"Red-letter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rather sorry crew that embarked the following morning, April 15. But it turned out a red-letter day. The day before, we had come across cuttings, a year old, which were probably but not certainly made by pioneer rubbermen. But on this day—during which we made twenty-five kilometres—after running two hours and a half we found on the left bank a board on a post, with the initials ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... his books, for he had a great facility in such minor graces, as he had a neat hand at tying a bow. I don't think he ever sent a box of flowers without his fertility serving him with some rose-leaf fancy to accompany them; and on birthdays and all red-letter days he was always to be counted upon for an appropriate rhyme. If his art served no other purpose, his friend would be grateful to him for that alone, for many great days would have gone without their 'white stone' but for him; when, for instance, J.A.W. took that brave plunge of his, ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... turned to food. We have been wondering what Christmas is like in England... and how our friends picture us. They will guess that we are away on our sledge journey, and will perhaps think of us on plains of snow; but few, I think, will imagine the truth, that for us this has been the reddest of all red-letter days.' ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... horrid!" laughed Merle. "You can't expect Cupid to know the difference! He's sent me some nice things. Aren't there any more saints in the calendar who bring presents? What's the next red-letter day?" ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... producing sun-pictures of all the treasures and curiosities in his possession. One complete copy of the collection of the photographs is to be presented to the Mechanics' Institution of Carlisle, mounted on the finest cardboard, with ostentatious red-letter inscriptions underneath, "Madonna and Child by Raphael. In the possession of Frederick Fairlie, Esquire." "Copper coin of the period of Tiglath Pileser. In the possession of Frederick Fairlie, Esquire." "Unique Rembrandt etching. Known all over Europe as THE SMUDGE, from a printer's blot in the ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... so conceited that this had never struck me? And yet—but here comes Harriet, and I must put you away, dear diary. I blush at my voluminousness. If every evening is to take up so many pages, my book will be full at Midsummer! But was not this a red-letter day?" ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Jean's yearly treat. There were, of course, other plays. But since her very-small-girlhood, there had been always that red-letter night when "The Little Minister" or "Hop-o'-my-Thumb" or "Peter Pan" had transported her straight from the real world to that whimsical, tender, delightful realm where ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... in the Alps, Lattery coming from a Government Office in Whitehall, Chayne now from some garrison town in England, now from Malta or from Alexandria, and sometimes from a still farther dependency. Usually they had climbed together for six weeks, although there were red-letter years when the six weeks were extended to eight, six weeks during which they lived for the most part on the high level of the glaciers, sleeping in huts, or mountain inns, or beneath the stars, and coming down only for a few hours now and then into the valley towns. Vorwaerts! ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... who went after her. At his sight she turned without a word, and walked home again, meekly submitting to the correction he saw fit to inflict. Jan did not believe this. His private opinion was, that had Dinah Roy started, her husband would have deemed it a red-letter day, and never have sought ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... we do aver this to be a very handsome average of a French sportsman's day's shooting. If by chance he has knocked down a red-legged partridge, (grey ones are very scarce in France,) his exultation knows no bounds. The day on which such a thing occurs is a red-letter day with him for the rest of his life. He goes home at once and inscribes the circumstance in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... 1848 was a red-letter year for Boker. It witnessed the publication of his first volume of verse, "The Lessons of Life, and other Poems," and it introduced him to Bayard Taylor and to R.H. Stoddard. Of the occasion, Taylor writes on October 13, to ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... feel proud of the part he had played in the chief match of the season, and might in years to come have always looked back with pleasure on this twenty-fourth of July. Unfortunately another event of a sadly different character was destined to make it a red-letter day in his career at Ronleigh. The feeling of respect and good-will which his prowess in the field had awakened in the minds of his former friends afforded him a splendid opportunity for reassociating himself with all that was worthy and ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... he said, 'to give the echo to Mr Palmer's kind words. I should have been the first to render expression to them but for the face not being familiar to me, Mr Humphreys. May your residence among us be marked as a red-letter day, sir.' 'Thank you very much, Mr Cooper,' said Humphreys, 'for your good wishes, and Mr Palmer also. I do hope very much that this change of—er—tenancy—which you must all regret, I am sure—will not be to the detriment of those with whom I shall be brought in contact.' He stopped, ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... cried, laughing a little. "I only meant that this was a red-letter night for us. We are basking in the light ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... to Ball, or Fete, Or Show, but in pursuit express Of my predestinated mate; And thus to me, who had in sight The happy chance upon the cards, Each beauty blossom'd in the light Of tender personal regards; And, in the records of my breast, Red-letter'd, eminently fair, Stood sixteen, who, beyond the rest, By turns till then had been my care: At Berlin three, one at St. Cloud, At Chatteris, near Cambridge, one, At Ely four, in London two, Two at Bowness, in Paris none, And, last and best, in Sarum three; But dearest of ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... point of the sword, England has been the pioneer to all the other nations of the earth in personal freedom, in public righteousness, in domestic stability, and in foreign influence and enterprise. Runnymede is a red-letter spot, and 1215 is a red-letter year, not only in the history of England, but in the history of the whole modern world. The keystone of all sound constitutional government was laid at that place on that date, and by that great bridge ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... Anthony—at your service. This with the hungry look"—he picked up the Sealyham—"is Patch. As the latter is convalescent, all his days lately have been red-letter, and celebrated by the addition to his rations of a small dish of tea. Whether such a scandalous practice is to be followed this afternoon must rest ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... poorer man from spending a certain amount upon his love. Every now and then there will be special days when he will play the host, and they will be red-letter days to both. If she is going anywhere by his special invitation he would naturally defray her expenses; but on their weekly jaunts why should he be put to the double outlay when he wants to save all he can to start their home? Why should he reduce his balance at the bank by ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... Egremont rather liked him, and on meeting him in the street, would ask him casually in to dinner, or to make up a rubber, or play piquet, for he excelled in these arts, and still more in chess, and an evening with Mr. Dutton was quite a red-letter time with Nuttie. It gave her an indefinable sense of safety and protection; but it was not always to be had, for her friend had many engagements, being one of the active lay church workers, and devoting ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mortifying! seven minutes too early! The dynamite surpassed my hopes; but the clockwork, fickle clockwork, has once more betrayed me. Alas, can there be no success unmixed with failure? and must even this red-letter day be chequered ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... red-letter day for me when Simon Newcomb met me at the door of the Cosmos Club, of which he was then president, and presented me as his guest to one and another of the select company of men who formed its membership. He moved among them ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... a red-letter day, when Dodgson of the Record wired for a special article, which probably meant two guineas on the morrow. On those occasions Lalage always went down to the office with Jimmy to hand in the copy because, as Jimmy ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... place on February 28—a Majuba Day—a day that had been marked as a red-letter day in our calendars. For nineteen years the enemy have longed to wipe out the remembrance of that day, and they have done so brilliantly and malignantly. Since that time we have been humiliated and belittled. Our fall was great. For the first time there was a general panic. ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... article on electricity, which he found in a volume of the "Encyclopedia Britannica," which had been given him to bind. He immediately began work on an electrical machine, from the very crudest materials, and, much to his delight, succeeded. It was a red-letter day in his young life when a kind-hearted customer, who had noticed his interest in scientific works, offered to take him to the Royal Institution, to attend a course of lectures to be given by the great Sir Humphry Davy. From this time on, his thoughts were ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... half-tamed coyote chained to a fence-post. He owned 3,000 sheep, which he ran on two sections of leased land and many thousands of acres neither leased nor owned. Three or four times a year some one who spoke his language would ride up to his gate and exchange a few bald ideas with him. Those were red-letter days to old man Ellison. Then in what illuminated, embossed, and gorgeously decorated capitals must have been written the day on which a troubadour—a troubadour who, according to the encyclopaedia, should have flourished between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries—drew ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... the arrased doorway, Prince Charles sprang to his side and cried, valiantly: "Nay then, if he goes so do I! 'Twas surely but a Christmas joke and of my own devising. Spoil not our revel, my gracious liege and father, on this of all the year's red-letter days, by turning my thoughtless frolic into such bitter threatening. I did but seek to test the worth of Master Sandy's lucky raisin by asking for as wildly great a boon as might be thought upon. Brother Hal too, did but give me his advising in joke even ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... after the close of business, upon General and Mrs. Grant, whom he had met before, and who had expressed a desire to see his collection. It can readily be imagined what a red-letter day it made in the boy's life to have General Grant say: "It might be better for us all to go down to dinner first and see the collection afterward." Edward had purposely killed time between five and seven o'clock, thinking that the general's dinner-hour, like his own, was at six. ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... child, caught a notion of imperishable heroism when they were told that brave men had lost their lives that the slaves might be free. At any moment the conversation of our elders might turn upon these heroic events; there were red-letter days, when a certain general came to see my father, and again when Governor Oglesby, whom all Illinois children called "Uncle Dick," spent a Sunday under the pine trees in our front yard. We felt on those days a connection with the ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... what you are doing here?" After some hesitation, one of them said, in a shy voice: "We're waitin' for the barrer." It then transpired that, once a week, a vegetable-and-flower-cart was driven through this particular street, on its way to a more prosperous neighborhood, and on a few red-letter days, a flower, or a sprig, or even a root sometimes fell out of the back of the cart; and these two little children were sitting there in hope, with their hands full of soil, ready to plant anything which might ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... the Greenwald High School was her red-letter day. Several times during the morning she stole to the spare-room where her graduation dress lay spread upon the high bed. Accompanied by Aunt Maria she had made a special trip to Lancaster for the frock, though Aunt Maria had conscientiously ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... a red-letter day. We only got letters fortnightly then. She was always interested in my home news and told me hers, so that we had generally a very happy hour together. Then the papers would be read and their contents discussed. To be with ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... May 7.—A big red-letter day; viz., the Lord Mayor's reception. The whole house upset. I had to get dressed at half-past six, as Carrie wanted the room to herself. Mrs. James had come up from Sutton to help Carrie; so I could not help ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... were entirely indebted for the success of a most interesting expedition. With a grateful heart for pleasure enjoyed and difficulties overcome, I went to bed, completely worn out, at the end of what may fairly be regarded as another red-letter day of the ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... turn up in Rivermouth for no other apparent purpose than to smoke a pipe or so with Button at his headquarters in Nutter's Lane. If he sometimes chanced to furnish the caller with a dollar or two of "the sinews of war," it was nobody's business. The days on which these visits fell were red-letter ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... and industrious woman, who did not often leave her home, or allow her children to run wild. Once a year, however, there was a big dramatic performance at Kucheng, and then Everlasting Pearl, dressed in her best, was taken to the theatre. These were red-letter days in her life. Chinese plays are mostly very stupid. Often immoral, and almost invariably connected with idolatry, they are a snare to some of the people when they want to break with everything idolatrous. But to the little ...
— Everlasting Pearl - One of China's Women • Anna Magdalena Johannsen
... red-letter day for all three, for they were going to the theatre that night for the first time. Jean had once been at a play with her father, but it was so long ago as to be the dimmest memory, and she was as excited as the boys. Their first ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... red-letter day has gone by as any other day goes, will you play a game of billiards with ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... each past "red-letter day"! Forget not all the sunshine of the way By which the Lord hath led thee; answered prayers, And joys unasked, strange blessings, lifted cares, Grand promise-echoes! Thus thy life shall be One record of His love ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... any left (which seldom happens, I believe), the souls in Purgatory get the benefit of it. They are also supposed to have the benefit of the exertions of certain small boys, who shake money-boxes before some mysterious little buildings like rural turnpikes, which (usually shut up close) fly open on Red-letter days, and disclose an image and ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... red-letter day. Harry was in luck. Therefore it was not one of the many servants of the establishment, or any straggling acquaintance that had joined in the search. Luckily, it was not one of these, or the cross Betty, who first espied Harry ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... influences of this red-letter day had been humanizing, and when Evan Blount remembered the preservation of the old "Circle-Bar" ranch-house, and the motive which had prompted it, he told his brief love-tale, hiding nothing—not even the hope that in the years to come Patricia might possibly find her career sufficiently unsatisfying ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... claim for recognition, and would not be denied. Hunger is not conducive to heroism; to those poor fellows eating was the great, the momentous question of life; how lovingly they watched the boiling pot on those red-letter days when the soup was rich and thick; how like children or savages they were in their wrath when ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... of the cause above personal differences. Both were tolerant and steady and understood the pressures put on the leader of a great organization. Anxious and troubled as she waited for this meeting, Susan appreciated Anna Shaw's visits as never before, marking them as red-letter days on her calender. ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... January 24, and in the Speech from the Throne a Reform Bill was promised. It was brought forward by Lord John Russell on March 1—the twenty-ninth anniversary of a red-letter day in his life, the introduction of the first Reform Bill. He proposed to reduce the county franchise to 10l. qualification, and the borough to 6l.; one member was to be taken from each borough with a population of less than seven thousand, and in this way twenty-five seats ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... red-letter day to us children when, about once a month, we were packed into a trap and driven with our parents to spend a day at Casa Antigua. The dinner at noon was the most gorgeous affair of the kind we knew. One of Mr. Royd's ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... Davidson to wait until Marjory's birthday before making himself known to her, in order that the day might be a red-letter one in her life. The Foresters had kept the secret carefully, Captain Shaw had kept his, and not a whisper had gone abroad of the wonderful event about to happen, and all had fallen out just as the ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... when were produced these charming little miracles remains a red-letter day in our household. Who ever tasted anything, save a nut, half so sweet, or who ever anything so pure? We ate, lingered, and revelled in them, thus becoming epicures at once. It seemed as if all our lives we had been seeking something really recherche, and had just found it. They were as great ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... contests; at the upper end of the valley a half-mile circular racecourse had been staked off. Throwing our outlaws into the corral, and leaving the remuda in charge of two vaqueros, we galloped into Shepherd's with the gathering crowd. From all indications this would be a red-letter day at the ferry, for the attendance drained a section of country fully a hundred miles in diameter. On the north from Campbellton on the Atascosa to San Patricio on the home river to the south, and from the Blanco on the east ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... then Thanksgiving! The nose of Memory—why shouldn't Memory have a nose?—dilates with pleasure over the rich perfume of Miss Abigail's forty mince-pies, each one more delightful than the other, like the Sultan's forty wives. Christmas was another red-letter day, though it was not so generally observed in New England ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... had listened with awe to tales of him; and the red-letter days of her childhood's calendar were the days upon which her father would take her down to the docks, past great windowless warehouses of concrete and sheet-iron, where big glossy horses stood harnessed to high-piled trucks—past great tiers of bales and ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... gave to him, and arriving late, he usually stayed for dinner and for music afterward. Those were his red-letter days. The atmosphere of the house, in such contrast with that in which he lived, and the mere nearness to her, sent him forth each time with a firmer grip on his resolve to climb the heights. In spite of the beauty in him, and the ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... her age she had an intense love for children. This love had grown stronger during the years there had been no children at the farmhouse to lavish it upon, and the short visits that the grandchildren made at the farm were red-letter days to ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... taken it as he did his wages every Saturday night. Right conduct in this case was obvious; but he never had any spending of his money, and he was suffering from candy hunger. He was ravenous for the sweets that only on red-letter days he had ever ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... "It was a red-letter day when I put Number One in the great glass case and took out the skeleton that I had bought from the dealer to occupy its place until it was ready. The substitute was no longer needed and I accordingly dismantled it and destroyed it piecemeal ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... skirmish in progress with the Maoris. He seated himself, opened the envelope, and forgot the crack of muskets in the document it contained. This was the first constitution for New Zealand, and he was instructed to introduce the same. He didn't; only that is a very red-letter tale. It should be told simply, as Sir George ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... supporter could not have been found, although his repetition of the phrase "May and December" revealed a want of tact of which the skipper had not thought him capable. What had promised to be a red-letter day in his existence was spoiled, and he went to bed that night with the full conviction that he had better abandon ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... asked to say which day of all his life had been the most thoroughly enjoyable, he would probably have answered that the seventh of his voyage from New York to Liverpool was the red-letter day of his life. The sea was as calm as it was possible for a sea to be. The sun shone bright and warm. Towards the latter part of the day they saw the mountains of Wales, which, from the steamer's deck, seemed but a low range of hills. It did not detract ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... Many red-letter days are set down in the history of Ranelagh during the sixty years of its existence, but its historians are agreed that the most famous of the entertainments given there was the Venetian Masquerade in honour of the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle on April 26th, 1749. For the most spirited ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... new shoes or a new overcoat; sometimes in a pair of skates or in luncheon; and on a very red-letter day, such as a birthday or anniversary of some sort, in a ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... was rather a red-letter occasion for me, everyone praising, the Press very attentive, etc., etc. The audience promised well for future things, and the emotion that was stirred nearly bowled myself over. In some of the hushes that came one could hear men crying. The Scott Gattys and a few of ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... come here upon a most auspicious day, a red-letter day for me and my poor house, when all are welcome. Suffer me, with all delicacy, to inquire if you are not in somewhat ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... to send troops forward, but had few in readiness to move, owing to the lack of ammunition, etc. As I had been in Richmond but a few hours, my desire to move and adequate state of preparation gained me some "red-letter" marks at the war office. The Secretary thought that a train would be in readiness at 9 o'clock that night. Accordingly, the regiment was marched to the station, where we remained several weary hours. At length, long after midnight, our train made ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... For this was a red-letter day in the eyes of the Jemadar, and of Fatma Bibi, his wife, who had spent a full hour in adorning her plump person, and emphasising its charms according to the peculiar methods of the East. That done, she came forth into the sunlight, ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... November was a red-letter day, for on it we crossed the LAST SAND-RIDGE—in lat. 19 degrees 20 minutes—leaving the desert behind us. A feeling of satisfaction filled us that we had conquered its difficulties not by chance, but ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... marco esta coincidencia felicsima, such a fortunate coincidence makes this a red-letter day ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... all, it was a red-letter three weeks for the three Wellington girls. Jane found New York a vastly different city when peopled by those dear to her. During her brief shopping trip there the previous winter she had not liked New York. Now she discovered that it ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... listened to this narrative Laeta Acilia lost little by little her sense of joy and contentment. Recalling the past and examining her own life, it seemed to her very monotonous in comparison to the life of the woman who had loved a god. Young and pious and a patrician, her own red-letter days were those on which she had eaten cakes with her girl friends. Visits to the circus, the love of Helvius and her needle-work also counted in her life. But what were these all in comparison ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... cocoons with a reddish silk, which looks as if it had been dyed in Bullock's blood; here are some whose cocoons are finished. There is plenty of everything, from the egg to the larva whose period of activity is over. I mark the 2nd of September as a red-letter day; it has given me the final key to a riddle which has kept me in suspense for ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... expression!" After making numerous and eager inquiries about him, personally, and with reference to any peculiarities of mind and manner, the visit ended in my being requested to bring him over to the Vale of Health. That was a red-letter day in the young poet's life,—and one which will never fade with me, as long as memory lasts. The character and expression of Keats's features would unfailingly arrest even the casual passenger in the street; and now they were wrought ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... not be duped by this clumsy stratagem. In those happy days when the discovery of a nest marked a red-letter day, I never saw my Sparrows or Greenfinches refuse a Locust because he was not moving, or a Fly because she was dead. Any mouthful that does not kick is eagerly accepted, provided that it be fresh and ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... than a prize-fight. But there was no end of amusements that were not brutal, and they enjoyed themselves abundantly to the end of their stay. They visited the temples and the palaces of the nobles, where they were received with the utmost attention. Captain Sharp and his wife declared this was the red-letter week of their lives; but the commander of the Blanche insisted that he must take his ship around to Calcutta, and left by train for Bombay the day before the ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... red-letter days of my life was that on which I learned that I could not have inherited tuberculosis from two uncles who died of consumption. For years I had known that I was a marked victim. Silently I carried my tragedy, suspecting each cold ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... It was indeed a red-letter day for Lottie Lawson when Phillip announced his intention of taking her ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... one of my red-letter days that on which I found him brooding over the little gray-brown chrysalis of the Papilio Cresphontes, that splendid swallowtail whose hideous caterpillar we in the South call the orange puppy, from the fancied ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... playing duets, and who declared, "Citizen, any one who cultivates the fine arts as you do cannot betray his country!" It was not the safe-conduct, however, but an unexpected dinner which he enjoyed on his route, that made this a red-letter day to Savarin:—"What a good dinner!—I will not give the details, but an honorable mention is due to a fricassee of chicken, of the first order, such as cannot be found except in the provinces, and so richly dowered with ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... fashion—with their own sons. But at last a red-letter day dawned for me. An English artist came to stay at the sheep-farm, and discovered that I also was among the prophets. He was a bachelor, and he took an uncommon fancy to me; it ended in his adopting me and bringing me to England, and making of me ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... public, and, to judge by the prevalence of "Royal Stewart" and the number of eagles' feathers, we were a high-born company. I threw forward the Scottish flank of my own ancestry, and passed muster as a clansman with applause. There was, indeed, but one small cloud on this red-letter day. I had laid in a large supply of the national beverage in the shape of the "Rob Roy MacGregor O' Blend, Warranted Old and Vatted"; and this must certainly have been a generous spirit, for I had some anxious work between four ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... A red-letter day in the history of the cottage came when a warm-hearted and much-beloved trustee of the institution expressed a wish to dine with the girls during one of his visits to the institution. The flowers that graced the small table on this day were brought by the distinguished ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... Europe. At last Lapland was found to be their home, and a nest has been found in Alaska and several others in Labrador. My only sight of these birds was of a pair perched in an elm tree in East Orange, New Jersey; but I will never forget it, and will never cease to hope for another such red-letter day. ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... at making toast, and it was an old fashion at the Rectory that Hilda's toast should be made by her, on those blissful red-letter days when the elder sister had tea with the little ones in ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... are not rare, they don't practise as cannibals every day: it is but on sentimental occasions that the exhibition of cannibalism becomes general. But the monsters who interrupt men in the middle of a sentence are to be found everywhere; and they are always practising. Red-letter days or black-letter days, festival or fast, makes no difference to them. This enormous nuisance I feel the more, because it is one which I never retaliate. Interrupted in every sentence, I still practise the American Indian's politeness of never interrupting. What, absolutely ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey |
