the abrupt suggestion of that thought would only shock ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... Salina. A drunk driving south from Topeka. Another accident near Wichita. But generally South Central Kansas was dead. The newspaper editor was about ready to go home—it was 10 o'clock—when the small talk he and the trooper had been making was brought to an abrupt finale by three high pitched beeps from the cruiser's radio. An important "all cars bulletin" was coming. Twenty- five years as a newspaperman had trained the editor to always be on the alert for ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... Jaguar having been banished for some years, and by the Gaucho not thinking it worth his while to hunt them. As I approached nearer and nearer they frequently made their peculiar noise, which is a low abrupt grunt, not having much actual sound, but rather arising from the sudden expulsion of air: the only noise I know at all like it, is the first hoarse bark of a large dog. Having watched the four from almost ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... predominate—in a word, that a republican government could never be any thing but a rascally one. While the philosophers, however, were busied in blushing at their stupidity in not having foreseen these inevitable evils, and intent upon the invention of new theories, the matter was put to an abrupt issue by a fellow of the name of Mob, who took every thing into his own hands and set up a despotism, in comparison with which those of the fabulous Zeros and Hellofagabaluses were respectable and delectable. This Mob (a foreigner, by-the-by), ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... here upon the lower branch of an elm, and sent forward a messenger, one of the eight magpies who attended him, to tell the commander-in-chief to wait upon him. Upon receiving the message, the general, hoping that at last the king had decided upon action, since so abrupt a summons to his side was somewhat unusual, flew hastily to the elm and saluted the monarch. Kapchack, without any preamble, announced his intention of forming the rooks into column, and falling at once upon the horde of barbarians. In the rooks, he said, and their loyal ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... returned Anton, "I do indeed feel sad. I can not dance the next dance with you, and am only come to apologize to you, and to the lady of the house, for my abrupt departure." ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... hundred thousand inhabitants. Its walls, six miles in circumference, were already two hundred years old. Unlike most Netherland cities, lying usually upon extensive plains, it was built along the sides of an abrupt promontory. A wide expanse of living verdure—cultivated gardens, shady groves, fertile cornfields—flowed round it like a sea. The foot of the town was washed by the little river Senne, while the irregular but picturesque streets rose up the steep sides ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... glance and disappear as the procession advances, now hidden by the hedge-rows, now flashing on the sight, in the autumnal sun, as it winds slowly along the devious road; louder and louder swell those short abrupt trumpet-notes as it draws near, till the whole sad array, in its affecting beauty, is presented to the eye. The life in death that pervades the melancholy ceremonial!—"Our brother is not dead, but sleepeth," seems written on the impressive pageant; and we almost expect, while we gaze, to see ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... if Carpenter was, he gave no sign. "Mary," he said, "I have been in grief." Then thinking, perhaps, that he had been abrupt, he added: "You, Mary—you have been ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... and most finely graduated series of transitions leads from bisexual to unisexual blossoms; and so in various other respects. Everywhere we may perceive that Nature secures her ends, and makes her distinctions on the whole manifest and real, but everywhere without abrupt breaks. We need not wonder, therefore, that gradations between species and varieties should occur; the more so, since genera, tribes, and other groups into which the naturalist collocates species are far from being always absolutely limited in Nature, though they are necessarily ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... because he alone knew the secret reason for Emerson Mead's abrupt departure. He thought Nick ought to know it, too, but he could not persuade himself that it would be the square thing for him to tell it to Ellhorn. "Nick ought to know it," he said to himself, "or he'll sure go doin' some fool thing, thinkin' Emerson's goin' away on account of the Whittaker ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... moon above, the irregular houses straggling round, the quaint old town-hall, with its elegant tower, and rather wheezy but most musical chimes; its neighbour, the black, solemn watch-tower, rising rude and abrupt, seven centuries old, whence there used to be strict look-out for the English. Down one of these side streets is a tall building, with its long rows of windows and shutters and closed door (Quillacq's, now Dessein's), once a favourite house—the ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... the most magnificent views in this part of Bohemia. Long and toilsome was this ascent; for though the main road was still beneath our feet, so perfectly had its fabricators set the rules of their art at defiance, that it ran sheer and abrupt, with scarce a trifling deflection, from the base to the summit. The sun, also, beat upon us with a power which we found it extremely uncomfortable to sustain, and our thirst was excessive. And here it may, perhaps, be ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... Creek,[1] a deep ravine with little water, which flows almost due north and empties into Snake Creek a little below the mouth of Owl Creek. The three principal creeks, Lick, Snake, and Owl, flow through swampy valleys, bordered by abrupt bluffs. Oak Creek, from the neighborhood of Shiloh Church to its mouth, flows through a miry bottom bordered by banks of less height. The land was for the most part covered with timber, partly with dense undergrowth; in places were perhaps a dozen open fields containing about eighty acres ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force
... must go to the Viking's castle," said the stork; "mother and the young ones are waiting for me there. How they will open their eyes and flap their wings! My wife, you see, does not say much; she is short and abrupt in her manner; but she means well, for all that. I will flap my wings at once, that they may hear us coming." Then stork-papa flapped his wings in first-rate style, and he and the swans flew ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... seen in the previous chapter, that the formal ceremony of a fashionable introduction, such as—"Mr. Sparkle, my friend Mr. Robert Tallyho, of Belville Hall; Mr. Tallyho, Mr. Charles Sparkle," was altogether omitted; indeed, the abrupt entrance of the latter rendered it utterly impossible, for although Sparkle was really a well-bred man, he had heard from Lady Jane of Tom's arrival with his young friend from the country. Etiquette between themselves, was at all times completely unnecessary, an air of gaiety ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... the suddenness with which it all went and he grew calm, coinciding as it did with the equally abrupt cessation of the humming and pattering outside—I think this was almost the strangest part of the whole business perhaps. For he just opened his eyes and turned his tired face up to me so that the dawn threw a pale light upon it through the doorway, ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... been on so rapid and continuous a current. As it whirled me along the narrow watercourse I was compelled to abandon my oars and use the paddle in order to have my face to the bow, as the abrupt turns of the stream seemed to wall me in on every side. Down the tortuous, black, rolling current went the paper canoe, with a giant forest covering the great swamp and screening me from the light of ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... vessel had lost all its pride and dignity, and seemed a poor, reeling, spiritless thing. The deck was deserted save for the little group about the hatch who strove with might and main to launch this last poor medium of rescue. The abrupt pitch of the deck made their frantic efforts seem all but hopeless, and walking, even standing, was quite out of the question. Tom could feel the ship heeling over ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
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