"Half-dozen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... face. Indeed, the more I think of it, the more I am inclined to believe that is all," she persisted, as she saw Malcom's expressive shrug and the comical look in his eyes as he moved them slowly along the half-dozen sketches that were now standing in ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... few minutes only, last winter, I saw her on the beach, near 'Solitude.' We exchanged a half-dozen words, and she left an impression on my mind which all time will not efface. Since that evening I have frequently endeavored to surprise her on the same spot, but only once I succeeded in catching a glimpse of a blue shawl that ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... Hamish had boasted that he should walk his father through Helstonleigh for the benefit of beholders, if happily he came home capable of walking; but, like poor Tom and his plan, that had to be relinquished. In the first half-dozen paces they would meet half a dozen gossipers, and the first remark from each, after congratulations, would be, "What a sad thing this is about your little Charles!" Hamish lived in doubt whether it might not, by some untoward luck, come out at the station, in spite of his precaution ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... 'Some half-dozen hours,' said Tiresias, 'will bring us to the palace of Saturn. We shall arrive for dinner; the right hour. Let me recommend your Majesty to order the curtains of your litter to be drawn, and, if possible, to ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... advanced. But it has not been discussed, as will be seen from the very scant bibliography at the end of the chapter. No plan of training for college teaching is in operation, and no discussion of such a plan can be found. Each of a half-dozen men has argued his individual ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... back door—luckily it was open. I was some half-dozen yards behind Mary, now, and my breath was sobbing in my throat. Then, something touched my shoulder. I wrenched my head 'round, quickly, and saw one of those monstrous, pallid faces close to mine. One of the creatures, ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... now summoned, by the successful and malicious mariners, forward, to improve their advantage. Thoroughly drenched already, and eager to resent their wrongs, a half-dozen of the soldiers, led on by a corporal, the coating of whose powdered poll had been converted into a sort of paste by too great an intimacy with a bucket of water, essayed to mount the rigging; an exploit to them much more arduous than to enter a breach. ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... engaged in writing a historical romance—indeed, it is principally to examine the localities in the country where my story is laid, that I have been abroad. Clara has read the first half-dozen finished chapters, in manuscript, and augurs wonderful success for my fiction when it is published. She is determined to arrange my study with her own hands; to dust my books, and sort my papers herself. She knows that I am already as fretful ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... A half-dozen foreign nations were represented, and one had but to listen to the talk for a short while to learn that among them were many whom one might well fear to meet on a lonely road ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... however, now much stronger than during the time of the first expedition. The Sheikh has two thousand muskets; so says the Shereef Kebir; whilst in the time of Denham he had only fifty. Certainly two thousand muskets is a progress beyond fifty. The Asbenouee Tuaricks carried away some half-dozen Arab women when they slaughtered the Walad Suleiman. One of these women has been seen, and the Sheikh and the Shereef Kebir are trying to get her back. The Sheikh has sent word that all the Arab women must be restored ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... at once to Cliff-Martin. The horse has rested thoroughly these last three hours, and he will have no difficulty in doing an additional half-dozen miles. We shall be there before twelve, and there are late taverns in the place, no doubt. There we'll sell both horse and carriage to-morrow morning; and go by the coach to Downstaple. Once in ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... been said that Mrs Quilp was pining in her bower. In her bower she was, but not alone, for besides the old lady her mother of whom mention has recently been made, there were present some half-dozen ladies of the neighborhood who had happened by a strange accident (and also by a little understanding among themselves) to drop in one after another, just about tea-time. This being a season favourable to conversation, and the room being a cool, shady, lazy kind of place, ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... He has much to do to stem the resentment of the pursuers. The head of Joaquin and the hand of Three-fingered Jack are poor, scanty booty. Not as ghastly as the half-dozen corpses swinging on Lagunitas' oaks, and ghastly trophies of a chase of months. The prisoners are lynched. Far and wide, cowardly avengers butcher suspected Mexicans. California breathes freely now. Joaquin Murieta Carrillo will weave no more ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... the broad, dark arch into the street, he gave Peter in one hand the thick butt of an army automatic, and in the other a half-dozen loaded clips. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... by Mr. S. M. Barlow, the claims of Buchanan were urged by Senators Bayard, Benjamin, Bright, and Slidell. General Pierce had few friends beyond the holders of Federal offices, and General Cass received a cold support from a half-dozen old friends. ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... beginnings of botanical and zoological gardens, a dry dock measuring, I judged, about 350 feet by 70, wharves, breakwaters, dredgers, tugs, steamers ... everything except the one thing needful, trade. Of the half-dozen fine steamers in port, and others either arriving or preparing to depart, all were practically light. Money has been poured out like water by the Russians in constructing the Railway and in building Dalny, and it is very doubtful if this gigantic enterprise ...
— Through Siberia and Manchuria By Rail • Oliver George Ready
... for ages continued to mark the struggle between the two races now brought face to face in a death struggle, are just as marked and just as strikingly conspicuous in the first twenty years which followed the invasion as they are during the succeeding half-dozen centuries. ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... City returned to America on November 19, 1867, and Mark Twain found himself, if not famous, at least in very wide repute. The fifty-three letters to the Alta and the half-dozen to the New York Tribune had carried his celebrity into every corner of the States and Territories. Vivid, fearless, full of fresh color, humor, poetry, they came as a revelation to a public weary of the driveling, tiresome travel-letters of that period. They preached a new ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... men are interested in betting. London swarms with vile clubs which are merely gambling saloons; professional men, tradesmen, clerks, and even artizans crowd into these horrid holes, and do business with the professional gamblers. In London alone there are some half-dozen papers published daily which are entirely devoted to "sport," and these journals are of course bought by the gudgeons who seek destruction in the betting-rooms. In the provinces there are several towns which easily support a daily sporting journal; and no ordinary paper ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... near—" began Peter John, but the sentence was not completed. At some unseen signal a half-dozen sprang upon him. Before he could bring down the chair which he still was holding above his head he was suddenly seized by his adversaries, the chair was wrenched from his hands, he was thrown heavily to the floor, and in a moment his hands and feet were fast bound with ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... with the lowing of cattle, and other domestic calls that proclaim it worth watching. A galaxy of little lights, in rows like street lamps, indicate the "negro quarter;" while in the foreground a half-dozen windows of larger size, and brighter sheen, show where stands the "big house"—the planter's ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... no longer. To some half-dozen tents, fires, and tables had dwindled the picturesque festival, and these had been relegated to an ancient ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... affairs Lady Glencora,—into whose hands the custody of Mr. Palliser's uncle, the duke, had now altogether fallen,—had a divided duty between Matching and London. When the members of Parliament went up to London, she went there also, leaving some half-dozen friends whom she could trust to amuse the duke; but she soon returned, knowing that there might be danger in a long absence. The duke, though old, was his own master; he much affected the company of Madame Goesler, and that lady's kindness ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... soldiers a source of danger to her boy. Just around the corner at the entrance to the old fort, already mentioned, was a guardhouse, and here some half-dozen soldiers were stationed day and night. They were usually jolly fellows, who were glad to get hold of little boys to play with, and thereby help to while away the time in their monotonous life. Cuthbert soon discovered ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... our work looks pretty small. Twenty-three "Personal Background Sets"—a few letters, a diary in some, an assortment of artifacts. Whoever stocked this ship we are on supplied wood, of the half-dozen kinds that have been taken wherever men have gone; stocks of a few plastics—known at the time of the Exodus, or easily developed from those known, and not associated with any particular planet. Also books on Design, a Form-writer for translating drawings into materials, ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... afraid I did the greater part of the talking. At any rate, if I should try to report all that I said during the first half-dozen walks we took together, I fear that I might receive a gentle hint from my friends the publishers that a separate volume, at my own risk and expense, would be the proper method of bringing them ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... crime—I was accustomed to hear that sufficiently maligned—of the author as a miserable reprobate, for ever reeling about Grub Street, in rags and squalor. They held me out no hand of help. My poor wife might cry in her pain, but they had no twopence to bestow upon her. They went to church a half-dozen times in the week. They subscribed to many public charities. Their tribe was known eighteen hundred years ago, and will flourish as long as men endure. They will still thank Heaven that they are not ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... women, hesitating in their embarrassment, rose and walked away, leaving the half-dozen men standing ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... time that he saw her was when he was on a ladder executing a job of this sort inside one of the churches. There was a short morning service, and when the parson entered Jude came down from his ladder, and sat with the half-dozen people forming the congregation, till the prayer should be ended, and he could resume his tapping. He did not observe till the service was half over that one of the women was Sue, who had perforce accompanied the elderly Miss ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... as highest official, was a power in the land, and Jacob Welse was the Company, and there was a superstition extant concerning the unwisdom of being on indifferent terms with the Company. And the time was not long till probably a bare half-dozen remained in outer cold, and they were considered a ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... together by a hand, in size and form almost an infant's, but in its greedy, desperate little clutch, a bad old man's. A face rounded and smoothed by some half-dozen years, but pinched and twisted by the experiences of a life. Bright eyes, but not youthful. Naked feet, beautiful in their childish delicacy,—ugly in the blood and dirt that cracked upon them. A baby savage, a young monster, a child who had never been ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... later Ping Wang and the Pages arrived at the open gate, near which were some half-dozen dirty rascals playing some Chinese game. They were soldiers, but so interested were they in their game that they did not even glance at the people passing in and out. Ping Wang told Fred and Charlie, later, that these imitations of soldiers ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... behind it, a jumble of roots. It was a double house, with long, narrow, heavily-framed windows. Many years ago, it had had it in its mind to slide down sideways; it had been propped up, however, and was leaning on some half-dozen gigantic crutches: which gymnasium for the neighbouring cats, weather-stained, smoke-blackened, and overgrown with weeds, appeared in these latter days to be no ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... intently as he could, with the result that he saw two trees. His attempt to pass between these resulted in a near-concussion of the brain. He reeled back, but presently sighted carefully, and tried again, with the like result. When this had happened a half-dozen times, the unhappy man lifted ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... the towel, and the chief commanded his followers to stand back. Then, charging wildly at the place where the line of Indians was thinnest, the four children started to run. Their first rush knocked down some half-dozen Indians, over whose blanketed bodies the children leaped, and made straight for the sand-Pit. This was no time for the safe easy way by which carts go down - right over the edge of the sand-pit they went, among the yellow and pale ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... and Martha were girls of fair culture, and womanly tastes, and social longings. How does this seem to you, young ladies, and what do you think of their upstairs life together, you who calculate, if you calculate at all, whether five hundred dollars may carry you respectably through your half-dozen city assemblies, where you shine in silk and gossamer, of which there will not be "a dress in the room that cost less than seventy-five dollars," and come home, after the dance, "a ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... are as good as the average. I got it by putting myself in the eye of rich people in every way open to me. I even joined a fashionable church—it pains me to write this—for the sole purpose of becoming a member of the vestry and thus meeting on an intimate footing the half-dozen millionaire merchants who composed it. One of them gave me his business, made me his trustee and executor; and then ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... the drug store and after the globe had been bought and they had selected the half-dozen fish that were to live in it, they loitered at a little table over their ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... time for such missionary enterprise," Tallente replied, with unappreciated sarcasm. "Dartrey's volume on 'Socialism in Our Daily Life' will tell you all about it." "Far too dry," she sighed. "I tried to read it but I never got past the first half-dozen pages." ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... There are some half-dozen classes of technical requirements which make the amending of many state constitutions wellnigh impossible. Some states have never been able to amend; others have had to submit the same amendment again and again before ...
— Woman Suffrage By Federal Constitutional Amendment • Various
... "Yes, I regularly follow him about, when he's in town. I would, even if he didn't send me such wonderful Christmas presents: Russian vodka by the half-dozen!" ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... A half-dozen of these stops and inquiries proved wholly vain; yet the sturdy parson urged his poor, heaving nag forward, until he had come to the little gatehouse which thrust itself quite across the high road at some six miles' distance from Bolton Church. No stray boy had passed that day. Thereupon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... big room, which was darkened at the windows and lighted by shaded electric globes. It was cool and bare in effect. Around a small table in a far corner a half-dozen people were sitting. Mrs. Moss, who was pouring tea, rose in her place at the tea-urn as her husband approached, and cordially shook hands with her guests. "I'm very glad you came. Please tell me how you'll ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... shutter of the window. The red light of the sunset still illumined the western sky, and found glorious reflection along the surface of the river. It was a dizzy drop to the bed of the stream below, but Indians were on the opposite bank, beyond rifle shot, in considerable force, a half-dozen canoes drawn up on the sandy shore, and several fires burning. They were too far away for me to judge their tribe, yet a number among them sported war bonnets, and I had no ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... a delightful process. You grasp the tool by either end, hold the square edge at a certain angle, and push away from you mightily. A half-dozen pushes will remove a little patch of hair; twice as many more will scrape away half as much of the seal-brown grain, exposing the white of the hide. Then, if you want to, you can stop and establish in your mind a definite proportion ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... of Congress from this district, and our tents are now grouped in front and at the sides of the house. The wagons did not come up until midnight, and we were compelled to forage for our supper and lodging. A widow lady who lives near gave some half-dozen officers an excellent meal, and Major White and myself slept on the floor of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... was still securely tied to its mate, one of the larger-bodied lanchas, and he had nothing with which to sever the rope. His first impulse was to reach for his revolver and cut through the manilla strands by means of a half-dozen quick shots. But this, he knew, would too noisily announce his presence there. So he fell on his knees and peered and prodded about the boat bottom. There, to his surprise, he saw the huddled body of a dead man, ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... exercises ensue. When you stick your hand under to make a stroke your feet decline to stay anywhere but on top; and when, after an exciting tussle with your refractory pedal extremities, you again get them beneath the surface, your hands fly out with the splash and splutter of a half-dozen flutter wheels. If, on account of your brains being heavier than your heels, you chance to turn a somersault, and your head goes under, your heels will pop up like a pair ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... who may read his old grandfather's papers, chance to be presently suffering under the passion of Love? There is a humiliating cure, but one that is easy and almost specific for the malady—which is, to try an alibi. Esmond went away from his mistress and was cured a half-dozen times; he came back to her side, and instantly fell ill again of the fever. He vowed that he could leave her and think no more of her, and so he could pretty well, at least, succeed in quelling that rage and longing he had whenever ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... all flavoring. Sometimes extract of bitter almond is so strong that even a drop would be too much to impart the faint almond flavor which alone is tolerable. In this case the thing to do for fear of spoiling the dish is to pour a half-dozen drops in a teaspoonful of water, and use from that, drop by drop, until the faint flavor desired is attained. In using any flavoring, great care must be taken not to put too much, as anything in the ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen
... slow coal fire, making every grain a copper color and ridding it all of dust and chaff." There was usually a difference in price of three to four pence a pound between the green and roasted product. Packages of roasted coffee under the half-dozen weight were sold in New York in 1791 for two shillings and three pence per pound, allowance being made for grocers at a distance. In those days, the favorite container was a narrow-mouthed pot or jar of any size. This was the first crude coffee package. In retailing the product, cornucopias ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... become a favorite phrase. But, like many common saws, it is an error. Visit the first half-dozen circuses that may come to town, and ask the managers whether the cannon-lifter or the general performer has the better health. You will find in every case it is the latter. Ask the doctors whether the cartmen, who are the strongest men in the city, have better health than other ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... does not fail to keep well ahead of the best of feminine writers. She is more thoroughly the master of her powers, is more self-centred, looks out upon human experience more calmly and with a more penetrating gaze. Foremost of the half-dozen women who during the present century have sought to interpret the feminine side of life, she has done much for her sex. Daring more than others, she has given a greater promise than any other of what woman is ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... A half-dozen charming girls are fluttering about; charming, because, whether plain or beautiful, they all look happy, earnest, womanly, full to the brim ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... paper with a sort of gloomy inquisitiveness. I spoke to the Lap who understood Norwegian, and he acted as tolk in interpreting anew to his brethren the purely amicable nature of my intentions. As to the half-dozen of little wild imps of children, I had already won their confidence by distributing among them large rye cakes, with which I had filled my pockets at Tromso, expressly with that view. At first it ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... on the table and from his pockets extracted the end of a loaf of bread, several doughnuts and a half-dozen molasses cookies. Then he seated himself in a chair by the stove and proceeded to eat, hungrily, voraciously, first the ham and bread and then the doughnuts and cookies. And as he ate he looked and listened, occasionally starting ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... English comfort as possible, rarely travel, and naturally find Mexico the dullest of cities. C—-n has gone to dine with the English Minister, and I am left alone in this large room, with nothing but a humming-bird to keep me company; the last of my half-dozen. It looks like a large blue fly, and is perfectly tame, but will ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... to be near the clump of trees beneath which the half-dozen splendid elephants that brought in the Rajah were ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... said Bert. "'Ere I was puzzlin' and whackin' away at the padlock, never noticing." It had been used apparently as an ice-chest, but it contained nothing now but the remains of half-dozen boiled chickens, some ambiguous substance that might once have been butter, and a singularly unappetising smell. He closed the ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... flash, a loud report, and Scarlett heard the thud in the wainscot beside him as he leaped the last half-dozen stairs, right on to the sentinel, who was driven backward by the force of the blow, while Scarlett darted across the hall, through the porch, and between two of the men stationed outside so ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... of the column then breaks off, only a sign or two remaining of the following half-dozen lines. It will be seen that in the eleven lines that are preserved we have several close parallels to the Babylonian Version and some equally striking differences. While attempting to define the latter, it will be well to point out how close the resemblances ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... not mean that the cases should be examined in chronological sequence. That is not necessary; for the half-dozen cases that we shall run over had little or no cause-and-effect connection with one another. It is convenient, indeed, to make some classification, and the simplest is that by probable origin, especially ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... was acted in London by Beerbohm Tree, and in America by William Faversham. Neither of these plays was a failure, but it is regrettable that he wrote for the stage at all. His genius was not adapted for drama, and the quality of his verse was not improved by the experiment, although all of his half-dozen pieces have occasional passages of rare loveliness. His best play, Paolo and Francesca, suffers when compared either with Boker's or D'Annunzio's treatment of the old story. It lacks the stage-craft of the former, and the ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... world had ever seen before. The fleets of Copenhagen, Trafalgar, and the Nile would have cut but a sorry figure beside them, and there was more of the materiel of war concentrated on that one siege of Sebastopol than on any half-dozen other sieges recorded in British history. In all that mechanical art could accomplish, the late war with Russia was by far the most considerable in which our country was ever engaged. It was, in respect of materiel, a war of the world's pre-eminently mechanical people in the world's pre-eminently ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... Only some half-dozen out of the hundred remained, and Ned Wright kneeling at one of the benches prayed fervently, and entered into conversation with them one by one. Two or three others dropped in, and there was much praying and groaning, but evidently much sincerity. And ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... you, good reader, know good 'style' when you get it? Can you say, of half-a-dozen given lines taken anywhere out of a novel, or poem, or play, That is good, essentially, in style, or bad, essentially? and can you say why such half-dozen ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... 1900, western civilization passed through an era of consolidation and integration that brought its sovereign segments into increasing stable relationships. The most advanced of these relationships took political shape in the half-dozen European empires which controlled the planet in 1900. Side by side with the consolidation of the planet into nations and empires there was another process, world-wide in scope, which made the facts and products of science ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... help for my practical work in the ministry from phrenology than from any other half-dozen studies, except the Bible. Even if its physical basis could not be substantiated, its analysis of the mental faculties is far better and more helpful than that of any other system of psychology. While it places the intellectual, moral and spiritual ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... passed the night, at the Hotel de France. For a town of less than six thousand people Bethel is quite a metropolis. It has a grand establishment known as the Societe d'Automobiles Bauchet, which will cater for any and every want of the automobilist, and has a half-dozen sights of first rank, from the old Hotel Dieu to the bizarre doubled-up Eglise St. Nicolas and ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... can not go. In one way it is effrontery for you to come here. But in another, it was the best thing you could do. The case of yourself and this man Decherd might be taken without retainer by the prosecuting attorney of any of a half-dozen localities. You may know that I'm acquainted with many of the details of this case in the past; but still you have ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... Kyley made bread because bread-baking at three shillings a loaf was an exceedingly profitable business. For the same reason she washed shirts at twelve shillings the half-dozen. But selling rum at a shilling a nobbler to 'flash' diggers who despised change was much more profitable still. The industrious woman, who washed and baked all day, was kept busy for the greater part of the night retailing ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... yours. I should have been here sooner, but I have been obliged, at their own requests, to wait upon some half-dozen persons of the first quality with tickets: upon my soul 1 have been chid for putting off my play so long. I hope you are all quite perfect, for the town will positively stay for it no longer. I think I may very well put upon the bills, At the particular desire of several ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... to the third and fourth of the half-dozen pictures of Duerer, which stand out from all the rest by their elaboration and importance. The Coronation of the Virgin (see p. 97), painted as the centre panel of the altar-piece commissioned ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... know. She is so guileless, Inspector Dalzell; so perfectly free from all connection with this crime. Why have you shut her up here, and plied her with questions, and made her look at me with such an expression, when all you have against me is just what you have against some half-dozen others,—that I was weak enough, or unfortunate enough, to spend a few minutes with that unhappy woman in ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... been delegated by his coadjutors ceremoniously to accept, and Captain Adams was appointed by the Commodore to deliver, the gifts; and each performed his functions by an interchange of compliments and a half-dozen stately bows. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... feelings regarding Dr. Dorrimore I will relate briefly the circumstances under which I had met him some years before. One evening a half-dozen men of whom I was one were sitting in the library of the Bohemian Club in San Francisco. The conversation had turned to the subject of sleight-of-hand and the feats of the prestidigitateurs, one of whom was then exhibiting ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... offerings seemed to her poor and mean in comparison with this display; but Miss Blake's eyes actually filled with grateful tears at the sight of the half-dozen linen handkerchiefs the girl had marked for her with so much trouble and at the cost of so many hours of recreation, and Delia hugged her rapturously at the sight of the gorgeous dress-pattern that Nan had ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... crowned the summit of the pass, which, like most Japanese passes, was a mere knife-edge of earth. With a quickened pulse if a slackened gait, I topped the crest, walked —straight past the twin teahouses and their importunities to stop— another half-dozen paces to the brink, and in one sweep looked down over a thousand feet on the western side. Noto, eyelashed by the branches of a tree just breaking into leaf, lay open to me ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... such wholesome results. The books are to be taken down from the shelves, and subjected to a shaking-up process, which will remove more of the dust they have absorbed than any brush can reach. To do this effectually, take them, if of moderate thickness, by the half-dozen at a time from the shelf, hold them loosely on a table, their fronts downward, backs uppermost, then with a hand at either side of the little pile, strike them smartly together a few times, until the dust, which will fly from them in a very ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... which enigmatical expression signified that he had not to work for his living. Edward Benden's father had made a little money, and his son, who had no children to whom to leave his property, chose to spend it rather than bequeath it to distant relatives who were strangers to him. He owned some half-dozen houses at Staplehurst, one of which was occupied by the Pardues, and he lived on the rents of these, and the money saved by his thrifty father. The rents he asked were not unreasonable, but if a tenant failed to pay, out he must go. He might as well appeal ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... came out, greetings, sentences of admiration of the church, and of inquiry for her absent sisters, were crowded upon her, as people moved towards the school, where a luncheon was provided for them, to pass away the interval until evening service. The half-dozen oldest Cocksmoorites were, meantime, to have a dinner in the former schoolroom, at the Elwoods' house, and Ethel was anxious so see that all was right there; so, while the rest of her party were doing civil things, she gave her ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... been storm-stayed—had tried to impress a crew, the peon boatman had sworn volubly that no pole would touch bottom and that one might as well try to paddle the town as a heavy canoe against such a flood. But when Bachelder stepped in and manned the big sweep, a half-dozen followed. Notwithstanding, their river wisdom proved. Paddling desperately, they gained no nearer than fifty yards to the pale face at ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... occurrence at Metz in 1870, when an important movement of the French army was not reported because it was assumed that it was already known to the Intelligence Department. As a public sign of his satisfaction he amnestied the half-dozen of his subjects who happened to be in gaol ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... advanced in years to be capable of the feats of endurance which he performed daily. He had the untiring enthusiasm of a fox-terrier, and had bullied and scolded more companies along the rocky road that leads to success than any half-dozen dance-directors in the country, in spite of his handicap in being almost completely deaf. He had an almost miraculous gift of picking up the melodies for which it was his business to design dances, without apparently hearing them. He seemed to absorb them through the pores. He had a blunt ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... usual amiability—their meeting at the theatre next day was more like that of two dear friends who had been inseparable from infancy, than a recognition passing between a lady and gentleman who had only met some half-dozen times, and then by mere chance. Nay, Miss Petowker even whispered that she had wholly dropped the Kenwigses in her conversations with the manager's family, and had represented herself as having encountered Mr Johnson in the very first ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... humming white highway not a mile distant, is untouched and unspoiled: nothing more than a half-dozen or so of half-timbered or brick cottages and farm-buildings, rain-bleached and creeper-veiled, and fronted with some of the prettiest and brightest gardens in Surrey. One of the sleepy little buildings bears the legend "County Police," forbidding in new blue enamel. What should anyone ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... below the homestead, the half-dozen cripples were dropped to the rear. "You can come back to-morrow morning and get these tender steers," said the foreman, "and drift them up above the improvements. You'll find them near here on the water. Now, we'll sight the ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... her skirts so that the half-dozen clinging children rattled like a bunch of keys, pushed her jet bonnet back from the shiny wrinkled forehead, and waited, her motherly heart aquake in spite of ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... hour later Louis de Camors, the Prince d'Errol, and a half-dozen guests of both sexes, took possession of an apartment, the closed doors of which ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... find oil amusing—or the oilist—and I kept on. Of course I had to, off there in a farmhouse full of lady boarders, and he the only gentleman short of Crawford's. Strike, but hear me, Henrietta Spaulding! What was I to do about the half-dozen lessons I had taken before he told me I should never learn to use oil? Was I to offer to pay him for these, and not for the rest; or was I to treat the whole series as gratuitous? I used to lie awake thinking about it. I've got little tact, but I couldn't find any way out of the trouble. It was ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... red-letter day. Our first important party since we have been in this house. I got home early from the City. Lupin insisted on having a hired waiter, and stood a half-dozen of champagne. I think this an unnecessary expense, but Lupin said he had had a piece of luck, having made three pounds out a private deal in the City. I hope he won't gamble in his new situation. The supper-room looked so nice, and Carrie truly said: "We need not be ashamed ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... gave forth a half-dozen "woofs" from her whistle, answering the freighter's staccato warning, but gave no signs of slowing. But that they were making an attempt to dodge the mite in their path was made known by a shout from their lookout and his shrill ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... of the general code of the civilized world,—that breeding, manners, and intelligence, constitute the gentleman. So when President Roosevelt entertains as his guest the foremost man of the negro race,—easily one of the foremost half-dozen men in the country,—the white South indulges in a mood which to the rest of the world can only appear ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... of the offer that had been made to him; Mrs Carter would have told her. Was it of good or of ill omen that she wrote only these half-dozen words? Half through the night he plagued himself with suppositions, now thinking that her brevity promised a welcome, now that she wished to warn him against expecting anything but a cold, offended demeanour. At seven he was dressed; two hours ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... they reached the steps, bobbed their heads and shoulders, started spasmodically to their feet, and fled from the apartment. My boy, who had been awed and terrified, began to cry, and I too was startled. Again he uttered the harsh gutturals, and instantly, as with an electric shock, another half-dozen of the prostrate slaves sprang up and ran. Then he resumed his mysterious promenade, still carefully keeping an eye upon us, and smiling by way of conversation. It was long before I could imagine what we were to ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... dear Mother, I am responsible for the religious education of some half-dozen young and innocent girls, and, though I like Evelyn herself very ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... he led me to a little wooden frame which hung against the wall near the window. Behind a dusty piece of glass it held what appeared to be a leaf from a small magazine or journal. "There," said he, "you see a page from the Grasshopper, a humorous paper which flourished in this city some half-dozen years ago. I used to write regularly for that ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... tramp of feet had now grown louder and nearer, and with it came the clank of armour. In front of them lay the path which sloped, for a hundred yards or more, to the first corner. Below them, on the right, the path again appeared at the point where it jutted out for some half-dozen yards in its zigzag course, and there Fanfulla caught the gleam of steel, reflecting the feeble moonlight. He drew Ferrabraccio's attention to it, and that stout warrior at once gave the word to start. ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... Bork—a man who could hardly be matched among all the devoted agents of the Kaiser. It was his talents which had first recommended him for the English mission, the most important mission of all, but since he had taken it over those talents had become more and more manifest to the half-dozen people in the world who were really in touch with the truth. One of these was his present companion, Baron Von Herling, the chief secretary of the legation, whose huge 100-horse-power Benz car was blocking the country lane as it waited to waft ...
— His Last Bow - An Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the Temple shows conclusively that it has no connected plan. Its growth has been the outcome of the needs of many generations during the last half-dozen centuries, and it is at present a picturesque conglomeration of buildings of all sizes and shapes and styles, erected with no regard for architectural beauty or symmetry, and with no very great ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... do it with a dull colored crayon and a half-dozen movements of his skillful arm? How can I tell, except that God has given to the arm wondrous skill; but there appeared before that astonished multitude a foundation as of granite, and there rose from it, as if suddenly hewed out before them, a ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... been driven to reading an old horse-doctor book! She had learned the symptoms of epizootic—whatever that was—and poll-evil and stringhalt, and had gone from that to making a shopping tour through a Montgomery-Ward catalogue. There was nothing else in the house to read, except a half-dozen old copies ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... selected as the scene of this rural festivity, they found there a noisy and bustling crowd. A monstrous fire of logs, enough to roast not only a single ox, but a hecatomb of oxen, was blazing near the edge of the glade, while a half-dozen chattering negroes were busy digging a great pit close by. This pit, when entirely excavated, measured some ten or twelve feet in length, by five or six in width, and perhaps three in depth; and was lined with smooth flat stones. As soon as the logs had ceased ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... begun. Round the cloth-covered table, at which Katavasov and Metrov seated themselves, there were some half-dozen persons, and one of these was bending close over a manuscript, reading something aloud. Levin sat down in one of the empty chairs that were standing round the table, and in a whisper asked a student sitting near what was being read. ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... The half-dozen eastern stocks occupying by far the greater part of North America contrast strongly with the half-hundred local stocks covering the Pacific coast; and none of the strong Atlantic stocks is more characteristic, more sharply contrasted with the limited groups of the western coast, ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... would give up, and it is no telling how long the circus tumbling would have kept up, if the officers of the boat had not separated them. After the fight the cabin looked as if we had been fighting a half-dozen Newfoundland dogs from the amount of blood and black hair that was on the floor. The young one told Mose if he ever came to Vidalia he would lick him, so we supposed from that remark that he did not feel satisfied with the result. Poor old Mose ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... be one of the occasions on which Sir John did not appear, and so the deed did not take quite as long as usual. To the staff it was just a matter of drill, and they arranged themselves at once. And since they were what really mattered, and the half-dozen patients merely appeared in the nature of a make weight, in a very short time, to everyone's profound relief, the group had been taken. . . . Vane, who had been sitting on the ground, with his legs tucked under him to keep them ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... his cabinet, of the men who were to aid him. People who doubted the will or the wisdom of their Rail-splitter Candidate need have had no fear. A weak man would have chosen this little band of counselors—the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, and the half-dozen others who were to stand closest to him and to be at the head of the great departments of the government—from among his personal friends. A man uncertain of his own power would have taken care that no other man of strong ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... artist's, Bible illustrations or Bible pictures from arguing a "Lutheran" monopoly in the vernacular Bible, that in Germany alone there were fifteen translated and illustrated editions of the Bible before Luther's appeared; and of these fifteen some half-dozen were published before Luther was born. Quentell, at Cologne, for instance, published a famous translation with exceedingly good woodcuts in 1480,—three years before Luther's birth. While some ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... British commerce, under the war conditions of 1812, that Rodgers' plan was particularly suited to injure it. It is doubtless true that if merchant vessels were so dispersed over the globe, that rarely more than one would be visible at a time, one ship of war could take that one as well as a half-dozen could. But this was not the condition. British merchant ships were not permitted so to act. They were compelled to gather at certain centres, and thence, when enough had assembled, were despatched in large convoys, guarded by ships of war, in force proportioned to that disposable at the moment ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... aroused, and in a few minutes was out of the house and off to join Lochiel not more than a mile distant. As it happened, Lord Loudon's troops had already been foiled and driven back by a bold manoeuvre of some of 'Colonel Anne's' men. A blacksmith with some half-dozen men—two pipers amongst them—were patrolling the woods near the high road, when in the dim morning twilight they saw a large body of the enemy approaching. They separated, planted themselves at intervals under cover, ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... frankly admitted—"I guess I won't argue with you on the six of one and half-dozen of the other! But it's just as natural for women to criticise men as for men to criticise nowadays. Long ago, in the lovely 'once upon a time' fairy period, the habit of criticism doesn't appear to have developed strongly in either sex. The men were chivalrous ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... shaft, and a half-dozen miners, with dull eyes and drawn faces, staggered from it, out into the sunlight. It was a rescuing party, just come from a vain attempt to save their unfortunate comrades. They were almost choked to death themselves, ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... much he loved her. No kind wishes towards the overseer whose fears and scruples had hurried him away, or towards Miss Phillips, who had interrupted him when he was about to say something he had hoped Elsie could not mistake, accompanied the half-dozen different attempts at a love-letter, which were written before he could please himself. Emily was his friend; Jane, he thought, would be his friend too. Elsie was really a kind-hearted girl, and if he could only convince ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... that all sorts of horrors had happened to him, for he is in the secret service of the King and exposed to every kind of danger. His being wounded in some skirmish either with highway robbers or with a band of the Corsican's pirates would not surprise me in the least, and the fact that he had some half-dozen mounted men with him confirms me in my belief that indeed it is my friend who is lying upstairs, as he often has to have an escort in the exercise of his duties. At any rate, petit pere," he concluded as he rose from the table, "by your leave, I'll ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... Among the half-dozen young people on board who were perpetually organizing tournaments, dances, card-parties, and concerts, she was the most indefatigable. Not being responsible to any one for her actions, and possessing a creative imagination, she indulged in escapades that provided ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... the House of Commons in promoting county improvements. Jonas was useful as a magistrate, and invaluable as a liberal contributor to the local charities. During the first five years of his occupancy, he did more for Lexley and its inhabitants than the half-dozen previous baronets of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... laudable thirst after knowledge that is called curiosity. I shall believe him to he the child of Corn-stalk, or Corn-planter, or some other renowned chieftain; possibly of the Big Snake himself; and shall treat him as such until he sees fit to shave his good-looking head, borrow some half-dozen pair of my best earrings, shoulder his rifle again, and disappear as suddenly as he made his entrance. So come, my dear sir, and let us not forget the rites of hospitality, for the short time he is ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper |
