"Small hours" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lying upon the dressing-case pointed to the wee small hours. Yet it mattered not. The song was ringing in the young man's ears. Ever and anon the beautiful refrain sounded through the quiet room with ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... small hours of the morning, and the submarine, having taken its prize in to Clyde City's harbor, was now on its way up the coast to tie up for ...
— The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip - "Making Good" as Young Experts • Victor G. Durham
... fear chilled me as I sat there in the small hours alone—I say alone, for one who sits by a sleeper is indeed alone; perhaps more alone than he can realize. My uncle breathed heavily, his deep inhalations and exhalations accompanied by the rain outside, and punctuated by another nerve-racking sound ...
— The Shunned House • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... the other house," cried Eugenia, "they are terrible people! I don't know what they may do over there. I am a quiet little humdrum woman; I have rigid rules and I keep them. One of them is not to have visitors in the small hours—especially clever men ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... the bill to go into the friendly Elections Committee and the opponents were planning to put it into the Judiciary Committee, where it would remain during the rest of the session. The suffrage lobby worked into the small hours of the night making plans to frustrate this scheme. Arrangements were made with Speaker McKinley to turn it over to the Elections Committee, and when the morning session opened this was done before the opponents realized that ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... gorge and added fuel to the fire. For a time the wind increased in velocity until a stiff gale was blowing, then, as the small hours came on, it waned, and the beacon flared straight ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... London is the equivalent of Maxim's of Paris. The great place for luxurious entertainments, it opens its doors at twilight, and does not close them till the small hours are well advanced. When evening falls, the scene grows animated: business men and women of pleasure crowd the rooms. Gradually the crowd assumes a cosmopolitan character. A band of Hungarian gipsies plays inspiriting ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... by his companionship, his unselfish devotion and helpfulness, his unfailing readiness to be a companion to Sir William, to come and play chess with him, or to sit up and do intricate patiences through the small hours of the morning, all this gradually made him insensibly slide into the position of a son of the house. And Rachel, convinced that she was doing the best thing for her father and admitting in her secret heart that for herself she was doing the thing that of all others would make her ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... power on earth would cause him to sign a Mandate possessing no legality behind it; and he indeed obstinately resisted every attempt to seduce him. Although his resignation was refused he stood his ground manfully, and it became clear that some other expedient would have to be resorted to. In the small hours of the 13th June what this was was made clear: by a rapid reshuffling of the cards Dr. Wu Ting-fang's resignation was accepted and the general officer commanding the Peking Gendarmerie, a genial soul named General Chiang Chao-tsung, who had survived unscathed the vicissitudes ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... the meal one Yorkshireman after the other begged the host to follow the lunch with a dinner and invite them to meet the wonder again. When the party broke up in the small hours they all went away delighted with Oscar, vowing that no man ever talked more brilliantly. Grimthorpe cannot remember a single word Oscar said: "It was all delightful," he declares, "a play of genial humour ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... He was a small, dark, reserved man, with a large inflexible-looking convex forehead, and his wife was very pink and high-spirited, with one of those chins that pass insensibly into a full, strong neck. Once a week, every Saturday, they had a little gathering from nine till the small hours, just talk and perhaps reading aloud and fruitarian refreshments—chestnut sandwiches buttered with nut tose, and so forth—and lemonade and unfermented wine; and to one of these symposia Miss Miniver after a good deal of preliminary ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... Mrs. Treacher, setting down the bottle of gin. "And what's more, I don't go a-sheevoing it around Garrison Hill in the small hours, and a-holding on to railings, and a-clammering ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... over head and ears in love. He was honest, too, in his desire to set her high and make a queen of her. In Boston, Mr. Ned Manley, architect of genius, was sitting up into the small hours of morning; now, between potations of brandy, cursing Sir Oliver for a slave-driver, while Batty Langton looked on and criticised with a smile that tolerated a world of fools for the sake of one or two inspired ones; anon working like a demon and boasting while he worked. Already ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... health by the pound," Lonegan observed, regarding the other's bulk with one eye shut. "I never heard of Mowbray spending much time in bed outside of the small hours." "How old is he?" ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... the hands of Fowler. This gentleman owned a bungalow on the Waikiki beach; and there, in company with certain young bloods of Honolulu, I was entertained to a sea-bathe, indiscriminate cocktails, a dinner, a hula-hula, and (to round off the night) poker and assorted liquors. To lose money in the small hours to pale intoxicated youth has always appeared to me a pleasure overrated. In my then frame of mind, I confess I found it even delightful; put up my money (or rather my creditors') and put down Fowler's champagne with equal avidity and success; and awoke ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... most of the day with John Splendid and one Tearlach Fraser, on old comrade, and as luck, good or ill, would have it, the small hours of morning were on me before I thought of going home. By dusk the bulk of the strangers left the town by the highroads, among them the MacNicolls, who had only by the cunning of several friends (Splendid as busy ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... her ears the murmur of the City seemed to leap suddenly to articulate words, the clanging thunder of the entire nation—the whole round world thrilling with this great news that had come to it from out the north in the small hours of this hot summer's night. And the chanting cries of the street rolled to her like the tremendous diapason of a ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... The small hours came—the happy group dispersed—not without many interchanges of social compliment, much badinage, and merry plans for the morrow. The monster Sea-sickness had been defied on the balmy voyage, save in the brief interval of tempest, and his victors mocked him, baffled as he was, with their ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... Or in the small hours I might make a confidant of my father, and when I had finished reading he would say thoughtfully, 'That lassie is very natural. Some of the ways you say she had - your mother had them just the same. Did you ever notice what an extraordinary woman ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... wildest spirits, however, were bound to reach their limit of protest against this new move of the authorities, and by midnight the majority of the customers had taken their departure from Dirty O'Brien's booth. Thus, when the small hours crept on, only a trifling gathering of his regular patrons still ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... of which of course I could not gather; but the end of it was that they hoisted both of us upon their shoulders, carried us back to the village, and thrust us into one of the huts, where we lay untended for the remainder of the day and practically the whole of last night. Then some time—about the small hours I think it must have been—a girl, who proved to be the same who had flung the garland of flowers round my neck, stole into the hut as silently as a ghost, laid her finger upon my lips—to indicate, I suppose, that I was not to talk—and deftly proceeded ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... with them at cheap restaurants, frequenting clubs, studios, and theatres of every degree; the youthful effervescence of her student-friends venting itself in such collegians' pranks as parading deserted quarters of the town by moonlight, in the small hours, chanting lugubrious strains to astonish the shopkeepers. The only great celebrity whose acquaintance she had made was Balzac, himself the prince of eccentrics. Although he did not encourage Madame Dudevant's ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... In the small hours of the morning the meeting broke up, and Villiers, the Major, Tommy, and a few more of the choicer spirits adjourned to Wyck's rooms to finish with a ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... lingered in the soundless saloon long after the fire had gone out. There was no danger of her feeling the cold; she was in a fever. She heard the small hours strike, and then the great ones, but her vigil took no heed of time. Her mind, assailed by visions, was in a state of extraordinary activity, and her visions might as well come to her there, where ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... blow and the air-ship to roll like a porpoise as it swung through the air. Kurt said that several of the men were sea-sick, but the motion did not inconvenience Bert, whose luck it was to be of that mysterious gastric disposition which constitutes a good sailor. He slept well, but in the small hours the light awoke him, and he found Kurt staggering about in search of something. He found it at last in the locker, and held it in his hand unsteadily—a compass. ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... trouble. But that you're used to. What we want to know—what we must know—is this: The name of the man who has incurred Madame's enmity to such a degree that she spends the small hours of the night in knocking out his features from a fifteen-year-old photograph. If it should prove to be that of a public man, rich or otherwise, we might consistently lay it to social hatred; but if, on the contrary, it turns out to be that of a private individual—well, in that case, ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... the parting with his mother. The emigrants' train started in the small hours, and the emigrants were to rendezvous at a common lodging-house close by the big terminus. We inquired about poor Mrs. Sheeny with feeling. Mick responded with a return of tears that he'd left her screeching for bare life ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... them were rising from table, they greeted Lute Desten and Rita Wainwright arriving. Over the billiard table with Bert, Graham learned that Dick Forrest never appeared for breakfast, that he worked in bed from terribly wee small hours, had coffee at six, and only on unusual occasions appeared to his guests before the twelve-thirty lunch. As for Paula Forrest, Bert explained, she was a poor sleeper, a late riser, lived behind a door without a knob in a spacious wing with a rare and secret patio that even he had seen ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... bath and dressing in his rooms. This was something not so unpleasant to contemplate. It was the afterwards that repelled him: the dinner at Sherry's, the subsequent tour of roof gardens, the late supper at a club, and then, prolonged far into the small hours, the session around some green-covered table in a close room reeking with the fumes of good tobacco and hot with the fever ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... another's gaps; and there were plenty of them towards the morning; but, luckily, people don't notice those things when the small hours draw on.' ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... Government of India awoke to find themselves confronted with another heavy task. Other messages recalled all officers to their regiments, and summoned reinforcements to the scene by road and rail. In the small hours of the 27th, the officers of the 11th Bengal Lancers at Nowshera were aroused by a frantic telegraph operator, who was astounded by the news his machine was clicking out. This man in his shirt sleeves, ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... we on 201?" he asked, Train 201 being the westbound passenger overtaken and left behind in the small hours of the morning by ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... and mules, bear me. With all my relatives and friends I now eat food rich with meat. Worshipped by all, sleep, O highly blessed one, on costly beds in delightful rooms into which disagreeable winds cannot blow. Towards the small hours of every night, Sutas and Magadhas and encomiasts utter my praises even as the deities utter the agreeable praises of Indra, their chief. Through the grace of thyself that art firm in truth and endued with immeasurable energy, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... small hours of the night my master woke me. The fire was still burning, and the snow ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... in the book, which must necessarily give rise to the most remarkable gun-room discussions. I can well imagine some stout-hearted Colonel, prompted by his love for the plain soldier-man and his rooted dislike of all "specialists," becoming very heated in the small hours of the morning about the paragraph on page 97, in which a division untrained in the Sniping Schools is in passing compared to a band of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... morning with news which fluttered our company. The rebels are to attack the town to-day. Oh, Neal, but it was fun to see the hurry the worshipful justices were in to get home this morning. There were a round dozen of them here last night drinking death and damnation to the croppies till the small hours. This morning it was who would get his breakfast and his horse first. You never ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... were the sights and scenes around the camp-fires when such wounded as could crawl dragged themselves towards their comrades. Pitiable the faces of the survivors as news came in of gallant hearts that had ceased to beat. A pathetic incident was witnessed in the grey gloom of the small hours. One of the bearers chanced on an ancient hoary-headed Boer, who was lying behind a rock supporting himself on his elbows. The bearer approached warily, as many of the enemy were known to have turned on those who went to their succour. This man, however, ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... attempted assassination. As a matter of fact there was no plot whatever, but the police officials and the detectives set to work with the utmost zeal to discover all the threads of the non-existing conspiracy. They did everything to deserve the fees they were paid; they got up in the small hours of the morning, searched one house after another, took copies of papers and of books they found, read diaries, personal letters, made extracts from them on the very best notepaper and in beautiful handwriting, interrogated Katia Turchaninova ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... and I'll help you rip and cut out from the skirt," I said, and began to undo my belt. I knew better than to let that family pride get to simmering in Roxanne in the wee small hours of the night. "A trade is a trade, as soon as it is made. Give me ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... In the small hours of a bitter January morning I sat in my room gazing into the fire, and thinking over many things. I was alone in the house, except for the servants, but this circumstance did not affect me. My childhood and ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... collector and man of great affairs, who perforce spends his days in adjusting business interests that extend from the arctic snows to the tropics. His evenings belong generally to his friends, for he possesses in a rare degree the art of companionship. The small hours are his own, and frequently he spends them in painting beautiful copies of his Japanese potteries. It is his homage to the artisans who contrived those strange forms and imagined those gorgeous glazes. In the end he will have ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... know," said Wyatt, replacing the bar, and pushing the screws back into their putty. "I get out at night myself because I think my health needs it. Besides, it's my last term, anyhow, so it doesn't matter what I do. But if I find you trying to cut out in the small hours, there'll be trouble. See?" ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... Early in the small hours it would seem that young Caddies came to the shadowy quiet of Regent's Park, stepped over the railings and lay down on a grassy slope near where the people skate in winter time, and there he slept an hour or so. And about six o'clock in the morning, he was talking to a draggled woman he had found ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... won't be home to-night till the small hours have struck. Miss Atherton will take care of that. There is no fear of ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... preamble embodied in his share of the foregoing fragment of dialogue, he paid our hero a long visit; as the two men sat with their heels on Newman's glowing hearth, they heard the small hours of the morning striking larger from a far-off belfry. Valentin de Bellegarde was, by his own confession, at all times a great chatterer, and on this occasion he was evidently in a particularly loquacious mood. It was a tradition of his race that people of its blood always ...
— The American • Henry James
... there I helped him out, one hand under his chin, the other back of his ears. I done it as much from regard of the neighbours as animosities to him, for it was the still, medium small hours. I tiptoed in with my treatise on the infamies of photography gurgling under my hand, but at the door I stopped. It was ajar; and there, under the light, I spied Morrow. In his arms I got glimpses of black lace and wavy, brown hair, and a white cheek that he was accomplishing ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... like terms of approval. That half of society which did not visit in Arlington Street, in whose nostrils the semi-aristocratic, semi-artistic, altogether Bohemian little dinners, the suppers after the play, the small hours devoted to Nap or Poker, had an odour as of sulphur, the reek of Tophet—even this half of the great world was fain to admit that Sir George was harmless. He had never had an idea beyond the realms of sport; he had never had ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Sea Lady is more ethereal, less practical; the story, despite the naturalistic, half-cynical manner of its recountal, has the elements of romance. The closing scene describes the perplexity of a practical Kentish policeman "who in the small hours before dawn came upon the wrap the Sea Lady had been wearing, just as the tide overtook it," He stands there on the foreshore with a foolish bewilderment, wondering chiefly "what people are up to." He is the "simple citizen ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... pulled into the rustic station in the wee small hours, and soon I had my first glimpse of the Canyon. Bathed in cold moonlight, the depths were filled with shadows that disappeared as the sun came up while I still lingered, spellbound, on ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... the end Dilke's chief competitor, and he was also one of the band of friends who met each other incessantly, and incessantly talked over first principles till the small hours of morning. Perhaps it is not without importance that Charles Dilke should have had the experience, not very common for Englishmen, of living on terms of intimacy with an Irish Roman Catholic: at all events, his relations in after-life, both with ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... Josephine had given proofs of her faith which nothing could destroy. And he understood now the reason for that tired, drawn look in Jean's face. This was not the first night he had watched. Every night he had guarded her until, in the small hours of dawn, his eyes had closed heavily as they ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... himself to work, attending lectures by day, reading every night into the small hours, spending scarcely anything, shrinking from all acquaintanceships, taking only a minimum of recreation, and living almost the life of a hermit, until I could see his cheeks grow pale, and his eyes dark round the rims, ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... himself that he had left a good impression by his last remark, thought better not to efface it later in the evening by any other conversation with his hostess. But in the small hours of the night, when he had finished his bundle of proofs, he took up his notebook and, strangling his yawns, made two or three brief, pithy notes of the story Mrs. Selldon had told him, adding a further development which occurred to him, and wondering to himself whether "Like a Green Bay Tree" ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... reading of raids on the North-West Frontier in India realise the full horror of these outrages. What generally happens is that in the small hours of the morning, a wretched village is suddenly assailed by a gang of perhaps 50, perhaps 200, well-armed raiders, who put out sentries, picket the approaches, and conduct the operation on the most skilful lines. The houses ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... on all others, Bobby was bored to death; the habits of twenty years were not to be thrown off in a day. It was impossible for him to go to bed before the small hours, and not knowing how else to kill time he dropped in at the Savoy restaurant. It was late when he got there, and he strolled through the foyer, stopping at various tables to talk to acquaintances. He ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... Deal, where he arrived late at night, and having no money was glad to share a bed with a seafaring man, the boatswain of an Indiaman then in the Downs. From this circumstance sprang the events which here follow. Along in the small hours of the night the lad awoke, and finding the room stuffy and day on the point of breaking, he rose and dressed, purposing to see the town in the cool of the morning. The catch of the door, however, ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... war-ships, and these began to get up steam. About midnight, in a pouring rain, Pelly communicated to Fritze his intention to follow him and protect British interests; and Knappe replied that he would come on board the Lizard and see de Coetlogon personally. It was deep in the small hours, and de Coetlogon had been long asleep, when he was wakened to receive his colleague; but he started up with an old soldier's readiness. The conference was long. De Coetlogon protested, as he did afterwards in writing, against Knappe's claim: the Samoans were in a state of war; they ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... all to the local lock-up. They laid their burden down on the bare, cold floor of the prison-cell, and then went out, locked the door, and departed several ways to put the "boys" up to it. And about midnight the "boys" gathered round with a supply of liquor, and waited, and somewhere along in the small hours there was a howl, as of a strong Irishman in Purgatory, and presently the voice of the Flour was heard to plead ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... to let James know that she had borne him a son, she did not perceive that thus she would withhold the most potent of influences for his repentance and restoration to God and his parents. She did not see James again that night; and before she fell asleep at last in the small hours of the morning, she had made up her mind that, ere the same morning grew clear upon the moor, she would, as the only thing left her to do for him, be far away from Stonecross. She would go back to Deemouth, and again seek work ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... breathing-spell, during which, while "Nosey" went to bed behind the portieres, he drew his lamp from its hiding-place and made strong coffee in the coffee-pot or chafing-dish, whichever had been washed the more recently. Somewhere in the small hours the seminary would adjourn with "international complications," "tendencies of the age," "sub-head B," heating their brains. Out of bed at seven for a final swift review of the subject, Mason would sail over to class with ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... conducted in the small hours, it was cruel to disturb their infant slumbers. If you want to do that here you will have to get Mabel's consent; it is out of my province. Best play with your children before they ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... then followed songs and parlour games, and it was in the small hours when the merry goodnights were all said and we had retired to rest. Aunt Helen dropped to sleep in a short time; but I lay awake listening to the soft distant call of the mopokes in the scrub beyond ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... I kept my ears open, and it was the same story all over the village. There was hardly a young man among all the ghosts of Fairfield who didn't roll home in the small hours of the morning the worse for liquor. I used to wake up in the night and hear them stumble past my house, singing outrageous songs. The worst of it was that we couldn't keep the scandal to ourselves and the folk at Greenhill began to talk of "sodden Fairfield" ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... back to Upsala, and remained there for the night. It is a sleepy silent place. The only sound I heard was the voice of the watchman calling out the small hours of the morning from his station on the summit of the cathedral tower. As the place is for the most part built of wood, this precaution in the shape of a watchman who can see all points of the city is a necessary one ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... took over these trenches a few days ago, in the small hours of the morning. In the ordinary course of events, relieving parties are usually able to march up under cover of darkness to the reserve trench, half a mile in rear of the firing line, and so proceed to their appointed ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... away to hide a blush, aware that "C" and she sometimes talked even into the small hours, in their zeal, doubtless, that the new wire should not rust ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... evidence against Mrs. Zebedee when the inquiry was resumed. To assist the ends of justice she was now put into the witness-box. The discovery of her murdered husband, when she woke in the small hours of the morning, was passed over as rapidly as possible. Only three questions of importance ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... Joyce went home to see that Keith was behaving properly and snatched two hours' sleep while she could. Another shipment of food had to be sent out that night and she did not expect to get to bed till well into the small hours. ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... have backed himself to beat, even if the positions had been reversed. Being a wise youth, however, and knowing that the best of runners may fail through under-training, he had for the last week or so been going in for a steady course of over-training, getting up in the small hours and going for before-breakfast spins round the track on a glass of milk and a piece of bread. Master R. Robinson was nothing if not thorough in matters ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... turning a corner in the small hours of the morning, I came suddenly upon a gang of drunken roughs ripe for mischief. The leader had a long dirk-knife with which he playfully jabbed me in the ribs, insolently demanding what I thought of it. I seized him by the wrist with as calm a pretence of considering ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... doors of the late professor! Rachel forgot her grudge against his widow; she pulled the outer door, and pushed the inner one, just as she had done in the small hours of that fatal morning, but this time all was darkness within. She had to put on the electric light for herself. The necessity she could not have explained, but it existed in her mind; she must see the ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... forecasts of what he would do when he got up, the laugh had not been completely against him. He had received the honourable distinction of extra lesson for ragging in French. He had been "touched up" by the prefect of his dormitory for creating a disturbance in the small hours. In fact, he had gone through all the usual preliminaries, and become ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... whence came nothing but the singing of night birds and the calling of wild animals. Yet Trent would have no caution relaxed, the more they progressed, the more vigilant the watch they kept. At last came signs of the men of Bekwando. In the small hours of the morning a burning spear came hurtling through the darkness and fell with a hiss and a quiver in the ground, only a few feet from where Trent and the boy lay. Trent stamped on it hastily and gave no alarm. But the boy stole round with a whispered ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... I posted it to them myself. You don't stick at a trifle, Mrs. Dethridge. If I had kept it locked up in the house, you might have forced the lock when my back was turned. If I had kept it about me—I might have had that towel over my face, in the small hours of the morning! The bankers will give you back your Confession—just as they have received it from me—on receipt of an order in my handwriting. Do what I have told you; and you shall have the ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... wrote the play at railway speed, like a night express—puffing out volumes of smoke as he panted along. "I dip my pen in their blood," he said from time to time, and threw back his head and laughed aloud in the silence of the small hours. ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... of singing and dancing going on in the town that night, the rumpus being so great that it was well on into the small hours before it subsided sufficiently to allow me to get to sleep; and on the following morning I learned, through my boy Piet, that so great had been the king's gratification at the result of his interview with me that he had given ten oxen from his own private herd ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... agreed; with tears in his eyes he agreed. There was nothing he had not done, no advance he had not made, to endeavour to bridge the gulf. All in vain! Never were such obstinate fellows as these Hindus. And he proceeded once more to "multiply examples." As we said "Good-bye" in the small hours of the morning he pressed into our hands copies of his speeches and addresses. And we left him perorating on the ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... JERRYMAN was right, for I was awoke in the small hours of the morning by a loud peal from the Monastery, as if the Prior had suddenly said to himself, "What's the use of the bells if you don't ring 'em? By Jove, I will!" and had then and there jumped from his couch, seized hold of the ropes, and set to work with a right good will. Then the hotels ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 25, 1890 • Various
... get artificial advantages, all this making poor people buy inferior goods dear, in the name of the flag. If it comes to that, damn the flag! Custom-houses are ugly things, Stephen; the dirty side of nationality. Dirty things, ignoble, cross, cunning things.... They wake you up in the small hours and rout over your bags.... An imperial people ought to be an urbane people, a civilizing people—above such petty irritating things. I'd as soon put barbed wire along the footpath across that field ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... of the trooper to these rooms, however, in the course of his patrolling is an assurance of protection and company both to mistress and maid, which renders them very acceptable in the small hours of the night. Whenever he is heard advancing, they both make some little decorative preparation to receive him; at other times they divide their watches into short scraps of oblivion and dialogues not wholly ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... imagine three fellows about our size piling out in the wee small hours of the night, clad in their striped pajamas, and hearing a scared individual go whooping through the woods, banging up against every other tree as he runs. It will be a great picnic, for us I mean, boys; and I'm half hoping he does come along ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... so sure that Wonota could be got into the moving pictures and that Mr. Hammond would be successful in making a star of the Indian girl, that that very night she sat up until the wee small hours laying out the plot of her picture story—the story which she hoped to make into ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... new life to the revelry. Such a medley of drinking, gambling, and carousing followed, as defies description. What a happy thing it is to be free; they feel this,—it it is a happy feeling! The sport lasts till the small hours of morning advance. Romescos is seen leaving ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... though he made a conscious effort to recover it, of his audacious success during the small hours of that morning in bringing triumphantly into the world the small new life that Pollard would have destroyed, came back to fortify him; no trace of his own afterglow that had so fascinated and alarmed his sister. "I shall sleep fast for an hour or two this morning and make it up," ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... and smirched with vice the day's sad pages end, For while the short 'large hours' toward the longer 'small hours' trend, With smiles that mock the wearer, and with words that half entreat, Delilah pleads for custom at the corner of the street — Sinking down, sinking down, Battered wreck by tempests beat — A dreadful, thankless trade is hers, that Woman of ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... are making a search, I entreat you to take care of the papers on the table in my bedroom. They are notes that have cost me a great deal of labour in the small hours ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... herself for deeper slumber. Jessica presented to my lambent gaze a visage which besought unspoken sympathy, and mutely breathed a protest against travel in general and this phase of it in particular. Jessica in the "still small hours" was never really gay. It was dimly comforting to one of my companionable nature to turn from her to the little old woman opposite me. In figure and dress she might have posed for one of Leech's drawings of ancient dames, ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... for news from home, and happy to see fresh supplies; but they were also glad to review the current medical problems on their planets with the new doctors, exchanging opinions and arguing diagnosis and therapy into the small hours of the night. ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... and depressed the spirits. The careless and jovial temperament of the people, however, was never much affected by the change of seasons—they drank more hot coffee than usual, and kept their feet warm by dancing from midnight up to the small hours of the morning. The cholera was a thing of the past—the cleansing of the city, the sanitary precautions, which had been so much talked about and recommended in order to prevent another outbreak in the coming year, ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... soft brown hair rested in the little open palm. The other stretched down toward the centre of the bed, as if fearlessly to invite the touch of those weird things with which imagination peoples the solemn night—which the wakeful eye, in the still, small hours, sees moving in the darker corners, or passing swiftly by the bedside, or hovering in the air, wearing the semblance of one's dead friends, or filling large portions of the room with some formless presence of unutterable malignity ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... wonderful racial type." But in Moscow he was sentimental. He insisted on going again to the Cosmopolis Bazaar, and when he had ascertained that Anna Alexievna had vanished and left no trace he prowled the streets until the small hours. ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... active style, singing a song the while from the gladness of his heart. It was a merry song, about mother slowly going down the hectic path of phthisis pulmonalis, and sister, who has—one is led to believe—taken to small bottles, small hours and undesirable companions, refusing to come home and lift the mortgage which is shortly to be foreclosed—all in the ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips
... see, it's no use starting to-night—the last trains have gone long ago." As he spoke, the night wind bore across the square the sound of Big Ben striking the quarters in Westminster Clock Tower, and then, after a pause, the solemn boom that announced the first of the small hours. "To-morrow," thought Ventimore, "I'll speak to Mrs. Rapkin, and get her to send for a doctor and have him put under proper care—the poor old boy really isn't fit to go ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... Gabriel saw, and was troubled thereby from the time of his daily journey a-field to the time of his return, and on to the small hours of many a night. That he was not beloved had hitherto been his great sorrow; that Bathsheba was getting into the toils was now a sorrow greater than the first, and one which nearly obscured it. It was a result which paralleled the oft-quoted ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... my mother is the most wonderful of women? I waked her in the small hours with the startling information that Mary Virginia was downstairs in John Flint's workroom, and that she herself must dress and accompany her home. And my mother, though she looked her stark bewilderment, plagued ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... small hours, everyone settled down again to slumber. Nevertheless the girls woke with the birds. Many of them had registered a solemn vow the night before that they would watch the sun rise, and each was pledged to arouse the others at ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... see them, in the era of its being quite settled that the national dustmen have only to do with one another, and owe no duty to an abstraction called a People, 'taunting the honourable gentleman' with this and with that and with what not, five nights a-week, until the small hours of the morning? Probably he had that much foreknowledge, knowing ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... politicians came thither to confer one another and to devise those schemes by which parties were to be humbugged. It was here that the painter and the actor discussed their respective arts; here, too, in the small hours of morning, the newspaper editor and reporters gathered together to dismiss professional cares and jealousies for the nonce, and to feed in the most amicable spirit from the same trough. Jobs were put up, coups planned, reconciliations ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... political meetings in the country to the waiting press in London, I do verily believe I have been upset in almost every description of vehicle known in this country. I have been, in my time, belated on miry by-roads, towards the small hours, forty or fifty miles from London, in a wheelless carriage, with exhausted horses and drunken post-boys, and have got back in time for publication, to be received with never-forgotten compliments by the late Mr Black, coming in the broadest of Scotch from ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... brought red wine, the French brought walnuts and chestnuts, and the good God sent a blessing. Almost every man found up either a wife or a sweetheart or a daughter or a niece to come with him, and the feast went on to the small hours of Friday. The Mayor came down on time, and being an accomplished man, addressed them in English, in Latin, in Greek, in Hebrew, and in Tuscan. And it is to be hoped that ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... front. The earliest mail delivery had shed a glimmer of hope in the shape of a midnight note from Mrs. Hilliard. He did not require her reminder that the voting strength of Little Poland was no longer to be counted in his column—he had thought and fought that out in the small hours; but he did need and pounced upon the statement that Little Poland's master would be out of town the greater part of election day. The scrawl ended with an appointment for a clandestine meeting at eleven o'clock, ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... them. But he lifted a sheet of paper, and turned a glass of water pink and then green, and he created a snail, which he miraculously annihilated, and got himself a miraculous new tooth-brush. Somewhere in the small hours he had reached the fact that his will-power must be of a particularly rare and pungent quality, a fact of which he had indeed had inklings before, but no certain assurance. The scare and perplexity of his first discovery ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... of the parade this year was a very favorable one,—without dust, and neither too hot nor too cold for comfort The performances properly—or rather improperly—commenced in the small hours of the night previous by the discharge of a cannon in front of the college buildings, which, as the cannon was stupidly or wantonly pointed towards the college buildings, blew in several hundred panes of glass. We have not heard that anybody ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... companies and regiments, accommodating himself to the wilful democracy of our institutions which insists upon seeing the man in chief command and will not take its answer from a subordinate, until in the small hours of the night the noises were hushed, and after a brief hour of effective, undisturbed work upon the matters of chief importance, he could leave the glare of his gas-lighted office, and seek a few hours' rest, only to renew the same ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... reputation for beauty is well known. I always associate her with japonicas, which she usually wore in her hair and of which her numerous bouquets were chiefly composed. Her father frequently accompanied her to balls, and in the wee small hours of the night, as he became weary, I have often been amused at his summons to depart—"Addie, allons." As quite a young woman, Addie Cutts married Stephen A. Douglas, the "Little Giant," whom Lincoln ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... graze until about ten o'clock and then sleep on well into the small hours, wake and begin to feed again at dawn," continued ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... small hours of the next morning, while Patsy was on duty in the hospital section, the young Belgian became wakeful and restless. She promptly administered a sedative and sat by his bedside. After a little his pain was eased and he became quiet, but he lay there ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... the ivories at Almack's, and an ogler of wenches in the gardens of Vauxhall, a sanguine backer of the Negro against the Suffolk Bantam, and a devil of a fellow at boxing the watch and wrenching the knockers when Bow Bells were chiming the small hours. Nor do we feel that he is a penitent. He is too Olympian for that. He has merely put these things behind him—has calmly, as a matter of business, transferred his account from the worldly bank to the heavenly. He has seen fit to become 'Papa.' As such, strong in the consciousness of his own ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... had taken place during the small hours of Wednesday morning; it was now Saturday, and the child was quite well again. Doctor Bodin, whose fears concerning her had prompted him to make an early call, spoke of Doctor Deberle with the respect that an old doctor with a meagre income pays to another in the same district, who is young, ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... My little bob-tailed brownie was thrice endeared to me by our separation; but I warned the man "Pat" to keep clear of him thereafter. The man "Pat" was a very eccentric person, who slept on the porch at Michie's, and used to wake up the house in the small hours, with the story that somebody was taking the chickens and the horses. He was the most impulsive person that I ever knew, and when I entrusted despatches to him once, he put them on the hospital boat by mistake, and they got to New York at the ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... ten-mile spin she stretches her limbs, She golfs, she punts, she rows, she swims - She plays, she sings, she dances, too, From ten or eleven till all is blue! At ball or drum, till small hours come (Chaperon's fan conceals her yawning), She'll waltz away like a teetotum, And never go home till daylight's dawning. Lawn tennis may share her favours fair - Her eyes a-dance and her cheeks a-glowing - Down comes her hair, but what does she care? It's ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... a period in the evening, or more generally towards the still small hours of the morning, in which we so far unbend as to take a single glass of hot whisky and water. We will neither defend the practice nor excuse it. We state it as a fact which must be borne in mind by the readers of this article; for we know not how, whether ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... address. There is nothing much that I can add. I did not travel last night because the trains had been changed, and I should have had to wait two or three hours at a wretched little hole in the small hours of the morning. I therefore slept the night in Sherbrooke, and got here by a train arriving at noon. Having fed and got my baggage stowed away, I hunted up my two principal backers, at least I hunted for them but was unsuccessful, so I can't tell you anything about what's been ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn
... Ronleigh commenced with a sort of half-hour's preliminary practice in the various classrooms; the school then assembled for prayers, after which came breakfast. During the progress of this meal on the Friday morning, in the small hours of which had been enacted the scene described at the end of the previous chapter, it became evident that "something was up." The table, at which sat most of the boys of the Third Form, was in a state of great disorder, while the discussion ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... to leave us yet, captain, are you? We have not reached the small hours of the night," said a second. "Another stoup of liquor, man; we are on firm ground, and no king's cruisers are in chase of us; you need not fear if it sends you to sleep, or makes you see double for ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... comfortless supper. And as darkness drew down, a feeling of the utmost unease and disquietude came over me. All my talks with Seaton returned on me with a suddenly enriched meaning. I recalled again his face as we had stood hanging over the staircase, listening in the small hours to the inexplicable stirrings of the night. There were no candles in the room; every minute the autumnal darkness deepened. I cautiously opened the door and listened, and with some little dismay withdrew, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... human quarrel, not as it should be, but as it is. They never reach the cook. The first mention of the word "dinner" reminds Elvira (quick to perceive that argument is brewing, and alive to the advantage of getting in first) that twice the month before he had dined out, not returning till the small hours of the morning. What she wants to know is where this sort of thing is going to end? If the purpose of Freemasonry is the ruin of the home and the desertion of women, then all she has to say—it turns out to be quite a good deal. Adolphus, ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... had to let him, my good fellow, or we'd have been dropping each other like bullocks. As it is, not a scratch between us, though I found young Bowen in a pretty bad way. Our friend had stuck up Jumping Creek barracks in the small hours, put a bullet through Bowen's leg, and come away in his uniform. Pretty tall, that, eh? I shouldn't wonder if you'd swing him for it alone, down here in Vic; no doubt you've got to be more severe in a young Colony. Well, I tracked ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... like dog," said the swarthy young man, defending himself at the point of the umbrella. "Really your animal is more intelligent than the overrated common or garden dog, which makes no distinction between people calling in the small hours and people calling in broad daylight under the obvious patronage of its own master. This beast of yours is evidently more in sympathy with its liege lord. Down, Fido, down! I wonder they allow you to keep such noisy creatures—but stay! I was forgetting you keep a piano. After ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... pretension, had worn a straw hat into November and the last stages of decay, and how it had been burnt by a special commission ceremonially in the great court. He couldn't convey to her the long sessions of beer and tobacco and high thinking that went on in Prothero's rooms into the small hours. A certain Gothic greyness and flatness and muddiness through which the Cambridge spirit struggles to its destiny, he concealed from her. What remained to tell was—attenuated. He could not romance. So she tried to fill in his jejune outlines. She tried to inspire a son who seemed most unaccountably ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... for anxiety; but I consider I should be doing less than my duty if I failed to inform you of the risks to his health and his reputation which he is running at present. I spent last night with him; in fact, it was only in the small hours of this morning that I left him still dancing at the Covent Garden Fancy Ball. I assure you I am at a loss how to express my consternation and alarm at his peculiar behavior. Are you aware that he has taken to dyeing his hair and doctoring his ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... As the small hours began once more to grow long, and I had reached at last some definite conclusions, I had fallen asleep, but not for long. Sunrise found me ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... to these remarks in dull despair. It was true that he might receive news from Ellen at Sedalia, but Sedalia would not be reached before the small hours of the following morning, when his journey would be practically ended. Nor was there any nearer town, large enough to support a night telegraph-office, where he could expect a message to be received in season ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... venue: a second report said Newbury, or at any rate a point south-west of Reading. Fire drives out fire: a third report swore positively that Clark and the Dustman were in Portsmouth, in hiding, and would run the cordon in the small hours ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... worst had happened to me. He was restless, and after supper prowled out again aimlessly. He returned and tried in vain to divert his attention to his examination notes. He went to bed a little after midnight, and was awakened from lurid dreams in the small hours of Monday by the sound of door knockers, feet running in the street, distant drumming, and a clamour of bells. Red reflections danced on the ceiling. For a moment he lay astonished, wondering whether day had come or the world gone ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... her—his existence was pure indifference to her. I answer for it! They tried his father for the atrocity. Even a French jury could not find extenuating circumstances for that kind of cold-blooded assassin who slays in the small hours the wife of his bosom—after having cast her off and driven her to evil ways, poor, spotless angel! They brought him in guilty of a foul murder and he was guillotined—gentleman and artist of merit though he was. They were kind to his young son; his friends made up a purse and sent ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... of the hanging had come. The small hours of the morning were tolling, heavily, slowly, over the roofs of the sleeping city. Sleeping? There was one who had no rest that night. An upper window of the house of Morelos looked out upon a court in which two palm trees grew. They had been tall and flourishing. One might ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... yourself, and then you must strike straight across country for here. You can look up your routes on the map. There will be less risk of attracting attention if you come and go by different ways. You ought to be here again some time in the small hours. I'll let you in, and you'll have cleared your own score with Rupert Dunsmore and earned more money than you ever have had in all your life before. Now, ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... by beautiful woods, and near by was a lovely pond; and young and gay hearts were often there to wake the echoes with their cheerful, laughing voices. Cato played on the violin, and, when the evenings were chilly or rainy, the young people danced till the small hours of ...
— The Talkative Wig • Eliza Lee Follen
... But in the small hours of the night Thyrsis lay awake in his little room, and the soul within him was sick with horror. He was trapped—there was no use trying to dodge the fact, he was trapped! His powers were waning hour by hour, his vision was dying within him; every day he knew that he was weaker, that ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... and wet through in the evening; we sat up talking till the small hours; we got cold and wet again this ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the canoe proved as dry as a bottle, and we paddled bravely on through the mists of night. About midnight we halted for supper, making a fire amidst the long wet grass, over which we fried the sturgeon and boiled our kettle; then we went on again through the small hours of the morning. At times I could see on the right the mouths of large rivers which flowed from the west: it is down these rivers that the American Indians come to fish for sturgeon in the Rainy River. For nearly 200 miles the country is still ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... position, that was to be positively the last, lost its virtue in the space of three minutes, till the sheet—that was too narrow for the mattress—became ruckled into hills and valleys and made things worse than ever. Having started like this, he knew himself capable of keeping it up gaily till the small hours; and to-night, of ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver |
