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Threshold   Listen
noun
Threshold  n.  
1.
The plank, stone, or piece of timber, which lies under a door, especially of a dwelling house, church, temple, or the like; the doorsill; hence, entrance; gate; door.
2.
Fig.: The place or point of entering or beginning, entrance; outset; as, the threshold of life.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Threshold" Quotes from Famous Books



... that he had spent a good many dollars upon his house and furnishings for it. It brought her a sudden sense of confusion, for as one result of that expenditure he had been forced into doing what she fancied must have been a very repugnant thing, and she had never even crossed his threshold. ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... could hold no more. Not content with this, he strewed gold-dust in his hair and beard and filled his mouth to that extent that he appeared in the act of choking. In each hand he grasped a golden dish, and thus laden dragged himself out of the treasure-house, falling exhausted as he crossed the threshold. Never have I laughed so heartily as ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... and it was with the solemn face of a man who was fulfilling a sacred duty that he ascended to the room in which his son was imprisoned. Jean threw open the door, and the Duke paused for a moment on the threshold. The furniture had been overturned, some of it broken, and there were evident signs of a furious struggle ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... come. Had she known how those few dollars had been stored up, bit by bit, month by month—But she did not know. Unbelievably unsophisticated, unbelievably innocent and helpless, was Elizabeth Landor at this time. Sitting there that morning on the threshold, she had no more comprehension of the world she was entering, she had entered, than of eternity itself. She was merely passive, trusting, waiting to be led. Like a bit of down from the prairie milkweed ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge

... friend. These are full of wonder; more mysterious are the moments that must have brushed me with their wings and passed me by: when Fate beckoned and I did not see it, when new Life trembled for a second on the threshold; but the word was not spoken, the hand was not held out, and the Might-have-been shivered and vanished, dim as a into ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith

... publication; and, besides, there must be an accompaniment of managerial ability sufficient to give the reason a continual demonstration in fact. Whatever the view of the cheerful optimist who stands on the threshold of the magazine world, with his experience, like his hoped-for triumphs, all in the future, the conditions above named, as witnessed by the broken lance of many a vanquished knight of this "Round Table," are not easily met. It is with a full understanding of ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various

... commander-in-chief was seated in a certain room near the threshold of his gate, when the voices of a number of people outside were heard. Rajeshwar asked, "Who is at the door, and what is the meaning of the noise I hear?" The porter replied, "It is a fine thing your honour has asked. Many ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... character, poor old Brea was left bare to every storm that blew. One morning, as the sun was rising over the town, surprising half a dozen belated gamblers in Ned Wright's saloon as they were getting up to leave, they found lying across the threshold the body of a man, ragged, emaciated, forlorn. ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... presently through the curtain appeared a royal-looking lady splendidly apparelled. She was accompanied by four waiting women who fell back on the threshold and were no more seen. The Prince stepped forward, took both her hands in his and kissed her on the brow, then drew back again, after which they stood a moment looking at each other. While they remained thus I studied her who was known throughout the land as the "Beautiful Royal Daughter," ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard

... treat thee now, even at the Door and Threshold of this house, but only with this Intelligence, that Mr. Badman lies dead within. Be pleased therefore (if thy leisure will serve thee) to enter in, and behold the state in which he is laid, betwixt his Death-bed and the Grave. He is not buried as yet, nor doth he stink, as is ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan

... plows its way through lumps of floating ice,—a novel sight to me,—and I look forward wondering whether the new people I shall meet will be as fierce about the war as those in New Orleans. That past is to be all forgotten and forgiven; I understood thus the kindly acts that sought to brighten the threshold of a new life. ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various

... upstairs and threw open the door; Lord Fairmount, pausing on the threshold, gazed at ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs

... Doctor mused, looking on the floor—then he shook his head and said, "My dear friend, I am powerless at present; such a thing has never come to me before—you are as it were in a chamber of life that I have never visited, and I can but stand on the threshold and listen at a closed door." Then he was silent for a little, but presently he said, "This light that you speak of—does it envelop every one?—do you see it about me as I speak with you?" "Yes," said Herbert, turning his eyes upon the Doctor, ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... matter, he is a man. But a sister?' Her head drooped a quavering 'Yes.' 'Younger? Very much?' 'Seven years.' 'And you have thought well about this matter? About them? About your mother? And your sister? She stands on the threshold of her woman's life, and this wildness of yours may mean much to her. Could you go before her, look upon her fresh young face, hold her hand in yours, or touch your cheek ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London

... the signs of poverty or its attendant miseries. No ragged, dirty, squalid children, dabbling in mud or dust; but many a tidy, smart-looking lass was spinning at the cottage-doors, with bright eyes and braided locks, while the younger girls were seated on the green turf or on the threshold, knitting and singing as blithe ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... as he had seated himself upon a mat, by the threshold of his door, a young woman (his intended bride) brought a little water in a calabash, and kneeling down before him, desired him to wash his hands; when he had done this, the girl, with a tear of joy sparkling in her eyes, drank the water; this being considered ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... with them, ha?" asked his master glancing down at the miserable apologies for shoes and stockings that but partially protected the child's feet front the snow whenever he stepped beyond the threshold. ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur

... of the Sea of Galilee. But the question—which we marvel beyond measure that the bishop overlooks—always was, Where did Cain get his wife? This is the fundamental question for such critics. The difficulty, it will be perceived, lies across the very threshold of the history. How did he stumble over it without record of his misadventure? It recurs, however, on every page. If the bishop will only answer that question, and introduce us politely to Cain's wife, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... Richard Brent up the stone staircase, along narrow corridors and passages, until he came to a door, at which he knocked gently. Receiving no reply he opened it and went in, motioning Brent to follow. But before Bunning had well crossed the threshold he started back with a sharp cry. The Mayor was there, but he was lying face ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

... were unprovided with windows, or apertures that served for them, the only light from without must have been admitted by the doorways. These were made with the sides approaching each other towards the top, so that the lintel was considerably narrower than the threshold, a peculiarity, also, in Egyptian architecture. The roofs have for the most part disappeared with time. Some few survive in the less ambitious edifices, of a singular bell-shape, and made of a composition ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... door was slowly but surely closing on them. No one had touched it, yet it was moving with great force. Marjorie ran back out of the way with Georgie clinging to her arm. Alan, seizing Estelle's hand, had barely time to stumble over the threshold when a heavy bit of wood was hurled over him, just missing his head, and landing on the threshold he had quitted the moment before. On this the door banged with a great crash. It had fallen just in time to prevent the door shutting. The whole building ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... have an example? You are sleeping peacefully in a ray of the sun that covers the threshold of the kitchen with pearls. The earthenware pots are amusing themselves by elbowing and nudging one another on the edge of the shelves trimmed with paper lace-work. The copper stewpans play at scattering spots of light over the smooth white walls. The motherly stove hums ...
— Our Friend the Dog • Maurice Maeterlinck

... now remained to him, before a long, perhaps a lasting separation from his dear wife and baby, and thinking to pass these with them he hurried thence by the most unfrequented route, but had hardly crossed the threshold when Delia, weeping bitterly, implored him to make good his escape, as Master Tom had already sent the officers to look for him. With a last, fond embrace and a tear, which, falling upon that cradled babe, meant present sorrow, but no less ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... into speech that so far had been scarcely above the threshold of his conscious thought. He went on to discuss the entire position of the disbelieving cleric. He discovered a ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells

... was bidden, and as he opened the door a flash of lightning showed him, standing at the threshold, a little wizened old man with a ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy

... fugitive pieces is young, just on the threshold of life, and with the daring audacity of youth makes assertions and gives decisions which she may reverse as time mellows her opinions, and the realities of life force aside the theories of youth, and prosy facts obscure the memory ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore

... Stratton crossed the threshold, instinctively removing his hat. As he remembered it, the room, though of good size and comfortable enough, had been a clutter of purely masculine belongings. He was quite unprepared for the colorful gleam of Navajo rugs, the curtained windows, the general air of swept and garnished tidiness ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames

... I. No answer, I took the lamp once more and flooded the car with light. In the far corner, still wrapped in the rugs, my lady lay fast asleep. With some difficulty I got her into my arms. On the threshold I met Thomas, our waiter. He had little on but a coat and trousers, and there was slumber ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates

... to consult the countess' desire for privacy. A separate entrance from the street was out of the question, but the draperies were to be disposed in such a manner that the instant Madame de Gramont and her family passed the threshold they were completely secluded. ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... family of Simeon Kieff, the other was given up to me. My half of the cabin was a large apartment divided by a partition. Saveliitch began at once to install us, whilst I looked out of the narrow window. Before me stretched the bleak and barren steppe; nearer rose some cabins; at the threshold of one stood a woman with a bowl in her hand calling the pigs to feed; no other objects met my sight, save a few chickens scratching for stray kernels of corn in the street. And this was the country to ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin

... her hair was a ragged knot, constantly coming down behind, and that she never could enter upon any undertaking without first twisting it into place. At that particular moment, being newly come to the threshold to take a look out of doors, she was winding herself up with both hands after this fashion. And so prevalent was the fashion, that on the occasion of a fight or other disturbance in the Hole, the ladies would be seen flocking ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... made him turn his head, and he saw Madame Midas, white as death, staring at the open French window, on the threshold of which was standing a man—medium height, black beard, and a haggard, hunted look in ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... remembrance which seemed to us (that is to them and to myself) ludicrously awful, though, at that time, the practice was common throughout our Indian possessions. He had a Hindoo servant with him; and this servant every night stretched himself along the "sill" or outer threshold of the door; so that he might have been trodden on by the general when retiring to rest; and from this it was but a moderate step in advance to say that he was trodden on. Upon which basis many other wonders were naturally reared. Miss Smith's father, therefore, furnished matter ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... him to 'kindly step up to the Manor in the afternoon.' And Mrs. Spruce's husband, a large, lumbering, simple- faced old fellow, in a brown jacket and corduroys, had himself come with the message, and having delivered it, stood on Walden's threshold, cap in hand, waiting for a reply. John surveyed his awkward, peasant-like figure with a sense of helplessness,—excuses and explanations he knew would be utterly lost on an almost deaf man. Submitting to fate, he nodded his ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... the door again opened, and Madam—Madam herself—the Waldoborough appeared! Did you ever see flounces? did you ever witness expansion? have your eyes ever beheld the—so to speak—new-risen sun trailing clouds of glory over the threshold of the dawn? You should have seen Madam enter that room; you should have seen the effulgence of the greeting smile she gave me; then you wouldn't wonder that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... Ormond stopped at the threshold, absolutely dazzled by the brilliancy of Dora's beauty, her face, her figure, her air, so ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... to the barn, the moment I set my foot over the threshold, my terrors of murder and of her having expired all returned. After a short pause, I called with a trembling voice, 'Mary! Are you alive?' and my heart bounded with joy to hear ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... on the threshold of the hall, She "Thomas" cried, with many a sob; And thrice on Bobtail did she call, Exclaiming ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis

... tell us, reaches out into daily life when the normal intelligence is in abeyance—as in sleep or profound relaxation. This subliminal (below the threshold) mind is swifter than the conscious mind and over-reaches it in a flash. It is practically unerring. It is controlled by laws not yet grasped to any great extent. It is hidden from ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)

... ill-will to those who are in the same line as ourselves, a spirit of covetousness and detraction. How little Christian work even is a protection against unchristian feeling! That most despicable of all the unworthy moods which cloud a Christian's soul assuredly waits for us on the threshold of every work, unless we are fortified with this grace of magnanimity. Only one thing truly needs the Christian envy, the large, rich, generous soul which ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various

... betokening high spirit strangely contrast with the impotence of its close. It will at least be remembered in his favour that he was a patron of the arts; and that after Froissart had been present at his christening, he received, when on the threshold of manhood, the homage of Gower, and on the eve of his downfall showed most seasonable kindness to a poet far greater than either of these. It seems scarcely justifiable to assign to any particular point of time the "Ballade sent to King ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... Escape into a substitute relationship is a going back to the dreamlike stage of late adolescence, putting new promises ahead of present performance, and attempting to make life stand still, so that one may continue on the threshold of maturity without ever stepping over into the place where one ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various

... William Blake An Ode on the Spring Thomas Gray Spring Henry Timrod The Meadows in Spring Edward Fitzgerald The Spring William Barnes "When Spring Comes Back to England" Alfred Noyes New Life Amelia Josephine Burr "Over the Wintry Threshold" Bliss Carman March William Morris Song in March William Gilmore Simms March Nora Hopper Written in March William Wordsworth The Passing of March Robert Burns Wilson Home Thoughts, from Abroad Robert Browning Song, "April, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... ricketty and smoke-dried, and black with his craft, was sitting on the threshold of a miserable hovel and working at the file. Behind him stood a stunted and meagre girl, with a back like a grasshopper; a deformity occasioned by the displacement of the bladebone, and prevalent among the girls of Wodgate from the cramping posture of their usual toil. Her long melancholy visage ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... note by Rollo, whom he instructed to deliver it, not at the desk, but at the door of Mrs. Hastings' apartment, and to wait for an answer. He watched with pleasure Rollo's soft departure, recalling the days when he had sent a messenger boy to some inaccessible threshold, himself stamping up and down in the cold a block or so away to await ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale

... the door caused Bluewater to cease speaking; and as Wycherly threw open the entrance, Galleygo appeared on the threshold, by this time reduced to the necessity of holding ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... you here just now and forbids you this useless journey. We have concealed your father's condition from you until now; but it is perhaps hopeless; and that alone should suffice to stop you on the threshold. But there are so many other reasons.... And it is not in the day when our enemies awake, and when the people are dying of hunger and murmur about us, that you have the right to desert us. And why this journey? Marcellus is dead; and life has ...
— Pelleas and Melisande • Maurice Maeterlinck

... whole tracts of the past which never rise up before my conscious thought at all. Psychological science has much to say in late years about this storehouse of subconscious memory and the power that, unknown to me, it is exerting on my life. It is there all the time, "under the threshold." These buried memories are alive, ready to spring up, but ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth

... died after being repeatedly outraged, and the son was wounded. Nor were children exempt. "About Aug. 4," says one witness, "near Vottem, we were pursuing some Uhlans. I saw a man, woman, and a girl about nine, who had been killed. They were on the threshold of a house, one on the top of the other, as if they had been shot down, one after the other, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... went, so that the hills echoed with it, and the folks at Cauldstaneslap got to their feet about the table and looked at each other with white faces. The horse fell dead at the yard gate, the laird won the length of the house and fell there on the threshold. To the son that raised him he gave the bag of money. "Hae," said he. All the way up the thieves had seemed to him to be at his heels, but now the hallucination left him - he saw them again in the place of the ambuscade - and the thirst of vengeance seized ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Nuns' House, and requests that Miss Landless may be informed that her brother is there, by appointment. He waits at the gate, not even crossing the threshold; for he is on his parole not to ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... associations which that ponderous edifice has gained from this act for all lovers of English poetry tempt one to forgive its unromantic appearance, and to remember rather the pilgrimages which Robert Browning on his subsequent visits to England never failed to pay to its threshold. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... the out-houses with means of defence: ammunition, bags of sand, gun-powder ... that, in short, I prepared for an alarm by setting up this unsuspected little fortress at twenty minutes from the Col du Diable ... on the very threshold ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc

... padding noiselessly through the outskirts where no one met them, and no sound was to be heard save for the barking of dogs, and the occasional wail of an infant; for the strangeness of everything had suddenly made her realise that of her own will she was standing on the threshold of a new life, laden—though this the usual narrow outlook and education of the West prevented her from understanding—with a love and passion and womanhood which cannot, and never will be, realised in countries where the dominant ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest

... look, and the hair shining under the black veil (you have to be a blonde, of course), and try to look as if, although your young life had been blighted just as it was about to give a hop-skip-and-a-jump over the threshold of life, a walk in the park might do you good, and be sure to happen out the door at the right moment, and—oh, it'll fetch 'em every time. But it's fierce, now, how cynical I am, ain't it?—to talk about mourning costumes ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry

... in her voice evidently affected the young man also. He came, hurrying, and when he had entered stayed upon the threshold, warm-hued with work and bringing with him the odor of the soil. His brown eyes went from one of them to the other, and ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown

... the door and stepped across the threshold and onto the cold, damp earthen floor of the passage. The cold she felt refreshed her. With her bare feet she touched a sleeping man, stepped over him, and opened the door into the part of the hut where ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... lookin' for you," began Susan the moment she had crossed the threshold. Susan had learned that Keith hated above all things to have to speak first, or to ask, "Who is it?" "Mis' McGuire's ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter

... return home, whatever might be the sacrifice, became almost a mania with him, but he would not beg his way. And so he struggled on, meeting with disappointment again and again, yet never yielding in his purpose. Then, on the threshold of success, when he landed in Philadelphia without money and without friends, he was taken seriously ill. By what seemed the merest chance Elizabeth learned of him, and it was through her efforts and sacrifices that he was spared, to enjoy in the comforts ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane

... of Rome is a tale of murder and sudden death, varied, changing, never repeated in the same way; there is blood on every threshold; a tragedy lies buried in every church and chapel; and again we ask in vain wherein lies the magic of the city that has fed on terror and grown old in carnage, the charm that draws men to her, the power that holds, the magic that enthralls men soul and body, as Lady Venus cast her spells ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... the lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold—then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... turn, prepared to go out, took his hat, a big soft hat, and paused for a few seconds on the threshold of his abode. In front of him stretched a wide sward, in which three large patches were conspicuous—three large beds of flowers in full bloom, one facing the house and the others at either side of it. Further on, rose skyward the principal trees in the wood, while ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893

... down the narrow passage in his direction. As the yellow door offered the only means of escape without detection, the Englishman decided to risk whatever might lie beyond it, and so, boldly pushing it in, he crossed the threshold and entered a ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... that it is considered a disgrace to have it, and to little else. Such a feeling naturally chokes all but secret discussion of it. Most of us remember the day when newspaper copy containing reference to tuberculosis did not find ready publication. Syphilis is just crossing this same threshold into publicity. It is now possible to get the name of the disease into print outside of medical works and to have it referred to in other ways than as "blood poisoning" in quack advertisements. The mention of it in lectures on sex hygiene is an affair of the ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes

... the baron somewhere else some other day—elsewhere than at his own house, so that he need not fear the recognition of the servants. These thoughts flashed through his mind, and he was about to fly, when a harsh cry held him spell-bound. Baron Trigault was standing on the threshold. His emotion, as is almost always the case with corpulent people, was evinced by a frightful distortion of his features. His face was transformed, his lips had become perfectly white, and his eyes seemed to ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... the commonplaces of daily life, of petty gossip, petty intrigues, and petty jealousies, then the dying man suddenly sees the futility of the whole thing. To him, who has one foot across the final threshold, it means nothing, and he lets his friend depart without having told him anything. There is a curious recurrence of the same basic idea in "Professor Bernhardi," where the central figure acquires a similar ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler

... throne, needed the assistance of Umako in particular. In short, he was building the edifice of a great reform, and to have pitted himself, at the age of nineteen, against the mature strength of the o-omi would have been to perish on the threshold of his purpose. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... regular features. But just at the period when personal graces are most valued, when a good presence is a blank check on the Bank of Fortune, with Nature's signature at the bottom, he found himself made hideous by this fearful-looking counterfeit of a limb. It announced him at the threshold he reached with beating heart by a thump more energetic than the palpitation in his breast. It identified him as far as the eye of jealousy could see his moving figure. The "peg" became intolerable, and he unstrapped it and threw himself on the tender mercies ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... clothing, and other necessaries of life—formerly the product of home industry—are produced in great factories; and the city home, stripped of its industrial functions, restricted in scope, robbed of its adults, presents little opportunity for the education of the city child. Standing on the threshold of his meager dwelling, this child of six looks forward to a life which must be based on the instruction provided ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing

... called Matamombo, celebrated for its pools of bitter. water of the colour of ochre. Monkeys and rhinoceroses, besides kudus, steinboks, and antelopes, were numerous in the vicinity. At this camp my little dog "Omar" died of inflammation of the bowels, almost on the threshold of the country—Ugogo—where his faithful watchfulness would ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... showed his teeth with the evil leer which he reserved specially for them. It was reported in the alley that he was a woman-hater; hence the name. Certain it is that he never would let one of the detested sex cross the threshold of his attic room on any pretext. If he caught one pointing for his aerie, he would block the way and bid her sternly begone. She seldom tarried long, for Barney was not a pleasing object when he was in an ugly mood. As the years passed, and cobweb and ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... Boston in the company of a Bostonian some thirty years of age, whose office was within a few yards of this historic and very interesting building, and whose business is more intimately associated with culture than any other, but who had never before crossed the threshold. ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas

... middle-aged man who now paused, half in doubt, on the threshold of the Buildings, the sordid-looking vestibule, with its bare floor and drab-coloured walls, presented an epitome ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... at the threshold" are the individualized entities of the elements of nature. Air, fire, earth depths, and seas. These belong to the domain of nature, pure and simple, and are met and controlled by the affinities of the chemicals of the material, physical organization of the individual. The most potent of ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield

... into an easy-chair by the fire. His daughter, pale but composed, stood beside him, her hand on his shoulder. She still feared Bullard: even now she was ready for sacrifice. Mr. Harvie, lost in amazement, had not got beyond the threshold. ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell

... are presented as complete stories the boy-lives portrayed in the works of Charles Dickens. The boys are followed only to the threshold of manhood, and in all cases the original text of the story has been kept, except where of necessity a phrase or paragraph has been inserted to connect passages;—while the net-work of characters with which the boys are surrounded in the books from which they are taken, has been ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... Tom—sly as it was—did not elude the eye of Harvey Bradley. He saw that his explanation was not believed, but he did not care; there was no love between him and them, and, had it not looked as if he held them in fear, he would have turned and walked away after stepping across the threshold. As it was, he meant to withdraw as soon as he could do it without seeming to ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis

... said the young peasant, stepping over the threshold. "Come, none of thee tricks upon travellers, Master Bill; I zee thee beside the rick yon!" and quitting the door for half a minute, he again hastily entered the cot. The rich colour of robust health had fled from his cheeks—his lips quivered—and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various

... thousand bundles of dry wood, which had been cut last year. Half dressed, I rushed downstairs. I was very much bewildered, I confess, and could hardly succeed in opening the outer door: still I did open it at last. But I had barely put my foot on the threshold, when I felt in my right side, a little above the hip, a fierce pain, and heard at the same time, quite ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau

... of dismay, and the laughter died out of her face, leaving it scared and white. Her fingers tightened round Margaret's arm, and she hung back trembling as they neared the schoolroom door. Another moment and they stood within the threshold, looking round on what seemed suddenly to have taken upon itself the aspect of a court of justice. The girls were as before ranged round the walls, and at the end of the room stood a row of teachers; Fraulein and Miss Bruce flushed and excited, Mademoiselle with tears ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... But without a word she began to ascend the stairs. Gray followed, Sir Lucien standing aside to give him precedence. On the second floor was a door painted in Oriental fashion. It possessed neither bell nor knocker, but as one stepped upon the threshold this door opened noiselessly as if dumbly inviting the visitor to enter the square apartment discovered. This apartment was richly furnished in the Arab manner, and lighted by a fine brass lamp swung upon chains from the painted ceiling. The intricate ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer

... been removed, seemed almost too good to be true. Miss Todd and Miss Beverley had gone indoors to find all the available stock of bunting; Miss Chadwick was already climbing on a ladder up the porch to hang the Union Jack over the threshold. ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... got to the open door of it, with her basket in her hand, and looked in from the threshold at the hanging scroll of Scripture texts printed in large clear letters,—a sheet for each day of the month,—and made to fold over and drop behind the black-walnut rod to which they were bound. It had been given her by her teacher at the Bible Class,—Mrs. Ingleside; ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... talk of that by and by," answered Pluto. "We are just entering my dominions. Do you see that tall gateway before us? When we pass those gates, we are at home. And there lies my faithful mastiff at the threshold. Cerberus! Cerberus! Come ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various

... drunk once more from the spring that Aunt Mary so dearly loved, and which is far sweeter to me than the vaunted waters of Trevi, and entered for the last time her loved home in the woods over whose threshold her weary ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland

... appeared on the threshold of the church after the ceremony, a terrific noise caused the bride to start in terror, and the baroness to scream; it was a rifle salute given by the peasants, and the firing did not cease until they reached ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... back Arentz who rose to speak, "take that young man, my stepson, the Heer Adrian, and lead him from my house—without violence if possible. My order is that henceforth you are not to suffer him to set foot within its threshold; see that it is not disobeyed. Go, Adrian, to-morrow your possessions shall be sent to you, and with them such money as shall suffice to start you in ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... and saw her husband on the bed, sleeping, his head turned toward her; she stopped and asked herself if she should cross the threshold and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... indeed him. When he appeared on the threshold, two cries of amazement rose from the crowd:—"He's a Teur!.... He's wearing sun-glasses!".... Tartarin, it is true, had believed that as he was going to Algeria he should adopt Algerian costume. ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet

... who had been in the room with us the whole time, declared that he could hold out no longer, and that sleep he must. With difficulty he obtained an hour's truce: the moment he got out of the room he fell asleep, absolutely at the very threshold of our door. By the rules of the house he was entitled to a bonus on every transfer of property at the hazard-table; and he had made, in the course of these three days, upwards of three hundred pounds. Sleep and avarice had struggled to the utmost, but, with ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... Ponte Vecchio, and their sad youths looking on! All this is an insult—a sacrilege—to the proudest, most aristocratic spirit who ever dwelt on earth! Why did not Aubrey Beardsley stop that beautiful boy on the threshold? He who was the model of his "Ave atque vale!" might have well served for Casella, singing among the cold reeds, in ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys

... threshold, graved by skill, With characters and wondrous signs, upturned A virtuous stone, where, underneath the sill, Pots, with perpetual fire and secret, burned. The enchanter breaks them; and at once the hill To an inhospitable rock is turned. Nor wall nor tower ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... noisy pests of an Indian town, kept silence. On entering the village, a boy made his appearance, and pointed to a house of larger dimensions than the rest. They had to stoop to enter it; as soon as they had passed the threshold, the narrow passage behind them was filled up by a sudden rush of Indians, who had before kept ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving

... did not tend to revolt, as he had proved: in publishing his Discourse on Method he halted at the threshold of Christianism without laying his hand upon the sanctuary. Making a clean sweep of all he had learned, and tearing himself free, by a supreme effort, from the whole tradition of humanity, he resolved ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... regiment, but before the relief could reach Crawford his remaining horses were pretty much all gone, though the men were brought in without loss of life. Thus, the regiment being dismounted by this misfortune at the threshold of the campaign, an important factor of my cavalry was lost to me, though as foot-troops the Kansas volunteers continued to render very valuable services till mustered out ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... death as a friend, as a stepping-stone 39:12 out of mortality into immortality and bliss. The Bible calls death an enemy, and Jesus overcame death and the grave instead of yielding to them. 39:15 He was "the way." To him, therefore, death was not the threshold over which he must pass ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... friends and not the kind of people who say one thing and mean another. "They will never permit us to go to the hotel—I know them." With that she consented, and fifteen minutes later Louis and Henriette met us at their threshold and took Zulime to their hearts, as though they had ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... the people of the town congregated quietly about the open door. Friendly curiosity to see the new Padre, and sincere desire to welcome him animated their simple minds. Naked babes crawled to the threshold and peeped timidly in. Coarsely clad women and young girls, many of the latter bedizened with bits of bright ribbon or cheap trinkets, smiled their gentle greetings. Black, dignified men, bare of feet, and wearing white cotton trousers and black ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... entered. She was the nurse, who had constant charge of Ernest. She paused on the threshold, and her looks ...
— Chester Rand - or The New Path to Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr

... was puzzling. And now that I had time to think, the house was much too large for a family requiring only three sleeping-rooms even when I was at home. It was what is called a double house, with rooms on both sides of the hall; and the apartment on the threshold of which I was still lingering appeared, from the dim light of the windows, to be of very considerable size. I now recollected that the quantity of plate I had seen—a portion of which at this moment felt preternaturally heavy in my pockets—must have been three times greater ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various

... counted each day as lost On which his feet no sacred threshold crossed; And when he chanced the passing Host to meet, He knelt and prayed devoutly in the street; Oft he confessed; and with each mutinous thought, As with wild beasts at Ephesus, he fought. In deep contrition ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... woman's shoulders, trying to thrust her out of the room—a move which she resisted by a hanging-back posture that threw her weight on his arm. He put more strength now into his effort and succeeded in forcing her clear of the threshold. His eyes were blazing under the shadow of his heavy, overhanging brows; but there was about him no suggestion ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay

... Muller, flaxen-haired, plump, and blue-eyed, sat knitting, and Larry's eyes grew a trifle wistful when he glanced at her. It was a very long while since any woman had crossed his threshold, and the red-cheeked fraeulein gave the comfortless bachelor dwelling a curiously homelike appearance. Nevertheless, it was not the recollection of its usual dreariness that called up the sigh, for Larry Grant had had his dreams like other men, and Miss Muller was not the woman he ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss

... dell. "I'll find my mother now," she thought, "What fun 't will be to call 'Mamma! mamma!' while she can see No little girl at all!" She peeped in through the window, Mamma sat in a dream: About the quiet, sun-steeped house All things asleep did seem. She stept across the threshold; So lightly had she crept, The dog upon the mat lay still, And still the kitty slept. Patient beside her mother's knee To try her wondrous spell Waiting she stood, till all at once, Waking, mamma cried "Nell! Where have you been? Why ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various

... Joel, twitching away. "I said peek, Dave. Mr. Tisbett didn't say not to do that." So both boys got as far as they could on the threshold of the big sweet-smelling barn, without stepping over the sill, and craned their necks to get a sight of the ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney

... various opinions on the merits, more or less conflicting with Volumnia's. That fair young creature cannot believe there ever was any such lady and rejects the whole history on the threshold. The majority incline to the debilitated cousin's sentiment, which is in few words—"no business—Rouncewell's fernal townsman." Sir Leicester generally refers back in his mind to Wat Tyler and arranges a sequence of events on a plan ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... held a flower, Like to this as like may be, Which, beside my very threshold, She had plucked and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... uncertainty, the primary wish of the mind is to ascertain first the naked truth, reserving the expedient of flight for the moment when its dread anticipation shall be realized. I turned the door-handle, and in an instant had crossed the fatal threshold, closed the door behind me, and stood in the presence ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

... a warm pool, he returned home. Helena was in the dining-room arranging a bowl of purple pansies. She looked up at him rather heavily as he stood radiant on the threshold. He put her at her ease. It was a gay, handsome boy she had to meet, not a man, strange and insistent. She smiled on him ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence

... soul:—I know that in another And brighter land my darling walks and waits, Where we shall surely meet and clasp each other, Beyond the threshold of the shining gates. ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean

... traced the main outlines of that literature from its dim beginnings in the Dark Ages up to the threshold of the present time. Looking back over the long line of writers, the first impression that must strike us is one of extraordinary wealth. France, it is true, has given to the world no genius of the colossal stature ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey

... cabin, and said, 'Akiba, I have some food for your mouth, but your soul is hungry, and for it I cannot get food! Go into the world and nourish your soul with great wisdom which flows from the mouths of wise people. I will remain here. I will sit at the threshold of the house; I will spin wool, and take care of the herds, ad look on the road by which you will return, like the sun which returns to the sky to chase away the darkness ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko

... too, I leave no print of shoe In all these vasty rooms I rummage through, No word at threshold, and no clue Of whence I come and whither I pursue The search of treasures lost When time ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman

... ashamed, and anxious to turn the talk from the threshold of his secret chamber, he said, "Did you ever ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... draws near, when you are to leave Saxony and go to Berlin. Berlin will be entirely a new scene to you, and I look upon it, in a manner, as your first step into the great world; take care that step be not a false one, and that you do not stumble at the threshold. You will there be in more company than you have yet been; manners and attentions will, therefore, be ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... Casual references indicate that some of the tribes lived in mutual tolerance with several birds(30) and mammals not yet domesticated (indeed the buffalo may be said to have been in this condition), so that the people were at the threshold of zooculture. ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee

... deputed by my mother to go and converse with her, on some question of her coming to us, at the establishment of Madame Reichhardt (pronounced, a la francaise, Rechard,) where I felt that I had crossed, for the hour, the very threshold of "Europe"; it being impressed on me by my cousin, who was tall and handsome and happy, with a laugh of more beautiful sound than any laugh we were to know again, that French only was speakable on the premises. I sniffed it up aromatically, the superior language, ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... see that it would," agreed Mrs. Hignett. "One's first step across the threshold of a new mind, ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse

... remembered that echoes of a far-off tumult had reached her as she sat. But her ears held only the memory of a man's footsteps—the eager tread that had never lingered so much as a second's space on its way to her; that had often stumbled slightly on the threshold of her presence; that she had heard and welcomed in her dreams; ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various

... days that followed, neither burly flesh-and-blood Doctor nor slim paper sweetheart tramped noisily over the threshold or slid thuddingly through ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... in it; only in one window a light was visible. With a sinking heart he opened the outer door (there was still the print of blood-stained fingers on it, and there were black drops of gore on the sand of the path), passed through the first dark room ... and stood still on the threshold, overwhelmed ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... little space the Count stood pausing on my threshold, whilst we craned our necks to contemplate him as though he had been an object for inquisitive inspection. Then a smothered laugh from the brainless La Fosse seemed to break the spell. I frowned. It was a climax of discourtesy whose impression I ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini

... and abstinence (so difficult for him to observe) until at length he was worthy to be initiated into the mysteries of the goddess, and, in his own words, "drew nigh to the confines of death, trod the threshold of Proserpine, was borne through all the elements, and returned to earth again, saw the sun gleaming with bright splendour at dead of night, approached the gods above and the gods below, and worshipped them face ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson

... yawning given Sign of convulsion; and tho' horrid rifts Sent up the moaning of unhappy spirits Imprison'd in her centre, with the heat Of their infolding element; had the angels, The watchers at heaven's gate, push'd them apart, And from the golden threshold had down-roll'd Their heaviest thunder, I had lain as still, And blind and motionless as then I lay! White as quench'd ashes, cold as were the hopes Of my lorn love! What happy air shall woo The wither'd leaf fall'n in the woods, or blasted ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... pair, but turned on the threshold to make his obeisance to the ranch mistress, and to say, "At your service, good lady. My pick and my head." Then, bowing again toward all the company, ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond

... from the direction the boys expected. It was more like a whine than a groan this time, and it came from the far side of the room. For the first time the boys noticed that there was a door there, partly open. They made a rush for it, Jerry in the lead. But he got no farther than the threshold. As he reached it, the door was flung open ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart

... world, I have learned to love still more the innocent ignorance of my past existence. Wiser than myself, you have remained in the service of the Lord; you have understood the divine mission which had been reserved for you; you have been unwilling to step over the profane threshold and to enter the world, that cavern, I ought to say, in which I am now assailed, tossed about like a frail bark during a tempest. Nay, the anger of the waves of the sea compared to that of the passions is mere child's play. Happy friend, who art ignorant of what I have learned. ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz

... offer only coercive influence. Without going diffusively into such a point, two vast advantages to the civil administration, from the predominance of a Protestant church in Ireland, meet us at the threshold: 1st, that it moulds by the gentlest of all possible agencies the recusant part of this Irish nation into a growing conformity with the two other limbs of the empire. The Irish population is usually assumed at about one fourth part of the total imperial population. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... unto this house!" observed the curate as he crossed the threshold, for Mrs Forster's character was notorious; then laughing at his own wit with ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... gone to bed; and, as Harry opened the door, the hall gaped black like the mouth of night. For a second or two the boy hesitated upon the threshold, and seemed almost to shrink back into the lighted room as though in that dark void peril awaited him. And peril ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason

... on the mild sunlight of the court, and hall and court were empty. The library door was open, too, and after listening in vain for any sound of voices within, she quickly crossed the threshold, and found her husband alone, vaguely fingering the papers ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton

... her?' My agitation startled him. He replied, that if this was the reception he was to meet, when he came to offer me the most essential service it was in his power to render me, he should take his leave, and never again cross my threshold. I ran to the door of the apartment, which I shut. 'Do not imagine,' I said, turning towards him, 'that you can once more make a dupe of me with your lies and inventions. Either defend your life, ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost

... the grandchildren of Soames, as much as of your mother, of a man who once owned your mother as a man might own a slave. Think what that would mean. By such a marriage you enter the camp which held your mother prisoner and wherein she ate her heart out. You are just on the threshold of life, you have only known this girl two months, and however deeply you think you love her, I appeal to you to break it off at once. Don't give your mother this rankling pain and humiliation during the rest of her life. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... said at last, "when one like me stands on the threshold midway between savagery and civilization and compares the crudities and at times barbarities of the one with the luxuries and vices of the other, he often asks himself which is preferable, civilization and its few virtues, or the simple life of the savage. Which, ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... understand. You will come to me always. But that woman never shall cross my threshold." "Mother! Do you ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis

... it seemed as if the night were their only guest, and had been waiting on the threshold to now enter bodily and pervade all things with its presence. With that cool, fragrant inflow of air they breathed freely. The red edge had gone from Black Spur, but it was even more clearly defined against the sky in its towering blackness. The ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte

... should work nor scheme for the position that such a change might bring me. Nevertheless, believing, as I do, that we are on the threshold of a new and entirely different era in this country, if the time should come when I felt that I, as its most highly trained servant, could best serve the United States by taking her destinies entirely into my own hands, I should do so ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton



Words linked to "Threshold" :   sensation, entree, outset, showtime, kickoff, start, threshold element, entranceway, doorsill, beginning, door, doorcase, threshold operation, get-go, doorway, case, sense experience, differential threshold, outside door, boundary, threshold function, pain threshold, commencement, wall, absolute threshold, sense datum



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