"Narrator" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the present narrator, who took up the tale. "Here is what I propose, men," said I: "I put up one hundred and fifty dollars. If any man can lay hands on the stuff right away, and off his own club, he shall have the hundred and fifty down. ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... cannot tell," briskly said the fair narrator. "But I know that the ladies of the court did not. As the king retired, and we remained in the opera boxes to amuse ourselves a little with the display, we heard, to our astonishment, a proposal that the tables should be cleared ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... ain't dying. It's like this," pursued the narrator, still with his air of secrecy, "there's a party there that runs the boarding-house—her name's Lottie Clute, she's had it for years, and she's got on to the fact that George is insured for nine thousand dollars, d'ye see? Well, she's got him ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... the impression derogatory to the neighbor's esteem and good name. Of course, if mere curiosity makes us listen and our pleasure and amusement are less at the expense of the neighbor's good name than excited by the style of the narrator or the singularity of the facts alleged, the fault is less; but fault there nevertheless is, since such an attitude serves to encourage the traducer and helps him drive his points home. Many sin who could and should prevent excesses of this kind, but refrain from ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... confidential friends she permitted Orloff's messenger, Joseph Ribas, to relate to her all the particulars of the affair from the commencement to the end, and to the narrator she nodded her approval with ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... to the interrupted narrative, even in despite of the evident frivolity of the narrator. The arrangement of the party in the coach compelled me to hear it at second hand, and I found it less frivolous than I had anticipated: it was an amour between the King and a peasant's daughter, in which the King conducted himself in a manner as little excusable in a monarch, as in a ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... and his resentment against him as this young creature's husband." Here is another, less dangerous, which he took from an actual occurrence made known to him when he was at Bonchurch. "The idea of my being brought up by my mother (me the narrator), my father being dead; and growing up in this belief until I find that my father is the gentleman I have sometimes seen, and oftener heard of, who has the handsome young wife, and the dog I once took notice of when ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... what passed reads, more than almost any other in the gospels, like notes taken at the time by one who was present. We can almost put it again into the form of brief notes.... We can scarcely doubt that it was the narrator John who was the witness ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed
... village are adorned with lamps and garlands. Such a recitation of the whole of the Mahabharata is said to occupy ninety days, or sometimes half a year.[94] The people at large require, no doubt, that the Brahman narrator (Kathaka) should interpret the old poem, but there must be some few people present who understand, or imagine they understand, the old ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... his man announced that the jury had brought in Ralegh guilty of treason. 'Surely,' observed Coke, 'thou art mistaken; for I myself accused him but of misprision of treason.' The story, which its narrator, in the anonymous Observations upon Sanderson's History of Queen Mary and King James, issued in 1656, 'upon the word of a Christian received from Sir Edward Coke's own mouth,' will appear to ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... observations are merely experimental. In another place I hope to reproduce the stories in the original, by phonetic methods. I have here given English versions of some of the stories recorded, as translated for me by the narrator, or by Mrs. Brown, and added some explanations which may be of assistance to a person listening when songs or stories are being rendered ...
— Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore • J. Walter Fewkes
... fled from at others)—each of the circle had some story to relate equally veracious and indisputable, of an infirmity cured, or a prayer accorded, or a sin atoned for at the foot of the holy tomb. One story peculiarly affected Lucille; the narrator, a venerable old man with gray locks, solemnly declared himself a ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... drew their chairs close together, and a long conversation ensued, Lucia being the chief narrator, while her companion, whom she addressed from time to time as Emilia, did little more than listen and throw in exclamations of wonder, surprise, ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... distressed a number of fishermen. Every attempt had been made to catch him, but without success. He at length became so constant a visitor that they named him "Port Royal Tom." At last, continued old Sambo, for that was the narrator's name, a young friend of mine, who was a very strong, courageous fisherman, said if the magistrates of the town would give him a doubloon, he would engage the shark and try to kill him in single combat. The magistrates consented, and two ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... latch of the door rattling, but no one could ever be found when search was made. The house-bells were old and all in a row, and on one occasion they all rang, apparently of their own accord. The lady narrator used to sleep in the back drawing room, and always when the light was put out she heard strange noises, as if some one was going round the room rubbing paper along the wall, while she often had the feeling that a person was ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... brindled ox had risen and left the place; and as he could not determine the spot, the gold still awaits the search of some more reflective and painstaking person. Of course, one and another of the narrator's auditors thought himself such a person, and hied him away to the conical hill that rises so conspicuously at the entrance to the estuary of the Forth. What success attended them there we have not the means of knowing, but ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... of Sennacherib's death has been added by some narrator, since it probably occurred after Isaiah's martyrdom. 'All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.' Such a career as his could not but give taste for violence and bloodshed, and dimmish regard for human life. Retribution comes slowly, for twenty ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... said Michael; 'he's no hand as a narrator of stirring incident. The case is simple,' he went on. 'My friend is a man of very strong passions, and accustomed to a simple, patriarchal style of life. You see the thing from here: unfortunate visit to Europe, followed by unfortunate acquaintance ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... restraining the duchess from rushing up to the embrace of her son, whom she had not seen for a considerable time, and insisting on her receiving him in state. "How horribly cold it was," said the narrator. "Yes," said Lamb, in his stuttering way; "but you know he is the Duke ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... His visitor urged him to bethink himself of publishing something, and Hawthorne replied by calling his attention to the small popularity his published productions had yet acquired, and declaring that he had done nothing and had no spirit for doing anything. The narrator of the incident urged upon him the necessity of a more hopeful view of his situation, and proceeded to take leave. He had not reached the street, however, when Hawthorne hurried to overtake him, and, placing a roll of MS. in his hand, bade him take it to ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... The gravity of Brendan's Voyage renders it impossible to place it in any such category. It can hardly be said to contain any grotesque adventure except that of the monster's back, and from the way in which this is told, it is evident that it did not appear grotesque to the narrator; and the religious tone of the whole thing forbids any ...
— Brendan's Fabulous Voyage • John Patrick Crichton Stuart Bute
... been reported, on reliable authority, that the original Mr. Black, whose Christian name was Andrew, was a famous teller of stories and narrator of facts regarding the persecution of the Covenanters, especially of the awful killing-time, when the powers of darkness were let loose on the land to do their worst, and when the blood of Scotland's ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... by no means a flawless book, though its defects are trivial enough. The illusion of Huck as narrator fails the least bit here and there; the "four dialects" are not always maintained; the occasional touch of broad burlesque detracts from the tale's reality. We are inclined to resent this. We never wish to feel that Huck is anything but a real character. We want him always the Huck who was willing ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... up the river?" continued the narrator, pointing his long, bony finger towards a great bend, and a point on the Kentucky ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... it. It is altogether a charming book—it reads like a woman's letters, so full is it of confidence couched in the artless, easy, unpretentious language of femininity. The style is so unconscious that at times it really seems as if, attired in wrapper and slippers, the fair narrator were lolling back in an easy-chair talking these interesting things into your ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... the History are masterpieces of the narrator's art. A trained novelist, unhampered by historical facts, could scarcely have surpassed the last part of Macaulay's eighth chapter in relating the trial of the seven Bishops. Our blood tingles to the tips of our fingers as we read in the fifth chapter the story of Monmouth's rebellion ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... he is running about like a madman, and as if the fiend had got hold of him," continued the narrator; "for now the very thing of which he has bragged from morning to night, is at an end: he has not only been forced to see corn growing in the field, he has lain ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... beautiful narrator, as she enacted before her this poetry and tragedy of real life, so much beyond what dramatic art can ever furnish. Her eyes grew splendid in their depth and brilliancy; sometimes they were full of tears, and sometimes they flashed out like lightnings; her whole form seemed to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... point in the action as to how Na.nefer.ka.ptah, with the book upon him, comes up from the water, after he is drowned, into the cabin of the royal boat. The narrator had a difficulty to account for the recovery of the body without the use of the magic book, and so that stage is left unnoticed. The successive stages of embalming and mourning are detailed. The sixteen days in the Good House is probably ...
— Egyptian Tales, Second Series - Translated from the Papyri • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... letter, half illegible through the fading of the ink. It might be—it probably was—a statement of Captain Reid's imperiousness in trifles, very much exaggerated by the narrator, who had written it while fresh and warm from the scene of altercation. Some sailors being aloft in the main-topsail rigging, the captain had ordered them to race down, threatening the hindmost with ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... terrible disaster which befell one of those privateers while cruising to the windward of Antigua. One of the men was boatswain of the vessel. The tale which he related was a sad one, and its correctness was confirmed by the deep emotion which the narrator and his shipmates manifested and by ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... any predecessor the possibilities of fiction in the study of character and the illustration of manners, and to the art of the narrator, he had added that of the dramatist. The falling of the rug in Molly Seagrim's bedroom[175] is one of the happiest incidents ever devised, and no doubt suggested to Sheridan the falling of the ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... nearly as a woman. In their great war-dances all the warriors in succession strike the post, as it is called, and recount their exploits. On these occasions their auditory consists of the kinsmen, friends, and comrades of the narrator. The profound impression which his discourse produces on them is manifested by the silent attention it receives, and by the loud shouts which hail its termination. The young man who finds himself at such ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... as winter was already making itself felt, James decided to withdraw to Dublin; as our narrator says, "the young commanders were in some haste to return to the capital, where the ladies expected them with great impatience; so that King James, being once more persuaded to disband the new levies and raising his camp a little of the soonest, dispersed his men too early ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... think," the narrator resumed, when he felt that he had settled Mr. Dickey, "whether or not you'd miss a woman like that, when you'd summered and wintered with her more'n forty year. She always said she hoped she'd go sudden, for she was so heavy it would 'a' took three or four of the common run of folks to lift her, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... now turned spontaneously to the excellent German, delighted to have a tale to listen to, even though it might prove of no interest. During this blessed interregnum the voice of a narrator is always delightful to our languid senses; it increases their negative happiness. I, a seeker after impressions, admired the faces about me, enlivened by smiles, beaming in the light of the wax candles, and somewhat flushed by our late good cheer; their diverse expressions ...
— The Red Inn • Honore de Balzac
... furnished him with an opportunity to increase his glory. His victories over them obtained for him the honours of a second triumph, and restored peace to his kingdom. Now, Emily, I again resign the office of narrator to you. ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... afterwards called the place Portceaster, whence its present name 'Porchester,'" continued the narrator; "and, subsequently, the stronghold has played an important part in history, from the days of Canute up to the ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Miscellanies,[322] there is an account of the battle of Lutzen,[323] which deserves to be read. And Simon Ockley's[324] History of the Saracens recounts the prodigies of individual valor with admiration, all the more evident on the part of the narrator, that he seems to think that his place in Christian Oxford[325] requires of him some proper protestations of abhorrence. But if we explore the literature of Heroism, we shall quickly come to Plutarch,[326] who is its Doctor and historian. ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... off his guard, he opened his wallet, which was well stocked, and retailed his stories, many of them so very rich, that I doubted the capacity of the Attache to out-Herod him. Mr. Slick received these tales with evident horror, and complimented the narrator with a well simulated groan; and when he had done, said, "Ah, I see how it is, they have purposely kept dark about the most atrocious features of slavery. Have you never seen ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... temporary liaisons of Count Lucien. I do not guarantee the authenticity of the anecdote, and I experience in writing it more embarrassment than the senator displayed in relating it, and omit, indeed, a mass of details which the narrator gave without blushing, and without driving off his audience; for my object is to throw light upon the family secrets of the imperial household, and on the habits of the persons who were nearest the Emperor, and not to publish scandal, though I could justify myself by the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... same. It had only been more finished off and elaborated in its details, as stories of that kind always are when they have passed first through the lips of the multitude, and then through the fancy of a clever and imaginative narrator; the result of the process being usually to leave everything and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... The narrator of this old story was a tall spare man, with light eyes and brown hair, and the author thought he saw in him a vague resemblance to the demon who had before this tormented him; but the stranger did not show the cloven foot. Suddenly the word ADULTERY sounded in the ears of the author; ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... seeing) equally Occidental with myself. It was plain, thus far, that I should have to get into India and out of it again upon a foot of fairy lightness; and I believe this first suggested to me the idea of the Chevalier Burke for a narrator. It was at first intended that he should be Scottish, and I was then filled with fears that he might prove only the degraded shadow of my own Alan Breck. Presently, however, it began to occur to me it would be like my Master to curry favour ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 'In the parish of Saint So-and-So.' It does n't pin you down to any special house, street, or number, which is, of course, a decided advantage when you are hunting for a needle in a haystack. And the Moscow saints and parishes have such names!" Here the narrator's feelings overcame him, and when I asked for some of the parochial titles he was too limp to reply. I had already noticed the peculiar designations of many churches, and had begun to suspect myself of stupidity or my cabman and other informants of malicious jesting. Now, however, ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... singular for a dairy-yard, was murmured by the voice behind the dun cow; but as nobody understood the reference, no notice was taken, except that the narrator seemed to think it might imply ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... loiterer, whose shop had confined him, or whose wife had locked him up, hears the tale of luxury with envy, and, at last, inquires what was their petition. Of the petition nothing is remembered by the narrator, but that it spoke much of fears and apprehensions, and something very alarming, and that he is sure it is against the government; the other is convinced that it must be right, and wishes he had been there, for he loves wine and venison, and is resolved, as long as he lives, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... wild stanzas, preliminary to a tradition current among the tribes of that region, Walk in the Water, a Roanoke chief of great celebrity, commenced his tale. Undoubtedly most of the Indians present were as well acquainted with the story as the narrator, but that circumstance seemed to abate nothing of the interest with which it was listened to; it certainly did not diminish the attention of the audience. In this respect, these wild foresters deserve to become a pattern for careful imitation. They never interrupt a speaker. However ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... father, and said, 'Take my daughter, for you have won her heart.' He immediately provided an outfit for his daughter, and when it was completed, my father and his bride rode away on horseback, while the trousseau of the Princess followed on three hundred camels." The passage proceeds (the narrator being Daruma, the offspring of the marriage), "When my father had returned home, and was desirous of celebrating his marriage Kandarin (his Wazir) said to him, 'Your wife will be destroyed if you touch her, for you are created of fire, and she is ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... phenomena described, only those most susceptible of mundane interpretation were witnessed by Glanvill or Mompesson. All of the more extraordinary—the great body with the red and glaring eyes, the levitated children, etc.—came to the narrator from second or third or fourth hand sources not always clearly indicated, and doubtless uneducated and superstitious persons, such as peasants or servants, whose fears would ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... dear Philo, being very loath in this noisy age to make no noise at all, or to act the part of a mute in the comedy, think it highly proper that I should roll my tub also; not that I mean to write history myself, or be a narrator of facts; you need not fear me, I am not so rash, knowing the danger too well if I roll it amongst the stones, especially such a tub as mine, which is not over-strong, so that the least pebble I strike against would dash it in pieces. I will tell you, however, what my design ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... contemporaries. Neither does he seem to have produced a very gracious impression upon outsiders who happened to meet him. There is a curious anecdote told by some one who met Arthur Hallam travelling with his father on the Continent only a short time before his sudden death. The narrator says that he saw with a certain satisfaction how mercilessly the young man criticised and exposed his father's statements, remembering how merciless the father had often been in dealing summarily with the arguments and ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... only intelligible as in relation to human opinions, and merely mean events of which the natural cause cannot be explained by a reference to any ordinary occurrence, either by us, or at any rate, by the writer and narrator of the miracle. ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... like to tell it in his own particular English, mixed with American slang, but it would not convey the simplicity of the narrator. He was the son of a large family who had lived for centuries in one of the highest villages in the Bernese Oberland. He attained his size and strength early, but with a singular distaste to use them in the rough regular work on the farm, although he ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... were holding splendidly, indeed were gradually eating into the enemy front. They brought weird stories of his comrades, incidents pathetic, humorous, heroic, according to the temperament of the narrator. But from more than one source came tales of Knight's machine gun section to which McCuaig was attached. Knight himself had been killed soon after entering the line, and about his men conflicting tales were told: they were holding a strong point, they were ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... brows of a few old men were sharply defined by a luminous band, which made fantastic shapes of their worn and discolored garments. These various listeners, so diverse in their attitudes, all expressed on their motionless features the absolute abandonment of their intelligence to the narrator. It was a curious picture, illustrating the enormous influence exercised over every class of mind by poetry. In exacting from a story-teller the marvelous that must still be simple, or the impossible that is almost believable, the peasant proves himself to be a ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... fairly correct presentments of that animal seen for the first time by the Spaniards in the straits to which Magellan gave his name, and described by the Italian narrator, Pigafetta, who accompanied the ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge
... Lonner, for he was the narrator, had concluded, Ragnar advanced and enfolded the ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... beyond the bounds of their brief acquaintance had of course been presented to her mind; but if a slight flush came into her face when she remembered the nature of the narrative and the personality of the narrator, it was quickly banished by the sweet assurance that in this way he had honored her beyond the ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... and child in England were made to read him; and I would that you in America would take him to heart. He is a tonic, a deep refreshing drink, with a strange and wonderful flavour; he is a mine of new interests, and ways of thought instinctively right. As a simple narrator he is well-nigh unsurpassed; as a stylist he has few, if any, living equals. And in all his work there is an indefinable freedom from any thought of after-benefit—even from the desire that we should read him. ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... with some broken sobs, and with a piteous light in her blue eyes, told Noel the whole cruel story. He listened without once interrupting the little narrator. When she had finished, he kissed her, and told her that she now had nothing to fear, and then, bidding her sleep away all her troubles, he left her to Primrose's care. By the next train he himself went to London in full time to attend ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... agreed the narrator; "he thought that he would make a rich haul on this occasion if he could get hold of the three Singleton boys and hold them for ransom. As soon as I saw the long, gray Shark, which I was quick to recognize, and noticed how she hung on our course, I knew what the game was ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... the inspired disregard of all technique. Den Siste Gloede is a diary of wearisome days, spent for the most part among unattractive, insignificant people at a holiday resort; the only "action" in it is an altogether pitiful love affair, in which the narrator is involved to the slightest possible degree. The writer is throughout despondent; he feels himself out of the race; his day is past. Solitude and quiet, Nature, and his own foolish feelings—these are the "last ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... fresh details; and Stanislas, thinking himself very witty, added a little to the tale every time that he told it. Every one flocked to Amelie's house that evening, for by that time the most exaggerated versions of the story were in circulation among the Angouleme nobility, every narrator having followed Stanislas' example. Women and men were alike impatient to know the truth; and the women who put their hands before their faces and shrieked the loudest were none other than Mesdames Amelie, Zephirine, Fifine, and Lolotte, all with more or less heavy indictments of illicit love laid ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... from the east, to show them their way to any place. Yet the ancients sometimes regarded comets as guides. Whichever view we accept, it is abundantly clear that an astrological significance was attached by the narrator to the event. And not so very long ago, when astrologers first began to see that their occupation was passing from them, the Wise Men of the East were appealed to against the enemies of astrology,[2]—very much as Moses was appealed ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... sunrise in all its splendour. I have taken down from Algonkin Indians several beautiful legends relating to them. In one, the Milky Way is the girdle of a stupendous deity, and the Northern Lights the splendid gleams emitted by his ball when playing. In another, the narrator describes him as clad in an ineffable glory of light, and in ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... "But you are not afraid," replied Gordon, "for now you know who says, 'I am the Resurrection and the Life.' He will be as near to you in the infirmary as here, and as near to you in death as in life." "Oh yes, I know Him now;" and so he did, for as the narrator said, "The Colonel had led him to Christ by his life and teaching." When in the hospital the young lad said to a nurse, "Read the Bible to me, there is nothing like it." "But you are very tired," said the nurse. "Yes, I am very tired. I do long to go to Jesus." This is ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... upon that occasion, to appear in unison with the text of the Immortal Bard, "dressed" the part in a most elaborate "neck-or-nothing tile." Upon being expostulated with by the manager, he triumphantly referred to the description of the chivalrous Prince in which the narrator particularly states— ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... to seem madder than I admittedly am,—and I lacked sufficient plausibility to enable me to concoct, on the spur of the moment, a plain tale of the doings of my midnight visitor which would have suggested that the narrator was perfectly sane. So ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... therefore:—"Yes—there was a little more Septimius Severus. I had rather made up my mind not to talk about it, in case you should think too much of it." He then narrated the Miss Scatcherd incident, checked and corrected by Irene from afar. The narrator minimised the points in favour of his flash of vision, while his commentator's corrections showed an ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... offered to carry her over on his back. In going over, he saw that she was webfooted; so he threw her down, and ran for his life. By the side of Loch Middle a woman saw one—"about three years ago," she told the narrator—she sat on a stone, quiet, and dressed in green silk, the sleeves of the dress curiously puffed from the wrists to the shoulder; her hair was yellow, like ripe corn; but on a nearer view, she had no nose. A man at Tubernan ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... country. I give it to you as near as may be in Mr. Grass's own words. The old gentleman, his father, I knew well when I was a boy; his residence was next to my father's for several years in Kingston. He was a genuine sample of an honest, plain, loyal German. The narrator was about eleven years old at the time he migrated with his father and the company of Loyalists from New York to 'Frontenac,' and therefore had a distinct recollection of all the incidents he relates. Being seated in his parlour one evening, while partaking ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... event was endued 'with sense and soul' by the narrator. The 'hardships and dangers' thrilled one's young nerves. Their two salient features were ice perils, and the no less imminent one of being captured and shot as a spy. The crossing of the rivers stands out prominently ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... the rock-masses. One of them, it is said, has never been climbed; unless a myth which hangs about it is true. Certain English sailors, probably of Rodney's men—and numbering, according to the pleasure of the narrator, three hundred, thirty, or three—are said to have warped themselves up it by lianes and scrub; but they found the rock-ledges garrisoned by an enemy more terrible than any French. Beneath the bites of the Fer-de- ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... case correctly;" that is to say, Galt had found out, in the interval, that it was open to contradiction and disproof, and it has since been disproved in the Athenaeum. So much for a story discredited by the narrator himself. Of these facts AEGROTUS is entirely ignorant, and therefore proceeds by the following extraordinary circumstantialities to uphold it. "The late President of the Royal Academy knew Maclean; and his son, the late Raphael West, told the writer of these remarks [AEGROTUS himself] that when ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... splendid writer of fiction—a most exciting narrator, for he forgot nothing, and he added thereto in a wonderful manner. He threw in, with his mouth full, touches of description that made his companion stare, and his eloquence about the blackened hull ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... he said unto the woman, yea, hath God said ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden.' Now, father, who ever heard of a talking snake. No one. It is only a myth, and I believe this snake was used to symbolize the narrator's idea of evil, tempting the children of ...
— The Pastor's Son • William W. Walter
... "Ha, ha!" The narrator laughed joyfully. "The Dago Count went for Curtis as if he was on to a sure thing, but before you could say 'knife' he was on his back on the sidewalk. I've never seen a man put down so quick. I couldn't have floored him so beautifully if I'd hit him with a spanner. But that was only part ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... must be mentioned by name. Their itineraries were wholly dedicated to the interests of their co-religionists. The first of the line is Eldad, the narrator of a sort of Hebrew Odyssey. Benjamin of Tudela and Petachya of Ratisbon are deserving of more confidence as veracious chroniclers, and their descriptions, together with Charisi's, complete the Jewish library of travels of those ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... writer lose his hold on the attention and regard of his countrymen. The debate, before his place in literature is settled, must rather turn on other points: as whether the genial essayist and egoist or the romantic inventor and narrator was the stronger in him—whether the Montaigne and Pepys elements prevailed in his literary composition or the Scott and Dumas elements—a question indeed which among those who care for him most has always been at ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... light, lithe body of the soldier could glide over the roof with the silent swiftness of a cat "on the rampage;" the same animal, shod with walnut-shells, suggests itself as an apt, though irreverent comparison for the priestly fugitive. To use the narrator's own words—occasionally ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... narrator, "you should 'a' heard Leggett howl faw a divvy!" All smiled. "Worst of it ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... mercy on her and guide me, the narrator of these incidents, in His ways, so that when the last bell will be rung to summon me before Him I need not hesitate but answer joyfully: I am ready, I ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... in its general features, of thousands of lives—is given, as nearly as possible, exactly as it fell from the lips of the narrator. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... was secured by their recital in churches. Wholly fabulous some of these are—as the legend of St. Margaret—but they were not on this account the less welcome or the less esteemed. In certain instances the tale is dramatically placed in the mouth of a narrator, and thus the way was in a measure prepared for the ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... speaker paused, overcome as much by his feelings as by weakness, and, during the silence that followed, Cabot stole away, ostensibly to see that the dynamo was running smoothly. When he returned the narrator had recovered his calmness, and was ready ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... Ferguson Dr. John Leaver was telling a story. He was apparently telling it to Dr. Burns, who listened with great interest, but at the same time shy Jamie Ferguson was listening too. There were curious points in the story when the narrator turned to the boy in the bed and inquired, smiling: "Could you do that, Jamie?" to which questions Jamie usually replied in the negative. They were mostly questions concerning backs and legs and hips, and the boy in the story seemed to find difficulty in using his, too, which made Jamie ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... great terror. Reining in this horse, he paused full ten minutes, and until the mouse disappeared on the farther side of the log. Drawing nearer, and peeping over, his suspicions of Lucifer's guile were verified—for mousey was within three inches of his open jaw, "irresistibly attracted," said the narrator, "although he was drawing back with all his might." The latter part of the tale is fishy—for the gentleman was twenty feet off, and could not nave seen that—but he saw the mouse finally disappear in that cavernous gullet; and when he killed the snake-a ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... boats' crews who were then spending the night at our house. He was started by two or three of Komag-Nils' stories, and wanted to show us that where he came from, down at Doenoe near Ranen, in Helgeland, there were as many and as wonderful stories and boats, as with us in Nordland. The narrator was a little, quick-speaking fellow, who sat the whole time rocking backwards and forwards, and fidgetting upon the bench, while he talked. With his sharp nose, and round, reddish little eyes, he resembled a restless sea-bird on a rock. Every now and then he broke off to dive down ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... eagerly. "Since you disclaim weariness we could listen for hours yet. You are a skilful narrator, for, intensely as your story has interested me, you have reserved its climax to the last, even though your search led you only among woful ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... winter Sir Robert and Lady Sale paid the Queen a visit at Windsor, while Miss Liddell was maid-of-honour in waiting. The lively narrator of the events of these days describes Lady Sale, as tall, thin, and rather plain, but with a good countenance, while Sir Robert was stout. Lady Sale told these wondering listeners, in a palace that she started from Cabul ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... It is possible, if not likely, that some of those friends of the narrator, for whom the account was evidently written, may still be living, and that these pages may meet their eyes. If so, they may be able to solve the few problems that have entirely baffled me, and to explain, if they so choose, the secrets to which, intentionally or through the destruction of ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... 1st of May, when returning from the Tuileries by the great gallery to the Louvre, supported in consequence of his gout by the Due de Guise and the narrator himself, he said on reaching the door of the Queen's closet to his two attendants, "Wait for me here. I will hasten the toilet of my wife that she may not keep my dinner waiting." He was of course obeyed, and the Duke and ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... war it is possible to obtain celebrity; many who have acted, and many who have recorded the actions of others, receive their tribute of praise. And to me, assuredly, though by no means equal glory attends the narrator and the performer of illustrious deeds, it yet seems in the highest degree difficult to write the history of great transactions; first, because deeds must be adequately represented[29] by words; and next, because ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... time," said the narrator, "dat I was in ole Satan's dominions. I tell you, pahson, dat was shore a ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... malpractices the gossips of Salem took little heed. One of them said that such an action showed Satan's prompting, but they all preferred to listen to the grander guilt of the blasphemous sacraments and supernatural rides. The narrator ended with saying that Hota was to be hung the next morning, in spite of her confession, even although her life had been promised to her if she acknowledged her sin; for it was well to make an example of the ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... suppose you are the regimental doctor?" and the imperfectly-accoutred youth, covered with confusion as with a cloak, fled blushing into the ball-room, and hid himself from further observation. And yet the narrator of this painful story always declared that George IV. could be very gracious when the fancy took him; that he was uniformly kind to children; and that on public occasions his manner was the perfection of ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... conference. To him and to his fellow gold-miners there were just two things in the story that were worth considering. One was the smartness of its hero, Jim Smiley, in taking the stranger in with a loaded frog; and the other was Smiley's deep knowledge of a frog's nature—for he knew (as the narrator asserted and the listeners conceded) that a frog likes shot and is already ready to eat it. Those men discussed those two points, and those only. They were hearty in their admiration of them, and none of the party was aware that a first-rate story had been told in a first-rate way, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Foljambe told the story, with a good deal of angry comment. The Countess was much amused, a fact which did not help to calm the narrator. ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... relating a story to another, which made him stare, "Did you never hear that before?" said the narrator. "No," says the other: ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... insidious falsehoods are daily carried to you, as they are brought to me, to engage us in the passions of our informers, and stated so positively and plausibly as to make even doubt a rudeness to the narrator; who, imposed on himself, has no other than the friendly view of putting us on our guard. My answer is, invariably, that my knowledge of your character is better testimony to me of a negative, than ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... certain questions against him of their own superstition, and of one Jesus which was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive." Nothing could be more in the character of a Roman governor than these words. But that is not precisely the point I am concerned with. A mere panegyrist, or a dishonest narrator, would not have represented his cause, or have made a great magistrate represent it, in this manner, i.e. in terms not a little disparaging, and bespeaking, on his part, much unconcern and indifference about the matter. The same observation may be repeated ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... maintain the Figure of the keenest Attention, the true Posture of which in a Coffee-house I take to consist in leaning over a Table, with the Edge of it pressing hard upon your Stomach; for the more Pain the Narration is received with, the more gracious is your bending over: Besides that the Narrator thinks you forget your Pain by the Pleasure of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... absurd and useless—were they plain interruptions of established laws—were they grave and dignified in their nature, and important in their object, and were there nothing to excite suspicion in the design, manner, or character of the narrator—still the testimony on which they rest is the bare word of an author writing one hundred years after the death of the person panegyrized, and far distant from the places in which most of the miracles were wrought, and who can give ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... Crocker,—the irrepressible Crocker. He had been also in the church. The narrator and he had managed to find standing room in a back pew under one of the galleries. Now would he be able to say with perfect truth that he had been at the wedding, and had received a parting salute from the bride; whom he ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... entitled Les Veillees du Chanvreur, the hemp-beaters being, as will be recollected, the Scheherazades of each village. Their number was never to be thus augmented, but the idea is recalled by the chapter-headings of Les Maitres Sonneurs, in which Etienne Despardieu, or Tiennet, the rustic narrator, tells, in the successive veillees of a month, the romance of his youth. It is a work of a very different type to the rural tales that had preceded it, and should be regarded apart from them. It is longer, more complex in form and sentiment, more of an ideal composition. Les Maitres Sonneurs, ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... chin sunk within the collar of his white waistcoat, and scrutinizing the narrator with a steadfast though impassive glance, made the ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... account whispered cautiously in Wolfert's ear by the narrator, Peechy Prauw, as he held him by the button in a corner of the hall, casting a wary glance now and then toward the door of the barroom, lest he should be overheard by the terrible hero of ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... alteration of level at Valparaiso was about three feet; and some rocks were thus newly exposed, on which the fishermen collected the scallop-shell fish, which was not known to exist there before the earthquake. At Quintero the elevation was about four feet. "When I went," the narrator adds, "to examine the coast, although it was high-water, I found the ancient bed of the sea laid bare, and dry, with beds of oysters, mussels, and other shells adhering to the rocks on which they grew, the fish being all dead, and exhaling most offensive effluvia. And I found good reason to ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... sailor, tacking at sight of the enemy, ran swiftly along the river-bank, but was almost immediately overtaken, knocked down, and thrown into the press-boat, which lay near by. "This gather'd a Mob," says the narrator of the incident, "who Pelted the Boat and Gang by throwing Stones and Dirt from the Shoar, and being Pursued also by the Galley's men, who brought Cutlasses in the Boat with them to rescue their Prest Man, the Gang was at last forc'd to betake themselves to a Corn-lighter, where they might stand ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... serene voice, described for the third time the various vicissitudes of our story. But despite our narrator's fine accent and stylish turns of phrase, the German language met with ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... you have read my little tale than if you had read a library. As to whether any one else will read it, I have no guess. I am in an off time, but there is just the possibility it might make a hit; for the yarn is good and melodramatic, and there is quite a love affair—for me; and Mr. Wiltshire (the narrator) is a huge lark, though I say it. But there is always the exotic question, and everything, the life, the place, the dialects—trader's talk, which is a strange conglomerate of literary expressions and English and American slang, and Beach de Mar, or native English,—the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... skill and discretion. Mr. Trevelyan is one of the exceptions to the rule. His book is such a piece of thorough literary workmanship as would have delighted its subject. By a rare felicity, the almost filial affection of the narrator conciliates the reader instead of exciting a distrust of the narrative. We feel that Macaulay's must have been a lovable character to excite such warmth of feeling, and a noble character to enable one who loved him to speak so frankly. The ordinary biographer's idolatry is ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... Deodati. Eager to hear the remainder, Mr. Van de Werve gazed fixedly upon the narrator. The bailiff was more calm—he listened attentively and nodded his head, as if he foresaw the conclusion of ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... the afternoon's performances, beginning with his experience as a lobster catcher. Seth smiled, then chuckled, and finally burst into roars of laughter, in which the narrator joined. ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... continued the narrator of her deficiencies, "there is not one of them fit for framing: mere scratches with a chalk pencil—what any ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... now goes down but scepticism and philosophy. And what, after all, do these rumours, when sifted, amount to? They have no origin but this,—a silly old man of eighty-six, quite in his dotage, solemnly avers that he saw this same Zanoni seventy years ago (he himself, the narrator, then a mere boy) at Milan; when this very Zanoni, as you all see, is at least as young as ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... drawn this evening was Eight, being the number of the story which it had cost Owen so much labor to write. He looked a little fluttered and anxious as he opened the manuscript. This was the first occasion on which his ability as a narrator was to be brought to the test, and I saw him glance nervously at ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... having finally agreed, he spent the short time that was left in getting it by heart, retiring into a vaulted chamber with some highly educated slaves, and remaining at work till after the consuls had taken their seat. Being sent for he at last came out, and, as Rutilius the narrator and eye-witness declared, with such a heightened colour and triumph in his eyes that he looked like one who had already won his cause. Laelius himself was present. The advocate spoke with such force and weight that scarcely an argument passed unapplauded. Not only ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... would not care about his offspring." The "Mosses from an Old Manse" supply another link in this train of reflection; for "The Virtuoso's Collection" includes some of the elixir vitae "in an antique sepulchral urn." The narrator there represents himself as refusing to quaff it. "'No; I desire not an earthly immortality,' said I. 'Were man to live longer on earth, the spiritual would die out of him.... There is a celestial something within us that requires, after a certain time, the atmosphere of heaven to preserve ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was excitement then," said the narrator, a clerk in one of the stores. "Everybody ran forward to pick up the general. He had been thrown so hard that he was stunned and had big bruises. That horse did him more damage than all the armies of the North have done. I ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... remember—from this side." [Footnote: NOTE.—In justice to Mr. Watson, the present writers have thought it best at this stage to transpose the story from the first to the third person. Any narrative, unless it is negative in its material, is hard to give in the first person; for where the narrator has played an active, positive part, he must either curb himself or fall under the slur of braggadocio. Yet, the world wants the details exactly as they ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... present who had distinguished them in the extreme distance, or rather the cloud of dust which they created; there were dreadful stories of their violence and devastation. It was understood that a body meant to attack Trafford's works, but, as the narrator added, it was very probable that the greater part would cross the bridge and so on to the Moor, where ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... the company sat in two lines facing each other, with kettles in the middle filled with meat chopped for distribution. To a dignified silence succeeded songs, sung by several chiefs in succession, and compared by the narrator to the howling of wolves. Then followed a speech from the chief orator, highly commended by Roubaud, who could not help admiring this effort of savage eloquence. "After the harangue," he continues, "they proceeded to nominate the chiefs who were to take command. As soon ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... falsehood that it should hope to be believed, in order that it may deceive. But, in the Spurious Sportsman's ventures into the marvellous, there is generally something that gives ground for the exercise of charity, and the appalled listener may hope that even the narrator is not so thoroughly convinced of the reality of his exploits as he would, apparently, desire others to be. And there is this also to be said in excuse, that sport, which calls for the exercise of some of the noblest ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 16, 1890 • Various
... her with. Reader, the child who had this great honour conferred upon him, who actually laid in the immaculate lap, on the apron of immaculate snowy whiteness of the immaculate Honourable Miss Delmar, was no other person than the narrator of this history—or, if you please it, the ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... The narrator of this story, and the chief actor in the simple drama was George Edmonds. I mention this little event because it shows that the spirit of hostility to tyranny, and the scorn of oppression, cruelty, and persecution, which he manifested in his after life, were inborn, and a part ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... stay long, but after practice, the leanest stay an hour and a halfe, even till the oyle of the spunge be corrupted.... Thus they gather spunges from more than an hundred fathom deep," &c. All this is very wonderful, but the narrator stamps the value of his tale by telling us immediately afterward that "Samos is the only place in the world on whose rocks the spunges grow." So that, in the words which he elsewhere makes use of, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... it right to follow Wade's narrative, which appears to me by far the most authentic, if not the only authentic account of this important transaction. It is imperfect, but its imperfection arises from the narrator's omitting all those circumstances of which he was not an eye-witness, and the greater credit is on that very account due to him for those which he relates. With respect to Monmouth's quitting the field, it is not mentioned ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... Those who are acquainted with the narrator will not scruple to give full credence to the foregoing account, and others may satisfy themselves by conversing with him. The scars he carries are a proof of his narrative, and a gentleman of New London who was several months with him, was acquainted with part of his sufferings, though it ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... at all, on the moral side of his character. Yet Raleigh can declare proudly, that all the time he was on the Oronooko, "neither by force nor other means had any of his men intercourse with any woman there;" and the narrator of the incidents of Raleigh's last voyage acquaints his correspondent "with some particulars touching the government of the fleet, which, although other men in their voyages doubtless in some measure observed, yet in all the great volumes which have been written touching ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... inceptor incisor inheritor initiator innovator insinuator institutor instructor interlocutor interpolator interrogator inventor investor juror lector legator legislator lessor mediator modulator monitor mortgagor (law) multiplicator narrator navigator negotiator nonjuror numerator objector obligor (law) observator operator originator pacificator participator peculator percolator perforator perpetrator persecutor perturbator possessor preceptor precursor predecessor predictor prevaricator procrastinator procreator procurator professor ...
— Division of Words • Frederick W. Hamilton |
