"Tale" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gives us an amusing tale of the horses: "The cart horses, a couple of large, mild-eyed, gentle, dappled grays, have arrived from Auckland. It was pleasant to see them fall upon the grass after their tedious sea voyage. Just as we were thinking about going to bed, an ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... and men came to call that foremost of all righteous persons by the name of Madhusudana (slayer of Madhu).[704] After this, Brahman created, by a fiat of his will, seven sons with Daksha completing the tale. They were Marichi, Atri, Angiras, Pulastya, Pulaha, Kratu, (and the already mentioned Daksha). The eldest born, viz., Marichi, begat, by a fiat of his will, a son named Kasyapa, full of energy and the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... thing, to do even that which you never intend to do. So you write an essay, or even a book, the gist of which is that it is a grand thing to select for a friend and guide the human being who has done you signal injustice and harm. Over that book, if it be a prettily written tale, many young ladies will weep: and though without the faintest intention of imitating your hero's behaviour, they will think that it would be a fine thing if they did so. And it is a great mischief to pervert ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... when suddenly the old porteress entered, told the licentious story, and added, that the Dominican, whose name she had forgot, would certainly be burnt alive, for that the Chapter had even then assembled for the purpose of trying him. Whilst the porteress was relating the tale with its various circumstances, the faces of the young nuns were violently flushed, and Sin, who never loses an opportunity of corrupting innocent hearts, shot into their blood, and hastily pictured the dangerous scene to their imaginations. Fury and consternation, in the mean time, deformed ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... them she was freshly bloused and gloved and all traces of the tell-tale red had vanished from her eyelids. Fifth avenue was impossible. Their car sped up Madison avenue, and made for the Park. The Plaza was a jam of tired marchers. They dispersed from there, but there seemed no end to the line that ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... India, which we shall have again occasion to quote, expresses himself in the same manner as to the inconceivable address of the Indians: "They have the art," says he, "to rob you, without interrupting your sleep, of the very sheet in which you are enveloped. This is not 'a traveller's tale.' but a fact. The movements of the bheel are those of the serpent. If you sleep in your tent, with a servant lying across each entrance, the bheel will come and crouch on the outside, in some shady corner, where he can hear ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... presented by the latter, their wild and haggard countenances and wasted frames,—so wasted by hunger and disease, that their old companions found it difficult to recognize them. Montenegro accounted for his delay by incessant head winds and bad weather; and he himself had also a doleful tale to tell of the distress to which he and his crew had been reduced by hunger, on their passage to the Isle of Pearls.—It is minute incidents like these with which we have been occupied, that enable one to comprehend the extremity ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... the beginning of such wonders," spoke up Entedius Hirnio. "That tale of Muso's is mild to one I can tell and I take oath in advance to ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... hearing what Mr. Thistle said, went to consult the wise man, and after the prefatory information of a long voyage, they were told that they would be shipwrecked, but not in the ship they were going out in; whether they would escape and return to England, he was not permitted to reveal. This tale Mr. Thistle often told at the mess-table; and I remarked, with some pain, in a future part of the voyage, that every time my boat's crew went to embark in the Lady Nelson, there was some degree of apprehension ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... puncheons fairly smooth, a stone fireplace, a chimney of mud and sticks, dusty wooden hooks, and rests nailed into the wall, a rude table overturned in a corner, and something that looked like a trap. It was the last that told the tale to Dick. When he examined it more critically, he had no doubt that it ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... little decorous interest, such as a stranger might legitimately take in the hero of such a tale. "This story ought to make a splendid anecdote for our book," she exclaimed. ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... Nature is a benevolent old hypocrite; she cheats the sick and the dying with illusions better than any anodynes. If there are cogent reasons why a patient should be undeceived, do it deliberately and advisedly, but do not betray your apprehensions through your tell-tale features. ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... active. His thoughts dwelt upon the soldier's reticence, his disinclination to make acquaintances, and the coldness with which he had received his, Mauville's, advances in the Shadengo Valley. Why, asked Mauville, lying there and putting the pieces of the tale together, did not Saint-Prosper remain with his new-found friends, the enemies of his country? Because, came the answer, Abd-el-Kader, the patriot of Algerian independence, had been captured and the subjection of the country had followed. Since ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... now and then pausing to laugh boisterously at some recollection. As his whirligig tale touched upon indecent episodes, his voice lowered and he sought for convenient euphemisms, helped out by sympathetic nods. Mrs. Preston made several attempts to interrupt his aimless, wandering talk; but he started again each time, excited by the presence of the doctor. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... a little drama, was, with the tale concerning Nebuchadnezzar, that of Daniel, and other novels quite as strange, evolved long later in the wide leisures of Jerusalem. The fluidic hand did not appear. Even had it zigzagged there was no Belshazzar ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... seems an Arabian tale, perhaps partly founded upon some real revolution in the government of Malabar. But it would much exceed the bounds of a note to enter upon disquisitions relative ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... stepped out to learn exactly what the excitement meant, Daisy again turned the key, and observing a stain of blood on her white dress, she dared not re-enter the parlor with the tell-tale sign. ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... wind happens to be in the east, or the preacher's nerves are badly out of order. The Church is told of her coldness, her indolence and unfaithfulness, her narrowness, bigotry and greed, not because, after a struggle to win permission to tell a more flattering tale, the preacher comes forth under a divine compulsion to "cry aloud and spare not," but because his digestion is upset, or his temporal concerns are awry, or even because his personal ambitions have been disappointed and himself ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... address, whether from the pulpit or the rostrum, half the battle is to know when you have said enough—the same rule applies with equal force to the tale-writer. There are two errors into which he may fall—he may say too little, or he may say too much. The first is a venial 473 sin, and easily forgiven—the second nearly unpardonable. Such, at all events, being ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... punishment. As for the "acquitting jurors," they were greeted with the popular applause; and because they allowed murder to be committed with impunity, the peasantry hastened in crowds to their fields in harvest-time, and reaped their fields for nothing. Crime, therefore, prospered; and the tale of murder was repeatedly told in the newspapers of the day, while the perpetrators thereof escaped the punishment due to their crimes. Yet no lament was raised by the political guides of Ireland over murdered landholders and clergymen; it appeared to be, in their sight, a just ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... she does, that will be weighed in the balance, it is not the patient stitch, stitch, stitch, that she takes, that will mark the hour well spent. It is the one thought that will predominate over all the others, that will tell the ultimate tale, because of its effect on her own mind. A thought once created, even if it is never expressed, is as much a created ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... artists who proceed thus. Upon which Coleridge remarked—"That, before the gentleman kicked up a dust, surely he would down with the dust." So far the story will not do. But what follows is possible enough. The same "hired" gentleman, by way of giving unity to the tale, is described as having hissed. Upon this a cry arose of "turn him out!" But Coleridge interfered to protect him; he insisted on the man's right to hiss if he thought fit; it was legal to hiss; it was natural to hiss; "for what is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... said. "We will now talk to one another as men who have weighty affairs to deal with simply and directly. The story of the meeting between your two rulers which you, Prince Korndoff, have alluded to as a fairy tale, was a perfectly true one. I have known of that meeting some time, and I have certain proof of what transpired at it. The North Sea incident was no chance affair. It was a deliberately and skilfully arranged casus belli, although ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... had Sunbeam for his daughter. And they had there the best heroes of Lochlinn, the best story-tellers of Alba, the best bards of Eirinn. They laid sorrow and they raised music, and the harpers played until the great champion Split-the-Shields told a tale of the realm of Greece and how he slew the three lions that guarded the daughter of the King. They feasted for six days and the last day was better than the first, and the laugh they laughed when Witless, the Saxon fool, told how Split-the-Shield's story ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum
... fond of making jokes, and not particular whom he confides them to, has heard another good story about Tarleton. This is the low comedian Kempe, who stepped into the shoes of flat-nosed, squinting Tarleton the other day, but never quite manages to fill them. He whispers the tale across Will's back to Cowley, before it is made common property; and little fancies, as he does so, that any immortality he and his friend may gain will be owing to their having played, before the end of the sixteenth century, ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... was not unmoved by his tale of blighted expectations; she refused, nevertheless, to accept it as conclusive. "Nonsense!" she said, briskly. "You know very well you haven't prospected your claim for what it's worth. You ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... deported himself in that capacity, and what gratitude he and his brother showed the land for its faith and loyalty in the wreck and desperation of their royal fortunes, with a firm and a fearless pen I now purpose to show. But as the tale of their persecutions is ravelled with the sorrows and the sufferings of my friends and neighbours, and the darker tissue of my own woes, it is needful, before proceeding therein, that I should entreat the indulgence of the courteous reader to allow ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... Colonel caught me as I was about to visit Tom McGregor at the hospital. I was disgusted, but he wanted an engineer. He got me, alas! We rode far to our left over icy snow-crust. To cut my tale short, after we passed our outlying pickets and I had answered a dozen questions, he said, 'Can you see their pickets?' I said, 'No, they are half a mile away on the far side of a creek in the woods. That road leads to a bridge; they may be ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... still operating on the criticism. The truths which these Parabolic and Allusive Poems wrap up and conceal, have been safely concealed hitherto, because they are not those common-place truths which we usually look for as the point and moral of a tale which is supposed to have a moral or politic intention,—truths which we are understood to be in possession of beforehand, while the parable or instance is only designed to impress the sensibility with them anew, and to reach the will that ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... express such trouble as that. We have not realised it yet. Forgive me if my letter is abrupt and confused. I have only desired to tell you simply the simple tale—if by any chance it should make you thank God more earnestly for the great gift He has given you—a holy gift indeed; for can you think the lessons from "Susy," so useful and so loved on earth, could be suddenly ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... July witnessed the last public appearance of the two eminent visitors, and thereby hangs a tale. The last of May Miss Anthony had received from the chairman of the Fourth of July Executive Committee, William H. Davis, the following: "Fully realizing the great importance of your life-work, and rejoicing with you in the certainty that the fruition ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... came forward to tell his tale. He said: "Father, I had an enemy, who for years had done me much harm and tried to ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... traveller's tale about some monkeys which carried their love of imitating very far; as you will say ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... "very few Spaniards and only 6 negroes in each." The incursions of the French and English freebooters, to which he refers in the same letter, had commenced six years before, and these incursions bring the tale of the island's ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... may be left to tell her own tale. In a letter written on October 5, 1843, to Mr. R.H. Horne, she furnishes him with the following biographical details for his study of her in 'The New Spirit of the Age.' They supply us with nearly all that we know of her early ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... the hall of joy, Cast on her nuptial evening: earth to earth That Priest consign'd her, and the funeral lamp Glares on her cold face; for her lover went By glory lur'd to war, and perish'd there; Nor she endur'd to live. Ha! fades thy cheek? Dost thou then, Maiden, tremble at the tale? Look here! behold the youthful paramour! The self-devoted hero!" Fearfully The Maid look'd down, and saw the well known face Of THEODORE! in thoughts unspeakable, Convulsed with horror, o'er her face she clasp'd ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... tale. The movement described is genuine and powerful. The busy city world may not note the signs of progress. Well-minded philanthropists may feel that the rural districts are in special need of their services. Even to ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... or less plaintive and pathetic metres are numerous in the Tale of Uns al-Wujud and the Wazir's Daughter, which, being throughout a story of love, as has been noted, vol. v. 33, abounds in verse, and, in particular, contains ten out of the thirty two instances of Ramal occurring in The Nights. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... thou spendest the whole summer of thy life in wasting both time and soul. All things are full of labour, saith Solomon (Eccl 1:8), only man spendeth all the day idle (Matt 20:6), and his years like a tale that is told (Psa 90:9; Rom 10:21). The coney is but a feeble folk, yet laboureth for a house in the rock, to be safe from the rage of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... well believe, that, to reach the railway station, he was not fool enough to take the omnibus. No, he returned on foot by the shortest way, which borders the river. Now on reaching the Seine, unless he is more knowing than I take him to be, his first care was to throw this tell-tale bundle into ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... with wonder; she cast them down, and a strange smile began to play about her sweet strong mouth. All at once she was in the middle of a fairy tale, and had not a notion what was coming next. Her dumb shepherd boy a baronet!—and, more wonderful still, a Galbraith! She must be dreaming in the wide street! The last she had seen of him was as he was driven from the house by her father, when he had just saved her life. That was but ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... you're as fond of Foreign sense as ... sound: And since their Follies have been bought so dear, We hope their Wit a moderate Price may bear. Terence, Great Master! who, with wond'rous Art, Explor'd the deepest Secrets of the Heart; That best Old Judge of Manners and of Men, First grac'd this Tale with his immortal Pen. Moliere, the Classick of the Gallick Stage, First dar'd to modernize the Sacred Page; Skilful, the one thing wanting to supply, Humour, that Soul of Comic Poesy. The Roman ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... with the wind and the deep drifts. Often he was ready to faint with fatigue, sickness, and hunger, and he would be obliged to sit down upon a bank of snow to rest. He reached the house and told his story, not omitting the oft-told tale of his new discovery,—that mine of wealth, if only he could procure the means of working it! The eager eloquence of the inventor was seconded by the gaunt and yellow face of the man. His generous ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... Amanz,, the conversation of two lovers, overheard and carefully noted by the poet, of a purely didactic character, in which are included three interesting pieces, the first being an episode of the story of Tristram, the second a fable, L'homme et le serpent, the third a tale, L'homme et l'oiseau, which is the basis of the celebrated Lai de l'oiselet (Rom. xxv. 497); Livre des Sibiles (1160); Enseignements Trebor, by Robert de Ho (Hoo, Kent, on the left bank of the Medway) [edited by Mary Vance Young, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... could read, Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth: But, either it was different in blood, Or else misgraffed in respect of years, Or else it stood upon the choice of friends; Or, if there were a sympathy in choice, War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it, Making ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... seemed the Fates who for four years had been so harsh with him. Scarce had he been settled a week when there came a letter addressed to Paul Armstrong, Esq., care of Messrs. Blank and Blank, reporting that the editor of a certain magazine had read with much pleasure a tale from Mr. Armstrong's pen, and would be happy to receive from him one of the same length. Paul danced and sang, and then plunged into labour, wrote his story, received his proof-sheet and his cheque, and with ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... could mete: Ask Prince Robert and d'Estrees, Ask your Solebay and the Boyne, Ask the Duke, whose iron valour With our chivalry did join, Ask your Wellington, oh ask him, Of our Prince of Orange bold, And a tale of nobler spirit Will to wond'ring ears be told; And if ever foul invaders Threaten your King William's throne, If dark Papacy be running, Or if Chartists want your own, Or whatever may betide you, That needs rid of foreign will, Only ask ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... appear as Angel of Light, completed the demolition of the securities of innocence. There was no difficulty in getting "other testimony" to give it effect. In the then state of the public mind, indiscriminately crediting every tale of slander and credulity, looking at every thing through the refracting and magnifying atmosphere of the blindest and wildest passions, it was easy to collect materials to add to the spectral evidence, thereby, according to the doctrine of the ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... old and often-repeated tale. One could not do anything; one could not even go a walking-tour: one could not (of this one was quite sure) take whisky at this juncture without feeling horribly sick. The only thing that occurred to Peter, in the face of the dominant Rodney, was to say, "I'm a teetotaller." ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... long, long summer hours, The golden light should lie, And thick young herbs and groups of flowers Stand in their beauty by. The oriole should build and tell His love-tale close beside my cell; The idle butterfly Should rest him here, and there be heard The housewife-bee ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... Crown Imperial tell its tale to you, and see what lesson we can learn from it? No, an old yew tree shall relate the story. Listen to ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... sound was heard, not a sight was seen, but I scent the Russian... how does it go on in the fairy tale... I've forgotten! 'At your service!'" ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of Wyoming, poured over the hilltop directly above them. Elizabeth took one look at the approaching Indians and then she lifted her Paul on to her own horse and galloped away to safety with the whole pack whooping at her heels. That is the tale of Elizabeth ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... that her elder sister did not grace the festive board that evening. Evelyn's keen and penetrative eye would have taken in the situation at a glance. The light in the soft, deep, violet eyes would tell the tale that the maiden would strive to conceal; and the bright flush, heightened by fond anticipation, would have ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... if they have taken any interest at all in the terrible tale just narrated, will certainly ask what became of the murderers, we will proceed to follow their course until the moment when they disappeared, some into the night of death, some into the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... one thing more than another which weighs upon the mind of a story-teller as he chronicles the events which he has set out to describe, it is the thought that the reader may be growing impatient with him for straying from the main channel of his tale and devoting himself to what are after all minor developments. This story, for instance, opened with Mrs. Horace Hignett, the world-famous writer on Theosophy, going over to America to begin a lecture-tour; and no one realises more keenly than I do ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... shall the outcast prostitute tell her tale? Who will give her help in the day of need? Hers is the leper sin, and all stand aloof dreading to ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... tale goes that Herne the Hunter, Some time a keeper here in Windsor Forest, Doth all the winter time at still midnight Walk round about ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... at least by heartlessness in a cruel function earning his fate,) is avenged to the uttermost on all the men conscious of the crime; Mr. Bertram's death, like that of his wife, brief in pain, and each told in the space of half-a-dozen lines; and that of the heroine of the tale, self-devoted, heroic in ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... felt his pulse quicken, and his heart go out in warmest sympathy at the recital of some tale of flood or field, as told by an eye-witness, when the same events related by a third party will only awaken a mild interest in the minds of his hearers. I crave the sympathetic attention of my readers, and this is my explanation for ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... probably mistaken. There has never been an Isabella in this house to my knowledge, but I will gladly place myself at your service. Come again after sunset, but you must expect to hear no pleasant tale." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Shudraka the tale imparts Of love's pure festival in these two hearts, Of prudent acts, a lawsuit's wrong and hate, A rascal's nature, and the course of ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... even some drops of partly dried blood on the hands of his little friends. It was hardly necessary for him to ask the cause of the wounds, as the bunches of sweet briers and wild roses, with their sharp needle-like thorns, in the happy children's hands told the tale. ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... slop-shops, and low lodging-houses. You could dine for a penny on soup made from the refuse meats of the rich, gathered at back gates by a horde of half-naked children, who all told varieties of one woeful tale. Here, too, you could be drunk for five cents, and be lodged for three, with men, women, and children of all colors lying about you. It was this hideous mixture of black and white and yellow wretchedness which made the place so peculiar. The blacks predominated, and had mostly that swollen, reddish, ...
— The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow • S. Weir Mitchell
... the face began to pale, The body looked too thin and frail, The cheek had lost its glow; The tongue a tale of woe did tell, With nerves impaired its spirits fell; The fire of life ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... resulting flood swept forward thousands of small bergs across the mud-flat into the fiord. In a short time all was quiet again; the flood-waters receded, leaving only a large blue scar on the front of the glacier and stranded bergs on the moraine flat to tell the tale. ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... softly, "ere I sleep, I needs must tell you all my tale of joy. Beginning where you left us—you and Roy. You saw the color flame upon my cheek When Vivian spoke of staying. So did he;— And, when we were alone, he gazed at me With such a strange look in his wond'rous eyes. The silence deepened; and I tried to speak Upon ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the anger of wild beasts and once tamed an elephant that had killed many people, simply by speaking to it in a quiet tone, at which the great animal, which had been raging through the streets of Rajagha, followed him like a dog. A tale of his great wisdom that is still told by his disciples, is of a woman who had lost her child through Death and who came before Buddha maddened with grief, begging him to bring the child back to life or at least to provide some comfort from the sorrow that tortured her. And Buddha told her to get ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... the way seemed long, Or his heart began to fail, She would sing a more wonderful song, Or tell a more marvelous tale. ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... tale of the Regent's Park serpent (Likajokophis harryfurnissii), discovered, patented, and greatly improved upon by the vivacious caricaturist, appears to be even now not told to its bitter sequel; for I am credibly ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... life—profusion—extravagance—prodigality—riotous waste! Small wonder that when this enticing shore was first revealed to the astonished Conquistadores, where every form of Nature was wholly different from anything their past experience afforded, they were childishly receptive to every tale, however preposterous, of fountains of youth, of magical lakes, or enchanted cities with mountains of gold in the depths of the frowning jungle. They had come with their thought attuned to enchantment; their minds were fallow ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... and she wondered at it now, looking about the frozen, buried, beautiful valley and up to the frozen towering mountains, breathing in the cold air, as pure as the ether itself. It seemed to her that spring was as remote and unreal and impossible an imagination of the heart as a child's fairy-tale. ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... to this shrine They lead the first-fruits of the Greek. 'Twas true, the tale he came to speak, That watcher of ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides
... So was the desperate gesture of Macartney's hand across his blood-shot, congested eyes. If I had not had Thompson's deuce of hearts in my pocket I might have doubted if Macartney really were Hutton, or had had any hand in the long tale of tragedy at La Chance. But as it was I knew, in my inside soul, bleakly, that if Dudley were dead Macartney had killed him,—as only luck had kept him from ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... indeed a fairy-tale banquet, this dinner of steak and chip potatoes, followed by meringues a la creme, and finishing up with bread and butter and cheese ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... birthright lets it slip away through hands of weakness or deeds of folly, and if the self-made man of to-day loses the vantage ground of his life work with his fleeting breath, the careers of nations would be brief, the story of liberty would be a nurse's tale, and the careers of individuals would be vanity of vanities. The prepotent blood that made an empire of an insignificant island and stamped its language and its laws upon it made also here the most splendid Republic of the earth out of ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... The tale of the Argonautic Expedition is told with many variations in the legends of the Greeks. Jason, a prince of Thessaly, with fifty companion heroes, among whom were Heracles, Theseus, and Orpheus, the latter ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... it were worth while to examine it, that the publisher and author, however much their general interests are the same, may be said to differ so far as title pages are concerned; and it is a secret of the tale-telling art, if it could be termed a secret worth knowing, that a taking-title, as it is called, best answers the purpose of the bookseller, since it often goes far to cover his risk, and sells an edition not unfrequently before the ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... strange thing had happened, last night. One of his comrades had declared that he had found a giant, standing at the window where the prisoner was. He put his hand upon him, when he was struck down by lightning. No one would have believed his tale at all, if it had not been that his nose was broken. The other prisoner had been questioned but, as he did not understand Burmese, they could learn nothing from him. Two guards were, in future, to be placed at the back of the house, as well as in ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... had foretold it eighty years ago, our grandfathers would have thought him idiotic or mad. They would have said: "Never will you be able to make the shareholders of a hundred companies listen to reason! It is a Utopia, a fairy tale. A central Government, with an 'iron' dictator, ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... under Washington and Adams; declares that they "propose a hereditary executive and a Senatorial nobility for life," and says that the "hand would tremble in recording, and the tongue falter in reciting, the long tale of monstrous aggression. But on the Fourth of March was announced from the Capitol the triumph of principle. Swifter than Jove on his imperial eagle did the glad tiding of its victory pervade the Union. As vanish the mists of the morning before the rays of a sunbeam, so error withdrew ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... pour out, dear brethren, and reach to each of us. Do not look to that great sacrifice with idle wonder. Bend upon it no eye of mere curiosity. Beware of theorising merely about what it reveals and what it does. Turn not away from it carelessly as a twice-told tale. But look, believing that all that divine and human love pours out its treasure upon you, that all that firmness of resolved consecration and willing surrender to the death of the Cross was for you. Look, believing that you had then, and have now, a place in ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... kept in the parish chest in the vestry, breathe the atmosphere of bygone times, and tell the stories and romances of the "rude forefathers of the hamlet." The tombs and monuments of knights and ancient heroes tell many a tale of valour and old-world prowess, of families that have entirely died out, of others that still happily remain amongst us, and record the names and virtues of many an illustrious house. The windows, brasses, bells, and inscriptions, ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... personages he brought on the scene; he seemed to multiply himself in order to play the different parts, and no person needed to feign the terror which he really inspired, and which he loved to see depicted in the countenances of those who surrounded him." In this tale I have made no alterations, as can be attested by those who, to my knowledge, have a copy of it. It is curious to compare the impassioned portions of it with the style of Napoleon in some of the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... amidst the general accordance of all material circumstances, rather confirmed by this minute diversity, than weakened, the general credit of the whole, and gave it the advantage which belongs to an artless and unartificial tale. Some saying his cap was a little flat, as it might be owing to its being drawn over his face; one saying that it was brown; another I think, that it was of a fawn colour; and one who spoke with the utmost certainty in other particulars, that it was nearly the colour ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... from plain People, and from such as have not either Ambition or Capacity to embellish their Narrations with any Beauties of Imagination. I was the other Day amusing myself with Ligon's Account of Barbadoes; and, in Answer to your well-wrought Tale, I will give you (as it dwells upon my Memory) out of that honest Traveller, in his fifty fifth page, the History of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... pleased than otherwise to be the sole narrator of the interesting tale. Needless to say, she and Bill Farnsworth figured as the principal actors in her dramatic version of the motor adventure, and, naturally, Bill could ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... while the politicians were declaiming against her as a cold-blooded aristocrat, there were poor people all over the city who had some tale to tell of kindness done in secret, either ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... ideal love legend are of infinite variety. Tassoni describes Paolo, the warrior, consumed with ravishing love, "shrunk with misery;" he fails to reach the youthful passion, and is as mediaevally chivalric as is Chaucer in "The Knightes Tale" of Palamon and Arcite. Leigh Hunt resorts to stilted narrative ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... world of merriment their melody foretells;" in the second stanza the second line gives us, "What a world of happiness their harmony foretells;" the second line of the third stanza reads as follows: "What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells;" and in the fourth stanza the second line runs thus: "What a world of solemn thought their ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... afraid than he had been at any time since he had overheard Howells catalogue his case to Graham in the library. Why, even in so much confusion, had Graham and he failed to think of those tell-tale marks in the court? They had been intact when he had stood there just before dark. It was unlikely any one had walked across the grass since. He saw Graham's elaborate precautions demolished, the case against him stronger than it had been before Howells's murder. Graham's face revealed the ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... real motives for Fouquet's disgrace, it was never considered unjust, and this leads me to tell the tale of his mad ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... face framed in tawny braids, and she indicates a bench for me with the ease and authority of a long practiced hostess. She sits there with the infant at her ample breast, and on her face is written unquestioning satisfaction with her part in life. A swift laughing tale I hear, of little frocks outgrown and of sabots worn through, and no place to buy anything, and little Jean so thin and nervous, "but no wonder, Mademoiselle, for he was born during the evacuation, and only Cecile ...
— Where the Sabots Clatter Again • Katherine Shortall
... Serpentine," she interrupted, with the faintest suspicion of a twinkle about her eyes. "On, sir, on! You are as reluctant as our pump at Wilmot House in the dry season. I see you were not killed, as you richly deserved. Let us have the rest of your tale." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... creatures of the conventions of the hour, as one figures the merciless vastness of the universe of matter sweeping us headlong through viewless space; as one hears the wail of misery that is for ever ascending to the deaf gods; as one counts the little tale of the years that separate us from eternal silence. In the light of these things, a man should surely dare to live his small span of life with little heed of the common speech upon him or his life, only caring that his days may be full of reality, and his conversation ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... death he confessed to thirty-seven murders, and bragged that he had long since lost count of his robberies and rapes. Something must be abated for boastfulness. But after all deduction there remains a tale of crime that is unsurpassed. His most admirably artistic quality is his complete consistence. He was a ruffian finished and rotund; he made no concession, he betrayed no weakness. Though he never preached a sermon against the ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... rage and shame. He went slowly to where Bert Stone lay. His friend was white and unconscious ... perhaps already his tale was told. Hap Smith looked from him to the girl who, her face as white as Bert's, was trying to staunch the flow ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... measures taken accordingly. The dinner and the ball took place; and what a pity I may not describe that entertainment, the dresses, and the dancers, for they were all exquisite in their way, and outre beyond measure. But such details only serve to derange a winter evening's tale such as this. ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... "Heavens! what a tale of romance! How learned you all this, Angelique?" exclaimed Amelie, who had listened with ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... beneath the covers, and in doing so her face came in contact with the moistened surface of her pillow. Propping herself up on her elbow, she looked curiously at the tell-tale bit of linen. Obviously, she had been crying in her sleep; and for this there must have been a reason. Until that moment she had not thought of the previous night; but now the sudden recollection overwhelmed her. She was only a girl-woman—a child of nature, incapable of ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... man can have nothing to be sad about.' And I think he understood me; he understood that I was begging off, and he made up his mind in his own way. He went about with his unasked question in his mind, as I did with my untold tale; we were both afraid of bringing dishonor on a great house. And it was the same with Mademoiselle. She didn't know what happened; she wouldn't know. My lady and Mr. Urbain asked me no questions because they had no reason. I was as still as a mouse. When I was younger ...
— The American • Henry James
... one day, while she gathered nettles for the cows under Seden his hedge, she heard the goodman threaten his squint-eyed wife that he would tell the parson that he now knew of a certainty that she had a familiar spirit; whereupon the goodman had presently disappeared. But that this was a child's tale, and she would fyle no one on the strength ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... seruices canst thou do? Kent. I can keepe honest counsaile, ride, run, marre a curious tale in telling it, and deliuer a plaine message bluntly: that which ordinary men are fit for, I am quallified in, and the ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... tell that marvelous tale with all the grace and unction and passion which her genius inspired her with. Little Agnes listened and listened, and forgot her terrors. She clung closer and closer to her companion, and when the story came to an end her starry ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... love of her young brother kept her single, for it was not likely that the daughter of the rich Mr. Carlyle had wanted for offers. Other maidens confess to soft and tender impressions. Not so Miss Carlyle. All who had approached her with the lovelorn tale, she ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... passengers before the smallish gentleman could catch the eye of its operator, flew suddenly upward in the echo of a gate slammed shut in his face; and all the other cars were still at the top, according to the bronze arrows of their tell-tale dials. The late arrival held up patiently; but after an instant's deliberation, doffed his hat, crushed it flat, slipped out of his voluminous cloak, and ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... greeting, as soon as the now lined features of the director showed upon the communicator screen, and the careworn countenance smoothed magically into the keen face of the fighting Newton of old, as Westfall recounted rapidly the tale of the castaways. ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... for the introduction of the Legend by the tale of the Red Haired Phantom, if I may describe it in the terms of a ghost story. That ghost was easy to lay (see Introduction). Next comes the odd account of Gilbert and Frances' honeymoon and of the years that followed. It is of course possible that the first night ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... fish reporter enters upon the last lap of his rounds. Through, perhaps, the narrow, crooked lane of Pine Street he passes, to come out at length upon a scene set for a sea tale. Here would a lad, heir to vast estates in Virginia, be kidnapped and smuggled aboard to be sold a slave in Africa. This is Front Street. A white ship lies at the foot of it. Cranes rise at her side. Tugs, belching smoke, bob beyond. All about are ancient warehouses, redolent of the Thames, ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... was hit twenty-eight times by shot and shell—or once to every fifth discharge. No seaman knowing anything of an actual engagement on the deep will object to the accuracy of such an aim. Had the Kearsarge shown the same blank sides as the Alabama, another tale might have been told. Captain Semmes, however, perceived that his shell rebounded after striking her, and exploded harmlessly. This led him to rely upon solid shot. The Alabama, not being thus or in any way ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... back to me after many weeks of illness," said the Baron slowly, "with a curious tale of a terrible thrashing, of a barge and mules, of rough men who kicked him about and consigned him to a city jail under the malicious charge of a mule-driver who swore that he loved ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... I write some of these funny momentoes of that time, carefully kept, often looked at. One of them is, "The Black Canyon; or, Wild Adventures in the Far West: a Tale of Instruction and Amusement for the Young, by Samuel L. Osbourne, printed by the author; Davos Platz," with the most remarkable cuts. It would not do some of the sensationalists anything but good to read it even at this day, since many points in their art are absurdly caricatured. Another is ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... these tricks of the moose—for many an old moose-hunter had poured his tale into Basil's ear. He proceeded, therefore, with all due caution. He first buried his hand in his game-bag, and after a little groping brought out a downy feather which had chanced to be there. This he placed lightly upon the muzzle of his rifle, and having gently elevated the piece above ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... merchant can Rank square with a Dirt-eater, man for man. Perhaps this point we may fairly turn, And Richmond, to her amazement, learn, When peace shall have come, and war be fled, And its hate be the tale of time long sped, That where there is work or thought for men, One Yankee is ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... visited by folk who have heard of my travels, and would fain have particulars of them from my own lips; so that ofttimes I have to tell my tale, or part of it, a dozen times in the year. Nay, upon one occasion I even told it to the King's majesty, which was when I went up to London on some tiresome law business. Sir Ralph Wood, who is my near neighbor and a Parliament man, had mentioned ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... story of a great deed. He made a long visit, staying to luncheon and after luncheon, so that the little studio heard all at once a greater quantity of brave talk than in the several previous years of its history. With much of our tale left to tell it is a pity that so little of this colloquy may be reported here; since, as affairs took their course, it marked really—if the question be of noting the exact point—a turn of the tide in Nick Dormer's personal situation. He was destined to remember ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... vanquished rivals and the love-tale red-written on the snow. Forgotten, save once, when old One Eye stopped for a moment to lick his stiffening wounds. Then it was that his lips half writhed into a snarl, and the hair of his neck and shoulders involuntarily bristled, while he ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... o'clock the sedan was brought home empty, and without a sign of defacement inside or out. It told no tale. ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... a drearier day in the convent than this, in the free sun and air, with the feeling of liberty, and unbounded hopes founded on this first success. She told her beads diligently, trusting that the tale of devotions for her husband's spirit would be equally made up in the field as in the church, and intently all day were her ears and eyes on the alert. Once Lucette visited her, to bring her a basin ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is an old house, said to have belonged to the Knights Templars. Its gable, pierced with numerous windows, generally in the form of flatly pointed arches, each of them containing a couple of arches with trefoil-heads, has given currency to the tale of its original destination. It was figured some time since by M. Langlois, in a work commenced to illustrate the Antiquities of Normandy, but of which the first number only appeared; and it has recently been lithographized by M. Nodier. But, from the ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... Next, the company consumed a sort of pasty of which the precise name has escaped me, but which the host rendered differently even on the second occasion of its being mentioned. The meal over, and the whole tale of wines tried, the guests still retained their seats—a circumstance which embarrassed Chichikov, seeing that he had no mind to propound his pet scheme in the presence of Nozdrev's brother-in-law, who was a complete stranger to him. No, that subject called for amicable and ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... It's just some foolish talk he's heard, I'm sure. Now, for goodness' sake, don't get so excited." Pethick, having evoked the storm, was not a little nervous as to its results in his own case. He, too, as well as Callum, himself as the tale-bearer, might now be involved. ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... swift motion, set a little plate of sweet crackers before the girls. These were not ordinarily served with five-cent orders, and the three instantly divided them, concealing the little cakes in their hands, and handing the tell-tale plate back to the clerk. A wise precaution it proved, for a moment later "old Bones," as the proprietor of the establishment was nicknamed, sauntered through the store. In a gale of giggles the girls went out, stealthily eating the crackers ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... a rough shake of my hammock and the hail of one of the boatswain's mates close by me told a different tale. ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... of pictures representing the streets of London in the night, even at the comparatively recent date of this tale, would present to the eye something so very different in character from the reality which is witnessed in these times, that it would be difficult for the beholder to recognise his most familiar walks in the altered aspect of little more than ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... transgression. Any sort of celebrity bestows an inconceivable prestige. Apparently for women, as for families, the glory of the crime effaces the stain; and if such and such a noble house is proud of its tale of heads that have fallen on the scaffold, a young and pretty woman becomes more interesting for the dubious renown of a happy love or a scandalous desertion, and the more she is to be pitied, the more she excites our sympathies. We are only pitiless to the commonplace. If, moreover, ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... old Anthony had said, after reading the tale of her delinquencies from some notes in his hand, "you dined last night openly at the Saint Elmo Hotel with this same Louis Akers, a man openly my enemy, and ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the girl struck me even more than her beauty. Her courage, frank indignation, and the nobility of her aspect made me resolve not to abandon her. I could not doubt that she had told a true tale, as my brother continued ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... artful Great Lady and an Artless Expert. The Lombard Runes, a mere interlude, but revealing a certain duplicity in Professional Seekers for Truth. Their Cross, so called from an inanimate Object of Price which wrought Woe to a well meaning New York Couple. The Missing St Michael, a tale of Italianate Americans which is full of Vanities and, though alluring to the Sophisticated, quite unfit for the Simple Reader. The Lustred Pots, again a mere interlude, but of a grim sort, as it grazes ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... describe it no one would follow me. More cruel than the clumsy torturing weapons of old, it distorts, and scars, and hacks, and maims, and destroys its victim inch by inch, feature by feature, member by member, joint by joint, sense by sense, leaving him to cumber the earth and tell the horrid tale of a living death, till there is nothing left of him. Eyes, voice, nose, toes, fingers, feet, hands, one after the other are slowly deformed and rot away, until at the end of ten, fifteen, twenty years, it may be, the wretched leper, afflicted in every sense ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... during the last years of his life was as great as the distress of his youth. His published letters tell a sorrowful tale. They are filled with apprehensions of notes maturing only to be protested, or complaints of inability to go up to Paris one day because he has not a shirt to wear, another day because he cannot procure the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... him wince, hit him as hard as you will he always comes up smiling. Barkley, he is a good boxer too, but he ain't got temper, sir; he gets nasty if he has a sharp counter; and though he keeps cool enough, there is an ugly look about his face which tells its tale. He would never keep his temper, and I doubt if he's real game at bottom. I knows my customers, and have never hit him as I hit Norris; I don't want to lose a pupil as pays fair and square, and I know I should mighty soon lose him if I were to let out at him sharp. No, ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... in the stable were gathered in silence around the manger. Mary, the mother, said never a word, but her thoughts were busy with the tale the shepherds had told about her ...
— The King Nobody Wanted • Norman F. Langford
... thrilling tale of the adventures of the great Field-Marshal ... is well written and makes a suitable gift ...
— My Adventures as a Spy • Robert Baden-Powell
... through secret ways, And to the King the dreadful tale conveys, Then passed, unseen, in night's concealing shade, The mournful heroes ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... Vpon whose Sunne-burnt continent doth daunce Westerne Ducallidon, the greatest maine, Thither shee packs, Error doth their aduance Her coale-blacke standerd in the hands of paine; And as escapt from rauishment or bale, With false teares, thus shee tunes a falser tale. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... was still fresh enough in the memory of St. Louis folk to make this seem no improbable tale, and the utmost confusion ensued. Some of the young men, with Josef Papin and Gabriel Cerre at their head, were for going at once to our rescue; but the maidens implored, and Yorke averred it was too late, and reported the savages in ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... point to this day whether the touching was more humorous or the humorous more touching. I therefore refrain from perplexing the reader with the speeches in detail. Only part of one speech will I refer to, as it may be said to have had a sort of prophetic bearing on our tale. It fell from the ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne |
