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More "Curtain" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... haggard, as if he had just committed a crime. He spoke aloud, and he trembled as he gave utterance for the first time to the cry that he had always loved her madly, passionately. Yes, ever since she had grown into womanhood he had adored her. And he saw her clearly before him, as if a curtain had been suddenly torn aside, as she was when, from an awkward girl, she became a charming and lovely creature, with her long tapering limbs, her strong slender body, with its round throat, round neck, and round and ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... embroiling the country in a war with Spain. On the contrary, he held that the true remedy of existing grievances in the first instance was an immediate declaration of war against both belligerents, which, now that the curtain is lifted, we see was the true remedy of the hour; but that, if from prudence a declaration of war was withheld, it was unwise, by a total cessation of our most gainful commerce, to inflict upon our own people all the injuries which war would produce without any of the advantages that might ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... slightest noise does not escape him. He heard the rolling of your carriage-wheels, and knows that you are here. He is expecting you, and has commanded that you come unannounced. Have the goodness to enter; you will be alone with the prince." He raised the curtain, and the countess looked ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... of gloom which is said to be the darkest time,—just before the dawn. This seemed to be so to the watchers, but shortly after five the curtain lifted. A slight haze was over the land, but they had found ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... he stood on his head or his heels at first, for, in spite of many rehearsals, everything seemed changed. Instead of daylight, gas shone everywhere, the empty seats were full, the orchestra playing splendidly, and when the curtain rose, a sea of friendly faces welcomed them, and the pleasant sound of applause made the hearts under the blue ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... made ready for sleep, in very close proximity to the hard ground, with a hanging canvas curtain between them. ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... the officers of the British Government that this suppliant before God never supposed, nor wished, that the matters [in dispute] between you and myself should come to this issue [literally, "should come out from the curtain"], or that the veil of friendship and amity, which has for many years been upheld between two neighbours and adjoining States, should, without any cause, ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... isn't the wanderers returned!" exclaimed their host, as he entered and saw the two. "Where's my boy? Hiding behind the window curtain?" ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... the room revealed a door partly hidden by a curtain next the mantelpiece. Where it led to I did not know, but concluding that any place would be better than to remain in the library, I tried the door, found it open, and ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer
... forward. "Let be, here's a friend!" Saying nothing, Penfeather thrust away the weapon, and gripping the little man in both hands, with prodigious strength jerked him bodily in through the window; which done, he clapped to the lattice and drawing the curtain stood fronting Godby grim-lipped. ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... A Platform before the Castle. As the Curtain rises, shouts and laughs are heard without. A Village Maiden rushes in, as if pursued. She hides herself behind the sentry-box, and then escapes. FRANCISCO, who is on his post, looks about, and is surrounded by Danish Gallants, who have come in pursuit of the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 6, 1892 • Various
... evening, he found his sunny Nell of old at work in the rooms. She was improvising a curtain of some kind, and as he came in she was standing off to study the effect. She had managed to make the room look pretty. Amy acknowledged that she herself had thought the case hopeless all the time, and had made up her mind ...
— The Hero of Hill House • Mable Hale
... England, and afterwards in the "Rose" on the Bankside, Southwark, the scene of the earliest successes of S. as an actor and playwright. Subsequently to 1594, he acted occasionally in a playhouse in Newington Butts, and between 1595 and 1599 in the "Curtain." In the latter year the "Globe" was built on the Bankside, and 10 years later the "Blackfriars:" and with these two, but especially with the former, the remainder of his professional life was associated. It is not unlikely that he visited various ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... striven to brighten the picture and awaken sympathy for the weakness of the woman, who, royal mistress though she was, could not command her love to be requited, the poetic measure of his lines roughens and hardens to the close, when the curtain falls on what is felt to be a ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... and most dolorous night, and so dolour may complain to dolour when we two meet.... And this is more plain than ever I spoke, to let you know you have a companion in trouble."[89] Once we have the curtain raised for a moment, and can look at the two together for the length of a phrase. "After the writing of this preceding," writes Knox, "your brother and mine, Harrie Wycliffe, did advertise me by writing, that your adversary (the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and comets have orbits to which the laws of the stars do not apply. For all ordinary people, this thick candle-end is a delicious substitute for the ghastly rush-light in its chequered cage, which threw strange figures on wall and curtain, and gave nervous women the megrims. But nothing more is known of Belmonts or night-lights; their birthplace, and the manner of their making, are alike hidden from the outer world; the uninitiated accept the arcana of tallow only in the positive form. It is generally ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... upon us. This fateful year was not more successful than we had been in solving the problems which it had set itself, but it demonstrated the fragility of many things which were supposed to be solid, and to young and active minds it seemed like the lowering of a curtain of ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... these same Judas Thomas's Acts, which are not later than the fourth century, we find (eighth act) the story of Mygdonia and Karish. Mygdonia, the wife of Karish, is converted by Thomas and flees from her husband, naked save for the curtain of the chamber door which she has wrapped around her, to her old nurse. With the nurse she goes to Thomas, who pours holy oil over her head, bidding the nurse to anoint her all over with it; then a cloth is put round her loins and he baptizes her; then she is clothed and he gives her ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... way along the paths Made new by walls of moving mist receding The more we follow. . . . What a silver night! That was our bench the time you said to me The long new poem—but how different now, How eerie with the curtain of the fog Making it strange to all the friendly trees! There is no wind, and yet great curving scrolls Carve themselves, ever changing, in the mist. Walk on a little, let me stand here watching To see you, too, grown ...
— Love Songs • Sara Teasdale
... a considerable distance, a rude bridge was discerned, sufficiently indicating a path to some house or village in that direction. The wind was rising in sharp and heavy gusts. The moon, not yet above the hills, was brightening the dark clouds that hung behind them like a huge curtain. The sky was studded, in beauteous intervals, with hosts of stars. This light enabled them to follow a narrow footpath, which, abruptly turning the head of a projecting crag, showed them a distant glimmer as though from some friendly habitation. Seaton bounded ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... saloon. FRITZ enters and goes through an entire programme of negro minstrelsy, to the wild delight of the gallery. At last the lazy curtain slowly consents ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... on the unhappy destiny of early risers; and finally, after many turns and grunts, having decided upon defying all engagements and duties, I fell asleep once more. In an instant I was seated in the pit of Her Majesty's Theatre, gazing upon the curtain, and, in common with a large and brilliant audience, anxiously awaiting its arising, and the appearance of Duprez. The curtain does rise; the orchestra are active; Duprez has bowed her thanks to an applauding concourse; and the opera is half concluded: when, just as the theatre ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... little box, one of the new ones, placed as in a French theatre. The great place was nearly dark as they entered, except for the blaze of light that shone through the curtain. The odour of cigarette-smoke and scent greeted them, with the rustle of dresses and the subdued sound of gay talk. The band struck up. Then, after the rolling overture, the curtain ran swiftly up, and a smart young person ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... clad in striking robes, and the party proceeded to the North Parade, from which Allen's house is now reached by a passage way. The house is built of stone, and has a very handsome front in the style of the classical Renaissance. In drawing aside the curtain, which veiled the tablet, on which was inscribed "Here lived Ralph Allen, 1727-1764," Lord Londonderry said that there was probably not one of the great men who had been associated with Bath who was more of a benefactor to his town, as ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... Susan Chapman, was watching them from a window as they walked and talked. She bit her lips anxiously as she stood behind the curtain. She was trying to imagine what they might be saying to each other. Suppose it was something which told against her. And why should it not be so? What good could be said? Janway's Mills had borne in upon her the complete sense of her outcast state. ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the Plynck was saying, as Sara dropped the curtain behind her the next morning, "to fly around the fountain at least twice every day." As she spoke, she reached out and took, from a bundle that lay within easy reach in a crotch of the Gugollaph-tree, ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... knew neither carpet, curtain, nor blind. The sun, the wind, and not seldom the rain and snow were free of it. A small collapsible camp-bed, a copper basin and jug, an old chest, a corner cupboard—these constituted the furniture. The walls were whitewashed. Three of them knew no pictures. On one was her hunting-crop, ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... fled with steps uncertain On a thousand-year long race, But the bellying of the curtain Kept me always in one place; While the tumult rose and maddened To the roar of Earth on fire, Ere it ebbed and sank and saddened To a ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... things hid? wherefore have these gifts a curtain before them? are they like to take dust, like Mistress Mall's picture? why dost thou not go to church in a galliard and come home in a coranto? My very walk should be a jig; I would not so much as make water but in a sink-a-pace. What dost thou mean? is it a world to hide virtues in? I did think, ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... moments, I shook with sobs. For a long time I knelt there, holding her hand; and surely it is the darkest hour I ever lived. Afterwards I stood by the open window and looked through the crevice of the curtain. The shouts, laughter, and cries of the two children had come up into the chamber from the open air, making a strange contrast with the death-bed scene. And now, through the crevice of the curtain, I saw my little Una of the golden ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... me through some narrow passages until we emerged into a spacious hall, at one end of which hung a curtain. Advancing towards this with silent tread, we were able to look through a slight aperture, where the curtain fell away from the pillar, into the room beyond. It was small and cosy, and a fire burned in the grate, before ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... I, my boy!" and, holding his hand out, Harry had no difficulty in recognizing his master and friend, Father Holt. A curtain was over the window of the chaplain's room that looked to the court, and Harry saw that the smoke came from a great flame of papers which were burning in a brazier when he entered the chaplain's room. After giving a hasty greeting and blessing ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... my life again. It is no good trying to set too fine a face upon this complex business, there is gold and clay and sunlight and savagery in every love story, and a multitude of elvish elements peeped out beneath the fine rich curtain of affection that masked our future. I've never properly weighed how immensely my vanity was gratified by her clear preference for me. Nor can I for a moment determine how much deliberate intention I hide ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... somewhat, for it was not the rank of a young dandy. He was nevertheless curious to know who this personage was with whom the countess had been shut up so long. Hearing no one approach the room he was in, he went to the window and opened the curtain cautiously, prepared to let it drop back at the slightest noise, and to make a quick right-about-face to avoid being caught, "flagrante delicto," in curiosity. An elegant coupe, standing at a little distance, was now driven up to the house, a footman in showy livery ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... pass the time, and not to wrest from it a blessing or a triumph, is the main object. The badges, the gardens, the smiles, the agreeable phrase, the keen repartee, the tempting dish, the ingenious vaudeville, the pretty foot, the elegant chair and becoming curtain, the extravagant gesture, the pointed epigram or alluring formula, must be taken as so many agreeabilities,—not for things performed, but imaginatively promised. The folly of war has been demonstrated to the entire ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... to play their part. The curtain rises, the story begins. The morning breaks slowly, the gray streaks redden, a lovely summer landscape lies bathed in primrose light. Under the shadow of a noble tree, the aged knight. Gurnemanz, has been resting with two young attendants. From the neighboring ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... a helpless human being; and that somewhere beyond was his master, calling to them from out the cold and the dark. So, blindly, willingly, they followed the intrepid man who staggered on, and on, till at last the fury of the storm was over. Then the chill mist seemed to rise, as a curtain, and the peaceful Valley of the Kruzgamapa lay before them, bathed in the glow of the ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... a soft air, the curtain rises slowly and discovers an Indian boy and girl sleeping under two plantain-trees; and, when the curtain is almost up, the music turns into a tune expressing an alarm, at which ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... deepened in the school-room, for a curtain of clouds was sweeping across the moon. Peering through the window, over the flats, I saw a light gleaming steadily at the head of the village street. It was my light burning in the window, and I knew that Tim was there, waiting for me. All the past rose up to tell me that he ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... structures, the true defence of mediaeval forts, from which the besieged delivered their missiles with far more freedom and variety of range than they could shoot through the oblique but immovable loopholes of the curtain, or even through the sloping crenelets of the higher towers. On this the besiegers brought up mangonels, and set them hurling huge stones at these woodworks and battering them to pieces. Contemporaneously they built a triangular wooden tower as high ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... stall at the West End Theater one evening, he was constantly irritated by his next neighbor—a lady—who not only went out between the acts, but several times while the curtain was up. The space between the run of seats was narrow, and the annoyance as ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... supposed that he had imagined the whole thing. He had not seen anything definitely; he had merely felt that eyes were watching him; what had seemed a figure across deck might have been the oil coat hanging on a peg or a curtain blowing out of a window. The more he thought over the matter the more assured was he that he had allowed his imaginings to make a fool of him. And by the time the sun flooded the decks next morning he was ready to forget ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... Winnipeg. Coming down two weeks ago we camped near a band of Sioux, and I declare, as I passed a tepee, I saw a woman's face that looked as white as snow. She was sleeping, and the curtain had blown up. Her child was in her arms, and I tell you her bare arms ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... innermost part being of "releeve or whole round," the rest painted. On the left a cave, and on the right a thicket, from which issued Orpheus. At the back part of the scene, at the sudden fall of a curtain, the upper part broke on the spectators, a heaven of clouds of all hues; the stars suddenly vanished, the clouds dispersed; an element of artificial fire played about the house of Prometheus—a bright and transparent cloud, reaching from the heavens ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... as he recognized its genial note. This was one of the things he had prepared himself for, but, now that it had happened, he felt a wave of stage-fright such as he had only once experienced before in his life—on the occasion when he had been young enough and inexperienced enough to take a curtain-call on a first night. Reggie Byng was friendly, and would not wilfully betray him; but Reggie was also a babbler, who could not be trusted to keep things to himself. It was necessary, he perceived, to take ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... true that memory sometimes, as in a vision, seems to raise the curtain upon the past and restore it to us in its pristine reality. We may imagine at such moments experience can never really perish, but, though hidden by chance from the roving eye, endures eternally in some spiritual ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... caught it up and was already at his elbow. His hand was shaking so that the light danced wildly now upon the carpet, now upon the green walls. This room also was deserted. A black gap in the curtain showed where the material had been roughly ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... alight, into his cap before he sat down to table; and everyone laughed. A fly, attracted, no doubt, by the sailor's red nose, persisted on settling on it, and when moving too slowly to catch it he knocked it away, it went over to a very fly-spotted curtain whence it seemed to eagerly watch the sailor's highly-colored nasal organ, for it soon flew back and settled ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... through a little hole in the curtain, saw one of the most fashionable audiences old Baltimore had ever turned out—the largest, in fact, Herr Deichenberg had ever drawn to one of his affairs, though the drawing power of the old professor had always ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... requirements of the work on hand. Each man's gift was needed, and each in its place was equally necessary. The jewels on the high-priest's breastplate were no more nor less essential than the wood that made some peg for a curtain, or than the cheap goat's-hair yarn that was woven into the coarse cloth flung over the roof of the Tabernacle to keep the wet out. All had equal consecration, because all made one whole. All was equally precious, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... to sit down, for Nannie had not seconded her mother's invitation, and the disappointed boy only lingered to take one peep under the curtain of the cradle of Winnie, and then went home to his abode with a downcast mien, ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... where it would keep just warm, slipped out of the room, letting the curtain at its entrance fall behind him. The sun was touching the white bedclothes with a lingering ray. Passing softly away, it left the room in shade which felt pleasant ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... Massachusetts made a strong speech to the same effect. "Make your officer responsible," he said with prophetic vision, "and the presumption is, that plans and information are properly digested; but if he can secrete himself behind the curtain, he might create a noxious influence, and not be answerable ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... the conversation of the courtiers around him, but it could easily be perceived that he gave but little, if any, attention to their remarks. In fact, hardly had the sound of the rings drawn along the curtain-rods announced that Madame was dressed, and that the goddess was about to make her reappearance, than the king, returning to his former post immediately, and running quite close to the river-bank, gave the signal for all those to approach whose duty or pleasure ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... The curtain was just going down on the dolls' pantomime, and the audience was applauding and hurrying off to make the rounds of the other attractions before dinner time. In clarion tones that made themselves heard above the din Emily Davis was advertising an auction of her animals, beginning with "one perfectly ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... near Thebes. Equally eminent as excavator, philologist, and historian, Maspero was the first to popularize Egyptology in France, as Flinders Petrie, the greatest excavator since Mariette, has popularized it in England. Until twenty years ago the curtain rose on the pyramid-builders of the Fourth dynasty. We have now not only recovered the earlier dynasties, but neolithic and palaeolithic Egypt emerges from the primitive cemeteries. The immense accession of new material has enabled Eduard Meyer to construct something like a definite chronology; ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... warfare of his future life, by regarding one set of opinions so steadily, as to leave little reason to apprehend he would ever abandon the most trifling of the outworks of his faith. No citadel ever presented a more hopeless curtain to the besieger, than did the mind of this zealot to the efforts of conviction; for on the side of his opponents, he contrived that every avenue should be closed by a wall blank as indomitable obstinacy could oppose. He appeared to think that all the minor conditions ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... intertwine, The green gauze now is also pasted on the straw windows! What about the cosmetic fresh concocted or the powder just scented; Why has the hair too on each temple become white like hoarfrost! Yesterday the tumulus of yellow earth buried the bleached bones, To-night under the red silk curtain reclines the couple! Gold fills the coffers, silver fills the boxes, But in a twinkle, the beggars will all abuse you! While you deplore that the life of others is not long, You forget that you yourself ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... the Caesar rapidly and continually informed of all the questions which were put and all the answers which were given; and by his pitiless orders, urged as he was by the persuasions of the queen, who kept her ear at the curtain, many were put to death without being permitted to soften the accusations brought against them, or to say a word ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... to feel in the baron's pockets, came upon a bunch of keys, first made sure that the portmanteau behind the curtain held no papers or jewels, and then went ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... with the lace of the window curtain. He had no intention of evading his duty, and yet he did not find it agreeable ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... such epilogue the curtain will descend on the great drama now approaching a close. It will be for the younger generations, the reincarnate souls of those who fell in battle, to inaugurate the work of giving expression, in deathless forms of art, to the vision of that ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... off. So I left the track and walked a few hundred yards, and when I got to the edge the hollow was full of mist all white underneath me. Another star appeared and a cold wind arose, and with the wind the mist flapped away like a curtain. ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... faithful servants; and all the while they are together, sighing because of yours and laboring for your freedom. But you have only tears in your eyes, and they, arms in hand, are fighting your enemies. As for us two, we were talking of taking to flight tomorrow, when your voice made us draw the curtain. Bethink you, sir, that, after us, the hands that will serve you would not dare refuse to employ poison and the knife." Henry, much moved, resolved to follow the example of the Duke of Anjou. His departure was fixed for ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... scene the night betrayed. In perspective the wall ahead narrowed, until the two sides seemed to come to a point. Back of all was the thick curtain of black that had settled down over the gulf. A little farther out, too, the water seemed rougher. There would seem to be hardly a doubt that ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... was open and the curtain drawed down tight. I was settin' inside, smokin' and goin' over the situation, when footsteps sounded on the piazza and a couple come to anchor on the settee right by that window. Cap'n Jonadab and ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... but a little while ago there was a kind of drawing aside of the thick curtain of falling snow, and I had a view of some terribly grand rocks, and one glimpse of a most ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... from a stool at our passing. I thought I saw Castro's peaked hat and large cloak flit in the gloom into which fell the light from the small doorway of a sort of guardroom near the closed gate. We continued along the arcaded walk; a double curtain was drawn to right and left before me, ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... walls and ceiling are exquisitely frescoed, and ornamented with bas reliefs in plaster. The proscenium is beautifully carved and frescoed, and is adorned with busts of the elder Booth and the proprietor of the theatre; and in the sides before the curtain are arranged six sumptuous private boxes. The curtain is an exquisite landscape. The decoration of the house is not done in the rough scenic style so common in the theatres of the country, but is the perfection of frescoe painting, and will bear the closest inspection. It is impossible, ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... of anticlimax, ran from the sight of Vittoria when she was called, after the fall of the curtain. He made his way to Rocco Ricci (who had given his bow to the public from his perch), and found the maestro drinking Asti to counteract his natural excitement. Rocco told Agostino, that up to the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... him violently to the floor, and caned him until he had exhausted the strength of his arm on the poor boy's body. His fury growing with the exercise of it, he now dragged the unresisting victim to the windows, seized the curtain cord, and twisted it tightly around his neck. Frederick had barely strength enough to grasp his father's hand and scream for help. The old brute would probably have strangled him had not a chamberlain rushed in and saved ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... humor the lad, for we were not incurious respecting the picture, and we accompanied him forthwith. His room was quite large, well lighted and airy, with a sleeping-closet attached. Over the blank wall opposite the windows hung a black muslin curtain of most funereal aspect, which rolled up to the ceiling by means of a cord and pulley, and, being now down, effectually concealed from view what we had come to see. Clarian placed three or four ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... infinity, by whatever conventionalism sought, the desire is the same in all, the instinct constant, it is no mere point of light that is wanted in the etching of Rembrandt above instanced, a gleam of armor or fold of temple curtain would have been utterly valueless, neither is it liberty, for though we cut down hedges and level hills, and give what waste and plain we choose, on the right hand and the left, it is all comfortless and undesired, so long as we ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... this with a little mixed sour, this and the rest and the corn which is grain, this and the best and certainly no kind of way of saying that it was unexpected, this completed the single selection of a curtain of repetition. This was ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... world will be squared away. Some call it a Day of Judgment; I like best to think of it as a day of explanations. I want to hear God's side. Also I know we shall not have to lie weary centuries waiting for it. When the black curtain of death falls on life's troubled scenes, there will appear on it these words in letters of gold, "End of Part I. ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... all manner of cries, piercing screams and shrill wailings dreadful to hear, while the deck beneath me, the air about me reeled and quivered to the never-ceasing thunder of artillery. But ever and anon, through some rent in this smoky curtain, I might catch a glimpse of the English ship, her shot-scarred side and rent sails, or the grim havoc of our own decks. And amidst it all, and hard beside me where I crouched in the shelter of the mizzenmast, I beheld Resolution Day limping to and fro, jovial of voice, cheering ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... a way," replied Prescott confidently. "Lift the curtain from the window and look. The night is dark and cold; all who can will be under roofs, and even the sentinels will hug walls and earthworks. ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... is still talking as the final curtain descends upon these three: GIBSON seated at his desk, looking fixedly at SIMPSON, NORA waiting thoughtfully by the door that ...
— The Gibson Upright • Booth Tarkington
... gaunt as a gallows-tree, and here the projecting end of a fallen cross. Between showed no vestige of an opening; dark, impervious, formidable as a fortress wall, the tunal met the eye. Ferne, attacking it with his sword, thrust aside a heavy curtain of broad-leaved vine, came upon a network of thorn and spike and prickly leaf, hewed this away, to find behind it a like barrier. Evidently the man had lied!—to what purpose Sir Mortimer Ferne would presently make it his business to discover.... There overtook ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... foam and gyrating in dizzy whirlpools, its surface broken by explosions of spray or pitted by devouring vortices resembling the oily mouths of marine monsters. Below this, in turn, is the White Horse, worst of all. Here the flood somersaults over a tremendous reef, flinging on high a gleaming curtain of spray. These rapids are well named, for the tossing waves resemble nothing more than runaway white horses with ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... was awaked by three or four drums, which Banter had placed under the window; upon which I withdrew the curtain, and enjoyed the unspeakable satisfaction of contemplating those angelic charms which were now in my possession! Beauty! which, whether sleeping or awake, shot forth peculiar graces! The light darting upon my Narcissa's eyes, she awoke also, and recollecting ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... enormous opinion of herself which Mrs. Gresley so frequently deplored, for Hester's thoughts seldom dwelt upon herself. But the altered circumstances of her life forced them momentarily upon herself nevertheless, as a burst pipe will spread its waters down a damask curtain. ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... when the blessed diurnal light Is quench'd by the providential night, To render our slumber more certain! Pity, pity the wretches that weep, For they must be wretched, who cannot sleep When God himself draws the curtain! ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... forms a natural riverine boundary with Zambia; in full flood (February-April) the massive Victoria Falls on the river forms the world's largest curtain of falling water ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... when Sleep Came o'er my sense, the dream went on; Nor, through her curtain dim and deep, Hath ever lovelier vision shone. I thought that, all enrapt, I strayed Through that serene, luxurious shade, Where Epicurus taught the Loves To polish virtue's native brightness,— As pearls, we're told, that fondling doves Have played with, wear a smoother whiteness.[1] 'Twas ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... the evening we were entertained with a sight, that is indeed singularly curious and interesting. In a particular part of the garden a curtain was drawn up, and by means of some mechanism of extraordinary ingenuity, the eye and the ear are so completely deceived, that it is not easy to persuade one's self it is a deception, and that one does not actually see and hear a natural ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... Patty, draping the curtain round her shoulders, sontag fashion. "These are fine. Now, see, I'm getting your ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... better for him, - the less pain and sorrow are his. When the mist of mortal mind evap- orates, the curse will be removed which says to woman, 557:18 "In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children." Divine Science rolls back the clouds of error with the light of Truth, and lifts the curtain on man as never born and as 557:21 never dying, but ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... confessed, at that first public performance, to all those tributary clarifying rills to the play's progress: but, as it was, vainglory combined with an aversion to "speech-making" to compel a taciturn if smirking acceptance of the curtain-call with which an indulgent audience flustered the nominal author of The Jewel Merchants.... Now, in any case, it is due my collaborators to tell you that The Jewel Merchants has amply fulfilled the purpose of its makers by being enacted to considerable ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... large calico curtains drawn across the windows. Serge's eyes, especially, were attracted to them as to the very source of light, in which he sought to steep himself, as in diluted sunshine fitted to his weakness. He could tell that the sun lay behind that yellower gleam upon one corner of the curtain, and that sufficed to make him feel himself again. Meanwhile a far-off rustle of leaves came upon his listening ear, and against the right-hand window the clean-cut greenish shadow of a lofty bough brought him disturbing thoughts of the forest ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... as the space and the sizes of the covers are not always the same. The back is covered with thin boards placed vertically. The front can be covered with a curtain or a paneled door as shown. —Contributed by Gilbert A. ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... in a fan of electric flame, and then the shafts all merged into a filmy, pale chrome sheet. This faded and intensified alternately, and then in an instant disappeared, but more flaming lights burst into view in other parts of the heavens, and a phantom curtain of glittering electric violet trembled between the ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... the sister remains enchanted, and cannot be released till the glass is broken and the light extinguished; which can only be done by a Lady who is neither maid, wife, nor widow. The Spirit blows a magical horn, and the Lady appears, breaks the glass, and puts out the light. A curtain being then withdrawn discovers the sister asleep; she is disenchanted, joins her brothers, and the Spirit vanishes.—The resemblance to Milton's Comus need not be pointed out. The difference of the two pieces in all points ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... the outstretched hand of the slave into the dark passage where, in the crimson glow of the hanging curtain, close by its other end, she could see a small dark form crouching near the wall. Her mother was feasting her eyes and ears with what was taking place on the front verandah, and Nina approached to take her share in the rare pleasure of some novelty. She was met by her mother's extended ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... enjoyed our mountain retreat very much. The bath was a remarkable feature—a natural stone basin, under the shadow of a great rock, fed by the clearest streamlet and sheltered from view by a heavy bit of curtain, was our bathing-place. We carried a little leaf bucket and our towels in our hands, and while we poured the fresh water over our heads we could now and then stop to look at the great expanse of plain and forest, with silver rivers winding amidst them, and blue smoke stealing up here and there to ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... come. Mrs. McAlister came back from a final survey of the corner house, made her eleventh tour of the parlor, dining-room and kitchen at The Savins, and then took her stand at the front window where she tapped restlessly on the glass and swayed the curtain to and fro impatiently. She was not a nervous woman; but to-night her mood demanded constant action. Moreover, it was only an hour and a quarter before the train was due. If she were not watchful, the carriage might ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... to sleep in the shadow of the church, under a black cross, in a bed with a coverlet of grass, for Fanny's bed had been her grandfather's when he was a little baby, and the little girl slept now in the same place as her ancestor. She slept. A cotton curtain with a pattern of roses protected her slumbers. She slept and dreamed. She saw the blue bird flying toward the castle of his love. He looked as beautiful as a star, but she did not expect for a moment to see him perch ...
— Our Children - Scenes from the Country and the Town • Anatole France
... had he dropped the pencil when the wizard lifted a corner of the curtain which hung over the doorway, and advanced into the room. Seeing a paper on the table, he picked it up, and great was his ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... barely-smothered groan. He was beginning to realize the tragedy upon which he had stumbled. A comic singer followed, who in a dress suit several sizes too large for him gave an imitation of a popular Irish comedian. Then the curtain went up and the professor was seen, standing in front of the curtain and bowing solemnly to a somewhat unresponsive audience. A minute later Beatrice came quietly in and sat by his side. There was nothing new about ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... work, when the audience had been half strangled by the too realistic fumes from the altar, and the chorus, huddled at the back of the stage, had sung the Rain Chorus off the key, to the accompaniment of the torrent which poured down in a thin sheet just back of the curtain, raining neither on the just nor on the unjust, but falling accurately into the groove for the footlights between them. He had sung The Messiah and Arminius until they were a weariness to his flesh, and Hiawatha's call to Gitche Manito, the Mighty ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... passed the outermost shack a light flashed up within it. He saw Marie's head and shoulder silhouetted against the curtain. He recognized her immediately by the heavy mass of her hair. No other woman in Farewell possessed such ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... corner, or the first violin in another. One or two young farmers' boys were a little uproarious with egg-pop, and danced awkward breakdowns at the end of the tent. Then a cracked bell sounded and the curtain rose, showing hardly more of the stage ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... of no mean family, and of form and feature nowise disabled, for he was a brave gentleman, and a very fine courtier, and for the time which he stayed there, which was not lasting, very high in her grace; but he came in, and went out through disassiduity, drew the curtain between himself and the light of her grace, and then death overwhelmed the remnant, and utterly deprived him of recovery; and they say of him that had he brought less to her Court than he did, he might have carried away more than he brought, for he had ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... the pretty muslin curtain of her kitchen window. She was standing in exactly the same place and attitude she had stood in eight months before, on the first day of war. But oh, how different were the sensations and the thoughts with which she now looked out on the familiar scene! She had ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... not, Rowland," she answered. "I cannot break my vow. I will confide it to Father Spencer, who will acquaint you with it when I am no more. Undraw the curtain, love," she added to Thames, "that I ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... magnanimity in doing so, that there had been some reason for her quick withdrawal from his studio or at any rate for her extreme discomposure there. He had a few days before put in a plea for a snatch of worship in that sanctuary and she had accepted and approved it; but the worship, when the curtain happened to blow back, showed for that of a magnificent young woman, an actress with disordered hair, who wore in a singular degree the appearance of a person settled for many hours. The explanation was easy: it dwelt in the simple truth that when one was painting, even ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... me much that our finale has pleased, and that the curtain drops gracefully.[12] You deserve it should, for your promptitude and good nature in arranging immediately with Mr. Dallas; and I can assure you that I esteem your entering so warmly into the subject, and writing to me so soon upon it, as a personal obligation. We shall now part, I hope, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... young to die," Grace observed; "but I am weary of the world. It is my wish to submit myself to the will of God; but, blessed be his holy name, that he sees fit to call me to him this day. Lucy, beloved one—go into the next room, and draw the curtain asunder; I shall then be enabled to gaze on the fields of dear Clawbonny once more; that will be my last look at ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... the Moorish walls by the original gateways. The road, stony and rugged beyond measure, now took to the mountains. From the opposite height, there was a fine view of the town, perched like an eagle's nest on the verge of its tremendous cliffs; but a curtain of rain soon fell before it, and the dense dark clouds settled around us, and filled up the gorges on either hand. Hour after hour, we toiled along the slippery paths, scaling the high ridges by rocky ladders, up which our horses climbed with the greatest difficulty. The scenery, whenever ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... of their choice. The parents then interfere, and the preliminaries being settled, a birnbang takes place. The young women proceed in a body to the upper end of the balli (hall), where there is a part divided off for them by a curtain. They do not always make their appearance before dinner, that time, previous to a second or third meal, being appropriated to cock-fighting or other diversions peculiar to men. In the evening their other amusements take place, of which the dances are the principal. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... brink of some terrible disaster. Surji Rao's wife was a clever woman, and she arranged such a feeling in the Maharajah's zenana, that one day as Dr. Roberts passed along a corridor to His Highness's apartment, a curtain opened swiftly, and some one in the dark behind spat at him. Amongst them they managed to make His Highness extremely uncomfortable. But the old man continued to decline obstinately to send ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... harmony, did our voices blend! Ah! It is impossible to describe this impression. Probably, it happens but once in a lifetime. According to the role, I had to weep, and I wept with sincere, genuine tears. And when, after the curtain, he walked up to me and patted my hair with his big warm hand and with his enchanting, radiant smile said, 'Splendid! for the first time in my life have I sung so' ... and so I—and I am a very proud being—I kissed his hand. And the tears were ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... dandy for a circus net!" Teddy went on. "You can hold one end, and I'll hold the other. But we won't make the tower any higher for a while. I'll get a curtain for a net." ...
— The Curlytops and Their Pets - or Uncle Toby's Strange Collection • Howard R. Garis
... usual first flat, with the cloak upon the nail, the rosaries of onions, the gun and powder-horn and corner-cupboard; here is the inn (this drama must be nautical, I foresee Captain Luff and Bold Bob Bowsprit) with the red curtain, pipes, spittoons, and eight-day clock; and there again is that impressive dungeon with the chains, which was so dull to colour. England, the hedgerow elms, the thin brick houses, windmills, glimpses of the navigable Thames—England, when at last I came to visit it, was only Skelt made evident: ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... He retired to the curtain alcove, and Pearson heard him rustling about, evidently making a hurried change of raiment. During this process he ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... himself go and collects himself as the work before him demands. There are some books, where it is necessary to let one's self go from beginning to end. There are others where a man may sit as he sits at a play, being himself between acts, or at proper intervals when the author lets down the curtain, and being translated the ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... Sardinia went in state to the Carlo Felice Theatre at Genoa, and presented to the public, says an Italian correspondent, his niece, the betrothed bride of the heir-apparent of the house of Austria. At seven the court arrived, the curtain rose, and displayed the whole corps dramatique, who sang Dio Salve il Re; or an Italian version of the words and music of our "God save the King," in which Madame Caradori took the principal part. Thus our national anthem is getting naturalized in Italy, the parent of song, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various
... Monpavon of the club, of the foyer of the Varietes, asking news of the Chamber, how matters stood with regard to the Nabob's election—all this coldly, without the least affectation. Then, tired, no doubt, or fearing lest his glance, constantly drawn to that curtain opposite him, from behind which the sentence was to come presently, should betray the emotion which he must have felt in the depths of his soul, he laid his head on the pillow, closed his eyes, and did not ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... A perfectly plain asbestos fire-curtain descended in front of the already locked door. It was none of his business to dispute the drive. If there were any discrepancies between estimate and results, one might be sure that the enemy knew about them, which was ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... should advance with caution, lest, ere properly admonished of its presence, their persons should be exposed to some lurking danger. When the three, however, were safely established behind the thick curtain of plank and earth that covered and commanded the entrance, and where their persons, from the shoulders downward, were completely protected, alike from shot and arrow, Content demanded to know, who applied at his gates for ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... time I ever was present at a dramatic representation: it was the benefit of that great actor[5] who was proceeding rapidly toward the highest paths of fame, when death, dropped the oblivious curtain, and closed the scene for ever. The part which he performed was King Lear; his wife, afterward Mrs. Fisher, played Cordelia, but not with sufficient eclat to render the profession an object for her future exertions. The whole school attended, Mr. Powel's two daughters being then pupils ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... and his wife were prosperous people. But they could not be satisfied to have so much done for them and not know to whom they should be grateful. So one night, after the shoemaker had left the pieces of leather on the bench, he and his wife hid themselves behind a curtain, and left a ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... in the summer of 1916, I heard childless women say: "Would that I had six sons to give to France!" I heard unmarried women say: "Thank heaven I never married!" I heard bitterness expressed by bereft mothers, terror and despair by others when the curtain had rung down and they could relax the proud and smiling front they presented to the world. Not one would have had her son shirk his duty, nor asked for compromise with the enemy, but all prayed for the war to end. It is true that these men ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... that last scene on Golgotha,—the agony of the dying Saviour, the taunts of the lictors, the wailing of the holy women, the shrieks of the dead whose graves are opened, and who cry aloud for mercy, and finally the rending of the Temple curtain, and the chorus of angels in heaven. All this affects even the most hardened of skeptics with a power that cannot be withstood. For the time being the imagination ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... fell and the curtain descended quickly. The woman by the marquis' side, who had trembled at first, now forced a laugh, as she said: "The trollop can curse! Let us go." Together they left the box, the marquis regretting the temerity which ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... back on his pillows in hopeless gloom, watching the shadows of the big elm by his window flickering over curtain and coverlet. The great elm—or "Old Top," as it had been affectionately called by generations of students—was the pride of the college grounds. Many a newcomer felt his heart warm to his strange surroundings when he found the ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... in each hand. Wave a hand to your followers to keep back—or come on: it makes no difference. Then you crawl in on your stomach, give a terrific howl, and stab me in the back. That rolls me under the curtain, and so lets me out. The missus ups with the wood-chopper and stands before the cradle, while you yell and dance round with the knives. That ought to be made 'the moment' of the whole piece. The great thing is to make enough noise. ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... back and forth among their troops, but their gaze was upon the crest. The men lay down ax and spade for the time, and reached for their arms. Robert saw the sunlight glittering on musket and bayonet, and once more he thrilled at the thought of the great drama on which the curtain was now rising. ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... bulwarks at eight o'clock the next morning. White mist was all around us, a sea with no horizon. Suddenly, like the curtain of a theatre, the mist rose. Gradually the horizon-line appeared, then a line of low coast, which, muddy-looking as it was, made one's heart beat thick and fast. Then lines of dark wood; then the shore was dotted with grey huts; then the sun came out, the breeze was soft and mild, and ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Christians by attending them; and he adds that the government teachers and books are "all positively heathen or quite destitute of all religion." In some parts of the country the government schools secure the attendance of high-caste girls by allowing them to be placed behind a curtain, and thus screened from the eyes of the male teacher or inspector, as all the women of such classes are screened from male visitors. Even the physician sees only a hand protruded from under a curtain, and by the touch of this, with a few unsatisfactory answers to his questions, he is supposed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... Through the curtain-chink From the sheet of glistening white; One without looks in to-night As we sit ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... up, he slightly drew aside a thick curtain that hung before a casement, a moment later he let it fall again. "There are two men-at-arms standing on the other side of the street and one at the door." He heard the door opened, then the boy's step was heard on the stairs, two or three minutes later there ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... the very loop of the curtain, And the very curve of the vine, Were full of the grace and the meaning Which was ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... fear as to that," said Andre. "Do you think I've risked my neck painting the curtain and scenery, and worked myself thin over it generally, not to get what I deserve in return. My name was next down after Sir William's for a box, and in it such beauty shall be exhibited that 't is likely we poor Thespians will ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... assured her that miracles had been wrought by such relics.[34] He promised to send her also some dust-filings of the chains of St. Paul; of which relics he makes frequent mention in his epistles. At Cagliari, a curtain rich Jew, having been converted to the faith, had seized the synagogue in order to convert it into a church, and had set up in it an image of the Virgin Mary and a cross. Upon the complaint of the other Jews, St. Gregory ordered[35] the synagogue to be restored to them, but that the image ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... staring intently at the Chinese doctor. His bare ankles also were manacled, and fixed to a second chain, which quivered tautly across the green carpet and passed out through the doorway, being attached to something beyond the curtain, and invisible to me ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... virtue was that he was a successful trader, though he looked like a mere woodsman, with rings in his ears, gayly decorated buckskin coat and moccasins, and a furtive smile always on his lips! Everyt'ing! Her blood ran cold at the thought of dropping the lodge-curtain upon this man and herself alone. For no other man than Dingan had her blood run faster, and he had made her life blossom. She had seen in many a half-breed's and in many an Indian's face the look which was ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... with good effect, and the besieged returned the fire with great vivacity. This mutual cannonading continued until the twenty-ninth day of the month, when the engineers were employed in raising another battery, near enough to effect a breach in the north-west counter-guard and curtain. Though the approaches were retarded some days by a violent storm, which almost ruined the works, the damage was soon repaired: a considerable post was taken from the enemy by assault, and afterwards regained by ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... curtain parted, and a woman who looked like an old servant entered the salon, dressed in black, wearing a plain skirt and a poor jacket, after the manner of a peasant woman. Her gray hair was partly concealed by a dark shawl to which time and grease had imparted a reddish ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... resplendent with the rich apparel of those who, on either side of the white, glistening boards, await the signal from the orchestra. The footlights of the theatre flash up; the bell rings, and the curtain rises; and out from the gorgeous scenery glide the actors, greeted with the vociferation of the expectant multitudes. Concert-halls are lifted into enchantment with the warble of one songstress, or swept out on a sea of tumultuous feeling by the blast ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... them, see! What if the air should grow so dimly white That we would lose our way along the paths Made new by walls of moving mist receding The more we follow. . . . What a silver night! That was our bench the time you said to me The long new poem—but how different now, How eerie with the curtain of the fog Making it strange to all the friendly trees! There is no wind, and yet great curving scrolls Carve themselves, ever changing, in the mist. Walk on a little, let me stand here watching To see you, too, grown strange to me and far. . ...
— Love Songs • Sara Teasdale
... ocean streams, The white sails glisten in the golden beams. Still, as they roll, the river's waters lave With ceaseless flow the lily of the wave: The willow-forests on its verdant side Bathe their green tresses in the crystal tide: The bending alders paint the floods, and seem A waving curtain o'er the glassy stream. Thro' the wide clouds and thro' the watery way Calm Light and Silence held ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... standing inside the curtain for a full minute before Perpetua had seen him. Spell-bound he had stood there, gazing at the girl as if bewitched. Up to this he had seen her only ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... upon the whole structure of the tongue was prodigious, when the Goths poured into Italy, established themselves in the capital, and began to speak and write in a language previously foreign to them. With the close of the reign of Theodoric the curtain ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... water-lilies on her back. Lovely she looked there, with her eyes still open, her lips parted, her hair trailing behind. And again Fiorsen raised his hands high to clap, and again called out: 'Brava!' But the curtain fell, and Ophelia did not reappear. Was it the sight of him, or was she preserving the illusion that she was drowned? That "arty" touch would ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... vanity, save as it shall promote Thy sovereign purpose toward the sons of men. O Lord God, clothed with majesty and honor, decking Thyself with light as with a garment, and spreading out the heavens like a curtain, with the beams of Thy chambers in the waters, and the clouds for Thy chariot, walking upon the wings of the wind, Thy messengers spirits and Thy ministers a flaming fire, accept, we beseech Thee, this last and chiefest fruit of human toil and genius as a tribute to Thy glory, and a new power making ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... that it is quite within the bounds of truth to say that on July 31 the curtain went down upon a world which never ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... with equal courage, and almost with equal loss, but with better success. One party, led by Lord Grandison, was indeed beaten off, and the commander himself mortally wounded: another, conducted by Colonel Bellasis, met with a like fate: but Washington, with a less party, finding a place in the curtain weaker than the rest, broke in, and quickly made room for the horse to follow. By this irruption, however, nothing but the suburbs was yet gained: the entrance into the town was still more difficult: and by the loss already ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... white body, no longer white, upon the shingle, which had been so foully done to death by gulls of various clans. He may, or may not, have known it, but I can tell you that the gull was the self-same herring-gull who had tried to kill him the day before. Now he—but we will draw a curtain here. ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... twilight, O thou subtle-fingered Eve! And at the slow day's ebb With small blue stars the purple curtain weave. If any wind there be, Bid it but breathe lightly as woodland violets o'er the sea; If any moon, be it no more than a white fluttering feather. Call the last ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... that awful voice, and soon I felt The cloudy curtain of refreshing eve Was closed once more, from that immortal fire Sheltering my eyelids. Looking up, I view'd A vast gigantic spectre striding on Through murmuring thunders and a waste of clouds, With dreadful action. Black as night his brow Relentless ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... the junk unless Wild Bob and Ichi have beaten us to it," said Little Billy. "Hope they are not snugged close by behind this blooming curtain." ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... of the wall there hung a curtain of silvery-gray spider-web, and the voice seemed to come from it. The hero went toward it, but he saw nothing, for the spider that was spinning it moved so fast that no eyes could follow it. Presently it paused up in the left-hand corner of the web, and then Teddy ...
— The Counterpane Fairy • Katharine Pyle
... desk, which the minister's children, when they were little, used to call the "omnibus," by reason of a certain vast and capacious drawer, the resort of all homeless things,—nails, wafers, the bed-key, curtain-fixtures, carpet-tacks, and dried rhubarb. Perhaps it was to this drawer that the minister's daughter lately referred, when she said that the true motto was, "One place for everything, and everything in that ...
— Saint Patrick - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... folded in each other, not raised, not clasped, but languidly drooping. An angel stands at the feet of Christ looking on with a tender adoring commiseration; another, at his head, turns away weeping. A kind of curtain divides this group from the lower part of the picture, where, assembled on a platform, stand or kneel the guardian saints of Bologna: in the centre, the benevolent St. Charles Borromeo, who just about that time had been canonized and added to the list of the patrons of Bologna by a decree ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... of love has been presented on the stage in the same way. In Tristan and Isolde, the curtain does not, as in Romeo and Juliet, rise with the lark: the whole night of love is played before the spectators. The lovers do not discuss marriage in an elegantly sentimental way: they utter the visions ...
— Overruled • George Bernard Shaw
... woman stepped across the room, and opened a glass door screened by a thick red curtain, thus displaying several book-shelves thickly packed, from which she selected the volume named; then handing it to Sara, who had ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... shade in the shape of a fine mat, made of numberless long strings of split bamboo, tied together in a parallel position by several silk strings which vary in number with the size of the mat. The use of these curtain-like barriers has several advantages. They protect the house from those troublesome visitors the flies; they let in the air, though not the sun, and, while the people who are in the house can plainly see through them what goes ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... damask curtains, a sofa against the side of the ship, a wash-stand in a recess between the bunks and the bulkhead adjoining the saloon, a framed mirror above it, a folding mahogany table against the transverse bulkhead, brass pins upon which to hang clothing, a curtain to draw across the doorway, a handsome lamp with a ground-glass globe hung in gimbals in the centre of the transverse bulkhead, two large travelling trunks and three or four smaller cases, broken open and the contents strewn upon the carpeted ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... him stood His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales chatting with apparent carelessness to Sir Andrew Ffoulkes and Lord Anthony Dewhurst. A curtain beyond the open door was partially drawn aside, disclosing one or two brilliantly dressed groups, strolling ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... enough scene the night betrayed. In perspective the wall ahead narrowed, until the two sides seemed to come to a point. Back of all was the thick curtain of black that had settled down over the gulf. A little farther out, too, the water seemed rougher. There would seem to be hardly a doubt that a ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... listening behind a curtain, heard how the valuable stone in her heap could be discovered. She hastened to find and remove it from the pile; and, when her guest had recovered from the effect of the banquet, he saw that the value had departed from his purchase. He went to negotiate again with the seller, ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... seemed to be in haste and went behind a screen and into a room on the side of the hall. A little later the music up-stairs ceased. I heard cries of fire. People rushed down the stairway screaming. There was a jam in the hall and a terrible crush at the outer doors. A curtain had been blown across a console and taken fire; that was all, but the alarm and confusion were dreadful. Women fainted. One or two men made brutal efforts to escape. I have a temperament which leaves ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell
... to the corner whence the sounds proceeded, tore aside a curtain, and discovered a telephone. He bent over, and as the last note died away he burst forthwith ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... from Kay's to the town was a mile and a half. If he started at the hour when he should have been starting for the school house, he would arrive just in time to see the curtain go up. ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... was at peace with God could not be doubted. One has no motive for being at enmity with Him when one is well in the land, and has never had to ask Him for anything. From the grand salon of the Manila home, a little door, hid behind a silken curtain, led to a chapel—something obligatory in a Filipino house. There were Santiago's Lares, and if we use this word, it is because the master of the house was rather a poly- than a monotheist. Here, ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... temerity, and insolence by copious suggestion of all doubts and difficulties, and acquainting the mind to balance reasons on both sides. It takes away vain admiration of anything, which is the root of all weakness. No man can marvel at the play of puppets that goes behind the curtain. And certainly, if a man meditate much upon the universal frame of Nature, the earth with men upon it (the divineness of souls except) will not seem much other than an ant-hill, where some ants carry corn, and some carry their young, and some go empty, and all to and fro a little heap of dust. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... pleasure of life from the foaming goblet of the infinite, and to partake, if but for a moment, even with the confined powers of my soul, the beatitude of the Creator, who accomplishes all things in himself and through himself.... It is as if a curtain had been drawn from before my eyes.... My heart is wasted by the thought of that destructive power which lies concealed in every part of universal nature—Nature has formed nothing that does not consume itself and every object near it; so ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... the stuffy room with its guttering candles and its Chameleon-colored ark-curtain was the pivot of their barren lives. Joy came to bear to it the offering of its thanksgiving and to vow sixpenny bits to the Lord, prosperity came in a high hat to chaffer for the holy privileges, and grief came with rent garments ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... as we may sometimes see valuable water-colours, or the portraits of the dead, or works of art more than usually skittish in the subject. It was perhaps in the hope of finding something of this last description that M'Naughten's comrade pulled aside the curtain of the first. He was startlingly disappointed. There was no picture. The frame surrounded, and the curtain was designed to hide, an oblong aperture in the partition, through which they looked forth into the dark corridor. A person standing without could ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... walls are strong. No man but Jehan, who is my dog, knows what is between them." He drew a curtain by the shot-window and showed us the shaft of a well in ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... it struck the floor. (It was Warrington's cutty which he had carried for seven years, now in smithereens.) She saw a hand, raw knuckled and bleeding slightly, catch at the curtain and swing it back ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... exclaiming against it, "Call that thing a bonnet, indeed?" certainly tempts us to reply to their prejudiced and absurd reflections, "Physician, heal thyself;" for if there is one thing more ugly than another, it is the old-fashioned bonnet with crown, curtain, and poke, to which a few old maids rigidly adhere—just as Quakeresses do to their hideous and antiquated style. There is a kind of self-righteousness in the protests of these ladies, with which we confess ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... the old man unsaddling her horse and fitting him with rusty harness. She closed the cabin door, drew the curtain at the window, and began to unbutton her riding jacket. As her clothing fell from her, garment after garment, that desperate look came into her pale young face again, and she drew from her pocket a heavy army revolver and laid it on the chair beside her. ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... odd habits. Having two sets of eyelids, an inner and an outer, we can close one or both at will. The inner one is a thin skin that we blink with, and draw across our eyes in the day-time when the light annoys us, just as House People pull down a curtain to shut out the sun. The outer lids we close only in sleep, when we put up the shutters after a night's work, and at last in death—for birds alone among all animals are able to close their own eyes when they die. The other habit is the trick of turning our heads entirely round from ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... and storm which he had always somehow foreboded, were about to break and obscure this brief pleasant period of sunshine. He rose at a very early hour, flung his windows open, looked out no doubt towards those other windows in the neighbouring hotel, where he may have fancied he saw a curtain stirring, drawn by a hand that every hour now he longed more to press. He turned back into his chamber with a sort of groan, and surveyed some of the relics of the last night's little feast, which still ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... inspecting the new-comer over the half-curtain, decided to leave, although, as she pointed out, this was an opportunity for enjoying her company that rarely occurred. In confidence, the young woman remarked that what she hoped might happen at a future date was that she would meet ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... on other boards, in which the principal objects thrown about are loaves and fishes. But I will try to give the noble lord the reason for these private theatricals, and the reason why, however ardently he may desire to ring the curtain down upon them, there is not the faintest present hope of their coming to a conclusion. It is this:- The public theatricals which the noble lord is so condescending as to manage are so intolerably bad, the machinery is so cumbrous, the parts so ill-distributed, the company so full of ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... anxious wish for his recovery. The Duke roused himself to enquire how the Prince was in health, and said, "If I could now shake hands with him, I should die in peace." A few hours before the end, one who stood by the curtain of his bed heard the Duke say with deep emotion, "May the Almighty protect my wife and child, and forgive all the sins I have committed." His last words—addressed to his wife—were, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... the exploring and ardent curiosity of man: but at the limits of the political world he checks his researches, he discreetly lays aside the use of his most formidable faculties, he no longer consents to doubt or to innovate, but carefully abstaining from raising the curtain of the sanctuary, he yields with submissive respect to truths which he will not discuss. Thus, in the moral world everything is classed, adapted, decided, and foreseen; in the political world everything is agitated, uncertain, and disputed: in the ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... Gothic arch, curtained with violet merino. He draws the curtain. It is an ante-room. One half of it is a bathroom, screened, and paved with encaustic tiles that run up the walls, so you may splash to your heart's content. The rest is a studio, and contains a choice little library ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... in Emain he'd not have stretched these rags to meet us. (She pulls hanging, and it opens.) There's new earth on the ground and a trench dug. . . . It's a grave, Naisi, that is wide and deep. NAISI — goes over and pulls back curtain showing grave. — And that'll be our home in Emain. . . . He's dug it wisely at the butt of a hill, with fallen trees to hide it. He'll want to have us killed and buried before Fergus comes. DEIRDRE. Take me away. . . . Take me to hide in the rocks, ...
— Deirdre of the Sorrows • J. M. Synge
... mountain rising above a pile of thick gray clouds. It was the high hill of the island of St. Anthony, the most westerly of the Cape de Verd group. Little by little the low-lying clouds ascend like a drawn up curtain, and the whole island lay spread out, a living panorama, to our view. But alas! we passengers were not permitted to leave the ship, and as soon as we had taken in provisions and water, the anchor was lifted and we held on ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... Bernage willingly consented, and going-downstairs they found her in a very handsome apartment, seated all alone in front of the fire. The gentleman drew aside a curtain that hung in front of a large cupboard, wherein could be seen hanging a dead man's bones. Bernage greatly longed to speak to the lady, but durst not do so for fear of the husband. The gentleman, perceiving this, ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... said the wife. "Why, Will, when there's not a tighter cottage than ours in all the wood, and with a curtain, as we have, and a brick floor, and ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow
... city swordbearer, clad in striking robes, and the party proceeded to the North Parade, from which Allen's house is now reached by a passage way. The house is built of stone, and has a very handsome front in the style of the classical Renaissance. In drawing aside the curtain, which veiled the tablet, on which was inscribed "Here lived Ralph Allen, 1727-1764," Lord Londonderry said that there was probably not one of the great men who had been associated with Bath who was more of a benefactor ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... at 10 a.m. I reconnoitred my front thoroughly in person, from right to left, and concluded to make my real attack at the right flank of the bastion, where the graveyard road entered the enemy's intrenchments, and at another point in the curtain about a hundred yards to its right (our left); also to make a strong demonstration by Steele's division, about a mile to our right, toward the river. All our field batteries were put in position, and were covered by good epaulements; the troops were brought forward, ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... that they, who now issued from the door of the dwelling, should advance with caution, lest, ere properly admonished of its presence, their persons should be exposed to some lurking danger. When the three, however, were safely established behind the thick curtain of plank and earth that covered and commanded the entrance, and where their persons, from the shoulders downward, were completely protected, alike from shot and arrow, Content demanded to know, who applied at his gates for admission at an hour ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... than one, then the spectres multiply; they arrange themselves on the blue ground of the sky, or the dark ground of any clouds that may be in the right quarter, or perhaps they are strongly relieved against a curtain of rock, at a distance of some miles, and always exhibiting gigantic proportions. At first, from the distance and the colossal size, every spectator supposes the appearances to be quite independent of himself. But very soon ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... say, Henry neither knew nor cared. The lights in the theatre were lowered, leaving only the bright, warm glow of the footlights on the heavy curtain. He could see Lady Cecily's face still golden and glowing ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... speech to the audience merged into a private conversation with its occupants. The noise increased, and M. Laporte declared that he was not to be "intimidated," a word which roused the "omnibus" party to perfect fury. He retired, and the curtain rose for the ballet, in which a new dancer was to have made her appearance. The noise, now, became terrible; yells, hisses, and all sorts of uncouth sounds were blended in frightful discord. The dancers, perceiving all attempts at a performance were ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... to be the duty of every well-conducted author, after the curtain has fallen on the final tableau of his little drama, to lift it, or half lift it, for a momentary last glimpse at ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... important observation. We must recollect that the veil drawn between the cluster and the telescope was not a thin curtain; it was a volume of cometary substance many thousands of miles in thickness. Contrast, then, the almost inconceivable tenuity of a comet with the clouds to which we are accustomed. A cloud a few hundred feet thick will hide not only the stars, but even the great sun himself. ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... environs the miserable Queen; and much though the poet has striven to brighten the picture and awaken sympathy for the weakness of the woman, who, royal mistress though she was, could not command her love to be requited, the poetic measure of his lines roughens and hardens to the close, when the curtain falls on what is felt to be ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... under it. "Why, no, she's not there!" he said in wonder and disappointment. "Ah, yonder she is! behind that window curtain," as "cluck, cluck cluck," came from a distant corner. "Max, Max, catch her quick, ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley
... week or more Zora slipped in every day and performed the little tasks that Miss Smith laid out: she sorted papers, dusted the bureau, hung a curtain; she did not do the things very well, and she broke some china, but she worked earnestly and quickly, and there was no thought of pay. Then, too, did not Bles praise her with a happy smile, as together, ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... A curtain wall connects the gateway with a tower called St Margaret's Tower, of which merely the shell remains, smothered in overhanging ivy, brambles, long grass, and a tapestry of plants, and beneath the tower is a small, dark dungeon. ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... he drew aside the curtain of his bed, the light fell on his pale countenance, as, turban'd with bandages, and dressed in a night-gown, he lay, seemingly ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... simplest of these consisted of a single battlemented wall, carried in lines nearly or quite straight along the four sides of the place, pierced with gates, and guarded at the angles, at the gates, and at intervals along the curtain with projecting towers, raised not very much higher than the walls, and (apparently) square in shape. [PLATE LVII., Fig 1.] In the sculptures we sometimes find the battlemented wall repeated twice or thrice in lines placed one above the other, the intention being to represent ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... the lace of the window curtain. He had no intention of evading his duty, and yet he did not find it agreeable as ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... the "curtain rises," little knots of the anxious multitude are seen here and there about the corners of the adjacent neighborhood and in the recesses of the caucus chamber, their heads together—caucusing ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... Lord Chancellor of England, turn back the current of hereditary dignity to its fountain and raise him to an higher rank of peerage, whilst he enriched the family with a new one; —if, amidst these bright and happy scenes of domestic honor and prosperity, that angel should have drawn up the curtain and unfolded the rising glories of his country, and, whilst he was gazing with admiration on the then commercial grandeur of England, the genius should point out to him a little speck, scarcely visible in the ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... straw windows! What about the cosmetic fresh concocted or the powder just scented; Why has the hair too on each temple become white like hoarfrost! Yesterday the tumulus of yellow earth buried the bleached bones, To-night under the red silk curtain reclines the couple! Gold fills the coffers, silver fills the boxes, But in a twinkle, the beggars will all abuse you! While you deplore that the life of others is not long, You forget that you yourself are approaching death! You educate your sons with all propriety, But they may ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... set; the scenery was always of the best and newest; the vacant boxes and the yawning pit were brilliantly lighted; the costumes were by the best makers; the stage manager was punctual and in his place; the curtain went up every day for the performance; but Frau von Greifenstein's theatre was silent and untenanted, not a voice broke the stillness, not a rustle of garments or a flutter of a programme in a spectator's hand made the silence less intense, not an echo of ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... As the last curtain fell and Dennis was no longer able to adjust his gloomy contemplation to incongruous orchestration, he hastened from the theater, scrambled down the precipitate stairs and hastened ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... the turbulence increased. The soldiers, stimulated by drink, committed still greater cruelties. Shrieks and shouts continually rent the air. Not daring to go to the door, I peeped under the window curtain. I saw a mob dragging along a number of colored people, each white man, with his musket upraised, threatening instant death if they did not stop their shrieks. Among the prisoners was a respectable old colored minister. They had found a few parcels of shot ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... as her mamma always made a point of obedience. The medicine was administered, although for some time Frances refused to look at it. When she laid down, her mamma placed the pillow high under her head, and, drawing the curtain to shade the light, left the room that she might be perfectly quiet. And when she returned to the drawing-room, she inquired of the other children what they had been doing, and received a full account of the feast, and the bird's nest, and all the ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... are the Vision and the Cry That haunt the new Canadian soul? Dim grandeur spreads we know not why O'er mountain, forest, tree and knoll, And murmurs indistinctly fly.— Some magic moment sure is nigh. O Seer, the curtain roll! ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... great emotional star for nothing. For, having treated him gratis to the look of horror and fury, she now moved towards him with the sinuous walk and spoke in the tone which she seldom permitted herself to use before the curtain of act two, unless there was a whale of a situation that called for it in ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... as the young chief and the girl were being conducted to the waggon. All was done so rapidly and silently, that none of the sleeping servants were awakened, and only those who had charge of the cattle could have observed what had happened, while the curtain which closed the front of the waggon was allowed to remain open, so as not to excite the suspicion of the Zulus, should ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... wonder that she, girl that she is, loves to hear the nightingale sing? Young folk naturally affect their likes." Whereto Messer Lizio made answer:—"Go, make her a bed there to your liking, and set a curtain round it, and let her sleep there, and hear the nightingale sing to her heart's content." Which the damsel no sooner learned, than she had a bed made there with intent to sleep there that same night; ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the window, pulled aside a curtain, and beheld rows and darts of lights like stars; street lights and house lights beckoned to her; she opened the window slightly and the distant sound of traffic, the drums of London rolling, excited and ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... easily accessible from the veranda, would afford a capital lodgment for the note, and be quickly seen by the fair occupant of the room on entering. He sauntered slowly past the window; the room was empty, the moment propitious. A slight breeze was stirring the blue ribbons of the curtain; it would be necessary to secure the note with something; he returned along the veranda to the steps, where he had noticed a small irregular stone lying, which had evidently escaped from Richelieu's bag of treasure specimens, and had been overlooked by that ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... irresistible look of mirthful chivalry and delicate middle-aged admiration on Leah's upturned face, and her eyes looked up more piercing and blacker than ever; and in each of them a little high light shone like a point of interrogation—the reflection of some white window-curtain, I suppose; and I felt cold all down ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... Melbourne made a bitter reply, full of personalities, against Lyndhurst, but offering a meagre defence for himself and his colleagues. Those who watch the course of events, and who occasionally peep behind the curtain, have but a sorry spectacle to contemplate:—a Government miserably weak, dragging on a sickly existence, now endeavouring to curry a little favour with one party, now with another; so unused to stand, and so incapable of standing, on ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... the curtain rises, and straightway we are in Seville—Seville, after Pentonville! Count Alma-viva, lordly, gallant, and gay beneath his disguise, twangs his guitar, and what sounds issue from it! For every instrument that was ever invented is in that ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... the Great Lord, where the tomb is to be found. It is erected to the south-east of the village, comprising some twenty tents or tent-like huts built of earth. Two large white felt tents, placed side by side, similar to the tents of the modern Mongols, but much larger, cover the tomb; a red curtain, when drawn, discloses the large and low silver coffin, which contains the ashes of the Emperor, placed on the ground of the second tent; it is shaped like a big trunk, with great rosaces engraved upon it. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... that the splendid achievements of Cortes made their impression on the public mind, and gave a new impulse to the spirit of adventure. The southern expeditions became a common topic of speculation among the colonists of Panama. But the region of gold, as it lay behind the mighty curtain of the Cordilleras, was still veiled in obscurity. No idea could be formed of its actual distance; and the hardships and difficulties encountered by the few navigators who had sailed in that direction ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... whether it would be better to awaken Guiche, in order to acquaint him with the good news. But as he began to hear behind the door the rustling of the silk dresses and the hurried breathing of his two companions, and as he already saw that the curtain which hung before the doorway seemed on the point of being impatiently drawn aside, he passed round the bed and followed the nurse into the next room. As soon as he had disappeared, the curtain was raised, and his two female companions entered the ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... front of the curtain and walked swiftly over the little bridge from the stage to the stalls. He was a small, sturdy, thin-lipped, choleric man, who looked as if he were made up of energy; energy distilled and bottled. Some one had said of him that his hat was really a glass stopper, which might ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... those very hands; spoke to her husband with that very voice, and rose from table with that same graceful management of her limp skirts. She made eyes at me; at her husband; at little Fox, at the man who handed the asparagus—great round grey eyes. She was just the same. The curtain never fell on that eternal dress rehearsal. I don't wonder the husband was forever looking ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... became tangible—an authentic island. It gleamed with golden rocks and emerald patches of culture. A cluster of white houses, some town or village, lay perched on the middle heights where a playful sunbeam had struck a pathway through the vapours. The curtain was lifted. Half lifted; for the volcanic peaks and ravines overhead were still ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... in a flood about him, and his imagination leaped to their answering. Above them the curtain of the Night shook out her million stars while they lay there talking with bated breath together. On every single point he satisfied them, and himself as well. He told them all—his visit to the Manor House, the sprites he found there still alive and waiting as he had ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... patient his medicine she peeped through the curtain and watched Mark's figure till it disappeared up the hill towards Bleakridge. He, on his part, walked with her image always in front of him. He thought hers was the strongest, most righteous soul he had ever encountered; ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... spoke in a tone of such calm conviction, that Mrs. Hardy was filled with wonder and fear. She went to the curtain, and, as we have already recorded, she called the children ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... off to to-morrow what we can do to-day, we are too apt to reverse it, and not to do today what we can put off to to-morrow. But this duty can be no longer put off. To-day we are at peace; to-morrow war. The curtain of separation is drawing between us, and probably will not be withdrawn till one, if not both of us, will be at rest with our fathers. Let me now, then, while I may, renew to you the declarations of my warm attachment, which in no period of life has ever been weakened, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Lawrence was held for more than the conventional moment. He remained standing till she pointed to her cavalier's empty chair: then dropped into it, but sat forward leaning his aim along the balcony, while she, drawn back behind her curtain, was almost drowned in shadow except for an occasional flash of diamonds, or an opaque gleam of white and dimpled neck. An interlude entirely decorous, and yet, so crude was the force of Philippa's personality, one would have had to be very young, ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... had come and had gone. Tilford Manor house stood once more dark and silent, but joy and contentment reigned within its walls. In one night every trouble had fallen away like some dark curtain which had shut out the sun. A princely sum of money had come from the King's treasurer, given in such fashion that there could be no refusal. With a bag of gold pieces at his saddle-bow Nigel rode once more into Guildford, and not a beggar on the way who had ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... representation? It is one thing to read of an enchanter, and to believe the wondrous tale while we are reading it; but to have a conjurer brought before us in his conjuring-gown, with his spirits about him, which none but himself and some hundred of favoured spectators before the curtain are supposed to see, involves such a quantity of the hateful incredible, that all our reverence for the author cannot hinder us from perceiving such gross attempts upon the senses to be in the highest degree childish ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... and expression of an ordinary man; cover up those features, and the eye shone out like Eblis's own. Nature had apparently observed this too, and had, by a paralysis of the nerve, ironically dropped the corner of the upper lid over it like a curtain, laughed at her handiwork, and turned him loose to prey upon a ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... usual to the southward. Next morning Louisbourg was early astir, anxiously eager to catch the first glimpse of this great destroying armada, which for several expectant hours lay invisible and dread behind a curtain of dense fog. Then a light sea breeze came in from the Atlantic. The curtain drew back at its touch. And there, in one white, enormous crescent, all round the deep-blue offing, stood the mighty fleet, closing in for the final ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... advanced in turn, gradually driving their supposed enemies back, till, when the smoke was rising in a faint, misty cloud to float softly away over the river, the final stages of the sham-fight were nearly at an end, and for a concluding curtain to the mimic warfare the two little forces advanced as if to meet in contention in the middle of the field. But at a certain stage a bugle rang out, and with wonderful precision the men fell into column and ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... that the parlor door was partly of glass shaded by a silken curtain the folds of which hung a little awry. So strong was the merchant's interest in witnessing what was to ensue between the fair Polly and the gallant Feathertop that after quitting the room he could by no means refrain from peeping through the ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... its formidable fragments. Yet, strange to say, no serious harm was done to life or limb, and the most formidable casualty was that of a citizen who complained that a shell had passed through the wall of his bedroom, and carried off his mosquito curtain ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Just before the final curtain, His Highness of Lotzen had strolled into the Royal Box. To my surprise he congratulated me very heartily upon my appointment as Governor of Dornlitz; and, perforce, I invited him ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... personality and indomitable spirit, which has always characterized him from the day he entered Exeter until he forged his way to the leadership of one of Princeton's finest elevens to bring home the long deferred championship. When the final whistle rang down the football curtain for the season of 1911 it found Hart in the ascendancy having fulfilled the wonderful promise of his old Exeter days. For ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... voice such of the latter allusions as were complimentary to the unconscious phenomenon, and giving the rest in a confidential 'aside' to Nicholas, Mr Folair followed the ascent of the curtain with his eyes, regarded with a sneer the reception of Miss Crummles as the Maiden, and, falling back a step or two to advance with the better effect, uttered a preliminary howl, and 'went on' chattering his teeth and brandishing his tin tomahawk as ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... volcanoes were blowing through it—one had to shout to be heard in the place. Liquid fire would leap from these caldrons and scatter like bombs below—and men were working there, seeming careless, so that Jurgis caught his breath with fright. Then a whistle would toot, and across the curtain of the theater would come a little engine with a carload of something to be dumped into one of the receptacles; and then another whistle would toot, down by the stage, and another train would back up—and ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... is a curtain of dense black fabric across all the hopes and kindliness of mankind. Yet always it has let through some gleams of light, and now—I am not dreaming—it grows threadbare, and here and there and at a thousand points the light is breaking through. We ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... pathos; we have before us a blameless and noble spirit stricken to the earth by malign powers, but not conquered; tempted, but grandly putting the temptation away; enmeshed by subtle coils, but sternly resolved to rend them and march forth victorious, at any peril of life or limb. Curtain—slow music. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... wife!—persuading her to smuggle the cup into heaven! Dawtie went on her knees behind the curtain, and began to pray for him all she could. But something seemed stopping her, and making her prayer come only from ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... caused me involuntarily to step two or three paces backwards, I turned, smiling and half ashamed to the old servant, and said, "You see what a coward I am." The woman looked puzzled, and without saying any more, I was about to draw aside the curtain and enter the room, when upon turning to do so, I was surprised to find that nothing whatever interposed to obstruct the passage. I went into the room, followed by the servant woman, and was amazed to find that it, like the ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Laramie, those Indians were bound by treaty not to go. North of the Platte Hal Folsom was warned never again to venture. These were stories which were well known to the parents of the girl he wooed and won, but which probably were not fully explained to her. Now, even behind the curtain of that sheltering river, with its flanking forts, even behind the barrier of the mountains of the Medicine Bow, she often woke at night and clutched her baby to her breast when the yelping of the coyotes came rising on the ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... spoken in a low murmur, which just served to draw Daisy's attention. Out of sight behind the moreen curtain, Mrs. Harbonner forgot she was not beyond hearing; and Daisy's ears were good. She noticed that Juanita made no answer at all to this question, ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... funny little curtain-raiser, with jealousy as a gray-haired Cupid. So far as Sada is concerned, it is admiration gone to waste. Even if she were not gaily indifferent, she is too absorbed in the happy days she thinks are awaiting her. Poor child! ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... squad lay down in the dark and simulated, what they certainly were far from experiencing, sleep. It was not yet late. The city, from far below, and all around us, sent up a sound of wheels and feet and lively voices. Yet awhile, and the curtain of the cloud was rent across, and in the space of sky between the eaves of the shed and the irregular outline of the ramparts a multitude of stars appeared. Meantime, in the midst of us lay Goguelat, and could not always ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... broken pane of glass, which the head of an inquiring youth in the street had stove in, while flattening his nose against it in the hope of getting a glimpse of the company through the opening in the window-curtain. ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... again if so be he might have with him Bartholomew Fiesco. They went, with heavily paid Indians to row the staunchest canoe we could find. This time the Adelantado with twenty kept them company along the shore to end of the island, where the canoe shot forth into clear sea, and the blue curtain came down between the stranded and the going for help. The Adelantado returned to us, and we ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... arm around her, exclaiming 'Ha! I have you now!' To my utter astonishment my arm passed through her and came with a thud against the bedpost, at which spot she then was. The figure quickened its pace, and as it passed the skirt of its dress lapped against the curtain and I marked distinctly the pattern of ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... the sun through a curtain of water, which had already cleaned them of heat and passion, and wisps of red hair drifted ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... maid to the King's daughter, and it had the old, green hangings that had always been round the walls, the long oak table, the box-bed set in the wall, the high chair and the three stools round the fire. The only thing she had taken of the King was a curtain in red cloth to hang on a rod before the door where was a great draught, the leading of the windows being rotted. She had lived so poor a life, her father having been a very poor lord with many children—she was so ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... The wave of the maiden's hand gave sufficient warning to the Greek. The view from the doorway commanded a long enough tract of road to render it impossible for any visitor to enter the house so suddenly as to prevent Lycidas, thus warned, from having time to retreat behind his curtain. ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... produced anonymously in August of the same year, 1870. Strindberg was present at the premiere and although it was well received, to him it was all a fine occasion—except the play! He was ashamed of his self-confession in it and fled before the final curtain. He soon finished another play, "The Outlaw," which is included in the present volume. In this drama, which retains a high place among his plays, Strindberg shows for the first time his lion's claw and in it began to speak with his own voice. It was accepted by the Court Theatre ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg
... application of his instrument; the window sash behind was not even bolted, for the bolt had perished with time and had not been replaced. So far, very good! But at this early point Mike received his first surprise. He could not see much of the interior; a tall curtain stretched across the entire breadth of the window, distant about two feet from it; but he could see that the ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... line as the curtain speech and crawled to my feet. He threw the Mark III file at me and went back to scratching in his papers. Just as I reached the door, he looked up and impaled me on ...
— The Repairman • Harry Harrison
... cavalry. Lee, like a hunted fox, turned hither and thither; but at last Sheridan planted himself squarely across the front. Lee ordered a charge. His half-starved troops, with a rallying of their old courage, obeyed. But the cavalry moving aside, as a curtain is drawn, revealed dense bodies of infantry in battle line. The Civil War was about to end in one of its bloodiest tragedies, when the Confederate advance was stopped. General Grant had already sent in a note demanding the surrender of the army. Lee accepted the terms; and, ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... something re-assuring in this? The census-takers will go about Moscow, they will set down in their lists, without distinction, those insolent with prosperity, the satisfied, the calm, those who are on the way to ruin, and those who are ruined, and the curtain will fall. The census-takers, our sons and brothers, these young men will behold all this. They will say: "Yes, our life is very terrible and incurable," and with this admission they will live on like ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... incumbrances, which, till he makes application of his art to it, surround the statue, and load it with obscurities and disfigurement. The man, who, without long study and premeditation, rushes in at once, and expects to withdraw the curtain, will only find himself ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... chastened tenderness both lighted and shaded it, half veiling yet half reasserting its innocent hardihood. The astonished amateurs hailed her with a clapping of hands, in which, it pleased her deeply to notice, Hugh Courteney, staring, took no share. Beyond the curtain the unseen audience answered with a pounding of heels and canes in good-natured impatience. Gilmore hurriedly waved away all the lads but Hugh, and Mrs. Gilmore all the girls but Ramsey. To her she glided while Hugh and her husband conferred on some ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... [The Curtain draws up, and reveals a small stage, with an inclined sheet of glass in a heavy frame in front; behind this glass is the Cottage Home of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 22, 1892 • Various
... it up to feed our dogs with. The animal was soon taken away. The house was clean, but small. In this place we had to sleep on the floor, and we used our blankets to make a couch as well as we could. A sailcloth was used as a curtain, so that we had something like a separated place for us. Our two drivers were also in the same room, and they cared for music during the night, for they snored like a saw mill, and when they woke up they smoked their pipes and gave the ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... glow as if the glare of the burning mountains were shining through, and then a joyful shout of thankfulness arose from officers and crew, for the light was from the rising sun, and they could see blue dancing water, and then, with one bound, they were in broad day, with a great black curtain riding slowly away from them ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... said Mr. Crow angrily. "I believe you've drawn a curtain across the other end of this tunnel. And I can't talk to anybody through a curtain. I refuse to injure my voice trying to talk with anybody that won't give me a more friendly welcome when I ...
— The Tale of Master Meadow Mouse • Arthur Scott Bailey
... watched a phantom landscape flit past the window of the sleeping-car. Sometimes a cloud of smoke, shot through with sparks, brushed the glass like a billowing curtain, and sometimes the thunderous darkness of a tunnel swept between her and spectral trees or looming hilltops. She lay there on her pillows, looking at the flying glimmer of the night and drawing long breaths of peace. ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... too tired to examine very carefully all the half-foreign, half-old-fashioned things that surrounded her. Two pillars supported the ceiling beam, and green curtains shut off from the rest of the room the alcove-like sleeping apartment in which the beds stood. But in the middle a curtain was either lacking or pulled back, and this afforded her a comfortable orientation from her bed. There between the two windows stood the narrow, but very high, pier-glass, while a little to the right, along the hall wall, towered the tile stove, the ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... gave the order? But I had short time to think of these things, or others. We passed through two rooms, in one of which some secretaries were writing, we stopped at a third door. Over all brooded a silence which could be felt. The usher knocked, opened, and, with his finger on his lip, pushed aside a curtain and signed to me to enter. I did so and found myself behind ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... drawn of the intercourse between the giant and his wife Diffidence. They form a very loving couple in their way; and the giant takes no new step in the treatment of the pilgrims without consulting Mrs. Diffidence over night, so that the curtain lectures to which we listen are very curious. But Mrs. Diffidence ought rather to have been called Dame Desperation, or Desperate Resolution; for she seems, if anything, the more stubborn genius of the two-(Cheever). ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... last door opened, and, pushing aside a blue gauze curtain which hung before it, an individual of about eight-and-twenty years of age stepped languidly into the room. He was a tallish man, over six feet in stature, rather spare in build, but with great breadth ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... in turns on the others' knees. Two amongst them at once attracted Patty's notice. One, a fair-haired girl of about the same age as herself, cried persistently and unrestrainedly, burying her face in the window curtain, and refusing all comfort, though her companions pressed chocolates, caramels, mint rock, jujubes, and walnut toffee ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... of Discovery and Distribution of Remains.—Mycenae and Tiryns are the two principal sites on which evidence of a prehistoric civilization was remarked long ago by the classical Greeks. The curtain-wall and towers of the Mycenaean citadel, its gate with heraldic lions, and the great "Treasury of Atreus'' had borne silent witness for ages before Schliemann's time; but they were supposed only to speak to the Homeric, or at farthest a rude Heroic beginning of purely Hellenic, civilization. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... arrived at the gate of a temple, guarded by two huge lions. Being invisible, he was able to enter unharmed. In the middle of the temple was an altar, on which lay a book, and behind the altar hung a great curtain. The Prince approached the altar and opened the book, which contained the names of all the lovers in the world; and in it he read that Rosalie had been carried off by the Prince of the Air to an abyss which had no ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... to sparkling with a sudden shimmer; he shot long rays of light through the dark hemlocks, till they looked like fairy trees; he touched Daisy's hair and it turned to gold; he chased away the shadows that lurked among the hills; he drew up the misty curtain that hovered over the river; and, with the warmth of his kisses, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... courteous determination through his specimens of all the schools, and made us observe the characteristics of each school and each master, till at last we rested in the last room, where hung a single picture covered with a silken curtain. This at last, with sacred and reverent ceremony, was drawn aside, and revealed a portrait by Raphael,—the portrait of a lady, young and beautiful, and glowing with a tender sentiment which recalled to my remembrance these heads by Allston, not alone in the sentiment, but in the masterly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... however, the audience was reported to have been saddened by its "unhappy ending." Pressure was forthwith put upon me to reconcile Philip and Ottoline at the finish, and at the third performance of the play the curtain fell upon the picture, violently and crudely brought about, of Ottoline ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... discuss, I leave the theme, that we may thus Remain within the realm of song. The story that I told before, Though not acceptable to all, At least you did not find too long. I beg you, let me try again, With something in a different vein, Before you bid the curtain fall. Meanwhile keep watch upon the door, Nor let the Landlord leave his chair, Lest he should vanish into air, And thus elude our ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... daybreak the 1,200 chimneys vomited their torrents of flame into the air, and the ground was agitated with dull tremblings. As many pounds of metal as there were to cast, so many pounds of coal were there to burn. Thus there were 68,000 tons of coal which projected in the face of the sun a thick curtain of smoke. The heat soon became insupportable within the circle of furnaces, the rumbling of which resembled the rolling of thunder. The powerful ventilators added their continuous blasts and saturated with oxygen the glowing plates. The operation, to be successful, ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... is heard locking and bolting it on the inside. Then a violent outburst of weeping is heard, the sound being somewhat deadened by the distance, but only for a few moments. Then the sound of singing is heard outside, and a few seconds later RIIS comes into the room. The curtain falls ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... persecutor turned his back and quitted the house, Susan sat down, and hid her face in her hands. She was soon aroused by the sound of her mother's feeble voice, who was calling Susan from the inner room where she lay. Susan went in; but did not undraw the curtain as she ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... How kindly does she rejoice with me when it is over! While I am pleading, she places persons to inform her from time to time how I am heard, what applauses I receive, and what success attends the cause. When at any time I recite my works, she conceals herself behind some curtain, and with secret rapture enjoys my praises. She sings my verses to her lyre, with no other master but love, the best instructor, for her guide. Her passion will increase with our days, for it is not my youth nor my person, which time gradually ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... square, in the heart of the city, I perceived a large folding gate, covered with plates of gold, which stood open; a curtain of silk stuff seemed to be drawn before it; a lamp hung over the entrance. After I had surveyed the building, I made no doubt but it was the palace of the prince who reigned over that country; and being much astonished that I had not ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... delicate and sensitive to light as the retina, would, of course, be damaged by too bright a glare; so in the front of the eye, just behind the cornea, a curtain has grown up, with an opening or "peep-hole" in its centre, which can be enlarged or made smaller by little muscles. This opening is the pupil; the curtain, which is colored so as to shut out the rays of light, is known as the iris, for the ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... which ensued the chords softly played passed into ears that might as well have been deaf; but at last there was a general quiescence of expectation, in which every one's eyes were strained to pierce through the gauze curtain to the sombre drapery beyond. The wait was so long that the tension relaxed and a whispering began, and Verrian felt a sickness of pity for the girl who was probably going to make a failure of it. He asked himself what could have happened to her. Had she lost courage? Or had her physical ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... lift the curtain, and attend more minutely to the chief jugglers who figure behind it. The Sheriff and others, who sign the McBain certificate, alledge that Mr. Cowen (according to their construction) not only resigned his nomination ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... simplicity and sweetness. Seeing my admiration, my host speaks of his daughter, of her love for him, of her delight in his speeches,—for he is of authority in the city,—of how on such occasions she will sit screened from the audience by a curtain, drinking in what people say to his credit. He smiles as he tells me this, adding she has a sharp wit, is wonderfully economical, and loves him well; and indeed she is worthy of him, and doubtless, as he says, of her grandfather. ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... rank of civilized respect as the Kingdom of Ashantee. Besides, it was to be remembered, that all round me was a scene of suffering—the dismal epilogue of a field of battle; or rather the dropping of the curtain on the royal stage, when the glitter and the noise were gone by, and the actors reduced from their pomps and vanities, and sent home to the shivering necessities of poor ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... an early hour, and repaired to the sick room. My mother was sitting by the bed. As I entered, she drew me to her, and for some time was silent, while the tears flowed fast down her face. I first learned that my sweet sister was dead, as my mother drew aside the curtain that concealed her from me. I felt as though my heart would break. The remembrance of her affection for me, and my last unkind deed, revived in my mind; and burying my face in the folds of the curtain, I ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... Murray, of Harvard; the League Island eleven, captained by Eddie Mahan, the former Harvard all-round player; and the Great Lakes team, largely composed of representative Western gridiron stars, played a series of games on the fields of the East and the Middle West, which lifted, temporarily, the curtain which seemed to have fallen on the college football heroes when they passed into naval service, and allowed the sport-loving public of America to again see ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... very beautiful picture, Mr. Titmouse, isn't it?" said Gammon, leading him to the farther corner of the drawing-room, where hung a small picture, with a sort of curtain of black gauze before it. Gammon lifted it up; and Titmouse beheld a picture of a man suspended from the gallows, his hands tied with cords before him, his head forced aside, and covered down to the chin with a white nightcap. 'Twas done with sickening fidelity; and Titmouse ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... the recent orders relative to hypnotism. But he himself is subjugated by Mr. Harmington and thrown down by the vibrations of which the encephalus of this terrible magnetizer is the center. When the curtain falls, the representative of authority is struggling against the catalepsy that ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... steep, but made more so by the Earth out of the Trenches and Lines being thrown over the Brow. The Castle is a Square of about fifty Foot, with three Demi-Bastions, two Guns in each Face, one in each Flank, and three in each Curtain. When the Army first landed, there was no material Works about the Castle, but a Fascine Battery, of five Guns at the North End of the Hill, facing the Brow of the commanding Hill abovementioned; but whilst they were encamping, &c. the Enemy cut Lines ...
— An Account of the expedition to Carthagena, with explanatory notes and observations • Sir Charles Knowles
... Sue had often talked about giving a Punch and Judy show. They had often seen one, at picnics or at church sociables, and Bunny knew by heart a few of the things Mr. Punch had to say. He did not stop to think that perhaps he could not get behind the curtain, and make the little wooden figures do the funny things they were supposed to do. And he did not know where he could get the queer little ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue • Laura Lee Hope
... throng, so strong the pressure on the doors that the lock gave way and I, with my dollar clutched tightly in my hand, was borne into the hall and half-way up the stairs without touching foot to the floor, and when at last, safe in my balcony seat I waited for the curtain to rise, I had a distinct realization that a shining milestone was about to be established in my ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... overhead, followed in a space immeasurable to the listener in the gulf of blackness, by a shattering sound which seemed to shake the house to its foundations. Then the external blackness entered her own soul, shrouding her consciousness like the sudden swift fall of a curtain. ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... lay down in the dark and simulated, what they certainly were far from experiencing, sleep. It was not yet late. The city, from far below, and all around us, sent up a sound of wheels and feet and lively voices. Yet awhile, and the curtain of the cloud was rent across, and in the space of sky between the eaves of the shed and the irregular outline of the ramparts a multitude of stars appeared. Meantime, in the midst of us lay Goguelat, and could not always ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I used to lie on my back in the grass and stare far into the wide blue sky above. It seemed so soft, so caressing, so far away, and yet so near. Then, perhaps, a tiny woolly cloud would drift across its face, meet another of its kind, then another and another, until the massed up curtain hid the playful blue, and amid grayness and chill, where all had been so bright, I would hurry under shelter to avoid the storm. That, outside of fairy books, an earthbound being could actually be in a cloud, was beyond my imagination. Indeed, it seems strange now, ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... large sofas, or standing bed-places, on either side, with brass bars overhead, by which a curtain could be ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... had been led to expect. The window of the low front room, which was large and rather bowed, still retained the remains of its former shop-like appearance, was modestly screened in the inside by a green curtain; and the step of the door ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... look into the window, and the curtain of that descended relentlessly. The bank had suddenly taken on an aspect of Sabbath blankness. Once more the Colonel rattled the knob, then he turned to his ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... only showed in flashes now and then, fully understood by no one except Carnac's mother and old Denzil. These two having suffered strangely in life had realized that the girl was always waiting for a curtain to rise which did not rise, for a voice to speak which gave ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... scattered heap of granite which forms the outstanding sentinel of our far western coast. The weather had been perfect. But now, having cleared the road and rounded St. Mary's, we were met by this thick mist, swaying down upon us like a vast curtain, and quickly enveloping us in ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... sacred fires, And unawares Morality expires. Nor public flame nor private dares to shine; Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine! Lo! thy dread empire Chaos is restor'd, Light dies before thy uncreating word; Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall, And universal ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... and drawings were suspended on the walls; there was a handsome carpet from Tunis, and a comfortable lounge; a mirror in a carved frame, which would have gladdened the heart of a connoisseur, stood upon the mantelpiece. An easel with a picture upon it, covered with a green baize curtain, stood in one corner. The young painter was in the centre of his studio, brush and palette in hand. He was a dark, handsome young man, well built and proportioned, with close-cut hair, and a curling beard flowing down over his chest. His face was full ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... lady from Philadelphia was very ill that day, and was in her bed. But when she was told what the trouble was she very kindly said they might draw up the curtain from the window at the foot of the bed, and open the blinds, and she would see. Then she asked for her opera-glass, and looked through it, across the way, up the street, to Mrs. ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... in a little canvas hut. Dressed in a black skirt and a red bodice, with a yellow-and-red bandana handkerchief tied round his black wig, he looked—sharp-nosed, brown, and wrinkled—like the Bohemian Hag of Frith's Derby Day. A placard pinned to the curtain of the doorway announced the presence within the tent of "Sesostris, the Sorceress of Ecbatana." Seated at a table, Mr. Scogan received his clients in mysterious silence, indicating with a movement of the finger that they were to sit down opposite him and to ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... she looked. She had never seen anything so somber, so sinister, as that precipitous curtain of rock and its riband of ice. It looked like a white band painted on ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... sang except when the refrain of the ditty arrived, when he hiccupped it forth with tipsy loyalty; and Eglantine leaned against the chequers painted on the door-side under the name of Crump, and looked at the red illumined curtain of the bar, and the vast well-known shadow of Mrs. Crump's turban within. Now and again the shadow of that worthy matron's hand would be seen to grasp the shadow of a bottle; then the shadow of a cup would rise towards ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... on his shoulders and shook her head. "No, no; don't tell me that. I have seen enough of tragedy, God knows. Don't show me any more just as the curtain is going down. No, no, it was only a boy's fancy, and your divine pity and my utter pitiableness have recalled it for a moment. One does not love the dying, dear friend. If some fancy of that sort ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... jolting over three miles of stone and rut did not improve the condition of our aching heads. Arriving at San Antonio, we thankfully went to bed for the rest of the morning, and dreamed, only dreamed, that the saucy black boy in the boiling-house had run after us, had lifted the curtain of the volante, screeched a last impertinence after us, and kissed his hand for a good-bye, which, luckily for him, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... the garden, into which the bedroom window opened. The window looked dark and ominous. It was covered by a faded green curtain. One corner of the curtain was slightly turned up, which made it possible to look ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... stand there looking like one of the Fates; you've only seen a peep through the curtain,—a specimen of what is going on, the world over, in some shape or other. If we are to be prying and spying into all the dismals of life, we should have no heart to anything. 'T is like looking too close into the details of Dinah's kitchen;" and St. Clare lay back ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... too indisputably mistress of the stage. The infinite resource with which she contrived always to draw the limelight in her direction, the unremitting regularity with which she turned every circumstance into a "curtain" for her own apotheosis, while it fired the proud Cleopatra to ever fresh efforts at successful competition,—efforts which were proving tremendously exhausting,—left Vanessa and Agatha in a state not unlike ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... by thick heavy clouds, which scowled already over the struggling brightness of the eastern horizon. The bustle and animation of the new day gradually overspread the Gothic encampment in all directions. The only tent whose curtain remained still closed, and round which no busy crowds congregated in discussion or mingled in labour, was that of Hermanric. By the dying embers of his watchfire stood the young chieftain, with two warriors, to whom he appeared to be ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... But the curtain rose; that is to say, the tombola commenced. At a raised platform, a small boy, dressed in black, popularly supposed to be a cholera orphan, rolled back his shirt-cuffs—he had a shirt—plunged his hand into the glass barrel, and produced a slip of paper; an assistant carried it to the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... even told a lie. Hamlet asked her where her father was, and she said he was at home, when he was really listening behind a curtain.' Poor Ophelia! It is considered angelic in Desdemona to say untruly that she killed herself, but most immoral or pusillanimous in Ophelia to tell her lie. I will not discuss these casuistical problems; but, if ever an angry lunatic asks me a question which ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... am not stronger than death. I submit. I would not have those truck drivers leaving their sweethearts to go to war on account of me. (She goes up to the curtain, and touches it.) How thin the prison-wall is! And yet it shuts me away ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... only to read what the Stars have said.' She took his right hand and turned it palm upward; but the instant her eyes met it she dropped it as though it had been red hot, and, with a startled look, glided swiftly away. Lifting the curtain of the large tent, which occupied the centre of the camp, she ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... letter about le Candidat. Now here are the criticisms that I add to yours: we ought to have: (1) lowered the curtain after the electoral meeting and put the entire half of the third act into the beginning of the fourth; (2) cut out the anonymous letter, which is unnecessary, since Arabelle informs Rousselin that his wife has a lover; (3) inverted the order of the scenes in the fourth act, that is to ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... and scarlet mountains hurt her into wincing—for was it not the clarion of Beauty that Samson had heard—and in answer to which he had left her? So, she would sit, and let her eyes wander, and try to imagine the sort of picture those same very hungry eyes would see, could she rip away the curtain of purple distance, and look in on him—wherever he was. And, in imagining such a picture, she was hampered by no actual knowledge of the world in which he lived—it was all a fairy-tale world, one which her imagination ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... And once, during a voyage from Lima to Mexico, he saw it in greater magnificence than ever before. 'Long narrow clouds, scattered over the lovely azure of the sky, appeared low down in the horizon, as if in front of a golden curtain, while bright varied tints played from time to time on the higher clouds: it seemed a second sunset. Towards that side of the heavens, the light diffused appeared almost to equal that of the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... put into working order I shall imitate travellers in hot countries—I shall ride all night, and I shall rest all day. There are too many young women in Cathay. They turn up one after another with the regularity of a continuous performance. No sooner is the curtain rung down on one act than it is rung up on another. Perhaps after a while I may get out of Cathay, and then again I may ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... which we speak things were quiet at the offices. The line of pigeon-holes in the wire curtain was deserted by the public, though the linoleum-covered floor bore abundant traces of a busy morning. Misty London light shone hazily through the glazed windows and cast dark shadows in the corners. On a ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... dust! dust! Carpet, curtain, window, floor; Right, left, thrust, thrust— Clouds are rising more and more! Sweep, sweep, sweep, sweep— Kitchen, parlour, passage, stair; Sweep, sweep, sweep, sweep— That's what I'm obliged to bear! Dust, dust, dust, ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... coffee and pipes, our presents were produced and given. The travellers were collected in a very long black tent, together with Deab, his son and friends. A screen at one end divided us from the women's apartment, i.e., what would be the Hhareem in houses of towns; behind this curtain the women were peeping, chattering, and laughing; of course we might expect this to be about the extraordinary-looking strangers. It has been conjectured that such a separation of the tent is implied in Gen. xviii. 6 and 10, when "Sarah heard ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... the sequel or issue of this episode, history is silent, but when the curtain rises again (A.D. 1674) Mazeppa is discovered in the character of writer-general or foreign secretary to Peter Doroshenko, hetman or president of the Western Ukraine, on the hither side of the Dnieper. From ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... possession of it, a native hut seems quite a comfortable home. My house at Waypoti was a bare shed, with a large bamboo platform at one side. At one end of this platform, which was elevated about three feet, I fixed up my mosquito curtain, and partly enclosed it with a large Scotch plaid, making a comfortable little sleeping apartment. I put up a rude table on legs buried in the earthen floor, and had my comfortable rattan-chair for a seat. A line across one corner carried my daily-washed cotton clothing, and on a bamboo shelf ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Dobelle family smoked on in placid contentment. When the time for repose arrived, Madame Dobelle and her eldest girl retired to a box-bed in a corner of the hut which was screened off—not very effectually—by a curtain of birch-bark. The two brothers lay down in another corner. The three visitors disposed themselves in the third, and, as the fourth was monopolised by the rain-rivulet, old Dobelle lay down on one side of the fire ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... but without rain: it was rather dark, too, though not so as to prevent us from seeing the clouds careering swiftly through the air. The dense curtain which had overhung and obscured the horizon was now broken, and large sections of the sky were clear, and thinly studded with stars that looked dim and watery, as did indeed the whole firmament; for in some places black clouds were still visible, threatening a continuance of tempestuous weather. ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... to be actually present," said Grace, with sudden inspiration. "Look here, this is a little alcove," and she pulled aside a hanging curtain and showed a recess in the library wall. "You can stand in there, and hear whatever he has to say. I'd feel safer if you were near. Of course there's Peterson, but he's so queer, and I don't like the servants to hear too much about poor father's disappearance. ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... thinning to gray there was a shattering rap on the ground-level window. The half-dressed young factory daughter clambered over the others and ripped down the rain coat that served as a night-time window curtain. Against the square-paned window was ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... old place. And, stranger still, out of facts that I educed to prove its fallacy would come corroborative suggestions. I think it is well for my peace of mind that I have not been in the way of hearing about him or of seeing him. Since we parted it has been as if a dark curtain had fallen between us; and, so far as I am concerned, that curtain has been lifted up but once or twice, and then only for a moment of time. So all my thoughts of him are joined to the past. Away back in that sweet time when the heart of girlhood first thrills with the passion of love are some ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... dealt pleasantly with men who are unmindful of small courtesies, the unknown country beyond the altar would lose some of its fear. If the way of an engaged girl lies past a barber shop,—which very seldom has a curtain, by the way,—and she happens to think that she may some day behold her beloved in the dangerous act of shaving himself, it immediately hardens her heart. One glimpse of one face covered with lather will postpone one wedding-day five weeks. Many a lover has attributed to caprice ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... behind him made Heideck turn his head. He saw the curtain before the door of the tent slightly lifted, and that it was Morar Gopal who had attempted to draw his attention ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... was given for looking around us, for our guard hurried us—El Sabio following close at Pablo's heels—across the court-yard to a door-way at its farther side, before which hung in heavy folds a curtain of some sort of thick black cloth. Across this entrance the guard was drawn up in orderly ranks behind us; and then the barge-master, who had preserved absolute silence towards us since our march through the city began, held aside ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... doors in an orchard every moonlight night for three months from nine o'clock till five. While working in his studio, he darkened one end of the room, put a lantern in the hand of his lay-figure and painted this interior through the hole in a curtain. On moonlight nights he let the moon shine in through the window to mix with the lantern light. It was a principle with the Brotherhood that detail, though not introduced for its own sake, should be painted with truth to nature. Hunt, especially, took infinite pains to secure ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... had done its work; the North had played its grim comedy to the final curtain, making sport of men's affections and turning love to rankling hate. But into the mind of each man crept a certain craftiness. Each longed to strike, but feared to face the consequences. It was lonesome, here among the white hills and the deathly silences, yet they reflected that ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... out his threat; and during the rest of the play she is represented as vainly vowing vengeance upon him, whilst she is really falling in love with him under the influence of his imaginary crime against her. Finally she consents to marry him; and the curtain falls ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... has just been raised, and I have had a curtain-lecture from my wife for swearing about it. Would not you swear if your rent ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... broke the silence of the moor. Crouching among the stones we stared intently at the silver-tipped bank in front of us. The steps grew louder, and through the fog, as through a curtain, there stepped the man whom we were awaiting. He looked round him in surprise as he emerged into the clear, starlit night. Then he came swiftly along the path, passed close to where we lay, and went on up the long slope behind us. ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... been adequately impressed by the grandeur of this mighty cathedral. When she first lifted the heavy leathern curtain, at one of the doors, a shadowy edifice in her imagination had been dazzled out of sight by the reality. Her preconception of St. Peter's was a structure of no definite outline, misty in its architecture, dim and gray and huge, stretching into an interminable perspective, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Portieres (curtain doors) have superseded folding doors. These should be in shades to contrast with the general blending of the colors in the room. The fabrics mostly used are India goods, but they may be of any material, from expensive tapestries, satins, and plushes, to ten-cent factory ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... the floor, and tacked up a white tablecloth which I had in my trunk, for a curtain; spread my one deer skin rug upon the floor, made up the cot bed with my blankets, opened my trunk, hung up a few garments, and was settled. This is the first spring bed I have slept upon since Mr. H. took the velvet couch away from the Mission. ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... want you to find one more verse about the earth as it hangs in the sky, a very beautiful verse in the fortieth chapter of Isaiah. "It is He that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in." What is meant by the "circle of the earth"? You have learnt that the earth is round, like the sun and moon; for you see how round the globe in the schoolroom ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... now to debate the case with Victor, which would be of necessity to do the avoided thing and roll up the forbidden curtain opening on their whole history past and prospective, was met in Nataly's bosom by the more bitter immediate confession that she was not his match. To speak would be to succumb; and shamefully after the effort; and hopelessly ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... troubled look now overspreading his features springs not from grief, nor has anger aught to do with it. Instead, it is all apprehension. For now, as though a curtain had been suddenly lifted before his eyes, he sees beyond it, there perceiving for himself and his companions danger such as they had not yet been called upon to encounter. All along the route their thoughts were turned to Naraguana, ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... book of Daniel draws aside the curtain, and shows how angels doubtless often have worked unseen in kingly courts or halls of legislation. Daniel had prayed for three weeks for light in certain matters that the angel Gabriel had begun to unfold to him. When at last the angel came, overpowering the prophet with the ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... opposite the foot, and both curtained, as we may sometimes see valuable water-colours, or the portraits of the dead, or works of art more than usually skittish in the subject. It was perhaps in the hope of finding something of this last description that M'Naughten's comrade pulled aside the curtain of the first. He was startlingly disappointed. There was no picture. The frame surrounded, and the curtain was designed to hide, an oblong aperture in the partition, through which they looked forth into the dark corridor. A ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... down some water and is given a present of money by the bridegroom. The bridegroom's feet are then washed by his father-in-law and he is given a yellow cloth which he wears. The couple are made to stand on two wooden planks opposite each other with a curtain between them, the bridegroom facing east and the bride west, holding some Akshata or rice covered with saffron in their hands. As the sun sets the officiating Brahman gets on to the roof of the house and repeats the marriage texts from there. At his signal the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... second fresh vitality was pouring into him. Before his eyes danced a red curtain of hate and his tongue roared forth a series of insulting challenges to the figure that was even now approaching ...
— Hellhounds of the Cosmos • Clifford Donald Simak
... suggested further experimentation, and called upon the English society to learn, by trials, whether the mental influences which they had observed to pass from mind to mind under specially arranged conditions, would still pass when a curtain or a door separated the parties. Fifteen years have since elapsed, and neither they nor any one else has settled this most elementary of all the questions involved. The only conclusion seems to be that only in exceptional cases does any effect pass at all; and when it does, ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... supply of pageants be limited, different scenes were acted in different parts of the same stage; and actors who were awaiting or had ended their parts stood on the stage unconcealed by a curtain. In more elaborate performances a scene like the "Trial of Jesus" involved the employment of two scaffolds, displaying the judgment-halls of Pilate and Herod respectively; and between them passed messengers on horseback. The plays contain occasional stage directions—e.g., "Here Herod ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... side of the necromancer's chair was a heavy curtain, or portiere of cloth, covered with fantastic figures, and this was drawn aside a minute or so after Mr. ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... of the tinder-box; a light was struck; it spread over the room, but he had time to place himself behind the window-curtain which was close at hand. The figure before him stood a moment or so motionless, and seemed to listen, for it turned to the right, to the left, its visage covered with the black, hideous mask which is worn in carnivals. Slowly the mask was removed. Could that be his son's ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... or forty miles southeast of Radway's camp, a train was crawling over a badly laid track which led towards the Saginaw Valley. The whole affair was very crude. To the edge of the right-of-way pushed the dense swamp, like a black curtain shutting the virgin country from the view of civilization. Even by daylight the sight could have penetrated but a few feet. The right-of-way itself was rough with upturned stumps, blackened by fire, and gouged by many and varied furrows. ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... going to," said the stranger: "I am a printer." And they walked on some way, until they at length stopped before a glass and illumined door, covered with a red curtain. Before it was a group of several men and women brawling, but who did not notice ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... the battle of the day. At twilight he had watched the lights spring up one by one, at first like pin pricks in the distance, growing and widening until the grotesque shapes of the buildings from which they sprung had faded into nothingness, and there was left only a velvet curtain of strangely-lit stars. At a giddy distance below he could trace the blaze of Broadway, the blue lights flashing from the electric wires as the cable cars rushed back and forth, the red and violet glimmer of the sky signs. He knew it all so well, by morning, by noon and ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... wherein the most conspicuous object was a large oak chest clamped with wide iron hinges and a massive writing-desk; the bed and a very primitive washstand were in an alcove at the farther end of the room and partially hidden by a tapestry curtain. ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... adventurous visit, upstairs, to picture books criticised for not being ALL geegees and walking sticks happily more conformable. The young man's window, too, looked out on their acquaintance; through a starched muslin curtain it kept his neighbour before him, made him almost more aware of her comings and goings than he felt he had a right to be. He was capable of a shyness of curiosity about her and of dumb little delicacies ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... by the assaulting troops only at short ranges, the advance being protected by a curtain of artillery fire. The advancing line makes use of shell holes ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... they had to adapt a bit taken from the third act and suppress the vision. This is the reason why Nelusko succumbs so quickly to the deadly perfume of the poisonous flowers, while Selika resists so long. The riturnello of Selika's aria, which should be performed with lowered curtain as the queen gazes over the sea and at the departing vessel far away on the horizon, became a vehicle for encores—the last thing that was ever in Meyerbeer's mind. But the worst was the liberty Fetis took in retouching the orchestration. As a compliment to Adolph Sax he substituted ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... assembly stood up. The curtain which covered the wall in the background was drawn aside, and on a platform sat a little insignificant-looking man, with a table before him and a sofa beside him. On the table stood a wooden goblet. He ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... I have been absolutely ravie with delight at the fall of the curtain; but I intend to take the affair in the tant miemx manner, and to console myself for your censure by this greatest proof I have ever received of the sincerity, candour, and, let me add, esteem, of my dear daddy. And as I happen to love myself rather more than my play, this consolation ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... lines of fluting from the columns towards the roof. The walls of the temple are not primarily intended to support, but to enclose the sacred cella, and are adorned only at their upper edge, as a curtain might be, with a decorative frieze. The whole building is thought out as a home for the statue of the deity which it encloses; and no part is allowed to adorn itself except in subordination to this general ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... and was built bungalow fashion, everything on the ground floor, and a veranda all around. They have doors in India, but I don't know why. They don't fasten, and they stand open, as a rule, with a curtain hanging in the doorspace to keep out the glare of the sun. Still, there is plenty of privacy, for no white person will come in without notice, of course. The native men servants will, but they don't seem to count. They glide ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... her eyes with a startled expression in them and her lips quivering with emotion. Mr. Winston lifted a portion of the red velvit curtain which screaned the fire place, and then to ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... low black clouds and stifling heat was more bearable. He wanted to get away from his house, which was permeated and soaked in association with the other two actors, who in company with himself, had surely some tragedy for which the curtain was already rung up. Some dreadful scene was already prepared for them; the setting and stage were ready, the prompter, and who was he? was in the box ready to tell them the next line if any of them faltered. The ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... concluded—the curtain fell—Henry Tilney was no longer to be seen where he had hitherto sat, but his father remained, and perhaps he might be now coming round to their box. She was right; in a few minutes he appeared, and, making his way through the then thinning rows, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... gallows-tree, and here the projecting end of a fallen cross. Between showed no vestige of an opening; dark, impervious, formidable as a fortress wall, the tunal met the eye. Ferne, attacking it with his sword, thrust aside a heavy curtain of broad-leaved vine, came upon a network of thorn and spike and prickly leaf, hewed this away, to find behind it a like barrier. Evidently the man had lied!—to what purpose Sir Mortimer Ferne would presently make it his business to discover.... There overtook ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... to the left. THORGJERD gazes after her thoughtfully. The chorus dies away in the distance as the curtain falls.] ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... and drew the curtain of the large bow-window, so common in the West Indian houses, and the rich moonlight, now unvexed by the dull glare of the taper, flowed into the apartment, bathing every object it touched with silvery radiance. Clara sat in the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... thin emaciated structures, bloated out by coats of flatulent plaster, and supported upon cast-metal pegs, which the courtesy of the times calls pillars of the church. The painted windows, that admitted a dim religious light, have given place to the cheap house-pane and dapper green curtain. The front, with its florid reliefs and capacious crater, has dwindled ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... first is solemn and sedate, Or ought to be, that's certain; But sometimes, owing to the state Of human passions, or to fate, It is a scene of fierce debate And wrath; but ere it is too late I'll stop, and draw the curtain. ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... him to expect her back in a day or two, and had posted this at Dover. The steamer was the Marie Henriette, a large and luxurious boat, whose state-rooms on deck vie with the glories of the Cunard and White Star liners. One of these state-rooms, the best, was evidently occupied, for every curtain of its windows was carefully drawn. Nella did not hope that the Baroness was on board; it was quite possible for the Baroness to have caught the eight o'clock steamer, and it was also possible for the Baroness not to ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... have ever been in the Play-house before the Curtain rises, you see most of the Front Boxes filled with Men of my Family, who forthwith turn out and resign their Stations upon the Appearance of those ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... transactions of those messengers who are employed when the parting soul takes it's leave of the reluctant body, and perhaps see things nature would shrink back from with the utmost terror and amazement. In a word, the curtain of Providence for the disposition of things here, and the curtain of judgment for the determination of the state of souls hereafter, would be alike drawn back; and what heart could support here its future state in life; much less that, of its future state after ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... suddenly threw himself from his horse, strode to the wagon and threw up the tail curtain. Safely stored therein he saw the protected tins ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler
... characters imprinted. Nevertheless, nothing could be more agreeable to the sight; so that instead of alarming, it gave pleasure. It appeared every night whilst the count stayed at Marseilles. This prince, having once cast his hands upon it, to see if it was not something attached to the bed curtain, the spectre disappeared that night, and ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... the 'dust-devils' which plagued their brethren. Here were tamarisk thickets, haunted with great metallic beetles, with such wings as Eastern smiths know how to use. The green bushes were good to the eyes, and a pleasant curtain from flying sand. But a sudden rise in the river flushed its shallow right arm, and made the place an island in reality and all inconvenience. ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... troops near Hazel Run moved forward from their bivouacs, the rumbling of artillery on the frozen roads, the loud words of command, and the sound of martial music came, muffled by the fog, to the ears of the Confederates lying expectant on the ridge. Now and again the curtain lifted for a moment, and the Southern guns assailed the long dark columns of the foe. Very early had the Confederates taken up their position. The ravine of Deep Run, covered with tangled brushwood, was the line of demarcation between Jackson and Longstreet. On the extreme right of the Second ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... her abruptly and walked to the window. The darkness had drawn close. It hung like a black curtain beyond the pane. The only light in the room was a lamp that burned on a side table. It illumined him but dimly, and again it seemed to the girl who watched him that this could be no other than the Guy of ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... added she, "the stage acts very prudently and sensibly in letting the curtain fall the moment the hero and heroine approach the altar; novels do the same, and that, also, with good reason, otherwise nobody would be able ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... a corner behind a pillar near the back of the hall. Grodman had been honoured with a seat on the platform, which was accessible by steps on the right and left, but he kept his eye on Denzil. The picture of the poor idealist hung on the wall behind Grodman's head, covered by its curtain of brown holland. There was a subdued buzz of excitement about the hall, which swelled into cheers every now and again as some gentleman known to fame or Bow took his place upon the platform. It was occupied by several local M.P.'s of varying politics, ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... by rills, and curtain'd round by woods, Slopes the green dell to meet the briny floods, 445 The sparkling noon-beams trembling on the tide, The PROTEUS-LOVER woos his playful bride, To win the fair he tries a thousand forms, Basks on the sands, or gambols in the storms. A Dolphin now, ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... circumstances, the husband being out of work. A sad sight met my eyes; the poor woman lay coughing on the bed, as if she could not last much longer, the children standing by the bed, dirty and uncared for; the floor black, window curtain hanging in rags, while the mother could do nothing. They receive one dollar a week from the Poor Association. I assisted her, and promised to look to the children; talked with her and then read and prayed. She clasped my hand as I arose from my knees and said, 'You are the ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... whillaloo That oft smacked of "Killaloe," The contagious wrath of Buskin and of Sock Hath abated for awhile, And no more the Emerald Isle On the stage and in the green-room seems to shock. The curtain is rung down, The comedian and the clown, With the sombre putter-on of tragic airs, Are gone, with all the cast, And the Theatre, at last, Is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... the white screen of vapour rolled up like the curtain in a playhouse, and uncovered a stately war-ship, lying so close that we could have thrown a biscuit aboard. Her long, lean, black hull rose and fell with a slow, graceful rhythm, while her beautiful spars and snow-white ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... marks and protects their perception as the curtain of the eagle's eye. Our swifter Americans, when they first deal with English, pronounce them stupid; but, later, do them justice as people who wear well, or hide their strength.—High and low, they are of an unctuous texture.—Their daily feasts argue a ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... had given little trouble, but now they sang outside my net all night long, while the poor, unprotected boatmen, robbed of their hard-earned sleep, kept up an accompaniment of slapping on the other side of the curtain. The river was falling again, leaving long stretches of mudbank over which I had to clamber if I tried to leave the boat for a little change, but I always managed to go on shore for a while when the men were cooking and eating their supper. They took an interminable ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... party was seated, that important evening. The house was ornamented as a theatre, and I thought it vast in extent; though Herman Mordaunt assured me it was no great things, in that point of view, as compared with most of the playhouses at home. But the ornaments, and the lights, and the curtain, the pit, the boxes the gallery, were all so many objects of intense interest. Few of us said anything; but our eyes wandered over all with a species of delight, that I am certain can be felt in a theatre only once. Anneke's sweet face was a picture of youthful ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... When used for flowers or leaves the width and the closeness of the stitch are varied to suit the shape to be filled. An example of its use as a flower filling is shown in the carnation at fig. 64, which is carried out in four shades of colour. Considerable use is made of this stitch in embroidered curtain shown in Plate VII.; it is there employed for all the stems and ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... must be my bed, The bracken curtain for my head, My lullaby the warder's tread, Far, far, from love and thee, Mary; To-morrow eve, more stilly laid, My couch may be my bloody plaid, My vesper song thy wail, sweet maid! It will ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... were performed at all hours, frequently in private houses, and sometimes even in jails, by pretended clergymen. The law, however, was subsequently and properly reformed. The duke and duchess are said to have been married with a curtain-ring, at half-past twelve-at night, at May Fair Chapel. This precipitated the marriage of Lord Coventry, a personage of a grave stamp, but who had long paid attention to the elder sister Maria. He married her about three weeks after. Except that we are accustomed to hear of the frenzy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... if SELIVIT was not paid the artist would be worried by the dogs and fowls that always roam about a Kayan house, so that the work would not be satisfactorily done; however, to make assurance doubly sure, a curtain is hung round the operator and her subject to keep off unwelcome intruders. After SELIVIT has been paid a cigarette is smoked, and then work recommences in earnest, there being no further interruptions for the rest of the day except for the purpose of taking food. The food of the artist ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... right," said Prowler, looking about him nervously. "Just wait till you hear 'em announce the refreshments—that always means a rush, you know. Then slip through the crowd and out by that door behind the curtain, and hustle down to the ship just as fast as ever you can lay your paws ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... plan," resumed Miss Craydocke, as Leslie took the measure of a buttonhole and began. "Change of work is as good as a rest. So I've had them down here on the curtain among the girls. Next, I'm going to have a bee. I've got some things to finish up for Prissy Hoskins, and they're likely to be wanted in something of a hurry. She's got another aunt in Portsmouth, and if she can only be provided with proper things to wear, she can go down there, ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... her to the window, from whence she cast a covert glance from behind the curtain. But she saw neither hen nor cock. Had they been able to run ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... suppose I had better put it on the ground of ill-health." The artist glanced at his handsome repeater. "Dear me, I promised to be at Mrs. Van Orley's before twelve o'clock. We are to settle about the curtain before luncheon. My dear fellow, it has been a privilege to see your work. By the way, you have never done any modelling, I suppose? You're so extraordinarily versatile—I didn't know whether you might care to undertake the ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... these preparations outwardly to win and secure fame, the curtain is now and then drawn aside, and we see with frightful evidence a boundless ambition and thirst after greatness, regardless of all means and consequences. Thus, in the preface to Machiavelli's Florentine history, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... image is projected upside down by the lens on the plate, and that the bottom of the picture is taken before the top. The camera mechanism admits light, which makes the picture, in the manner of a roller blind curtain. The slit travels from the top to the bottom and, the image on the plate being projected upside down, the bottom of the object appears on the top of the plate. For instance, the wheels are taken before the head of the driver. If the car is moving quickly, the image moves ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... or people or scenery. But to dream often of going to live in an ancient house,—of trying to find in it my room; mosquito netting at the window, not quite tight; from my room into a smaller one a door which I try to fasten but can not because at the bottom it is a swaying curtain, the wall paper loose and a mouse hole near the floor; a long, sunshiny room where I see what appears to be a rat but which becomes a little kitten, weak from long confinement, that follows me from room to room and at last through a door leading to a porch;—why all these accessories? Once I go ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... impossible, and all thought superfluous. Thought was an enemy, obedience was its friend. Investigation was fraught with danger; therefore investigation was suppressed. The holy of holies was behind the curtain. All this was upon the principle that forgers hate to have the signature examined by an expert, and ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... strict orthodoxy) and domestic jealousies and perfidies all contributed to this result. Zeno, who had fled twenty months before from the Hippodrome, returned to the Amphitheatre, and there, having commanded that the linen curtain should be drawn over the circus to exclude the too piercing rays of the July sun, gave the signal for the games to begin, while the populace shouted in Latin the regular official congratulations on his elevation and ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... turning to him, while Albert continued to point his glass at every box in the theatre, "you seem determined not to approve; you are really too difficult to please." The curtain at length fell on the performances, to the infinite satisfaction of the Viscount of Morcerf, who seized his hat, rapidly passed his fingers through his hair, arranged his cravat and wristbands, and signified to Franz that he was waiting for him to lead the way. Franz, who had mutely ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... alone for nearly half an hour, scarcely stirring, so intent was she on the subject of her thoughts, when a light footfall sounded without, and the curtain at the door was raised. She turned and saw a dark countenance, which ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... faint glimmer peculiar to the shaded lamp of a sick-room. Guy's pulse bounded wildly at first, and then grew dull and still. In that room he knew Constance lay dying. The other window was brightly lighted, but half shaded by a curtain. While he gazed, this was torn suddenly aside, as if by an angry, impatient hand, and a man leaned out, throwing back the hair from his forehead, to catch the cold wind which was blowing sharply. Guy had never seen the dark, ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... interests. Falls, glaciers and lakes are on a grand scale. The Tasman glacier is eighteen miles long and more than two miles across at the widest point; the Murchison glacier is more than ten miles long; the Godley eight. The Hochstetter Fall is a curtain of broken, uneven, fantastic ice coming down 4,000 feet on to the Tasman glacier. It is a great spectacle, seen amid the stillness of the high Alps, broken only by the occasional boom and crash of ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... concerned, I may state that I have had personal knowledge of all the negociations and questions at issue above referred to, and I can only declare that I have confined myself to facts; these will stand out in a much clearer light when the curtain is raised and the events of the last two years in this sorely afflicted part of the ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... discovered, there appeared a wood in perspective, the innermost part being of "releeve or whole round," the rest painted. On the left a cave, and on the right a thicket from which issued Orpheus. At the back of the scene, at the sudden fall of a curtain, the upper part broke on the spectators, a heaven of clouds of all hues; the stars suddenly vanished, the clouds dispersed; an element of artificial fire played about the house of Prometheus—a bright and transparent ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... of thy cheeks Is apter than thy tongue to tell thy errand; Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless, So dull, so dead in look, so woebegone, Drew Priam's curtain at the dead of night, And would have told him half his Troy was burnt: But Priam found the fire, ere he his tongue, And I my Percy's death ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... shall hardly consider under this head the speech of the whole grex, or the "Nunc plaudite" of an actor that closes a number of the plays. It is no more than the bowing or curtain-calls of today[160], unless it was an emphatic announcement to the audience that the play ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... was dressed, she went to the princess's apartment, who was still in bed. She undrew the curtain, wished her good morrow, and kissed her. But how great was her surprise when she returned no answer; and looking more attentively at her, she perceived her to be much dejected, which made her judge that something had happened, which she did not understand "How comes ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... in this cave. Her fair head, with its long flowing hair, was resting in her hands, and her deep blue eyes were fixed upon the glow of a peat fire that burned in the middle of the chamber, and reflected its warm light upon the deerskin curtain at the entrance. From without came the soughing of a bitter east wind that blew in biting ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... Beecher and to Maude to realise that Mrs. Hunt Mortimer knew no more about the matter than themselves. They both ventured upon a less diffident air now that it was clear that it might be done in safety. Maude frowned thoughtfully, and Mrs. Beecher cast up her pretty brown eyes at the curtain-rod, as if she were running over in her memory the whole long catalogue of ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... of an excuse for climbing a tree, however cheaply he might hold one who cared for flowers; and by the time Bessie had put on her lilac-spotted sun-bonnet—a shapeless article it must be confessed, with a huge curtain serving for a tippet, very comfortable, and no trouble at all—he had scrambled into the fork, and brought down a beautiful spire of blossoms, with all the grand leaves hanging ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... took a bunch of keys from his pocket and, crossing the office, locked the door. He then retired to his private apartments and also locked the communicating door. A few moments later he came out of "The Chancery Agency" and proceeded in the direction of the Strand. Under cover of the wire-gauze curtain which veiled the window he had carefully inspected the scene before emerging. But although his eyes were keen and his sixth sense whispered "Danger—danger!" he had failed to ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... to the physical evils of slavery. I do not wish to dwell at length upon these, but it seems right to speak of them, not so much to influence your minds on this question, as to let the slaveholders of America know that the curtain which conceals their crimes is being lifted abroad; that we are opening the dark cell, and leading the people into the horrible recesses of what they are pleased to call their domestic institution. We want them to know that a ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... saw, was a kind of nymph, her spread drapery forming the receptacle. "I must get one of those," he thought. "I wonder what they cost." Then he puffed violently again. The doctor had risen and was pacing the cabin floor slowly over by the red curtain that concealed the bunk. O'Malley absent-mindedly watched him, and as he did so the words he had heard kept on roaring at ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... the church, now an evangelist, was busy in an adjoining room, separated only by a curtain. The reference to Mrs. Becker attracted his attention. At the close of her remarks he entered the room and stepping to the window, pointed ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... perching herself upon his knee, calling him "her good boy," now holding a whispered conversation with Miggie, who, she fancied, was there, and again singing to herself a plaintive song she had sung to Dr. Griswold. When it drew near her bedtime she went to the window, from which the curtain was thrown back, and looking out upon the blackness of the ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... a rule," the Plynck was saying, as Sara dropped the curtain behind her the next morning, "to fly around the fountain at least twice every day." As she spoke, she reached out and took, from a bundle that lay within easy reach in a crotch of the Gugollaph-tree, something that looked like a little ivory stick. She snapped it easily with one golden claw, ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... going to stay all night he bestirred himself, dragged some of the things to one side and put down a shake-down of pulu (the silky covering of the fronds of one species of tree-fern), with a sheet over it, and a gay quilt of orange and red cotton. There was a thin printed muslin curtain to divide off one half of the room, a usual arrangement in native houses. He then helped to unsaddle the horses, and the confusion of the room was increased by a heap of our wet saddles, blankets, and gear. All this time the women ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... governesses of the Netherlands. It is just the finest portrait that ever was seen. Only a half-length, but such a majesty, such a force, such a splendor, such a simplicity about it! The woman is in a stiff black dress, with a ruff and a few pearls; a yellow curtain is behind her—the simplest arrangement that can be conceived; but this great man knew how to rise to his occasion; and no better proof can be shown of what a fine gentleman he was than this his homage to ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and if Micheline had turned round she would have been frightened at the pallor of her companion. But Mademoiselle Desvarennes was not thinking of Mademoiselle de Cernay; she had just raised the heavy door curtain, and calling to Jeanne, "Are you ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... He was also the fortunate producer of the "Beggar's Opera," which was facetiously said to have made Rich gay, and Gay rich. He took so little interest in what is termed the "regular drama," that he is reported to have exclaimed, when peeping through the curtain at a full house to witness a tragedy—"What, you are there, you fools, are you!" He died wealthy, in 1761; and there is a costly tomb to his memory in ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Fogg, as the rain swept against the cab as if driven from a full pressure hose, and they could feel the staunch locomotive quiver as it breasted great sweeps of the wind. "I don't like that," he muttered, as a great clump came against the cab curtain. And he and his engineer both knew what it ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... the best of my ability; one of the panes with the old pillow-case, and the other with a piece of the old stage green curtain. Sure I was as careful as possible all the time you were away, and not a drop of rain came in at that window of all the windows in the house, all winter, ma'am, when under my care; and now the family's come home, and it's summer-time, I never thought no more about ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... and it took all my voice to silence them. Lucky for us, there was a cloud over the moon now, and darkness like a black vapour upon the sea. Not a lamp burned on the Southern Cross; not a cabin window but had its curtain. What glow came from her funnel was not more than a hazy red light over the waters; and when five of us (for we took Harry Doe to stand by ashore) stepped into the longboat, and set her head due west ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... light illumined one of the upper windows of the house. A shadow was thrown on the curtain. Perhaps it was the girl herself. What explanation had she given her friends for appearing so late at their door? Probably she had told them no more than that she was tired and belated. She was not the kind of girl from ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... boy had paid any heed to the fact a cab had moved slowly down Main Street past them while Mrs. Dexter was talking. The curtains were drawn just enough to make the interior of the vehicle a black shadow. Lolling on the back seat, with one curtain adjusted just so that he could look out sufficiently, sat a man, disguised somewhat, though ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock
... curtains hung at the windows. A canary in a gilt cage sung above an open window. Oh, plainly he was bewitched or the world was topsy-turvy! The look he turned on the girl was so helpless, so entreating that her face, which had begun to set coldly, softened instantly. The hand clasping the curtain fold fell to her side and she took a ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... fathomed your depths. And when they talk of you as familiarly as if they had taken out your auricles and ventricles, and turned them inside out, and wrung them, and shaken them,—when they prate of your transparency and openness, the abandonment with which you draw aside the curtain and reveal the inmost thoughts of your heart,—you, who are to yourself a miracle and a mystery, you smile inwardly, and are content. They are on the wrong scent, and you may pursue your plans in peace. They are indiscriminate and satisfied. They do not ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... wind had been steadily dropping, the sea going down at the same time, and when, just before sunset, the glorious orb burst through and dispersed the curtain of storm-tattered clouds which had for so long a time overspread the sky, his golden rays fell upon the Princess Royal, now no longer rolling gunwale-under, but swinging with a slow stately motion over the long swell, and ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... grew darker, they saw several lights lit in the ranch. One was in the kitchen, one in what looked to be a bedroom and another in a small room in the main part of the building. The curtain over the window of the last-named room was up, and they could see the lamp quite ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... virgin darted forward. As she ran, she looked more beautiful than ever. The breezes seemed to give wings to her feet; her hair flew over her shoulders, and the gay fringe of her garment fluttered behind her. A ruddy hue tinged the whiteness of her skin, such as a crimson curtain casts on a marble wall. All her competitors were distanced, and were put to death without mercy. Hippomenes, not daunted by this result, fixing his eyes on the virgin, said, "Why boast of beating those ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... listened to them like a man at a play, who knows that at a word from him the complications would cease, and that were he to rise in the stalls and explain them away, and point out the real hero and denounce the villain, the curtain would have to ring down on the instant. He gave a little purr of satisfaction, and again marshalled his chances before him and smiled to find them good. He was grandly at peace with himself and with the world. Whatever happened, he was already richer by some 300,000 francs, ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... the two branches of the Serb race by the Powers at the Berlin Congress. To me it sounded then fantastic—operatic. I had yet to learn that the opera bouffe of the Balkans is written in blood and that those who are dead when the curtain falls, never come ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... o'clock to-day I went to see Sylvestre, to tell him all the great events of yesterday. We sat down on the old covered sofa in the shadow of the movable curtain which divides the studio, as it were, into two rooms, among the lay figures, busts, varnish-bottles, and paint-boxes. Lampron likes this chiaroscuro. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... scene in the film version of 'The Wizard of Oz' in which the true nature of the wizard is first discovered: "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."] 1. A stage of development of a process or function that, owing to incomplete implementation or to the complexity of the system, requires human interaction to simulate or replace some or all of the actions, inputs, or outputs of the process or function. 2. Of or pertaining to a process or ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... Indian guide, he ascended the great river, with its numerous lakes, cataracts, and islets. He saw the beautiful fall to which ever since has been given the name of Rideau—a name also extended to the river, whose waters make the descent at this point—on account of its striking resemblance to a white curtain. Next he looked into the deep chasm of mist, foam, and raging waters, which the Indians called Asticou or Cauldron (Chaudiere), on whose sides and adjacent islets, then thickly wooded, now stand great mills where the electric light flashes amid the long steel saws as they cut into ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... warned them that the note of the trumpet was the signal for them to bring assistance. Then with a select band, lightly armed, he went to the banquet. The hall was decked with regal splendour; it was covered all round with crimson hangings of marvellous rich handiwork. A curtain of purple dye adorned the propelled walls. The flooring was bestrewn with bright mantles, which a man would fear to trample on. Up above was to be seen the twinkle of many lanterns, the gleam of lamps ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... it," said Mr. Crow angrily. "I believe you've drawn a curtain across the other end of this tunnel. And I can't talk to anybody through a curtain. I refuse to injure my voice trying to talk with anybody that won't give me a more friendly welcome when I call ...
— The Tale of Master Meadow Mouse • Arthur Scott Bailey
... raise him to an higher rank of peerage, whilst he enriched the family with a new one; —if, amidst these bright and happy scenes of domestic honor and prosperity, that angel should have drawn up the curtain and unfolded the rising glories of his country, and, whilst he was gazing with admiration on the then commercial grandeur of England, the genius should point out to him a little speck, scarcely visible in the mass of the national ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... friends determined that if popular support and applause on the first night could make his comedy succeed, then no effort in this direction should be spared upon his behalf. An illustrious and a memorable house greeted the rising curtain. This assemblage of celebrities and the men and women who loved and admired and were resolved to stand by and support Oliver Goldsmith was moving in itself, and one of the greatest possible evidences of the honour and popularity in which the man was held. The people ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... looked in again. This time, however, Kircheisen was not standing before the sashes, but at the side, ensconced behind the curtain, he was spying Gotzkowsky through the window. As he saw him passing by, pale of countenance, but erect and unbent, he felt involuntarily a feeling of remorse, and his conscience warned him of his unpaid debt toward the only man who came to his rescue. But he ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... overhead behind the curtain, a faint but perfectly distinct radiance was visible. It was no more than a diffused glimmer, but it was unmistakable, and it shone out faintly and clearly upon the medium's face. By its light Laurie could make out every line and every feature, the drooping clipped moustache, ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... dreamt I,—and when Sleep Came o'er my sense, the dream went on; Nor, through her curtain dim and deep, Hath ever lovelier vision shone. I thought that, all enrapt, I strayed Through that serene, luxurious shade, Where Epicurus taught the Loves To polish virtue's native brightness,— As pearls, we're told, that fondling doves Have played ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... customary in those days to consult on all manner of questions those holy maids to whom God vouchsafed illumination. Such an one the Maid appeared, and her fame as a prophetess had been spread abroad in a very short time. She revealed hidden things, she drew the curtain from the future. We are reminded of that capitoul[1695] of Toulouse, who about three weeks after the deliverance of Orleans, advised her being consulted as to a remedy for the corruption of the coinage. Bona of Milan, ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... little square his attention was excited by a crowd which had assembled round a conjuror, who, from the top of a small cart, which he had converted into a stage, was haranguing, in front of a green curtain, an audience with great fervency, and apparently with great effect; at least Vivian judged so from the loud applauses which constantly burst forth. The men pressed nearer, shouted, and clapped their hands; and the anxious mothers ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... rooms on the first floor; one of these was a tiny one, but it held our little cooking-stove and a cupboard, with our few dishes; the other we called 'sitting-room;' it had to be dear Nat's bedroom also, because he could not be carried up and down stairs. But I made a chintz curtain, which shut off his bed from sight, and really made the room look prettier, for I put it across a corner and had a shelf put up above it, on which Nat's stuffed owl sat. My room was over Nat's, and a cord went up from his bed to a bell over ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... beautiful, and when you came to know her face, lovely. They are brown, she was fair; they are little, she was very tall. They have eyes like a dove's, glossed brown; hers were deeply blue, the colour of the Adriatic when a fleeting cloud spreads a curtain of hyacinth over the sheeted turquoise bed. Beautifully hued in mingled red and white, delicately shaped, pliant, supple, and shy, such as she was (an honest, good girl, Heaven knows!) she might have lived and died in her alley—sweetheart of some half dozen decent fellows, wife ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... and leave them as the boys I knew. They are living still, and are happy and highly honoured in the world. In their case "the boy has been father to the man;" and the reader who has understood and sympathised with them in their early life will not ask me to draw aside the curtain, even for a moment, to show them as they appeared when a few more summers had seen them grow to the full ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... was a sultry July evening of the day on which the woman whom he had loved for years had married his brother. He was standing on the deck of the steamer which was taking him from England, looking back at the gray town dwindling against the tawny curtain of the sunset. In his brain was a wild clamor of wedding-bells, and across the water, marking the pulse of the sea, came to his outward ears the slow tolling of a bell on a sunken ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... received a gun-shot wound, which seemed to be obviously mortal; but whether in a brawl or from robbers they could not learn, as he was in a fever, and spoke nothing connectedly. Wayland entered the dark and lowly apartment, and no sooner had the curate drawn aside the curtain than he knew, in the distorted features of the patient, the countenance of Michael Lambourne. Under pretence of seeking something which he wanted, Wayland hastily apprised his fellow-travellers of this extraordinary circumstance; and both Tressilian and Raleigh, full of boding apprehensions, ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... make your description of the picture too fine, or else he will be disappointed when the curtain is drawn. I don't want him to be disappointed. But now it's time for you to be gone, if you are to have the best of the tide, and also of ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... she became too anxious to read or think to any purpose; she drew aside the curtain, and, in spite of the cold, curled herself upon the window seat with her face pressed close to the glass. Watching, in a literal sense, was impossible, for there was a dense fog, if possible, worse than the ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... indisputable. Her voice was sweeter and richer than when she sang in Venice, and a perfect storm of flowers fell upon the stage at the end of the performance. Amid these perfumed gifts Consuelo saw a green branch fall at her feet, and when the curtain was lowered for the last time she picked it up. It was a bunch of cypress, a symbol ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... the poop, Mr Meldrum found that the snow had ceased to fall, the gale having gone down a bit. There was also a clear sky overhead, and a few stars were shining out; but the heavy misty fog still hung over the water, like a curtain, preventing the view of anything beyond a limited range from the sides of the ship, while the sea was extremely rough, the waves being nasty and choppy, as if some current or tideway was working against the wind, ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... introduced by Leos Dvorak who informed his guests that the American had been reluctant but had finally agreed to give them his opinion on the press on both sides of what had once been called the Iron Curtain. ...
— Freedom • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... and the next the idlers in the Court House yard knew all the business, and rolled it under their tongues. They loved a tragedy, and this curtain had gone up with promise. Had they not seen Lewis Rand walk into the yard—had they not spoken to him and he to them—had they not watched him enter the Court House? The boy who minded the sheriff's door found himself a hero, and the words treasured that fell from ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... lane sloped, much as the bottles do, From a house you could descry O'er the garden wall: is the curtain blue, Or ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... for some minutes, the old gentleman walked, with the same meditative face, into a back anteroom opening from the yard; and there, retiring into a corner, called up before his mind's eye a vast amphitheatre of faces over which a dusky curtain had hung for many years. 'No,' said the old gentleman, shaking his ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... abstractions of logic conduct to a view of life, which, though startling to the apprehension, is, in fact, that which the habitual sense of its repeated combinations has extinguished in us. It strips, as it were, the painted curtain from this scene of things. I confess that I am one of those who are unable to refuse my assent to the conclusions of those philosophers who assert that nothing exists but as it ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... somewhat of accusation; and since I am innocent, and yet must excuse, how shall I do for that part of accusing. By my troth, as desperate and perplexed men, grow from thence bold; so must I take the boldness of accusing you, who would draw so dark a Curtain betwixt me and your purposes, as that I had no glimmering, neither of your goings, nor the way which my Letters might haunt. Yet, I have given this Licence to Travel, but I know not whither, nor it. It is therefore ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... Only of this be sure. 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy.' More and more the light peeps through the chinks. Soon, amidst music ravishing, the curtain will rise, and the glorious scene be displayed. Adieu! Remember me. Ha! 'tis dawn," Pinto said. And he ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... again sing: BIBAMUS! For joy through a wide-open portal it guides, Bright glitter the clouds, as the curtain divides, An a form, a divine one, to greet ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... youth—forty thousand strong—into the Confederacy; she lifted the lid of her treasury to Lincoln, and in answer to his every call, sent him a soldier, practically without a bounty and without a draft. And when the curtain fell on the last act of the great tragedy, half of her manhood was behind it—helpless from disease, wounded, or ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... larboard to starboard, or from stem to stern, or seat themselves on the benches running along the inside of the guard railing on the two sides of the vessel. They are protected from rain by a roof, and from the rays of the sun by a curtain extending ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... it found itself without further support at the eaves, spreading out each side, and clinging for dear life to the roof, making a delightful screen, as well as a comfortable site for many bird homes. Indeed, there seemed to be a populous bird village behind the green curtain, and great disturbances sometimes occurred, and I could hear the excited voices of the residents till darkness put an end to their discussions. One cool October day, as I sat at my window I heard a strange bird note, and my ready glass in a moment revealed a ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... Wishes, being the Tenth Satire of Juvenal Imitated"; and on February 6 Garrick brought out his tragedy at Drury Lane. Dr. Adams was present at the first night of the representation of "Irene," and gave me the following account. "Before the curtain drew up, there were catcalls and whistling, which alarmed Johnson's friends. The prologue, which was 'written by himself in a manly strain, soothed the audience, and the play went off tolerably till it came to the conclusion, when Mrs. Pritchard, the heroine of the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... welcome your present visit. Two steps forward broke the spell. The drapery of the dress changed outline; the tints of the complexion dissolved, and were formless. Positively, as I reached the spot, there was nothing left but the sweep of a white muslin curtain, and a balsam plant in a flower-pot, covered with a flush of bloom. 'Sic ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... staler beer, and the thrill that the appearance of the orchestra produced, followed by the arrival of all the important personages fortunate enough to afford fifty-cent seats, which gave them the security to put off their appearance until the curtain was almost ready to rise. And when the curtain really did rise upon the inevitable spectacle of villagers dancing upon the village green! And Mrs. Robson carefully picked out in the chorus the stout sister of a former servant who had worked for her mother! And the wicked old witch swept ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... all united, and will at length stand forth in perfect revelation. Verily, conscience is a witness, secretly taking notes, even as good Latimer in his cell overheard the scratching of the pen in the chimney behind the curtain. Conscience is a judge, and, though juries nod and witnesses may be bribed, conscience never slumbers and never sleeps. Conscience is a monarch, and, though to-day the soul's king be deposed from its throne, ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... follow in choosing furnishings is to avoid anything which strikes you as elaborate, or prominent. If a piece of furniture, carpet, or curtain material stands out in a shop, you may be quite certain that it will be even more ...
— Better Homes in America • Mrs W.B. Meloney
... cleared. M. le Duc de Berry went away to his rooms, partly supported by his wife. All through the night he asked, amid tears and cries, for news from Meudon; he would not understand the cause of the King's departure to Marly. When at length the mournful curtain was drawn from before his eyes, the state he fell into cannot be described. The night of Monseigneur and Madame de Bourgogne was more tranquil. Some one having said to the Princess, that having—no real cause to be affected, it would be terrible to play a part, she replied, quite naturally, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... thought it was Phoebe, the maid, going to bed; and with no very gracious feelings toward her for having deprived him of his own night's rest, he was wishing that she might have the toothache or something else to keep her awake, when suddenly through the white window curtain he perceived a broad light in the room—it increased every moment—and he saw the figure of a female rush past it, and attempt to open the window—the drawing of the curtains showed him that the room was on fire. A moment's thought, and he ran for the ladder by which he had ascended to the loft, ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... piecemeal, broken and driven by an iron flail. It would reform and charge again, but now there was confusion. All the field was confused, dismal and dreadful, beneath the orange-tinted smoke. The smoke rolled and billowed, a curtain of strange texture, now parting, now closing, and when it parted disclosing immemorial Death and Wounds with some attendant martial pageantry. The commands were split as by wedges, the uneven ground ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... coasts. The gills of the animal, instead of bearing the general color of its other parts, like those of the oyster, are of a deep green color, resembling, when examined by the microscope, the fringe of a green curtain. ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... was a leopard that had caught his scent! It would be upon him in a minute. Hot tears flowed from the large eyes of little Tibo. The curtain of jungle foliage rustled close at hand. The thing was but a few paces from his tree! His eyes fairly popped from his black face as he watched for the appearance of the dread creature which presently would thrust a snarling countenance from between ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... on St. Pancras church struck half-past eleven; in his hanging cage in the front room, behind his yellow gauze curtain, Poppy's canary woke out of his first sleep. He untucked his head from under his wing and ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... act of the drama of unfolding consciousness upon which the curtain is now upfurled is that wherein we discover the world to be indeed a stage, a playground for forces masquerading as forms: "they have their exits and their entrances," or, as expressed in the Upanishads, "All that goes hence (dies ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... fatiguing her. But not only the lady of the house will rejoice; also the poor, hen-pecked husband will be in transports of delight, as it will make his path easier in many ways. The constant complaints he was hitherto obliged to endure, will grow mute for ever, and the curtain ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... had been half strangled by the too realistic fumes from the altar, and the chorus, huddled at the back of the stage, had sung the Rain Chorus off the key, to the accompaniment of the torrent which poured down in a thin sheet just back of the curtain, raining neither on the just nor on the unjust, but falling accurately into the groove for the footlights between them. He had sung The Messiah and Arminius until they were a weariness to his flesh, and ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... of smiles and announced Miss Carter's presence in the house! And the new note in the Colonel's voice—a note of triumph and love and pride! And the touches here and there inside the cosy rooms; touches that only a woman can give—a new curtain here, a pot of flowers there: all joyous happenings that made a visit to Aunt Nancy, as we loved to call her, one of the events to ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... he raised the curtain of the window near him. The sky was overcast and day was breaking. He rose higher on his elbow to look more carefully. Everywhere that his eye could reach toward the horizon the earth seemed in motion, rising ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... new or had been entirely forgotten. It was night, and impossible to take notes; but that fact was not to be regretted. The darkness gave greater scope and freedom to the narratives of the negroes, and but for this friendly curtain it is doubtful if the conditions would have been favorable to story-telling. But however favorable the conditions might have been, the appearance of a note-book and pencil would have dissipated them as utterly as if they ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... his powers of self-control were, was but human. When he saw the paper, he leant forward, half rising from his chair. As a result, his face came beyond the shadow of the curtain, and the full morning light beat on it. As Rischenheim took the paper out, he looked up. He saw the face that glared so eagerly at him; his eyes met Rassendyll's: a sudden suspicion seized him, for the face, though ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... 'Mum'; for the two had great larks together. Mrs Jo always arranged her own parlour, refilled her vases, and gave the little touches that left it cool and neat for the day. Going to draw down the curtain, she beheld an artist sketching on the lawn, and groaned as she hastily retired to the back window to shake ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... modish thing for unattached men was to make up a party and hire an omnibus-box; and from that position to pronounce judgment upon the legs of the dancers pirouetting in wispy gauze on the stage. Then, when the curtain fell, they would be privileged to go behind the scenes ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... where an overdressed young man, just alighted from an automobile, stood surveying his surroundings. His eyes met hers. He removed his hat with an elaborate bow. The girl, a little piqued and a little amused, reached over very quietly and drew down the window curtain. Then she resumed operations on the ledger with the ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... "Act two—curtain!" Little complied quickly. "Surabaya chap is called Leyden, half Dutch, half English. Trader of sorts, see? Well, Leyden is bound for Celebes right now; hunt up the source of supplies, y' know. Up the Sandang River, where the post is, there's a missionary outfit ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... can any man marvel at the play of puppets, that goeth behind the curtain and adviseth ...
— "Stops" - Or How to Punctuate. A Practical Handbook for Writers and Students • Paul Allardyce
... backgrounds are crisply but carefully sketched; his characters and caricatures have their own logical consistency. Finally, granted the desirability of the theatric finale, it is necessary to admit that Harte always rings down his curtain dramatically ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... with enamour'd gaze. "And leaves my Goddess, like a blooming bride, 250 "The fanes of Argos for the rocks of Ide? "Her gorgeous palaces, and amaranth bowers, "For cliff-top'd mountains, and aerial towers?" He said; and, leading from her ivory seat The blushing Beauty to his lone retreat, 255 Curtain'd with night the couch imperial shrouds, And rests the crimson cushions upon clouds.— Earth feels the grateful influence from above, Sighs the soft Air, and Ocean murmurs love; Etherial Warmth expands his brooding wing, 260 And in still showers ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... I went out the other girl said. "You have been in a hurry." My cousin was pronounced the best fucker. Whilst the strumming was going on in the parlour, people bought cigars, and tobacco—for it was really sold there,—little did they guess the fun going on behind that rod curtain of ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... countries, together with the Abbe Liszt, and many others in the higher walks of music, were present. The audiences were immense, brilliant, and exceedingly demonstrative in applause. At the close of the opera, Wagner was called before the curtain, receiving quite an ovation: and in his speech he said, "Now we see what can be done: at last ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... When the drop-curtain slowly rose that Saturday evening fully three thousand people crowded the hall, eager for any fresh excitement; and ready enough either to taunt or applaud a performer, as the whim moved them. Bearded miners conspicuous in red shirts; cattlemen wearing wide sombreros and hairy "chaps"; swarthy ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... mother and he often sang together, so he joined in with the rest, his pure, sweet, high voice rising as clear as the song of a bird. He quite forgot himself in his pleasure in it. The Earl forgot himself a little too, as he sat in his curtain-shielded corner of the pew and watched the boy. Cedric stood with the big psalter open in his hands, singing with all his childish might, his face a little uplifted, happily; and as he sang, a long ray of sunshine crept in and, slanting ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... that can bring it to the eyes of men, and free it from all the incumbrances, which, till he makes application of his art to it, surround the statue, and load it with obscurities and disfigurement. The man, who, without long study and premeditation, rushes in at once, and expects to withdraw the curtain, will only find himself disgraced by ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... from the chapel itself is, I think, on the whole, regrettable. I have been sometimes tempted to think that it originally hung on the wall by a hook which still remains near the door through which the figures must pass, but think it more probable that this hook was used to fasten the string of a curtain that was hung ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... island. Her mind, however, was so much occupied with her guest, that, seizing the first favorable moment, she left the table, and was soon in her own hut again. Carefully fastening the door, and seeing that the simple curtain was drawn before the single little window, Mabel next led the Dew-of-June, or June, as she was familiarly termed by those who spoke to her in English, into the outer room, making signs of ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... disputioni infallibly observed. And although the | eorum / ut non inveniat homo opus quod highest generality of motion or summary | operatus est Deus ab initio usque ad law of nature God should still reserve | finem. within his own curtain, yet many and noble | are the inferior and secondary operations | Luther Bible: Prediger Salomo 3,11: which are within man's sounding. This is a | Er aber tut alles fein zu seiner Zeit thing which I cannot tell whether I may so | und lt ihr Herz sich ngstigen, wie plainly ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... room, I remember, was rather dingy and stuffed up with furniture. Large Flemish pieces, bureaus, chests and cabinets stood against the walls. There was a bed behind the door; she had put her travelling-rug over it. And there was a washstand in an alcove with a curtain hung across it; and some of her coats and gowns hung behind another curtain in a corner, and some were on hooks on the door. And her little trunk was on the floor by the foot of the bed. And her shoes stood by ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... caricaturist had started, with a manner of his own; he had already formed a new school, and the fickle public were all running together after him and his disciples. I said to myself: "This scene in the drama of your life, my friend, has closed in; you must enter on another, or drop the curtain at once." Of ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... looked round at Katrine, who gave him a sympathetic glance, and entered the room, taking a step forward and pausing for the rest to follow. Ramo closed the door, and drew a heavy curtain across, whose rings made a peculiar thrilling noise on the ...
— The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled • George Manville Fenn
... spoke we emerged upon the stone-paved walk leading to our kitchen door; it had been picked free of weeds, and the currant-bushes on either side trimly harnessed up to a set of stakes. A white curtain flounced behind the old lattice; there was a row of flowering geraniums in pots upon the sill. Through the open door you might see a clear fire and Mary Smith's saucepans glowing on the wall. The place, I thought, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... The heavy leathern curtain falls by its own weight, and the air is suddenly changed. A hushed, half-rhythmic sound, as of a world breathing in its sleep, makes the silence alive. The light is not dim or ineffectual, but very soft and high, and it is as rich as floating gold ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... though he was one of life's realities; but suddenly there passed through his veins the chilling sense of the unreal, that he was only acting a part, as he had ever done in his life, and that the man before him could, with a wave of the hand, raise the curtain on all his disguises and pretences. It was only for an instant, however, for there swept through him the feeling that Fleda had roused in him—the first real passion, the first true love—if what such as he felt can be love—that he had ever known; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... protest that I had not come there to make new acquaintances, when the curtain was pushed aside, and none other than the stranger who had addressed me at the caravanserai stepped on to the veranda. He crossed over to the master of the house, and greeted him affectionately. I decided to remain at least a short time, and waited quietly until ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... had come out from his curtain, a squat, formidable figure, monstrous in chest and arms, limping slightly on his distorted leg. His skin bad none of the freshness and clearness of Montgomery's, but was dusky and mottled, with one huge mole amid the mat of tangled black hair ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in the hollow. The curtain of vines was torn, the boughs of a sumach bent and broken, the fallen leaves groun underfoot. In one place there was blood upon ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... erect and strode out of the room. An interlude ensued, during which the millionaire stared at the priest, and the priest at his breviary; then the pantaloon returned and said, with staccato gravity, "The policeman is still lying on the stage. The curtain has gone up and down six times; he is ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... Peter had viewed with no little anxiety the sudden overclouding of the sky, or rather the heavy curtain of vapor which seemed to descend mysteriously from the zenith, rather than to gather ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... resolutions she tried to fix her eyes on the stage, but unconsciously they continually strayed to a tall blue figure which was seated in the front row of the stalls with a number of officers of the Chevaliers Gardes. And when the curtain went down,—and instead of the Prince joining them in the box, as she fully expected he would do, he calmly leaned against the orchestra division and surveyed the house with his glasses—she felt a sudden pang, and talked as best ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... Virgil when he drops the pius and the pater, and drop our favourite epithet of chaste), the FAIR Laetitia had, I say, made Smirk as happy as Wild desired to be, what must then be our reader's confusion! We will, therefore, draw a curtain over this scene, from that philogyny which is in us, and proceed to matters which, instead of dishonouring the human species, will ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... pours down some water and is given a present of money by the bridegroom. The bridegroom's feet are then washed by his father-in-law and he is given a yellow cloth which he wears. The couple are made to stand on two wooden planks opposite each other with a curtain between them, the bridegroom facing east and the bride west, holding some Akshata or rice covered with saffron in their hands. As the sun sets the officiating Brahman gets on to the roof of the house and repeats ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... had been uncurtained a background of rocky, surf-washed shore, with high green hills rising behind it. Next was uncovered a lower shore, indented by a large bay, and fringed with palm-trees. Next, as on sped the mist (like a swiftly rolling curtain, indeed) there came into view a lofty headland, with trees on its crest and the waves dashing against ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... eats his way to the grave and has at least this much to say for it: it is more delightful than the pet weaknesses by which the other types hasten the final curtain. ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... into the window, and the curtain of that descended relentlessly. The bank had suddenly taken on an aspect of Sabbath blankness. Once more the Colonel rattled the knob, then he turned to his ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... and one dragging leg. That's my last picture of God's earth. Before I could do anything—I must have been standing sideways on—a bullet got me across the bridge of the nose and night came down like a black curtain. Then I ran like a hare. Sometimes I tripped over a man, dead or wounded, and fell on my head. I don't remember much about this part of it. They told me afterwards. At last I stumbled on to the parapet and some plucky fellow got me into the trench. It was the regulation V.C. business," he added, ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... which she encountered with a perseverance good to witness. She folded her night-dress, she smoothed the drapery of her couch quite neatly; withdrawing into a corner, where the sweep of the white curtain concealed her, she became still. I half rose, and advanced my, head to see how she was occupied. On her knees, with her forehead bent on her hands, I perceived that ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... was then the end of it for him, after all. There was no longer any question about suitability, or room for tiffs on petty tastes. The curtain had fallen again between them. She could not be his. The cruelty of their late revived hope was now terrible. How could they all have been so simple as to suppose this ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... in another, a solemn instance of divine retribution working its designs by men's sins. The greater part of this account deals with it in the former aspect, and shows the despicable motives of the men in whose hands was the nation's fate; but one sentence (verse 15) draws back the curtain for a moment, and shows us the true cause. There is something very striking in that one flash, which reveals the enthroned God, working through the ignoble strife which makes up the rest of the story. This double aspect of the disruption of the kingdom ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... white, drawn face. She raised her head, gazing at the black, leaden patch of sky that was to be seen through the muddle of roofs and walls. A wondering crossed her mind of all the horrible sights and scenes that were being enacted under that same impenetrable curtain of darkness which hung over everything. She rubbed her hand across her eyes, but ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... we watched him—Hubba sitting on the table's edge, and I standing by him—a leathern curtain that went across a door at the upper end of the hall was pulled aside, and a lady came into the place. Stately and tall, with wondrous black hair, was this maiden, and I knew that this must be that Osritha of whom the jarl was wont to speak to Eadgyth and my ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... and Capi, who slept beside my bed, woke up with a growl. I then saw that this light came in through a little window of the caravan against which our berths were placed, and which I had not noticed when going to bed because there was a curtain hanging over it. The upper part of this window touched Mattia's bed and the lower part touched mine. Afraid that Capi might wake up all the house, I put my hand over his ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... Miss Van Tuyn knew. She did not choose to go down and dine alone. A lonely dinner followed by a lonely evening upstairs did not appeal to her; for a moment, like Lady Sellingworth in Berkeley Square, she felt the oppression of solitude. She went to the window of her sitting-room, drew the curtain back, pulled aside the blind, and looked out. The night was going to be fine; the sky was clear and starry; the London outside drew her. For a moment she thought of telephoning to Garstin to come out somewhere and dine with her. He was rude to her, seldom paid her a compliment, ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... audacious science this geology is! How ruthlessly it wrests aside the curtain from the mystery of the past, and how glibly it deals with thousands, millions of years, tying them up into packages, as it were, and handing them out labeled "eras" and "periods." As usual, the names made by the wise men are hard to pronounce, and seemingly ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... will see signs, harness buckles, and buttons, everywhere. Look on the automobiles and fire engines for a fine display of brass, polished and shining. In the house you will find brass bedsteads, curtain rods, faucets, pipes, drawerpulls, candlesticks, gas and electric fixtures, lamps, the works of clocks and watches, and scores of other things. You will not have any idea how many they are ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan
... Going to the window, I put aside the curtain, and looked out into the garden. Louis Herbois and his wife were there, renewing the garlands with fresh flowers, and watering the moss which was spread over the grave. It must be their own child, thought I, and yet—no—I ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... sleep a little longer, but though the clock had but just chimed six Suzanna was up and had drawn the window curtain letting in a flood of sunshine. Maizie lay watching her sister, her gray eyes still blurred with sleep; not wide and interested as a little later they would be. Her soft little features expressing her naive personality seemed unsubtle, yet of contours so lovely in this period ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
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