"Curtain" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thus occupied is called the 'kila', or fort, and the wall that surrounds it is thirty feet high, with a round embattled tower at each corner. On the east face is a fine large gateway for the entrance, with a curtain as high as the wall itself. Inside the gate is a piece of ordnance painted red, with the largest calibre I ever saw.[8] This is fired once a year, at the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... hut, recalled by the distant howling of the dogs. But as they came near, they could see no sign of men or animals, though the sensible brutes still whined under the shelter of their snow-heaps. Ivan, much surprised, raised the curtain of the door, his gun in hand, expecting to find that some animal was inside. The lamp was out, and the hut in total darkness. Before Ivan could recover his upright position, four men leaped on him, and ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... garden sat in an easy-chair asleep; an unsnuffed candle burnt dimly on the table. Miss Temple was not to be seen: I knew afterwards that she had been called to a delirious patient in the fever-room. I advanced; then paused by the crib side: my hand was on the curtain, but I preferred speaking before I withdrew it. I still recoiled at the dread of seeing ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... of a sleep, refreshed, and asked her to read to him. But the curtain of the bed, softening the light, which she always drew back when he awoke, that she might see him from her table at the bedside where she sat at work, was held undrawn; and a woman's voice ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... Within the crater, it was equally difficult to ascend, except at one or two places; but these ascents our mariners thought of improving, by making steps, as the animals were effectually excluded from the plain within by means of the sail which served for a curtain at the gateway, or hole ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... cast my eye over these paintings suddenly a young lady accosted us speaking with a delicate voice demure and words that the sick and sorry would cure and she was behind a hanging and saying, 'Whoso hath let down this curtain let him receive one hundred stripes.' Then she bade withdraw it and they removed it and behold, I felt as though the lightning were gleaming and glittering and it took away my sight until my head was near striking the ground, for there stood before me a young ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... profession who have to deal with facts rather than fancy are not believers in the supernatural. I was sure that the extending arm and the beckoning finger were there, but belonged to no ghost. It might have been a curtain blowing out the window or a fake of some kind. But I knew that unless there was some kind of a showing in a ghostly way that night, I should never hear the last of my stone fence indulgence, so I resolved to make a preliminary ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... by a brilliant expedition to the coasts of Greece. With thirty-five sail and forty-eight galleys he attacked Coron, by way of making a diversion while Sultan Suleym[a]n was invading Hungary,[23] and after a heavy bombardment succeeded in landing his men on the curtain of the fort. The Turkish garrison was spared and marched out, and Mendoza was left in command, while Doria bore up to Patras and took it, occupied the castles which guard the Gulf of Corinth, and returned ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... doorways, was Harrie, all in a cloud of white. It floated about her with an idle, wavelike motion. She had a veil like fretted pearls through which her tinted arm shone faintly, and the shadow of a single scarlet leaf trembled through a curtain upon her forehead. ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... upon the stage. Baron von Hormayr left his place quietly and walked to the entrance. He slipped a florin into the hand of the doorkeeper, who was leaning against the wall. "Say," he whispered to him hastily, "as soon as the curtain drops, go to the giant with the long beard, who sits in the orchestra-stall yonder, and whose words amused the audience just now. He is a cattle-dealer from Hungary, and I must see him at once. Just whisper in his ear that his countryman with the wine and horses has arrived, and it is necessary ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... ordinary young woman would have laughed herself into hysterics. Kitty tore off the scribbles, not the least sign of laughter in her eyes, and sought the window-seat in the living-room. There was one word which stood out strangely alien: haberdasher. Why that word? Was it a corner of the curtain she had been striving to look behind? Had Thomas been a haberdasher prior to his stewardship? And was he ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... Amos Opie an oil-barrel has been trussed up like a miniature windmill tank in the end of the camp barn, one end of which rests on the ground, and being cellarless has an earth floor. Around the supports of this tank is fastened an unbleached cotton curtain, and when standing within and pulling a cord attached to an improvised spray, the contents of the barrel descend upon Bart's person with hygienic thoroughness, the only drawback being that twelve pails of ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... or standing bed-places, on either side, with brass bars overhead, by which a curtain could ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... wall was an old. clothes-press with brass handles, its drawers filled with sketches, as well as a lounge covered with chintz and heaped up with cushions. The door between the studio and library had been taken off, and was now replaced by a heavy red curtain. Margaret had held it aside for Oliver to enter, and it had dropped back by its own weight, ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and making an easy way for us, he stopped when we were out of the press in a corner behind a great red curtain. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... rather suggest, most humbly suggest, that the defensive is your best course. Here in the copse you have an enclosure capable with a little trouble of being converted into an impregnable fortress. Already the ditches are deep, the curtain wall of hawthorn high and impenetrable, the approaches narrow. By retiring hither with your forces, occupying every twig, and opposing a beak in every direction, you would be absolutely safe, and it is easy to foresee what ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... cold one hundred and seven degrees below freezing-point. But the dog knew; all its ancestry knew, and it had inherited the knowledge. And it knew that it was not good to walk abroad in such fearful cold. It was the time to lie snug in a hole in the snow and wait for a curtain of cloud to be drawn across the face of outer space whence this cold came. On the other hand, there was keen intimacy between the dog and the man. The one was the toil-slave of the other, and the only caresses it had ever received ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... here long ago if your friend Mr. Middleton had allowed it; but when papa and mama, with their undramatic, unexcitable spirits, were preparing to go, he interfered so successfully that we carried our point, heard the very last words, saw the curtain drop—" ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... action, and installed in luxury. The cradle, a cloth distended by poles, like that of Peter the Great, which is preserved in the museum of the Kremlin at Moscow, was suspended from the upturned shafts of a telyega by a stiff spiral spring of iron, similar to the springs used on bird-cages. The curtain was made of the mother's spare gown, her sarafan. Baby's milk-bottle consisted of a cow's horn, over the tip of which a cow's teat was fastened. I had already seen these dried teats for sale in pairs, in the popular markets, but had declined to place implicit faith in the venders' solemn ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... in here, Candlish," said Mr. Jermyn. There came a clattering noise from the window. Mr. Jermyn had released some heavy rolled up curtain-blinds, which covered the whole window. There was no chance, now, of being seen from the street, or from my uncle's house. Candlish ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... at the back. The SERVANTS hasten to lend their help; a part of the roof falls in; OLAF is seen high amidst the flames as the curtain falls.] ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... the village to which we went was out cutting wood for a garden, and his wife refused us a hut, but when Kansabala came in the evening he scolded his own spouse roundly and all the wives of the village, and then pressed me to come indoors, but I was well enough in my mosquito curtain without, and declined: I was free from insects and vermin, and few huts ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... questioned Mrs. Levice, parrying with enjoyment the indirect thrusts. "I did not know; had the curtain risen?" ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... ruins paused to look for the next act of the desperate drama. Raoul seized the opportunity to prepare for the expected hand-to-hand struggle; but it was unnecessary. The cessation in the firing was common in both parties, and it gave the vapor a minute in which to lift the curtain from the water. ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... upon his knee, calling him "her good boy," now holding a whispered conversation with Miggie, who, she fancied, was there, and again singing to herself a plaintive song she had sung to Dr. Griswold. When it drew near her bedtime she went to the window, from which the curtain was thrown back, and looking out upon the blackness of the night, said ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... poured in from east, west, and north. On Fifth Avenue all the automobiles in the world were gathered together. On the sidewalks, pedestrians, muffled against the nipping chill of the crisp air, hurried to and fro. And, above, that sapphire sky spread a rich velvet curtain which made the tops of the buildings stand out like the white minarets of ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... possible to convey an adequate idea of the effect produced by this apparently trivial occurrence. Unconscious of our own motion from any direct impression upon our own feelings, the whole world appeared to be in the act of receding from us in the dim vista of infinite space; while the vapoury curtain seemed to congregate on all sides and cover the retreating masses from our view. The trees and buildings, the spectators and their crowded equipages, and finally, the earth itself, at first distinctly seen, gradually became obscured by the thickening mist, and growing whiter ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... believe the wondrous tale while we are reading it; but to have a conjurer brought before us in his conjuring-gown, with his spirits about him, which none but himself and some hundred of favoured spectators before the curtain are supposed to see, involves such a quantity of the hateful incredible, that all our reverence for the author cannot hinder us from perceiving such gross attempts upon the senses to be in the highest ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... Lewis and then suddenly straightened. While they had been chatting, the curtain of the improvised stage at one end of the ball-room had gone up. In the center of the stage stood a figure that Lewis would have recognized at once even if he had not been ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... things loved below, Fair pictures damasked on a vapor's fold, Fade like the roseate flush, the golden glow, When the bright curtain of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... a dead-rose velvet curtain, draped to show blue sky, veiled by clouds. The same dead-rose on table and chair covering. The book on table has a softly toned calf cover. Gilbert Stuart was fond of working in ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... had never known so direct a consciousness of the inevitableness of death, but she was full of life herself, and so eager and ready for whatever might be coming. What if this other girl had felt so, too? She watched the upper windows where the dim light shone, and now and then a shadow crossed the curtain. Everything out-of-doors was quiet and sweet; the moon went higher and higher, and the wind rustled among the apple-trees. Some white petunias in a little plot near by looked strangely white, and Betty thought that perhaps the other girl had planted them, and there they were growing ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... where he found the books. Felicite sat before the window, smoking, contemplating in turn the marshes, the sea, and Calyste, to whom she now and then said a few words about Beatrix. At one time, seeing the marquise strolling about the garden, she raised a curtain in a way to attract her attention, and also to throw a band of light across ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... extinction of the gas, the curtain would naturally fall. And it would fall upon a pleasant, well-constructed, probable, and eminently realistic play. As it is, OTHELLO ends with a complicated massacre worthy of the Bowery Theatre in its ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 39., Saturday, December 24, 1870. • Various
... The curtain is rung down on an illusion, but it rises again on another, this time, as before, with the look of the absolute Good and True upon it. It is because we are at once actor and spectator that we find no fault with blinking sight and slothful thought. We are finite branded and content, except ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... These, with the curtain, block-forts, and a deep ditch over which was a log bridge, composed the military works at Tioga; and this was the place into which we now walked, a sentry directing us to Block-House No. ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... curtain she conversed with me for some time, and then walked across to where Miss Cook was lying senseless on the floor. Stooping over her, "Katie" touched her and said: "Wake up, Florrie, wake up! ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... of respectable size when one considers the smallness of the house. The bed was all nicely made up, and there were two chairs in the room, but the usual washstand and swing-mirror were not visible. However, seeing a curtain at the farther end of the room, I drew it aside, and found, as I expected, a fixed lavatory in an alcove of perhaps four feet deep by five in width. As the room was about fifteen feet wide, this left two-thirds of the space unaccounted for. ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... honours with the activity of a man who is not ashamed of his establishment. His room is comfortably furnished; two modern pendules mounted on bronze, a wardrobe with a Medusa's head, a high bed, and a handsome rose-coloured curtain. If the room was not overburdened with furniture, if there was not much of luxury, yet, to those not early accustomed to superfluities, it might even seem gay. It represented the tastes, opinions, and habits of its master. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... mosquito curtain, he opened the window wider, and then stayed for a few minutes to wonder that the morning air should be so cool to his ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... subordination, never sang except when the refrain of the ditty arrived, when he hiccupped it forth with tipsy loyalty; and Eglantine leaned against the chequers painted on the door-side under the name of Crump, and looked at the red illumined curtain of the bar, and the vast well-known shadow of Mrs. Crump's turban within. Now and again the shadow of that worthy matron's hand would be seen to grasp the shadow of a bottle; then the shadow of a cup would rise towards the turban, and still the strain proceeded. Eglantine, I say, ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and the heavens beam serene with peace, Like a pure heart benignly smiles the moon. Oh, guard thy blessed beauty from mischance, This I beseech thee in all tender love. See where the Storm his cloudy mantle spreads, An ashy curtain covereth the moon. As if the tempest thirsted for the rain, The clouds he presses, till they burst in streams. Heaven wears a dusky raiment, and the moon Appeareth dead—her tomb is yonder cloud, And weeping ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... any visible creature. "In the beginning God created the heavens" (Gen 1:1), &c. Neither do I think that the heavens were made of that confused chaos that afterwards we read of. It is said, he stretched out the heavens as a curtain, and with his hand he hath spanned the heavens (Psa 104:2; Isa 40:22; 48:13).; intimating, that they were not taken out of that formless heap, but were immediately formed by his power. Besides, the Holy Ghost, treating of the creating of heaven and earth, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... discovered, there appeared a wood in perspective, the innermost part being of "releeve or whole round," the rest painted. On the left a cave, and on the right a thicket from which issued Orpheus. At the back of the scene, at the sudden fall of a curtain, the upper part broke on the spectators, a heaven of clouds of all hues; the stars suddenly vanished, the clouds dispersed; an element of artificial fire played about the house of Prometheus—a bright and transparent ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... inform you that your dear friend Alice Fletcher is no more—there ain't no such person. She made a noble end in white satin covered with sticky out things, and her stylish aunt's lace curtain. She looked very lovely, what I could see of her through the curtain. My dear Miss Morton, I beseech you when you get married, don't wear a window curtain. Because if you do the groom and the sympathizing friends can't see how ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... the utterance of this name in the prim, archaic, stuffy little back-parlour, Meshach raised the curtain on the last act of a drama which had slumbered for fifteen years, since the death of William Twemlow, and which the principal actors in it had long thought to ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... this interesting point, the Editors—small thanks to them, authentic but thrice-stupid mortals—cut short our Eye-witness, not so much as telling us his name, some of them not even his date or whereabouts; and so the curtain tumbles down (as if its string had been cut, or suddenly eaten by unwise animals), and we are left to gray hubbub, and our own resources at second-hand. Except only that a French Officer—one of those cannonading from Almsdorf, no doubt—declares that "it was like a change of scene in the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... a tailored suit of blue and looking particularly beautiful, walked haughtily by and disappeared behind the heavy green curtain. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... waited for the comedian. He was called before the curtain and a speech was extorted from him. There were but a few faint cries for the actress, to which she did not respond. She had summoned the manager to her dressing-room. While she hastily assumed her wraps for the street, she was excitedly complaining of the ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the village of Grabovetz on the 18th we repulsed four furious enemy attacks on a wide front, supported by a curtain of fire ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... little time, however, to think of such things, for a curtain was suddenly drawn aside, and Redmond and his daughter appeared. Although years had somewhat changed the former, yet Harmon recognized him at once. He stood as if rooted to the floor, so great was his surprise. What ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... of hereditary dignity to its fountain, and raise him to higher rank of peerage whilst he enriched the family with a new one. If, amidst these bright and happy scenes of domestic honor and prosperity, that angel should have drawn up the curtain and unfolded the rising glories of his country, and whilst he was gazing with admiration on the then commercial grandeur of England, the genius should point out to him a little speck, scarce visible in the mass of national interest—a small seminal ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... days after I have taken possession of it, a native hut seems quite a comfortable home. My house at Waypoti was a bare shed, with a large bamboo platform at one side. At one end of this platform, which was elevated about three feet, I fixed up my mosquito curtain, and partly enclosed it with a large Scotch plaid, making a comfortable little sleeping apartment. I put up a rude table on legs buried in the earthen floor, and had my comfortable rattan-chair for a seat. A line across one corner carried my daily-washed cotton clothing, and on a bamboo ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... was asleep, and when the night was fairly advanced, you could hear a whizzing and a snorting in the air. Manuel went to the window, and lifted the scarlet curtain figured with ramping gold dragons, and he looked out, to find a vast number of tiny bluish lights skipping about confusedly and agilely in the darkness, like shining fleas. These approached the river bank, and gathered there. Then the assembled lights began to come toward the house. You could now ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... board 150 cm. long and 15 cm. wide, fixed on two four-wheeled trucks. It was divided by vertical partitions of black cardboard into ten compartments, each slightly wider than the aperture to correspond with the visual angle. A curtain fastened to the back of the car afforded a black background to the compartments. The couplets were supported by being inserted into a groove running the length of the car, 3 cm. from the front. A shutter 2 cm. high also running the length of the car in front of the groove, fastened ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... boys amount to something, why don't they let me have a chance to see what's in you? Fellows who know at a glance that elevator wires are crossed ought to be encouraged. That's my view." Parks left the subject and turned his attention to the bruised pilot, who came in for a curtain lecture. Harry Corwin busied himself with trying to ascertain the extent of the damage to the wrecked plane. As Parks finished talking to the pilot he stepped to Harry's side and asked: ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... entrance the curtain was up; and knowing that the ritual of Madame Ancelin required absolute silence at such a time, he waited quietly in the little room, separated by a step from the front of the box, where Madame Ancelin was seated in bliss between Madame Astier and Madame Eviza, while behind were Danjou and ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... known what was coming, and how soon, but she had not. There was something awful in the contrast. As she went through one of the rooms a mouse ran from under the fringe of a velvet curtain and took refuge under an armchair. She had sat in that very chair ten days ago and the Russian ambassador had talked to her; she remembered how he had tried to extract information from her about the new issue of three ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... over the barricade and pushed open the door of the dining-room, which was in darkness. But the heavy curtain dividing it from the drawing-room was dragged aside and Daleham appeared in the doorway, outlined against the faint light of a turned-down lamp. Behind him Noreen was ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... they are great. For novelty, no man that wadeth in learning or contemplation thoroughly but will find that printed in his heart, Nil novi super terram. Neither can any man marvel at the play of puppets, that goeth behind the curtain, and adviseth well of the motion. And for magnitude, as Alexander the Great, after that he was used to great armies, and the great conquests of the spacious provinces in Asia, when he received letters out of Greece, of some ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... not heard of his return; and the prodigy was quickened by the fact that he gave no sign of looking for them or even at them. Having taken possession of his place he sat very still in it, staring straight before him at the curtain. His abrupt reappearance held the seeds of anxiety both for Biddy and for Nick, so that it was mainly Miss Tressilian who had freedom of mind to throw off the theory that he had come back that very hour—had arrived from ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... enemy; and that she even attended a witches' Sabbath in Sleepy Hollow; nay, a neighbor, who lived hard by, declared that he saw her harnessing a rampant broom-stick, and about to ride to the meeting; though others presume it was merely flourished in the course of one of her curtain lectures, to give energy and emphasis to a period. Certain it is, that Wolfert Acker nailed a horse-shoe to the front door, during one of her nocturnal excursions, to prevent her return; but as she re-entered the house without ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... the curtain: the king sits sleeping, his sword by his side. Enter Austria, before whom cometh Ambition, and bringing him before the chair, King John in sleep maketh signs to avoid, and holdeth his own crown ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... as I introduced these notes with some lines from a noble Poet of our own country, I shall conclude them with an extract from a French Critick: Or, if I may speak the language of my trade, as I opened these annotations with a Prologue from Roscommon, I shall drop the curtain with an Epilogue from Dacier. Another curtain now demands my attention. I am called from the Contemplation of Antient Genius, to sacrifice, with due respect, to Modern Taste: I am summoned from a review of the magnificent spectacles ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... uncertainty—Torc, whether tripping gently or rushing angrily, "to one thing constant never," makes its bed in a fairy realm, a leafy garden of ever-changing beauty. Larch and alder, arbutus, oak, and hazel thickly curtain the Fall from the passing glance. But a sylvan path o'erstrewn with leaves, and bordered with many fronded ferns, discovers the fountain in full bearing. White with foam, and angry for its long delay in the grip of Mangerton, and the hollow of the ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... a floor in here, and cut a window in the closet back there, and put in a little gas stove, and before winter we'll put on a little addition—a kitchen in back, with a room for the boys above. And we'll shut the big double doors, and I'll have another window box right across their windows, and curtain the whole place in plain net. The boys can sleep in the tent for the time being. There's a furnace, but we'll have to make some provision ...
— Undertow • Kathleen Norris
... of the black curtain. He could see his way to the office to bid Pringle good-bye. After that all ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... secret transactions of those messengers who are employed when the parting soul takes it's leave of the reluctant body, and perhaps see things nature would shrink back from with the utmost terror and amazement. In a word, the curtain of Providence for the disposition of things here, and the curtain of judgment for the determination of the state of souls hereafter, would be alike drawn back; and what heart could support here its future state in life; much less that, of its future state ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... laying down my pen, "you are a prophet in disguise, the prophet sent to lift the curtain which is before my eyes. Which way shall I go to find these real men and real women, to look upon these tragic happenings? For Heaven's sake direct me. Where, for instance, ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... pang. He might have danced all the evening, if he had liked, with Susy Fairbairn or Rosy, or any of the strange girls about, but she did not like that he should so entirely abandon her for Adelaide. Wherefore she drew herself away out of sight altogether, and sat behind the curtain looking into the garden and up to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... the works with very little loss. The collapse was general. As soon as we were over the works, I was ordered to stand fast with my command and give General Smith's command the right of way down the Granny White turnpike. Doolittle's brigade had carried the bastion in front of our right and the curtain adjoining it, and his line halted immediately in rear of these, partly facing the turnpike. He had captured a four-gun battery of light twelves in the bastion and another of the same number in the curtain, with the artillerists and part of the supports. [Footnote: ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... promise vouchsafed. But we watched in intense excitement. There it was again; and this time the fog was so thin overhead that we caught sight of a patch of blue sky a yard square, across which the curtain was instantly drawn. A little wind was stirring, and the fog boiled up from the valley caldrons thicker than ever. But the spell was broken. In a moment more Old Phelps was shouting, "The sun!" and before we could gain our feet there was a patch of sky overhead as big as ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the house! The royal prince stood up in his box waving his drawn sword, which someone, however, ventured to wrest from his grasp. The interior fittings of the theatre were completely destroyed; the furniture and hangings being carried into the street and made a bonfire of, the curtain surmounting the flaming heap like a gigantic flag. A riot at the Lincoln's Inn Fields, in 1721, led to George I.'s order that in future a guard should attend the performances. This was the origin of the custom that ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... I have been among When they roll'd in mountains dark, And Night her blackest curtain hung Around our heaving bark; But give me, when the storm is fierce, My home and fireside glee, Where winds may howl, but dare not pierce; The land! ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... drop the curtain, because it would be as imprudent in me to assign my reasons for this opinion as it would be insulting to your conception to suppose you stood in need of them. A moment's reflection will convince every dispassionate mind of the physical impossibility of carrying ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... into a Mussulman home know what a guignol is, a kind of square niche in the wall, four feet from the floor, its opening covered by a curtain. One mounts to it by wooden steps. I noticed such a guignol at my left. I crept into it. My pulses beat in the shadow. But ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... on the floor, up the brown foot-board of the bed, and, when the wind shook the window-curtains, made little crimson pools of mottled light over the ceiling,—curdling pools, that he liked to watch: going off, from the clean gray walls and rustling curtain and transparent crimson, into sleeps that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... time but Huger's, but still no battle. Thousands of impatient spectators are venting their criticisms and anathemas, like an audience at a theater when some accident or disarrangement behind the scenes prevents the curtain from rising. ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... horses out over the sage-covered levels, and the contrast must have dropped like a curtain on her picture, for the light in her face died. Tisdale's look followed the road up from the plain and rested on the higher country; his eyes gathered their far-seeing gaze. He had been suddenly reminded of Weatherbee. It was in those California orchards he had spent his early life. He had ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... to my senses in one of the bedrooms of the Shantytown Hotel. There was only a partition between that and the other bedrooms of brown cotton cloth, and as I slowly became conscious of things about me, I heard two voices beyond the next curtain talking of my affairs. ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... sobered by sentiment until it ended on a note of romance or even of pathos. A commonplace little officer, the butt of the mess, becomes by the last act as high and hopeless a lover as Dante. Or a vulgar and violent pork-butcher remembers his own youth before the curtain goes down. The first thing that Bernard Shaw did when he stepped before the footlights was to reverse this process. He resolved to build a play not on pathos, but on bathos. The officer should be heroic first and then everyone should laugh ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... ring of the prompter's bell! The curtain is about to fall. I cannot stay in the gloom alone with that man!—Good ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... away; the repute soon passed out of date, and its heir was soon forgotten. Politicians who fall short of the highest renown are like actors; no applause is so vivid while they are on the stage, no oblivion so complete when the curtain falls on the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... close to Rann's house. From the side on which he had approached it was dark. No gleam of light showed through the windows. Slowly he walked around the building, and stopped suddenly on the opposite side. Here a closely drawn curtain was illuminated by a glow from within. Cautiously Aldous made his way along the log wall of the house until he came to the window. At one side the curtain had caught against some object, leaving perhaps a quarter of an inch of space through ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... that there is not a day in the whole year, except the Thursday and Friday in the Holy Week, on which the host does not receive this kind of worship. At night-fall the custodia is covered with a curtain, which is generally made of rich gold and silver lace. This act, at which an officiating priest presides, and during which hymns are chanted and accompanied by music, usually attracts a great concourse of the devout. In the mornings the eucharist is ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... had organized his petroleum company a boy of sixteen had obtained his first job in a produce commission office on a dock in Cleveland. As the curtain rises on the career of John D. Rockefeller, we see him perched upon a high stool, adding up figures and casting accounts, faithfully doing every odd office job that came his way, earning his employer's respect for his industry, his sobriety, and his unmistakable talents for business. ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... out a door to him hidden by a damask curtain, and Quennebert saluting her, opened it and disappeared, leaving Angelique convinced that she had seen the devil in person. Not until the next day did the sight of the displaced partition explain ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... and dew of night Fell softly o'er the plain, As though o'er man's dread work of death The angels wept again, And drew night's curtain gently round A ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... the Panorama-Dramatique in 1821. Among her contemporaries were Coralie, Florine, and Bouffe, or Vignol. On the first night performance of "The Alcade," she played in a curtain-raiser, "Bertram." For a few days she was the mistress of a Russian prince who took her to Saint-Mande, paying her manager a good sum for her absence from the theatre. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... predominated in the decorations, and in the midst of this splendour stood a little figure about twelve or fourteen inches high, its back turned toward us as it faced the dark interior of the church so far below. A pale blue curtain was drawn over the front of the shrine, but we fortunate ones in the little chapel were looking at the Holy Child more intimately; from the back, to be sure, but so close that we could have touched ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... sweeps away to the salient, for the most part Norman; but beyond the salient its character changes, two towers appear—the Catchcold Tower of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century, and the fine Arundel Tower, now only a curtain of fourteenth- century work in ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... follow me, I regard as two black impenetrable curtains, which hang down at the two extremities of human life, and which no living man has yet drawn aside. Many hundreds of generations have already stood before them with their torches, guessing anxiously what lies behind. On the curtain of Futurity, many see their own shadows, the forms of their passions enlarged and put in motion; they shrink in terror at this image of themselves. Poets, philosophers, and founders of states, have painted this curtain with their dreams, more smiling or more dark, as the sky above them ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... why sit I lonely Within my quiet, curtain'd room, So idly seeking and clinging only Unto its chastened, thoughtful gloom. You tell me that never fragrance rarer Did breathe from clustering leaf and bough; That never the bright spring was fairer Or more enchanting than ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... clouds, as it had done off and on for the past twenty-four hours, and above their fire-laced bosom floated glorious-coloured masses of misty vapour, enflamed in a thousand hues by the arrows of the sinking sun. Above her, however, there was no sun, nothing but the curtain of cloud which grew gradually from grey to black and minute by minute ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... satin, heavily embroidered with gold. On her head is an edifice of scarlet and pearls. For weeks, I know, she has wept in protest. The feast-mother leads her in to us with sacrificial rites. Her eyes are closed, hidden behind her curtain of strung beads; for three days she will not open them. She has ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... There, still weathering the elements, was the old-fashioned latticed summer-house, but the fruit-trees that I recalled as clouds of pink and white were gone.... A touch of poignancy was in these memories. I dropped the curtain, and turned to confront Nancy, who had ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... almost to the back door of the smithy, so that late of afternoons the slanting shadows of the near-most trees fell on its roof of warped shingles. At the extreme end of this point of woods Mr. Trimm was squatted behind a big boulder, squinting warily through a thick-fringed curtain of ripened goldenrod tops and sumacs, heavy-headed with their dark-red tapers. He had been there more than an hour, cautiously waiting his chance to hail the blacksmith, whose figure he could make out in the smoky interior of his ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... Cinderella's mind is preoccupied with her ball. Ill from overwork and underfeeding, she wanders into the street, falls faint—and dreams her ball. Whereupon our authentic magician, coming to his own, lifts a curtain of her queer little mind and gives us an all too short glimpse of the state function, with an h-dropping, strap-hanging King and Queen out of a pack of cards; their disdainful Prince, who is none other, of course, than our policeman done into ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various
... hearts." My defenseless self, too, they would plague about the woman, for I was as young as they. What a figure I must have cut with them on the fourth tier of the gallery! Yet, I never got a sight of more than just a corner of the curtain, but had to content myself with listening. She had a fine, resounding, mellow voice like a nightingale's, and we all of us used to clap our hands loudly, and to shout at the top of our lungs. In short, we came ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... from the curtain of clouds, from the tent of purple and scarlet, Issued the sun, the great High-Priest,[54] in his garments resplendent, Holiness unto the Lord, in letters of light, on his forehead, Round the hem of his robe the golden bells and pomegranates. Blessing the world he came, and the bars of vapor ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... blacks in the middle, and such bright spots of pink in her cheeks—she looked lovely; and I can't think why, but I suddenly felt I hated her. It was horrid of me, for she was so kind, and settled me in the corner behind the curtain where I could see and not be seen, rather far back, while she and Lord Robert were quite in the front. It was "Carmen"—the opera. I had ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... o'clock on Main Street. A very faint glow still lingered in the western sky and above it cool points of stars pricked a gray-blue curtain. Over to the left the moon was peeping above a gambrel roof and the near side was steely blue up to the shadow of the purple chimney. Joe walked along shuffling with his feet in the little hollows of dry leaves. They crunched cheerily, sending up a faint, dry fragrance. Up ahead ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... because she never talks about 'im. I don't see wot's keeping her. She could ha' gone to market and back five times—Hello!" He was peering through the little front window. A huge smile beamed in his face. With a chuckle, he called his visitor to the window. "Sh! Don't let 'er see the curtain move! She'd take our 'eads off. See that chap? That's why she's been so long ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... double meaning. Let it, therefore, be ours to note the outward signs of a very natural emotion. Miss Chyne noted them herself with care, and not without a few deft touches to hair and dress. When Jack Meredith entered the room she was standing near the window, holding back the curtain with one hand and watching, half shyly, ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... beating well-nigh to suffocation as he did so. It was in a small compartment leading to the principal chamber of the tent he found himself at first, and Sir Nigel was not there. With a fleet, yet noiseless movement, he drew aside the massive curtain, let it fall again behind him, and stood unperceived in the presence of him ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... the curtain of his hands that veiled his boyish tears, thought only of the letter which he received on his return to Paris, where Christine, fleeing from Perros like a thief in the night, had arrived ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... the wild tribes of the mountain have occupied them for thousands of years, and doubtless a thousand years from now the descendants of these tribes of people and bats will still be there in the cisternlike caverns with the broad fan of sparkling water spreading like a beautiful curtain across the great ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... which large folding doors opened into another and smaller apartment. This smaller room was hung with green baize; candelabra shed gentle light upon it from within the doors, so placed as not to be seen from the principal room; and over the folding doors was hung a hick red curtain; ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... was transpiring regarding the duel, until his mangled corpse was brought into his dwelling, from which he had so recently gone forth in all the vigor of life and manhood. And here let us drop the curtain, nor intrude on that scene of domestic affliction around the deserted hearth-stone of the ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... shall get it all out of him," said the corporal, shutting the door. My uncle Toby filled his second pipe; and, had it not been that he now and then wandered from the point, with considering whether it was not full as well to have the curtain of the tennaile a straight line as a crooked one, he might be said to have thought of nothing else but poor LeFevre and his boy the ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... to the church just in time for the last curtain, so he can see what a stunner Mildred was in her canopy-top outfit. He's all right, Brother Bill is. Never gives me any call-down for shuntin' him off the way I did and makin' him miss most of the show. As I ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... disarrangements occasioned by its being dwelt in, and all the objects scattered around displayed the taste of her who hallowed it by her presence. I saw her enter with a quick light step—I saw her approach the window—she drew back the curtain yet further, and looked out into the night. Its breezy freshness played among her ringlets, and wafted them from the transparent marble of her brow. She clasped her hands, she raised her eyes to heaven. I heard her voice. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... and finally there was the bedroom wherein the most conspicuous object was a large oak chest clamped with wide iron hinges and a massive writing-desk; the bed and a very primitive washstand were in an alcove at the farther end of the room and partially hidden by a tapestry curtain. ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... sloped, much as the bottles do, From a house you could descry O'er the garden-wall. Is the curtain blue Or green to ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... effects, Providence punishes national sins by national calamities." The Virginian romancer pictured the far-off scenes of the conflict which he saw approaching as the prophets of Israel painted the coming woes of Jerusalem, and the strong iconoclast of Boston announced the very year when the curtain should rise ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... supposed that he had imagined the whole thing. He had not seen anything definitely; he had merely felt that eyes were watching him; what had seemed a figure across deck might have been the oil coat hanging on a peg or a curtain blowing out of a window. The more he thought over the matter the more assured was he that he had allowed his imaginings to make a fool of him. And by the time the sun flooded the decks next morning he was ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... to the right of Douaumont, was important as part of the French line. It was carried by the Germans on Sunday morning, April 2, after a bombardment of twelve hours, which seemed to break even the record of Verdun for intensity. The French curtain of fire had checked their further advance, according to a special correspondent of the Chicago Herald, and a savage countercharge in the afternoon had gained for the defenders a corpse-strewn welter of splintered trees and shell-shattered ground that had been the southern corner of the wood. Further ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... was not inappropriate, for what with the sea roaring in white foam up to our very feet, and the spray flying in white sheets continually over our heads, and the water dripping heavily from the ledge above like a curtain in front of our cave, it did seem to us very much more like being below than ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... separate Latin dialects arose, and the strain upon the whole structure of the tongue was prodigious, when the Goths poured into Italy, established themselves in the capital, and began to speak and write in a language previously foreign to them. With the close of the reign of Theodoric the curtain ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... signs of the skies. Nay, once, his brother surprised him in the act of examining through his longest tube a patch of burning heath upon a distant hill. But now he was diligent from morning till night in the study of the laws of the truth that has to do with stars; and when the curtain of the sunlight was about to rise from before the heavenly worlds which it had hidden all day long, he might be seen preparing his instruments with that solemn countenance with which it becometh one to look into the mysterious harmonies of Nature. Now he learned ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... cloak upon the nail, the rosaries of onions, the gun and powder-horn and corner-cupboard; here is the inn (this drama must be nautical, I foresee Captain Luff and Bold Bob Bowsprit) with the red curtain, pipes, spittoons, and eight-day clock; and there again is that impressive dungeon with the chains, which was so dull to colour. England, the hedgerow elms, the thin brick houses, windmills, glimpses of the navigable Thames—England, when at last I came to visit it, was only Skelt ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been writing a play now for twenty years, but hasn't had time to finish the last act. "There's no hurry," he says; "true art will not permit of haste"—and the joke of it is that he has a cough that'll give him his own curtain long before he ever writes it on his play. ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... mustache thrilled her with its silky touch. She stopped playing and tried to catch her breath, for, strong as she was, it affected her breathing. Her heart was beating like a triphammer. She did not say, "Oh," or, "You mustn't," but rose and walked over to a window, where she lifted a curtain, pretending to look out. She felt as though she might faint, so intensely happy ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... that one could hardly see. The chief had gone to a feast in a lodge near his own, and his wives were in bed, but one of them was still awake. The fire had burned down, and the lodge was almost dark. Suddenly the curtain of the doorway was thrown back. A person entered, passed around to the back of the lodge, and sat down in ...
— When Buffalo Ran • George Bird Grinnell
... at her, and the old curiosity took possession of him to understand this feminine enigma. Many a man before him has been the victim of a like desire, and lived to regret that he did not leave it ungratified. It is not well to try to lift the curtain of the unseen, it is not well to call to heaven to show its glory, or to hell to give us touch and knowledge of its yawning fires. Knowledge comes soon enough; many of us will say that knowledge has come too soon and left us desolate. There is ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... other house could Levin see over all the prospect except the bold and tarnished form of Johnson's castle, sliding its long porch forward at the base of that tall, blank, inexpressive roof which seemed suspended like the drab curtain of a theatre between the solemn chimney towers; the northern chimney broad and huge, and bottomed on an arch; the southern chimney leaner, but erect as a perpetual sentry ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... into the window, and the curtain of that descended relentlessly. The bank had suddenly taken on an aspect of Sabbath blankness. Once more the Colonel rattled the knob, then he ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... delighted with the performance, and many among the first quality examined and praised it; only I must own that Doctor Tusher happening to come up to London, and seeing the picture, (it was ordinarily covered by a curtain, but on this day Miss Beatrix happened to be looking at it when the Doctor arrived,) the Vicar of Castlewood vowed he could not see any resemblance in the piece to his old pupil, except, perhaps, a little about the chin and the periwig; but we all of us convinced him ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... of bed, and, running to one of the windows, raised the curtain. Both of the children cried out in fright then. Flames shot and curled to the very window of their room. Laura could not tell whether their house was on fire or not. She feared so, and the house next door was one mass ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... your wife is not here,' replied Albert, after a short silence, during which we could hear the furniture being moved, closets opened, and the curtain-rings rattle. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... quick and thorough work. He was not to be disappointed. Without any formalities the presiding officers of the last session were re-elected—in times of peace and party strife this would have been impossible. This short curtain raiser being over, the first act of the drama began. Before an overcrowded house the Chancellor described simply and clearly the efforts of the Government for the preservation of peace. He stated cold facts, showing unmistakably Russia's ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... have been in the old man's design? Was it a trap? Did he expect her to rush into Braden's arms? Was he lurking behind some near-by curtain to witness her surrender? Was he putting her to the test, or was it his grandson who ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... and it was time for the evening meal, and when it was ready they ate it at the rough table, with a sense of safety and comfort that had long been lacking. "This place is quite cosy," said Helen, looking round the firelit cabin. "Tomorrow I shall make a curtain for the doorway out of ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... beauties and interests. Falls, glaciers and lakes are on a grand scale. The Tasman glacier is eighteen miles long and more than two miles across at the widest point; the Murchison glacier is more than ten miles long; the Godley eight. The Hochstetter Fall is a curtain of broken, uneven, fantastic ice coming down 4,000 feet on to the Tasman glacier. It is a great spectacle, seen amid the stillness of the high Alps, broken only by the occasional boom and crash of ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... Theater to see Sarah Bernhardt. What a magnificent actor! I never saw any man or woman who so absolutely buried self out of sight and became the very being personated. Though I couldn't understand a single word, I enjoyed it all until the curtain fell at half-past eleven. I was tired beyond telling, but felt richly repaid by the seeing. She must be master of her divine art thus to impress one by action alone. Today Mrs. McLaren invites me to dine at her son's, Charles ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... the mist had cleared, and we flew across the Channel, under a curtain of clouds, leaving Marmaduke to fetch a new machine. When you visit the Continent after the war, friend the reader, travel by the Franco-British service of aerial transport, which will come into being with the return ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... distant. Minnehaha is a perfect little beauty; its bright sparkling waters, forming innumerable fleecy threads! of silk-like wavelets, seem to laugh over the rocky edge; so light and so lace-like is the curtain, that the sunlight streaming through looks like a lovely bride through some rich bridal veil. The Falls of St. Anthony are neither grand nor beautiful, and are utterly disfigured by the various ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... At length the curtain fell upon the bloody scenes of the war. Under the mighty blows of Grant and his lieutenants the Rebellion was crushed. On a bright day the President, accompanied by Mr. Sumner, entered the streets of Richmond, and witnessed ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... it. Day hath left No token of its parting, and the blush With which it welcomed the embrace of Night Has faded from the blue cheek of the West; Yet from the solemn darkness of the North, Stretched o'er the "empty place" by God's own hand, Trembles and waves that curtain of pale fire,— Tingeing with baleful and unnatural hues The winter snows beneath. It is as if Nature's last curse—the fearful plague of fire— Were working in the elements, and the skies Even as a ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... treasures into three shelves, and did her best to make the room look pleasant and inviting to the little stranger. In fact, before she was through with the work she became really very much interested in it. She had put a clean white quilt upon the bed, and looped up the curtain with a handsome crimson ribbon, taken from the stock in the wardrobe. She had swept and dusted every corner and crevice; she had displayed all her ornaments to the best advantage, and put fresh cologne in ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... rose, the foe invaded, In her own defence upbraided Wine for his invective base: "Now at last we've drawn the curtain! Who, what god thou art is certain From ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... the tent, beyond whose first division, screened by a heavy curtain of goat's hair, the beautiful young Djelma played with her only son, a child of three or four summers; the Sheik lay mute, the Djouad and Marabouts around never spoke in his presence unless their lord bade them, and the Chasseur was stretched motionless, his elbow ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... of the higher ranks was gathering. Closely packed and standing, the multitude extended to the sides and the rear of my position for many hundred metres until it seemed quite lost under the glowing lights in the distance. Before us a huge curtain hung. Emblazoned on its dull crimson background of subdued socialism was a gigantic black eagle, the leering emblem of autocracy. Above and extending back over us, appeared in the ceiling a deep ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... George Boulenger, F.R.S., recognising him among the crowd in front of their cage when he was still far off. And I have often made chimpanzees laugh—"roar with laughter," and roll over in excitement—by tickling them under the arms. The saying of Aristotle (inscribed over the curtain of the Palais Royal Theatre in Paris) that "Laughter is better than tears, because laughter is the speciality of man," is not true. Not only do the higher apes and some of the smaller monkeys laugh, but dogs also laugh, although they do not make sounds whilst indulging in "spasms ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... brought up genteelly, she declines the mode of conveyance provided for her journey to Tyburn with the utmost volubility. Being about to be hanged merely does not seem to affect her so poignantly as the disgraceful "drag" she is doomed to take her last journey in. She swoons at the idea; and the curtain falls to end her wicked career, and the sufferings of an ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 21, 1841 • Various
... to Win, as she went out at last, a week since she had come in by the same door. It was like a play she had seen, where, in the second act, the people who had been young in the first were middle-aged when the curtain next rose; and in the third they were old, all in the course of a few hours. But a year or two seemed to drop from her shoulders when she caught sight of Miss Kirk waiting for her in the street. Beside Miss Kirk, to the surprise of 2884, towered ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... showed a friendly bias toward it at the beginning and were plainly moved by the dramatic power of it as it progressed, but they seemed shocked and bewildered by the bludgeon blows of the conclusion and the curtain fell upon a rather panicky silence. Then they rallied and gave both the performers and the composer what would pass in current ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... to the story, nor is the anticipatory sadness felt for the future of this ill-assorted couple in any way dissipated by the stereotyped and perfunctory offer of marriage made by the young London Journal Nobleman to the daughter of the utterly crushed snob just before the Curtain descends. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various
... dews at even; Her tears fell ere the dews were dried; She could not look on the sweet heaven, Either at morn or eventide. After the flitting of the bats, When thickest dark did trance the sky, She drew her casement-curtain by, And glanced athwart the glooming flats. She only said, 'The night is dreary, He cometh not,' she said; She said, 'I am aweary, aweary, I would ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... rain swept the ports, and the Southern Queen began to roll on the rising swells. Throckmartin drew another deep breath of relief, and drawing aside a curtain peered out into the night. Its blackness seemed to reassure him. At any rate, when he sat again he was ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... But it was their custom to come in the forenoon, when I was at work with Fifanti. And often I observed the doctor to be oddly preoccupied, and to spend much time in creeping to the window that was all wreathed in clematis, and in peeping through that purple-decked green curtain into the garden where his excellency and ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... approaches it assumes the hue predicted by Rocas, and desired by Diaz. For the ocean fog has again rolled shoreward across the peninsula, and shrouds San Francisco as with a pall. The adjacent country is covered with its funereal curtain, embracing within its folds the house ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... take it away. Even now, while we were making our prayers and supplications unto Him, and confessing our sins, He has sent a token that He has heard our cry, and will grant our request. Look at those clouds that are rising over the western hills, and gradually spreading like a curtain across the sky. For six weary weeks those clouds have been withheld, and we have been humbled; and, at times, our faith has well nigh failed. But the faithfulness of our God never fails; and now we are confident that, ere long, His blessing will ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... house lay wrapped in slumber. I hesitated to pull the bell: no, it would startle Mrs. Sloman. Bessie was coming: she would surely not make me wait. Was not that her muslin curtain stirring? I would wait in the porch—she would ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... the stamping of his feet, and cried, "Why don't you begin? Up with the curtain! Go ahead, will ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... but groping down it, I found the study door open, as before, and passed in. A sick light stole through the blinds—enough for me to distinguish the glasses and decanters on the table, and find my way to the curtain that hung before the room where the light had ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... like the others on the plantation, the interior had a rude, grotesque elegance about it far in advance of any negro hut I had ever seen. The logs were chinked with clay, and the one window, though destitute of glass, and ornamented with the inevitable board-shutter, had a green moreen curtain, which kept out the wind and the rain. A worn but neat and well swept carpet partly covered the floor, and on the low bed was spread a patch-work counter-pane. Against the side of the room opposite the door stood an antique, ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... my joss-house so gloomy and low, that I have returned to my first quarter in the garden, on a mound overlooking the river. It consists, of a single room, part of which is screened off by a curtain for a bedroom. It is hot during the day, but nothing much to complain of. I took a walk yesterday. The country is quite flat, cultivated in wheat, millet, &c. Instead of the footpaths of the southern parts of China, there are roads for carriages, and wheeled carts dragged by mules in tandem ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... lifted the curtain and went in, it was like passing at one step from Europe to the East—from the banks of Windermere to the shores of the Bosphorus. It was a circular apartment with a low cushioned divan running completely round it, except where broken by the two doorways, ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... physical as it was mental. The room was slowly suffused with a cool sodden breath and the dank odor of rotten leaves. He looked at the candle—its flame was actually deflecting in this mysterious blast. It seemed to come from a recess for hanging clothes topped by a heavy cornice and curtain. He had examined it before, but he drew the curtain once more aside. The cold current certainly seemed to be more perceptible there. He felt the red-clothed backing of the interior, and his hand suddenly grasped a doorknob. It turned, and the whole structure—cornice and curtains—swung ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... entirely nude. As it would have been sacrilege unspeakable for a man to see the ankle or shoulder of a Vestal, let alone her entire body, it was enjoined that the scourging take place at midnight, in a shut room, and that a woolen curtain should hang between the Pontifex ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... ravenously hungry, but she was in too dirty a condition to touch food. She looked in and out and around, but no one was there. She mounted the ladder in hopes yet of finding the Motherkin. Her room was as she had left it, with the exception of a note pinned on the muslin curtain of the window. It ...
— The Princess Idleways - A Fairy Story • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... been a long one, and any article that holds sway for so lengthy a period must have had some merit. But the soft chintz, linen, madras, or muslin is now the vogue, and there is much good sense in the innovation. No lace curtain ever made could be both artistic and serviceable; some persons go so far as to say that they never were either, but we have too much reverence for tradition to be so iconoclastic. However, they certainly were expensive if ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... tempore throughout all these changes are | suo et mundum tradidit disputioni infallibly observed. And although the | eorum / ut non inveniat homo opus quod highest generality of motion or summary | operatus est Deus ab initio usque ad law of nature God should still reserve | finem. within his own curtain, yet many and noble | are the inferior and secondary operations | Luther Bible: Prediger Salomo 3,11: which are within man's sounding. This is a | Er aber tut alles fein zu seiner Zeit thing which I cannot tell whether I may so | und lt ihr Herz sich ngstigen, wie plainly speak ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... ushered first into a stately outer drawing-room, filled with old French furniture and fine pictures; then the butler lifted a velvet curtain, pronounced the visitor's name with a voice and emphasis as perfectly trained as the rest of him, and stood aside ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward |
