"Key" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the island, where I wanted nothing but what I had, and had nothing but what I wanted: whereas I had now a great charge upon me, and my business was how to secure it. I had ne'er a cave now to hide my money in, or a place where it might lie without lock or key, 'till it grew mouldy and tarnished before any body would meddle with it: on the contrary, I knew not where to put it, or who to trust with it. My old patron, the captain, indeed was honest, and that was the only refuge ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... in Dr. Knapp's book, he also writes of this visit to the Prussian Minister, where he had for company 'Princes and Members of Parliament.' 'I was the star of the evening,' he says; 'I thought to myself, "what a difference!"'[162] The following letter is in a more sober key: ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... nerves and brains. She has to train up the cook in the way he should go, and after he has gotten into the way, she has to walk along by his side, for she must be brains for him for ever and ever. She has to see that he walks in paths of truth and uprightness. She has to keep everything under lock and key, and is apt to lose her keys when she is in the biggest hurry. She is also apt to lose her temper, and feels worse over this than she does when she loses her keys. She has to argue over prices; to fuss over the quality ...
— The Khaki Kook Book - A Collection of a Hundred Cheap and Practical Recipes - Mostly from Hindustan • Mary Kennedy Core
... facility, by means of a clue which he himself provided. Having been a man of method, he was in the habit of keeping a memorandum-book or diary, in which he recorded, in cypher, all his proceedings. This interesting volume fell into the hands of the detectives, who soon discovered the key to it, and thus enabled the judge of the Assize Court to present the sham dauphin with a very vivid portrait of himself drawn by his own hand. Among other occurrences which were recorded in this diary, was a visit which had been paid by the pretender to a certain Madame de Malabre, ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... up to the death-chamber, Mr. Carlyle procuring the key. It was the only time that he entered it. Very peaceful she looked now, her pale features so composed under her white cap and hands. Miss Carlyle and Joyce had done all that was necessary; nobody else had been suffered ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... filled with a new distress. He rose, to pace the floor with the gestures of a man who realizes that he is locked in a cell to which there is no key. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... make it, historic, sentimental, poetic, or otherwise, as we please, so that it be the honest exponent of our views. Then we are to make a grand exchange of letters among the class, and the young lady who receives my letter, for instance, is to keep it sealed, and under lock and key, until graduation day, when it is to be read before scholars, faculty, and trustees, and my full name announced as the signature; and all the rest of us are to ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... Moschino della Torre and mother of the Patriarch Gastone. She died July 23, 1300, and her sarcophagus is the only one of the five in the chapel inscribed. On the front are reliefs, and on the sloping cover her effigy. One of those at her side has a figure of a person in subdeacon's dress, with a key, no doubt Rainaldo della Torre, treasurer to the church and brother of Gastone. His will of March 31, 1332, gives a precise description of the monument he wished to have erected to him. There was to be an archivolt ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... things which have been written, I applied myself for a space to the worship of the Mother Isis, and to the further study of the outward forms of those mysteries to which I now held the key. Moreover, I was instructed in matters politic, for many great men of our following came secretly to see me from all quarters of Egypt, and told me much of the hatred of the people towards Cleopatra, the Queen, and of other things. At last the hour ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... bag, I am so constantly opening it that I never bother to lock it, and the fact that it is strapped to me has always been sufficient protection. But I can appreciate now what a satisfaction, and what a torment too, it must have been to that woman when she saw that the bag opened without a key. ...
— In the Fog • Richard Harding Davis
... modern progress. Of course, also, the honor of several useful inventions and additions to wireless apparatus must be given him. He started experimenting as far back as 1895 when but a mere boy. In the beginning he employed the induction coil, Morse telegraph key, batteries, and vertical wire for the transmission of signals, and for their reception the usual filings coherer of nickel with a very small percentage of silver, a telegraph relay, batteries and a vertical wire. In the Marconi system of the present time there are many forms of coherers, ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... creeps through me in the presence of the man who has scorned me, deceived me, and who has fluttered, right under my eyes, from girl to girl—this man, I say, has the right to demand from me a shameful and infamous concession. I have no right to hide myself; I have no right even to a key to my own door. Everything belongs to him—the key, the door, and even the woman who hates him. It is monstrous! Can you imagine such a horrible situation? That a woman should not be mistress of herself, should not even have the sacred right ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... words to this suggestion, Folliot led the way through his rose-trees to a far corner of his grounds, where an old building of grey stone, covered with ivy, stood amongst high trees. He turned the key of a doorway and motioned Bryce ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... the gaze which had never dropped from its inflexible directness; and his own voice was changed to a key of satirical quiet. ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... furious intensity which is able to reveal many deep levels of human obliquity. But one thing it cannot reveal, because of the strain of malice it carries with it, and that is the spring of genuine love. "Like unto like" is the key to the situation; and the deeper the clairvoyance of malice digs into the subterranean poison of life, the more poison it finds. For in finding poison it creates poison, and in ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... friends (or "pals," as he vulgarly designated them), and when he got to her house he discovered she had forgotten to leave the door open for him; but being pretty well acquainted with that accomplishment of the "force," area scaling, and being supplied with his own latch-key, he did not think much of her neglect. But, strange to say, and considerably to the astonishment of Dick, the head of the family had a strong objection to that individual's visiting his ladye love; and absolutely ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... could be brought into play. The expedition under Abercromby proved an utter failure. Not so the expedition against Louisburg, the capture of which was the most important event of the year. Being regarded as the key to the St. Lawrence, it was a strongly fortified place. A fortress had been erected there at a cost of 30,000,000 livres. The garrison was defended by the Chevalier de Drucourt, with 3,100 troops and about 700 Indians; while two frigates and six line-of-battle ships ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... fashion, suiting accent and gesture to the subject matter through the whole first three acts of that exquisitely humorous opera, the Primate of Fiji. Sometimes he hummed the tune over to himself as he went; sometimes he played a few notes upon his flute by way of striking the key-note; sometimes he rose from his seat in his animation, and half acted the part he was reading with almost unconscious and spontaneous mimicry. He read through the famous song of the President of the Local Government Board, that everybody has since heard played by every German ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... either. The fumes of brandy, and the sudden revulsion from active wrath to apathy, seemed to stupefy his brain. At last he stooped beside the outstretched form of Molly, and, with averted face, felt in her pocket and drew out the key. Stealthily, as if he feared that they could hear him, he moved toward the door, opened it, and passing through, closed it gently, as one does who would not waken a sleeping child or invalid. Rapidly, but with soft steps, he descended the stairs, and went ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... by his own conscience or observing my suspicions, turned as pale as death. He pretended he had not the right key, and could not unlock the chest; said he must go in search of it, and that he would call on ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... thought we did. We could hardly do that, of course. Our numbers were so small compared with theirs that we wouldn't have lasted very long. And, obviously, it would have been plain stupid. There is one key that must not be forgotten: An effective use of love requires an absolute superiority on the levels attainable by the individual to be tamed. So, in this case, we had to have power to keep the Markovians from ...
— Cubs of the Wolf • Raymond F. Jones
... No, I don't mean suffrage. I believe in suffrage myself. I mean the way she's going after it. There are healthy ways of insisting on your rights and unhealthy ways. Beulah's getting further and further off key, that's all. Here we are at home, daughter. Your poor old cooperative father welcomes ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... find some cabbage-palm trees growing in the vicinity of the camp; the tops are very nutritious, and would be very desirable for men in a starving state, had they been aware of it. I picked up part of a key belonging to a chronometer. After having a good look round, we returned to the boats, all tired, from our drenching and wading through so much mud and water, and we unfortunately had no provisions of any kind, and had eaten nothing all day. When we pulled to the entrance of the river ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... as I stood thus, I heard a sound of steps and voices on the other side of the wall, a key was thrust into the lock of this door, and instinctively I shrank back and back into the gloom of the trees; I heard the key turn, the drawing of heavy bolts, and then, as I crouched, hand upon the weapon in my pocket, the ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... that inhabit the twain rocks of the Euxine that face each other. O Dictynna, mountain daughter of Latona, to thy court, the gold-decked pinnacles of temples with fine columns, I, servant to the hallowed guardian of the key, conduct my pious virgin foot, changing [for my present habitation] the towers and walls of Greece with its noble steeds, and Europe with its fields abounding in trees, the dwelling of my ancestral home. I am come. What new matter? What anxious care hast thou? Wherefore hast thou led ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... side door and showed them a foot path across the hills, a short cut which carriages could not take, and was just turning the key in the ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... and made my way across the great hall, which was still invaded by domestics with brushes and brooms. Taking a small key from my watch-chain, I unfastened the door of a room almost behind the staircase, and pushed it open. The curtains were drawn, and the room itself, therefore, almost in darkness. I carefully locked myself in, and turned ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... feel better when he knew that Damon Crowley was securely lodged under lock and key; but such was not the case. The knowledge of this only seemed to press some real or imaginary burden closer to him. Then he imagined that he would perhaps feel at peace with the world and himself when white-robed justice had had her perfect course, and the victim of a nation's ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... "Don't be so imprudent again, but never mind now. Go to the office very early tomorrow morning; here is the key of a small safe which is in my roller secretary; it shuts with a combination lock. You can open it with the word 'sky'; put the memorandum and your copy into it and ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... now completely accoutred as a yeoman, with sword and buckler, bow, and quiver, and a strong partisan over his shoulder. He left his cell at the head of the party, and, having carefully locked the door, deposited the key ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... were drinking their coffee, she left the room and went to the office. The riding-whip was in its old place; on a shelf in the cupboard was a brace of pistols. Magdalena threw the whip into the cupboard, locked the door, and slipped the key behind a book on the mantel. Her father came in a moment later. She handed him a cigar and a match. He drew his heavy brows together and puckered ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... away in company with the man with the ash stick another man, with a key in his hand, who had been looking on, led the bewildered female to a second short flight of steps leading to a doorway. Mrs. Bardell screamed violently; Tommy roared; Mrs. Cluppins shrunk within herself; and Mrs. Sanders made off, without more ado. For there stood the injured Mr. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... on which a new spire was erected since 1775, when a set of eight musical bells were fixed there, by Mr. Rudhall, of Glocester; the weight of the tenor being more than twenty-three hundred, and the key note ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye
... Balls, Rosiers and Fendals, Marshalls and Halls, Daingerfields, Herberts, Craiks, Tuckers a few, Platers, Custis, and Randolph and Washingtons, too, Blackburns, Hunters and Forrests and Taylors a lot, Lees, Seldons, Fitzhughs, Wests, Dandridge and Scott, Pope, Ramsey and Graham, French, Lewis and Key, Lloyd, Taylor and Wellford, Ridout, Beverly, Simms, Peters and Lightfoot, Lyles, Murray and Beall, Fauntleroy and Grey and Carroll they tell, Berkley, Fairfax and Bladen, Powell, Chase, Montague, Bassett, ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... had on thee, who ow'st his strength And his Love too, who is a Servant for The Tenour of thy Speech: Deere Glasse of Ladies, Bid him that we, whom flaming war doth scortch, Vnder the shaddow of his Sword may coole us: Require him he advance it ore our heades; Speak't in a womans key: like such a woman As any of us three; weepe ere you faile; Lend us a knee; But touch the ground for us no longer time Then a Doves motion, when the head's pluckt off: Tell him if he i'th blood cizd field lay swolne, Showing the Sun his Teeth, grinning ...
— The Two Noble Kinsmen • William Shakespeare and John Fletcher [Apocrypha]
... what was expressed in a deep sigh. His hope of the permanent restoration of the House of Lancaster had received some rude shocks during the past weeks; but he had never before heard Edward speak in this key, and he wondered if it were but the expression of a passing emotion, or the result of a ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... freemasonry, but they threw no light on the matter. He knew ever variety of windmill and weathercock, but was not a whit the wiser as to the aerial sign in question. He had even dabbled in Egyptian hieroglyphics, and the mystic symbols of the obelisk, but none furnished a key to the reply of Nicholas Koorn. He called a meeting of his council. Anthony Van Corlear stood forth in the midst, and putting the thumb of his right hand to his nose, and the thumb of his left hand to the finger of ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... the elevator, and descended to the dining-room upon the second floor. Jesse watched until they were safely ensconced at breakfast and then returned to the fourth floor where he tipped the chambermaid, told her that he had left his key at the office, and induced her to unlock the door of room Number 420, which she did under the supposition that Jesse was the person who had left the chamber in Dodge's company. The contents of the room convinced Jesse that he had found ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... boy," Nevitt answered, smiling, "it's English, pure English, and by a lady what's more—one of the Eweses of Kenilworth. She's a distant relation of Cyril's Miss Clifford, I believe. An Elma, too; name runs in the family. But she composes wonderfully. Everything she writes is in that mystic key. It sounds like a reminiscence of some dim and lamp-lit eastern temple. The sort of thing a nautch-girl might bo supposed to compose, to sing to the clash and clang of cymbals, while she was performing the snake-dance before some ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... three books of poems now before us,—"The Book of Love," "Twilight," and "The Book of Death." "The Book of Love," "a thing excessively rare," as we are told in the Preface, "but this one written in good faith," opens with a couplet that is a key to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... shouting at once, and when they at length, after receiving a few farewell presents, bid us good-bye, we felt as if we had passed out of a tempest of noise into a calm, so apparently deep was the silence which reigned round us. In two days, passing the Key Islands, the inhabitants of which are very much like those of Aru, we arrived in sight of a lofty volcano, from the summit of which wreaths of white smoke were even then ascending. On approaching more closely, we ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... that money is the key to the door of society. Without it our sons will not get into the polo-playing set or our daughters figure in the Sunday supplements. We want money to buy ourselves a position and to maintain it after we ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... up with string. Then blankets were made into another bundle; a third held a frying-pan, a coffee-pot, and a kettle, with a few knives, forks, and spoons, while a fourth contained food. The Twins were sent to say good-by to Madame Coudert, and to give her a key to the door, and then all the rest of their household goods were packed away as carefully as time permitted, ...
— The French Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... saying that the most northern point at Belle Isle Strait is in the same latitude as that of Edinburgh, whilst St. John's, near the southern extremity, lies in the same latitude as that of Paris. Strategically it forms the key to British North America. St. John's lies about half-way between Liverpool and New York, so that it offers a haven of refuge for needy craft plying between England and the American metropolis. The adjacent part of the coast is also the landing-place for most of the Transatlantic ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... Adventures of the Rev. Amos Barton which was followed by Janet's Repentance. These stories appeared under the pen name of George Eliot, which she never relinquished. Gathered into book form under the title Scenes From Clerical Life, these stories in a minor key made a profound impression on Charles Dickens, who divined they were the work of a woman ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... destroy any infantry moving in the open, but intermittent shelling, although it appears to be terribly destructive, will not stop resolute troops determined to press forward. But the farther we advanced the more evident it became that Sugar Loaf Hill was the key of the position. It stood seven or eight hundred yards west of the railway, and the enemy's riflemen from the entrenchments on top brought a deadly enfilade fire to bear on our advancing lines. The Gurkhas moving in echelon ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... break, the earth was set Beneath us, and we stood and paused to see The Dussel river from a parapet Of earth and rock. Then bending curiously, As reaching, in a moment with his hand He scraped the turf and stones, pried up a key Of harder granite, and at his command, When he had made an opening, I slid And sank, down, down through the Devonian land Until with him I reached a cavern hid From every eye but ours, and where no light But from ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... and always in such exuberant spirits. And look at me now! Here, of all places! Oh, I am not at all suited to be a grand Lady. Now mama, she would have fitted this position, she would have sounded the key-note, as behooves the wife of a district councillor, and Sidonie Grasenabb would have been all homage toward her and would not have been greatly disturbed about her belief or unbelief. But I—I am a child and shall probably remain one, too. I once heard that it is a good fortune. But I don't ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... unpleasing;" among the minor, the fact that critics have gravely quarrelled among themselves over the epithet "monumental" applied to the oak in Il Penseroso, when Spenser's "Builder Oak" (Milton was a passionate student of Spenser) would have given them the key at once, even if the same phrase had not occurred, as I believe it does, in Chaucer, also a favourite of Milton's. We have only space here ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... moleskin a good deal bespattered with paint. My friend William Ross stood before me; and his welcome on the occasion was a very hearty one. I had previously taken a hasty survey of my unlucky house in Leith, accompanied by a sharp, keen-looking, one-handed man of middle age, who kept the key, and acted, under the town-clerk, as general manager; and who, as I afterwards ascertained, was the immortal Peter M'Craw. But I had seen nothing suited to put me greatly in conceit with my patrimony. It ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... or Mr. Jackson, or the housekeeper, may hear us talking, and it may disturb them. Come with me to my private shop," and Tom led the way to a small building where he did experimental work. He unlocked the door with a key he carried, turned on the lights, which were run by a storage battery, and motioned Mr. Jenks to ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... Allington and those of the Small House open on to each other. A proper boundary of thick laurel hedge, and wide ditch, and of iron spikes guarding the ditch, there is between them; but over the wide ditch there is a foot-bridge, and at the bridge there is a gate which has no key; and for all purposes of enjoyment the gardens of each house are open to the other. And the gardens of the Small House are very pretty. The Small House itself is so near the road that there is nothing between the ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... kings! It bids the demon Care take wings, And the rose's hue to the cheek it brings! And sweeter music none can hear Than that which greets the list'ning ear— By distance mellowed to a key That breathes divinest harmony— And wakes the slumbering echoes round— The ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... private interview with you, as early as possible, and as we will wish to be perfectly secure from interruption, as well as from all danger of being overheard, I wish you would come to my cabin, there we can talk with perfect safety. And now, as a key to this contemplated interview, allow me to say that I fully understand your mission here; but have no fear, your secret is absolutely safe. My only reason for wishing to meet you is, that I desire ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... or other, one can always arrange one's life. She cultivated from this time forward a little private plot of sentiment, and it was of this secluded precinct that, before her death, she gave her son the key. Rowland's allowance at college was barely sufficient to maintain him decently, and as soon as he graduated, he was taken into his father's counting-house, to do small drudgery on a proportionate salary. For three years he earned his living as regularly as the obscure functionary ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... &c. (support) 215. spring, fountain, well, font; fountainhead, spring head, wellhead; fons et origo[Lat], genesis; descent &c. (paternity) 166; remote cause; influence. pivot, hinge, turning point, lever, crux, fulcrum; key; proximate cause, causa causans[Lat]; straw that breaks the camel's back. ground; reason, reason why; why and wherefore, rationale, occasion, derivation; final cause &c. (intention) 620; les dessous ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... which to him is the highest, the answers to the riddles of existence. Just in our day, when only gross physical science is recognised as containing truth, it is difficult to believe that in the highest things we depend upon the key-note of the soul. Knowledge thereby becomes an intimate personal concern. But this is what it really is to the Mystic. Tell some one the solution of the riddle of the universe! Give it him ready-made! The Mystic will find it to be ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... nothing, for my laboratory was an old out-house, quite unconnected with the dwelling; but in the laboratory also lay my torpedo! The worst of it was that I had inserted a detonator and affixed a fuse, feeling quite secure in doing so, because I invariably locked the door and carried the key in my pocket. ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... words, a furious anger, flashed over Hannah's face, and, glaring fiercely on Florence for a moment, she darted from the room and slammed the door behind her. The young girl turned the key, saying, "I'm glad to be rid of her hateful presence. What possessed her to come here is more than I can tell." And in the surprise this unusual visit occasioned, she retired and ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... any rate, Philander turned the key on him while he wus up over- head, and locked him in there for the day. A meaner, low-liveder, miserabler caper, I never see ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... turned the key softly in the lock, pushed open the door, and beckoned. His son saw him gravely hanging up his coat, with an expression on his face like that of a boy who intends ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the insolvent Cisalpine Republic he said to me, at the beginning of the winter of 1800, "Bourrienne, the weather, is becoming very bad; I will go but seldom to Malmaison. Whilst I am at council get my papers and little articles from Malmaison; here is the key of my secretaire, take out everything that is there." I, got into the carriage at two o'clock and returned at six. When he had dined I placed upon the table of his cabinet the various articles which I had found in his secretaire including 15,000 francs (somewhere about L 600 of English ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... fat paunch of the merchant was a silver-studded belt. Hunsa eyed this speculatively. Beyond doubt in its neighbourhood would be the key to the iron box; and when its owner lay on his back, his bulbous eyes glaring upward to where the moon trickled through the thick foliage of the mango tree beneath which they sat, he would seize the keys and be first to dabble his grimy fingers in ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... blackmailed entirely disconcerted them, and made them furious. Lida said the man was violent with her mother for letting out even what she did to Lance, and he meant to put a heavy price even on the final disclosure, in the trust (which I share) that it may prove the key to the mystery. She had no notion that the doubt was upsetting my position. Poor thing, she never had a chance in her life-gipsy breeding at first, then Benista's tender mercies and the wandering life. She could not fail to love my father till his requirements piqued her, and it ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that to have lost the power of shedding tears is to have dehumanized oneself and put oneself outside the pale. "A tear is an intellectual thing," and those who still have the power of "weeping" have not quite lost the key to the wisdom of the eternal gods. It is not only the mysterious and foreordained congruity of rhyme that leads him to associate in poem after poem—until for the vulgar mind, the repetition becomes almost ludicrous—this symbolic "weeping" with the sweet ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... in the long hall, and close to the little glass table. "Now I'll manage better this time," she said to herself, and began by taking the little golden key, and unlocking the door that led into the garden. Then she set to work nibbling at the mushroom (she had kept a piece of it in her pocket) till she was about a foot high: then she walked down the little passage: and then—she ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. With a Proem by Austin Dobson • Lewis Carroll
... success, but I think you ought to treat it explicitly as a boy's story; grown-ups will enjoy it just as much if you do, and if you should put it forth as a story of boys' character from the grown-up point of view you give the wrong key to it. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... day a due of sixteen pence to one of the stewards, which was called table money. At his discharge the several fees were as follows:—Two shillings the master's fee; fourteen pence for the turning of the key; twelve pence for every action that lay against him. For leave to go out with a keeper upon security (as formerly in the Queen's Bench) the prisoners paid for the first time four shillings and tenpence, and two shillings every day afterwards. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... emptiness in the straight sunny roads where the little plastered garden-walls, with their incommunicative doors, looked slightly Oriental. There was definite stillness in his own house, to which he admitted himself by his pass-key, having a theory that it was well sometimes to take servants unprepared. The good woman who was mainly in charge and who cumulated the functions of cook and housekeeper was, however, quickly summoned by his step, and (he cultivated frankness ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... pleasure, furnish by no means good security for the books. Some of the smaller public libraries protect their books from access by glass doors in front of the shelves, which form also a partial protection against dust. Others again, use wire screen doors, opened, like the others, by lock and key when books are wanted. Both of these arrangements give to readers the advantage of reading the titles on the backs of most of the books in the library, while protecting them from being handled, disarranged, or removed. But they are also open ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... reflectively—as if in a quandary, and cogitating how best to get out of it. "Neither hard up or hungry! I call this a stiff reckoning to work out. I'd better try the young shaver on another tack. Got any friends?" he added, in a louder key—addressing himself, now, personally to me, not supposing that I had heard his previous soliloquy, for he had merely ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... high falsetto tone. It was the voice of Mr. Tubbs, but pitched in a key of quite insane excitement. I sprang up and ran, Crusoe and the Honorable Cuthbert at my heels. There in the midst of the camp Mr. Tubbs stood, the center of a group who were regarding him with astonished looks. ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... hours later when he next saw them, after he had turned over the book he wished to see, and had found the passage which would enable him to go on with his work for the rest of the day at home. He was fitting his key into the house-door when he happened to look up the little street toward the bridge that led into it, and there, defined against the sky on the level of the bridge, he saw Mrs. Elmore and Miss Mayhew receiving the adieux of a distinguished-looking man in the Austrian uniform. The officer ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... gathered his earliest inspiration, is to court an incomplete impression. It is in the light of a life story and its setting, however slight our knowledge, that creative work tends to assume proper proportions. It is in the surroundings of the author that we find the key to the creation. For, as Gray has pointed out in his "Elegy written in a Country Churchyard," there are many in the dust and silence whose hands "the rod of Empire might have swayed, or waked ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... slightly advanced, and to-day was decked, as was becoming more and more usual on such occasions, in his Masonic insignia. It was he who had given immense impetus to that secret movement by his declaration in the House that the key of future progress and brotherhood of nations was in the hands of the Order. It was through this alone that the false unity of the Church with its fantastic spiritual fraternity could be counteracted. St. Paul ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... utmost freedom of thought, and to rest on no authority but hers—that is, their own. She will speak to them in the language of the Soufys, a sect of philosophers in Persia that travellers have mentioned. "Doubt," say these wise and honest freethinkers, "is the key of knowledge. He who never doubts, never examines. He who never examines, discovers nothing. He who discovers nothing, is blind and will remain so. If you find no reason to doubt concerning the opinions of your fathers, keep to them; they will be sufficient for ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... of our traffic with Planchet was that we became temporarily suspicious and careful to a fault. The horse had been stolen. For the next three weeks we locked not only the stable door, but every single door to which a key could be fitted—and suffered accordingly. In a word, our convenience writhed. To complete our discomfort, if ever one of us jibbed, the others were sure to lay the lash about his shoulders. The beginning of the end ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... from Seattle. We still had elements of convention left in us then,—or, rather, I still had some; I don't believe Carl had a streak of it in him ever,—so we dressed in our very best clothes, dress-suit and all, and had dinner at the Key Route Inn, where we had gone after the wedding a year before. After dinner we rushed home, I nursed the son, we changed into natural clothes, and went to the circus. I had misgivings about the circus being a fitting ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... her candle. As she is about to go out, she falls in a faint. Rudolph gives her wine and restores her to consciousness. She tells him that she suffers from consumption. Rudolph is struck by her beauty and her delicate hands. She notices that she has lost her key and whilst they search for it their candles are extinguished. As they grope on the floor in the dark, Rudolph finds the key and puts it in his pocket. Their hands meet and Rudolph tries to warm her hands and ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
... was, a world Peter had built up out of books and pictures and music, more real and habitable than that in which he went about in a gray business suit and a pleasant ready manner; a world from which, every time he fitted his key in the latch of the little flat in Pleasanton, ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... contracted,—had hardened,—had perished! It had ceased to partake of the universal throb. He had lost his hold of the magnetic chain of humanity. He was no longer a brother-man, opening the chambers or the dungeons of our common nature by the key of holy sympathy, which gave him a right to share in all its secrets; he was now a cold observer, looking on mankind as the subject of his experiment, and, at length, converting man and woman to be his puppets, and pulling the wires that moved them to such degrees ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... poacher for assistance, an appeal to which that treacherous ally responded by bestowing upon him a blow which stretched him on his back, and damaged his 454 physiognomy in the manner already described. Having put him hors de combat, they took the key from him, released the lady, forced her and her maid to re-enter the carriage, and drove off, leaving him to explain her ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... Great only in unconsecrated pride; Man's pity grew from pity to derision, And still I thought, 'Albeit they deride, Yet is it mine uncharted ways to dare Unknown to these, And they shall stumble darkly, unaware Of solemn mysteries Whereof the key is mine ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... change in the whole external appearance of Mr. Frank Webber; for scarcely had the oaken panel shut out the doctor, when he appeared no longer the shy, timid, and silvery-toned gentleman of five minutes before, but dashing boldly forward, he seized a key-bugle that lay hid beneath a sofa-cushion ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... of fear came upon me again. I gathered my somewhat shattered self together, sprang to my feet, slammed the door with such force that the corridors echoed to the sound, slid the bolt once more, turned the key, moved a heavy chair in front of it, and then fled like a frightened hare to the sideboard in my dining-room. There I grasped the decanter holding my whiskey, seized a glass from the shelf, and started to pour out the ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... it is only in such general terms that one can speak in the midst of a confused world, because, as I have already said, no man has the key to this confusion. No man can see the outcome, but every man can keep his own spirit prepared to contribute to the net result when ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... tribunal in question did not altogether believe in Gorshkov, but I do so. The matter is of a nature so complex and crooked that probably a hundred years would be insufficient to unravel it; and, though it has now to a certain extent been cleared up, the merchant still holds the key to the situation. Personally I side with Gorshkov, and am very sorry for him. Though lacking a post of any kind, he still refuses to despair, though his resources are completely exhausted. Yes, it is a tangled affair, and ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... went to his offices in the Temple Court Building, the strenuosities reasserted themselves with emphasis. Though he found his desk closed, and was reasonably certain that he had in his pocket the only key that would unlock it, he found his papers scattered in confusion under the roll-top. A touch upon the electric button brought ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... sing them when the bodily impediments are swept away, and, as the earthly shadows lengthen, as the chill winds of old age strengthen, we more and more appreciate the wonderful expression of this thought, in that sweetest of all poems of the minor key, ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... the man, rummaging in his pocket, after sticking the fork in the ground. "Here, this way," he continued, as he drew out a bright key. "Coming, Bob?" ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... with automobiles by the time he arrived at the Bartletts'. The house looked strangely unfamiliar with its blaze of lights and throng of arriving guests. He instinctively felt in his pocket for his latch-key, and then remembered, and waited for the strange butler to open the door. The inside of the house looked even less natural than the outside. The floors were cleared for dancing and the mantels were banked high with flowers and ferns. Under the steps the musicians were already ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... des Songes—the 'Key of Dreams'—with the explanation of any dreams that anybody can have; dreams of gold, dreams of robbers, dreams of death, dreams of falling from the top of a tower.... It ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... Northern Italy, then under Napoleon's control. It would indeed have been against the whole tendency of his career to have made the Jews an exception to that principle of the "carriere ouverte aux talents," which was the key-note of his whole policy, as it is logically to all war-lords. It was by no accident that similar indifference toward the creed of their soldiers, or civil servants, was shown by William the Silent, Wallenstein, Cromwell, William III, and ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... hereafter we shall find that, by this excited discussion, portentous of a war with England, unreasonable demands upon the part of Mexico should be encouraged, the acquisition of California be defeated, that key to Asiatic commerce be passed from our hands for ever—what will we have gained to compensate so great a loss? We know the influence which Great Britain exercises over Mexico; we should not expect her to be passive, nor doubt that the prospect of a war between England and the United States would ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... I crossed the threshold of Miss Clyde's house, I was seized with a sudden vague impression of uneasiness. I felt a, to me, singular sensation of nervousness, shyness, "mauvais honte"—just as if a cold key had been put down my back—for which I was at a loss to account. Those who know me say that bashfulness is one of the least of my virtues; and, I do not think that I am constitutionally timid—so why this feeling? Was it not a foreboding of evil? I believe it was, for everything went ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... on Disarmament last fall, this proposal was explored and the United States also declared itself willing to include reciprocal ground inspection of key points. By the overwhelming vote of 56 to 7, the United Nations on December 16 endorsed these proposals and gave them a top priority. Thereby, the issue is placed squarely before the bar of world opinion. We shall persevere ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... he arrived in Philadelphia he demanded of Hamilton the arrears of the French debt, which the Secretary had refused to pay until there was a stable government in France to receive it. Hamilton laughed, locked the doors of the Treasury, and put the key in his pocket. To Genet's excited volubility and pertinacity he paid as little attention as to Jefferson's arguments. Moreover, he reversed all Citizen Genet's performances in the South; and in course of time, even the captured British ships, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... concurrence of the French Emperor in the union of Italy and Prussia against Austria. He visited Napoleon at Biarritz in September, 1865, and returned with the object of his journey achieved. The negotiation of Biarritz, if truthfully recorded, would probably give the key to much of the European history of the next five years. As at Plombieres, the French Emperor acted without his Ministers, and what he asked he asked without a witness. That Bismarck actually promised to Napoleon III. either Belgium or any part of the Rhenish Provinces ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... this, however, so much as their materialism, that shocked me. It is true, these beautifully gowned, beautiful women prattled sweet little ideals and dear little moralities; but in spite of their prattle the dominant key of the life they lived was materialistic. And they were so sentimentally selfish! They assisted in all kinds of sweet little charities, and informed one of the fact, while all the time the food they ate and the beautiful clothes they wore were bought ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... and folded hands. The features are dim, spectral, yet marvelously beautiful. Almost one might think the eyelids quivered, there is such an air of waking dreaminess. That this is a false and inadequate conception of Byron's 'Astarte' I feel assured, and trust that I shall yet find the key to this enigma. It interests me greatly, and, by some inexplicable process, whenever I sit pondering the mystery of Astarte, that wonderful creation in 'Shirley' presents itself. Astarte becomes in a trice that 'woman-Titan' Nature, kneeling before the red hills ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... do this, but to his surprise found that the door was fastened in some way. He had not heard a key turned in the lock. Possibly ...
— Mark Mason's Victory • Horatio Alger
... "He say he was tiahed when he got home 'long 'bout midnight, an' he clean fo'got to turn de key in de do' an' shoot ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... more impatient. He waited some time longer, then he saw the man prick up his ears and listen eagerly. Presently there was the sound of a scuffle on deck. The Frenchman sprang up the ladder through the fore-hatch-way. As he did so a key fell from his pocket. The moment he was gone, Fid jumped out of his hiding-place, picked up the key, applied it to the chest which contained the arms—the lid flew open. He drew out several brace of pistols and a bundle of dirks. He stuck as many of both into his belt and pockets as he could ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... to extract the sting of bees before all of the poison has come away. A fine pair of forceps is useful for this purpose; or, by pressing the hollow tube of a small key directly down over the puncture made by the sting, it may ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... beauty and death; sorrow seemed to glitter, as it does in some of the great pagan poems. I understood one of the thousand poetical phrases of the populace, "a God-forsaken place." Yet something was present there; and I could not yet find the key to my fixed impression. Then suddenly I remembered the right word. It was an enchanted place. It had been put to sleep. In a flash I remembered all the fairy-tales about princes turned to marble and princesses changed to snow. We were in a land where none could ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... friend, Sir Thomas Seymour, he bestowed his blessing. Was he to repeat that blessing upon the child? Many times did Lord Bereford dwell upon this subject. His was a nature endowed with lasting qualities, true sympathy was the key note to his heart. He loved Lady Rosamond with devout, tender solicitude as his only daughter, and her happiness was his. If the love that Gerald Bereford bore towards his niece was not entirely reciprocated, and at the great sacrifice, would the true-hearted nobleman have urged upon Sir Thomas ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... in your voice, and I'm sure it is. In fact I know it is. But I simply don't understand that type of fiction; I have no key to it. So my mind wandered a little. I listened to the lovely sounds your voice made, and watched the firelight on your hair. You were like a Dutch interior—quite a new aspect, as I said—and ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... Massias rose into a still higher key, burst forth with a strength of terrible despair, with a rending like that of a sob: "Jesus, son of David, I am ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... to have been placed there by one of the latter Lairds of Ellangowan to prevent presumptuous strangers from incurring the dangers of the haunted vault—that door, supposed to be always locked, and the key of which was popularly said to be deposited with the presbytery—that door, that very door, opened suddenly, and the figure of Meg Merrilies, well known, though not seen for many a revolving year, was placed ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... compelled the other to draw also, although there had never been the slightest quarrel between them. They were soon separated and La Vauguyon immediately fled to the King, who was just then in his private closet, where nobody ever entered unless expressly summoned. But La Vauguyon turned the key, and, in spite of the usher on guard, forced his way in. The King in great emotion asked him what was the matter. La Vauguyon on his knees said he had been insulted by M. de Courtenay and demanded pardon for having drawn his sword in the palace. His Majesty, promising to examine the matter, with ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... not come in when he returned to their lodgings. He also had been out to spend the evening. But it was not many minutes before Baird heard his latch-key and the opening of the front door. He came upstairs ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... brown juice of the poppy. They know not that it is thou who hauntest the bosom of the tender maiden, and makest a heaven of her lap; never suspect it is thou, the portress of heaven, that steppest to meet them out of ancient stories, bearing the key to the dwellings of the blessed, silent messenger ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... perfect numbers; each created thing is a more or less perfect number. The world, governed thus by combinations of numbers, has always existed and will always exist. It develops itself, however, according to a numerical series of which we do not possess the key, but which we can guess. As for human destiny it is this: we have been animated beings, human or animal; according as we have lived well or ill we shall be reincarnated either as superior men or as animals more or less inferior. ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... the oath, a key to the secret language, or code (devised by Penrod for use in uncertain emergencies) and passwords for admission to the shack, also instructions for recognizing a brother member in the dark, and a rather alarming sketch of the things to be done during the initiation ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... region, after a week's wet waiting, he, on ocular survey of the ground about, was heard to say, "This cannot be done, then!" "Had never meant to do it," sneers Schmettau, "and only wanted some excuse." Which is very likely. Schmettau gives an Anecdote of him here: In regard to a certain Hill, the Key of the Austrian position, which the King was continually reconnoitring, and lamenting the enormous height of, "Impossible, so high!" One of the Adjutants took his theodolite, ascertained the height, and, by way of comforting his Majesty, reported ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... The key of the difficulty is on its other side, in the doctrine of the unity of God, which was not only taught by Jews and Christians, but generally admitted by serious heathens. The philosophers spoke ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... Washington's attention for three years. Spain is a constant source of annoyance, and the sooner we get her off the continent the better—and before Great Britain sends her. We need the Mississippi for navigation and must possess the territories that are the key to it. How idiotic, therefore, to ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... sustained their hopes, thus he neutralized their turbulence. Timour next, and his son Zemaun after him, pursued the very same policy. They have been both taxed with foolish ambition. It was not that: the historian has not perceived the key to their conduct:—it was the instinct of self-preservation. No otherwise than by exhausting the martial restlessness of the Affghans upon foreign expeditions, was durability to be had for any government. To live as a dynasty, it was indispensable to cross the Indus in pursuit of plunder. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... He is more respectable apparently. He has a very fine store in Water street. He does not deal in adulterated liquors. He sells his articles, if the customer desires it, 'in bond;' that is, from under the key of the custom house, which of course insures their purity. By a singular coincidence, Hill's store is adjoining a 'U. S. Bonded Warehouse.' Hill's goods, for convenience' sake, are sent to that particular warehouse—frequently. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of finding that there is a moral for everything; that the whole great frame of the Universe has a key, like a box; has been contrived and set going by a well-meaning but humdrum Eighteenth-century Creator. It would be a kind of Hell, surely, a world in which everything could be at once explained, shown to be obvious and useful. I am sated with Lesson and ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... had learned to call thee Father, Through thy Spirit from on high; But, until the Key of Knowledge Was restored, I knew not why. In the heavens are parents single? No; the thought makes reason stare! Truth is reason; truth eternal Tells me, I've a ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... aid to this end, and doubtless many students will find in them the key to unlock the mysteries veiled in symbol and hieroglyphic by ancient writers. The author's object has been to make plain and easy of understanding these subjects. Much, however, has been left for private study and research, for many large volumes might be filled if ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... Key. Robert Traill Hall,[240] a month after Captain Caffin's letter was published, says, "the distress was nothing in Captain Caffin's time compared with what it is now." On reading Captain Caffin's letter, one would suppose, that destitution could not reach a ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... Nothing for it but to creep in and go to bed; yet for a long while he sat unmoving, his feet chilly in the dew, drunk on the memory of her lost, half-smiling face, and the clinging grip of her burning fingers, pressing the cold key into his hand. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... feelings, pretty Vestal, From the smooth Intruder free; Cage thy heart in bars of chrystal, Lock it with a golden key: Thro' the bars demurely stealing, Noiseless footstep, accent dumb, His approach to none revealing— Watch, or ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... proceedings as one hears about; but they are so afraid of losing maids that they put up with anything. No wonder the girls find this out and cease to have any respect for them. Look at Mrs. Graham! A latch-key allowed, and no caps or aprons. That's swimming with ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... had learned to "play the piano," but, caring little or nothing for music, she had hardly touched a key for several years. Now the idea possessed her that she must resume her practising, and to-day she had spent hours at the piano, with painful effect upon Mrs. Mumford's nerves. After dinner she offered to play to Mumford, and he, ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... England known as "The Dukeries." The Duke of Rutland, attended by two hundred of his tenantry on horseback, awaited his guests at Red Mile, and rode with them the three miles to Belvoir. Soon after the Queen's arrival, Dr. Stanton presented her Majesty with the key of Stanton Town, according to the tenure on which ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... from the English fleet, and retreated to his own country without molestation.* Then he undertook the reduction of Susa, the garrison of which surrendered at discretion. By this conquest he not only secured the key to his own dominions, but also opened to himself a free passage ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... of what is virtuous. 'It is by our ideas that we ennoble our passions or we debase them; they rise high or sink low according to the man's soul.'[36] All this has ceased to be new to our generation, but a hundred and thirty years ago, and indeed much nearer to us than that, the key to all nobleness was thought to be found only by cool balancing and prudential calculation. A book like Clarissa Harlowe shows us this prudential and calculating temper underneath a varnish of sentimentalism and fine feelings, an incongruous and extremely displeasing combination, particularly ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... Michael. S. Michael's Mass was a red letter day. The Communion and Inter-Communion of earth with heaven was emphasized. Families met that day to pray and feast, lovers plighted their troth, gatherings of relatives and friends was the rule, joy was the key-note. Then dissent raised its ugly head, dissent that had its birth in Germany. These kill-joys got the upper hand. The recognition of the Christ-Mass, Christmas and the Michael-Mass, Michaelmas, was put down by law. Dissent has never hesitated to use compulsion ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... said the girl, drawing from her bosom a little key attached to a black cord, "this is the key of my toilet casket. Open it and you will find a bundle of documents tied together with a blue ribbon, take them. All through my illness I trembled at the thought that they might ransack ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... key in his pocket and turned again toward Bulling, the latter's pallor increased. "I take you men to witness," he said, appealing to the company, "if murder is done I'm not responsible. I'm defending my life. ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... not blame us; we have taken every necessary precaution against such accidents. We have got all the thieves who are inscribed on our books under lock and key. For any new comers we ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... tense in study, for he had partially grasped, in a hazy, nebulous way, the rudiments of a thought which was destined to prove the key and the solution to the puzzling problem ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... against the wiles of the devil." Antichrist is described by a similar allusion: "Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan, with all power, and signs, and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness." "And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit, and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, and cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... felt the prize would be one that I should be very loath to lose; and joy led to anxiety, and my anxiety rendered me nervous to a womanly degree. But I did not lose my composure and when I had taken her into my arms, I thought it would be only a prudent precaution to turn the key in the outer dour, and leave it somewhere along the highway. This I did, absolutely forgetting, that, in thus securing myself against any sudden pursuit, I had also locked up my ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... the regular report call from the planet Eden was overdue, the communications operator summoned his supervisor. His finger hesitated over the key reluctantly, then he gritted his teeth and pressed it down. The supervisor came boiling out of his cubicle, half-running down the long aisle between the forty operators hunched over ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... imagine me to be an adept in the "black art," an astrologer, or a fortune-teller, but I have no pretentions whatever to any such titles; this report has got abroad in consequence of a maid-servant having once had the temerity to peep through the key-hole, and observed on the wall opposite her "line of sight," some triangular characters. She had been in the habit of poring over a dream book, and the art of casting nativities; the Prophetic Almanac was her oracle, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... rude workmanship of which induced the belief that he must have made it himself, and a large gold watch, with a gold chain in the form of a cable, and a rough gold nugget attached to it in place of a seal or key. We class the watch among simple ornaments because, although it went— very demonstratively too, with a loud self-asserting tick—its going was irregular and uncertain. Sometimes it went too slow without apparent ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... the front door with a latch-key; and to Daisy it seemed as if paradise had been opened—from the carved walnut rack, upon which entering angels might hang their hats and coats, to the carpet upon the stair and the curtains of purple plush that, slightly parted, disclosed glimpses of an ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... "was the hinge on which all modern history turned,"* and he regarded the Reformation as a revolt of the laity against the clergy, rather than a contest between two sets of rival dogmas for supremacy over the human mind. That is the key of the historical position which he took up from the first, and always defended. He held the Church of Rome to have been the enemy of human freedom, and of British independence. He was devoid of theological prejudice, and never ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... alliance thus loosely and vaguely suggested, he was not so sanguine however. He had too much difficulty in enforcing the interests of Protestantism in the duchies against the infatuation of James in regard to Spain, and he was too well aware of the Spanish marriage delusion, which was the key to the King's whole policy, to put much faith in these casual outbursts of eternal friendship with the States. He contented himself therefore with cautioning Caron to pause before committing himself to any such projects. He had frequently instructed him, however, to bring the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the Forecaster answered. "There are two hundred official stations scattered all over the United States and the West Indies, each one carefully selected because its site is a key station to weather changes. Twice a day, exactly at eight o'clock in the morning and eight o'clock in the evening, the observations are ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... house was so dirty! Was it grateful? Was it politic? Was it TRUE?—Enough! In the interval, up marched little L. S., one of my neighbours, all in his Sunday white linens; made a fine salute, and demanded the key of the kitchen in German and English. And he cooked dinner for us, like a little man, and had it on the table and the coffee ready by the hour. Paul had arranged me this surprise. Some time later, Paul returned himself with a fresh surprise on hand; he was almost sober; nothing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... personage of antiquity made more haste than Guynemer to multiply the exploits that increased his glory. But the enumeration of these would not furnish a key to his life, nor explain either that secret power he possessed or the fascination he exerted. "It is not always the most brilliant actions which best expose the virtues or vices of men. Some trifle, some insignificant word or jest, ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... originate, an incalculable number of attempts to better human conditions always proving failures, and worsening the human status. It is dawning upon the minds of the true lovers of humanity, that there is nothing else to be done, but to revert to the past to find the key to any possible reform, and to that past we are edging rapidly, though, it must be said unwillingly, in the hope and expectation that the old foundations are possessed of sufficient solidity to support ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... changed his tune agin. He hopt-light ladies and tip-toed fine from eend to eend of the key-board. He played soft, and low, and solemn. I heard the church bells over the hills. The candles in heaven was lit, one by one. I saw the stars rise. The great organ of eternity began to play from the world's ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... small boy to puzzle over. It was also a world in evolution. Every so often a piece of furniture would disappear and a better one take its place, to be studied and admired and tried out again and again. Back of every improvement lay a unifying ambition. Its key-word was mahogany. The superior social respectability of this wood could not be disputed, and it had a sort of natural dignity that harmonized with the father's solid taste—though the mother might have preferred ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... hold that the glottic stroke is the key to correct laryngeal action. As a rule they instruct their pupils to attack every tone, throughout all their practising, with the stroke of the glottis. In the course of time the automatic valvular action is supposed to become so well established that the singer can dispense with the ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... a slit-up apple and three sardines. They'll all come under the door—though the sardines may get a bit out of shape. I'll come after lessons and suck some brandy-balls here and breathe through the key-hole to comfort you. I could blow them through the key-hole when ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... the hidden selfishness that marred Thy teachings ever; this the false key-note That on such souls as might have loved thee jarred Like an unearthly language; thou didst float On a strange water; those who stood on land Gazed, but they could not leave ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... Nonesi bear that carrion; but because not one of them could resist the chance of kicking his benefactors. It is reasonable, after all. Instant flight, my dear, if you please. But whither? you will ask. Luckily I can take you to a pretty safe place, of which I have the key and custode's goodwill in my pocket. You know the Rocca del Capitan Vecchio outside the Latin Gate? We go there for our terrestrial paradise. Shawl your lovely head, therefore, stoop your glorious ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... blandly, and returned the squeeze so as to cause the interpreter to wince. Then, perceiving at once that he had got possession of a key to the affections of the strangers, he offered to shake hands with Leonard and his brother, stooping with regal urbanity to them as he did so. By this time the Captain and first mate, with Benjy and several of the crew, were approaching. Instead of exhibiting fear, Chingatok ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... to their feet. A manservant had turned the great key, drawn the bolts, and opened the door with difficulty. Little flakes of snow and a gust of icy wind swept into the hall, and following them the figure of a man, white from head to foot, his hair tossed with the wind, almost ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... canons, a white horse came and carried him! That when Liu Chih-yan was attacking the empire, a melon-spirit appeared and brought him a coat of mail, and that in the same way, where our vixen Feng is, there you are to be found! You are your mistress' general key; and what do you want this other ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... intimacy of years with the growing art of decoration in this country, that the color gift is a race gift with us. English art-work is nearly always characterized by subdued and modified harmony, while that of America has vivid and striking notes which play upon a higher key, and still melt as softly into each other as the perfect modulations of the best English art. I was very conscious of this during the year of my directorship of the Woman's Building and exhibits in the World's Columbian Fair at Chicago, that place of wonderful comparisons ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... and turned a key, opened a door, thrust the child within, and paused to look around, as if pursuing her reminiscences, oblivious of ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... Darrell grew red. To myself I seemed to have hit suddenly on the key of a mystery. Was I then a pawn in the great game of the Churches, and Darrell another, and (to speak it with all due respect), these grand dukes little better? Had Phineas Tate also his place on the board where souls made the stakes? ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope |
