"Startle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... break it to her, then," said Beatrice, feeling scarcely so much convinced as overwhelmed. "It will startle her if she ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... perpetually speaks in Society. And then she remembered Carey's eyes. They were ugly eyes. She had always thought them ugly. Yet, now and then, there was something in them, something to hold a woman—no, perhaps not that—but something to startle a woman, to make her think, wonder, even to make her trust. And the scene which had just occurred, with all its weakness, its fatuity, its maundering display of degradation and the inability of any self-government, had not somehow destroyed the impression made upon Lady ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... and impudence of the speaker were admirable in their way. I never saw better acting, even in Kean. His look, his manner, his long arm, his elvish fore-finger,—like an exclamation-point, punctuating his bitter thought,—showed the skill of a master. The effect of the whole was to startle everybody, as if a pistol-shot had rung through the ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... mysterious night, oppressively warm, the moonlight shining on the little white figure, the deep silence, broken only by the faint murmur of the river and the distant singing of a nightingale, the gleam of the glowworms, compose a scene of fantastic beauty. The slightest sounds startle her, whether it be a fish leaping at the surface of the water to seize a fly, the gurgling of a little eddy, or the shrill cry of a bat. There is a certain voluptuous beauty in the very sound of the words that describe the little nymph, ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... not been discussed in these pages. Webster states the facts without exaggeration:[41] "For the most of them are not credible, by reason of their obscenity and filthiness; for chast ears would tingle to hear such bawdy and immodest lyes; and what pure and sober minds would not nauseate and startle to understand such unclean stories ...? Surely even the impurity of it may be sufficient to overthrow the credibility of it, especially among Christians." Professor Burr has said that "it was, indeed, no small part of ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... young supercargo, it was his second voyage in such capacity, and he suffered much secret worry from his lack of experience in pricing pearls. But when Mapuhi exposed the pearl to his sight he managed to suppress the startle it gave him, and to maintain a careless, commercial expression on his face. For the pearl had struck him a blow. It was large as a pigeon egg, a perfect sphere, of a whiteness that reflected opalescent lights from all colors about it. ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... loved dramatic situations in real life quite as well as in make-believe, planned to conceal her radiance until her first appearance on the stage, when she would startle them all, and especially Lysander, with her dazzling loveliness. She stood in a shadow of the wings with her coat wrapped about her. Except for Jerry, waiting to do her humble part, she was alone. She listened to the ceaseless chatter in the dressing-room with a happy smile. She ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... without moving a muscle, he suddenly sat bolt upright and looked round at the player. The character of the music, always individual, had grown more marked, and at this point an effect was produced which appeared to startle the musician. He withdrew his gaze, after a moment, muttering something to himself, and resumed his former attitude, slowly and gravely nodding his head. There was a long silence after the last of the lingering, ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... if I can remember anything to startle you, if you're out for sensations. It's a kind of literary society, isn't it? Can you lend me a pencil, please, and some waste paper? I don't know what I've done with my blotter. Thanks! Now I'm going right up to my bedroom ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... formerly,* that all dealers, though but for pins, may be taken in by customers for pins, sooner than by a direct bribe of ten times the value; especially if pretenders to conscience: for the offer of a bribe would not only give room for suspicion, but would startle and alarm their scrupulousness; while a high price paid for what you buy, is but submitting to be cheated in the method of the person makes a profession to get by. Have I not said that human nature is a rogue?**—And do not I ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... does Paley, why does Jeremy Taylor, when no practical matter is actually before him, lay down a maxim about the lawfulness of lying, which will startle most readers? The reason is plain. He is forming a theory of morals, and he must treat every question in turn as it comes. And this is just what St. Alfonso or Scavini is doing. You only try your hand yourself at a treatise on the ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... forth from her those pleasantries at which you will be the first to laugh and those reflections which will startle you by their profundity; now you will see sudden changes of mood and the caprices of a mind which hesitates. At times she will exhibit extreme tenderness, as if she repented of her thoughts and her projects; sometimes ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... volume of a trilogy called The Sensationalists, three books giving the history for a few years before the war, during and immediately after the war, of a group of sensation-mongers, emotion-hunters or whatever you like to call them, whose principle and practice it was to startle the world by the extravagance of their behaviour, speech, dress and thought and, in the other sense of the word, sensationalism, to live on the excitement of new experiences. Such people have always existed and always will ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... take some noisy instrument to the lake to startle the echoes; a whistle his father made him served for a time; after that he marched up and down the banks, rattling a tin canister with pebbles in it; then he got a large frying-pan from the kitchen, and beat on it with a stick every day for about a fortnight. When he grew tired of ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... read the sign—"H. H. Hardwill, Publisher." His heart half-failed him, and he stood looking in the large, book-filled window, with that romance which was to startle the literary world folded quietly under his arm, like any common paper. What kind of a man is Mr. Hardwill? he thought. Is he a large man, with a heavy watch-chain, or a thin, sky-rockety piece of humanity, ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... dominion Has broken Nature's social union, An' justifies that ill opinion, Which makes thee startle At me, thy poor, earth-born ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... picture of an hauke swiftenes and spiede, by the shape of a crocodile [Transcriber's note: 'crocoiled' in original] displeasure or misfortune, by the figure of an eye, good watche or regarde, and so forthe of other. Emong their priestes, loke whome they sawe startle aboute as haulfe wood, [Footnote: Mad, from the Saxon wod. See "Two Gentlemen of Verona," ii., 3, and "Mids. N. Dr.," ii., 3.] him did iudge of all othermooste holy, and making him their king, they fall downe and worship him, as thoughe there ware in him a Godhead, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... and fro through the room with a cautious tranquillity which nothing could startle; she prepared her decayed roots for food with a patient attention which nothing could divert. Lost, through the aggravated miseries of her position, to recent grief and present apprehension, she could still instinctively perform the simple offices of ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... rape," says his good son; videlicet, he was fond of turnips. In his fourth Satire, he mentions as a favourite dish, turnips seasoned with vinegar and boiled must (sapa), which seems, not unjustifiably, to startle Mr. Panizzi.[39] He cared so little for good eating, that he said of himself, he should have done very well in the days when people lived ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... temper no doubt aroused by some vague shadow which surely no other eyes than his could possibly have detected in the darkness; sometimes the distressful plaint of a hungry coyote, hunting for what it never seems to find—for he is always prowling and hunting—would rouse the echoes and startle the "tenderfoot" with the suddenness and nearness of its uncanny call. But for the rest all was still. And he paced to and ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... disparaging to Dr Johnson. He was rather ostentatious in his preference of the writings of Mr Boz; would walk through the streets so absorbed in them that he all but ran against Miss Jenkyns; and though his apologies were earnest and sincere, and though he did not, in fact, do more than startle her and himself, she owned to me she had rather he had knocked her down, if he had only been reading a higher style of literature. The poor, brave Captain! he looked older, and more worn, and his clothes were very threadbare. But he seemed as bright and cheerful as ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... I knew what he thought of the whole performance; but a friend of the lean man, who sat just in front of Arick, tells me what seemed to startle him most. The first thing was when two of the officers came out with blackened faces, like minstrels, and began to dance. Arick was sure that they were really black, and his own people, and he was wonderfully surprised to see them dance in this ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which gives perpetual warning of those smouldering forces ever ready to devastate the surrounding country. Subterranean activity increases during the rainy season, and tremors of earthquake occasionally startle the equanimity of those unused to the perils of existence on this thin crust of Mother Earth, for Java's teeming soil and population rest upon an ominous fissure of the globe's surface, and twelve of the forty-five volcanos on this island of terror and ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... wreak thy murder. Hissing fire of flaming stead, Groan of spear-carles, wail of women, Soon shall startle through the night. Then on Mosfell, Kirtle-Wearer, Eric waits the face of Death. Freed from weary life and sorrow, Soon we'll kiss ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... Lawrence, and I started for the theatre. I can't say that I was expecting a very pleasant evening, but the deathlike stillness, both of ourselves and the town did, I confess, startle me. Scarcely a word was exchanged by us between the English Prospect and Saint Isaac's Square. The square looked lovely in the bright moonlight, and I said something about it. It was indeed very fine, the cathedral ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... I should startle you," he said; "and do you know, you looked so busy that I hoped it would have fallen souse on your heads before you were aware of it. What was the Master ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... man in all Europe than the kaiser. It is related of him at the Court of Berlin that when on one occasion he inquired of his brother, Prince Henry, if he could suggest to him anything new wherewith to startle both his own subjects and the world in general, the sailor prince, with a merry laugh, proposed that his majesty should remain perfectly quiet, without saying or doing anything, for an entire week! That, he assured his imperial brother, would amaze and dumbfound the entire universe more than anything ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... the independence of Francis, who had scattered his friars in all the four corners of the globe without trying to gain a confirmation of the verbal and entirely provisional authorization accorded him by Innocent III.—all these things were calculated to startle the clergy. ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... go it, my hearties," sang out Mr McCarthy; and, the hands, giving a responsive cheer and putting their backs into each stroke, made the boat race along—dragging the raft behind it at a speed that caused it to rock from side to side, and slightly startle the ladies, while the boat, too, shipped a little water that came in over the bows as it dipped forward from the jerk ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... lines of her thick grey garment giving a gliding character to her rapid walk, her hair rolling backward and illuminated on the left side by the sun-rays, the little olive baby on her right arm now looking out with jet-black eyes, she might well startle that youth of fifteen, accustomed to swing the censer in the presence of a Madonna less fair ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... that startle us with their unforeseen vividness or some unexpected blaze of colour; when the fleece of gold is taken from the tree where it had long since shone like a beacon through the dark, the tree sinks back ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... are not made by Tyndall or Huxley; but they are objections made by me, which I stated to them, and in which they agreed—Tyndall expressing the opinion that I ought to make them public. I name this because you may otherwise some day startle Tyndall or Huxley by speaking to them of their objections, and giving me as the authority for so ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... It used to startle strangers to hear "The Hardy Norseman," "The Cuckoo," and such-like songs from the lips of little Chinese boys. Every Saturday evening they came to the house to practise the hymns and chants for Sunday; I had an harmonium in the dining-room. ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... dark wood rings with our voices shrill, That startle the sleeping bird! To-morrow eve must the voice be still, And the step must fall unheard. The Briton lies by the blue Champlain, In Ticonderoga's towers, And ere the sun rise twice again, Must they ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... boy with a sleepy face and hair as stiff and hard as the bristles of a brush yawned until he seemed to be about to dislocate his jaws, and stretched himself with his arms extended as though he were in his bed. The professor saw this and wished to startle him. ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... spring upon Phoebe, as though it had been something visible to startle her. It shook off her old English self for a moment, and she leaped to ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... into the Cave my self, and see what it was that had produced such wonderful Effects upon the Company; but as I was stooping at the Entrance, the Door being something low, I gave such a Nodd in my Chair, that I awaked. After having recovered my self from my first Startle, I was very well pleas'd at the Accident which had befallen me, as not knowing but a little Stay in the Place might ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... surpass Suevius influenced Virgil in attempting the same task again." [19] Trifling as this circumstance is, nothing that throws any light on the growth of Virgil's muse can be wanting in interest. Virgil was not one of those who startle the world by their youthful genius. His soul was indeed a poet's from the first, but the rich perfection of his verse was not developed until after years of severe labour, self-correction, and even failure. He began by essaying various ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... passages of interest or beauty, which we have quoted, and omitted to quote, there are scattered up and down the book, and in the midst of its most repulsive portions, a very great number of single lines and images, that sparkle like gems in the desart, and startle us with an intimation of the great poetic powers that lie buried in the rubbish that has been heaped around them. It is difficult to pick up these, after we have once passed them by; but we shall endeavour to light upon one or two. The beneficial effect of intervals ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... omens, I should rather see them pointed at the vices which prevail; at the corruptions of the public morals, which are fouler than aught I had so much as dreamed of before I was myself a witness of them, and may well be supposed to startle the gods from their rest, and draw down their hottest thunderbolts. But I will not say more, when there must be so many able to do so much better in behalf of what I must still believe to be a good cause. Let me entreat the Emperor, before he condemns, to hear. There are those in Rome, of warm ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... gazelle would timidly approach to slake his thirst at the water; the noble lion would stalk out in all his majesty for the same purpose, while ever and anon, now close to the canoes, now yards away, a loud snort would startle us, and the huge ugly head of a hippopotamus would be thrust ...
— Harper's Young People, March 2, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... respect good reading. Rather than deplore their frankness, as one critic has done, we ought to rejoice in their utter want of affectation, in their boyish honesty. At every turn there is something to amuse or to startle one into thinking. We are carried back in a vivid way to the period of their composition. Not a little of the pulsing life of that time throbs anew, and we catch glimpses of notable figures. Often, the feeling is that we have been called ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... while I have been knocking about the world. You are now more than "sweet": you are almost handsome. I suppose it is a question of lights and the time of day whether or not you are really brilliant. And you carry surety in your face. There is nothing in Chicago to startle you, perhaps not in ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... that he was somewhat out of breath. The night had fallen and the house revealed but little light from the front. Through the door he could see that the dining-room was lighted. He tried the door stealthily and entered with caution. It would not do to startle Sylvia. ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... in the midst of solitude could reach no other human ear, would startle the bashful creature into alarm; and whilst her cheek became alternately pale and crimson at such an avowal thus uttered aloud, she would wipe away the tears that arose to her eyes whenever the depths of her affection were stirred by those pensive ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... up from the table the very volume which had originally inspired this train of thought, and Shelton could see his solemn pleasure as he read. In the white of his eye there was a torpid and composed abstraction. There was nothing in that book to startle him ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... "Would it startle you to hear," he said, as if he hardly had breath to utter the words, "that she who was to me what he was to you is ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... nevertheless, is not affected by the desire either to impress or to startle his readers, any more than the writing of a good poet springs from an aiming at effect: it is like all true literature, in the first place, the outcome of a strong and personal passion, the passion for the past. He ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... clattering of hoofs was heard, and looking toward the sound, I perceived the Chancellor cantering down the road. When abreast of the carriage he dismounted, and walking up to it, saluted the Emperor in a quick, brusque way that seemed to startle him. After a word or two, the party moved perhaps a hundred yards further on, where they stopped opposite the weaver's cottage so famous from that day. This little house is on the east side of the Donchery road, near its junction ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 6 • P. H. Sheridan
... stones, and every man of them might have been hurled from the cliff by the soldiers merely rolling down stones on them. They dared not more, and a few moments' silence proved that the alarm had been merely a trick to startle the garrison—a jest soon ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... origin, but is sent directly by God himself, as David intimates in the Psalm, "out of His secret places." As to the hailstorm, he lays great stress upon the plague of hail sent by the Almighty upon Egypt, and clinches all by insisting that God showed at Mount Sinai his purpose to startle the body before impressing ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... the edge of a clearing enclosed by a worm fence I came to a row of slave-cabins. Mongrel dogs barked through the fence, and in one angle of it a young white man with long straight hair showed himself so abruptly as to startle my horse. Only the one cabin was lighted, and thence came the rhythmic shuffle of bare-footed dancers while the fiddle played "I lay ten dollars down." There were three couples on the floor, and I saw—for the excited dogs had pushed the door open—that two ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... selfish and so surprised at the goodness they showed me. Again, I saw something of the mystery of pain. My own was so trivial compared with that which some others had to bear. Yet I had enough to startle me that such a fact should be permitted on earth at all. I don't suppose we can understand its meaning; but my consolation was that it is not necessarily a sign of God's displeasure—that the highest life was a life of suffering, that the Son of Man was a 'Man of Sorrows.' ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... objective' are getting into general use now, and Donne has begun with aesthetics and exegetical in Kemble's review. Kemble himself has written an article on the Emperor Nicholas which must crush him. If you could read it, no salvos of mortalletti could ever startle you again. And now my paper is almost covered: and I must say Good bye to you. This is Sunday March 21—a fine sunny blowing day. We shall dine at one o'clock—an hour hence—go to Church—then walk—have tea at six, and pass rather a ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... typical English girl.' Miss Heriot fulfilled to a nicety the requirements of those who are sensibly reassured by the spectacle of careful conventionality allied to feminine charm—a pleasant conversability that may be trusted to soothe and counted on never to startle. Hermione would almost as soon have stood on her head in Piccadilly as have said anything original, though to her private consternation such perilous stuff had been known to harbour an uneasy instant in her bosom. She carried such inconvenient cargo as carefully hidden as a conspirator ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... once; easy manner). I'd like to know about this swindle that's going to be sprung on him. I didn't mean to startle the old man. You see, on my way here I dropped into a barber's to get a twopenny shave, and they told me there that he was something of a character. He has been a ...
— One Day More - A Play In One Act • Joseph Conrad
... something now and then that seemed to startle Cub into a mood of reflection, and whenever Cub reflected his dominance wavered. Tee-hee was able to accomplish the same effect without a "blurt". Tee-hee was sly, "as sly as they make 'em", but it was a kind of slyness that commands respect. ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... startle the little mother, whose frightened eyes were fixed upon us, we announced our mutual discovery by a single movement of the hand, and walked quietly past without pausing. Not until we reached the open fields at the end did my comrade whisper, "a cuckoo," and our hearts, if ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... light fantastic toe; And in thy right hand lead with thee The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty; And if I give thee honour due, Mirth, admit me of thy crew, To live with her, and live with thee, In unreproved pleasures free; To hear the lark begin his flight And singing startle the dull night From his watch-tower in the skies, Till the dappled dawn doth rise: Then to come, in spite of sorrow, And at my window bid good-morrow, Through the sweetbriar, or the vine, Or the twisted eglantine: While the cock with lively din, Scatters the rear of darkness thin, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... the sack summarily, when he might have had a further month of service or a month's pay. Had not the workmen's forbearance been much tried? And they had not stolen, they had bought the powder, only intending to startle. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... is the relation which has been shown to exist between criminality and household occupations. Nothing, indeed, which recent investigation has established ought to startle the American woman more. Contrary to public opinion, it is not the factory and shop which are making the greatest number of women offenders of all kinds; it is the household. In a recent careful study of over 3000 women criminals, the Bureau of Labor found that 80 per cent ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... that can shake Thy sweet composure, and thy heart dismay? Perhaps some murderer's cruel eye agleam Is fixed upon me, or some monstrous dream Might bring such fearful guilt upon the head Of my unvigilant soul as would arouse The Borgian snake from her envenomed bed, Or startle Nero in his ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... and thither through the country, and bewilder the traveller who, having strayed from his waggon, vainly hopes by following them to find his way back to the main track, or the wreaths of blue smoke which indicate the spot where a Kafir has set the grass on fire to startle and kill the tiny creatures ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... due time, a worthy consort, and a certain Crown Prince would, in further due time, startle the world with his left-handed pitching. It was a prospect all golden to dream upon. His spirit grew tall and its ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... very curious kind of man. In the coldest weather, when even the hardiest soldiers were wrapping themselves up, he would go about in his shirt sleeves just as if it were summer; and very often he would be up before any one else in the camp was astir, and startle the first officer whom he saw coming out of his tent by crowing like a rooster as loud as he could, just as if to say, "You ought to have been out before." Then, too, Count and General though he was, dining with the Empress herself almost every week, ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... sharper than the others, as though calculated to startle Galloway into a quick answer. But the proprietor of the Casa Blanca was lighting his cigar and took his time. When he looked up, his eyes told Norton that he had understood any danger which might lie under a question so simple in ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... neglect nor trifle with; who was addressing your intellect in weighty words, fathoming your intentions, and detecting your inclinations and prepossessions, and leading you in some given direction with gentle but irresistible force. He would often startle you with the boldness of his propositions, but never till he had contrived, somehow or other, to predispose you in favour of that view of the case which he was presenting. He had a most seductive smile; truth, candour, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... practice? Evidently the sole performer of my experiment must be myself; the subject—whom or what? Accident should determine. I itched to commence with murder—to tackle the stiffest problems first, and I burned to startle and baffle the world—especially the world of which I had ceased to be. Outwardly I was calm, and spoke to the people about me as usual. Inwardly I was on fire with a consuming scientific passion. I sported with my pet theories, and fitted them mentally on everyone I met. Every friend or acquaintance ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... said Diana. "I know the house, and I will call a servant; your sudden appearance might startle the old gentleman even to choking;" and she escaped from me, leaving me uncertain whether I ought to advance or retreat. It was impossible for me not to hear some part of what passed within the dinner apartment, and particularly several apologies ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... as a hawk's from sheer solitude and lonely travelling. He was so bent and scarred with weather that he seemed as much a part of that woodland place as the birks themselves, and the noise of his labours did not startle the birds that ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... that I startle from its shaded restin' place, Seems a furry shaft o' silence shootin' into noiseless space, An' a rattlesnake a crawlin' through the rocks so old an' gray Helps along the ghostly feelin' in a rather startlin' way. Every breeze that dares to whisper does it with a bated breath, Every ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... those stronger alcoholic beverages that are the product of distillation. In addition to those commonly designated as such we may reckon brandy, gin, and rum, and at the same time those subtle combinations called mixed-drinks, for which they serve as a basis. It will, perhaps, startle the average reader when the statement is made that whisky and its near relatives just referred to, particularly when diluted by water, are by far the least harmful of all alcoholic drinks. Their bad reputation lies in the fact that on account of their large percentage of alcohol ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... forbidden by the laws of life; but that life is full of indirect messages from the unseen world; that all our "simulated thunder-claps," all our "counterfeited truths," all those glimpses of beauty which startle while they elude the soul, are messages of this kind: darts shot from the spirit world, which rebound as they touch, yet sting us to the consciousness of its existence. And so Rene Gentilhomme had had a true revelation, in what reminded him that there are things higher ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... cannot go into the Joys like this: most of them cannot endure me. But I have here the thick veil with which I cover myself when I visit happy people.... (She unfolds a long veil and wraps herself in it carefully.) Not a ray of my you! must startle them, for there are many Happinesses that are afraid and are not happy.... There... like this, even the ugliest and coarsest of them ...
— The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts • Maurice Maeterlinck
... cough was one of the peculiarities of my friend, and determined to assume the character in toto, I allowed myself to startle the silence now and then with a series of gasps and chokings that whether agreeable or not, certainly were of a character to show that I had no desire to conceal my presence from those I had come among. Indeed it was my desire to acquaint them as fully ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... would request him to re-peruse any one poem, of any confessedly great poet from Homer to Milton, or from Aeschylus to Shakespeare; and to strike out, (in thought I mean), every instance of this kind. If the number of these fancied erasures did not startle him; or if he continued to deem the work improved by their total omission; he must advance reasons of no ordinary strength and evidence, reasons grounded in the essence of human nature. Otherwise, I should not hesitate to consider him as a man not so much proof against all authority, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... sight; A lovely Apparition sent To be a moment's ornament; Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair; Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair; But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful Dawn; A dancing Shape, an Image gay, To haunt, to startle, and way-lay. ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... heard. I doubt it—with men. It may be with women.—But you won't surprise them? It might startle your mother too much. She is not strong, you say. Hadn't I better tell Clara Coningham? She can let them ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... nor moved a mite. That is one of the peculiarities of the boy, you can't surprise him: nothin' seems to startle him. ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... dominion Has broken nature's social union, An' justifies that ill opinion Which makes thee startle At me, thy poor ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... approaching. Before we have reached victory we have reached bankruptcy. We are to-day flooding the country with an irredeemable currency. In ninety days, with the patriotism of the people paralyzed by the inaction of our great army, the funded debt of the country will depreciate with a rapidity that will startle us. In ninety days more the nations of the world will, I fear, be justified in saying to us, "You have no more right to shut up the cotton fields of the world by a vain and fruitless effort to reconquer the territory ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... Gadol so much as the manner in which I received his confidences. He half expected to startle me by his boldness, but was himself confounded by my words. I told him that in my country self was the chief consideration, self-preservation the law of nature; death the King of Terrors; wealth the object ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... making faggots of myrtle-branches. She listened sullenly to Gertrude's offer and explanations; indifferently to my admonitions not to accept. The thought of stripping for the view of a man, which would send a shudder through our most brazen village girls, seemed not to startle her, immaculate and savage as she is accounted. She did not answer, but sat under the olives, looking vaguely across the sea. At that moment Waldemar came up to us; he had followed with the intention of putting an end ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... we realized it before we reached home. The flock was very timid, and when disturbed on North Head invariably came past the wireless station close to the engine-hut. Sandell concealed himself there with a gun, while I went out to startle the animals. They did not fail to do their part, but Sandell missed and the shot frightened them. He then rushed out and fired another shot as they were running, managing to hit one, which immediately dropped behind and ran to the edge of the cliff. We did not want to shoot the sheep at this ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... creaked whenever he went along the passages, and neither did her aunt or Tetchen tread with feet as light as that. She sat up, and then the knock was repeated,—very low and very clear. She still paused a moment, resolving that nothing should frighten her,—nothing should startle her. No change that could come to her would, she thought, be a change for the worse. She hastened up from off the bed, and stood upon the floor. Then she gave the answer that is usual to such a summons. "Come in," she said. She spoke low, but ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... you stay here in the hall with Bob," she directed her youngest daughter. "You won't be afraid with Bob, will you, dear? I don't want too many to go down or we may startle Libbie." ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... in the utmost genial and kind in his look and way; he was not a person from whom one would keep back anything he wanted to know; as also evidently he was not one to ask anything he should not. The request did not even startle Eleanor. She looked thoughtfully over the heaving sea ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... began. And swift and sudden it went on to the end. She had come on board the yacht that first night to startle it with her beauty and her voice; last night, silent and stately, she had slipped through the evening like a dream; now she stood before him a dazzling creature of the morning: yesterday she was Penseroso; to-day she was Allegro; what would she be to-morrow? How sparkling, as one day ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... greatest dramatists asserts itself not only in their thoughts but even in the mere form of their plays. It is the lesser men who invent new tricks of technique and startle the public with innovations. Moliere merely perfected the type of Italian comedy that his public long had known. Shakespeare quietly adopted the forms that lesser men had made the crowd familiar with. He imitated Lyly in Love's Labour's Lost, Greene in As You ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... end. Even in a corner of it, in a private park, or in the neighbourhood of a single hamlet, the weather and the seasons keep so deftly changing that although we walk there for a lifetime there will be always something new to startle and delight us. ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... old in the angel-hymn of the Advent, breathes of "glory to God, peace on earth, and good-will to men," in the serene atmosphere of that "perfect love which casteth out fear," smiles at the terrors which throng the sick dreams of the sensual, which draw aside the nightcurtains of guilt, and startle with whispers of revenge the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the lion. My first shot had struck one of his back teeth, breaking it squarely off, and then passed through the fleshy part of the neck. It was a wound that would startle, but not kill. The second shot had hit him between the eyes, but had glanced off the skull, merely ripping open the skin on the forehead for five inches. The third shell had killed him, except for the convulsive heaving that was finally stilled ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... was renewed and the visitor took his leave, declining Alec's offer to "run him home" in the car. "The car might startle my old friend," he pleaded. Alec saw him off, and returned to find the General, who had contrived to avoid more than a distant bow of farewell to Beaumaroy, standing on the hearthrug apparently in ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... With their horses and following, Should rush to her dwelling, And our prince[122] in his trim, They might vainly aspire Without rifle and fire To ruffle or nigh her, Her mantle to dim. Stark-footed, lively, Ever capering naively With motion alive, aye, And wax-white, in shine, When her startle betrays That the hounds are in chase, The same as the base Is the rocky decline— She puffs from her chest, And she ambles her crest And disdain is express'd In her nostril and eye;— That eye—how it winks! Like a sunbeam it blinks, And it glows, and it sinks, And is jealous ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... man gripped his arm so suddenly that Sinnet was startled—in so far as anything could startle any one who had lived a life of chance and danger and accident—and his face grew a shade paler; but he did not move, and ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... that a light has been found which can penetrate, so as to make a photographic record, through everything from a purse or a pocket to the walls of a room or a house, is news which cannot fail to startle everybody. That the eye of the physician or surgeon, long baffled by the skin, and vainly seeking to penetrate the unfortunate darkness of the human body, is now to be supplemented by a camera, making all the parts of the human body as visible, in a way, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... body! In fact, the case is just as if a young giant were compelled to waste all his strength in carrying about the corpse of the old giant, his grandfather, who died a long while ago, and only needs to be decently buried. Just think a moment, and it will startle you to see what slaves we are to bygone times,—to Death, if we give the matter ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... a sudden proud impulse he raised his head and looked at her with a bold steadfastness,—a critical scrutiny,—a calmly discriminating valuation of her physical charms that for the moment certainly appeared to startle her self-possession, for a deep flush colored the fairness of her face and then faded, leaving her pale as marble. Her emotion, whatever it was, lasted but a second,—yet in that second he had measured his mental strength against hers, and had become aware of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Did I startle you? I 'm so sorry," said Miss Sandus, coming up to her. "Yes, Don Antonio has arrived. I saw him as he disembarked at his native railway-station. I was ordering a book at Smith's. And such luggage, my dear. Boxes and bags, bags and boxes, till you ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... this moment the mob opened fire on the soldiers. This appeared for a moment to startle the captain and his men. But it was only for a moment. Then he coolly gave the command: "Ready! aim! fire!" The company obeyed to the instant, and poured a volley of bullets into that part of the mob which was trying to batter down the side door of ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... courtship, for he believed that he had a clear field before him, and he was too sagacious to startle Clara by overmuch energy. Meantime he began to be conscious that an influence from her was reaching his spirit. He had hitherto considered her a child; one day he suddenly recognized her as a woman. Now a woman, a ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... Rue Lafitte, who I believe has been most malignantly traduced by the third-rate English Colony in Paris—all his faults exaggerated, none of his good qualities even hinted at. The good British public has so long been used to look upon him as a minotaur that it will perhaps startle and amuse it to be told that he ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... I'm so excited I'm all mixed up! She's had an awful spell, but she's better now; but you mustn't startle her. Something's the matter with her heart. It was beating like a ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... little enough here in America, either in the towns or in the cities," he said rapidly. "We are all on the rush. We are all for action. I sit still and think. If I wanted to write I'd do something. I'd tell what everyone thought. It would startle people, frighten them a little, eh? I would tell you what you have been thinking this afternoon while you walked here on this railroad track with me. I would tell you what your mother has been thinking at the same time and what she would like to ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... the earliest if not the first remarkable animal to startle a stranger on arriving in Ceylon, whilst wending his way from Point-de-Galle to Colombo, is a huge lizard of from four to five feet in length, the Talla-goya of the Singhalese, and Iguana[1] of the Europeans. It ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... waitin' in it," he growled. "I have waited long enough, and too long, and you must choose between us now. You know we will soon be at 'Five Fingers,' and you must be good or they may get you," with a wicked leer and clutch at her arm calculated to startle her as she carelessly sat on the ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... electoral franchise; there, you will find a free Church, a free school, free land, a free vote, and a free career for the child of the humblest born in the land. My countrymen who work for your living, remember this: there will be one wild shriek of freedom to startle all mankind if that ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... thoughts. Week after week pours onward its stream of low-born, corrupt, unspiritual feelings. Year after year accumulates that hardening mass of carnal-mindedness, and distaste for religion, which is sometimes a more insuperable obstacle to the truth, than positive faults and vices which startle and shock the conscience. And yet the man thinks nothing about all this action of his mind and heart. He does not subject it to any self-inspection. If he should, for but a single hour, be lifted ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... to be moral was to believe that under certain circumstances you would at some future time go to hell. Virtue of that kind was not to Edwards' taste, though few men have been less sparing in using the appeal to damnation. But threats of hell-fire were only meant to startle the sinner from his repose. His morality could be framed from no baser material than love to the Divine perfections. 'What thanks are due to you for not loving your own misery, and for being willing to take some pains to escape ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... burglars in the night—priding herself indeed on this timidity, and telling people that when you once had had a husband you lost your nerve for sleeping alone. So Caroline knew there was no help to be had in that quarter, and yet she did not like to startle Miss Ethel after that fall among the half-built houses which had been more than an ordinary faint, though no one made anything ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... the knight, 'I was anxious to hasten as quickly as possible through the forest, for it seemed to me that not only might I find it difficult to regain the pathway I had lost, but that strange beings might again startle both me and my ...
— Undine • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... rhythmic arrangement will be felt to bear force and impressiveness both to reader and to hearer. In the remaining Books changes will be found fewer in number and less striking; but occasionally, as for example in 1 Kings xx. 27, we come across changes that startle us by their unlooked-for character, but which, if correct, add a deeper degradation to the outpoured blood of Ahab ...
— Addresses on the Revised Version of Holy Scripture • C. J. Ellicott
... sometimes is apt to run away with him. He must give us next, not scattered scenes, but a whole epic, the middle of which shall be as obvious as the beginning or the end. He should, in his next work, seek less to please, startle, or gain an audience, than to tell them in thunder and in music what they ought to believe and to do. Thus acting, he may "fill his crescent-sphere;" revive the power and glory of song; give voice to a ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... trees on de banks and 'round, wid long moss hangin' from de limbs. I baited my hook wid a small, wigglin', live, minnow and throwed out into de water. Nothin' happen. In de warm sunshine I must have gone to sleep, when I was startle out my doze by Henry a shoutin': 'Marse Johnnie, Marse Johnnie, your cork done gone down out of sight!' I made a pull but felt at once it would take both hands to land dat fish. I took both hands, put ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... Turgenieff's stories with the knowledge that they were composed—or rather that they came into being—in this way, one can trace the process in every line. Story, in the conventional sense of the word—a fable constructed, like Wordsworth's phantom, 'to startle and waylay'—there is as little as possible. The thing consists of the motions of a group of selected creatures, which are not the result of a preconceived action, but a consequence of the qualities of the actors."—And ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... patting him paternally on the back, not to startle everybody again. If he should see another onca he had better come to me. I seldom missed when I fired at all—as I had been able to show them a few days before. I did not wish my men to behave like so many timid young girls, as I wished to be able to tell people in Europe that Brazilians ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... property altogether. They were extreme Communists, and so were many of the earlier Socialists; in More's Utopia, doors might not be fastened, they stood open; one hadn't even a private room. These earlier writers wished to insist upon the need of self-abnegation in the ideal State, and to startle and confound, they insisted overmuch. The early Christians, one gathers, were almost completely communistic, and that interesting experiment in Christian Socialism (of a rather unorthodox type of Christianity), the American Oneida community, was successfully communistic in every respect for ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... the puppets turn independent agents. He represented to Talboys that Lucy was young and very innocent in some respects; that marriage did not seem to run in her head as in most girls'; that a precipitate avowal might startle her, and raise unnecessary difficulties by putting her on her guard too early in their acquaintance. "You have no rival," he concluded; "best win her quietly by degrees. Undermine the coy jade! she is worth it." ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... whom he was brought in contact, so he was very uncharitable in his judgment of them; and thus having really a low opinion of so many of them he could indulge his vindictive rancor without stint; his invective, always powerful, will sometimes startle us by its venom, and we shall be pained to see him apt to make enemies for a good cause by making ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... very much upset?" queried Flora de Barral, meaning, of course, Mrs. Fyne. And I admitted that she was less so than her husband—and even less than myself. Mrs. Fyne was a very self-possessed person which nothing could startle out of her extreme theoretical position. She did not seem startled when Fyne and I proposed going ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... startle them, I fancy. Something very much like a feminine screech rose in the oomiak. It was quickly hushed up, though, with no fainting, but any quantity of heh-heh-ing and yeh-yeh-ing from ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... late at night, and even if they startle me a little when I'm in bed, the pleasure of going to sleep again is all the greater. But in the morning I awaken them, when I put my room in order. Then they scold a little and go." I had been observing him in the mean time. His clothes were scrupulously clean, his figure ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... and whether venomous or not it was enough to startle the watcher, as a serpent some seven or eight feet in length came into sight, travelling through the undergrowth, with its scales ever changing in tint as its folds came more or less into connection with the light that penetrated ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... not wish to be in a hurry to make my revelations to the world at large. I do not wish to startle people without being able to show them proof of what I say. I wish to speak only to persons who are worthy to hear my story, and I have begun with you. I do not want you to believe me until you are quite ready to do so. Think over what I have said, consider it carefully, ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... ascendency, and his finest renditions grew "out of tune and harsh." In depicting the pathetic frenzy of Lear, such actors as he and Kean, when at their best, can surpass all rivals; and the grotesque, darkly-powerful ideals of Richard and Shylock are precisely those in which they will startle us to the last, gathering new, though fitful, expressions of hate and scorn, as their own natures sink from ethereal to grosser atmospheres. The mouth catches most surely the growing tendency of a soul; and on the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... beauty of their individual sky-blue flowers. No wonder a neat housewife finds them an eyesore. But I never pass the spot in August (I do not pass it at all after that) without seeing that hers is only one side of the story. My approach is sure to startle a few goldfinches (and they too are most estimable neighbors), to whom these scraggy herbs are quite as useful as my excellent lady's apple-trees and pear-trees are to her. I watch them as they circle ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... to engage the wonder at any price; that it would startle the naturalists, wake up the whole scientific world, draw in the masses, and make $20,000 for the Museum. Barnum told him that he thought well of the speculation, only he did not like ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... as if they had never seen it before, and then one of them turned on me quickly, as if to startle me. "Vous etes ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... traffic in the Edgware Road. Then she would drop back again, to crouch against the wall, drawing the quilt about her, and remain motionless until a step on the stair or the banging of a door below would startle her ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... she will kill herself," I answered, thinking that this resolve would startle Henriette. But when she heard it a disdainful smile, more expressive than the thoughts it conveyed, flickered on her lips. "My dear conscience," I continued, "if you would take into account my resistance and the seductions that led to my fall you ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... I'll startle you. Sixty years ago, the grandfather of Admiral Semmes made whisky ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... I. And that is what I must find out. I have my suspicions. My dear, don't let me startle you, but have you ever thought that it might ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... give happiness? look round, and see What gay distress! what splendid misery! Whatever fortune lavishly can pour, The mind annihilates, and calls for more! Wealth is a cheat; believe not what it says; Like any lord it promises—and pays. How will the miser startle, to be told Of such a wonder, as insolvent gold! What nature wants has an intrinsic weight; All more, is but the fashion of the plate, Which, for one moment, charms the fickle view; It charms us now; anon we cast anew; To some fresh birth of fancy more inclin'd: Then wed not acres, but a noble ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... acts Ursus exhibited his power as an engastrimist, and executed marvels of ventriloquism. He imitated every cry which occurred in the audience—a song, a cry, enough to startle, so exact the imitation, the singer or the crier himself; and now and then he copied the hubbub of the public, and whistled as if there were a crowd of people within him. These were remarkable talents. Besides this he harangued like Cicero, as we have ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... goods in Cap'n Abe's store did not so much startle the visitor, as the figure that rose from behind the counter, where he ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... an' flung him down against the wall. I got one glance out into the hall, an' didn't care no more what become o' him. You was facin' the whole mob of 'em, swingin' a gun barrel, an' I knew where I belonged. But damned if that feller didn't startle me. He was up like a flash to his feet, an' I thought he was trying to get me. But he wasn't. When I run to you, he wasn't two steps behind, an' may I be jiggered, sir, if he didn't jump in there on ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... migrations, but, on the contrary, goes as far away from them as possible, preferably to some mountain region, beside a cool and dashing brook, where a party of adventurous young climbers from a summer hotel or the lonely trout fisherman may startle it from its mossy nest ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... one night as usual. No word had fallen from my lips, at that time or at any time before it, that could betray me, or startle her into sudden knowledge of the truth. But when we met again in the morning, a change had come over her—a change ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... a crack in the high wall—from its eyrie without doubt—a huge female eagle suddenly shot down toward the drifting aeroplane. The flying machine seemed not to startle the great bird at all; it only angered her. Perhaps she had young up there in the cliff and she feared her hereditary enemy, Man, was coming on wings to deprive ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... fingers over the big staring letters, as over the black and white keys of a piano, drumming out of them a mild melody of perfect repose. With what delight do we disport us in the illimitable void of its nothingness, as who should swim in air! Here is nothing to startle-nothing to wound. The very atmosphere is saturated with "the spirit of the rural press;" and even our dog stands by, with pendant tail, slowly dropping the lids over his great eyes; and then, jerking them suddenly ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile |
