"Conversational" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of her, no one would believe that a serene, professional spirit of enquiry prompted his curiosity. While native caution kept him hesitating, the opportunity slipped away; Agnes surrendered to the boisterous advances of Geoff, and he turned to find Mrs. Nares tentatively conversational ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... horribly uninteresting as a rule, but mine shall be quite different. There shall be nothing stiff and prim about it; the photographs shall be dotted about in all sorts of positions, and underneath each I shall put in—ah—conversational annotations." Her tongue lingered over the words with triumphant enjoyment. "Conversational annotations, describing the circumstances under which it was taken, and anything about it which is worth remembering... What are you going to do ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... predetermined sentence of death, Miss Cavell courageously and freely admitted her assistance in the specified cases of escape. When she was asked why she did it, she declared her fear that if she had not done so the men would have been shot by the Germans. Her testimony was given in a clear conversational tone that betrayed no nervousness and her entire bearing was such as to win the sympathy of everyone except her ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... he passed the angle of the house she dodged around to its rear and stole into the dairy room, being well aware that from this position she could overhear words spoken in ordinary conversational tones in the apartment above. She had barely gained her ambush when she heard Alida ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... the feuilleton of a Paris daily journal, M. Sainte-Beuve cannot but be sometimes diffuse; but his diffuseness is always animated, never languid. Fluent, conversational, ever polished, he is full of happy turns and of Gallic sprightliness. When the occasion offers, he is concise, condensed even in the utterance of a principle or of a comprehensive thought. "Admiration is a much finer test of literary talent, a sign much ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... Professor Roswell D. Hitchcock, gave us one of his incisive and inspiring discourses. The building accommodates eighteen hundred worshippers, and in emergencies, twenty-five hundred. It is a model of cheerfulness and convenience, and is so felicitous in its acoustics that an ordinary conversational tone can be heard at the opposite end of the auditorium. The picture of the Church in this volume gives no adequate idea of the size of the edifice; for the Sunday School Hall and lecture-room and social ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... 'David' stay?" Bassett had tried to keep his tone carefully conversational, but he saw that it was not necessary. She was glad of a chance ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... smiled in listless amusement, but Joe took it for conversational encouragement. "City folks is dretful bashful when they's away from home," he said to himself. He clucked again to his unheeding horses, shifted his quid, and was casting about for a new topic when a ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... instruction, is this: "Say rose." Now your Parisian rather prides himself on a peculiar pronunciation of the letter r. He neither rolls it like an Italian, nor does he make anything like the noise standing for r in our conversational English,—something like uhr-ose,—a sound said to be peculiar to our language. A Parisian rolls his r, by making his uvula vibrate, keeping the tongue quite still: producing a peculiar gurgling sound. This is an abomination in the ears of the Conservatoire. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... I've watched 'em close, and it's my private opinion that before many days you'll see your club-house sailing back here, with Queen Elizabeth at the hellum, and the other ladies on the for'ard deck knittin' and crochetin', and tearin' each other to pieces in a conversational way, as happy as if there never had been any Captain Kidd and his ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... mean time she took part in every amusement with her wonted affability and without the slightest indication of alarm. She dined with the rest of the company, and enlivened the whole court with those conversational charms for which she was distinguished. The disease proved light, and she was carried through it very successfully. Soon after, ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... conversation towards personal lines that might lead into something that would justify a gesture towards her. It began to work on him. The original clinical urge to touch her just to see what reaction would obtain changed into a personal urge that grew higher as he found that he could not kick the conversational ball in that direction. The idea of putting an arm about her waist as he had seen men embrace their girls on television was a pleasing thought; he wanted to find out if kissing was as much fun as it was made ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... was not prone to be very diffident of his own conversational powers, but it did seem to him that he was about to tax them almost too far. He hardly knew where to begin, and he hardly knew ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... ladies and brave men assembled at what is called a 'surprise-party.' It was my fortune to be the attendant cavalier, for the time, of a damsel of romantic disposition, and, I fear, of somewhat impaired digestive powers. And she was lamenting, not boisterously, but in a subdued, conversational manner, that the good old days were gone, 'the days of Chivalry,' when my lady had her nice little boo-dwah (for the life of me, I didn't know whether that was something nice to eat or to wear; but ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... conversational powers are limited, I had some difficulty in securing a vehicle. This was explained later by the discovery the next day that no one is allowed on the streets of Calais after ten o'clock. Nevertheless I secured a hack, and rode blithely and unconsciously to the house where I was to spend the night. ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... perhaps her servant Maria, and partly because it was so picturesque and afforded much excellent material for gossip. Mrs Garlick's latest feat of stinginess was invariably a safe card to play in the conversational game. Each successive feat was regarded as funnier ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... proper relations were established. Winkleman seated himself humbly on the sod, and kept silence, while high converse went forward. At length M'tela departed. Winkleman immediately plunged into the conversational gap around which, mentally, he had been, impatiently ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... demonstrate: A German aviator had been attacked and brought to earth by a French airman. The German was killed in the contest. In the dead man's pocket was found a diary of his adventures in the war, and other happenings, from day to day. It was written in conversational style addressed throughout to his wife, together with a letter to her of the same day's date. The next morning a French aeroplane flew over the German line. Descending to within a few hundred yards of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... once, but you will be audacious many times, madam," Newman answered. "I didn't come however, for conversational purposes. I came to say this, simply: that if you will write immediately to your daughter that you withdraw your opposition to her marriage, I will take care of the rest. You don't want her to turn nun—you know more about the ...
— The American • Henry James
... I have, of course, nothing to say; but that I have sedulously avoided being overlearned; that few Latin words will be found in the work—none whatsoever in the conversational parts, and none but the names of articles which have no direct English appellation; and that it is sufficiently simple and direct for the most ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... There are conversational compensations for life in the Orient. Talk does not grow stale when there are always the latest phases of "the great game" of international politics to gossip about. Men do not discuss baseball performances ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... Derwent Coleridge, and of Mrs. Coleridge, my dear and honored friends of so many years, I must not permit myself to speak. I may note only the brilliant conversational power of Mr. Coleridge, and the fact that as I listen to him I perfectly understand the marvelous gifts in this way of his father, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Again and again I have been held as if under a spell by the flowing stream of his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... his hand across his jaw. "I think that you might just be desperate enough to use that thing you're brandishing about so melodramatically if I don't," he remarked in a calmly conversational tone. ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... past that I have indulged and spoiled you, with the result that you are growing into a most impertinent young rascal. Have the goodness for the future, sir, to allow me to speak for myself. When I require your conversational assistance, I will ask you ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... was the subject of horses and saddles, and the other was the danger of the ford we were coming to, and he exhibited a good deal of ingenuity in endeavoring to excite our alarm. He returned to the ford from every other conversational excursion, and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... my head and listened more earnestly to the music or to the conversation in the parlor, of inspired men and women, talking in low, conversational tones, with now and then a spice of wit, on art, religion, science or the lives of great painters, musicians, artists and reformers. Or I was looking to see if the "Northern Cross" had appeared among the constellations above the horizon. ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... As they tramped briskly off, atop the cliffs, toward the ferry to New York, five miles away, they talked with a quiet, quick seriousness which discovered them to each other. It was too cold for conversational fencing. It was too splendidly open for them not to rejoice in the freedom from New York streets and feel like heroes ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... to light a cigar. Andrew made no reply, and the conversational topic died a natural death. They talked of other things—went back to Arras, the Somme, Saint Quentin. Presently Arbuthnot, pulling out his watch, suggested lunch. Andrew rose, pleading an engagement—his daily ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... over-sized and made mental notes of their answers for my own subsequent use. Since the Eighteenth Amendment put the nineteenth hole out of commission, prohibition and how to evade it are the commonest of all conversational topics among those moving about from place to place in America; but the subject of what a man eats, and more particularly what he eats for breakfast, runs it a ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... their hour of need. From the first touch of her hand and the first look into her face Skippy knew that a crisis had arrived. Mr. Tuptale was so placidly and professionally at ease and Miss Tupper so nervously and unsibilantly conversational that the conversation bubbled on like a kettle steaming in a distant room. He nodded once or twice, Mr. Tuptale fingered a magazine while Jennie ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... of word and gesture in the conversational method of to-day there lies the history of the long struggle of the race through volubility to refinement of expression. Du Maurier's Punch pictures take their place in the field of psychology in which the modern novel has secured its greatest results, and the best appreciation ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... answered with certainty, and have added something to show his acquaintance there. The chateau of Le Lude served me in this manner all the way to Vaas, where there is a great church, which answered my purpose thence to Chateau du Loir. But though I threw out my conversational bait to dozens of people, of all conditions, not one bite did I get anywhere on the road between Le ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... mother's voice, in a rather startled conversational tone, and then another woman speaking; then the voices died away. Mrs. Lessways had evidently opened the back door to somebody, and taken her at once into the sitting-room. The occurrence was unusual. Hilda went softly out on to the landing and listened, ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... seem to enter the heart through none of the ordinary and ticketed senses. It is true that he had not produced in her mind the distinct impression that she was anything more to him than an agreeable talker and listener in his conversational moods; but that was due to her natural modesty rather than to his self-restraint. He had been impatient, at times, of her slowness to respond, and it was only when he saw whither this impatience was leading him that he resolved to tell her all that she ought to know. ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Francisco, and did it cleanly. Except that he exhaled a peculiar druglike odor, he was not personally offensive in domestic contact, and by virtue of being the recognized laundryman of the whole community his own blouses were always freshly washed and ironed. His conversational reserve arose, not from his having to deal with an unfamiliar language,—for he had picked up a picturesque and varied vocabulary with ease,—but from his natural temperament. He was devoid of curiosity, and utterly unimpressed by anything but the purely business concerns of those he served. Domestic ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... been well taught. This is clear from the remarkably good spelling which we find in the private letters; it is seldom that words are misspelt. The language may be conversational, or even dialectic, but the words are written correctly. The school-books that have survived bear testimony to the attention that had been given to improving the educational system. Every means was adopted for lessening ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... Barry, amused at his new acquaintance's conversational powers. "But I'm a rat in a strange garret here. Nothing doing. Can't get a ship for love ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... . . Nikita, haven't we any of that red Kavkas wine [Footnote: Chikir] left?" I asked, very much enlivened by Guskof's conversational talent. Nikita still kept muttering; but he brought us the red wine, and again looked on angrily as Guskof drained his glass. In Guskof's behavior was noticeable his old freedom from constraint. I wished that he would go as soon as possible; it seemed as ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... being there for conversational purposes, continued his slow pacing, his rifle resting over his ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham
... walked away, Uncle Dan looked after the two comely figures, with a newly acquired intelligence of observation. Presently he coughed discreetly, and asked, with a great effort at being merely conversational: "Did it ever strike you, Polly, that young ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... French from an "Ahn's First-Course." The history of this famous work is remarkable and instructive. The book was originally written for a joke, by a witty Frenchman who had resided for some years in England. He intended it as a satire upon the conversational powers of British society. From this point of view it was distinctly good. He submitted it to a London publishing firm. The manager was a shrewd man. He read the book through. Then he ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... tried and know; and I wouldn't if I could. There's a limit to everything, and the limit of my patience and endurance is reached. I'm done for now and for all time." The voice was not excited now or unnaturally tense, but normal, almost conversational. ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... she's a school-teacher, working here in vacation," Claire whispered to Milt, beside her at the long, busy, scenically conversational table. ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... his son David, newly back from England and the study of metallurgy, and a Mr. Winscombe, come out to the Provinces in connection with the Maryland boundary dispute, accompanied by his wife. All this Howat Penny regarded with profound distaste; necessary social and conversational forms repelled him. And it annoyed his father when he sat, apparently morose, against the wall, or ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... immediately the grocer's boy came out of the shop with a heavy basket on his arm, delivered the small pot of ginger at her own door, and proceeded along the street. He was, unfortunately, a popular and a conversational youth, who had a great deal to say to his friends, and the period of waiting to see if he would turn up the steep street that led to Miss Mapp's house was very protracted. At the corner he deliberately ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... he met my eye. He winced slightly, but recovered himself, and going to the fence, stood for a few moments on his hands, with his bare feet quivering in the air. Then he turned toward me and threw out a conversational preliminary. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... memoirs, though several times approached by publishers and strongly urged to do so by his friends, notably Mr. Froude and Mr. John Bright. If his reminiscences are to be at all characteristic they must be conversational, and it is as a talker that he himself at length ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... I was informed that music is never performed on such occasions as these, during conversational periods, as it is considered a desecration of a ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... man more than his works, or they forget the works in the absorbing impression made by the living author. And no wonder. Those who remember him in his more vigorous days can bear witness to the peculiarity and transcendant power of his conversational eloquence. It was unlike anything that could be heard elsewhere; the kind was different, the degree was different, the manner was different. The boundless range of scientific knowledge, the brilliancy and exquisite nicety of illustration, the deep and ready reasoning, the strangeness ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... three conversational lessons, let pupils begin their diaries (composition books). In these may be written descriptions of what they see, hear, or read about the place being studied ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George
... tones of her rich voice. Her whisper electrifies and penetrates; her hurried words in the passion of the scene, where she drinks the sleeping potion, and afterward in the catastrophe at the end, although very far below conversational pitch, came to the ear with distinctness and with wonderful effect. In the final scene she reached the climax of her acting, which, from the time of Tybalt's death to the end, was full of tragic power that we have never seen excelled. It ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... contrary, was a small man, quiet in manner, conversational in argument, and an encyclopedia of definite information. He was so thorough that, when he became a Bell lawyer, he first spent an entire summer at his country home in Petersham, studying the laws of physics and electricity. He was never in the slightest degree spectacular. ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... 'threw out his bow window' on the strength of his success with 'John Bull,' and spent much more than he had. He mingled freely in all the London circles of thirty years ago, whose glory is still fresh in the minds of most of us, and everywhere his talent as an improvisatore, and his conversational powers, made him ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... his Father's, where I remember John Mill, John Crawford, Mrs. Crawford, and a number of young and elderly figures of distinction,—that a group having formed on the younger side of the room, and transcendentalisms and theologies forming the topic, a number of deep things were said in abrupt conversational style, Sterling in the thick of it. For example, one sceptical figure praised the Church of England, in Hume's phrase, "as a Church tending to keep down fanaticism," and recommendable for its very indifferency; ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... occasion he was in one of his most wilful, mocking, reckless moods, and was no sooner seated than he began smilingly, in his quiet conversational tone, to discuss the question of the singer and the tune. Yes, he said, the Milkmaid was a good tune, but another name to it would have suited the subject better. Oh, the subject! Any one might guess what that would be. The words mattered more than the air. For ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... at her out of the corners of his eyes. Her latest conversational effort tickled his sense of humor—it was so wholly inadequate. He laughed outright. "That's better; the high spirits will soon be coming back—— Thousands of Braithwaites! My dear Terry, there must be hundreds of thousands." ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... elegant mansion in a fashionable quarter of the city of New York, toward the close of April, a social party were assembled, distributed mostly in small conversational groups. The head of the establishment, a pompous, well-to-do merchant, stout, short, and baldheaded, and evidently well satisfied with himself and his position in society, was vehemently expressing his opinions upon the affairs of the ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... Sunday afternoon with old Fortescue, K. C., who'd come up to see his two daughters, both great friends of Isabel's, and some mute inglorious don whose name I forget, but who was in a state of marked admiration for her. The six of us played a game of conversational entanglements throughout, and mostly I was impressing the Fortescue girls with the want of mental concentration possible in a rising politician. We went down Carfex, I remember, to Folly Bridge, and inspected the Barges, and then back by way of Merton to the Botanic Gardens ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... quite determined to give Mr. Seven Sachs a brief episodic account of his career. A fair conversational opening was all he wanted ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... conversational maneuver was a feint. He inquired, with a certain affected indifference, what sort of weather Durant had met with on the journey down, and what sort he had left behind him in London; and then he seemed ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... this Jerry, but he was already grown into a proverb. Men of the Three B's reckoned their conversational dates by the visits of the youth; if a storm hung over the mountains someone might remark: "It looks like Jerry Strann is coming," and such a remark was always received in gloomy silence; mothers ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... Of Mrs. Montagu's conversational abilities Johnson entertained a higher opinion. " Sir," he would say, "that lady exerts more mind in conversation than any person I ever met with" (Miss Reynolds's Recollections). It was probably, indeed, to the fame of her conversation, and of the has biem parties which ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... Bench he has been known as a citizen of wealth, of retired habits, but of influence in public affairs, and retaining to the full the conversational gifts which have made him the life and charm of social and professional circles. Indeed it may be said that either at the Bar, in well remembered efforts of marked brilliancy as an advocate, or on the Bench, occasionally illuminating the soberness of judicial proceedings, or in assemblies ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... I was deeply impressed with his power. He was not so smooth and eloquent as Phillips, but he could make his audience both laugh and cry; the latter, Phillips himself said he never could do. Mr. Stanton was then in his prime, a fine-looking, affable young man, with remarkable conversational talent, and was ten years my senior, with the advantage that number ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... rather absurd," he said, in a conversational way, as we went to the next tee, "that putting should be so ridiculously important. Take that hole, for instance. I get on the green in a perfect three; you fluff your drive completely and ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... cares to know about their changes of lodgings and their petty disbursements, it is, after all, because they are great personalities, and have displayed their greatness in imaginative writings or in uttering fertile and inspiring conversational dicta. Imagine what one's responsibility would have been if one could have persuaded Charles Lamb to have taken up the task of editing the works of Beaumont and Fletcher, and to have deserted his ephemeral ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... said, with a conversational ruthlessness. "Fifteen dollars! Why, I'd give that myself an' set it up out there at the cross-roads for autos to bid on while they run. Its wuth—well, I wouldn't say what 'twas wuth. Maybe you'd laugh, an' I ain't goin' to be laughed at, if ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... Virginia is converted into a Countess Galotti, Virginius into Count Odoardo, an Italian prince takes the place of Appius Claudius, and a chamberlain that of the unblushing minister of his lusts, &c. It is not properly a familiar tragedy, but a court tragedy in the conversational tone, to which in some parts the sword of state and the hat under the arm as essentially belong as to many French tragedies. Lessing wished to transplant into the renownless circle of the principality of Massa Carara the violent injustice of the Decemvir's inevitable tyranny; ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... was a little confused, but conversational. "That old building you see across there is ... well, it used to be a granary; but nobody's used it for a long time. There's a dinghy in the mud over there. ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... him out of curiosity were swung by his personality into being supporters. He had always his own natural style of talk. Possessing a musical and clear voice, he never strained for effect, rarely used a rotund sentence, but talked to his audiences in a red-hot conversational kind of way, his heightened feelings finding expression in a sibilance which always touched the nerves of his hearers. He seldom interrupted interrupters, finding it more effective to let them speak and then to ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... not hilariously, only to the exact shade demanded by conversational sympathy. "Then we shall agree in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... the poetical and the obsolete word of the older literature was rejected as well as the rustic phrase or that borrowed from the language of common life, and more especially the Greek words and phrases which, as the letters of this period show, had to a very great extent found their way into conversational language. Nevertheless this scholastic and artificial classicism of the Ciceronian period stood to the Scipionic as repentance to innocence, or the French of the classicists under Napoleon to the model French of Moliere and Boileau; while the former classicism had sprung out ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... them and remained there while he spoke to them of their daughter. Even in his manner of speaking Georgiana felt a decided difference. There was a curious crispness and succinctness of speech that marked the professional man, which was decidedly different from the more expanded conversational manner of Mr. Jefferson. ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... conversation was always a difficult matter for Eloquent, but on this occasion he related his experiences to his aunt, and was quite talkative; so that, to a certain extent, she revised her unfavourable impression as to his conversational powers, and became more hopeful for his success in the Election. His gloom and taciturnity on Christmas Day had filled her ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... remembered the name. Great-aunt Jane was one of the relations the Polkingtons did not use; she was not rich enough or obliging enough to give any help, nor grand enough for conversational purposes. She never figured in Mrs. Polkington's talk except vaguely as "one of my husband's people in Norfolk;" this when she was explaining that the Captain came of East Anglian stock on his mother's side. Jane was only a step-aunt to the Captain; his mother had married above her family, ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... the company eagerly filled their glasses; others looked doubtfully towards the chair. Before Dr Protean seemed to have made up his mind what to do, Monsieur Papalier had risen, saying, in a rather low and conversational tone— ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... that is gained by travel and garnered from many fields of study. He reminded me of Wendell Phillips as an orator, with the impression of having an immense reserve power behind him; he could fill a large hall by speaking in his natural conversational voice. He possessed the same keen Damascus blade of sarcasm when aroused. Undoubtedly he was the Sir Philip Sidney of ...
— Alexander Crummell: An Apostle of Negro Culture - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 20 • William H. Ferris
... seasons; he the man of definite conquering tasks, the familiar of wide horizons, and in his very repose holding aloof from these agglomerations of units in which one loses one's importance even to oneself. They had no common conversational small change. They had to use the great pieces of general ideas, but they exchanged them trivially. It was no serious commerce. Perhaps she had not much of that coin. Nothing significant came from her. It could not ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... more vividly brought out than by their tacit exclusion from the currents of opinion about them. Amherst, seated in unsmiling endurance at the foot of the table, between Mrs. Ansell, with her carefully-distributed affabilities, and Blanche Carbury, with her reckless hurling of conversational pebbles, seemed to Justine as much of a stranger as herself among the people to whom his marriage had introduced him. So strongly did she feel the sense of their common isolation that it was no surprise to her, when the men reappeared ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... it mentioned among the gentlemen—what became of him?' The landlady shook her head; it being the first conversational stage at which her vivacious earnestness had ceased to nod it, keeping time to what she said. It had been mentioned at the Daybreak, she remarked, on the authority of the journals, that he had been kept in prison for his own safety. ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... kept back by the men, and they quarrelled among themselves, disputing who should talk to me; they had seen no one except each other for a long time, and I feared their interest in the looms was a conversational interest—it ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... up the street, timed Cissie's arrival at the front gate, picked up his hat, and walked briskly to the library in the hope of finishing any business the Captain might have, in time to encounter the octoroon. He even began making some little conversational plans with which he could meet Cissie in a simple, unstudied manner. He recalled with a certain satisfaction that he had not said a word of condemnation the night of Cissie's confession. He would make a point of that, and was prepared to argue ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... circle—the fight had begun. Even now she awoke sometimes at night with a shudder, having lived again in vivid dream that August afternoon in Newport Harbor, when she sat at her tea table facing the first ordeal. She had come through it. With what rare felicity had she scattered her conversational charms; with what skill had she played upon the pet failings and foibles of her guests; what unerring judgment had been hers, and memory of details, unfailing tact, and exquisite taste! A triumph, yes. And the first knowledge of it had come in a lingering hand clasp from the great ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... extended from 1835 to the time of his marriage, and produced some nine plays, not all of which, however, were intended for the stage. "Paracelsus," the first of the series, has been fairly described as a "conversational drama," and "Pippa Passes," though it has been staged, is essentially a poem to read. The historical tragedy of "Strafford" has been impressively performed, but "King Victor and King Charles," "The Return of the Druses," "Colombe's Birthday," "A Soul's Tragedy," and "Luria," while interesting ...
— A Blot In The 'Scutcheon • Robert Browning
... Grandfather, "that there is no record nor tradition of your conversational abilities? It is an uncommon thing to meet with a chair that ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... for the guard would instantly shoot me down. The guard in question had a doppel-ganger,—counterpart of himself in inflexibility,—and both were appendages of their muskets. He was not probably a sentient being, certainly not a conversational one. He knew the length of a stride, and the manual of bayonet exercise, but was, during his natural life, a blind idolater of a deity, called "Orders." The said "Orders," for the present evening, were walking, not talking, and he was dumb to all conciliatory words. He took ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... his first contribution Mr. Lehmann was promoted to the Table—an unprecedentedly rapid promotion—and he has ever since been one of the most diligent of contributors. Literary merit apart, Mr. Lehmann's "Conversational Hints for Young Shooters" has probably been received with greater favour throughout the country, on account of its subject and its felicitous treatment, than any of the young author's works. Country readers are essentially ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... the Scotsman and the Irishman," began the Skeptic, in a conversational tone, "being about to be hanged, were given their choice of a tree. 'The oak for me,' says the Englishman. 'The Scotch elm for mine,' says the Scotsman. 'Faith,' says the Irishman, 'I'll be afther takin' a gooseberry bush.' 'That's ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... highly intellectual and cultivated woman, with fascinating manners, a strong will, and singularly fine conversational powers. She usually exercised a controlling influence over all with whom she associated. Happy it was for Mrs. Dexter that a friend like Mrs. De Lisle came to her in the right time, and filled her mind with right ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... start, and quickly lay down his fork. She watched in vain through the rest of that dinner for a conversational sensation at his end of the table. When they were in the carriage and on ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... recent times has been in the field of the drama. Pinero has improved its technique; Shaw has given it remarkable conversational brilliancy; Barrie has brought to it fancy and humor and sweetness; Galsworthy has used it to present social problems; Phillips has tried to restore to it the Elizabethan poetic spirit. The Celtic dramatists form a separate school. Lady Gregory, ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... three or four minutes Mrs. Drainger did not speak. I could not, of course, see her face; but once or twice her hands shifted in her lap, and I thought she was perturbed. My own conversational efforts had been so uniformly unfortunate that I ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... and two horses had been impressed into the transport service. At first with some aid from an interpreter, afterwards mostly by signs and broken fragments of language, I got to be able to converse with this Turk. (In the Balkans the various shreds of races have quaint crazy-quilt patchworks of conversational language. Somehow or other even a British citizen with more than the usual stupidity of our race as to foreign languages can make himself understood in the Balkan Peninsula, which is so polyglottic that its inhabitants ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... Wilson, however, the Englishman had a more satisfactory experience. He was delighted by the President's courtesy, charm, intelligence, and conversational powers. The impression which Sir William obtained of the American President on this occasion remained with him for several years and was itself an important element in British-American relations after the ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... Coleridge did not pretend to any fluent command of conversational German, he read it with great ease. His knowledge of German literature was, indeed, too much limited by his rare opportunities for commanding anything like a well-mounted library. And particularly it surprised us that Coleridge knew little or nothing of ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... stem her protests. She was of the blood,—her aunt's own niece. But whereas Medora Phillips sometimes "scrapped," as he called it, merely to promote social diversion and to keep the conversational ball a-rolling, this young person, a more vigorous organism, and with decided, even exaggerated ideas as to her dues... Well, the room was still full, and he was ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... stock exchange has a membership of ten thousand and is open every day except Sunday. There are no auction sales, no excitement or loud talk, no gesticulating, as is the case in New York, particularly on the curb. The business is all done in a quiet, conversational tone. Cotton is the principal commodity ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... discriminate. They are the blank checks of intellectual bankruptcy;—you may fill them up with what idea you like; it makes no difference, for there are no funds in the treasury upon which they are drawn. Colleges and good-for-nothing smoking-clubs are the places where these conversational fungi spring up most luxuriantly. Don't think I undervalue the proper use and application of a cant word or phrase. It adds piquancy to conversation, as a mushroom does to a sauce. But it is no better than a toadstool, odious to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... father and son, Dr. Lavendar talked a good deal, but rather at random. He was confounded by the situation. Had he made a mistake, after all, in insisting upon this interview? In his own mind he was asking for wisdom, but aloud he spoke of the weather. His host gave no conversational assistance except an occasional monosyllable, and his senior warden was absolutely dumb. As for the subject which brought them together, no further reference was ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... shall proceed to make a few remarks; from which I trust your Hong Kong correspondent W. T. M. may be able to form "a clear and definite rule," and students of English assisted in their attempts to overcome this formidable conversational "shibboleth." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various
... all about them, Miss Laskin." Very sarcastic. An inflection that had made her a conversational terror in ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... conventional and readable. I have not done so, except in one flagrant case, because I suspect that Kingston may have been experimenting in some way. On the other hand it may be that he had contracted to write a book of so many pages, and this was a way of condensing a long conversational exchange. ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... Withal, a logical simplicity governed his argument. The flaneur, the poseur—if such he was—no longer appeared. He came close to the jurymen, leaned his hands upon the back of a chair—as it were, shut out the public, even the judge, from his circle of interest—and talked in a conversational tone. An air of confidence passed from him to the amazed yet easily captivated jury; the distance between them, so gaping during the last two days, closed suddenly up. The tension of the past estrangement, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... mitten, to avoid listening and the necessity of reply; it was too evident that the conversational tone was becoming profane. But Mrs. Page's eyes were gleaming with pure dramatic ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... Alas!" which, by the by, no one ever says. "Awah," like "Yauh," is now a woman's word although used by Al-Hariri (Assembly of Basrah) and so Al-awwahone who cries from grief "Awah." A favourite conversational form is "Yehh" with the aspirate exasperated, but it is an expression of astonishment rather than sorrow. It ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... life of him the man could not refrain from displaying the conversational art in which he excelled. Their talk dealt with Italy, Egypt, India. He spoke with the ease of culture and enthusiasm. Once he slipped into anecdote a propos of the helplessness of British soldiers in any matter outside the scope of ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... laborers that those who came at the eleventh hour "received also a penny." Mazzini also is content that all should fare alike as brethren, if only they will come into the vineyard. He is not an orator, but the simple conversational tone of his address is in refreshing contrast with the boyish rhetoric and academic swell common to Italian speakers in the present unfledged state. As they have freer use of the power of debate, they will become more ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... artistic features of Rome, the human side of it appealed to me. There was something congenial in the Romans, and, indeed, in the Italians generally, so that I seemed to be renewing my acquaintance with people whom I had partly forgotten. I picked up the conversational language with unusual ease, perhaps owing to the drilling in Latin which my father had given me; and I liked the easy, objectless ways of the people, and the smiles which so readily took the place of the sallow gravity which their faces wore in repose. But it was the Transteverini ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... who saw his conversational duty, a dead-sure thing, and went for it there and then, "who then could have such a house, or ought to ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... intensely shrewd and practical mind there was something repellent in the waste of energy involved in a discussion upon the Early Church or the twenty-seven principles of Mesmer. It was his custom to slip past such conversational openings with a quick step and ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... indecipherable monogram, wherewith to wipe his troubled brow. Susan Gluck's Orphan, who was playing down-wind, paused to inhale deeply and with a beatific expression. Restoring the fragrant square to its repository, the pink one essayed another conversational skirmish. ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... principle than the laureate's: his verses more taste. We will venture to oppose his Third Canto of the Story of Rimini for classic elegance and natural feeling to any equal number of lines from Mr. Southey's Epics or from Mr. Moore's Lalla Rookh. In a more gay and conversational style of writing, we think his Epistle to Lord Byron on his going abroad, is a masterpiece;—and the Feast of the Poets has run through several editions. A light, familiar grace, and mild unpretending pathos are the characteristics ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... ride; forced to wonder at some new and unexpected revelation of the mind and character of this western girl who was so interested in the reclamation work and so unconscious of her womanly power. He came quickly to look forward to their hours together and to plan and carry out many conversational experiments. Invariably ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... who would wish nothing else to those who needed only a mild spiritual flavor. There were others whom he would please much better by not talking shop at all. Although he could ill afford it, he subscribed now for a daily paper that he might have a perpetually renewed source of good conversational topics for these more worldly calls. He also bought several pounds of candy, pleasing in color, but warranted to be entirely harmless, and he made a large mysterious mark on the inside of his new silk hat to remind ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... to the dining room and the combinations of which you may form a possible part are reduced to a scattering two or three, you realize with a shudder that the lady beside you is none other than Mrs. Jones—and that for the last ten minutes you have been recklessly using up the evening's conversational ammunition. ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... plane surfaces, arid integuments, hair like the fibrous covering of a cocoa-nut in gloss and suppleness as well as color, and voices at once thin and strenuous,—acidulous enough to produce effervescence with alkalis, and stridulous enough to sing duets with the katydids. I think our conversational soprano, as sometimes overheard in the cars, arising from a group of young persons, who may have taken the train at one of our great industrial centres, for instance,— young persons of the female sex, we will say, who have bustled ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... what is known to us as "the Methodist style." He was quiet, moderate, conversational, but so earnest that his words carried conviction. The man was honest—he wanted nothing—he ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... instances, the whole effect of a modern tale is dependent on the manner of presentation. Henry James is, possibly, an extreme example. Has any one ever attempted to tell a tale in the Henry James manner by word of mouth, even when the manner pretends to be conversational? I, for one, have yet to experience this pleasure, though I have listened to a good many able and ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... the time of his life in the two hours before the arrival of the noon express. The station agent was a sociable soul. He had a guinea-pig in a box, so delightful to observe that Elsmere forgot his desire for zwieback and became conversational. He told the agent the history of the polly-wogs he had raised "till they was all froggies, only one was deaded." He showed the place where he had cut his finger in the mower-lawn. He explained how fond he was of back-horse-saddle-riding, and declared his intention ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... in a third-class railway carriage remark vaguely and yet impressively to the company at large, as follows: "I once saw six men hanged in a very rustic manner." That, I think everyone will agree with me, was an excellent conversational opening. The full story, though I cannot tell it here, was quite as good. So was the story of William Harvey, "the girt big Somersetshire man" and what he did in a fight with Spanish Pilots in ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... wow!" remarked Sancho, in a mild and conversational tone, sitting up and touching one paw to his head, as if he saluted ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... together, forgot that she had been defeated, and inaugurated a new battle. She began to tell the table not something, but almost everything, about herself, and it soon became apparent that she was no ordinary woman. She had never had a set-back; in innumerable conversational duels she had always given the neat and deadly retort, and she had never been worsted, save by base combinations deliberately engineered against her—generally by women, whom as a sex she despised even more ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... do talk, things become actively intolerable. I have no tact. To have tact, is much like being good at Halma, or whist, or tennis, or chess. You must be able to calculate the remote consequences of every move, and all the angles and side-walls from which the conversational hall may bound. It is needless to say that, at whist, I never know in the least what will happen in consequence of the card I play; and life is very much too short for the interminable calculations of chess. It is the same in conversation. I never ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 23, 1892 • Various
... meant it to be, an account of his stewardship as their councillor-general. He said not a word about the personal aspects of the party conflicts raging in France, and very little about the national aspects of that conflict. Speaking in a frank conversational way, and referring to his notes only for figures and dates, he gave his constituents a succinct picture of the effect upon their own local interests of the policy pursued by the Government of the Republic. He told them how much of their money had been ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... place them in this connection. Many essays contain something of narration, and not infrequently an incident forms the basis of a beautiful lyric. In print these studies may appear formal and forbidding, but where they are presented in a conversational manner, they become attractive ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester |
