"Christmas" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little that I shall in a few days see you again, and I will give you an account of my journey. I have heard almost nothing of your late weeks,—but that is my fault,—only I heard with sorrow that your wife had been ill, and could not go with you on your Christmas holidays. Now may her good days have come again! I say I have heard nothing of your late days; of your early days, of your genius, of your influence, I cease not to hear and to see continually, yea, often am called ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Thanksgiving season, with strong, black ice on the mill pond, where the four skated hand in hand. Then the piling snows stopped the skating with a white Christmas, the old year sank to rest, the new rose up, and Bylow Hill, under its bare elms and with the pine-crested ridge at its back, sat in the cold sunshine like a white sea bird with its head in its down. And when the nights were frigid and clear ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... The Christmas of 1876 was not a particularly merry one for Charles Frohman. The ardent boy, whose brief experience in Hooley's box-office had fastened the germ of the theater in his system, chafed at the restraint that kept him at a routine task. But ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... produced this wide tract of broken and tumbled ground, only to be equalled in its picturesque confusion by the better known Undercliff in the Isle of Wight. The greatest "slip" took place in 1839 on Christmas Day and the country people were awakened during the night by loud and continuous noises like the rumble of distant artillery. It was found the next morning that a chasm nearly a mile long and about 400 feet ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... into a New York slip the day before Christmas. Bedient was aboard. There was to be a little party for him, given by Cairns and Vina at the Smilax Club that night. The Cairns' had come over from Nantucket for the winter, and were living at ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... this absence of Forrest and Morgan with the best of the cavalry that put it into the mind of Rosecrans to attack at once. The thousands of lads in the army who were celebrating Christmas received that night the news that they were to march in ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... probably rather a gay and pleasure-loving youth about this time. A suspicion of this seems justified by the fact that he 'was elected one of the Comptrolers of the Middle Temple-revellers, as the fashion of ye young Students and Gentlemen was, the Christmas being kept this year (1641) with great solemnity; but being desirous to passe it in the Country, I got leave to resign my staffe of office, and went with my brother Richard to Wotton.' From January till March he was ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... mentioned having met Clovelly several times of late, and, with Hungerford's words hot in my mind, I determined, though I had perfect confidence in her, as in myself, to be married at Christmas-time. Her account of the courtship of Blackburn and Mrs. Callendar was as amusing as her description of an evening which the bookmaker had spent with her father, when he said he was going to marry an actress whom he had seen at Drury Lane ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... all familiar with the oft repeated anecdote of Paganini's playing with a light reed-stem, and I remember having seen at Christmas festivities in country homesteads, the village fiddler playing a brisk old-time tune with the long stem of his clay pipe; also, quite recently, I read an account of an "artiste" in the States who charmed his enlightened ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... Royalist. In his character the noblest qualities of every party were combined in harmonious union. From the Parliament and from the Court, from the conventicle and from the Gothic cloister, from the gloomy and sepulchral circles of the Roundheads, and from the Christmas revel of the hospitable Cavalier, his nature selected and drew to itself whatever was great and good, while it rejected all the base and pernicious ingredients by which those finer elements were defiled. Like the Puritans, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and provide new quarters every evening for his beloved white horse, which, by the way, was a charming animal. I say "his white horse," for he was more concerned about good quarters for the horse than for himself. And so, for three-fourths of a year, till Christmas, 1826, he was on the road a great deal, not to say most, of the time, covering, to be sure, quite an extensive territory, which, beside the Province of Brandenburg, included Saxony, Thuringia, ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... could not divulge, perhaps, because she knew how the widow would have rejoiced to know it. This regarded an event which had occurred during that visit to Lady Rockminster, which Laura had paid in the last Christmas holidays: when Pen was at home with his mother, and when Mr. Pynsent, supposed to be so cold and so ambitious, had formally offered his hand to Miss Bell. No one except herself and her admirer knew of this proposal: or that Pynsent had been rejected by her, and probably ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... During the Christmas holidays of 1901 a very well known Syrian, a man of high standing and character, came into my son's office and ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... day on which the Lords passed the Bill of Attainder, they adjourned over the Christmas holidays. The fate of Fenwick consequently remained during more than a fortnight in suspense. In the interval plans of escape were formed; and it was thought necessary to place a strong military guard round Newgate. [777] Some Jacobites knew William so little as to send him anonymous ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... onward, and all persons closed their doors, and said that Christmas would be cold. In a quarter of an hour they saw their chronology late by a day. In half an hour they noted a gray mist drive across the sky. There was a faint wavering and spreading and deflection at the top of the tallest spire of smoke. Somewhere, high above, there passed a swarm of vast ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... manhood, they fell in love with the same round-cheeked school-teacher. Jonathan married her, after what wrench of feeling I know not; and the other fled to the town, whence he never returned save for the briefest visit at Thanksgiving or Christmas time. The stay-at-home lad is a warm farmer, and the little school-teacher a mother whose unlined face shows the record of a placid life; but David cannot know even this, save by hearsay, for he never sees ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... in that of Elizabeth, the mimic reproduction of the great drama with which it is associated. It is even said that Shakespeare took part here in his own play, King Henry VIII., or the Fall of Wolsey. In 1558 the hall was resplendent with one thousand lamps, Philip and Mary holding their Christmas feast. The princess Elizabeth was a guest. The next morning she was compliant or politic enough to hear matins ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... get the flesh and bones off us at their own price. Look you at this here down.—If I had an acre on it, to make a garden on, I'd live well with my wages, off and on. Why, if this here was in garden, it 'ud be worth twenty, forty times o' that it be now. And last spring I lays out o' work from Christmas till barley-sowing, and I goes to the farmer and axes for a bit o' land to dig and plant a few potatoes—and he says, 'You be d—d! If you're minding your garden after hours, you'll not be fit to do a proper day's work for me ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... say, wise reader, it takes to make an American? By the middle of my second year in school I had reached the sixth grade. When, after the Christmas holidays, we began to study the life of Washington, running through a summary of the Revolution, and the early days of the Republic, it seemed to me that all my reading and study had been idle until then. The reader, the arithmetic, the song book, ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... years ago on Christmas Eve that Billy Warlock bought the smithy in the cellar of that little old house. Billy had been working for the man who owned it, and the man who owned it, being a little short of wind and a trifle weak in his legs, had decided to sell and retire. Billy had become the purchaser, and not ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... to be distinctly understood (said Reginald) that I don't want a "George, Prince of Wales" Prayer-book as a Christmas present. The fact ...
— Reginald • Saki
... later, she knew. But though she scorned the servile and downtrodden Crosby, Sissy, no more than he, dared disobey that grenadier, his mother. She took her seat at the piano, opened a Beethoven that Mrs. Pemberton had given her the last Christmas, under the impression that she was fostering a taste for the classical, and, with a revengeful little hand that couldn't reach the octaves, she began to ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... unfavourable circumstances in which they stood. Hoping everything, therefore, from a change, they greeted their new leader with a hearty cheer; whilst the confidence which past events had tended in some degree to dispel, returned once more to the bosoms of all. It was Christmas-day, and a number of officers, clubbing their little stock of provisions, resolved to dine together in memory of former times. But at so melancholy a Christmas dinner I do not recollect at any time to have been present. We dined in ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... which he calls King Harry's chaire, where he that sits down is catched with two irons, that come round about him, which makes good sport. Here dined with us two or three more country gentlemen; among the rest Mr. Christmas, my old school-fellow, with whom I had much talk. He did remember that I was a great Roundhead when I was a boy, and I was much afraid that he would have remembered the words that I said the day the King was beheaded (that, were I to preach upon him, my text should be—"The ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... suddenly that they wondered where the month had gone. Christmas Eve the Happy Family spent in arranging a round-up camp out behind the house where the hill rose picturesquely, and in singeing themselves heroically in the heat of radium flares, while Luck took his camp-fire ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... toward the Christmas-tree (45). Thirty-ninth day, toward tassels swinging (46). Seventh week, moving lamp or bright ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... children lying in bed to keep warm. Yet roses, geraniums, and callas bloomed out of doors all the time, and great trees of red camellia, which they cut as we cut roses. Superb scarlet banana-flowers decked our Christmas-Tree. Deciduous trees lose their leaves in winter there, however, and exotic plants retain the habits they brought with them, with one singular exception. The Morus multicaulis was imported, and the silk-manufacture ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... from Christmas. Phil and Sol Hanson had been striving hard to cope with an accumulation of work so that they might be clear of it during the holiday season. Sol, in fact, had been slaving at nights as well as during the day, until even he was bordering on a ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... into a premature season of fog and slush, while a violent gale had stripped off the leaves long before their time. Winter was at hand, and already one or two of the hardier Christmas annuals, fresh from editorial forcing-houses, had blossomed on the bookstalls, and a few masks and Roman candles, misled by appearances, had stolen into humble shop-fronts long before November had begun. All the ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... greater than Mirabeau, Hoche, or Danton was here. If the December sun of Hohenlinden diverted men's minds to Moreau, the victor, it was but for a moment. In the universal horror and joy with which on Christmas Day, 1800, the rumour of the explosion and failure of the infernal machine in the Rue St. Nicaise spread over Europe, men felt more intimately, more consciously, the hopes, the fears, bound up inextricably with the name, the actions, and the life of ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... go nippin' round, thinkin' he's chased by 'em like he did las' Christmas holidays,' ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... remote region in the northern part of England, the people still cherish an attachment to old usages and sports, and hold the observance of Christmas, May-day, and other time-honored festivals, a sacred obligation. One village, in particular, is famous for its May-day sports, which, as the curate is a little withered antiquary, are conducted with great ceremony and fidelity ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... 25th Christmas 1805 Wednesday Some rain at different times last night and Showers of hail with intervales of fair Starr light, This morning at day we were Saluted by all our party under our winders, a Shout and a Song- after brackfast we divided our tobacco which amounted ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... the bed of a mountain stream; and your income will reach the princely sum of sixty pounds per annum. But," I added hastily, "you'll have plenty of turf, and oats and hay for your horse, an occasional pound of butter, and you'll have to export all the turkeys you'll get at Christmas." ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... stamina, and the grand voice of Captain Abrane, and the Father Christmas, roast-beef-of-Old England face of the umpire declared to be on the side of Lord Brailstone's colour blue, darkened the star of Kit Ines till a characteristic piece of behaviour was espied. He dashed his cap into the ring and followed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... storm was followed by ideal winter weather until Christmas day. The brothers had planned an extra supper on that occasion, expecting to excuse Dell during the early afternoon for the culinary task, and only requiring his services on corraling the herd at evening. ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... for the family," Scotty said slowly. "I do, on birthdays and Christmas. But I've always wanted to give Dad something really special, something to tell him how I feel about being taken ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... go along? Why, Richard, I'm just dying for a trip to New York. I haven't been there since before Christmas, as you know, and I've got to get a spring outfit. Of course I'm going." She went ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... splash away along the straggling village, Out to the flat rich country green with June.... And sunset flares across wet crops and tillage, Blazing with splendour-patches. Harvest soon Up in the Line. "Perhaps the War'll be done By Christmas-time. Keep smiling then, ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... of the house, noticed that Miss Sophie's bundle was larger than usual that afternoon. "Ah, poor woman!" sighed Titiche's mother, "she would be rich for Christmas." ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... to come in!" she said, smiling through her pallor, which was beginning to pass away, and putting out her hand to him—the young Eton and Oxford athlete, just home for his Christmas vacation, was a great favourite with her—"You must come and have tea and cheer me up by telling me all the things you have killed this week. Is there anything left alive? You had come down to the fieldfares, ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... no, that's impossible; for I am worse than a bankrupt. I have at the present six shillings and a penny; I have a sounding lot of bills for Christmas; new dress suit, for instance, the old one having gone for Parliament House; and new white shirts to live up to my new profession; I'm as gay and swell and gummy as can be; only all my boots leak; one pair ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... without you like, but they didn't feed you up aboard ship like you're getting it now, I know; salt beef, then salt pork, and hard biscuits. Why, it's like fattening up one of our pigs for Christmas. I say, you are quiet. Haven't been at one of them little kegs, have you? Oh, very well; if you don't like to talk, ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... been made to start a garden, both for vegetables and flowers, but the hot winds burnt up everything. Only four cabbages out of hundreds that were planted had survived, and these were carefully nursed by Mrs. Benn for our Christmas dinner. Unluckily, on Christmas Eve a cow entered the enclosure and made ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... and real, and further, are a struggle against continual difficulties, and further still, because anything in the form of accidental injury, or any kind of illness or disability is so very serious in their own sphere. I will explain this seeming paradox of mine. Take the case of a Christmas Pantomime. Surely nobody supposes that the young mother in the pit who falls into fits of laughter when the baby is boiled or sat upon, would be at all diverted by such an occurrence off the stage. Nor is the decent workman in the gallery, who is transported beyond the ignorant present ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... monks drawn from Jarrow and Monkwearmouth. The foundations of the new church were laid on 29th July 1093, the Bishop and Prior Turgot being present. He did not live to see it very far advanced, being taken ill at Windsor. He died about Christmas 1096. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate
... food. They may not themselves know it, but this is true of the peasants who are best to do in the world. Of the peasantry of Upper Bavaria, some have meat five times in the year, on their chief holidays,—namely, Shrove Tuesday, Easter, Whitsuntide, Church-Consecration, and Christmas; some have it on but two of these days, and some only at Christmas. The exceptions may be many, and the large cities are quite exceptional, but the change is of late introduction. When people must labor upon such a diet, they feel the lack of something; but the Bavarians have been ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... he won a Boulter scholarship, and at the end of the following year obtained First Class Honours in Mathematics and a Second in Classical Moderations. On Christmas Eve he was made a Student on Dr. Pusey's nomination, for at that time the Dean and Canons nominated to Studentships by turn. The only conditions on which these old Studentships were held were that the Student should remain unmarried, and ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... Christmas Island chief of state: Queen ELIZABETH II (since 6 February 1952), represented by the Australian governor general head of government: Administrator William Leonard TAYLOR (since 4 February 1999) elections: none; ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... five are on a lay. I've guaranteed you to be square, and you're to come in on the profits equal with the boys, and you've got to help. Two hundred hands on this plantation are expecting to be paid a week's wages to-morrow morning. To-morrow's Christmas, and they want to lay off. Says the boss: 'Work from five to nine in the morning to get a train load of sugar off, and I'll pay every man cash down for the week and a day extra.' They say: 'Hooray for the boss! It goes.' He drives to Noo Orleans to-day, ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... was aware of the potentiality in herself of all virgin privileges and powers, and assumed thereupon her own little dignity. Never but once did I see a masculine arm round Miss Maria's trig, stiff little waist, and that was at Christmas-time, when there were sprigs of mistletoe over every doorway; but, mistletoe or not, the owner of that arm, if he did succeed in ravishing a kiss, got his ears smartly boxed the next moment. I don't know precisely what was Miss Maria's function in the economy of the household; I can ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... last trip, had brought extra supplies from Portland Point, so there was sufficient food for all. The various houses were decorated with fragrant evergreens, and before blazing fires during the long evenings parents told their children of the happy Christmas ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... called Bjarne, the son of Herjulf, a few years after the Greenland colony was founded. In 986 he put out from Iceland to join his father, who was in Greenland, the purpose being that, after the good old Norse custom, they might drink their Christmas ale together. Neither Bjarne nor his men had ever sailed the Greenland sea before, but, like bold mariners, they relied upon their seafaring instinct to guide them to its coast. As Bjarne's ship was driven westward, great mists fell upon the face of the waters. There was ...
— The Dawn of Canadian History: A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada • Stephen Leacock
... did not even own a horse. When Logan rode to Edinburgh, Sprot walked thither to join him. Yet the two were boon companions; Sprot was always loitering and watching at Gunnisgreen, always a guest at the great Christmas festivals, given by the Laird to his rough neighbours. The death of Logan was a disaster to Sprot, and to all the parasites of ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... much surprised, and as for Taro and Take, they felt just exactly the way you feel when you look at your stocking on Christmas morning. ...
— THE JAPANESE TWINS • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... Eve in Paris. A large Christmas tree, grown in the wood of St. Germain, stood in their little chalet on the Cours de la Reine. They were going out after breakfast to buy Christmas presents for the children. The Baron was pre-occupied, for he had just published a little pamphlet, entitled: "Do the Upper ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... Mr Gordon Craig is aiming at and what relation his scene-pictures bear to the current cant of the art critic. It is deplorable when one finds serious critics gushing about the beauty of costly stage effects belonging to the standard of taste exhibited by wedding-cakes, Christmas crackers, old-fashioned valentines and Royal Academicians. Dancing must mean something more to him than a whirling and twirling of human beings—he should at the least know the distinctive styles and ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... in fussily.] It's a regular mess. I don't like the position we're in; I don't like it; I've said so for a long time. [Looking at WANKLIN.] When Wanklin and I came down here before Christmas it looked as if the men must collapse. You ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Eyebright, alone in the kitchen, was hanging up the stockings before going to bed. Papa, who had a headache, had retired early, so there was no one to interrupt her. She only wished there had been. Half the fun of Christmas seems missing when there is nobody from whom to keep a secret, no mystery, no hiding of things in corners and bringing them out at just the right moment. Very carefully she tied papa's stocking to the corner of the chimney and proceeded ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... received permission to go home and see her friends in the country, on that very day; having been previously informed, when she entered Mrs. Dethridge's service, that she was not to expect to have a holiday granted to her until after Christmas. Such were the strange things which had happened in the house since the previous night. What was the interpretation to be placed ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... that he'll be able to get down to us for Christmas, although he's been asked to go on this reading party. Of course, it's simply a question as to whether he works better at home or with his friends. If he were a weak character, I think Mr. Alweed would insist in his coming home, but Hector really cares for his work more than anything. ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... and what about your clothes and my clothes, and the rates and taxes, and bus-fares, and holidays, and your cigarettes, and doctor, and errand boys' Christmas-boxes, and gas, and coal, and repairs? Repairs! A hundred and eighty is more like ...
— The Great Adventure • Arnold Bennett
... It was Christmas Eve, and a large gathering there was at Rosewarne. In the hall the ladies and gentlemen were in the full enjoyment of the dance, and in the kitchen all the tenantry and the servants were emulating their superiors. Everything went joyously; but when the mirth was in full ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... thank you, captain," replied Stanley; "and don't forget us out here, in this lonely place, when you drink the health of absent friends at Christmas time." ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... At Christmas I obtained a furlough to visit my people at Penryn. The next day after arrival, in my sergeant's uniform with silk sash and gold stripes, I visited my friends and my former companions. I was the only soldier in ...
— A Soldier's Life - Being the Personal Reminiscences of Edwin G. Rundle • Edwin G. Rundle
... but the armour was finished and Christmas passed by before anything was seen of the Captain. At last, however, he did descend on the Dragon court, looking so dilapidated that Mr Headley rejoiced in the having received payment beforehand. He was louder voiced ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... say hot, and wet where they say dry, and always put the contrary to what they foretell; if he were to lay a wager, he would not care which side he took, excepting where no uncertainty could fall out, as to promise excessive heats at Christmas, or extremity of cold at Midsummer. I have the same opinion of these political controversies; be on which side you will, you have as fair a game to play as your adversary, provided you do not proceed so far as to ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... born king of the Jews, for we have seen his star in the east and have come to worship him?" The modern world in its gentler moments seems to take a peculiar thrill of delight from these travellers, perhaps realizing what has been lost from parting with such gentle seers and secular diviners. Every Christmas half the magazines set them forth in richest colors, riding across the desert, following the star to the same manger where the ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... she said, in a conciliatory tone: "I shall arrange for you to have some unusual treat from your reward, some concerts and lantern lectures suited to your years, and maybe, as the Christmas Season approaches, even a pantomime. What do ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... And now it was Christmas eve. This was a grand festal day even for all the officers of the citadel. With the exception of the night- watch, they were all invited to dine with the commandant. A day of joy and rejoicing to all but the poor prisoner, who sat solitary in his cell, ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... Her fancies were but fancies, she told herself; and they had ceased to trouble her. The boy's letters to his mother were ordinary and natural: he was reading fairly hard; his coach was as pleasant a person as he had seemed; he hoped to run down to Stantons for a few days at Christmas. There was nothing whatever to alarm anyone; plainly his ridiculous attitude about Spiritualism had been laid by; and, better still, he was beginning to recover himself after his sorrow ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... "December 25.—Christmas Day. Thermometer, 6 A.M., 65 degrees. We began work at the sunken vessel. By filling the barges with water and sinking them within a foot of the surface, and then securing them by chains to the wreck, we obtained ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... now suppose that a quantity of additional pressing took place—that the nephews offered to go along as Christmas was coming—that Harry sent home another note to say 'he thought he might go'—and that long before it reached the cottage, he was installed at the house of Mr Grindley in London, who, as his nephew promised, divided a capital legal business with ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... (if young especially), and cannot abstain though it be when they go to, or should be at church. We have a pretty story to this purpose in [5531]Westmonasteriensis, an old writer of ours (if you will believe it) An. Dom. 1012. at Colewiz in Saxony, on Christmas eve a company of young men and maids, whilst the priest was at mass in the church, were singing catches and love songs in the churchyard, he sent to them to make less noise, but they sung on still: and if you will, you shall have the ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Christmas was a time which I knew not how to fill up. I wanted to be jolly and to make some festive difference in the usual routine of my daily life and fare, but with no companion I found it a very difficult task, even to make myself believe ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... "This is no Christmas turkey shooting, young feller, so look sharp," and with a noiseless tread Pete vanished in the wood, while I with beating heart and bulging eyes watched the thicket at the end of the ledge. I had not long to wait before I heard a blood-curdling yell and ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... known what a triumph she held in abeyance. For Mr. Burrell was the patron of St. Penfer's church; he had given its fine chime of bells and renovated its ancient pews of black oak. The new organ had been his last Christmas gift to the parish, and out of his purse mainly had come the new school buildings. The rector might ignore Miss Tresham, but she smiled to herself when she reflected on the salaams he would yet ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... children of all countries will be the better for reading it.... In the end a double joy is waiting for the reader, for Dot finds again her home and her loving mother, and the faithful kangaroo finds its lost baby. Quite the right ending for Christmas-tide." ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... Danes.] Andrewes tide they turned towards Northampton, & comming thither set fire on that towne. Then turning through the west countrie, with fire & sword they wasted and destroied a great part thereof, & namelie Wiltshire, with other parties. And finallie about the feast of Christmas they came againe to their ships. Thus had the Danes [Sidenote: How manie shires the Danes wasted.] wasted the most part of 16 or 17 shires within this realme, as Northfolke, Suffolke, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Middlesex, ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (7 of 8) - The Seventh Boke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... packet,' said he, 'will be the last of your prosperity; but if you desire to carry your good fortune to the highest pitch, be careful upon every great festival, that is to say, Easter, Whit-Sunday, the Assumption, and Christmas, to plunge a pin in this talisman, so that the point shall pass directly thro' it; observe to do this, and you will live perfectly happy.' "The king accepted this fatal present, and swore upon the Gospel never to open the packet; he richly rewarded the priest, who from that period lived in ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... Through the windows of many of the houses rosy lights were flickering; and silver tinsel and evergreen wreaths and brilliant little glass globes of silver and wine colour could be seen, and glimpses were caught of Christmas trees, with people decking them by firelight—reminders that this was Christmas Eve. The ride-stealers had disappeared from the highway, though now and then, over the gasping and howling of the horseless carriage, there came a shrill ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... houses of men. I thought of little chimney-sweeps, and 'The Water Babies;' but I decided that it was not that. Then I remembered what it was that made me connect such topsy-turvy trespass with ideas quite opposite to the idea of crime. Christmas Eve, of course, and Santa Claus ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... was a friend of my mother's, and was often at our house. A young lady, to whom he was much devoted, had a fancy for cats. He resolved, at the Christmas season, to gratify this taste of hers, as well as his own love of ...
— Who Spoke Next • Eliza Lee Follen
... at Christmas you might have said so,' replied James; 'but now I see naught amiss; I had been thinking I had never seen him ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as a concrete example the question of Santa Claus. This joy has almost disappeared, for we have torn away the last shred of mystery about the personage by allowing him to be materialized in the Christmas shops and bazaars. ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... allowing for all mishaps, will produce two hundred and fifty chickens. The chickens will become ready for market when poultry will fetch the highest price; so that by the end of the year I shall have money enough to buy a new gown. In this dress I will go to the Christmas junketings, when all the young fellows will propose to me, but I will toss my head, and refuse them every one." At this moment she tossed her head in unison with her thoughts, when down fell the Milk-pot to the ground, and broke into a ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... honest story—of how Christmas came to a poor cold home, and made it bright, and warm, and glad. A very poor home it was, up three flights of worm-eaten, dirt-stained stairs, in the old gray house that stood far up a narrow, crooked alley, where the sun never shone except just a while ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... Christmas and New Year's day, long since past, had been celebrated in a mild, half-hearted way on board the Doraine. Easter was drawing near, and Ruth Clinton took upon herself the task of arranging special services ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... construction of the Beira railway from Chimoyo to Fort Salisbury began to be energetically prosecuted, it was found that to take the line past Mtali would involve a detour of some miles and a heavy gradient in crossing a ridge at the Christmas Pass. Mr. Rhodes promptly determined, instead of bringing the railway to the town, to bring the town to the railway. Liberal compensation was accordingly paid to all those who had built houses at old Mtali, and new ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... is the first of several which I shall send to Congress during the interval between the opening of its regular session and its adjournment for the Christmas holidays. The amount of information to be communicated as to the operations of the Government, the number of important subjects calling for comment by the Executive, and the transmission to Congress of exhaustive reports of special commissions, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... wouldn't it, and we being all the brothers and sisters ever he had, since Jane Niland, God rest her soul, went out last Little Christmas from the troubles ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... I spent Christmas among them, and as one of them had succeeded in getting some minks in his traps, and for the skins had obtained from some passing "free-traders" some flour and plums, they got up, in honour of my visit, ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... the outbreak of gossip it would have been unsuitable to follow her for the moment, because it might have given colour to the talk about them which was half-believed and already partly forgotten. Tatiana Markovna, however, said he might come at Christmas, and by that time perhaps circumstances would permit him to stay. In the meantime, he accepted Tushin's invitation to ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... At Christmas-time they took a fortnight's holiday and Clemens went home to Hartford. A surprise was awaiting him there. Mrs. Clemens had made an adaptation of 'The Prince and the Pauper' play, and the children of the neighborhood had prepared a presentation of it for ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Just a fortnight before Christmas, 1871, a young man, twenty-four years of age, returned home to his dinner about eight o'clock in the evening. He was married, and with him and his wife lived his wife's sister. At that somewhat late hour he walked in among the two young women, and another much older woman who was preparing ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... attention paid him in a certain very goodish house, by people whom she heard talking in unintelligible but unmistakable praise, when she said, casually, with a liquid glitter of her sweet, small eyes, "I wish you would come down to my place, Mr. Verrian. I'm asking a few young people for Christmas week. Will you?" ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... my apartments in the Albany,—No. 3 A. I have had them ten years, and it was only last Christmas that I ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... said laughing, and remembering she had Trevalyon for to-day continued hastily, "we open the Hall for no end of revels at Christmas, ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... ride Nell to town one Christmas to see the sports. He had n't seen any sports before, and went to bed excited and rose in the middle of the night to start. He dressed in the dark, and we heard him going out, because he fell over ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... the queen, though he did not expect more issue from her: and little as Buck's authority is regarded, a contemporary writer confirms the probability of this story. The Chronicle of Croyland says, that at the Christmas festival,(34) men were scandalized at seeing the queen and the lady Elizabeth dressed in robes similar and equally royal. I should suppose that Richard learning the projected marriage of Elizabeth and the earl ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... especially hard to bear all their troubles in the gracious Christmas season; for it was now past the middle of December. Always before they had had enough for their happy little Christmas feast, and some to spare. They had always had their sheaf of wheat put by for the birds; and for two seasons past Gabriel's father had let him climb up the tall ladder and ...
— Gabriel and the Hour Book • Evaleen Stein
... a madman rushed out of a forest and called out, "King, you are betrayed!" Charles was much frightened, and further seems to have had a sunstroke, for he at once became insane. He recovered for a time; but at Christmas, while he and five others were dancing, disguised as wild men, their garments of pitched flax caught fire. Four were burnt, and the shock brought back the king's madness. He became subject to fits ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the chief cities of Titelmann's district, and almost before his eyes, one Bertrand le Blas, a velvet manufacturer, committed what was held an almost incredible crime. Having begged his wife and children to pray for a blessing upon what he was about to undertake, he went on Christmas-day to the Cathedral of Tournay and stationed himself near the altar. Having awaited the moment in which the priest held on high the consecrated host, Le Blas then forced his way through the crowd, snatched the wafer from the hands of the astonished ecclesiastic, and broke it ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Christmas morning, nearly four years after the departure of Rule Rothsay. It was a fine clear, cold day. Bright with color was the village of North End, where all the houses were decorated with holly, and the people, in their Sunday ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... He whose thin sire dwelt in a smokye roofe, Must make tobacco, and must wear a locke. His thirsty dad drinkes in a wooden bowle, But his sweet self is served in si'ver plate. His hungry sire will scrape you twenty legges For one good Christmas meal on new year's day, But his mawe must be ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Hammond, National Chairman of the War Children's Christmas Fund, has received letters from Princess Mary of England, and the Russian Ambassador to the United States, writing in behalf of the Empress of Russia, expressing thanks for the Christmas supplies sent ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... to start afresh. And then he glares at his father. It's all very unpleasant. Still, he's a good boy really. They're both good boys. I've a lot to be thankful for; and, my dear,'—her voice sank, and she laid a plump hand on Henrietta's—'Mr. Batty says we may give a ball after Christmas. Everybody in Radstowe. We shall take the Assembly Rooms. The date isn't fixed, and now and then, if he isn't feeling well, Mr. Batty says he can't afford it. But that's nonsense, we shall have it; but don't say a word. I've told nobody else, but somehow, Henrietta, I always ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... resist blight fairly well. Among my chinkapins, I have the common pumila and the Missouri variety of pumila, which grows in tree form forty or fifty feet high. I have the alder-leaf chestnut, which keeps green leaves till Christmas, sometimes till March when the snow buries them, and those comparatively young trees have shown no blight; but one hybrid, between the chinkapin and the American chestnut, about twelve years of age, has blighted several times. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... this old world a long time, but just can recollect bein' a slave. Since Christmas ain't long past it sets me to thinkin' bout the last time old Sandy Claus come to see us. He brought us each one a stick of candy, a apple and a orange, and he never did come to see us no more after that time cause we peeped. That was the last time he ever filt our stockin'. But you knows ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... last of the six Christmas days I have during my life passed in the field by visiting Foch. I told him of my mission to Joffre, and discussed with him the situation in the East. He said he felt sure that the Russians were exaggerating their deficiencies in ammunition, rifles, etc., ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... granted all manner of things "that came into his hands," to all manner of men, we pause and doubt whether such a virtue in such excess may not lean towards vice. But when we hear of a powerful lord, like William O'Kelly of Galway, entertaining throughout the Christmas holydays all the poets, musicians, and poor persons who choose to flock to him, or of the pious and splendid Margaret O'Carroll, receiving twice a year in Offally all the Bards of Albyn and Erin, we cannot but envy the professors of the gentle art their good fortune in having lived in such times, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... Grammar has been used in the school, but Greek has been taught through Robson's Constructive Greek Exercises, which, I presume, Harry ought at once to work at.... A Greek Grammar by Mr. Greenwood is expected to be ready by Christmas, and is to be brought into the school. It will be new to all; and Harry will be on a par with the ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... my poor friend in the December of 1865. I was on way home to pass a cheery Christmas with my own people—a luxury which was not often reserved for me—and he had persuaded me to give him a couple of days. It would have been hard to refuse Hanger, who had been gazing across Channel so ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... he did all his life. He married young,—Anne Chaloner; she and I were girls together; married the same year. They settled at Kirby Hall—nice place, but dull. Poyntz and I spent a Christmas there. Ashleigh when he talked was charming, but he talked very little. Anne, when she talked, was commonplace, and she talked very much. Naturally, poor thing,—-she was so happy. Poyntz and I did not spend another Christmas there. Friendship is long, but life is short. Gilbert Ashleigh's life ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... been marked by few characteristics. For a week or two previous to Christmas day, the newspapers contained rich details respecting market-stalls and butchers' shops,—what magnificent carcasses of prize oxen and sheep they displayed. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... man should be condemned to misery for life because he had been led by misfortune into such a mistake as that. He dined very well at his club, and on the following morning went down to the Moonbeam by an early train, for that day's hunting. Thence he returned to Newton Priory in time for Christmas, and as he was driven up to his own house, through his own park, meeting one or two of his own tenants, and encountering now and then his own obsequious labourers, he was not an unhappy man in spite of Mary Bonner's cruel answer. It may be doubted whether his greatest trouble ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... but one sacrifice—but one satisfaction—Jesus Christ. Besides Him there is none other." Dr Carlstadt was the first to celebrate the Lord's Supper in accordance with Christ's institutions. On the Sunday before Christmas-day he gave out from the pulpit that, on the first day of the New Year, he would distribute the Eucharist in both kinds to all who should present themselves; that he would omit all useless forms, and wear neither cope not chasuble. Hearing, however, that there might be some ...
— Count Ulrich of Lindburg - A Tale of the Reformation in Germany • W.H.G. Kingston
... your ideas from the rich Miss Carpenter, but we have our living to make." She drove her tack with emphasis, then sat down on the floor of the window. "I am not sure I shall not always like this way best," she continued. "Think, if there were no show windows at Christmas! ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... On Christmas Day Pakenham took command of the forces at the front now augmented to about six thousand, but hesitated to attack. And well he might hesitate, in spite of his superior numbers, for Jackson had employed his ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... "Merry Christmas!" and Eunice gave him such a scornful shrug of her furred shoulders that Hendricks laughed out, in sheer enjoyment ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... the desire to see how like it was. But where in all the world was he to get a "blue"? Pelle, who at this time superintended the collection and distributing of millions, did not possess ten kroner! The pipe! The pipe! That was what the boy got his idea from! His old Christmas present, queerly enough, had a ten-kroner note on the bowl—and that gave him an idea! He got it out and compared it; it was a long time since he had smoked the pipe—he couldn't afford it. He began eagerly to fill in the drawing while Young ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... "You know as well as I do that the men are doing just as they please. At the rate they're going they wouldn't have this section finished by Christmas. I'm paying them for work they don't do and you know it. I put you in here to see that McGuire gets what he's paying for. You haven't ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... as something on the whole preferable to a purchase. The drives continued quite into December, over roads as smooth and hard as any in June, and the air was delicious. The first snow brought the suggestion of sleighing; but that cold weather about Christmas dispersed these gay thoughts, and restored my friend to virtue. Word came from the stable that Frank's legs were swelling from standing so long without going out, and my friend resolved to part with an animal for which he had no use. I do not praise him for this; it ...
— Buying a Horse • William Dean Howells
... On Christmas Eve the old woman brought in a cold supper for Berwin, as usual, making several journeys to and fro between hotel and house for that purpose. She laid the table, made up the fire, and before taking her leave asked Mr. Berwin if he ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... worship of the vine. And vine worship was forest worship. Moreover, in the same oak grove at Dodona bells were tied to the oak boughs and their tinklings also were sacred auguries. The drum, which the modern boy beats on Christmas Day, was beaten ages before Christ in the worship of Confucius: the story of it dies away toward what was man's first written music in forgotten China. In the first century of the Christian era, on one of the most splendid ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... the matter in one instance in the earlier part of the work. An accidental loss of several sheets of the manuscript delayed the continuance of the publication in that manner, till the close of the Christmas holidays; and—the pressure of public business rendering it then improbable that room could be found, in the columns of the paper, regularly to insert matter extending to such a length—this plan of publication was ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Mr. Skinner to appear with the payrolls of all of the Ricks enterprises and show what cause, if any, existed, why there should not be a general whooping up of salaries to the deserving all along the line. The Ricks Lumber & Logging Company had already declared a Christmas dividend; the accounts of every ship in the Blue Star fleet had been made up to date and a special Christmas dividend declared, and, in accordance with ancient custom, Cappy had appeared to devote one day in the year to actual labor. Christmas dividend checks and checks covering Christmas ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... besieged, and given up to the rebels by Lord Darcy and the Archbishop of York. In the following century came the three sieges of the Civil War. The first two followed after the Battle of Marston Moor in 1644, and Fairfax joined the Parliamentary forces on Christmas Day of that year, remaining through most of January. On March 1 Sir Marmaduke Langdale relieved the Royalist garrison, and Colonel Lambert fell back, fighting stubbornly and losing some 300 men. The garrison then had an interval of just three weeks to ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... Christmas Day, Ned Land seemed to regret sorely the non-celebration of "Christmas," the family fete of which Protestants are so fond. I had not seen Captain Nemo for a week, when, on the morning of the 27th, he came into the large ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... "Guayaquil, Callao, and Santiago," "Cape Town, Durban, and Lorenzo Marquez." It was past six o'clock and very dark. The ice was pushing and grinding against the pier-heads, and through the falling snow the tall buildings in New York twinkled with thousands of electric lights, like great Christmas-trees. At one wharf a steamer of the Red D line, just in from La Guayra, was making fast, and I guiltily crept on board. Without, she was coated in a shearing of ice, but within she reeked of Spanish-America—of coffee, rubber, and raw sugar. Pineapples were still swinging ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... abject form had so long reigned paramount, and that any sudden emancipation must endanger the peace of the islands. The experience of the first of August at once scattered to the winds that most fallacious prophecy. Then it was said, only wait till Christmas, for that is a period when, by all who have any practical knowledge of the negro character, a rebellion on their part is most to be apprehended. We did wait for this dreaded Christmas; and what was the result? I will go for it to Antigua, for it is the strongest case, there ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... goodness! is safe to press.) This discourse will appear at the season when I have read that wassail-bowls make their appearance; at the season of pantomime, turkey and sausages, plum-puddings, jollifications for schoolboys; Christmas bills, and reminiscences more or less sad and sweet for elders. If we oldsters are not merry, we shall be having a semblance of merriment. We shall see the young folks laughing round the holly-bush. We shall pass the bottle round cosily as we sit by the fire. That old thing will have a sort ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... country-folk thronged in pilgrimage to the church of the Immaculate; since earliest morning I had heard the note of bagpipes, which continued to sound before the street shrines all day long. Don Pasquale assured me that the festival had an importance in this region scarcely less than that of Christmas. At the hour of high mass I entered the sanctuary whither all were turning their steps; it was not easy to make a way beyond the portico, but when I had slowly pressed forward through the dense crowd, ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... of the months: "january, february, march, april, may, june, july, august, september, october, november, december."—Cobb's Standard Spelling-Book, 21-40. Write the following names and words properly: "tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday, saturn;—christ, christian, christmas, christendom, michaelmas, indian, bacchanals;—Easthampton, omega, johannes, aonian, levitical, deuteronomy, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... have said at a time like that. I started to smile and discovered that my original smile was still frozen on my face. I stood up and began retrieving the torn papers; they passed them back to me without saying anything. I replaced them in my briefcase, closed it, said, "Gentlemen, Christmas falls on Friday this year," and ...
— The Professional Approach • Charles Leonard Harness
... shall throw away no more sums on such unmeaning luxury. To spend as much to furnish your dressing room with flowers in winter as would suffice to turn the Pantheon into a greenhouse, and give a fete champetre at Christmas! ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... country house and garden in old Chelsea Village to the theological seminary of his professorship. How many people remember this, or his scholarship? But before that old rooftree was laid low, he wrote beneath it, quite offhand, a little poem, 'The Night Before Christmas,' that blends with childhood's dreams anew each Christmas Eve—a few short verses holding more ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... fat goose, at Christmas stannen' pie, and good yal awt year roond," said an old man in the chimney corner. This was Matthew Branthwaite, the wit and sage of Wythburn, once a weaver, but living now on the husbandings of ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... grew tired of this game they played automobile. To do that Laddie had to turn an old rocker upside down and stick on one leg a broken drum he had left from his Christmas toys. The drum was the steering wheel, and it made enough noise, when pounded on with a stick, to pretend it was ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in a Great City • Laura Lee Hope
... the Capital, life in the Capital punishment Characteristics, national Christmas customs Church, relation of State to Churches, Dutch Clergymen, Dutch Colonies, the Dutch Costume, ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... particular—a fine, pompous citizen who came down the street swinging his cane and looking as though the universe was a sort of Christmas turkey, lying all brown and sizzling before him ready to be carved—a fine pompous citizen who never realized how nearly Fate with a battered volume of Montaigne in one hand and a tin whistle in the other—came to pouncing upon ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker |
