"Curbstone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mr. Hume would take up in mocking him. He'd call him a curbstone fiddler, and say that he ought to be playing at barn dances and Italian christenings instead of aspiring to the platform. Spatola would get frantic with rage, and fairly scream his ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... presented to Laura. The sufferings of the arrogant are not wholly depressing to the spectator; and of arrogance Hedrick had ever been a master. She began to shake; a convulsion took her, and suddenly she sat upon the curbstone without dignity, and laughed as he had never ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... quickly before the curbstone, and as he sprung from the vehicle, his astonishment can better be imagined than described at finding himself face to face with his friend, Miss Rogers, and that it was she who had been ejected so summarily. The poor soul almost ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... quarters, evidently, people always talked so. Ascending the rise, we reached a large house on a corner. The greater part of the people who were walking along with me halted at this house. They stood all over the sidewalk of this house, and sat on the curbstone, and even the snow in the street was thronged with the same kind of people. On the right side of the entrance door were the women, on the left the men. I walked past the women, past the men (there were several hundred of them in all) and halted where the ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... chilly, the night dark, and the street deserted. The gloomy silence was only disturbed at long intervals by the opening or shutting of a door, or by the distant tread of some belated pedestrian. Having at least twenty minutes to wait, Pascal sat down on the curbstone opposite the Hotel de Chalusse, and fixed his eyes upon the building as if he were striving to penetrate the massive walls, and see what was passing within. Only one window—that of the room where the dead man was lying—was lighted up, and he could vaguely distinguish ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... see a couple of automobiles come whirling down the street, packed solid with husky detectives. Then he turned off and hurried down a side street. He managed to get a couple of blocks away, and then his nerves gave way entirely, and he sat down on the curbstone and began to cry—just the way little Jennie had cried when he told her he couldn't marry her! People stopped to stare at him, and one benevolent old gentleman came up and tapped him on the shoulder and asked what was the trouble. Peter, ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... sitting at opposite sides of the car, and laughing and talking loudly to each other, amid the astonishment of the other occupants. But when they came to mean and ugly streets with green-grocers' barrows by the curbstone, and weird and dreary cemeteries in the midst of gaunt, green sticks that were trying to look like trees, Glory thought they ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... mountains is generally gained by experience when it is gained at all, and the craving for explanation takes the place, in some minds, of a willingness to learn. It is not my business to find explanations, nor to raise my little self to your higher level, by standing upon this curbstone, in order to deliver a lecture in the popular form, upon matters that interest me. It is enough that I have found what I wanted. Go and do likewise. See for yourself. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. You are unhappy, and unhappiness ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... rose-trees had been allowed to climb up to its lowest branches, so that its green arms stirred the roses. Under the tree was a swing, and at the back of it a sort of thicket of lilacs and witch-elms; there was a round plot of grass, with a garden bench and a very small pool with a white curbstone round it and a fountain that did not play. The pool was full of aquatic plants and a few black newts ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... by the end of the following week. He found his wife in the big hall. She was standing by the fireplace, with one foot on the curbstone of the hearth, the other lifted a little to the blaze. Her arms lay along the chimney-piece, her head drooped over them. Her back was towards him as he came in, and she did not turn at the sound of his footsteps. He went up to her, put his arm round her waist and led her gently into the library. ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... Benders, and more Wesley Benders zigzagged out sideways from still other Wesley Benders; nevertheless, he found one of these and it proved to be flesh. He engaged it wildly at fisticuffs; pounded it upon the countenance and drove it away. Then he sat down upon the curbstone, and, with his dizzy eyes shut, leaned forward for the better accommodation of his ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... depicted by some authors. The 2nd Battalion, the relievers, came through late at the rear of Buller's army, and by that time the 1st Battalion, the relieved, had been in the sun, standing or sitting down on the curbstone, for some hours, and a great many men had fallen out exhausted. Still the meeting was very hearty, officers recognizing men and men old comrades. There was little time to enact the scene so graphically described ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... these four men in armour met each other in front of the windows of the house, and stood there on horseback for fifteen minutes, with their backs to the curbstone. The forage, however, of the horses became so terribly large an item of expenditure that Mr. Brown's heart failed him. His heart failed him, and he himself went off late one evening to the livery stable-keeper who supplied ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... fortune-tellers and a multitude of small tradesmen carrying on a business in a jog, or niche in the wall, not as large as an ordinary bootblack's stand. Along the narrow sidewalks are seen many of these curbstone merchants. Some have their goods displayed in glass show-cases, ranged along the wall, where are exhibited queer-looking fancy articles of Chinese workmanship, of a cheap grade, all sorts of inexpensive ornaments for women and children's wear, curiously fashioned from ivory, bone, ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... permitted James Mandeville and his velocipede to be abroad again, the place showed unmistakable signs of occupancy. There were muslin curtains in the upstairs windows, and, peeping in through the glass door of the shop, he saw packing-boxes. At another time a woman stood on the curbstone buying vegetables from a wagon, but she was far removed from the lady of his ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... of argument, I was so profoundly convinced of its truth, that without having first tried it upon my own person, I would have sat where I was, upon the curbstone, and had a tooth removed with the perfect expectation of absence of pain and of still being conscious of touch. While yet walking with my children, I commenced to breathe as rapidly as possible, and, as anticipated, found my steps growing shorter and shorter, until I came to a stand, showing to ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... as they walked along the road, on either side the fantastic shapes of the dripping, shivering bushes started forth, looking like the plants in an aquarium),—they went together to say farewell to the grave where he lay. They all three knelt on the narrow curbstone which surrounded the freshly turned patch of earth. They wept in silence; Olivier sobbed. Madame Jeannin mopped her eyes mournfully. She augmented her grief and tortured herself by saying to herself over and over again the words she had spoken to her husband the last ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... I could hug a curbstone ... or the handle o' your collection bag. I do feel most uncommonly jolly. I ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... live over here. That there is the Reddin's' house, the big white one where them curbstone ladies are in the yard. I wisht you could git a peek in the parlor; they've got chairs made outer real gold, an' strandaliers that look like icicles all ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice
... converged from various directions, making gayly for the thrilling gateway—and the most beautiful little girl in all the world, Marjorie Jones, of the amber curls, jumped from a carriage step to the curbstone as Penrod and Sam came up. She ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... filled with passengers, was standing at the door, its steps backed over the curbstone, and beside it was a broad, flat van, on which stalwart porters were heaving great square, iron-bound trunks belonging to commercial travelers, and the more fragile, but not less bulky, saratogas, doubtless the property of the ladies who sat patiently ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... of you! You might as well catch at the winds!" shouted Beulah, and, with one last effort, she threw, her whole weight on the reins and turned the horses into a cross street. The wheels struck the curbstone, the carriage tilted, rocked, fell back again, and on they went for three squares more, when the horses stopped short before the livery stable where they were kept. Embossed with foam, and panting like stags at bay, they were seized by ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... four policemen were carrying her to the station, and she was extra violent, screaming, plunging and biting, when, either by accident or design, one of the policemen let go of her head, and it came in contact with the curbstone, causing the blood to pour forth in a stream. As soon as they placed her in the cell the poor creature caught the blood in her hands, and literally washed her face with it. On the following morning she presented a pitiable sight, and before taking her ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... George pulled the string for the carriage to stop, as they had arrived at the corner of the street where he was to get out. The coachman drew up to the sidewalk and stopped. Mr. George opened the door and stepped out upon the curbstone, and then said, as he shut ...
— Rollo in Switzerland • Jacob Abbott
... enjoying himself and let his neighbors rest. But here they were at home. How odd it looked, to see those great heaps of snow which had been shovelled from the sidewalk and piled up in banks before the houses, between the curbstone and the driveway. And over in the "Square" which filled the centre of the block the children of the bordering houses had all come out with sleds and happy laughter, and were ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... sneakers and a large red hair-ribbon, shouted at her, and Charlie Martindale, of the First National Bank, nodded to her, but these exquisites were too young for her; they danced too well and laughed too easily. The person who stopped her for a long curbstone conference about the weather, while most of the town observed and gossiped, was the fateful Henry Carson. The village sun was unusually blank and hard on Henry's bald spot to-day. Heavens! she cried to herself, in almost hysterical ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... forward from under the noses of two enormous sleepy-headed cart-horses. He skipped wildly out of the way and up on the curbstone with a purely instinctive precision; his mind had nothing to do with his movements. In the middle of his leap, and while in the act of sailing gravely through the air, he continued to relieve his ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... of Balzac's works, twenty-seven volumes, piled up near his sofa, to throw at Watkins whenever that exemplary serving-man appears with his meals. Yesterday I very innocently brought Flemming a small basket of lemons. You know it was a strip of lemon-peel on the curbstone that caused our friend's mischance. Well, he no sooner set is eyes upon those lemons than he fell into such a rage as I cannot adequately describe. This is only one of moods, and the least distressing. At other times he sits with bowed head regarding his splintered limb, silent, ...
— Marjorie Daw • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... for a cab and for a priest; send for the curate of Saint-Sulpice!" answered the old dragoon, sinking down upon the curbstone. ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... a severe attack of croup from which my little boy was suffering, and said, impatiently, that it seemed as if all my care might secure for him as happy a babyhood as that of the little things whose frozen heels were at that moment hitting the curbstone. ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... tolerant, even in his wrath, than most men would have been, but he had disposed of his enemy effectually. The fellow lay stunned upon the ground. In his fall, he had cut his head upon the curbstone, and the blood streamed from the wound when his companions crowded near, and raised him. Owd Sammy Craddock offered no assistance; he leaned upon his stick, and looked on ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... more, as formerly. He took a "deal" on the curbstone occasionally, or now and then ventured a few pieces of silver upon the black or red. He was back in the ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... street. Like pigeons they would descend in a flock, here, there, everywhere; perching in a blissful row before the soda fountain in the drug store; or if the state of the public purse did not warrant this, the curbstone and the wares of the Candy Wagon were cheerfully substituted. By virtue no doubt of her long legs and masterful spirit, Virginia ruled the flock. Under her guidance they made existence a weariness to the several ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... met Swett on the street. We sat down upon the curbstone, as it was growing a little dark, and talked the matter over. Swett said to me that he was an older man than I was; that he had been knocked about a good deal, and, though he had done much work for the party, he had never got anything; and if ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... third was almost severed from the trunk, and the body divested of nearly all its clothes. The mob evidently felt confident that their actions were approved, for they paraded the streets with their stolen goods and clothes with an air of glory and bravado. One soldier was seen to sit on the curbstone and change his own garments for the new stolen ones he had ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... be good, won't you?" Then the ambulance rolled softly away, and he stood on the curbstone and felt his heart swelling in his throat: "Why did I say 'my'?" As he walked home he tried to explain the possessing word away: "Of course I'd say 'my' to any child; it didn't mean anything! But suppose the orderly had heard ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... murmur of voices about the rival exchanges that were the battlegrounds of millionaires. The "curbstone boards" were in session. The buyers who traded face to face, and the brokers who carried their offices under their hats, were noisily bargaining, raising as much clamor over buying and selling a few shares as the most ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... Thursday morning, insisted on accompanying her from his office to her friend's house on the North Side. On Halstead street their carriage suddenly stopped. Putting her head out of the window, the countess perceived that the coachman had drawn up close to the curbstone to avoid the onset of a yelling mob of boys and men armed with every description of weapon, from laths and brickbats to old muskets. The boys appeared to regard the whole affair as merely a gigantic "spree," ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... a curbstone, to one side, he watches the passing of liberty-crazed mobs, armed with pikes—the self-same common people on whose shoulders Napoleon himself was later to ride into ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... support. The money on which he had relied was gone. His credit was utterly destroyed, and he had no hope of being reinstated in his former position. The only way he could possibly be useful in the street was by becoming a curbstone broker, a go-between, trusted by neither borrower nor lender, and earning a precarious livelihood by commissions. Even in that position he felt that he should labor under disadvantages, for he knew that his course had been universally condemned. It was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... by two classes of people—those who want to trade in horses, and those who don't; between them they manage to assemble a large crowd. There are always plenty of curbstone brokers, or intermediaries, who hang around the fair to negotiate purchases and sales. They have a way of conducting trades by drawing their long sleeves over their hands, and making or receiving bids by means of the concealed fingers. This mode of telegraphing is quite convenient ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... cried at last, at the end of his patience, and out he went in God knows what mood. He drove as if he had never handled the reins before, locked his wheels in the wheels of other vehicles, collided with the curbstone in the Place Louis-Quinze, went he knew not whither. The horse, left to its own devices, made a bolt for the stable along the Quai d'Orsay; but as he turned into the Rue de l'Universite, Josephin appeared ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... a little girl standing on the curbstone down town on Broadway in New York, with a bundle in her arms. She has been sent on an errand, and wants to get across the street. But the electric cars are whizzing past in both directions, and wagons, and carriages, and omnibuses, and horses jam the street from curb to curb, and she ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... instrument formed of a hair-comb upon a curl-paper. At last, when the punch was all gone, and the night nearly so, they sallied forth to see each other home. Mr. Tuckle no sooner got into the open air, than he was seized with a sudden desire to lie on the curbstone; Sam thought it would be a pity to contradict him, and so let him have his own way. As the cocked hat would have been spoiled if left there, Sam very considerately flattened it down on the head of the gentleman in blue, and putting the big stick in his hand, propped him ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... ones that we waste our lives in holding on to things that in our hearts we hold contemptible. I wish to tell the mob just why there are thirty thousand steady men out of work in this city: to do this I may take to the curbstone." ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... Margery had forgotten, and now, at this sudden reminder, she was so overcome she had to sit down for a few moments and rest on the curbstone. ...
— A Little Question in Ladies' Rights • Parker Fillmore
... and started back up the street again, walking idly. His chagrin was very real. He hated to be fooled, and fooled he had been. Gregory was not the only one who had lost a night's sleep. Then, unexpectedly, he was hailed from the curbstone, and he saw with amazement that it was ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... little division into classes, as of rich and poor, educated and illiterate, well and obscurely born. On the steps of the court-house, in the post-office while the daily mail is sorted, in the corner drug store on Sundays, in lawyers' offices, on the curbstone,—wherever a group of men is assembled,—there is the freest talk on every possible subject; and the lives of men are open to their fellows as they cannot be in cities by reason of the mass or in country districts ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... he came to the corner of Lexington. There, on the curb, he stopped and stared. The gray wall was thicker there but he did not realize how close it was until he glanced down at his feet and saw there was nothing, nothing at all beyond the curbstone. No dull gleam of wet asphalt, no sign of a street. It was as if all eternity ended here at the corner ...
— The Street That Wasn't There • Clifford Donald Simak
... had led to the opening of Polktown's library and free reading-room. However, the boys pursued Tim Narnay no farther. They slunk back into the lane, and finally, with shrill whoops and laughter, disappeared. The besotted man stood wavering on the curbstone, undecided, it ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... Street—the Walnut Street which belongs to the city of William Penn; and on the threshold stands a lady, with her hand up to her brows, shielding her eyes from the light. She is watching to see what will come out of a carriage just driving up to the curbstone. The carriage stops; there descends first the figure of a handsome, very comfortable-looking gentleman. Mrs. Eberstein's eyes pass over him very cursorily; she has seen him before; and there is hardly a curl on his handsome head which his wife does not know by heart. What comes next? Ah, ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... a poor washerwoman. His first studies were made on the curbstone and in the gutter, and pretty soon he became the toughest boy in the neighborhood. His mother decided the time had come for her son to enter the army. Coucou did not hesitate long; only he made it a condition that he be allowed ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... limit, boundary, bounds, confine, enclave, term, bourn, verge, curbstone^, but, pale, reservation; termination, terminus; stint, frontier, precinct, marches; backwoods. boundary line, landmark; line of demarcation, line of circumvallation^; pillars of Hercules; Rubicon, turning point; ne plus ultra [Lat.]; sluice, floodgate. Adj. definite; conterminate^, conterminable^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... pretty picture in the shade of the great elm, that sultry morning of August, three quarters of a century ago. The presence of the crutch showed there was something sad about it; and so there was; for if you had glanced at the little bare brown foot, set toes upward on the curbstone, you would have discovered that the fellow to it was missing— cut off about two inches above the ankle. And if this had caused you to throw a look of sympathy at his face, something yet sadder must long have held your attention. Set jauntily on the back of his head ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... beside the car as they emerged from the hotel and started to cross the sidewalk; the porter, following, set their luggage on the curbstone; and at the same instant a young and pretty woman stepped lightly between Rue ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... fallen against the curbstone, covered with bruises and beastliness? He was as bright-faced a lad as ever looked up from your nursery. His mother rocked him, prayed for him, fondled him, would not let the night air touch his cheek, and held him up and looked down into his loving eyes, and wondered for what high ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... stood on the curbstone and stared into the middle of the street. Her face was white with fright and the tears which had not as yet come were close to her big blue eyes. Her little fists were clinched and even her perky plaid hair ...
— Mary Jane: Her Book • Clara Ingram Judson
... Haven't got a red cent, and I wouldn't go back out to the hospital if I had to bunk on the curbstone! So ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... country was rolling; a very attractive church of cream-coloured stone, and finally the carriage turned sharply to the left under an archway on which were the words "Stafford Park," and stopped at a very new curbstone in a very new ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... struck my foot against the curbstone, and now one of my roller skates is broken, and ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Aunt Jo's • Laura Lee Hope
... been made, not always the widest to be sure, but smoothly floored with the asphaltum of Seyssel, which answers the purpose admirably; the gutters have been removed from the middle of the street to the edge of the curbstone, and lately the curbstone has been made to project over them, so that the foot-passengers may escape the bespattering from carriage-wheels which he would otherwise be sure to get in a rainy day, and there are many such days in this climate—it has rained every ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... is," said Freddie, handing it over, as he and Flossie took their seats in the goat wagon. There was plenty of room for them and the red-haired driver. Other children on the block crowded to the curbstone and looked on with eager eyes as the Bobbsey twins started on their ride. Mrs. Bobbsey, talking with her friend in the darkened parlor, knew nothing of what was ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in a Great City • Laura Lee Hope
... of impotence in every direction. It came upon her like a burden; under it she grew sick and faint. At the door she stumbled, and she was hardly sure of her steps to her cab, which was drawn up by the curbstone, and in which she presently ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... the literary incarnation of the 'eccentric' person, on the curbstone, is supposed to represent Mr. Moore at the present moment, Mr. Whistler thinks the likeness exaggerated—as it is absurd to suppose that Mr. Moore can really imagine that any one admires him in his late role before Interviewer, ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... is to find your "lead," for this precious metal is not found indiscriminately in every rock or ledge you may chance upon. It is found only in the quartz rock, a ledge of which, say twenty feet in thickness, may run like a curbstone set on edge for many miles across hills and in valleys. It may be a mile in depth, and maintain a nearly uniform thickness, being perfectly distinct from the casing rock on each side of it, and keeping its distinctive character always, no matter how deep or how far into the earth it extends. ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... I asked, "is this the animal you gassed between the hours of seven and eight on the evening of May the eleventh, crouching in front of this house with his nose to the curbstone?" ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... things from their far rim. He had no spare funds to put into federal hands, and felt by no means able to afford the conversion of any of his few remaining investments with a loss of nearly half his present returns. He viewed a patriotic parade or two from the curbstone and attended now and then some patriotic meeting in the public parks—a flag-raising, for example. On these occasions he preferred to stand at some remove, so that it would be unnecessary to raise his hat: ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... door-steps, was a motley throng, largely made up of toughs and roughs from the East Side, good-natured spectators who merely wanted to see this splendid prison, and a moving line of gentlemen and ladies who simply happened to be passing that way at this time. The curbstone was lined with a score of reporters of the city journals, each with his note-book. Every window and entrance was eagerly watched. It was hoped that one of the family might be seen, or that some servant might appear who could be interviewed. Upon the windows supposed by the reporters to be those ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... for the twins' lungs were capable of a body of tone more piercing than that of a Chinese orchestra, and the wonder is that poor Lisa did not hear them as she sat shivering on the curbstone, miles away; for it was her name with ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... coloured paper, of graduated tints, and surrounded with a small band of stamped gilt. The two sides of the shop were protected by an immense pent-house shed, which projected over a greasy pavement and was supported by wooden posts fixed in the curbstone. Beneath it, on the dislocated flags, barrels and baskets were freely and picturesquely grouped; an open cellarway yawned beneath the feet of those who might pause to gaze too fondly on the savoury wares displayed in the window; a strong odour of smoked fish, combined with a ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... difficult situation with consummate tact and diplomacy, goes off unsteadily in the direction of Piccadilly, accompanied by a suite of small boys who have kindly resolved to see him through any further adventures that may await his progress. The Cabman remains to discuss the affair at great length on the curbstone. The Policeman paces slowly on, conscious that he has worthily maintained the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, January 18, 1890 • Various
... bell and a boy on the curbstone whistled shrilly, but the dog refused to budge. He only rolled ...
— Four Little Blossoms at Brookside Farm • Mabel C. Hawley
... line as they pass, allowing each group a fair share of the walk. This is especially incumbent when on a narrow crossing. It is very rude for groups of three or more to walk abreast without heeding the people whom they meet, and often crowding the latter off the curbstone. Young girls are sometimes very thoughtless in this matter. "Turn to the right, as the law directs" is an injunction that holds ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... on a strike. Let the horses of these fat aldermen, left all day in the court house alleyway without food and checked tight with head-check lines, go on a strike. Let the patient nags that stand all day by the curbstone and are plagued and annoyed by mischievous boys, go on a strike. In such a strike as any of these the Lord himself might condescend to take sides with the oppressed ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... Street a young woman was standing. She wore a blue dress and a white sailor hat. She stood on the curbstone, swinging a sunshade in ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... you ventured to meddle with any question supposed to involve a doubt of the generally accepted Hebrew traditions. To-day such questions are recognized as perfectly fair subjects for general conversation; not in the basement story, perhaps, or among the rank and file of the curbstone congregations, but among intelligent and educated persons. You may preach about them in your pulpit, you may lecture about them, you may talk about them with the first sensible-looking person you ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... they followed him out. At the curbstone he said, "Keep together somewhere round the wharf-boat. So long." He lifted the battered hat he was wearing, smiled at Susan. "Cheer up, Miss Sackville. We'll down 'em yet!" And away he went—a strange ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... found the Living Water. She forgot her old thirst. She forgot the errand that brought her to the well. She left the empty water pot by the curbstone and bounded away like a happy child into the city. She is under the compelling power of a marvelous discovery. She has a story infinitely too good to keep. And in spite of the fact that her past had ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... Polack, a man does not enjoy seeing a woman knocked down, so I left my doorstep and went to help the lady up. Constitutionally I am not a brave man, but I forgot all about the flying bullets till one took me in the knee, and I toppled over, hitting my head against the curbstone as I did so. I must have been stunned, for when I opened my eyes again the street was empty, except for a thundering vehicle that was ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... a blink that seems to begin nowhere; though it is to be suspected that it was first whispered over the telephone—together with an urgent selling order—by some employee in the cable service. In five minutes the dull noise of the curbstone market in Broad Street had leaped to a high note of frantic interrogation. From within the hive of the Exchange itself could be heard a droning hubbub of fear and men rushed hatless in and out. Was it true? asked every man; and every man replied, with trembling lips, that ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... comes too late for the enlightenment of New York silver miners; they have already learned all about this neat trick by experience.] The Board had no desire to strike the ledge, knowing that it was as barren of silver as a curbstone. This reminiscence calls to mind Jim Townsend's tunnel. He had paid assessments on a mine called the "Daley" till he was well-nigh penniless. Finally an assessment was levied to run a tunnel two hundred ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... like that," he said, "I shall punish you by sitting down here, in St. James's Park, on the curbstone, and giving you an explanation before all ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... into the afternoon. When he went out to get his supper at a restaurant, the gaunt figures of his fellow-criminals were at every step. They gazed curiously into the lighted shop-windows; they talked in groups that overflowed the curbstone into the gutter. In a vacant lot back of the Methodist church the glare of a camp-fire showed the covered wagon that was to give a night's shelter to the family whose shadows were cast large against its ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... storehouses; a couple of banks, occupying the best corners, and barber shops and pool-rooms in apparent excess of the needs of the population. All these he might have found in Plainville, but there were here in addition half-a-dozen real estate offices, with a score or more curbstone dealers, locaters, commission-splitters, and go-betweens, and the number and size of the livery stables gave some clue to the amount of prospecting going on from this base of supplies. The streets were lined with traffic. Riles estimated that in two hours as many teams passed him as might be seen ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... mingling with second-hand lace; an heterogeneous gleaming of bare, brawny arms, and distended busts, all lend a sort of barbaric splendor to that mysterious group floating, as it were, into a hall in one blaze of light. A soft carpet, over-lain with brown linen, is spread from the curbstone into the hall. Two well-developed policemen guard the entrance, take tickets of those who pass in, and then exchange smiles of recognition with venerable looking gentlemen in masks. The hostess, a clever "business man" in her way, has made the ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... such celebration. In very many the whole year passes without neighbors meeting for a common social experience. This is why people move to the city, because every city, great and small, has in the course of the year some events which bring all the people to the curbstone. Country life has few such times and therefore it is dull, because the richest experience of mankind is the experience of common social joy. The best recreation is acquaintance and conversation. The farmer's son spends many hours in silence. He wants someone to help him to talk, ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... between nine and ten o'clock, an organ-grinder was still playing in the Rue des Hebdomadiers. The purpose was clear: it was to drown the death-cry of the victim. It soon turned out that there must have been two organ-grinders, one of whom, a cripple, had squatted on the curbstone in front of the Rue de l'Ambrague. To be sure, it had been the annual fair-day in Rodez, and the presence of organ-grinders would, therefore, not have signified anything mysterious, if the lateness ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... of a pipe, and me being in another chair, rather struck his fancy, and he said he would consider it; and so that afternoon we went to the hotel door and looked at the long line of bath-chairs standing at the curbstone on the other side of the street, with the men waiting for jobs. The chairs was all pretty much alike and looked very comfortable, but the men was as different as if they had been horses. Some looked gay and spirited, and others tired and worn ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... were shaking, but with Lutchester's help he staggered up and reached his side. On the pavement below a man in chauffeur's livery was standing, holding out his hands, and by the side of the curbstone a closed car was waiting. Somehow or other the two reached the pavement. Lutchester almost pushed his companion into the limousine and stepped in after him. The chauffeur sprang to his seat and the car glided off. Graham just realised that there was a woman ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the box, sit upright, but easily, with your knees a little bent. Some gentlemen almost stand, with a thick cushion reaching above the rail of the box, and their toes several inches over the foot-board. This is not only unsightly, but attended with risk, for if you came in contact with the curbstone, or any trifling obstruction, you might very readily, and most likely would, be thrown from your seat. The rail of the box, ought always to be a few inches ...
— Hints on Driving • C. S. Ward
... Sylvie in the bay-window. Rodney rode by, then wheeled about and came back as far as the stone sidewalk before the Bank entrance. He jumped off, hitched Red Squirrel to one of the posts that sentineled the curbstone, and passed quietly round into the ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... as we do not find that he was advanced to any other public post on his return, than the post at the corner of the Haymarket, where he officiated as assistant-waterman to the hackney-coach stand. Seated, in this capacity, on a couple of tubs near the curbstone, with a brass plate and number suspended round his neck by a massive chain, and his ankles curiously enveloped in haybands, he is supposed to have made those observations on human nature which exercised so material ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... every propriety be described as private. In its breadth, emptiness, and extent it had the majesty of inorganic nature, of matter that never dies. The only reminder of mortality was a doctor's brougham arrested in august solitude close to the curbstone. The polished knockers of the doors gleamed as far as the eye could reach, the clean windows shone with a dark opaque lustre. And all was still. But a milk cart rattled noisily across the distant perspective; a butcher boy, driving with the noble recklessness ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... Carl Schurz mansion on the hill, and we departed for the airy plateaus of Central Park. Desperately I pointed to the fading charms of East River Park—the convent round the corner, the hokey pokey cart by the curbstone. ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... that run between lines of hooting men. On every side we were assailed with cries. Even the voices of women mocked at us. Men sprang at my bridle, and my horse rode them down. They shot at us from the doors of the cafes, from either curbstone. As we passed the barracks even the men of my own native regiment ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... was concluded Mrs. Staggchase went home with Berenice to lunch with Mrs. Morison. Maurice put them into their carriage, feeling that he could not let Berenice go out of his sight. He stood on the curbstone watching the carriage as if it had set out on a voyage to regions unknown and far; then smiling at himself with a realization of what he was doing he turned back to go home himself. As he did so he came face to ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... ever-increasing horror as long as he could, then—better starve and have done with it than die like a dog from sheer fright!—he stepped cautiously, softly, starting at the crackle of the ice under his tread, off the curbstone into the street. So far he was safe. He kept his head low, and walked carelessly towards Third Avenue. When nearing the corner he determined he would look up. He took the middle of the street. It cost him a supreme effort to raise his eyes, to look stealthily ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... the cab rattled up by the curbstone, and I sprang in while the porter tossed my traps on top. Away we bumped over the stony pavement, past street after street lighted dimly by tall gas-lamps, and alley after alley brilliant with the glare of villanous all-night cafe-concerts, and then, turning, ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... side to side, and his calm, proud eye—a governing, compelling and determined eye. She had never met his glance yet: she withered away before it as a mouse withers and shrinks and falls to its den before a cat's huge glare. She used to look at him from the curbstone in front of the chemist's shop, or on the opposite side of the road, while pretending to wait for a tram; and at the pillar-box beside the optician's she found time for one furtive twinkle of a glance that shivered ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... back and nodded from the tangle to Tom, who stood on the curbstone with his hands in his pockets. Her white hood bobbed out of sight the next moment in School Street behind a ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... couldn't tell who we were under this top," Walter assured her as he brought the little car to a standstill beside the curbstone, out in the street. "What's it matter if he ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... remember, Lucy, we used to have to think twice about calling a cab, when we used to travel together, on account of the expense," said Mary Leonard, as they waited for it to draw up at the curbstone. ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... Gracechurch Street. It was a fine summer evening. The street was less crowded than earlier in the afternoon, although there was a continuous stream of waggons, omnibuses, and cabs both ways. As they stood on the curbstone, a little way north of Lombard Street, ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald |
