"Surprising" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had whispered was speaking quietly with Rios. Kendric, seeing them beyond Bruce's bowed head, saw a fire of rebellion burning in Rios's eyes. Then, surprising him when he expected an outburst, Rios merely shrugged his shoulders and left the room. The servant came on to Barlow. Again he whispered. Barlow heard him through stolidly, then for the first time looked long and steadily ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... wonderfully well,—for a woman," said Varillo lazily, "But there is so much in that phrase, cara Contessa, 'for a woman'. Your charming sex often succeeds in doing very clever and pretty things; but in a man they would not be considered surprising. You fairy creatures are not made for fame—but ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... disapprove of the policy of the Senate only when that body yields to the demands of the people. In all such cases the House would naturally support the Senate as against the Supreme Court. It is not surprising, then, that the Federal courts have not attempted ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... in her throat surprising her. She had expected Hugh to be angry and to scold. Instead ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... state in the heart of the Etat du Congo, on territory filched from that power; but the little sailor was in deadly earnest over the project, and already he had met with extraordinary luck in the initial stages. Central Africa is a country where determined coups de main can sometimes yield surprising results. ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... Iceland during the early spring, I had an opportunity of seeing the horses and sheep in their winter garments. The horses seemed to be covered, not with hair, but with a thick woolly coat; their manes and tails are very long, and of surprising thickness. At the end of May or the beginning of June the tail and mane are docked and thinned, their woolly coat falls of itself, and they then look smooth enough. The sheep have also a very thick coat during the winter. It is ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... the way from Genoa out of the Pisan gate to Nervi is none of the pleasantest, being suburb all the way; but those eight chilometri over and done with, there is nothing but delight between you and Spezia. Nervi itself, that surprising place where beauty is all gathered into a nosegay of sea and seashore, will not keep you long, for the sun is high, and the road is calling, and the heat to come; moreover, the beautiful headland of Portofino seems to shut out all Italy from your sight. ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... not always, a compass. If the pilot's scientific ambitions went beyond this simple outfit, he carried a watch on his wrist and an aneroid slung round his neck. The risks that these early pilots cheerfully faced at the call of duty were serious enough, and it is surprising that their casualties were so few. The only fatal accident in the Air Battalion was the death of Lieutenant R. A. Cammell, R.E., who was killed while flying a Valkyrie monoplane at Hendon on the 17th of September 1911. The machine was not familiar to him, and it is believed that ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... diminished day by day. The masses broke loose completely from the authority of the scribes; the ruling nobility adapted itself better to the times; under the circumstances which then prevailed, it is not surprising that they became thoroughly secular and did not shrink from the employment of directly immoral means for the attainment of their ends. The Zealots became the dominant party. It was a combination of noble and base elements; superstitious enthusiasts (Acts xxi. 38) and political ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... not attempt to do so, but I feel a similar and equally surprising serenity. Heracles is insensible to it, it seems, and he gives me ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... known as human nature. She knew human nature all the way from the fifty-nine-cent girdles to the twenty-five-dollar made-to-orders. And if the years had brought, among other things, a certain hardness about the jaw and a line or two at the corners of the eyes, it was not surprising. You can't rub up against the sharp edges of this world and expect to come out without a ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... case, it is not surprising that Merriwell received an anonymous note warning him to keep in his room on a certain evening and look out ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... bird there which certainly could not have been long out of the nest. I have never seen the Cirl Bunting in any of the Islands, nor has it, as far as I know, been recorded from them, which seems rather surprising, as it is common on the South Coast of Devon, and migratory, but not numerous, on the North Coast of France;[12] so it is very probable ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... bell itself, with a valvular opening on one side which was evidently a mouth, surrounded with a circle of eyelike disks, projecting shafts of self-evolved light into the water. They moved about with surprising ease, rising and sinking at will, sometimes rolling along the curve of an arch, emitting flashes of green fire, and occasionally darting across the intervening spaces in pursuit of their prey, which consisted ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... on the streets,—at least French soldiers and officers; there was a surprising number of English of all branches of the service and a few Belgians. The French were either at the front or in their depots outside the city. On the Fourteenth of July, when the remains of Rouget de Lisle, the author of the Marseillaise, were brought to the Invalides, a few companies of ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... impression of "vanity of vanities, all is vanity," very painful to affection that was striving to lose the conviction that it had been a self-indulgent, plausible life. The accumulation of expensive trinkets and small luxuries, was as surprising as perplexing to a person of Rachel's severely simple and practical tastes. It was not only since the marriage; for Bessie had always had at her disposal means rather ample, and had used them not exactly foolishly, but evidently for ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a change of parties occurs, a clean sweep is made of all the officers of government, from the highest to the lowest. Custom-house officers, jailers, &c., all share the fate of their betters. It is only surprising that the business of the country is carried on as well as it is, under the influence of this ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... of animals and birds that like a good thing is perfectly surprising, and in trying to raise my seedling nuts I have had great difficulty and have had to take up a new department of natural history in order to study the habits of rodents and of the birds. The crows have been, perhaps, the worst enemy, after the field mice, of the seedling nuts that were planted ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various
... Khan Sahib are also off their feed. Their original allowance of 11 lbs. oats and oilcake has been reduced to 9 lbs., and they are not eating this. The dogs took another 300 lbs. off them to-day, and pulled it very well. The surface has been splendidly hard, which is most surprising. Wright does not think that there has been an abnormal deposition of snow the last winter; he says it is about 11/2 feet, which is much the same as last year. The mules are generally not sinking in more than two inches, but in places, especially ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... Congress being in such a small minority as to be unable to do any thing effectual either to impede or advance legislation, could only present their vain protests in words. Chafing under the difficulties they encountered, it is not surprising that at times they used language so ill-timed and unparliamentary as to call forth ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... guilty. Finding that her cry was also taken as something natural and expected, and feeling incapable of altering matters, she was horror-struck and began to weep in despair, knowing that she must submit to the cruel and surprising injustice that had been done her. What astonished her most was that young men—or, at any rate, not old men—the same men who always looked so approvingly at her (one of them, the public prosecutor, she had seen in quite a different humour) had condemned her. ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... with laurel and little thickets of ground pine, through which she was hard beset to force her way—the more since she must move with what noiselessness she might. But her strength and skill compassed the affair with surprising quickness. Presently, she came to the brim of the little cliff, and lying outstretched, cautiously looked down. Already, a hideous idea had entered her mind, but she had rejected it with horror. What she now saw confirmed the thought she ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... Russian and the Swede on his northern frontier. If you look for his place on the map, before you find it he has quitted it. He is always marching, flying, falling back, wheeling, attacking, defending, surprising; fighting everywhere, and fighting all the time. In one particular, however, the campaigns described in this letter are conducted in a different manner from those of the great Frederick. I think we nowhere read, in the narrative of Frederick's achievements, of his ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... without surprising me. It is only what ought to be, that Lebert and Stark's Pianoforte Method should meet with general acceptance, and that the Stuttgart Conservatoire should continue to prosper. Both of these points of merit I took the opportunity ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... instrument of assault and cannot, by its very nature, take the place of a shield as a protection. Everybody, of course, knows that showy and startling ruse said to have been invented by the Divine Julius, which consists in surprising one's antagonist by parrying a stroke with the sword instead of with the shield and simultaneously using the shield as a weapon, striking its upper rim against the adversary's chin. But this can succeed only ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... the troubles of the royal bride did not await her womanhood. Like Marie de Medicis, she clung to all which appeared to link her to her distant home, and caused her to forget for a time that it was hers no longer; and under this impulse it was by no means surprising that she attached herself with girlish affection to the individuals by whom she had been followed in her splendid exile; but even as her predecessor had been compelled to forego the society of her native attendants, so ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... and all the cavalry, by riding up almost to the very gates, drew out the enemy—which was just what he wanted—by a mode of battle of a disorderly and threatening nature. The same tactics on the part of the cavalry caused the flight, which it was necessary to pretend, to appear less surprising: and when, as the cavalry appeared undecided whether to make up its mind to fight or flee, the infantry also retreated—the enemy, pouring forth suddenly through the crowded gates, were drawn toward the place of ambuscade, in their eagerness to press on and pursue, after they had ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... that might have precipitated an argument had it not also reminded M. Binet of the terms on which they were encamped there, and of the fact that the half-hour was more than past. In a moment he was on his feet, leaping up with an agility surprising in so corpulent a man, issuing his commands like a marshal on a ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... For after the coaches have paraded up and down some time to shew the equipages, liveries, &c. all have on a sudden notice to quit the scene of action; and all do quit it, in such a manner as is surprising. The street is now covered with sawdust, and made fast at both ends: the starting-post is adorned with elegant booths, lined with red velvet, for the court and first nobility: at the other end a piece of tapestry is hung, to prevent the creatures ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... eastern Colorado, and in pegmatite dikes in the Appalachians, but these deposits are of no commercial importance. Pitchblende is grayish-black, opaque, and so lacking in distinctive characteristics that it may readily be overlooked; hence future discoveries in various regions would not be surprising. ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... enviable. And if we think of it, most human originality is apt to be of that kind. Goodness is one, and immortal; it may be received and communicated—not originated: but Evil is various and recurrent, and may be misbegotten in endlessly surprising ways. ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... Roman nation Made use of spittle in lustration; (Vide "Lactantium ap. Gallaeum"[3]— i. e. you need not read but see 'em;) Now Irish Papists—fact surprising— Make use of spittle in baptizing; Which proves them all, O'Finns, O'Fagans, Connors and Tooles all downright Pagans. This fact's enough; let no one tell us To free such sad, salivous fellows.— No, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... What is surprising is that of this spiritual and intellectual transformation which Goethe avouches that he underwent there should be so little evidence either in his contemporary correspondence or in the conduct of his own life. In his letters of the period ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... retreat into caves and fastnesses of the earth, into unthreaded copses or remote outlying cowsheds, whence we were only to be extricated by wily nursemaids, rendered familiar by experience with our secret runs and refuges. It was not surprising therefore that the heroes of classic legend, when first we made their acquaintance, failed to win our entire sympathy at once. "Confidence," says somebody, "is a plant of slow growth;" and these stately dark-haired demi-gods, with names hard ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... detail, however, and it is always dangerous to discuss details in a subject which is so enormous, so dimly seen. As the wisest woman I have known remarked to me: "Things may well be surprising over there, for if we had been told the facts of this life before we entered it, we should never have believed it." In its larger issues this happy life to come consists in the development of those gifts which we possess. ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... numbers of Women on Deck, who were very liberal of their Curses and Execrations: they were also not a little Noisy in their Insults, but clap'd their hands and used other peculiar gestures in so Extraordinary a Manner yet they were in some Danger of leaping overboard in this surprising Extacy." On arriving at the Pacific, a very large transport ship, they were told that all officers and men together were to be shut down below deck. The master of the ship was a brute named Dunn. ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... also the woollen cloth, the red wine, the golde, and the summes of money contained in the said ship amounted vnto the value of 200. marks of English money: moreouer they vniustly slew Iohn Patanson and Iohn Russell in the surprising of the shippe and goods aforesaide, and there they imprisoned the sayde parties taken, and, to their vtter vndoing, detayned them in prison for the space of three ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... did not grasp it tightly enough to hurt, yet the grip of his slim brown hand was like a bracelet of iron. She knew that she could not escape from it by measuring her strength against his, or even by surprising him with some quick movement; for she had surprised him once, and he would be on guard not to let it happen again. Now she did not even try to struggle, but stood still, looking up at him steadily. Yet her heart also was like a hammer that ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... received the priest in a surprising medley of emotions which he exhibited one by one to me who knew him so well. He was at first plainly terrified at receiving a priest and a Jesuit; but, presently recovered himself a little and strove to remember that here was one of God's ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... Christian population and the interests of general peace. Declarations relative to the disarmament of Russia, which it was now the principal object of the British Government to effect, were added. There was indeed so little of a substantial engagement in this Protocol that it would have been surprising had Russia disarmed without obtaining some further guarantee for the execution of reform. But weak as the Protocol was, it was rejected by the Porte. Once more the appeal was made to the Treaty of Paris, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... charging up the Place de l'Eglise. The square was held by a regiment of sailor-boys, who appeared to slacken their fire for a moment as if with the intention of drawing their assailants on; then, when the close-massed column was directly opposite their front, a most surprising maneuver was swiftly executed: the men abandoned their formation, some of them stepping from the ranks and flattening themselves against the house fronts, others casting themselves prone upon the ground, and down the vacant space thus suddenly formed the mitrailleuses that ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... There is no more surprising fight in British history. The mere swiftness with which the adventure was carried out is marvellous. It was past six P.M. when Hamilton disclosed his plan to his officers, the Hermione at that moment lying some eight miles distant; by two o'clock the captured ship, ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... very lukewarm allies, Spain and France, broke down the barriers of their selfish caution, and vied with one another in protestations of friendship and offers of help that was no longer necessary. The unaccustomed warmth of their congratulations adds a new touch of comedy to the surprising scene. The Marquis of Carracena, Governor of Flanders, who had turned a deaf ear to all suggestions of alliance, and had not been slow to hint the inconvenience of the King's prolonged stay in Flanders, now craved his return to Brussels, and ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... never once looked towards the sufferer till he himself was thoroughly warm. Even then he withdrew from the genial glow, only to sit back, humped together, blinking, silent. The Boy began to feel that, if he did finally say something it would be as surprising as to hear an aged monkey ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... credulous. It is the perfectly natural and desirable result of the working of the scientific spirit. Everything is relentlessly investigated, the enormous structure of natural law is being discovered to underlie all the most surprising, delicate, and apparently fortuitous processes, and no one can venture to forecast where the systematisation will end. The result is a great inrush of bracing and invigorating candour. It is not that our liberty of reflection and action is increased. ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to pass the time of a jaded novel reader.... The story is quite surprising enough, and amusing at that.—New York ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... "It was a brilliant success, but the final triumph was borne off by Jenny Lind, who fairly carried the audience away with her Swedish melodies, the effect of which is really remarkable. She has a strength of voice in the upper notes that is vast and surprising: without screaming she produces echoes, the loud and soft notes being almost simultaneous. In the artist's green-room she is kind and courteous without being either mirthful or expansive. Moreover, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... her return to——. Emma Long was a singularly fascinating woman. Plain and sharp and self-asserting at twenty-two, she had become at thirty-five magnetic and winning, full of tact, and almost beautiful. We see such surprising developments continually: it seems as if nature did her best to give every woman one period of triumph and conquest; perhaps only they know its full sweetness to whom it comes late. In early youth ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... diversion—as always—in walking without ranks. It is so uncommon that one finds it surprising and profitable. So it is a breach of liberty which soon enlivens all four of us. We are in the country as though for the ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... the least surprising that a man as wedded to his books and profession as Dudley should fail to realise what was, in a measure, phenomenal. By the simple rule of A B C, he argued that ill necessarily contaminates, if the one ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... close-set and white; and not only the corners of her eyes joined in her smile, but even her nose, her delicate yet piquant nose, which could quiver like a deer's. When she laughed, Carl noted, Ruth had a trick of lifting her heavy lids quickly, and surprising one with a glint of blue eyes where brown were expected. Her smooth, healthy, cream-colored skin was rosy with winter, and looked as though in summer it would tan evenly, without freckles. Her chin was soft, but ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... would not only be lost to the Ministry by being ordered back into the Treasury, but would allow opportunities for impugning the forecast and judgment of the ministers!' Under such a system it is not surprising that Admiral Krantz, one of the best naval administrators France possesses, should have been forced to withdraw from the Tirard Government to satisfy a political Under-Secretary, ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... mentioned by Brangaena to happen. Yet again, if they were married, Mark, in the third act, shows a more than heroic willingness and less than cuckold readiness to let Isolda go free. Probably Wagner never gave the problem a moment's consideration, which is hardly surprising when we consider his own multitudinous love affairs. He was not writing a Sunday-school tract, but a drama of passion so intense that purity, prudence and all such considerations were thrown to ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... and brighten when, instead of words, the actual you and I sit cheek by jowl, the spirit housed in the live body, and the very clothes uttering voices to corroborate the story in the face. Not less surprising is the change when we leave off to speak of generalities—the bad, the good, the miser, and all the characters of Theophrastus—and call up other men, by anecdote or instance, in their very trick and feature; or trading on a common knowledge, toss ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... pleasure. The use of the Huber hive had convinced me that with proper precautions, the combs might be removed without enraging the bees, and that these insects were capable of being domesticated or tamed, to a most surprising degree. A knowledge of these facts was absolutely necessary to the further progress of my invention, for without it, I should have regarded a hive designed to allow of the removal of the combs, as too dangerous ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... millions of the public's money. Familiarly they are alluded to as "our bank" or "our insurance company," as the case may be. We are all apt to feel we own the things we use, and that Mr. Rogers should speak of the millions of the National City Bank as "our funds" is not surprising when he possesses the power and the privileges of doing with them as he pleases. I was too fascinated at that time by the ready magic of "Standard Oil" to observe all the anomalous conditions my relation with it revealed. Such things all seemed a natural attribute of the ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... should vary in their intensity of light by the probable transits of these dark cosmical bodies across their discs, is no matter of wonder or astonishment: on the contrary, it is surprising that these sidereal phenomena do not occur with much greater frequency. This would inevitably be the case if the planes of revolution, in the case of these non-luminous bodies about their central orbs, were coincident with the lines of vision from ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... neglected his interest on the Bourse; in the evening he accompanied his young wife into society, which, she always declared, she did not care for, but which had claims upon her nevertheless. It was therefore not surprising that M. de Nailles's face showed traces of the habitual fatigue that was fast aging him; his tall, thin form had acquired a slight stoop; though only fifty he was evidently in his declining years. He had once been a man of pleasure, ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... surprising that he should talk English, for what the British themselves have not accomplished in that land of a hundred tongues has been done by American missionaries, teaching in the course of a generation thousands on thousands. (There is none like the American missionary ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... this case is little better than an impeachment. As for Mr. Johnson, he had held the weapon of the most relentless of the 'Parcae' so long that his suddenly clipping the thread of a foreign minister's tenure of office in a fit of jealous anger is not at all surprising. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... I tried to give an account of this, the most important of our joint discoveries in the strange new world revealed to us by chance. More than twenty years of our united lives have been devoted to the following out of this slender clew—with what surprising results will, I trust, be ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... might hang upon his words, Mr. Harwell took his stand before the jury with a degree of dignity not only highly prepossessing in itself, but to me, who had not been over and above pleased with him in our first interview, admirable and surprising. Lacking, as I have said, any distinctive quality of face or form agreeable or otherwise—being what you might call in appearance a negative sort of person, his pale, regular features, dark, well-smoothed hair and simple ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... and twenty-first of that miserable January the Federal army ploughed its dreary way through sloughs of gluey mud under torrents of chilling rain. Then, when the pace had slackened to a funereal crawl, and the absurdly little chance of surprising Lee had vanished altogether, this despairing "Mud March" came to its wretched end. Four days later Burnside was superseded by one of his own subordinates, General Joseph Hooker, known to all ranks as "Fighting ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... acquaintance with the English State Trials, for which he always had a great liking. "Colquhoun on the Police" would seem not entirely foreign to one who mentally pursued so many malefactors; but it is a little surprising that he should have found himself interested in "Babbage on the Economy of Machinery." He dipped, also, into botany and zooelogy; turned over several volumes of Bayle's "Critical Dictionary," read Mrs. Jameson, and the "London Encyclopaedia of Architecture"; ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... salamanders not included in Table 1 were found, in the course of examination for parasites, to have empty stomachs. One was a male, and the other was a female taken from a chamber that held an egg cluster. It would not be surprising regularly to find stomachs empty in "incubating" females, but the fact is that the one other such female collected by us had a small amount of food in the gut; probably these individuals take anything that enters the ...
— Natural History of the Salamander, Aneides hardii • Richard F. Johnston
... this leading up to? "She did it bringing in your bicycle." Puzzling sometimes over passages with Mabel that with mysterious and surprising suddenness had plunged into scenes, he had whimsically envisaged how he had been, as it were, led blindfolded to the edge of a precipice, and then, whizz! sent flying over on to the angry ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... down the road to-day," said a third speaker, "and he was using the cowboy stirrups and saddle. Talking of his pistols, he's the most surprising shot I ever saw. I saw him the other day in the village snuffing a candle, and cutting a ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
... human being has passed through this Valley of the Shadow of Death and lived to tell of its terrors. Hardy took him down to Fort Mohave, where he met Dr. Parry,* who recorded his whole story, drawn out by many questions, and believed it. This was not surprising; for, no man ever yet having accomplished what White claimed to have done, there was no way of checking the points, of his tale. "Now, at last," remarks Dr. Parry, "we have a perfectly authentic account, from an intelligent source, from a man who actually traversed its ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... the fact that "Outlooks From a New Standpoint" was sold at Berger's own publishing company, it is somewhat surprising to see him, in the August 10, 1912, edition of his paper, the Milwaukee "Social Democratic Herald," attacking, in a party squabble, "the men in control of the 'International Socialist Review,' ... who publish books in defense of what our enemies ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... of that fateful day when Creede and Hardy, riding in from up the river, saw Rafael's wagon in front of the house. This was not surprising in itself as he had been down to Bender for round-up supplies, but as the two partners approached the house Creede suddenly grabbed Hardy's rein and drew back as if he were on top ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... mellow land, with purple hazes over the bluffs, in a normal fall," assured Kate. "Even now if the sun were just to shine out for a day and a good 'chinook' blow you'd see a surprising change. I feel like chanting continually that old rhyme I ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... It is not surprising, therefore, that in the later, enlarged editions of The Golden Bough, Sir James Frazer has given up the view that religion evolved out of magic, being moved thereto by the fact, as he says, that there is 'a fundamental ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... perfectly surprising, the bower that lovely housewife and her children had made of the room. The muslin curtains were bordered with wreaths of evergreens; festoons of hemlock and feathery pine tufts fell along the snow-white wall. On a little shelf under the window, stood a bird cage sheltered ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... Gravesend by an outburst of enthusiasm which literally astounded her. A stately and formal reception she had, of course, anticipated but the splendour of what actually appeared, the elaborate character of the preparations, the surprising interest shewn by the people, were indeed revelations of the changed conditions into which the bride of the Heir Apparent had come. At Gravesend the dense crowds which lined the shores, or at least some portion ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... power wheel so that the rough paddles plowed the water, sending the float diagonally across the flooded stream with tremendous force. He was even able, by inclining the upper end of the machine to right or left, to guide his clumsy craft, which responded to this live rudder with surprising promptness. ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... time to get a specimen of sagebrush to carry home," she explained, "but when the cars started, although I was but a little way off, I could not regain the platform;" which, considering that she wore a tie-back of the then prevalent fashion, was not surprising. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... opinions of the wise men of Europe in the age which preceded the French Revolution! It is not surprising they brought on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... this surprising creature and the gingham aproned Eliza was unbelievable. There was but one explanation: She was the mistress of the house, Eliza the servant. And yet, even so, how strangely out-of-place, out-of-keeping she was here ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... about six months' hard travelling, in and out, to provide a year's stores for three cattle stations and two telegraph stations. It is not surprising that the freight per ton was what it was—twenty-two pounds per ton for the Elsey, and upwards of forty pounds for "inside." It is this freight that makes the grocery bill such a big item on stations out-bush, where several ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... politics; and in a short time he was a fugitive at a Tuscan village, Sarzana, beyond the reach of the victorious Guelfs. Here the family seems to have lived for well nigh three centuries, maintaining its Ghibelline and aristocratic principles with surprising tenacity. The age was not remarkable for the virtue of constancy, or any other virtue. Politics and private life were alike demoralized by unceasing intrigues; and amidst strifes of Pope and Emperor, duchies and republics, cities and autocrats, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... this simple outline is of the highest of all emotions,—prayer. It is a significant fact, that the sentiment of aspiration is nowhere hinted at in Classic Art, and we look in vain for it in all pagan architectures. This is not surprising. The worshippers who built in those schools demonstrated there all the noblest ideas they were capable of,—intellectual beauty, dignity, power, truth, chastity, courage, and all the other virtues cherished in their theologies; but their personal relations with any higher ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... Under all circumstances the result of their labors was as near an approximation to perfection as was compatible with the fallibility of man. Such being the estimation in which the Constitution is and has ever been held by our countrymen, it is not surprising that any proposition for its alteration or amendment should be received with reluctance and distrust. While this sentiment deserves commendation and encouragement as a useful preventive of unnecessary ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... March; for, along with the Bank crisis, came rumours of serious discontent among our seamen. Even Jervis could scarcely stamp out disaffection in the fleet that rode triumphantly before Cadiz; and in home waters mutiny soon ran riot. Is it surprising that sailors mutinied? In large part they were pressed men. Violence swept the crews together, and terror alone kept them together. The rules of the service prescribed flogging for minor offences, hanging for refusal to work. How men existed in the over-crowded decks ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... the Union of the States, this Nation owes its unprecedented increase in population, its surprising development of material resources, its rapid augmentation of wealth, its happiness at home, and its honor abroad; and we hold in abhorrence all schemes for Disunion, come from whatever source they may: And we congratulate the Country that no Republican ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... and genius of their own race. Thus it came to pass that the spirit of remote warlike ages was perpetuated, and that the profession of arms continued to be the most natural one for any bearer of the name Gordon. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that the practice of his nearest relations, as well as the traditions of his race, marked out Charles ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... he is the Author of the shortest of the Gospels, and though to all appearance he often merely reproduces what S. Matthew has said before him, or else anticipates something, which is afterwards delivered by S. Luke,—it is surprising how often we are indebted to S. Mark for precious pieces of information which we look for in vain elsewhere. Now, this is a feature of the Evangelist's manner which is susceptible of memorable illustration from the ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... channel, I do not know. Certain, however, it is, that it possesses very appreciable laxative qualities, and under its influence those who go to drink the waters at Wiesbaden often see their intestinal functions restored to a surprising degree. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... cuttings in the vineyard for months exposed to the air, sun, and rain; not thinking that the very porous wood gets dry very quickly, and becomes weak near the buds. Others, again, buy their cuttings without knowing to what variety of vine they belong, and how they were preserved. It is not surprising, therefore, that these negligent vine-growers, after having incurred great expense in preparing the soil and planting the vineyard, besides having their vineyard planted with so many varieties, are compelled to pull up a great number ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... "What? How surprising!" ejaculated the visitor. "He has something like fifteen thousand dollars invested in that concern, for which I have the honor to be the agent. He has another payment to make on the investment, and that ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield
... the rapid and surprising success of the schemes of those who directed the French bank did ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley
... not meant to bring the subject up on that particular evening. She had made no program—not because she was uncertain as to what she ought to say, but because the impulse to say it lagged. In the end it came to her without warning, surprising herself no less ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... so. The inference seemed to be that the petition was intended, not to move the royal mind, but merely to inflame the discontents of the people. [367] These complaints were utterly groundless. The King had laid on the Bishops a command new, surprising, and embarrassing. It was their duty to communicate with each other, and to ascertain as far as possible the sense of the profession of which they were the heads before they took any step. They were dispersed over the whole kingdom. Some of them were distant from others a full ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... pet aversion, as an unlucky day on which to sail or begin work. But this is not surprising, when we remember that Friday has everywhere more superstition and folk-lore attached to it than any other day in the week, originating, perhaps, as Mr. Thiselton-Dyer suggests, from the fact that it was the day ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... time to the four little fellows under the automobile, but it was really surprising how soon Jack Rabbit ...
— Grand-Daddy Whiskers, M.D. • Nellie M. Leonard
... Settle, Rathmell, Langcliffe and Stainforth, was roughly 2,400 and at the beginning of the nineteenth century was unaltered. Such a population was too "abbondaunt" for one man to teach, particularly if he took boarders, and it is not surprising to find in the report of 1548 ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... surprising that Lord Kingsbury should have been unhappy when Roden was shown up into his room, as Mr. Greenwood had been with him. Mr. Greenwood had called on the previous day, and had been refused admittance. He had then sent in an appeal, ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... of Captain Mackintosh and Norman. Every hour the young Englishman remained in the society of the original of the beautiful picture he so much admired, endeared her more and more to him; and it is not surprising that a girl who had seen so few gentlemen, except her brothers and some of the Hudson's Bay clerks, should have given him her heart in return. Loraine was not a man to trifle with a girl's affections, and sooner than he might otherwise have done, ...
— The Frontier Fort - Stirring Times in the N-West Territory of British America • W. H. G. Kingston
... to wait long. Dad Patten was an early riser and at the first sound the professor was ready to go out in the yard. Here he found Indian Joe already busy, going doggedly about his work, never in a hurry, never flustered but accomplishing a surprising lot of ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... It is surprising how patient the Americans of those days were. But their patience as to Great Britain now gave out, and our minister at London was recalled in 1811. This alarmed the British, who promptly began to take steps to keep the peace, and offered to make amends for the Leopard-Chesapeake ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... soon beyond his depth, and we were at once alarmed and diverted at seeing his rider, with surprising adroitness, draw her feet from the stirrups and perch herself upon the top of the saddle, where she held her position, and navigated her little refractory steed safely ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... animalcules erect their habitations upon the rising bank, and die in their turn, to increase, but principally to elevate, this monument of their wonderful labours. The care taken to work perpendicularly in the early stages would mark a surprising instinct in these diminutive creatures. Their wall of coral, for the most part in situations where the winds are constant, being arrived at the surface, affords a shelter to leeward of which their infant colonies may be safely sent forth; and to their instructive foresight it seems ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... he first went back he told her, to her immense joy and satisfaction, merely that he had broken it off. But when some people who had come to dinner had gone away and she and Harry could be alone, the habit of confidential gossip, the habit, especially, of impressing and surprising her, and, above all, the inability to keep to himself anything so amazing, ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... causing Gorham some concern, was not the matter which gave him the greatest anxiety during the days he passed away from his office. The fact that Buckner was in town was not altogether surprising, and his maudlin comments need not necessarily be seriously considered. In addition to the commission he intrusted to young Riley, Gorham also set in motion the wheels of his own secret-service department, feeling confident that he would soon learn all the facts. The conduct of the current business ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... moment, when her swimming eyes and dizzy brain could hardly comprehend the sense of what she looked upon, it is not surprising that Miss Vere should have omitted to remark that this letter seemed to rest her scruples rather upon the form and time of the proposed union, than on a rooted dislike to the suitor proposed to her. Mr. Vere rang the bell, and ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... to excuse me," he said, getting back to his characteristic grimness with surprising suddenness, when once he began to recover himself. "I've been through a good deal lately; and sometimes it ketches me round ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... here mildly interposed, and soothed down the offended pride of the Highlanders by attributing Lady Juliana's agitation entirely to surprise. The word operated like a charm; all were ready to admit that it was a surprising thing when heard for the first time. Miss Jacky remarked that we are all liable to be surprised; and the still more sapient Grizzy said that, indeed, it was most surprising the effect that surprise had upon some people. For her ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... torture behind, a harrowing legacy to one's friends; for tombs are even less sacred than houses. Memory, friendship, obligation,—all are lost sight of in the greed of desire to make an effective sketch, a surprising revelation, a neat analysis, or perhaps an adroit implication of honor to one's self by reason of an old association with greatness. Private letters and private conversations, which may touch living hearts in a thousand ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... not take it like that. The man is independent, and need not undertake this journey without he likes. Is it surprising, then, that if he should come and see you, and not liking your appearance, or the prospect of being comfortable in your service, ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... [v.04 p.0660] sons, Lord James Stewart (not the son who was afterwards the regent Murray), and encouraged him to a still more daring effort. In these circumstances the poems Palinodia and Franciscanus & Fratres were written, and, although they remained unpublished for many years, it is not surprising that the author became an object of bitterest hatred to the order and their friends. Nor was it yet a safe matter to assail the church. In 1539 there was a bitter persecution of the Lutherans, and Buchanan among others was arrested. He managed to effect his ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... Kirkwood cheerfully. "That's the greatest comfort of all London, the surprising intellectual strength the average cabby displays when you promise him a tip.... Great Heavens!" he cried, reading the girl's dismayed expression. "A tip! I never thought—!" His face lengthened dismally, his eyebrows working awry. "Now we are ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... unable to understand this extremity of hopefulness, following upon the previous depth of misery, stared back at him, speechless, the latter proceeded in still more surprising fashion. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... princes could have sustained the Christian Spaniards in their struggles against their infidel oppressors. It was, therefore, a stern necessity which made these two high qualities elements of the Spanish national character, and it is not surprising that we find submission to the church and loyalty to the king constantly breathing through ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... entered into the garden, I stepped a little on one side, to make way for a person whom I saw before me. He was a young man of surprising beauty, and attired in a foreign costume. Although dressed in the large black robe which the superiors of our order wear, he had, underneath, a short jacket of fine cloth, fastened round the waist by a leathern belt, and a buckle of silver, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was so surprising that she sat gazing with unconscious fixity at the round black head and glossy reddish face which kept appearing and disappearing through the intervening jungle of aigrettes. It was long since she had either heard of Moffatt or thought about him, ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... not without reason that Roger Dymond hesitated before he gave his answer, for nerves are difficult things to deal with. It is surprising, but it is true, that you never find a man who is afraid the first time he goes under fire. There are thousands who are frightened beforehand—frightened that they will "funk it" when the time comes, but when they see men who ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... author of the Life of Cicero, speaking of the opinion entertained of Britain by that orator and his contemporary Romans, has the following eloquent passage:—"From their railleries of this kind, on the barbarity and misery of our island, one cannot help reflecting on the surprising fate and revolutions of kingdoms; how Rome, once the mistress of the world, the seat of arts, empire, and glory, now lies sunk in sloth, ignorance, and poverty; enslaved to the most cruel as well as to the most contemptible of tyrants, superstition and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... was about Calico's markings which stuck in one's mind, as does a haunting memory, intangible but unforgotten. Surely the pattern was obtrusive enough to halt attention; yet its vagaries were so unexpected, so surprising that, even as you looked, you might hesitate at declaring whether it was his withers or his flanks which were carrot-red and if he had four white stockings or only three. It was safer simply to say that he was white where he was not red and red where he was not white. Moreover, his ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... cause of this surprising change? What wrought this wonderful transformation in this individual? The whole story is told in one short line. He went where intoxicating liquor was not sold. Had he remained in this city, he would probably long since have been laid in the ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... your face!" then commanded him to shut his eyes, and keep them shut. He felt something being attached to his wrists; heard a coarse hum that quickly rose in pitch until it passed the range of hearing. He was caught up in a surprising exhilaration; he heard the hum again, sliding down and down in pitch, while every atom in his body felt a sickening vibration that grew ever coarser. Then suddenly he felt normal; the things on his wrists were removed and Vivian told him ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... world cannot be increased at the same rate; and therefore there will be greater poverty and a higher death-rate unless the birth-rate is lowered. Thus Malthusians argue. In view of the false premises on which their argument is based, it is not surprising to find that their deductions are erroneous and contain many economic and statistical fallacies, to the consideration of which we ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... 1871, however, Thiers was finally elected president for a term of three years. Considering the many and difficult problems which the new Government had to solve, it is rather surprising that it lasted as long as it did, even if its end came before the appointed time. For in May, 1873, both the president and his ministry resigned, and General MacMahon was elected president by the Assembly. Early that fall (1873) the last parts of the German army of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... into five lines. Five lines, rather straggling, rather shapeless lines that told him with a surprising brevity that his wife had decided on an ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... four hundred miles. This is really delightful sailing in any but the hurricane months; that is, between the middle of August and the middle of October. It would seem that this should be quite a commercial thoroughfare, but it is surprising how seldom a sailing-vessel is seen on the voyage, and it is still more rare to meet a steamship. Our passage along the coast was delightful: the undulating hills, vales, and plains seemed to be ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... quick, but then an amazing thing happened. Marilyn suddenly colored, a flush which gathered up around her eyes above the make-up and made me think of a country girl. She started to say something else and then bit her tongue. Her confusion was surprising, due, probably, to the ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... second time that day, the steward lay senseless on the ground. Though Mr. C. Augustus Ebenier was not wanting in intelligence, his skull seemed to have a capability for enduring hard knocks which was really surprising. Doubtless his head was his strong place; if it had not been, his brains must have been dashed out. According to the tradition, it was safer for him to strike on his head than on his shins. Certainly he was not badly injured, and if reduced to extremity he might have let out his head ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... facts and forces of the world order and upon mortal mind so vaguely conceived Mrs. Eddy throws the whole burden of responsibility for all the unhappy aspects of experience and conditioning circumstances. She gives it a surprising range of creative power. It has created everything Mrs. Eddy does not like or believe in. In other words, there is not one reality but two, one the reality of well-being, the other the reality of unhappiness and suffering, but according to Mrs. Eddy the first reality ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... scene-shifters, pale, weary-looking men, who had come down with the scenery, were sitting in the wings, perfectly apathetic amid the general excitement. Charles and several other actors were standing round a footman who was opening champagne bottles at a surprising rate. I saw Charles take a glass to Evelyn, who was shivering with a sharp attack of stage-fever in an arm-chair, looking over her part. She smiled gratefully, but as she did so her eyes wandered to the other side of the room, where Ralph, on his knees before Aurelia, was fastening a diamond ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... "we have been eye-witnesses of a strange, portentous, unheard-of, and truly surprising phenomenon. Admire the rapidity with which our friend here has been transformed from a ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... scraps of melody—a shy tenderness in her smile that peeps out at you and vanishes, a something that is winning, looking out of her eyes. You find a waviness of her hair that you never saw at the beginning, a certain surprising, pleasing, enduring want of clumsiness in part of her ear. And it is yours. You can see she strikes the beholder with something of a shock; and while the beauty of the beauty is common for all the world to rejoice in, you will find in your dear, plain wife beauty enough and to spare; ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... very first line of the sophomores made a formidable array, and it is not surprising that some of the freshmen ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... with her as with—with—you, Joseph, when you choose to exert your authority. After Miss Mainwaring came, I thought it best to run away; but before I went I extracted a promise from the three darlings to come and spend the day here to-morrow. Really, Joseph, I have had a surprising day; but I remember now that Miss Martineau did say something about these ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... the City, skinflints in paying wages and profiteers in dealing with the public; yet, if only conscious motives are to count in moral valuation, we shall remain model characters. This is an agreeable doctrine, and it is not surprising that men are un willing to abandon it. But moral considerations are the worst enemies of the scientific spirit and we must dismiss them from our minds if we wish to ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... grasp of the real Christ, that He died because He chose, and chose because He loved. What meant that 'loud voice' with which He said 'It is finished,' but that there was no physical exhaustion, such as was usually the immediate occasion of death by crucifixion? What meant that surprising rapidity with which the last moment came in His case, to the astonishment of the stolid bystanders? They meant the same thing as I believe that the Evangelists meant when they, with one consent, employed expressions to describe Christ's death, which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... see men who appear to have consulted their neighbours' tastes, habits, and means, instead of their own, in building the house they themselves are to inhabit; like Mr. Taylor, without any very good reason, they imitate their opposite neighbour. Again, it is surprising to see what time and toil are spent in following every variation of fashion in dress, by many women who certainly can ill afford it; we do not mean fashion in its general outlines, but in its most trifling details. If one could ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... 18th, 1862, we left Khartoum. Our course up the river was slow and laborious. At times the boats had to be dragged by the men through the high reeds. It is not surprising that the ancients gave up the exploration of the Nile, when they came to the countless windings and difficulties of the marshes. The river is like an entangled skein of thread, and the voyage is tedious and melancholy beyond description. We did not reach Gondokoro until February 2d. This ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... year in any crowd by his automatic repetition of the phrase, "Thirteen hundred—fellow-citiztens!—and fifty miles of railroad!" There was nothing to be done but to go on with the stupendous folly. Loans were effected with surprising and fatal facility, and, "before the end of the year, work had begun at many points on the railroads. The whole State was excited to the highest pitch of frenzy and expectation. Money was as plenty as dirt. Industry, ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... some additional troops that had joined him on the march. On August 15th, taking a large portion of Caswell's militia, he set out with the purpose of surprising Cornwallis. Colonel Armand was marching in front, when, at midnight, his dragoons recoiled from an unexpected meeting with the British vanguard. The collision was unexpected on both sides, and threw ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... Nothing is so surprising to a prophet as the fulfillment of his most confident prediction. Jael looked all aghast, and her face splintered into the most contradictory lines in the effort to give expression to the ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... surprising to no one than to those who are its subjects, when they see themselves mirrored in that glass, and so unlike what they are here. Their first impulse will be to wonder at the form they see, and to ask, almost with incredulity, 'Lord, is it I?' Nor will the wonder be less when they ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... of apparently insignificant events, relations between France and Germany suddenly became strained: and, in a few days, the usual neighborly attitude of banal courtesy passed into the provocative mood which precedes war. There was nothing surprising in this, except to those who were living under the illusion that the world is governed by reason. But there were many such in France: and numbers of people were amazed from day to day to see the vehement Gallophobia of the German Press becoming rampant with the usual ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland |
