"Curtain" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... feet dangling in front of the wheel, which plays on to them a continuous stream of dirt and dust. In windy weather one must crawl inside and sit on the floor tailor fashion, there being no seat, and then let down the curtain, thus effectually blocking all view but keeping out most of the dust, which, flying in blinding clouds, would quickly reduce one to a state of absolute filth, filling the clothes, hair, ears and mouth and guttering down from the nose ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... their way back to the hill, and Morse left Molly at her gate. As she walked slowly up the road, she could see the light in Theodore's window, and his shadow thrown on the curtain. ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... career, she was in terror lest her friend should scent a romance, and for this reason she had never spoken of the symptoms Ditmar had betrayed. She attempted to convey to Eda the doubtful taste of staring point-blank at the house of one's employer, especially when he might be concealed behind a curtain. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... in return, he heard a loud exclamation behind the wall, followed by a confused sound of scuffling, and the hole suddenly disappeared. The next moment a little bell tinkled, and the wall rose slowly before them like a curtain, carrying the trees with it apparently, and he and the Goblin were left standing in a large open space ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... kind of heroine who would stop a play five minutes after the curtain had risen on the first act if the remaining four acts depended on her failing to see something that was plain to the veriest dolt in the audience," Marguerite replied, with spirit. "Nobody shall ever write me up save as ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... and again sing: BIBAMUS! For joy through a wide-open portal it guides, Bright glitter the clouds, as the curtain divides, An a form, a divine one, ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... him demands. There are some books, where it is necessary to let one's self go from beginning to end. There are others where a man may sit as he sits at a play, being himself between acts, or at proper intervals when the author lets down the curtain, and being translated the rest of ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... curtain was rung down on this scene, in a metaphorically sense, it rose on another ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... there appeared a wood in perspective, the innermost part being of "releeve or whole round," the rest painted. On the left a cave, and on the right a thicket from which issued Orpheus. At the back of the scene, at the sudden fall of a curtain, the upper part broke on the spectators, a heaven of clouds of all hues; the stars suddenly vanished, the clouds dispersed; an element of artificial fire played about the house of Prometheus—a bright and transparent cloud reaching from the heavens to the earth, whence the eight maskers descended ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... answer to my rap. I obeyed the signal, and found myself in a room of tolerable dimensions and multiplied utilities. A decayed silk curtain of a dingy blue, drawn across a recess, separated the chambre a coucher from the salon. It was at present only half drawn, and did not, therefore, conceal the mysteries of the den within; the bed was still unmade, and apparently of no very inviting ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... early twilight I went for the last time to "Rockport." There are sadder things than funeral rites. The tragedies of life do not always ring down the curtain leaving the stage strewn with the forms of the slain. Oftener they find the living actor following his lines and doing his part of the play as if all life were a comedy. The man of sixty years may smile at the intensity of feeling in the boy of twenty-one, ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... this assumption, and casting an eye in the direction of the Iron Curtain, it is obvious that the Soviet Union is going all-out to ...
— The Practical Values of Space Exploration • Committee on Science and Astronautics
... the stage consisted of a bare platform, with a curtain or "traverse" across the middle, separating the front from the rear stage. On the latter unexpected scenes or characters were "discovered" by simply drawing the curtain aside. At first little or no scenery was used, a gilded sign ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... curtain council, as usual, with his wife, dutifully repeated to her what Burr had revealed of the Wachita speculation, and asked advice. She made up his mind promptly. "Share the enterprise, if you think he really wishes your co-operation. ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... her abruptly and walked to the window. The darkness had drawn close. It hung like a black curtain beyond the pane. The only light in the room was a lamp that burned on a side table. It illumined him but dimly, and again it seemed to the girl who watched him that this could be no other than the Guy of her dreams—the Guy she had loved so faithfully, for whose sake she ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... be very glad to know that I am exceedingly comfortable here. My cabin has now got into tolerable order, and what with my books—which are, I am happy to say, not a few—my gay curtain and the spicy oilcloth which will be down on the floor, looks most respectable. Furthermore, although it is an unquestionably dull day I have sufficient light to write here, without the least trouble, to read, or even if necessary, to use my microscope. I went to see a friend of mine on board ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... Zambezi forms a natural riverine boundary with Zambia; in full flood (February-April) the massive Victoria Falls on the river forms the world's largest curtain of falling water ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... considering her as even a human being. She was a pawn in their game, and they used her, careless of her terror, her beauty, her pain. Then he freed from her waist the long cord which ran beneath the curtain to Adele Rossignol's foot. Celia's first thought was one of relief. He would jerk the cord unwittingly. They would come into the recess and see him. And then the real truth flashed in upon her blindingly. He had jerked the ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... meant for an artist, and it is to be hoped that there was one at Tarr Farm to see the curtain of fog slowly lifting from the bright waters of the Creek, and creeping up the bluff beyond it, until it melted into the clear blue sky, and let the sunshine come glancing down the valley, where groups of derricks, long lines of tanks, engine-houses, counting-rooms replaced the forest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... clans began to monopolize Imperial power, the people distinctly recognized the nature of their methods and gave it the name of "Bakufu" or "curtain government," a roundabout expression for military government. There has been a succession of these "curtain governments," the last and most successful being that of the Tokugawa, whose fall in 1867-68 brought the entire system to an end and placed ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... lady in her curtain'd bed, The herdsman in his wattled shed, The clansman in the heather'd hall, Sweet sleep be with you, one and all! We part in hope of days as bright As this now gone—Good ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... that eternal waltz tune he reached the doorway of the music-room. A chintz curtain hung there, and to the sound of feet slipping on polished boards, he saw his daughter Noel waltzing slowly in the arms of a young officer in khaki: Round and round they went, circling, backing, moving sideways with curious steps which seemed to have come in recently, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... men, armed with weapons like those of his guards, leap into an instant's dim visibility. The whole area began to crackle, to flash with little instantaneous streaks of light, and abruptly the darkness rolled back like a curtain. ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... heard at once, Let vs sit downe, and marke their yelping noyse: And after conflict, such as was suppos'd. The wandring Prince and Dido once enioy'd, When with a happy storme they were surpris'd, And Curtain'd with a Counsaile-keeping Caue, We may each wreathed in the others armes, (Our pastimes done) possesse a Golden slumber, Whiles Hounds and Hornes, and sweet Melodious Birds Be vnto vs, as is a Nurses Song Of Lullabie, to ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... and a great thing to cover the blemishes and to excuse the failings of a friend; to draw a curtain before his stains, and to display his perfections; to bury his weaknesses in silence, but to proclaim his virtues upon ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... stopping in where the curtain was looped up, and showed King Henry half sitting, half lying, on a couch of cushions and deer-skins, his eyes full of fire, his thin face flushed with deep colour; Bedford, March, Warwick, and ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and noise began in the entrance; and after a moment Caesar's freedman, Phaon, appeared from beyond the curtain. Close behind him was the ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... I lay entranced, a curtain seemed To shrivel with crackling from before my face, Across mine eyes a waxing radiance beamed And showed a ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... created a new center for the world and set heaven and earth revolving around his cradle. All things began to gravitate towards him as by a new and more powerful attraction. Angels sang, shepherds wondered, a new star glittered upon the blazing curtain of the night, and wise men came from afar to worship him. These wise men were Persian priests, scholars, scientists, astrologers, students of the stars. Rumors of a coming King or Saviour were widespread in the ancient world and doubtless had reached these worshipers of the sun to whom the stars ...
— A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas • James H. Snowden
... with equal courage, and almost with equal loss, but with better success. One party, led by Lord Grandison, was indeed beaten off, and the commander himself mortally wounded: another, conducted by Colonel Bellasis, met with a like fate: but Washington, with a less party, finding a place in the curtain weaker than the rest, broke in, and quickly made room for the horse to follow. By this irruption, however, nothing but the suburbs was yet gained: the entrance into the town was still more difficult: and by the loss already ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... eyes are with the eels, and your lips with the crabs; and your two white hands under the sharp rule of the salmon. Five pounds I would give to him that would find my true love. Ohone! it is you are a sharp grief to young Mary ni-Curtain!' ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... in dressing gown and cap, she pushed aside the curtain into the aisle and crept out, meaning to steal a march on the others. She let the curtain fall with a little gasp of astonishment, for as she looked, two other curtains moved stealthily, animated by unseen hands, and two heads popped simultaneously into the aisle. ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... have only to stake out our claim; and then, if we persevere, we shall find that our Joyous Gard is really rising into the air about us—where else should we build our castles?—with all the glory of tower and gable, of curtain-wall and battlement, terrace and pleasaunce, hall and corridor; our own self-built paradise; and then perhaps the knight, riding lonely from the sunset woods, will turn in to keep us company, and the wandering minstrel will bring his harp; and we may even ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... charm been more in evidence. He had not seen her since they parted on the previous night. He had built for himself a cot in the woodshack, and had contrived a curtain that could be drawn in front of her bed in the living-room. Thus he could enter in the morning, light the fires, and start breakfast without disturbing her. She had dressed her hair, now in a different ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... he wears on extraordinary occasions. The Justice had nine, and all of them were destined by him to be assembled around his body on this day. He kept them hung up in a row on wooden pegs behind a seed-cloth, which partitioned off one part of the room from the other like a curtain. First the under ones of silver-gray or red woolen damask, adorned with flowers, and then the outside ones of brown, yellow and green cloth. These were all adorned with ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... face a sunburst of smiles and announced Miss Carter's presence in the house! And the new note in the Colonel's voice—a note of triumph and love and pride! And the touches here and there inside the cosy rooms; touches that only a woman can give—a new curtain here, a pot of flowers there: all joyous happenings that made a visit to Aunt Nancy, as we loved to call her, one of the events to ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... is light coming, though as yet you cannot see it. There are angels of mercy flying toward you, though you cannot hear the rustle of their wings. The dark curtain of death and despair can never shut down upon a life linked to heaven by such true, strong prayer. And yet the logical results of wrong-doing will work themselves out, sin must be ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... all there was in the room. The yellow, scratched and shabby wall-paper was black in the corners. It must have been damp and full of fumes in the winter. There was every sign of poverty; even the bedstead had no curtain. ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... explosion. It is post-decision steadiness more than pre-decision certitude which carries the day. A large part of decision is intuitive; it is the byproduct of the subconscious. In war, much of what is most pertinent lies behind a drawn curtain. The officer is therefore badly advised who would believe that a hunch is without value, or that there is something unmilitary about the simple decision to take some positive action, even though he is working ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... entire absence of mawkish sentimentality, of effort to conceal the secret motives and desires of the heart beneath specious language and words of double meaning. On the contrary, they tear away from the heart the curtain of deceit, artifice and treachery, to expose the nature of ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... Charles, I suppose you will go on alternating between vice and sentimentality until the curtain drops. You know, one reason why you ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange
... who wished to come, and more. Ranges of benches ran up till they met the canvas roof. Below were the boxes, hung with red and white cloth and banners. Dazzling lights were everywhere, the band was playing, from behind the green curtain came sounds of voices and horses whinnying to each other. Alice had never been to a circus before. It seemed to her the most beautiful and bewildering place which she ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... danger greatly excited me, and I felt a desire to get up, seize my revolver, and rush into the library. I did not rise; I saw one of the curtains of the left window move. There was no doubt about it: the curtain had moved. It was still moving. And I saw—oh! I saw quite distinctly—in the narrow space between the curtains and the window, a human form; a bulky mass that prevented the curtains from hanging straight. And it is equally certain that the man saw me through the large meshes of ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... than half hidden in the rich foliage that fringes the wonderfully wrinkled green of the hills at their base;—it has a curtain of palms before it. Approaching, you discern only one or two faades above the sea-wall, and the long wharf projecting through an opening ing in the masonry, over which young palms stand thick as canes on a sugar plantation. But on reaching the street that descends ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... One might fancy that the tide of life was stemmed by Mr. Jasper's own gatehouse. The murmur of the tide is heard beyond; but no wave passes the archway, over which his lamp burns red behind his curtain, as if the building ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... little bakery on this corner, with two gaslights flaring in its window. Several flat pies and small cakes were displayed there, and a limp curtain, on a string, shut off the shop, where a dozen people were waiting now. A bell in the door rang violently, whenever anyone came out or in. Susan knew the bakery well, knew when the rolls were hot, and just the price and variety of the cookies and ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... the Sun in bed, Curtain'd with cloudy red, Pillows his chin upon an Orient wave, The flocking shadows pale, Troop to th'infernall jail, Each fetter'd Ghost slips to his severall grave, And the yellow-skirted Fayes, Fly after the Night-steeds, leaving ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... tide had risen on the beach; but I hammered lustily, and laid open in the dark red shale a vertebral joint, a rib, and a parallelogramical fragment of solid bone, none of which could have belonged to any fish. It was an interesting moment for the curtain to drop over the promontory of Ru-Stoir; I had thus already found in connection with it well nigh as many reptilian remains as had been found in all Scotland before,—for there could exist no doubt that the bones I laid open ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... and went on with the next act as if nothing had happened. Such fortitude is commoner in our profession, I think, than in any other. We "go on with the next act" whatever happens, and if we know our business, no one in the audience will ever guess that anything is wrong—that since the curtain last went down some dear friend has died, or our children in the theatrical lodgings up the street have run the risk ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... some special reason, and it was too far away from the rest of the house for casual visitors to intrude themselves. The short passage, within the more modern house, which led to the bridge was reached by a door hung with a leather curtain securely arranged to prevent draughts, and no one ever lifted this curtain except those who had a right to the ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... sweet simplicity and naturalness quite took the audience by storm, and the curtain was rung down at length amid the wildest storm of applause that that theater had ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... behind the six-strand fence blocking the range road. Two men with wire cutters, jumped from the truck and snipped the twanging wires. The metal "Keep Out" sign banged to the ground and was kicked aside. The truck rolled through the gap and the men swung aboard. Behind them was a curtain of dust rising sluggishly in the hot sky, marking the long convoy of other official vehicles pressing hard on the trail ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... just dandy for a circus net!" Teddy went on. "You can hold one end, and I'll hold the other. But we won't make the tower any higher for a while. I'll get a curtain for a net." ...
— The Curlytops and Their Pets - or Uncle Toby's Strange Collection • Howard R. Garis
... museum: a Louis XVI. cabinet, for instance, that had been stolen from the Trianon (what a lot of successful thieves there were in those days); the identical sofa that the Pompadour used in her afternoon naps, and the undeniable curtain that covered her bed, and which now hung between Jack's ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... dreadful dream?" wailed Rosemary; and Evelyn found no answer. But Hugh had pounced upon a card pinned on the window curtain; and as he held it out, in eloquent silence, she read aloud over his shoulder; "Compliments ...
— Rosemary - A Christmas story • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... down again, and the old woman would have withdrawn the light. He moved uneasily. "Not that," he murmured,—"light to the last!" and putting forth his wan hand, he drew aside the curtain so that the light might fall full ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the theatres and circuses of the present day would consider this establishment of Gudel's very modest, with its single gallery, a little red serge, and its shabby velvet curtain. There was an orchestra, but what an orchestra! All the actors when not occupied on the stage assisted in it. Gudel at intervals played the trombone. The gallery was crowded; so crowded that, from time to time, there were ominous crackings, but the people ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... proceed with his proposed investigation. No explanation was given, but to the onlooker it was clear that one of two reasons, or perhaps both, was the cause of silence on the part of the chief lawmaking body of the state—either the lifted curtain would reveal "the pot calling the kettle black," or so extensive and noxious a mass of corruption was known to exist that no means were available for correction ...
— Woman Suffrage By Federal Constitutional Amendment • Various
... Garrison gruffly. He had been Red's idol once. He was quite prepared now, however, to see the other side of the curtain. He was no longer an idol to ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... had by this time lighted a lamp, at the wick of which he had been working for some time, and taking the bottle of wine, he led the way into the back part of the saloon, where was a door partially concealed by red moreen hangings. He shoved aside the curtain, and passed into a long vestibule, elegantly furnished, with doors opening on each side, not unlike the state-rooms of a steamboat. These doors led into small apartments, carpeted, lighted, and containing four chairs and a card-table, with a ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... a flight of corkscrew stairs, and lit with singular poverty by an orifice more of the nature of a porthole for a piece than a window, and this port or window, well out in the angle of the turret, commanded a view of the southward wall or curtain of the castle. ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... his appearance on deck for a few minutes before sitting down to breakfast, and about nine o'clock he came up again, just as the fog had begun to clear away in earnest, opening up like a curtain every now and then, and showing clear spaces of about half a mile or so in extent, then settling down again as thick as ever, but each time clearing away more thoroughly, and revealing larger and still larger open spaces. At ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... figure, still moving stealthily, crept up to the long window upon which there suddenly flashed a small zone of white light from an electric pocket-lamp, revealing the fact that, though the heavy curtain was drawn, the window ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... glows, till Walhalla is discerned in its central illumination, with its enthroned gods and heroes. Flames are seen invading the stately hall. When the company of the Blessed are completely wrapped in fire, the curtain falls. ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... in a day or two, and had posted this at Dover. The steamer was the Marie Henriette, a large and luxurious boat, whose state-rooms on deck vie with the glories of the Cunard and White Star liners. One of these state-rooms, the best, was evidently occupied, for every curtain of its windows was carefully drawn. Nella did not hope that the Baroness was on board; it was quite possible for the Baroness to have caught the eight o'clock steamer, and it was also possible for the Baroness not to have gone to Ostend at all, but to some other place in an entirely different ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... saw a curtain move at that window on the left a while ago," commented Astro, "and all three of ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... found. The Chysoyster huts in Cornwall and the "Picts houses" in Scotland were built up of stones, underground.] But the original paleolithic man did not get beyond the cavern or the rock-shelter. This latter was a retreat beneath an overhanging stratum of hard rock, screened against the weather by a curtain of skins. And why should he wish to change so long as these were available? We, from our advanced position, sitting in padded arm-chairs, before a coal fire, can see that there was room for improvement; ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... not an old widow (or a young maid), so that I might marry him, survive him, and dwell forever in this rich and mellow home. As I write here, at my bedroom table, I have only to stretch out an arm and raise the window-curtain to see the thick-planted garden budding and breathing and growing in the silvery silence. Far above in the liquid darkness rolls the brilliant ball of the moon; beneath, in its light, lies the lake, in murmuring, troubled sleep; ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... amongst them 'Come where my love lies dreaming.' Paul's heart obeyed the call with a virgin coyness, and his thoughts stole into some dim-seen shadowed sanctuary, some place of silence where the feet fell soft, and a pale curtain gleamed, and where behind the curtain lay something so sacred that he dared not draw the veil, even in fancy. 'Her beauty beaming,' sang the local tenor. 'Her beauty beaming,' May's voice carolled. Heaven, how it beamed! The boy's emotion choked him. If shame ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... silhouetted in white against the dark background of a first-tier box. He had even speculated idly as to her identity, and had come to the conclusion, on catching her face in profile, that she must be the daughter of the man seated by her side but half-hidden behind a heavy curtain. ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... waked up and glanced at her watch. It was half-past nine. On the carpet near the bed was a bright, narrow streak of sunlight from a ray which came in at the window and dimly lighted up the room. Flies were buzzing behind the black curtain at the window. "It's early," thought the princess, ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Then the curtain rose. Tarquina was a marvelous Carmen. The Society Editor, who had taken her notebook surreptitiously from a silk evening bag and, under cover of a chiffon scarf, commenced to record the names and gowns of important personages, got no farther than the party in the opposite box ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... all tipped, with nature's ermine, and studded now with myriad gems, taking fire at the first touch of the day god's messenger, as the mighty king himself burst his halo of circling cloud and came peering over the low curtain far at the eastward horizon. Chill and darkness and shrouding vapor vanished all in a breath as he rose, dominant over countless leagues of wild, unbroken, ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... curtain covering a recess in the wall, where some of her toys and gymnastic things were kept; and from behind that curtain Watho and Falca always appeared, and behind it they vanished. How they came out of ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... through a series of sitting-rooms, opening one out of another, and all of them looking into a stately garden, glowing, even in the twilight, with the bloom of flowers. We went up four steps out of the last of these rooms, and then my guide lifted up a heavy silk curtain and I was in the presence ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... action. Tavernake sat down with a barely-smothered groan. He was beginning to realize the tragedy upon which he had stumbled. A comic singer followed, who in a dress suit several sizes too large for him gave an imitation of a popular Irish comedian. Then the curtain went up and the professor was seen, standing in front of the curtain and bowing solemnly to a somewhat unresponsive audience. A minute later Beatrice came quietly in and sat by his side. There was nothing new about the show. Tavernake had seen the ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... word, but turned away and went alone to the window. She was deathly pale, and she trembled from head to foot as she clutched the heavy curtain with ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... containing only four lines, concerning which another critic has explained that only the words stop, while the sense goes on. But what a world of meaning is to be found between four short lines! Often a door is opened, a curtain drawn aside, in the halls of romance, where the reader may roam at will. With this nation of artists in emotion, the taste of the tea is a thing of lesser importance; it is the aroma which remains and delights. The poems of the T'angs are full of this subtle aroma, this suggestive compelling ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... down to dinner in an uplifted frame of mind that made her passage down the long dining room in the wake of Madam and the few returned teachers a veritable march of triumph. The feeling that the curtain had gone up on an interesting play in which she was chief actor came back stronger than ever when she took her seat in one of the high-backed ebony chairs, with the carved griffins atop, and unfolded her napkin in the gaze of a long line ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... of DRURIOLANUS OPERATICUS is heard at the wings. The stage-manager's assistant is evidently nervous, and the curtain, after once going up a little way and coming down again, ascends suddenly, in spite of adjuration of DRURIOLANUS to "Wait! wait!" No hitch, and in another moment DRURIOLANUS, calm, but with suppressed emotion, is watching the scene from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various
... the middle-day siesta. No peacock was visible, no lady. Then he saw a face at a window and it stared at him. Ringfield, taken by surprise, returned the stare. To the stare succeeded a weak smile, then a beckoning finger, then an insistent tapping. The window was closed, with a roughly crocheted curtain half-drawn back on a string. The young man had no cause to hesitate, for he knew nothing of what lay inside the house. He was also a clergyman, which means much. It means, if you rightly understand ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... things hid? wherefore have these gifts a curtain before them? are they like to take dust, like Mistress Mall's picture? why dost thou not go to church in a galliard and come home in a coranto? My very walk should be a jig; I would not so much as make water but in a sink-a-pace. What dost thou mean? is it a world to hide virtues in? ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... first time that I ever used my wings was in flying from behind a red curtain. It was in a warm nice breakfast-room. The master of it was called ...
— Dick and His Cat and Other Tales • Various
... the full light of the moon as it shone through the giant sycamore. Outside, the lawn lay like a sheet unrolled, rent by sharp black shadows. All the dear, familiar objects were draped by the darkness as by a curtain; the body of the sycamore assumed a spectral pallor, and the small rockery near by was as mysterious as a tomb. From the dusk beneath the window the fragrance of the mimosa tree ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... house, the insects rasped in her ears, she thought her forlorn childish thoughts, and it was an hour after noon. She did not see a curtain trimmed with white balls in a window overhead pulled cautiously to one side, and a grizzled head thrust out; ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... him made Heideck turn his head. He saw the curtain before the door of the tent slightly lifted, and that it was Morar Gopal who had attempted to draw his attention by ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... and no change was perceivable; but in two hours afterwards she opened her eyes. I crossed the room, to see whether she observed my motion. She did; and I therefore opened the curtain, and spoke to her. She gazed, but did not reply. Presently she seized my arm, muttering some words, of which "my mother!" was all I could understand. I took the opportunity of saying, that I was going to write to her family, and asked how I should ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various
... snow, as bright as day; The glittering constellations roll About the grinding arctic pole; The lovely tingling in your ears, Wrought by the music of the spheres— Your spouse shall then no longer hector, You need not fear a curtain-lecture; Nor shall she think that she is undone For quitting her beloved London. When she's exalted in the skies, She'll never think of mutton-pies; When you're advanced above Dean Viz, You'll never think of Goody Griz; But ever, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... the flat thin voice behind the curtain; and Kim came, conscious that eyes he could not see were staring at him. One skinny brown finger heavy with rings lay on the edge of the cart, and the ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... was examining the globe and chart, Mrs. Warne slipped into the room, through the folds of a curtain at one side of the mirror, and swept down toward me. I should hardly have known her, so great was her disguise; her face and hands were stained a clear olive, and her hair hung down in heavy masses to her waist; her dress was of rich material, trimmed with Oriental extravagance; ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... should suggest that it be played in one Scene and two Acts. That this one Scene should be the Exterior of Cherry-Tree Farm (which should be Fritz's, not the Rabbi's) and that instead of lowering the Curtain, the intermezzo—not I venture to opine equal to the marvellous intermezzo in Cavalleria Rusticana—should be played. L'Amico is certain of an encore, and this will give the singers a rest. It could then commence at nine—a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 4, 1892 • Various
... bed was the bed nearest the window. The curtains were all drawn round it except the half curtain at the bottom, on the side of the bed furthest from the window. Arthur saw the feet of the sleeping man raising the scanty clothes into a sharp little eminence, as if he was lying flat on his back. He took the candle, and ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... head that dictates and the hand that traces these lines shall be no more. Earthly cares shall all be swallowed up, and the death of an unthinking man shall have atoned for the trespass he has committed against the laws of his country. But ere the curtain be for ever dropped, or remembrance leave this tortured breast, let me take this last and solemn leave of one with whom I have passed so many social and instructive hours, whose conversation I fondly cultivated, and whose friendship for me I hope will remain, even after the clay-cold ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 285, December 1, 1827 • Various
... such subjects maintain that the plain words, "I will," are generally first used by the bride in church, when she promises to worship M. or N. with her body. No doubt, Bertie was answered somehow; but as there are no reporters in Paradise, so happiness requires no chronicler, and we drop the curtain while Cecil becomes engaged to her ideal and only love—a fate sufficiently uncommon in this world ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... dancing-place about Soho, waltz and quadrille it with Miss Greengrocer or Miss Butcher, and fancy they have had rather a pleasant evening. There is one house in Dover Street, where, behind a dirty curtain, such figures may be seen hopping every night, to a perpetual fiddling; and I have stood sometimes wondering in the street, with about six blackguard boys wondering too, at the strange contortions of the figures jumping up and down to the mysterious squeaking ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... candle and sank upon his bed to rest. The heat of the evening seemed to increase. He became restless, and throwing off his quilt and drawing his curtain aside, turned towards the window to inhale the last breeze which yet might be wafted from the neighbouring heath. But no zephyr was stirring. On a sudden a broad white flash of lightning—nothing ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... shadow of her muslin curtain, Edna looked down on the walk beneath, and after a few moments saw ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... on the 22d, simultaneously, at 10 a.m. I reconnoitred my front thoroughly in person, from right to left, and concluded to make my real attack at the right flank of the bastion, where the graveyard road entered the enemy's intrenchments, and at another point in the curtain about a hundred yards to its right (our left); also to make a strong demonstration by Steele's division, about a mile to our right, toward the river. All our field batteries were put in position, and were covered by good epaulements; the troops were brought ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... squadron of fifteen planes. Thirteen had crumpled beneath that treacherous, stabbing curtain of disintegrating flame. Only two of them were left—he ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... which does not roll along or move is drawn across the immense stage below like a curtain. There is indeed, a brown wood beneath; but nothing more is visible. The plain is the vaster for its vague uncertainty. From the north comes down the wind, out of the brown autumn light, from the woods below and twenty ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... her cheeks suddenly as she looked toward Oscar. The curtains behind him swayed, but so did the curtain back of her. A May-time languor had crept into the heart of April, and all the windows were open. The blurred murmurs of insects stole into the house. Oscar, half-forgotten by his captor, heard a sound in the window behind him and a hand touched ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... lonely spot, not far distant, deep among the bush-covered hills. Here he stopped, and with his cane drew a line in the sand. The sun was set when the captive Huguenots, with their escort, reached the fatal goal thus marked out. And now let the curtain drop; for here, in the name of Heaven, the hounds of hell were turned loose, and the savage soldiery, like wolves in a sheepfold, rioted in slaughter. Of all that wretched company, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... Hausset, who, in every half page, overturns half a dozen misstatements of this hollow rhetorician. Madame du Hausset was often separated from the little and obscure chamber in the Palace of Versailles, where resided the supreme power, only by a slight door or curtain, which permitted her to hear all that was said there. She had for a 'cher ami' the greatest practical philosopher of that period, Dr. Quesnay, the founder of political economy. He was physician to Madame de Pompadour, and one of the sincerest and most single-hearted of men probably ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... ruff-scruff. They stop exactly opposite the house. The orchestrion blares, the chimes ring a knell to peace and harmony, the calliope shrieks to heaven. The infants wake and shriek likewise. Exit Mrs. A. Curtain falls.] ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... wall, swept up the bits of bark and ashes beside the stove, made sure that the water bucket was standing full on its bench beside the door, sent another critical glance around the room, and tip-toed over to the dish cupboard and let down the flowered calico curtain that had been looped up over a nail for convenience. The sun sent a bright, wide bar of yellow light across the room to rest on the shelf behind the stove where stood the salt can, the soda, the teapot, a box of matches and two pepper cans, one empty and ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... by seizing the proper moment, kick the rat up to the ceiling with such force as to produce concussion of the brain and instant death. Very soon I had an opportunity of putting my plan into execution. A significant shaking of the little curtain at the foot of the berth showed that it was being used as a scaling-ladder. I lay perfectly still, quite as much interested in the sport as if I had been waiting, rifle in hand, for big game. Soon ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... dawn came to Katie with a sudden chill and sinking of the heart that felt for a minute like the utter failure of bodily strength. When she put the lamp out, and put aside the curtain so that the daylight fell on the two grey old faces lying on the same pillow, her heart beat hard ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... somewhere overhead behind the curtain, a faint but perfectly distinct radiance was visible. It was no more than a diffused glimmer, but it was unmistakable, and it shone out faintly and clearly upon the medium's face. By its light Laurie ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... the curtain, block-forts, and a deep ditch over which was a log bridge, composed the military works at Tioga; and this was the place into which we now walked, a sentry directing us to Block-House No. 2, which ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... doctor; "this boat fill? Oh no; she rides over the water like a cork. Can't see anything of the enemy, Jack; the spray along the reef makes a regular curtain, and shuts off everything. I hope it hides us well from our black friends, for I don't want to get into a row of that kind. Well, Ned, if it comes to the worst, do you think ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... wished to marry me; and though I should have been glad if that could be, being alone and motherless I knew not whom to open my mind to, and so I left it as it was, showing him no favour, except when my father, and his too, were from home, to raise the curtain or the lattice a little and let him see me plainly, at which he would show such delight that he seemed as if he were going mad. Meanwhile the time for my father's departure arrived, which he became aware of, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Violet start. In a dark corner, shrouded by the curtain, sat Pallas Athene, the owl of the Parthenon, winking at the light, and testifying great disapproval of Arthur, though when her master took her on his finger, she drew herself up and elevated her pretty little feathery horns with satisfaction, and did not even object ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... When the curtain fell on the last act of "The Squire's Daughter," the comedy-opera that had taken all musical London by storm, a tall and elegant young English matron and her still taller brother rose from their places in the private box they had ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... heat would be enough to convert the rescued calf into an appetising roast. I wish I could sleep off the pain of my foolish prank! The sunlight is beginning to be troublesome. I cannot bear it; it is blinding. Draw the curtain over the window." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... sat in silence. It takes a long time to prepare a big rag; the curtain very seldom goes up punctually on the first night; and there had been no dress rehearsal. There was a sound of scuffling from the door in the cloister which led into the School House studies. Then came the tread of measured feet. The door ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... hearts and imaginations of the people; they felt proud of their great poet, and delighted to enthusiasm with his poetry. At the first exhibition of the play in Leipzig, Schiller being in the theatre, though not among the audience, this feeling was displayed in a rather singular manner. When the curtain dropped at the end of the first act, there arose on all sides a shout of "Es lebe Friedrich Schiller!" accompanied by the sound of trumpets and other military music: at the conclusion of the piece, the whole assembly left ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... and gave him a look that cut him short in his glad note. The lifting of her eyelids was like the rise of the curtain upon some scene of tragedy which was all the more impressive because it seemed somehow mixed with shame. This poor girl, whom he had pitied as an invalid, was a sufferer from some spiritual blight more pathetic than broken health. He pulled ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... alone? Out of the clinging, ever-thickening curtain there came sounds—the sounds of hoofs that struggled upwards, of an animal's laboured breathing, of a man's voice ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... adjoining chamber, but Maurice and Gaston. The curtains partially concealed the bed and the two who lay prostrate beside it; the white, haggard, terrified countenance of Madame de Gramont was alone visible. As Mrs. Lawkins endeavored to extricate her from the folds of the curtain, Maurice and Gaston removed the fallen arrow to which the drapery was still attached. Afterwards Gaston, who was nearest to Mrs. Lawkins, assisted her in raising the helpless countess and placing her upon the bed. Then the form of Madeleine became visible. She was ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... final outdoor chores, Aaron inquired of his wife's day. The Sarki's Paramount Wife, with two servants, had indeed visited, bringing more gifts of food and clothing. Somehow the four of them had managed to breach the Hausa-Pennsylfawnisch Deitsch curtain. "What in the world did ...
— Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang
... dreariness, loneliness, and wildness, now hung out a vast curtain, which Joanna and Conny were skirting under the golden decline of day, not so far from the spot where the little group of men had gathered on the autumn morning, and the two sharp, short cracks, and the little curl of blue smoke had indicated where one life ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... thousand strong—into the Confederacy; she lifted the lid of her treasury to Lincoln, and in answer to his every call, sent him a soldier, practically without a bounty and without a draft. And when the curtain fell on the last act of the great tragedy, half of her manhood was behind it—helpless from disease, wounded, ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... of the wall there hung a curtain of silvery-gray spider-web, and the voice seemed to come from it. The hero went toward it, but he saw nothing, for the spider that was spinning it moved so fast that no eyes could follow it. Presently it paused up in the left-hand corner of the web, and then Teddy saw it. It looked very ...
— The Counterpane Fairy • Katharine Pyle
... performances were a repetition of two pieces which had been previously acted, and from first to last the mirth was electric; the good people appeared, by common consent, to abandon themselves to the fun of the scene, and laughed a gorge deployee. At the fall of the curtain, after, in obedience to the call of the house, I had made my bow, the manager announced my re-engagement; and from this night forth I never met a merrier or a ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... 'cause I saw the new moon over my left shoulder the night before, and now I wish I had died before this thing happened. When the Japanese jugglers went out of the ring I knew that was the cue for the elephants to come in, and when the dressing room curtain was pulled aside and old Bolivar came out at the head of the herd, and they marched around the outside of the ring, clear around the tent, my heart jumped up into my throat, and I ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... he sat down, drew out his lavender gloves in the old way, and took up his glasses for a long look round the house. Dropping them at last on his folded hat, he fixed his eyes on the curtain. More poignantly than ever he felt that it was all over and done with him. Where were all the women, the pretty women, the house used to be so full of? Where was that old feeling in the heart as he waited for one of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... curtains, drive through the city, breaking every speed law, to "Third and Townsend," sit in the station until a train,—some train, any train—pulls out, and go with it. If in crossing Market street, you raise that taxi-curtain as much as an inch, believe me, stranger, it's all off; you're lost. You'll never leave San Francisco. Myself, both times I have gone to California, I have vowed to see Yosemite, the big trees, the string of beautiful old missions which dot the state, some of the quaint, languid, semi-tropical ...
— The Californiacs • Inez Haynes Irwin
... his doleful story, when there was a pattering of heavy feet, a noise of men shouting and laughing outside, and a voice, above all, calling for the monk by name, which made that good man crouch behind the curtain of Lady Godiva's bed. The next moment the door of the bower was thrown violently open, and in walked, or rather reeled, a noble lad eighteen years old. His face was of extraordinary beauty, save that the lower jaw was too long and heavy, and that ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... of a nomad life bestow each thing of theirs in a proper beyt; it would otherwise be lost in their daily removings. One rises to go to fill up the pots at the water-skins, or a bowl of water is handed over the curtain from the woman's side; the pot at the fire, Hirfa reaches over her little palm-ful of green coffee berries.... These are roasted and brayed; as all is boiling he sets out his little cups, fenjeyl ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... wife's curtain lecture are too precious to the enraptured husband to be shared with other ears. And in the hush of the bed-time hour, when tired daddies are seeking repose in the oblivion of sleep, the unearthly bangs on the grand piano below in the parlor, and the unearthly screams and yells of the budding ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... awful "awful!" Why, if a thousandth part of things which are commonly affirmed to be aweful were aweful, we should go about with our faces blanched, like his who drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night, our teeth chattering, and our hair on end. Everything is aweful—awefully good ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... large sum of money had he not thought that by doing so he was buying off Crinkett and the other witnesses. Of course there had been a marriage in Australia, and therefore the arrival of Dick Shand was to him only a lifting of the curtain for another act of the play. An attempt was to be made to get Caldigate out of prison, which attempt it was his duty to oppose. Caldigate had, he thought, deceived and inflicted a terrible stain on his family; and therefore Caldigate was an enemy upon ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... design was at length carried out, they had built up with stone and lime the open spaces between several of the rocks; had cased these curtain-walls outside and lined them inside with softer and warmer walls of fells or divots cut from the green sod of the hill; and had covered in the whole as they found it possible—very irregularly no doubt, but smoothing up all the corners ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... impossible. Although the weather was warm the window was tightly shut and a thick curtain ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... of land may either be imposed according to a certain canon, every district being valued at a curtain rent, which valuation is not afterwards to be altered; or it may be imposed in such a manner, as to vary with every variation in the real rent of the land, and to rise or fall with the improvement ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... she muttered with professional pride and enthusiasm as the signal for the raising of the curtain was given. "Mebby I'd orter give up my seat so as ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... from Kay's to the town was a mile and a half. If he started at the hour when he should have been starting for the school house, he would arrive just in time to see the curtain ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... scene upon the stage, unreal, inhuman. You felt it could not be true. You felt that the curtain of fire, purring and crackling and sending up hot sparks to meet the kind, calm stars, was only a painted backdrop; that the reports of rifles from the dark ruins came from blank cartridges, and that these trembling shopkeepers and peasants ringed in bayonets would not in a few minutes really ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... Horace Danforth to contain only one apartment, warmed by an ill-constructed clay chimney, and lighted by one small, square window. That window, however, was not only sashed and glazed, but shaded by a plain muslin curtain. ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... some whey-skinned ward-teacher's, perhaps, or some German cobbler's, but hints of a hungry soul, to whom Beethoven and Mendelssohn knew how to preach an unerring gospel. The stage was broad, planked, with a drop-curtain behind,—the Doge marrying the sea, I believe; in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... Bouchette, (Fort) of St. Louis covered about four acres of ground, and formed nearly a parallelogram; on the western side two strong bastions on each angle were connected by a curtain, in the centre of which was a sallyport: the other faces presented works of nearly a similar description, but of less ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... coffee were instantly brought me by a French youth in the costume of a Mameluke, with compliments from my lady begging I would refresh myself after my fatigue. On my ablutions being finished I was sent for. Passing through several passages I was shewn into a room rather dark with a curtain drawn across, which being withdrawn I found myself in the presence of a Bedouin Arab chief who soon turned out to be Lady Hester. She expressed great joy at seeing the son of one of the most honest families in England, so she was pleased to express herself. She received me as an English lady of ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... kind warm curtain hung The spider's ghostly cloth is flung; The beetle and the woodlouse creep Where once I loved ...
— Many Voices • E. Nesbit
... the Greeks forbade women to go to the play, they acted in a right way; for they would at any rate be able to hear something. In our day it would be more appropriate to substitute taceat mulier in theatro for taceat mulier in ecclesia; and this might perhaps be put up in big letters on the curtain. ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... After the curtain descended on the final tableau, Redding waited in the lobby while the stream of people passed. The Wiggses had obeyed instructions, and were the very last to come out. They seemed dazed by their recent glimpse into fairy-land. Something in their thin bodies and pinched faces ...
— Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch • Alice Caldwell Hegan
... had much, but in every respect her good fortunes were but preliminary to something else. Her marriage was but the raising of the curtain—the play had not yet begun. The money she was spending was but an earnest of something more expected. Her newly developed physical beauty, which she could not fail to appreciate, would fade away again, did it not continue to ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... to the side o' the bed, the curtains bein' close, and my heart a'most failed me. But I took courage, and I slips my finger in between the thick curtains, and then my hand. So I waits a bit, but all was still as death. So, softly, softly I draws the curtain, and there, sure enough, I sid before me, stretched out like the painted lady on the tomb-stean in Lexhoe Church, the famous Dame Crowl, of Applewale House. There she was, dressed out. You never sid the like in they days. Satin and silk, and scarlet and green, and ...
— Madam Crowl's Ghost and The Dead Sexton • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... And how the brass is molten. But a Mind Deeper than his, close-hidden things explores, Searching out all perfection. Earth unveils The mystic treasures of her matron breast, Bread for her children, gems like living flame, Sapphires, whose azure emulates the skies, And dust of gold. Yet there's a curtain'd path Which the unfettered denizens of air Have not descried, nor even the piercing eye Of the black vulture seen. The lion's whelps In their wide roaming, nor their fiercer sire Have never trod it. There's a Hand that bares The roots of mountains at its will, ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... our remarks, and let the curtain fall, we must say a word of Tom and Maria. Tom, then, is one of the happiest fellows of the lot. He occupies a nice little villa on the banks of the "mill-dam." And here his friends, who having found wings and returned with ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... in the great hall of the Wartburg castle, which is festively decorated, for the minstrels are again to contend for the prize of song, a laurel wreath which will again be bestowed as of yore by the fair hands of the beloved Princess Elizabeth. As the curtain rises she is alone in the hall, no longer pale and wan, but radiant with happiness, for she knows that Tannhaeuser, her lover, has returned, and she momentarily expects him to appear. While she is greeting the well known hall, the scene of her lover's former triumphs, with a rapturous little outburst ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... sent it forth in a chant that made itself heard from end to end of the camp; and far out in the surrounding desert the jackals that whined and skulked among the sandhills dropped to earth hushed by the sonorous call. Not a leaf in the palms was astir. Not a breath of the night wind swayed a tent curtain. The chant rang through a stillness broken only by the low snap and crackle ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... of our carriage was drawn up, and I hung a pelisse before it, thus to curtain the beloved sufferer from the pelting sleet. She leaned on my shoulder, growing every moment more languid and feeble; at first she replied to my words of cheer with affectionate thanks; but by degrees she sunk into silence; her head lay heavily upon me; I only ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... that certain tenderness of heart incident to all sentimental historians, but I candidly confess that I cannot look back on the happier days of our city, which I now describe, without great dejection of spirits. With faltering hand do I withdraw the curtain of oblivion that veils the modest merit of our venerable ancestors, and as their figures rise to my mental vision, humble ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... completely subtending the aperture of the cave. Not inaptly might the scene be compared to the celebrated Grotto of the Winds at the rear of the central fall of Niagara, only with the exception that here, instead of a curtain of rushing water, it was a curtain of roaring flame that hung before ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... fire, top left centre. The door is top right centre. On the left side is a window. Four large grandfather clocks are standing here and there round the room. In front of the fire is seated a little wee bit of a pigeen. The Stranger is seated by the window, apart from the rest. As the curtain rises one of the clocks strikes two, another strikes eleven, while the others remain silent. It is thus impossible to tell what time it is. The Stranger gazes out of the window. No one speaks. The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... differently had he seen the face of Tom Calder peering in at one of the side windows. Tom had spent the evening in the village, and was now on his return to his chamber, on the second floor of the stable. His attention was attracted by the light in the room, and, as the curtain was partly raised, he took the ...
— The Tin Box - and What it Contained • Horatio Alger
... room to escape questions and think in peace, and remained plunged in deep meditation throughout the night. He rose early and went to Mass. He placed himself close to the latticed screen, his brow touching the brown curtain. He longed to rend it away; but he was not alone, his host had accompanied him, and the least imprudence might compromise the future of his love and ruin his new-found hopes. The organ was played, but not by the same hand; the musician of the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... last rational thought. He could no longer feel his flesh. A thin red curtain was falling between him and his senses. Everywhere it billowed out beneath him and eased his fall. Everywhere it swirled and softened the outlines of things that were streaking by—a large tree that he remembered seeing ...
— They Twinkled Like Jewels • Philip Jose Farmer
... remarkable event in this day of events was the departure of Miss Hender, who came downstairs saying she had only just allowed herself time to hurry to the theatre; she feared she wouldn't be there before the curtain went up, and she was sorry Kate wasn't coming, but she would tell her to-morrow all about Mr. Lennox, and how the piece went. As Kate bade her assistant good-night a few customers dropped in, all of whom gave a great deal of trouble. She had to pull down ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... overrate the privation, the blank, which it will make to the old friends and associates, political and personal, to whom Holland House has always been open like a home, and there cannot be a sadder sight than to see the curtain suddenly fall upon a scene so brilliant and apparently prosperous, and the light which for nearly half a century has adorned and cheered the world, thus suddenly and for ever extinguished. Although I did not rank among the old and intimate friends of Holland House, ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... of the sunset very quickly fade, and with their disappearance night falls upon the scene like the drawing of a curtain. So was it on the evening in question; but I had grown accustomed to those rapid nightfalls, and for a few minutes I, immersed in my own thoughts, was quite unaware of anything unusual in our surroundings. As the darkness deepened around us, however, it suddenly occurred to me that there ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... groveling ambition, beneath the lofty amplitude of Mr. Coleridge's mind. No, he revolves in his wayward soul, or utters to the passing wind, or discourses to his own shadow, things mightier and more various!—Let us draw the curtain, and unlock the shrine. Learning rocked him in his cradle, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... Immediately upon the curtain rising, one of the actors, whom you may suppose to be myself, appeared on the stage in an ordinary dress, and addressing himself to the King, with the look of a man surprised, made excuses in great disorder, for being there alone, and wanting both time and actors to ...
— The Bores • Moliere
... is time to lift the curtain, and attend more minutely to the chief jugglers who figure behind it. The Sheriff and others, who sign the McBain certificate, alledge that Mr. Cowen (according to their construction) not only resigned his nomination but did so without any previous request (as they perceived) ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... character of man's spiritual nature so firmly that he ceased to have any further interest in the mythological aspects in which vivid and pictorial imagination has invested the unseen world. "God's presence itself," he says, "is heaven, and if God did but put away the veiling shadows, which now curtain thy sight, thou wouldst see, even where thou now art, the Face of God and the heavenly gate. God is so near that at any moment a holy Birth [a Birth into the Life of God] may be accomplished in thy heart,"[43] and, again, in the same book he writes: "If man's eyes were opened ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... gray and misty, driving sleet came along on the wind, and the horizon was closed in as by a dull curtain. ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... curtain," Miss Crosby called, as she came down from the stage, where she had been putting the last finishing touches to the Venetian street. "Are ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... was brought back from its wanderings by the sound of a great noise about the house, above which I heard the voice of Marais storming and shouting, and that of my father trying to calm him. Presently Marie entered the room, drawing-to behind her a Kaffir karoos, which served as a curtain, for the door, it will be remembered, had been torn out. Seeing that I was awake and reasonable, she flew to my side with a little cry of joy, and, kneeling down, ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... blushed, and said: "Yes, I am getting suspicious, ever since I found I was followed and watched. Excuse me a moment." She went to the window and peered through the curtains. She saw a man walking slowly by; he quickened his pace the moment she opened the curtain. ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade |
