"Housetop" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cock's on the housetop blowing his horn; The bull's in the barn a-threshing of corn; The maids in the meadows are making of hay; The ducks in ...
— The Little Mother Goose • Anonymous
... noon on Saturday, the message came which announced the surrender of the fort. The city was frantic with joy. For hours, no forms of manifestation seemed adequate to express the excitement which filled all classes of society. Standing on the housetop in the evening, a wild crowd could be seen flitting before bonfires, or ranging the streets, and shouting in the ecstasy of an excitement which none could control. Immediately on the arrival of the despatch, messengers had started into the country with the welcome tidings, and deep ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... that I am not angry when they smile and nod the head; why should I be? But, John, it is known to myself only and Him before whom all hearts are open how great is my suffering in being among my neighbours as a sparrow upon the housetop. ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... calumny—another and a very different fault. It would be well for such people to reflect for a moment, and ask themselves if their own character would stand the strain of having their secret sins and failings subjected to public criticism and censure, their private shortcomings heralded from every housetop. Would they, or would they not, consider themselves injured by such revelations? Then it would be in order for them to use the same rule and ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... a thrill. It is expected that the crack of a rifle from a tree or a housetop will fell the tall Lincoln from Illinois, as he faces the crowd to take the oath of office. But all was peace. The South only intended to go its way and let Lincoln do what he could, if anything. I stood with the rapt mass close to the stand where I could see every face on the platform. Lincoln ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... is on the housetop, let him not go down to take what is in his house; and he that is in the field, let him not turn back to ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... something will happen to me before morning. I don't know what—something to keep me from coming into that money. I'm afraid a tree will fall on me—I'm afraid a cab will run over me, or a stone drop on me from a housetop, or something. I never was afraid before. I've sat in this park a hundred nights as calm as a graven image without knowing where my breakfast was to come from. But now it's different. I love money, Dawson—I'm ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... of the Maronites, and, being thirsty, looked in at a doorway. He saw the village priest and all his family engaged in stuffing a fat sheep with mulberry leaves. The sheep was tethered half-way up the steps which led on to the housetop. The priest and his wife, together with their eldest girl, sat on the ground below, amid a heap of mulberry boughs; and all the other children sat, one on every step, passing up the leaves, when ready, to the second daughter, whose business ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... fact before it was evolved into a doctrine. And so I venture to say that the unanimity of the preaching is only explicable on the ground of that preaching in both its parts—its assertion of Jesus' Messiahship and of His propitiatory death—being the repetition on the housetop of the lessons which they had heard ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... round, examined everything with a practised eye, and found that it would require a regular siege to make good his entry. He threatened, entreated, observed that he would be content with a small sum of money, but all in vain. There stood the sturdy administrador on the housetop, and there sat the captain on his horse below, something like the fox and the crow; but the agent with the keys was wiser than the crow and her cheese, for no cajoling would induce him to let them out ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... quite softly to myself, and held my head sneeringly askew. Wherefore should I sorrow for what I eat, for what I drink, or for what I may array this miserable food for worms called my earthy body? Hath not my Heavenly Father provided for me, even as for the sparrow on the housetop, and hath He not in His graciousness pointed towards His lowly servitor? The Lord stuck His finger in the net of my nerves gently—yea, verily, in desultory fashion—and brought slight disorder among the threads. And then the Lord withdrew His finger, and there were fibres and delicate ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... brought on a bed a man who was palsied; and they sought to bring him in, and to lay him before him. (19)And not finding by what way they might bring him in, because of the multitude, they went upon the housetop, and let him down through the tiling with the couch into the midst before Jesus. (20)And seeing their faith he said: Man, thy sins are forgiven thee. (21)And the scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying: Who is this that speaks blasphemies? ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various
... indeed dead, but the spirit which animated it is indestructible. There will be poets to worship and reproduce it, there will be scholars to admire and preserve it, when every man's field is bounded by a railway, when every housetop is surmounted by a telegraph wire, and when the golden calf is again set up amid the people, to be ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... homelier elements. Men and women stood alike in the crowd, dainty patrician and toil-stained laborer, all thrilled by a common emotion, all vivified—if in unequal degree—by the same sublime enthusiasm. Overhead, from every window and doorway and housetop, in every space and spot that could sustain one, on ropes, on staffs, in human hands, waved, and curled, and floated, flags that were in multitude like the swells of the sea; silk, and bunting, ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... things. Then Leslie opened a glass door in the very prettiest room of all, which she and Allison immediately decided must belong to their aunt, and exclaimed in delight; for here nestled between the gables, with a tiled wall all about it, was a delightful housetop or uncovered porch, so situated among the trees that it was entirely ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... health of life, of thought, of action; is growing in character. Let them grow, help them to grow. You know they love you even when they say little about it; you do not expect them to climb to the housetop and declare their affection. A flower does not sing about the sun, it grows toward it. That is the test of the child's religion: Is he growing ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... that sketch of the housetop alone was worth a hundred times more than what you"—She stopped; she did not like to reveal what he got for his pictures, and added, "more than what any of those usurers ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... gone for good into military secret service at the front—she drearily smiled away the whole trivial riddle as she lay of nights contriving new searches for that inestimable, living treasure, whose perpetual "missing," right yonder "almost in sight from the housetop," was ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... we cannot fully understand, not even the child should be asked to believe what plainly contradicts common sense and so puts too great a strain on credulity. In a certain Sunday school class the lesson was about Peter going up on the housetop to pray, and the vision that befell him there. This class of boys, living in a small village, had had no experience with any kind of housetop except that formed of a sharply sloping roof. Therefore the story looked improbable to them, and ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... twisted and pried with his steel lever at the lock of the trapdoor that stood between him and the open air of the housetop, he could already hear the telltale splintering of wood and sharp orders and muffled cries and the approaching, quick tramping of feet. He fought at the lock like a madman, for by this time the trampling feet were mounting the upper stairs, and doors were being battered and wrenched from ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... consider it for an instant. She would no more have been persuaded to see Jerry again, by a consideration of the material advantages to be gained, than she could have been persuaded to throw herself down from the housetop. That much was settled, not by any coherent effort of her brain, but by a co-ordination of every instinct in her, by the action of her whole being, by what ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... for his birds, and who cares if any fellow, just for exercise, shoots a dagger a yard from his wrist and sticks you in the back? You serve me, and there's pay for you; brothers, doctors, nurses, friends,—a tight blanket if you fall from a housetop! and masses for your soul when your hour strikes. The treacherous cur lies rotting in a ditch! Do you conceive that when I employ you I am in your power? Your intelligence will open gradually. Do you know that here in this house I can conceal fifty men, and leave the door ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... last, I positively dreamed that I was deserted. I fancied that I was chased along a housetop, and fell from the gutter. Down—down—but I woke up on the bear-skin before the fire, as our man-servant was bringing ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... doors and windows were shattered in an instant. Froment and his brother Pierre tried to escape by a narrow staircase which led to the roof, but before they reached it Pierre was wounded in the hip and fell; but Froment reached the roof, and sprang upon an adjacent housetop, and climbing from roof to roof, reached the college, and getting into it by a garret window, took refuge in a large room which was always unoccupied at night, being used during the day as ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... whispered, his breath coming in gasps. "Thou wilt wait for His coming? Nay, my little sister, thy time of waiting is over. The Messiah is here! The Christ is born! O that I might shout it from the housetop, that my father and mother and all the world may know that the Lord hath kept His promise and the ...
— Christmas Light • Ethel Calvert Phillips
... almost summer heat reigning without. Then there was an hour of sleep, then a drive to the Pincio to see all the notable people who came up there to look at or speak to each other while the sun sank behind St. Peter's. And in the evening after dinner they went to the housetop to see the fireworks which were being displayed for some festa or other; and later there was ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... and slaughter continued to alternate between them until the planting season of some indefinite year came around. All the Sikyatki men were to begin the season by planting the fields of their chief on a certain day, which was announced from the housetop by the Second Chief as he made his customary evening proclamations, and the Walpi, becoming aware of this, planned a fatal onslaught. Every man and woman able to draw a bow or wield a weapon were got in readiness ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... ancient as his ray; While their great shadows stretching from the light Look like the first colossal steps of Night Stretching across the valley to invade The distant hills of porphyry with their shade. Around, as signals of the setting beam, Gay, gilded flags on every housetop gleam: While, hark!—from all the temples a rich swell Of music ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... away, and with this distance between them Maggie dared do anything; so when the flag was again mentioned, she answered apologetically, as if it were something of which they ought to be ashamed: "We never had any, but we can soon make one, I know. 'Twill be fun to see it float from the housetop!" and, flying up the stairs to the dusty garret, she drew from a huge oaken chest a scarlet coat which had belonged to the former owner of the place, who little thought, as he sat in state, ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... floating on the stream or stranded among shallows. Settlers were rowing about in boats and canoes in all directions, but although some of them noticed the poor man sitting beside his cat on the housetop, they were either too far off or had no time to render ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... have another testimony to the wondrous interdependence of the action of prayer and the Spirit, and another proof of what will come to a man who has given himself to prayer. Peter went up at midday to pray on the housetop. And what happened? He saw heaven opened, and there came the vision that revealed to him the cleansing of the Gentiles; with that came the message of the three men from Cornelius, a man who "prayed alway," and had heard from an angel, "Thy prayers are come ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray
... the pariah dogs of the Orient, they have the right of way; and they are evidently conscious of the fact, for they are tamer than barnyard fowls. They are the scavengers of the tropics. They sit upon the housetop and among the branches of the trees, awaiting the hour when the refuse of the domestic meal is thrown into the street. There is no drainage in those villages; strange to say, even in the larger cities there is none. Offal of every description is cast forth into the highways and byways; ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... Serbian infantry staggered back to the main army shattered and beaten. The big guns took up the battle again, but not with the same vigor and confidence as before. The Serbian fire seemed even to tell the spectators on the housetop that the Serbians had ...
— The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign - The Struggle to Save a Nation • Clair W. Hayes
... upon the failings of the ladies, "The contentions of a wife," he says, "are a continual dropping." "It is better to dwell in the corner of a housetop than with a brawling woman in a wide house." "It is better to dwell in the wilderness than with a contentious and angry woman." The meaning of all these sayings must be that women are of a very irritable and vexatious character. But did Solomon really believe in the strong ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... not stand anything like affectation, or what people were calling aestheticism and decadence. To him, literature was literature and art was art, and not puling sentiment, affected posturing, lilies and sunflowers. The National Observer was the housetop from which he shouted for all who passed to hear that it did not matter twopence what the dabbler wanted to express if he could not express it, if he had not the technique of his medium at his fingers' ends and under his perfect control. A man might indulge in noble ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... Daniel's prophetic vision was to be heralded by the encompassing of Jerusalem by armies. Then all who would escape should make haste; from Judea they should flee to the mountains; he who was on the housetop would have no time to take his goods, but should hasten down by the outer steps and flee; he who was in the field would better leave without first returning to his house even for his clothes. Terrible, indeed, would that day be for women hampered ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... accomplishment of a perfect house-interior which few householders have had the time or experience to cope with, and yet the fact remains that each mistress of a house believes that unless she vanquishes all difficulties and comes out triumphantly with colours flying at the housetop and enjoyment and admiration following her efforts, she has failed in something which she should have been perfectly able to accomplish. But the obligation is certainly a forced one. It is the result of the modern awakening to the effect of many heretofore unrecognized influences ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... accompany them. He hoped that no intriguing old women, particularly Jewesses, had been admitted into his harem; and that the walls, which surrounded the women's apartments, had always been kept in good repair, in order to prevent gadding on the housetop with the neighbours. He ordered that his black slave, Johur, was now no longer to be allowed free access into the anderun; and if ever seen to be familiar with any of the female slaves, he and they were to be whipped: finally, he desired the steward to give the courier a handsome reward, ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... Italian. Her parents lived almost all the year round in the country on an estate in the North of Italy: plains, fields, little canals. From the loggia on the housetop they looked down on golden vines, from which here and there the black spikes of the cypress-trees emerged. Beyond them were fields, and again fields. Silence. The lowing of the oxen returning from the fields, and the shrill ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... forth we set once more and on a path no easier than before, but worse—like a very housetop for steepness, without a tinge of any living thing for succour if one fell, but only sharp, jagged rocks, and that which now added to our peril was here and there a patch of snow, so that the mules must cock their ears and feel their way before ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... identical with it, though possibly not entirely so, in chemical composition. It consists of a series of flattened horny scales, each being probably an aggregation of many cells. The scales, which have been compared to the scales of a fish or to slates on a housetop, overlap each other, the free edges protruding more or less from the fibre, while the lower or covered edges are embedded and held in the inner layer of cells. The free edges always point away from the root of the fibre, just as do the bracts ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech
... in which he had landed was residential—a district of merchants of the more prosperous sort. Everywhere were evidences of luxury and wealth. Slaves appeared upon every housetop with gorgeous silks and costly furs, laying them in the sun for airing. Jewel-encrusted women lolled even thus early upon the carven balconies before their sleeping apartments. Later in the day they would repair to the roofs when the slaves had arranged couches and pitched silken ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... vivid relief against the background of empty air. She was angry, and the pose suited her. The slight hardness of her expression was lost in the dim blue twilight which still waited for the moon. Vine, an unemotional man, felt with a curious strength the charm of this isolation on the housetop, this tranquillity, so much more suggestive of solitude than anything which could be realized within the walls of a room. He shivered a little when he saw how close she was to the low parapet, and he held out his hand. She took it at once, and ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Solomon, whose experience in home life was as melancholy as it was multitudinous. One day his palace with its great wide rooms and great wide doors and great wide hall was too small for him and the loud tongue of a woman belaboring him about some of his neglects, and he retreated to the housetop to get relief from the lingual bombardment. And while there he saw a poor man on one corner of the roof with a mattress for his only furniture, and the open sky his only covering. And Solomon envies him and cries ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... house, summoned him to come forth for personal conference. Whereupon, Monsieur Gabelle did heavily bar his door, and retire to hold counsel with himself. The result of that conference was, that Gabelle again withdrew himself to his housetop behind his stack of chimneys; this time resolved, if his door were broken in (he was a small Southern man of retaliative temperament), to pitch himself head foremost over the parapet, and crush a man ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... hot to live upstairs. All the rest of the space below was left to the servants and offices. Upstairs the rooms ran around two sides of the courtyard. A long terrace occupied the other two sides, joining the rooms at either end. This terrace formed a pleasant housetop in the cool evenings. We spread it with mats and divans, and used to sit among the flowers and shrubs, and look over Damascus and sniff the desert ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... never do to show such cowardice!" said Mrs. Cole. "If I were chairman of that committee I'd put the ticket in the field and go to the polls if the devils were around it as thick as shingles upon a housetop." "I was of the same mind" answered Mrs. West, "but when the Governor of the State—when brave Daniel Lane has become apprehensive, I can appreciate the gravity of the situation. I have seen that man walk undismayed through the streets of Wilmington ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... that differences of adult form grew out of likeness and simplicity in the young; and that the life of plants and animals was one science, their study one discipline. What Huxley had begun to proclaim from the housetop, Darwin was meditating in secret; and much more. Let us see how he states the case in the famous modest opening of the "Origin of Species" (1859): "When on board H.M.S. Beagle, as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... great thing to cover the blemishes and to excuse the failings of a friend; to draw a curtain before his stains, and to display his perfections; to bury his weaknesses in silence, but to proclaim his virtues upon the housetop. ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward
... growing dark. The bright red dot that, from the railed housetop, you might have seen on the far edge of Turkey Creek battle-ground, was a watch-fire beside the blackberry patch we know of. Here sat Judge March guarding his wagon and mules. One of them was sick. The wagon, under a load of barreled pork and general supplies, had slumped into a hole and ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... officer's voice as he answered. He was an older man, and his expression of feeling nearly upset Tom. He trudged on, file-closer for the front rank and six-feet-one of target, and wondered if he had been a fool after all. It was well enough for those people yelling acclaim from street and housetop; but they were going back home, or down to the University, and he—to the troopship, and the high seas, and after that no telling. The strap of his knapsack hurt him. They said that Manila was a furnace. He wished that the women would stop loading them with flowers; he wished that Pellams and ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... had to do on the continent of Europe. And yet it will be hard to kill the little wretches, the only Old World bird we have. When I take down my gun to shoot them I shall probably remember that the Psalmist said, "I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the housetop," and maybe the recollection will cause me to stay my hand. The sparrows have the Old World hardiness and prolificness; they are wise and tenacious of life, and we shall find it by and by no small matter to keep them in check. Our native ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... and Vixen! On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Dunder and Blitzen! To the top of the porch! To the top of the wall! Now, dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!" As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky; So up to the housetop the coursers they flew, With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas, too. And then in a twinkling, I heard on the roof The prancing and pawing of each little hoof. As I drew in my head, and was turning around, Down the ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... by a wall of English soldiery, standing elbow to elbow, erect and stalwart figures, fine and sightly in their polished steel; while from behind them on every hand stretched far away a level plain of human heads; and there was no window and no housetop within our view, howsoever distant, but was black with ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... startle him; he recognized it, accepted it, and strove to convert it. And as long as this daughter of Folly forsook her evil ways for him, it was a triumph in which there was no shame, and might be proclaimed from the housetop. When his neighbors thought differently, and avoided them, he saw no inconsistency in bringing his wife's old friends to divert her: she might in time convert THEM. He had no more fear of her returning to ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... more extraordinary man, who, in the emphatic language of that time, which has now lost its force from its familiarity, first revealed the existence of a "New World." As he passed through the busy, populous city of Seville, every window, balcony, and housetop, which could afford a glimpse of him, is described to have been crowded with spectators. It was the middle of April before Columbus reached Barcelona. The nobility and cavaliers in attendance on the court, together with the authorities of the city, came to the gates to receive him, and escorted ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... house, little dreaming of the good fortune, which by this means he was to enjoy. Before the first day passed, to his extreme surprise and joy, he saw a bird, with a chain attached to its neck, entangled with the horse's head; and, on mounting to the housetop to extricate the bird, he found it one of the greatest beauty, and that the chain was of diamonds. He was not long in discovering the bird had escaped from the window of the favourite of a certain sultan, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen! On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!— To the top of the porch, to the top of the wall, Now, dash away, dash away, dash away all!" As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, When they meet with an obstacle mount to the sky, So, up to the housetop the coursers they flew, With a sleigh full of toys—and St. Nicholas, too. And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof The prancing and pawing of each little hoof. As I drew in my head, and was turning around, Down the chimney ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... to this day, must have been born with nothing less than genius—genius to observe, to narrate, and to judge. Even had he written as a mere recluse and critic, looking out upon his world from a monk's cell or from the corner of a housetop, the vividness, the tenderness, the sarcasm and the humour would still have been there. But Knox's genius was predominantly practical; and the difference between the transformation which befell him, and that which changed so many other men in his time, was that ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... where the gray slate roofs of dull Chamberi bake in the sun, and ascending a gently mounting road, with high leafy bank on the right throwing cool shadows over his head, and a stream on the left making music at his feet, he sees an old red housetop lifted lonely above the trees. The homes in which men have lived now and again lend themselves to the beholder's subjective impression; they seemed to be brooding in forlorn isolation like some life-wearied ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... after a few minutes, I used to see one of them dart out from behind a mud wall and scuttle away like a rabbit; then another lady would steal out, carefully lock the door, and with a child on her back and a couple of olive branches in rear, crawl over the housetop and out at the back garden, there taking to her heels, and vanishing with her convoy suddenly from sight. This operation being repeated in other tenements, I found myself at last left in full and uninterrupted ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... forgiveness, with promises of full amendment of his former evil life, he gave her back the ring which he had recovered from his friend. He entreated the latter not to reveal his shame; but, as what is whispered in the ear is always proclaimed from the housetop, the truth, after a time, became known, and men called him cuckold without imputing ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... father and husband, doing good by stealth, sometimes pours out in secret an affection for his womenfolk which it would not be seemly for the world to know about. Standing with a friend of mine on a high flat housetop in Calcutta one day, I saw a Hindu father on the next-door housetop proudly and lovingly walking and talking with his daughter who was just budding into maidenhood. "His affection is quite unmistakable," my friend said to me, "and yet if in public, ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... paused at the for'ard end of the housetop and stood in a listening attitude. From the main deck below, near Number Two hatch, across the mumbling of various voices, I could recognize Kid Twist, Nosey Murphy, and Bert Rhine—the three gangsters. But Steve Roberts, the cow- boy, was also there, as was Mr. Mellaire, both of whom ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... Deceit is always a losing game. A lie is sure to be found out; as the Lord Jesus Himself says, 'There is nothing hid which shall not be made manifest;' and what we do in secret, is sure, unless we repent and amend it, to be proclaimed on the housetop: and many a poor soul, in her haste and greediness to get much, ends by getting nothing at all. And if it were not so;—if you were able to deceive any human being out of the riches of the world: yet know, that ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... stairs with no less caution (there are traps and pitfalls here, for those who are not so well escorted as ourselves) into the housetop; where the bare beams and rafters meet overhead, and calm night looks down through the crevices in the roof. Open the door of one of these cramped hutches full of sleeping negroes. Pah! They have a charcoal fire within; there is a smell of singeing clothes, or flesh, so close they ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... the course of her life, Zarah dreaded a meeting with Hadassah. Though the season was now so far advanced that the heat of the sun was great, the maiden lingered on the shadeless housetop, leaning her brow against the parapet, listlessly gazing towards Jerusalem, but with her mind scarcely taking in the objects upon which her eyes were fixed. Was it a foreboding of coming sorrow, ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... proclaim my views from the housetop," replied the squire, angrily, as he abruptly turned away ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... stood, while nearly a thousand faces from window, roof, wall, yard and housetop, gazed, the scaffold behind them still densely packed with the assistants, and the four executioners beneath, standing at their swinging beams. The priests continued to murmur prayers. The people were dumb, as if each witness ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... so crowded in the court that some men, who were bringing a friend to Jesus who was helpless with palsy, took him up by the outside stairs to the housetop. There, by taking up a few tiles, they made an opening just over the place where Jesus sat, and the people soon saw the man lying on his mat before Jesus, for they had let it down by cords ...
— Child's Story of the Bible • Mary A. Lathbury
... short-skirted, starling-voiced young women with bare arms and regimental badges, who acted as secretaries to Deputy-Director-Generals, would consent to walk up four flights of creaking, uncarpeted stairs to the dusty sparrows' nest on the housetop that was his home. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... told a friend what he was thinking of, and what he intended to do during the day.' Here, I thought, is something that can be at once tested. I said immediately to X: 'If you wish to win to your cause an apostle, who will proclaim your principles to the world from the housetop, tell me what I am now thinking of.' X. reddened, and did ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... is so small that some of us overflow into the hall or the garden; it matters not; there is some fatal charm in our humble hospitality. At four o'clock one of us is obliged to be, like Sister Anne, on the housetop; and if company approaches, she must descend and speed to the plumber's for six pennyworth extra of cream. In most well-ordered British households Miss Grieve would be requested to do this speeding, but both her mind and her body move too ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... day on the housetop, and she was not happy. The great pots of glazed earthenware, each a small garden in size, were filled with baked earth. The locusts had taken her flowers. In the park below the grass was gone and the palm trees were shadowless. Her chariot horses had died in ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... sparrow, on the housetop, heard— The sparrow is a knowing bird: "If rogues unto preferments rise, I ask nor place nor seignories. To the thatched cottage, I, to find, From courts afar, ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... taken seriously and literally such statements are simply untrue to the facts and blur our fundamental perceptions. If actually accredited, either would lead to quiescence; if everything were equally good or evil all striving would be meaningless, one might as well jump from a housetop or walk into the fire. But as a matter of fact such mystical assertions are indulged in only in the inactive moments of life, and mean no more than a lyric poem or a burst of music. Every one in his practical moments acknowledges tacitly, at least, ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... preceded and followed by a noisy crowd of demons and fairies. There seemed to be millions of them, all clattering and pointing at him. They hobbled and hopped over the ground, jumped into the air, sprang from housetop to housetop, made sudden appearances from holes in the ground ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... old to fight, all seeking some hiding-place until the storm should be over,—wretched, ragged, worn out by the fatigues of their hasty flight from "the abomination of desolation," for it seemed as if he that was on the housetop had not gone down to take anything out of his house, and woe had been pronounced upon them that were with child and them that gave suck in those days. I had seen enough of the horrors of suppression of Christian discontent by the Mussulmans ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... common. For an instant she forgot Bernard's greater transgressions in the wonder that a Battle should have married a woman who did not know how to behave in a crisis—who could even chant her wrongs from the housetop. At the moment this seemed to her the weightier share of the family remissness. The loyalty of the Battle wives had been as a lasting memorial to the Battle breeding—which, after all, was more ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... who had quarreled with her relations because of her theatrical propensities. There may have been some truth in the statements, but Ullmann adorned her history still more, and proclaimed from every New York housetop that the lady was a lineal descendant of Charlemagne, and the great-grand-daughter of ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... apply themselves to the development of the truly feminine art of giving a soul to things which have none. The triumph of woman's charm is in that work. Only a woman knows how to put into a home that indefinable something whose virtue has made the poet say, "The housetop rejoices and is glad." They say there are no such things as fairies, or that there are fairies no longer, but they know not what they say. The original of the fairies sung by poets was found, and is still, among those amiable mortals who knead bread with energy, ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... the story as it was told me, and it was told me for a fact. A man fell from a housetop in the city of Aberdeen, and was brought into hospital with broken bones. He was asked what was his trade, and replied that he was a tapper. No one had ever heard of such a thing before; the officials ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is, in some respects, like getting out of the chimney on to the housetop,—the latter city is, by contrast, so light and airy, and so American in its roominess. I had come to Paris for my dessert after my feast of London joints, and I suspect I was a little dainty in that most dainty of cities. ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... victorious Greek was exchanging a facetious remark with a stout gentleman in a doorway— one-half black and one-half white, as if he had been peeled up the middle—who had offered him his congratulations on this achievement, he received an orange from a housetop, full on his left ear, and was much surprised, not to say discomfited. Especially, as he was standing up at the time; and in consequence of the carriage moving on suddenly, at the same moment, staggered ignominiously, and ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... it wrought upon me. I was hateful in mine own eyes. I was hateful to myself, in being so hateful to the debtor and to you. But more than that, and worse than that, and to pass out far and broad beyond myself—I reflected that evening, sitting alone in my garden on the housetop, that I was doing dishonour to my ancient faith and race. I reflected—clearly reflected for the first time—that in bending my neck to the yoke I was willing to wear, I bent the unwilling necks of the whole Jewish people. For it is not, in Christian countries, with ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... arms, Telfer went off up the road and Sam followed thinking him altogether right, and, if later in life he learned that there are men who could write love letters on a piece of housetop in a flood, he did not know it then and the least suggestion of windiness or pretence ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... what are we—lords of nature? Why, a tile drops from a housetop, which an elephant would not feel more than the fall of a sheet of pasteboard, and there lies his lordship. Or something of inconceivably minute origin, the pressure of a bone, or the inflammation of a particle of the brain takes place, and the emblem ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... vision, and by it she knew the soul of the club; no amount of dissension could shake her faith in its ultimate good, and in times of crisis she presided with a serenity only accountable in the fact that she viewed from the mountain summit what her associates saw only from the housetop. What years of development she enjoyed long before the club idea possessed her, endowing her with wisdom and mental breadth, and what associations that urged and demanded that she become a student of sociology! The seeds of thought planted ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... who wouldn't go— Up on the housetop click, click, click? Down through the chimney, With ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... here on the housetop and the trees for an hour, and guffawed over that thing like human beings. It ain't any use to tell me a bluejay hasn't got a sense of humor, because I know better. And memory, too. They brought jays here from all over the United States to look down that hole, every summer for three years. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... outside was packed with boats—overloaded boats.... Screams of terror, choked into silence ... boats with frenzied occupants leaping into the water to find a quicker, happier death ... a woman with a babe in her arms on a housetop across the lagoon—the infant already dead; the crazed mother flinging it down into the water, herself following with ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... There was nothing to be done, and patience was one of the king's strong points. At two o'clock an officer, who had remained on watch on the housetop, hurried down with news that the enemy had suddenly turned to the left. The king went up to the roof with his officers, and at once divined the intention of ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... unfairly, that I had personal feelings. Surely you should in this hour of my reckoning, this hour of my Golgotha, when I climb the hill alone and ask the man I have wronged to take my place—surely you should be content with my humiliation? I shall not hesitate to proclaim it from the housetop when I ask for your election. If I have wronged you, my anguish could not be more pitifully complete! Will you do as I ask, and assure the safety of ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... fulfilment, may the image be used of the leaves of the trees of Eden! Other symbols have been given often to show the evanescence and slightness of our lives—the foam upon the water, the grass on the housetop, the vapour that vanishes away; yet none of these are images of true human life. That life, when it is real, is not evanescent; is not slight; does not vanish away. Every noble life leaves the fibre of it interwoven for ever in the work of the world; by ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... down, and withered like grass. I am even as a sparrow that sitteth alone on the housetop—Ps. cii. ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... that before the wild hurricane fly, When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky, So up to the housetop the coursers they flew, With a sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too; And then in a twinkling I heard on the roof The prancing and pawing of each ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... eyes blazed with pride at being a Plummer. This kind of courage was the Plummer kind. The child's lank little figure seemed to grow taller and straighter. She held up her head splendidly and exulted. She felt like going up on the minister's housetop and proclaiming: "She's my aunt Olivia! She's mine! She's mine—I'm a Plummer, too! All o' you listen, she's my aunt ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... been, once only: We lodged in a street together, You, a sparrow on the housetop lonely, I, a lone she-bird ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... own wares needs (to say the least of it) most careful handling. What they, or some anonymous admirer, say on the cover of The Worn Doorstep (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) is that they should like to shout its merits from the housetop. Possibly; but let me protest that it is for me, and not for them, to do the shouting, if any; which said, I will proceed to admit that the book is one of considerable charm. It is told in the form of letters (never ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various
... permitted to pursue this course unmolested; there are parties in the village that silently oppose his every footstep. If the battle were open it would be easier to win it, but it is concealed. The Church is not often denounced from the housetop, but it is certainly denounced under the roof. The poor and ignorant are instructed that the Church is their greatest enemy, the upholder of tyranny, the instrument of their subjection, synonymous with lowered wages and privation, more iniquitous than the landowner. The clergyman ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... him to look for a confidential councillor, now that matters which he had wished to be kept so profoundly secret that the very earth should not hear of them, had been proclaimed aloud above the tiles of every housetop. Nevertheless, he would be cut into little pieces but his Majesty should be obeyed, while he remained alive to enforce the royal commands. There were none who had been ever faithful but Berlaymont, he said, and even he had been neutral in the affair of the tax. He had ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and horses feeding in the lower paddock, a quarter of a mile off; then a low wail in the wood, then two or three wild weird yells, as of a devil in torment, and a pretty white curlew skirled over the housetop to ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... to get them down?' asked Mrs. Jonathan, the floodgate of her tears loosed once more at sight of her household and wearing apparel hung, as it were, from the housetop. ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... willing to concede that the servants will utilize the pantry and its death-dealing sink. It is very probable that under their auspices the slaughter of china and of glassware will be continued; it moots not to the average hired-girl whether the sink be in the kitchen or the butler's pantry, upon the housetop or in the bowels of the earth; the work of destruction goes on at four dollars a week and ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... one, but it has special appropriateness and emphasis on Peter's lips. Do you remember who it was that said, and on what occasion he said it: 'Now I perceive that God is no respecter of persons'? It was Peter when he had learned the lesson on the housetop at Joppa, looking out over the Mediterranean, and had it enforced by Cornelius' message. The great thought that had blazed upon him as a new discovery on that never-be-forgotten occasion, comes before him again, and this unfamiliar word comes ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... astronomy, there is the same enjoyment in a night upon the housetop, with the stars, as in the midst of other grand scenery; there is the same subdued quiet and grateful seriousness; a calm to the troubled spirit, and a hope ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... court, with its orange and lemon trees, fell all day the cool waters of a fountain. The principal apartments were the reception room, furnished with rich Eastern webs, and a large dining room, while a terrace forming part of the upper storey served as "a pleasant housetop in the cool evenings." The garden, with its roses, jessamine, vines, citron, orange and lemon trees, extended to that ancient river, the jewel-blue Chyrsorrhoa. There was excellent stabling, and Mrs. Burton kept horses, donkeys, a camel, turkeys, bull-terriers, street dogs, ducks, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... few such seasons for them—I wish they could live a hundred years just to feast on the seeds and sing and be utterly happy and oblivious of everything but the moment they are passing. A black line has rushed up from the espalier apple yonder to the housetop thirty times at least. The starlings fly so swiftly and so straight that they seem to leave a black line along the air. They have a nest in the roof, they are to and fro it and the meadow the entire day, from dawn till eve. The espalier apple, like a screen, hides the meadow ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... Nicholson advanced through the narrow lane between the wall and the houses, the column was swept by a storm of fire from window, loophole, and housetop—a fire to which no effective reply was possible. Then, just as he was in the act of cheering on his men, the gallant soldier fell back in the arms of those behind him, mortally wounded. He was carried off by his sorrowing soldiers, and lingered until the ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... cocks a fight began; Their spirit is, 'tis said, as that of man: Of these the beaten bird, a mass of blows, For shame into a corner creeping goes; The other to the housetop quickly flew, And there in triumph flapped his wings and crew. But him an eagle lifted from the roof, And bore away. His fellow gained a proof That oft the wages of defeat are best,— None else remained ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... don't complain, Mrs. Grey, but I want you to know that you're appreciated! 'It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop, than with a woman in a wide house'—especially ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... meets the sun, and his triple-cloven tongue flickers in his mouth. With him huge Periphas, and Automedon the armour-bearer, driver of Achilles' horses, with him all his Scyrian men climb the roof and hurl flames on the housetop. Himself among the foremost he grasps a poleaxe, bursts through the hard doorway, and wrenches the brazen-plated doors from the hinge; and now he hath cut out a plank from the solid oak and pierced a vast gaping hole. The ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... then the followers of Christ were to find safety in flight. When the warning sign should be seen, those who would escape must make no delay. Throughout the land of Judea, as well as in Jerusalem itself, the signal for flight must be immediately obeyed. He who chanced to be upon the housetop must not go down into his house, even to save his most valued treasures. Those who were working in the fields or vineyards must not take time to return for the outer garment laid aside while they should be toiling in the heat of the day. They must not hesitate a moment, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... regiment were permitted to join the men in the redoubt. The British sent 3000 of their best troops to carry the works by assault. Thousands of the people of Boston and neighborhood, many of whom had fathers, sons, brothers and husbands in the patriot lines, looked from hill and housetop and balcony as the regulars marched steadily to the attack. At the redoubt all was silent, although the British ships and a battery on Copp's Hill hurled shots at the Americans. Nearer and nearer marched the British. They were almost close enough for the final charge, when suddenly ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... my father," she whispered almost inaudibly. But it sounded to Craven as if she had shouted it from the housetop. Without a word he turned from her and stumbled toward the verandah steps. He must get away, he must be alone—alone with the night to wrestle with this ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... saith he, "is the candle whereby the thief is espied." And Tertullian saith, "The Holy Scripture manifestly findeth out the fraud and theft of heretics." For why do they hide, why do they keep under the Gospel which Christ would have preached aloud from the housetop? Why whelm they that light under a bushel which ought to stand on a candlestick? Why trust they more to the blindness of the unskilful multitude, and to ignorance, than to the goodness of their cause? Think they ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... What a man's question! He is all but six weeks old; and on this night I go up to the housetop with thee, my life, to count the stars. For that is auspicious. And he was born on a Friday under the sign of the Sun, and it has been told to me that he will outlive us both and get wealth. Can we ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... clear idea of what he meant to do; he thought of barricading himself in his bedroom and hiding in the wardrobe; he had desperate notions of getting on to the housetop by means of a step-ladder and the sky-light above the nursery landing; on one point he was resolved—he would not be ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... You lie in your throat, as the nobles say. I know well enough how she nursed you; and Marcasse from the housetop happened to look through her window and saw her on her knees in the middle of the room at five o'clock in the morning the day that you ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... though I made them expressly on your account. There are some things about this hall to which I would call your attention. Boo! Boo! Hallo! Hallo! No echo, you perceive. Likewise notice the fine view from the window." Mr. Boolpin pointed to a swamp which could be distinctly seen over a housetop toward the east. "The ventilation is a great feature, too." Mr. Boolpin directed his pestle toward a trap door in a corner of the ceiling, through which a quantity of rain had come a night or two previous, leaving a large wet patch on the floor. "It's ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... Pillsbury said of it: "With the exception of Phillips, no soul kindled with volcanic fire was permitted a solitary spark. O, such a meeting! Beautiful as parlor theatricals, but as a bold shriek for freedom or a protest against tyrant laws, not a sparrow on the housetop could have been more harmless." Miss Anthony wrote at this time: "Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... the old black strife began again. Many and many a dawn, as he thought of these things, he went out alone into the shadowless places of the land, to the quiet lapping sea, to the gardens, or to the housetop fronting the new-born day, with prayer throbbing for utterance, but a tongue too dry to pray. Despair seized on him, and he led his men out to death-dealing, that so haply he might find death for himself. The time wore to early summer, while he was nightly visited by the thought of his sin, and ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... own interests in the same way my associates look out for theirs? I should be lost in the shuffle. The Christian virtues may be proclaimed from every pulpit and the Banner of the Cross fly from every housetop; but in business it is the law of evolution and not the Sermon ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... barred and the court guards alert?" the stewart questioned. "Are there watchmen on the housetop? Herod hath said he will comb Galilee with teeth of steel for such as this. Yea, one wounded and robbed brother hath spoken truly. Nor is this the worst. The Sicarii, those murderers that do so grievously afflict the ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... manner, confirming the reputation of indomitable valor that the Argentine troops won at the trenches of Curupayti. Our readers may imagine the fire they suffered in the straight streets swept by Krupp guns, gatlings and mitrailleuses, while every housetop was a fortress whence a deadly fire was poured on the heads of the soldiers. Let anybody take the trouble to visit the Calles [Footnote: Streets] Cerrito, Libertad and Talcahuano, the vicinity of the Plazas Parque and Lavalle, and he will be staggered to see how all the houses ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... saddle, and had dragged him with them until he was half dead with fatigue and pain. At night he had broken from them and had fled. They were close at hand, he said, and had burned the town from end to end because a man had fired at them from a housetop. That was all he knew. Bernadou, who had gone out to hear his news, returned into the house and sat down and hid his face within his hands. "If I resist you are all lost," he muttered. "And yet to yield like a cur!" It was a piteous question, whether to follow the instinct ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... principles in the National Legislature. He did not mince his words, but called a spade a spade, and sin, sin. He perceived at once that if he would kill the sin of slave-holding, he could not spare the sinner. And so he spoke the names of the delinquents from the housetop of the Journal of the Times, stamping upon their brows the scarlet letter of their crime against liberty. He had said in the October before: "It is time that a voice of remonstrance went forth from the North, that should peal in the ears of every slaveholder ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... together, and attend thy tasks Diligently as thou 'rt ever wont to do. When thou dost add thy mite of joyous life To the great world, thou art a giver too, Like to the birds who make us glad in spring. Be happy therefore, little bird, and stay Warm in thy nest upon the housetop high, Where may God keep ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... cheek on this by the ducking stool in public, and sticks no thicker than the thumb for marital correction in private. The writer of the Proverbs alludes to the perpetual dropping of a woman's tongue as an intolerable nuisance, and declares that it is better to live on the housetop than with a brawling woman in a wide house. A later writer, describing the virtuous woman, said that on her lips is the law of kindness, and after all this is the real feminine characteristic. As daughter, sister, wife, and ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... a friend of my mother had left with her. This lady my father called 'the angel with the moulting wings,' because she was always in an ecstatic tremor over the second coming of the Messiah. She would go to the housetop at least once every six months, and there, with a band of pious deluded geese dressed in white flowing robes, would inspect the firmament for favourable signs. Nothing ever happened, as we know, yet the predictions sown about the ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... four mounted to their housetop, and Attar Singh, who was always one of the impetuous, said "My work is done," and he made shinan (purification) in all men's sight, and he lent Rutton Singh Baynes Sahib's revolver, and Rutton Singh shot him in ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... Miss Heron found that she had been bad-tempered, and she thought how pleasantly they might have arranged the matter if only she had been more moderate. So she spread her beautiful blue wings and flew to the housetop where Mr. Stork lived, and, perching on ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... to end, and crowded with the experiences and vicissitudes of a most eventful nature. What he promised he fulfilled; what he attempted, he seldom, or never failed to accomplish; what he believed, he dared to proclaim upon the housetop; what he ardently desired, and incessantly labored for, was the reign of universal freedom, peace, and righteousness. He was among the manliest of men, and the gentlest of spirits. There was no form of human suffering that did not touch his heart; ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... carrying life and motion through every street, seem suddenly to have disappeared. Here and there solitary footfalls, like the last pattering rain drops after a shower, awaken the echoes of the streets; and here and there some lonely woman looks from the housetop with anxious and agitated face, as if she would discern something ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... been again upon the housetop to watch the progress of the fire. He came down, and Drusus instantly saw that there was dismay written on his face. The merchant, who was himself armed with sword and target, drew ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... so," I answered. "But the song-hour has not yet come to me. How good you all ought to be who can sing! I feel as if my heart would break with delight, if I could sing; and yet there is not a sparrow on the housetop that cannot sing a better song ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... on the cairds. Ye're ower ready, I trow, to murmur under dispensation of Proavidence that ye canna fathom—like the Eesraelites of auld. I'll say nae mair to ye. Mebbe when the mony's powering into yer poakets, ye'll no forget yer aunt Chance, left like a sparrow on the housetop, wi' a sma' annuitee o' thratty ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... a negro servant, who had been on the lookout from the housetop, entered the room, made a significant sign to his mistress, and at once withdrew. Mrs. Murray now rose, and with a meaning smile ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... fools together,"—he said to Adam Frost in hoarse accents, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand—"We ain't no stronger nor wiser than a lot o' chitterin' sparrows on a housetop! Old Josey, he be too weak an' ailin' to get out in this kind o' weather, but he sez he's prayin' 'ard, which I truly believe he is, though he ain't in church. All the village is on its knees this marnin' I reckon, whether it's workin' in fields ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... versatile writer. He is original and powerful, interesting and realistic. He is a lover of the men who earn their bread by the sweat of their faces and a despiser of "flannelled fools." He lacks the day-dreams of Stevenson and preaches from every housetop the gospel of virile, acting morality. Many of his readers have criticised adversely his spiritual teachings, because of the furious energy with which he denounces an apathetic religion and eulogizes the person who works with all his might, day after ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not, (let him that readeth understand,) then let them that be in Judaea flee to the mountains: and let him that is on the housetop not go down into the house, neither enter therein, to take any thing out of his house: and let him that is in the field not turn back again for to take up his garment. But woe to them that are with child, and to them that give suck ...
— Jesus of Nazareth - A Biography • John Mark |
