"Stillness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Carkeek was not there. But something was there, by the porcelain basin—something which might have sent me scurrying upstairs two steps at a time, but which as a matter of fact held me to the spot. My heart seemed to stand still—so still! And in the stillness I remember setting down the brass candlestick on a tall ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Kolomna is terribly dull: rarely does a carriage appear, except, perhaps, one containing an actor, which disturbs the universal stillness by its rumble, noise, and jingling. You can get lodgings for five rubles a month, coffee in the morning included. Widows with pensions are the most aristocratic families there; they conduct themselves well, sweep their rooms often, chatter ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... more noise. Accompanied by the clinking of glass and the creaking of tin, my visitor rolled off the roof. I waited, expecting an uproar from the other inmates of the hotel. No footstep, no call sounded within hearing. Once again the stillness settled down. ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... or two of this kind, betwixt my uncle Toby and Trim, upon the demolition of Dunkirk,—for a moment rallied back the ideas of those pleasures, which were slipping from under him:—still—still all went on heavily—the magic left the mind the weaker—Stillness, with Silence at her back, entered the solitary parlour, and drew their gauzy mantle over my uncle Toby's head;—and Listlessness, with her lax fibre and undirected eye, sat quietly down beside him in his arm-chair.—No longer Amberg and Rhinberg, and Limbourg, ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... with light; and how through the curdling wreaths of the restless crashing abyss below, the blue of the water, paled by the foam in its body, shows purer than the sky through white rain-cloud, while the shuddering iris stoops in tremulous stillness over all, fading and flushing alternately through the choking spray and shattered sunshine, hiding itself at last among the thick golden leaves which toss to and fro in sympathy with the wild water,—their dripping masses lifted at intervals, like sheaves of loaded ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... Ireland and in Brittany, on November eve food is laid out for the dead who come to visit the houses and to warm themselves at the fire in the stillness of the night, and in Brittany a huge log burns on the hearth. We have here returned to the cult of the dead at the hearth.[554] Possibly the Yule log was once a log burned on the hearth—the place of the family ghosts—at Samhain, when new fire was kindled in each house. On it ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... she's a sweet girl, and I am very partial to her, there's the truth," cried Lady Clonbrony, in an undisguised Irish accent, and with her natural warm manner. But, a moment afterwards, her features and whole form resumed their constrained stillness and stiffness, and in her English accent she continued, "Before you put my idears out of my head, Colambre, I had something to say to you—Oh! I know what it was—we were talking of embarrassments—and I wish to do your father the justice ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... shadows of the dark mountain masses fall upon valleys where nothing but moss grows; upon lakes whose still waters are full of never-melted ice—thus the Cold Valley, the Cold Lake (Koledal and Koldesjoe), with their dead, grey-yellow shores. The stillness of death reigns in this wilderness, interrupted only by the thunderings of the avalanche and by the noise which occasions the motion of the glaciers. No bird moves its wings or raises its twittering in this sorrowful region; only the melodious sighs of the cuckoo are borne thither by ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... he chance upon a north-easterly gale, the sea a froth in which no boat could live, the slant of a sou'wester the only protection against the cruel lash of the wind. If this glimpse was not convincing, let him stand in the door of their house in the stillness of a winter's night, and catch the shout and rush of the crew tumbling from their bunks at the cry of "Wreck ashore!" from the lips of some breathless patrol who had stumbled over sand-dunes or plunged ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... "I," saith he, "will cause the enemy to entreat thee well in the time of evil, and in the time of affliction" (Jer 15:11). For by waters here are typed out the great and mighty of the world, by the flowing of them, their rage; and by their ebbing and returning their stillness and moderation. "And the waters returned." That is, to the sea (Gen 1:9,10). "He gathereth the waters of the sea together as an heap: he layeth up the depth in store ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... something that has struck the attention at the time. The measure of the song varies according to circumstances. It is gay and lively, for the dance; slow and solemn for the enchanter; and wild and pathetic for the mourner. The music is sometimes not unharmonious; and when heard in the stillness of the night and mellowed by distance, is often soothing and pleasing. I have frequently laid awake, after retiring to rest, to listen to it. Europeans, their property, presence, and habits, are frequently the ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... commanding height, possibly by the aforesaid quaintness of his aspect, and the smile which forbade any one to regard him as an aggressor. He went steadily on until he came opposite to the Talbot Inn. At that moment a stillness fell upon the crowd; every voice was hushed; every head was craned towards the open windows of ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... this persuasion, and they to whom repose is sweeter than the truth. But I would exhort you to refuse the offered shelter, and to scorn the base repose—to accept, if the choice be forced upon you, commotion before stagnation, the breezy leap of the torrent before the foetid stillness of the swamp. In the course of this Address I have touched on debatable questions, and led you over what will be deemed dangerous ground—and this partly with the view of telling you that, as regards these questions, science claims unrestricted ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... A breathless stillness reigned around. All faces were pale and colorless. Gardiner and Wriothesley stood with their eyes fixed, gloomy and defiant, expecting that the king's wrath would ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... because—although she did not realise it—in the profound deeps of her girl's being she was vaguely conscious of something latent which seemed to have lain hidden there for a long, long time—something inert, inexorable, indestructible, which, if it ever stirred from its intense stillness, must be reckoned with in years ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... She made no difference for them, speaking to the elder, whom she had not yet seen, as if they were already acquainted. There was moreover in the air of that personage at this juncture little to invite such a confidence: he appeared to have been startled, in the oddest manner, into stillness and, holding out no hand to meet her, only stared rather stiffly and without a smile. An observer disposed to interpret the scene might have fancied him a trifle put off by the girl's familiarity, or even, as by a singular effect of her self-possession, ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... he was linen-pale with fright; It was not hard to guess my task, Although I raised the sash to ask— 'Oh, Father,' cried the boy, 'Oh, come! Quickly with the viaticum! The sailor-man is going to die!' The thirsty silence drank his cry. A starless stillness damped the air, While his shrill voice kept piping there, 'The sailor-man is going to die'— The huge ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... be told. She was jealous of the first. It would be another two months at least before she would go in dock for refit; and among the watch below there were three new hands on their first voyage, two of whom would, just then, have preferred the peace and stillness of the sea bottom to ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... in the end those three Shall perish and their hands be still, And with the master's touch shall flee Their incommunicable skill. A stillness absolute as death Along the slacking wheels shall lie, And, flagging at a single breath, The fires shall moulder out and die. The roar shall vanish at its height, And over that tremendous town The silence of eternal night Shall gather ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... have ever been over; the view from the top is superb, and then the row home to Arona, the twinkling lights softly gleaming in the lake, the bells jangling from the tall and gaudy campaniles, the stillness of the summer night—so warm and yet so refreshing on the water; hush, there are some people singing—how sweetly their voices are borne to us upon the slight breath of wind that alone is stirring; oh, it is a cruel thing to ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... poorest mountain village in the Southern Italy of today, black with smoke, black with dirt, blacker with patches made by shadowy windows that had no glass. A silent town, too, surly and defensive; now and then the call of the water-carrier disturbs the stillness, more rarely, the cry of a wandering peddler; and sometimes a distant sound of hoofs, a far clash of iron and steel, and the echoing yell of furious fighting men—'Orsini!' 'Colonna!'—the long-drawn syllables coming up distinct through the evening ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... the hymn-book used there. I took up a hymn-book and opened it, and the very first lines my eyes fell on were those of the verse I wanted, though it was the last verse of a long hymn. Rising again, I told the people of my prayer and the answer, and gave them the verse. The solemn stillness which prevailed indicated that a deep impression had been made. Some two years after, a newly arrived missionary in China told me he had been present at that meeting, and how this little incident had been a great ...
— How I Know God Answers Prayer - The Personal Testimony of One Life-Time • Rosalind Goforth
... severe than a mild spring in England. I first came in on this region at night, at the season of planting, when the cast or used canes are burned in heaps on each plantation. The dark turgid waters—the distant fires, surrounded by clouds of white smoke ascending in winding columns to the skies—the stillness of the night, interrupted only by the occasional cry of the pelican or the crane, and the monotonous thumping of the steam-boat paddles, formed a strange combination; and had the days of witches and ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... as yeou like. There ain't nothing to prevent yeou from thinking. We've heard all abaout your players. Happened to meet old Stillness a while ago at ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... the first of the gray dawn, while the house was in utter stillness, and rising at once, rose and dressed herself with soundless haste. It was hard indeed to go and leave James thus in danger, but she had no choice! She held her breath and listened, but all was still. She opened her door softly; not a sound reached ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... its way through having grown so big and strong. And I want some nice, kind woman, that is more sensible than I, to be a mother to me—to take me in her arms and let me cry to her when I am afraid. Herr Gott! I am so frightened sometimes—how I have cried! Of the dark night, of loneliness, of the stillness when there is no noise near, but only that, something far, far away, that comes! Everything frightens me when I am alone. Fighting? No, I am not afraid of that; it is this wait, wait, wait—for what? And I want to have one woman just at my heart, and her voice at my ear, and children—yes, ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... disappointment and contempt for one woman had not driven him, as it so often does, to other women—to that wild waste which leaves behind it a barren and ill-natured soil exhausted of its power, of its generous and native health. There was a strange apathy in his senses, an emotional stillness, as it were, the atrophy of all the passionate elements of his nature. But because of this he was the better poised, the more evenly balanced, the more perceptive. His eyes were not blurred or dimmed by any stress of emotion, his mind worked in a cool quiet, and his forward tread ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... The deep stillness, after that roar of steamers, trains, and tourists, held something that thrilled, for as we lay round the fire there was no sound but the faint sighing of the pines and the soft lapping of the waves along the ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... The road by which I had come ran through the village with a turn just outside the gates closing the short drive. Somebody was abroad on the deep snow track; a quick tinkle of bells stole gradually into the stillness of the room like a ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... The stillness prevailed yet a little longer in the Indian village. The women and children were again running up the river, but they were too far away for Dick to hear them, and he was watching his own army. Straight on toward the river rode the horsemen, with the yellow-haired general ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... coffee-houses, however, there generally prevails a very decorous stillness and silence. Everyone speaks softly to those only who sit next him. The greater part read the newspapers, and no one ever disturbs another. The room is commonly on the ground floor, and you enter it immediately from the ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... bee-takers have. I then began to smoke briskly, to stupify the bees. At first we heard a great buzzing in the hollow, like the sound of a distant storm: the murmur ceased by degrees, and a profound stillness succeeded, and I withdrew my pipe without a single bee appearing. Fritz and I then, with a chisel and small axe, made an opening about three feet square, below the bees' entrance. Before we detached this, I repeated the ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... was seen in the shape of a mystic roll of white tappa, suspended by a twisted cord of the same material from the top of a slight pole planted within the enclosure*. The sanctity of the spot appeared never to have been violated. The stillness of the grave was there, and the calm solitude around was beautiful and touching. The soft shadows of those lofty palm-trees!—I can see them now—hanging over the little temple, as if to ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... open window showed as a greenish oblong set in black, and William knew that in a little while there would come through the stillness of that window the distant sound of violins. That was a moment he dreaded with a dread that ached. And as he lay on his dreary bed he thought of brightly lighted rooms where other boys were dressing eagerly faces and hair shining, ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... morning, having invested the sturdy wooden outer walls of the house and filmed with delicate tracery every available inch of window pane, it seemed stealthily to invade the house itself, stilling and chilling it as it drew closer around its central heart of warmth and life. Only once the frigid stillness was broken by the opening of a door and steps along the corridor. This was preceded by an acrid ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... lordship would please to allow me a little time till I can settle my affairs and make my peace with God"; to which Mr. Baron Legge feelingly replied, "To be sure, you shall have a proper time allowed you." So, amid the tense stillness of the crowded "house," the curtain fell upon the great fourth act of the tragedy of "The ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... slept on shore out of Kingston before; the night season in the country in dear old England, we all know, is usually one of the deepest stillness—here it was any thing but still;—as the evening closed in, there arose a loud humming noise, a compound of the buzzing, and chirping, and whistling, and croaking of numberless reptiles and insects, on ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... forest," says Bates. "The few sounds of birds are of that pensive or mysterious character which intensifies the feeling of solitude, rather than imparts a sense of life and cheerfulness. Sometimes, in the midst of the stillness, a sudden yell or scream will startle one. This comes from some defenceless fruit-eating animal, which is pounced upon by a tiger-cat or stealthy boa-constrictor. Morning and evening howling monkeys make a most fearful and harrowing noise, under which it is difficult to keep up one's buoyancy ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... however, the enemy recovered from their panic; and, having received large re-enforcements, advanced again, under Sykia Wongee, third minister of state. The jungles were animated with living masses, and their tumultuous preparations for battle contrasted strangely with the stillness and quiet of the British lines. Our troops at this time had been much diminished by sickness and death; but they were recruited by the eighty-ninth British regiment from Madras, and the detachments that had been sent to the capture ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... up with a lovely grace, But nae smile was seen on Kilmeny's face; As still was her look, and as still was her ee, As the stillness that lay on the emerant lea, Or the mist that sleeps on a waveless sea. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Such beauty bard may never declare, For there was no pride nor passion there; . . . . . . . . . . . . . Her seymar was the lily flower, And her cheek the moss-rose in the shower; And her voice like the ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... his seat, and the door opened to admit the four youthful prisoners, all eyes were turned upon them. Slowly and with downcast eyes they entered the chamber of justice, and amid an awe-like stillness that pervaded the room, took their seats in the prisoners' dock. In spite of all that had transpired, and with the full conviction that these youthful offenders richly merited whatever judgment they were to receive, there was not one in that entire audience, whose heart did not throb with ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... the ears of Sammy and Sally, followed by their sharp screams of pain and fright, broke the tense stillness. ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... falls at intervals. The valleys are filled with a curious opaque blue, from which the peaks rise, phantom-like and pallid, into the grey air, scarcely distinguishable from their background. The pine-forests on the mountain-sides are of darkest indigo. There is an indescribable stillness and a sense of incubation. The wind has fallen. Later on, the snow-flakes flutter silently and sparely through the lifeless air. The most distant landscape is quite blotted out. After sunset the clouds have ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... left scarcely any impression on it, and only by the flattened grass and crushed plants trodden to earth by our heavy-weighing ships, could our trail now be followed. The plain appeared to extend a great distance all around us. A solemn stillness pervaded the atmosphere; nobody spoke much above a whisper. Once we saw some wild turkey bustards, and Mr. Young managed to wing one of them on the seventh day from the dam. On the seventh night the cow, for which we had delayed there, calved, but her bull-calf had to be destroyed, as we could ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... will venture to intimate to those whom I am addressing how in my mind I mainly connect that occasion with the present. When I looked round on the vast assemblage, and observed the huge pit hushed into stillness on the rising of the curtain, and that mighty surging gallery, where men in their shirt-sleeves had been striking out their arms like strong swimmers—when I saw that. boisterous human flood become still water in a moment, and remain so from ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... of men whose visages Do cream and mantle like a standing pool, And do a wilful stillness entertain; With purpose to be dress'd in an opinion, As who should say, "I am Sir Oracle, "And when I ope my lips let no dog bark." SHAKESPEARE, ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... shall drink, as no cat has drunk before, from an old precious platter bearing the arms of the Estes of Ferrara—over which Lucrezia Borgia laughed when the world was young. It is a pity cats don't drink champagne. I would have made you to-night as drunk as Bacchus. We drink, and in the stillness the glouglou of his tongue forms a bass to the elfin notes of the Pommery in ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... you to take in the total impression of this scene before you examine the details. Only listen to this primeval stillness; feel, if you can, the stately monotony of this corridor, the divine repose and dignity of these marble forms, the chill immobility of this light. It seems to me that, if a full, majestic organ-tone could ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... most of us here have had, at Pompeii, looking at Sallust's house and the relics of an orgy, a dried wine-jar or two, a charred supper-table, the breast of a dancing girl pressed against the ashes, the laughing skull of a jester, a perfect stillness round about, as the cicerone twangs his moral, and the blue sky shines calmly over the ruin. The Congreve muse is dead, and her song choked in Time's ashes. We gaze at the skeleton, and wonder at the life which once revelled ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... away until the hour of eleven had arrived, when the great stillness of the house betokened the time for retiring. Accordingly, the chamber-maid was summoned, and with a candle in each hand, she led the way up a wide stair-case, graced with twisted bannisters and of easy ascent, terminating on a long corridor, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... back if I find I ain't wanted. Look what a pretty sky there is!" and the two friends went to the side door and stood together in a moment of affectionate silence, looking out toward the sunset across the wide fields. The country was still with that deep rural stillness which seems to mean the absence of humanity. Only the thrushes were singing far away in the walnut woods beyond the orchard, and some crows were flying over and cawed once loudly, as if they were speaking to the ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... part of them over and over, and that she had had a teacher the year before who had helped her to understand them. I began to delimn Zoe as a girl of intelligence. Of vital spirits she had an abundance.... The night was very warm and of wonderful stillness, no breeze. We heard the cry of what Zoe called "varmints" in the woods. A night bird was singing. She told me it was the whippoorwill. I never had heard a more thrillingly melancholy note. Once Zoe stepped upon a stick in the road. Thinking it was a snake she gave a cry and leaped to one side. ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... usual about ten-thirty P.M., and must have slept for nearly four hours, when I awoke feeling the heat very oppressive. It was almost the end of June at the time. Getting out of bed to open my window still farther, I gazed down upon the courtyard which it overlooked, noting the absolute stillness of the house and the hot, oppressive ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... She heard Pat playing the last of the opening chords; Burlingham lifted his hand like a leader's baton. And naturally and sweetly the notes, the words of the old darkey song of longing for home began to float out through the stillness. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... a soubrette, moved briskly away; and the corporal, tossing the wreck of his onion from him, blew a single note on his whistle. The thin squeal of it was barely audible thirty yards away, yet it seemed to Jovannic as though the brief jet of sound had screamed the afternoon stillness to rags. The two slack-bodied soldiers were suddenly swift and violent; drawn bayonet in hand, they plunged together into the black of the door and vanished within. Down the long street the old man let the donkey wander on and turned, bludgeon in hand, to stare; ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... staked his life and effort on the hunch that the future held in store a big strike on the Upper River. So he and his three companions, with dogs, and sleds, and snowshoes, toiled up the frozen breast of the Stewart, toiled on and on through the white wilderness where the unending stillness was never broken by the voices of men, the stroke of an ax, or the distant crack of a rifle. They alone moved through the vast and frozen quiet, little mites of earth-men, crawling their score of miles a day, melting the ice that they might have water to drink, camping in ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... close column of his cavalry had entered Moscow: they penetrated to the centre of that gigantic body, as yet untouched, but inanimate. Struck with profound astonishment at finding a solitude so complete, they replied to the stillness of this modern Thebes by a silence equally solemn. These warriors listened, with a secret shuddering, to the sound of their horses' steps among these deserted palaces. They were amazed to hear nothing ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... Here, in the stillness of the Alpine landscape, there arose something more of Erasmus's deepest aspirations than in the lament to Servatius. But in this case, too, it is a stray element of his soul, not the strong impulse that gave direction and fullness to his life and with irresistible pressure urged him ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... stillness. A swift zigzagged across the cattle trail he was following. Out of a blue sky the Arizona sun still beat down upon a land parched by aeons of drought, a land still making its brave show of greenness against ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... The stillness and the night seemed thinking to each other. George had little imagination, but what he had woke in him now as he rode slowly along. Step by step the old man seemed following him, on silent church-yard feet, through the eerie whiteness of the night. There was neither cloud nor moon, only stars ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... she wondered, that made people mad? Not things like these; she was calm, very calm. She was calm; too calm. If something would occur to break up this icy stillness of heart, to convulse the numbed powers of feeling, and shock them back into life ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... again. A new stillness was born. Within the great house nothing moved. But still Julius Rohscheimer shook and quivered. Only his mind was clearing; and already he was at work upon a scheme ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... day of Sabbath stillness in Fayetteville. The people generally attended their churches, for they were a very pious people, descended in a large measure from the old Scotch Covenanters, and our men too were resting from the toils and labors of six weeks of as hard marching as ever fell ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... city, whilst the river Dee, flowing immediately below, secured it from annoyance on one side, and the church, with its adjacent church-yard, insulated it from the tumults of life on all the other sides, an atmosphere of conventual stillness and tranquillity brooded over it and all ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... musician visible. Next night the same sounds were heard, and a search was made, but with no better success. One or two nights of quietude might intervene between those on which such sounds were heard; but they still broke at intervals through the stillness of midnight—at one time with note by note, slowly—at another, like the quick, loud thundering of a battle-piece; till the horrible conviction filled every mind, that the house was haunted. One morning, the piano was heard sounding away much louder than usual; ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... seemed to grow heavier, that silence, with each second—to palpitate through the quiet house—to grow pregnant, premonitory of dread, of fear—it seemed to throb in long undulations, and the stillness grew LOUD. A moonbeam filtered in between the edge of the drawn shade and the edge of the window. It struggled across the floor in a wavering path, strayed over the desk, and died away, shadowy and formless, against ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... the sentry sounded like the tread of an armed host; sounds being magnified to a degree almost terrific, in the absence of others by which their intensity may be compared. Even the dash of the waves below the walls was heard in the deep and awful stillness of that portentous night. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... In the stillness and listening silence, a sudden cough from some one in one of the back benches produced that instantaneous diversion of attention common to humanity on such occasions. Cissy's curls swung round ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... play of her deep young face. The fire, under the low white marble, undraped and academic, had burnt down to the silver ashes of light wood, one of the windows, at a distance, stood open to the mildness and stillness, out of which, in the short pauses, came the faint sound, pleasant and homely, almost rustic, of a plash and a clatter of sabots from some coach-house on the other side of the court. Madame de Vionnet, while Strether sat there, wasn't to shift her posture by an inch. ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... our native birds, or rather summer visitors, since they leave us in autumn, closely associated with these warm June nights, the stillness of which they break in very different fashion, and these are the nightingale and nightjar. Each is of considerable interest in its own way. It is not to be denied that the churring note of the nightjar is, to ordinary ears, ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... seated visitors here seemed to be quite at home, some picking up their Napoleons and five franc pieces, and others recording the issues of the game, and illustrating the doctrine of chances by pricking holes in cards. A death-like stillness prevailed, interrupted only by the monotonous result of the deal of the cards, and the bewitching, though not frequent chink of gold and silver. The success of the winners was as silent as the disappointment ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... illusion of warmth and depth which it sustained at noon, bringing up its burden of leviathans on the top of the flood; its sheen on moonless nights, when only little punctures, green and red and orange, and its audible stillness, reminded him that down in the obscurity the great polluted stream stole on wearily, monotonously, everlastingly to the sea. It was changeful and changeless. He thought he knew its effects by heart, but it had always new ones in reserve to surprise and delight him. He declared it at last to ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... his wits scattered by this sudden change—the stillness of his enemy, who a moment ago was beating him down with ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... there within King Arthur's Castle. The tourists who, mayhap, had visited it earlier in the day were gone; no one would come again to-night to disturb the supreme stillness. The wan cry of the gulls drifted eerily across the sea. Once an enquiring sheep approached the slim young body lying there, stirless and inert, and sniffed at it, then moved away again and lay down to ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... and gratitude and devotion, to which the young king had given expression by his costly sacrifice, God, who loves a thankful heart, and pours into it still more of His goodness, visited the sleeping Solomon in the stillness of the night. ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... revived afresh, and in such vivid colours that it regained its old power over him, dissipating the cloud of self-reproachful doubt. He saw before him a calm bright future in the narrow valley between wooded heights, and it came over him suddenly that there in the stillness, where one could live in touch with nature, he would for the first time begin really ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... is evidently ready with a neat little speech which shall sum the applause that never comes, is disconcerted at this unwonted stillness. You might hear a pin fall as the old gentleman, in dumb show, places the certificate into the boy's hand and tries to get at the words which ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... Ladd's young ladies were supposed to be fast asleep, in accordance with the rules of the house. Only at intervals the silence was faintly disturbed, when the restless turning of one of the girls in her bed betrayed itself by a gentle rustling between the sheets. In the long intervals of stillness, not even the softly audible breathing of young creatures asleep was ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... with all those sounds of tumult incidental to such a movement, it required only Mountmeadow slowly to rise, and drawing himself up to the full height of his gaunt figure, to knit his severe brow, and throw one of his peculiar looks around the chamber, to insure a most awful stillness. Instantly everything was so hushed, that you might have heard ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... Suddenly there was stillness, and the very tapers seemed to tremble into quiet. The executioner was ready on the scaffold, and Bernardo del Nero was seen ascending it with a slow firm step. Romola made no visible movement, uttered not even ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... stillness was broken by a sound, deafening and shrill on ordinary occasions, but falling now like music on Madam Conway's ear, for by that sound she knew that Margaret was near. Wearily went the half-hour by, and then, from the head of the tower stairs, Theo cried out, "She is coming!" while the grandmother ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... and of joy is possible. The sorrows are on the surface; beneath there may be rest. All the winds of heaven may rave across the breast of ocean, and fret it into clouds of spume against a storm-swept sky. But deep down there is stillness, and yet not stagnation, because there is the great motion that brings life and freshness; and so, though there will be wind-vexed surfaces on our too-often agitated spirits, there ought to be deeper than these the calm setting of the whole ocean of our nature towards God Himself. It is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... also imposing, as its dark masses of infantry were ranged along the position, from whence they looked sullenly down upon their skilful and gallant foe. The Sikh cavalry, in constant and unnecessary motion, gave some life to the stillness which brooded over the long lines of the compact and motionless infantry of the Khalsa army. It was a moment of extreme suspense, for upon the fortune of this battle much depended. If the sirdar repulsed the British, he would undoubtedly cutoff ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... gazed intently at the crest of the wall. Every broken edge, every tuft of feathery grass, every aspiring ivy-spray, stood sharply out against the sunny blue. The breeze had gone down, and neither blade nor leaf stirred in the hot stillness of the air. There was the way by which they had gone up, there was the ruinous gap which Sissy had said was like a giant's bite. Archie's grasp tightened on the stone as he looked. He might well feel stunned and dizzy, gazing thus across ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... and her beams were reflected by the delicate frost-work of the myriad pinnacles which rose in a bewildering maze at his feet. It might seem to be some strange enchanted garden of fairy-land, where a luxuriant and freakish growth of Nature had been suddenly arrested and frozen into eternal stillness. Around in the shadows at the foot of the Cathedral the lights of the great gay city twinkled and danced and veered and fluttered like fire-flies in the damp, dewy shadows of some moist meadow in summer. The sound of clattering hoofs ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... incorrect feeling. When all that is unnatural becomes self-conscious, it desires but one thing—nonentity; the natural thing, on the other hand, yearns to be transfigured through love: the former would fain not be, the latter would fain be otherwise. Let him who has understood this recall, in the stillness of his soul, the simple themes of Wagner's art, in order to be able to ask himself whether it were nature or nature's opposite which sought by means of them to achieve ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... "bassecour," they sat down to await the beginning of their treacherous enterprise. If we may believe Henry of Anjou, none of them as yet realized its full horrors; but as they quietly watched in that hour of stillness for the first signs of the coming outbreak, the report of a pistol-shot reached their ears. Instantly it wrought a marvellous revulsion in their feelings. Whether the shot wounded or killed any one, they knew not; but it brought up vividly to their imaginations the results of the ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... top of the bank had no dust on them; the rocks were parti-coloured with lichens; the river was bright, flowing and rippling past; the "Pipe of Peace" had pushed off and sped on, and in another minute or two was turning the point, and then—out of sight. Stillness seemed to fill the woods and the air as the beat of her paddles was lost. I breathed stillness. New York was fifty miles away, physically and morally at ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... people of both vessels, and every one was instantly busy in making sail. Raoul had a proof into what dangerous proximity to the frigate he had got by the sound of the calls on board her, and the stillness of the sea was yet so great that the creaking of her fore-yard was actually audible to him as the English rounded in their braces briskly while laying their ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... reply, a jolting burst of power blasted through the tubes, jerking the ship convulsively and throwing Tom to the deck. A loud, crashing sound filled the ship, followed by a strange stillness. Dimly Tom realized that the rockets had been cut and they were safely on ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... when I enter, as if I were in a holy temple. 'Thou standest in a holy place,' I would say. A loud word, a heavy footstep, makes me shudder, as if an infidel were desecrating the place. I stand speechless, in a magical atmosphere that wraps my whole being, scarcely daring to lift my eyes. A perfect stillness comes over my soul; it seems to be soaring on the bosom ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... sitting-room, where Mousie and my wife had prepared supper; but we all were too oppressed with awe of the coming tempest to sit down quietly, as usual. There was a death-like stillness in the sultry air, broken only at intervals by the heavy rumble of thunder. The strange, dim twilight soon passed into the murkiest gloom, and we had to light the lamp far earlier than our usual hour. I had never seen the children ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, "Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore— Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... curiously, half fearfully, dimly but rebelliously aware that the world, his human world of personal desires and activities, as well as all external nature was threatened by vast, unseen, menacing forces. The great, gray desert lay in crouching stillness, a silence which filled the soul of man with horror. The sun, crimson as blood, hung in a sky over which seemed to have been drawn ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... stone-paved path under a black oak porch and went into the church, and the chimes stopped and the people of the village began to sing, and the level sunlight shone on the white tombstones that stood all round the church. Then there was a stillness in the village, and shouts and laughter came up from the valley no more, only the occasional sound of the organ and of song. And the blue butterflies, those that love the chalk, came and perched themselves on the tall grasses, five or six sometimes on a single piece ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... noise of the discharging shotgun broke on the night's stillness. Bang! crashed the ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... the tall old clock in the corner and then compared her pretty watch with it, laid her olive-green parasol across the table, but took it off again almost immediately and dropped the tip to the floor. The Sister's impassive stillness seemed meant for a reproach and made her nervous. The certainty that the motionless woman opposite her was Angela, calmly declining to know her, was very disagreeable. She tried the excuse of pretending ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... first line of a hymn in short metre, doled out by the parish clerk. I wish Madame A—— were singing it instead of he. "By the mark three, less a quarter." To this tune, the only sound breaking the stillness of the night, I dropped to sleep. The captain passed the night anxiously, now looking out for lights on the Banks, now at the helm, or himself ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... thickly upon her as she sat there. Bits of her childhood flashed back at her out of the eternal stillness, "even as the beads of a told rosary." Since the day she met Alden's father, everything was clear and distinct, for, with women, life begins with love and the rest is as ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... spirits were to be found also among the deer, dumbly basking, and among the fish, set still in mid-stream, for they were mute sharers in a benignant state not needing any exposition by the tongue. No words that Cassandra could come by expressed the stillness, the brightness, the air of expectancy which lay upon the orderly beauty of the grass walks and gravel paths down which they went walking four abreast that Sunday afternoon. Silently the shadows of the ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... oppressive that, in spite of the storm, I dressed myself and went out to call on my friend. I found her in her chamber, looking very pale, and calmer than I had hoped to find her. But the calmness I soon saw to be a congelation of feeling. Fear of the worst had frozen the wild waves into stillness. ...
— The Son of My Friend - New Temperance Tales No. 1 • T. S. Arthur
... the mountain pastures o'erspread with golden radiance. And then all at once there lay before me a fair green valley, with low shrubs, a clear, gently-flowing, winding stream, quiet houses and a few tall-stemmed tropical trees. An indescribable, deeply-significant calm and stillness reigned there. The land was populated and thickly settled, but enwrapped in a universal breathless consecration of peace and joy. I saw light-blue peacocks quietly strutting about in the sun, their images reflected by the water. The colors, the pure ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... sky-signs are only annoying, and for the same reason. The eye longs for repose in some serene radiance or stately sequence, while the ear delights in contrast and continual change. It may be that as the eye becomes more educated it will demand more movement and complexity, but a certain stillness and serenity are of the very nature of light, as movement and passion are of the very nature of sound. Music is a seeking—"love in search of a word"; light is a ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... the dread stillness of the night, To lose the faint, faint sound of breath! To listen in restrain'd affright, To deprecate ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... stillness, and the sudden pause which the shadow made as I inconsiderately stumbled in my hesitation, assured me that I was right in attributing a sinister motive to this encounter. Naturally, therefore, I drew back, keeping my eyes upon the shadow. It did not move. Convinced now ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... soon afterwards left to the silence and stillness which reigned in it, with few interruptions, throughout the year. Miss Bertram, displeased with her sister, led the way, and all seemed to feel that they had ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... peal. The poor fellows had been lying about, trying to deaden their hunger by sleep, but at the order they leapt to their feet, seized the ropes, and Ghent was electrified by hearing the triumphal peal bursting out in the stillness ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... hands impulsively. "Oh, this beautiful stillness!" she exclaimed. "In Marlborough there is the clang of the car gongs and the rumble of cabs and the tramp of feet upon the pavement until it seems as if the weary world were never to be at rest, but this house is so quiet I could almost hear a ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... far and wide. I concluded that he laughed in derision of my efforts, confident of his own resources. Though the sky was by this time overcast, the pond was so smooth that I could see where he broke the surface when I did not hear him. His white breast, the stillness of the air, and the smoothness of the water were all against him. At length, having come up fifty rods off, he uttered one of those prolonged howls, as if calling on the god of loons to aid him, and immediately there came ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... as though yielding on seeing her pretexts exhausted. Desnoyers was silent, too, construing her stillness as assent. They had left the garden and she was looking around uneasily, terrified to find herself in the open street beside her lover, and seeking a hiding-place. Suddenly she saw before her the little red door of an automobile, opened by the hand ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... distressing to him. She was totally unembarrassed and completely un-self-conscious. And as they sat silent, her thoughts far away in the desert, and his full of vain longings and regrets, a man's low voice rose in the stillness of the night. "Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar. Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell?" he sang in a passionate, vibrating baritone. He was singing in English, and yet the almost indefinite ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... safely reached and the long, dark storm was cleared away. How hopefully, peacefully bright that night were the stars in the frosty sky, and how impressive was the thunder of icebergs, rolling, swelling, reverberating through the solemn stillness! I was ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... efforts of pain to gain some temporary relief, rather than the freaks of slumber. A few—and these were among the youngest of the children—slept peacefully on, with smiles upon their faces, dreaming perhaps of home; but ever and again a deep and heavy sigh, breaking the stillness of the room, announced that some new sleeper had awakened to the misery of another day; and, as morning took the place of night, the smiles gradually faded away, with the friendly darkness which had ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... the courtyard or around the kitchen. Even the great watch dog had retired to sleep in his kennel. The snow fell noiselessly, curtaining out all the world; the line of the sky was low and leaden, and nothing was heard to break the death-like stillness of the air, save occasional gusts of wind sullenly ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... is the stillness of death. Ten soldiers—carbine in hand—mounted on their unsaddled steeds are waiting in the darkness at the upper rifle-pits for Hunter's signal. If he shout, every man is to yell and break for the front. Otherwise, all is to remain quiet. Back at the watch-fire under the bank Wayne ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... no more for a while," said the Colonel. He was right. There was stillness; no battery, however distant, no pitter-patter of rifle fire, no chattering report ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... feature may be noted in connection with this time of trouble. While the Secession war lasted, "the cotton famine" had full sway in Lancashire; unwonted and unwelcome light and stillness replaced the dun clouds of smoke and the busy hum that used to tell of fruitful, well-paid industry; and the patient people, haggard and pale but sadly submissive, were kept, and just kept, from starving by the incessant charitable effort ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... the horned owl would send their quavering echoes creeping among the tree-tops, which, swaying to the night winds, filled the air with noises, like half-formed whispers in the ear. Then the shrill cry of the dingle-ambushed panther would ring out through the black stillness, like the shriek of a ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... borders of the sunny slave States to the snow-white shores of Canada. When men came up out of the hell of slavery gasping for a breath of free air, these good friends sheltered and fed them; and then hastened them off in the stillness of the night, with the everlasting stars as their ministers, toward Canada. The fugitives would be turned over to another conductor, who would conceal them until nightfall, when he would load his living freight into a covered conveyance, and drive all night ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... was new and strange to me, and a number of things passed before my eyes which could never be seen in decorous London, yet there were unmistakable signs of Sunday in them all—only it was not the Sunday to which I had been born and bred. The shops were closed, and there was stillness in the houses, if not in the streets. I passed by the fore-courted entrance to a theatre, and its doors were shut; but one could easily guess by the bills at the door-posts that it offered histrionic entertainment for the evening. Wandering through some beautifully-wooded ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... a final celebration!" exclaimed Randy, when the crowd came to a halt near the river front. "Everybody attention! One—two—three! Listen to the stillness!" ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... day long, I cannot help thinking of that last fourteenth of July, spent in the deep calm and stillness of my old home, the door closed to all intruders, while the gay crowd roared outside; there I had remained till evening, seated on a bench, shaded by a trellis covered with honeysuckle, where in the bye-gone days of my childhood's summers, I used to settle myself with my copybooks and ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... away, as if she could not bear the pain of hearing him, and her hand had gradually crept to his lips. For a little while there was a dead silence and stillness; and he remained shrunk in his chair, and she remained with her arm round his neck and her head ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... little steeds sometimes objected to having an extra rider astride their haunches, and a bicycle across their shoulders. They seized every opportunity to impress us with the necessity of being accompanied by a government representative. In some lonely portion of the road, or in the suggestive stillness of an evening twilight, our Turkish Don Quixote would sometimes cast mysterious glances around him, take his Winchester from his shoulder, and throwing it across the pommel of his saddle, charge ahead to meet the imaginary enemy. But we were more harmful than harmed, for, despite our most ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... moment's interlude, and yet How the heart quaffs the draught that thrills and thrills Its soul, finding again youth's mysteries. What matter if tomorrow we forget— Today the stillness of the sun-lit hills And the low drowsy ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones
... sir?" asked Carrick, bending above them as he noted Carter groping blindly for her pulse. "She looks like a queen," he added in a voice husky with the awe inspired by the marble stillness of ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... but mingled with it, almost as the last words of her final speech had left her lips, came a curious hoarse cry from somewhere in the cheaper seats near the back of the house. It was heard very distinctly in every part; it rang out upon the deep quivering stillness which reigns for a second between the end of a play which has left the audience spellbound, and the burst of applause which is its first reawakening instinct. It was drowned in less than a moment, yet many people turned ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the Arab chief had done, and impressed a fervent kiss upon the fair young face, still bent lovingly towards him. At that moment he felt an electric thrill convulse her frame, followed by a complete stillness. In that last fond ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... it. In the stillness she could hear his deep breathing; she could just discern his face, ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... heart beating in his ears. He could almost hear hers. His hand went out toward her, cold and unsteady, but it fell to his side again almost instantly. But for the heart-beats, it seemed to him that there was an appalling stillness in the air of the quiet room. His manly face grew very pale. He slowly bit his lip and looked out of the window. An enormous temptation was upon him. He knew that if she moved to leave his side he should take her and hold ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... he speak of me?" She had hesitated and dropped her eyes; she raised them with her question, and revealed in their sombre stillness a gleam of feminine confidence which, for the moment, revived and illumined her beauty. Poor Theobald! Whatever name he had given his passion, it was still her fine ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... weather was intensely warm. On the 21st we had watched all day to see them go, sure that they were perfectly well able. Obviously it is the policy of this family to prepare for a life of extraordinary activity by an infancy of unusual stillness. Never were youngsters so perfectly indifferent to all the world. In storm or sunshine, in daylight or darkness, they lay there motionless, caring only for food, and even that showed itself only by the fact that all mouths were toward the front. The under one of the pile seemed ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... rapture; and, whilst melody has almost suspended respiration, a lady has asked me where I bought my gown. I have seen also an eye glanced coldly over a most exquisite picture, rest, sparkling with pleasure, on a caricature rudely sketched; and whilst some terrific feature in nature has spread a sublime stillness through my soul, I have been desired to observe the pretty tricks of a lap-dog, that my perverse fate forced me to travel with. Is it surprising, that such a tasteless being should rather caress this dog than her children? Or, that she should prefer ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... not see any reason for speaking. There were thirty seconds of deep silence in which he felt that all were bending to hearken to his words of counsel The professor huskily broke the stillness. Well * * * what are we ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... pilot-boat off New York, in the morning, in a calm, with all her sails set, lying asleep on the water, which had subsided into such perfect stillness that we could count the seam of each cloth in the mirror beneath her, and it became difficult to tell which was the reflected image, which the true vessel. And yet, within a few hours, I have observed the same boat, with only her close-reefed foresail set—no one visible on her decks—and ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... dense hammock, of a quarter of a mile in width, through which the pioneers of the American army had recently cut a rough road, I dismounted, to take a view of these sombre shades on either hand. The solemn stillness around seemed to me like the shadow of death—especially so, from the peril we were in through the deadly feud existing at the time between the Indians and white men. I penetrated for full a quarter of a mile into this ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... each held a candle, but Dr. Panton led the way; and soon they were treading the whitewashed passages, even their slippered feet making, in the now absolute stillness, what sounded like loud thuds on ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... caged reptiles, horrid as they were, were yet very different from his recollections of what he had seen or dreamed he saw at the cavern. These looked dangerous enough, but yet quiet. A treacherous stillness, however,—as the unfortunate New York physician found, when he put his foot out to wake up the torpid creature, and instantly the fang flashed through his boot, carrying the poison into his blood, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... her up. Moreover, it would do her good to break up her work now and then; she pursued her medical studies far into the night, and Miss Birdseye, who was nothing of a sleeper (Mary Prance, precisely, had wanted to treat her for it), had heard her, in the stillness of the small hours, with her open windows (she had fresh air on the brain), sharpening instruments (it was Miss Birdseye's mild belief that she dissected), in a little physiological laboratory which she had set up in ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... transparent silver veil that hung over the landscape. The leaves, still russet and veined with purple on the boughs overhead, lay in brown wind-rifts along the drive, where they had been blown during the night before the changeful weather had settled into a frosty stillness at daybreak. ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... setting sun met the edge of the moor. The evening seemed suddenly to become incredibly still, even the voice of the stream ceasing to be a sound distinct. A wagtail bobbing in the shallows fled into the waste. Overhead the smoke trembled upwards, a faint stain against a cloudless sky. The stillness seemed almost acute. It was as if the moor were waiting, and holding its breath while it waited. Then the twigs upon his altar crackled, and the pale flames blazed up. The man stepped back with ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various |
