"Threshold" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Washington city to be fairly in the country, and ten minutes' walk in the country brings one to real primitive woods. The town has not yet overflowed its limits like the great Northern commercial capitals, and Nature, wild and unkempt, comes up to its very threshold, and even in many places ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... response to feelings such as these in the great world, for we have not been looking much toward what is above us, nor discriminating from meaner things those which approach to heroic natures. We must abandon Mammon, politics, and polemics, when we would approach the threshold of elevated meditation—when we dwell on the illustrious names of the past, and tread over the stones which they trod. I never wandered along the banks of the sedgy Cam, at that lone, twilight hour, when the dimness of external objects tends most to concentrate ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... entrance of which the ever-faithful and ever-watchful Wolf placed himself. There did the great dog stretch his body—a sentinel couchant—with such grim Cerberus-like resolution, that even Wingrove might not have dared to cross the threshold of that sacred precinct? As yet we had not assumed our Indian disguises. The opening scene of the travestie was reserved for the morning; and, after arranging the hours of our respective watches—the trapper taking the first and longest—the rest of us crept under the ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... was a God-send! The prayer of many a mother, far overseas, had moved the Good Master to give her soldier boy this last chance to pause for a prayer on the threshold of death! ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... Bergen," said the professor, "who vas lost for a year, ant tiscofered himself in te pairson of a cook in a lumber-gamp in Minnesota, unter te name of Chamison. Oh, dere are many such! Te supchectife mind, te operations of vich are normally below te threshold of gonsciousness, suddenly dakes gontrol. Pouf! you are anodder man! You haf been Smidt; you are now Chones. As Chones you remember notting of Smidt. You go on, guided by instinct, ant te preacquired ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... of the barns a winnowing-machine was working, sending out clouds of dust. On the threshold stood Aliokhin himself, a man of about forty, tall and stout, with long hair, more like a professor or a painter than a farmer. He was wearing a grimy white shirt and rope belt, and pants instead of trousers; and his boots were covered with ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... common consent, as it appeared, the girls rose and crowded round the entrance. Ellenor lifted the latch, and, flinging the door wide open, she stood on the threshold and looked out into the inky blackness of the night. The wind howled and moaned as it entered the kitchen; and a flash of lightning tore open, for one second, the darkness of the sky. After the crash of thunder that followed, Blaisette ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin
... in our mouths, we children rushed out, but father drove us in again and bade scullery-Pekka come and help with the chest. Pekka, who had already been dozing away on the bench by the stove, was so awkward as to knock the chest against the threshold as he was helping father to carry it into the room, and he would most certainly have got a sound drubbing for it from father if only he had been younger, but he was an old fellow now, and father had never in his life ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... thee now, even at the Door and Threshold of this house, but only with this Intelligence, that Mr. Badman lies dead within. Be pleased therefore (if thy leisure will serve thee) to enter in, and behold the state in which he is laid, betwixt his Death-bed ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... well known to us. History repeats itself, and the next generation may put on record our week attempts, our doubts and fears of this day. Whether electricity will ever rival steam, remains yet to be proved; we may be on the threshold of great things. The premature enthusiasm has subsided, and we enter upon the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... of summer-time, Some twenty years or more, When Ernest lost his way, and crossed The threshold of our door. I'll ne'er forget his locks of jet, His brow of Alpine snow, His manly grace of form and face, Some twenty ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... on his way to prison, so long as he does not cross the threshold of the fortress, it is possible to deliver him. Weingarten, who, it appears to me, is much devoted to your highness, has drawn for me the plan of the route, Trenck is to take. Here it is." He handed the princess a small piece ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... could distinguish the gilt cupola of the tomb before me; and as I perceived the horseman at some distance behind, I made all possible speed until I had passed the gateway of the sanctuary. Kissing the threshold of the tomb, I said my prayers with all the fervency of one who has got safe from a tempest ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... flash that blazed Full o'er her features—oh 'twas then, As startingly her eyes she raised, But quick let fall their lids again, I saw—not Psyche's self when first Upon the threshold of the skies She paused, while heaven's glory burst Newly upon her downcast eyes, Could look more beautiful or blush With holier shame than did this maid, Whom now I saw in all that gush Of splendor from the aisles, displayed. Never—tho' ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... seems as though it would dream on for ever. It is hard to believe that in three months we shall probably be snowed up and certainly be cold. There is a feeling about this month that reminds me of March and the early days of April, when spring is still hesitating on the threshold and the garden holds its breath in expectation. There is the same mildness in the air, and the sky and grass have the same look as then; but the leaves tell a different tale, and the reddening creeper on the house is rapidly approaching ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... the Polish Election;—keeps ward on his own frontiers, with good military besom in hand, to sweep it out again if it intruded there. "What King you like, in God's name; only don't come over my threshold with ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... their magic song; away in the dim distance are the wonderful Doric temples of Paestum, which go back to the mythical times of Jason and the Argonauts. On the opposite shore is the tomb of Virgil, on the threshold of the scenes which he loved to describe,—the Holy Land of Paganism, the Phlegraean Fields, with the terrible Avernus and the Cave of the Sibyl, and all the spots associated with the Pagan heaven and hell; and in the near neighbourhood Baiae, with its awful memories of Roman luxury and cruelty, ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... I was on the threshold of the temple, and I opened the door in a manner that overthrew all obstacles. A little scream and then several sighs announced the completion of the sacrifice, and, to tell the truth, the altar of love was covered with the blood of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... She stood on the threshold, pale, and brilliant still in her blaze of anger, equal, at last, to anything. Kerr, as he signaled to her with every lineament of his enlivened face, his interest, his defiance, his uncontrollability, was not the man of her imaginary conversations. He was not here to ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... was praying in a church of Corbie, a stranger drew near and spoke to her libidinous words: "May it please God," she said, "to bring home to you the hideousness of the words you have just uttered." The stranger in shame went to the door. But an invisible hand arrested him on the threshold. Then he realised the gravity of his sin; he asked pardon of the saint and was free to ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... villagers brought others running to the scene, but no one offered assistance. Hippy and the bronco were tussling on the threshold of the car with Hippy's feet in the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... many months before I again saw the Ninth Massachusetts; but what a contrast to its appearance on that glorious April morning, in 1862, when I was the recipient of its warm hospitality among the pines on the threshold of the ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... class and learned educated speech and graceful manners. Her holidays, poor child, were somewhat dreary, for her father, an anti-social creature, had scarce a friend in the town. Save for here and there an invitation to tea from Betty or myself, she did not cross the threshold of a house in Wellingsford. But to my house, all through her schooldays and afterwards, Phyllis came, and on such occasions Mrs. Marigold prepared teas of the organic lusciousness dear to the heart ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... preternatural in my reluctance to begin. I linger at the threshold, and have a perception of very disagreeable phantasms to be encountered if I enter. I wish God had given me the faculty of writing ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and which wholly transform the recognized function and powers of governments. With these startling facts of religious and political significance before us thoughtful people are beginning to ask if we are not upon the threshold of a complete breaking down of modern civilization and the birth of a new order of things, in which direct government by the people throughout the entire world will be coincident with the rise of a universal religion based on the ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... this respect the courage of love is the more remarkable. How bravely it takes the appalling risks of life! To separate for an hour may mean that never as long as the world lasts will love hear the voice it loves again. "Good-bye," love has called gaily so often, and waved hands from the threshold, and the beloved has called "good-bye" and waved, and smiled back—for the last time. And yet love faces the fears, not only of hours, but of weeks and months; weeks and months on seas bottomless with danger, in lands rife with unknown evils, dizzily ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... disdained to save his life at the expense of his honour. When abandoned by his own regiment of dragoons, he alighted from his horse, joined the infantry, and fought on foot, until he fell covered with wounds, in sight of his own threshold. Prince Charles bore his good fortune with moderation; he prohibited all rejoicings for the victory he had obtained; the wounded soldiers were treated with humanity; and the officers were sent into Fife and Angus, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... is such a thing as happiness, that he had once possessed it, but had lost it and could never again recover it. Johanna entered and announced Privy Councillor Wuellersdorf, who was already standing on the threshold ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... table; where she clipped sponge biscuits in milk, and wondered at other people's Sundays. A weight seemed settling down on her heart. She could not bear to hear the talk; she ate her supper, and then sat down on the threshold of one of the glass doors that looked towards the west, and watched the beautiful colours on the clouds over the mountains; and softly sung to herself the tune she had heard in the morning. So the colours faded away, and the light, and the dusk grew on, and still Daisy sat in the ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... owners put on a new pressed-brick front and changed the sash from the usual small lights to two single lights of large dimensions. The transition from this 1890 front to an eighteenth century interior in a perfect state of preservation, produces upon one crossing the threshold the sensation of walking straight through the looking glass. And whither does the looking glass lead? Right into the ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... where his two and twenty comrades had devoured the banquet, which ended so disastrously for themselves. But, all this while, he had held the snow-white flower in his hand, and had constantly smelt of it while Circe was speaking; and as he crossed the threshold of the saloon, he took good care to inhale several long and deep snuffs of its fragrance. Instead of two and twenty thrones, which had before been ranged around the wall, there was now only a single throne, in the center ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... knee, vis-a-vis, wrapped to their souls in the enchantment of each other, sat the entranced voyagers. Their rods lay idle beside them; life was serious just then for people who stood on the threshold of separation. ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... with a palpitating heart and trembling limbs, I crossed the threshold of the house that was to me a ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... where trees are and flowers, into the dust and heat where passion hides as in a nest, and unspoken things lie warm. Julian was vaguely afraid of himself. It is dangerous to lean on any one, however strong. Having met Valentine on the threshold of life, Julian had never learned to walk alone. He trusted another, instead of trusting himself. He had never forged his own sword. When Siegfried sang at his anvil he sang a song of all the greatness of life. Julian was notably strong ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... floor,—footmarks of a man with large feet whose boot-soles had left a sort of sooty impression. How had this man got away? How had he vanished? Don't forget, monsieur, that there is no chimney in The Yellow Room. He could not have escaped by the door, which is narrow, and on the threshold of which the concierge stood with the lamp, while her husband and I searched for him in every corner of the little room, where it is impossible for anyone to hide himself. The door, which had been forced open against the wall, could ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... as he stood dumfounded on the threshold of the hall; and yet, at the time, my eyes sped past ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... Author has neither wish nor power to grapple with the mysteries and passions which at that epoch possessed so many souls. The Assembly marks a political period. Its political aspects have been anxiously examined, but beyond the ecclesiastical threshold there has been no ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... King saw them enter he rose, went to the door, and without giving them time to utter a word, said to La Feuillade, "Monsieur, we are both very unfortunate!" and instantly turned his back upon him. La Feuillade, on the threshold of the door that he had not had time to cross, left the place immediately, without having dared to say a single word. The King always afterwards turned his eye from La Feuillade, and would never speak to him. Such was the fall of this Phaeton. He saw that he had no more hope, and retired ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... eastward by the setting sun. At that moment I was alone on her decks. There was not a sound in her—and around us nothing moved, nothing lived, not a canoe on the water, not a bird in the air, not a cloud in the sky. In this breathless pause at the threshold of a long passage we seemed to be measuring our fitness for a long and arduous enterprise, the appointed task of both our existences to be carried out, far from all human eyes, with only sky and sea for spectators ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... to be spoke with just that moment; besides, 't was no time for them to be l'iterin' round staring, with all there was to be done. So the crowd melted away, and only Abby followed the new-married couple to their own home. She, walking behind in much perturbation of spirit, noticed that on the threshold Marie stumbled, and seemed about to fall, and that Jacques lifted her in his arms as if she were a baby, and carried her into the room. He had not seemed to notice till that moment that the child was carrying her violin-case, though to be sure it was plain enough ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... him out to the door, as he drew it on and put on his cap. The moonlight shone over the threshold, and he thought she looked ghostly as it fell upon her face. He took her hand, pressed it ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... the Madonna's breast and supports her flowing garments. His name is not found on any of his other works, and we can understand why he felt proud of such a masterpiece. Though made when on the very threshold of his career, it was never surpassed even in his later years. Some other artist afterwards designed the two little bronze cherubs who hold a crown over the Madonna's head. They are quite out of harmony with the impressive dignity of the ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... behind the screening curtains into the hall, even as I heard a heavy foot stumbling at the threshold and a somewhat husky voice offer some ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... myself, naturally," she answered. "He told me that it was an understood thing that when he was over here on business he was not even to cross the threshold of the Embassy, or hold any direct communication with any person connected with it. Everything had to be done through a third party, and generally in duplicate. There was another man, for instance, who had a copy of the same letter, but I ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Mouradour, still in his blue blouse, appeared on the threshold, reading "L'Intransigeant" attentively. ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... Abner was just about to throw open the stable door, preparatory to giving his hobbies an airing, when a latch-key was heard operating in the front door of the house itself. Then came a man's quick step, a tussle with a heavy winter overcoat, and Whyland himself appeared on the threshold. ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... Mrs. Joyce stood alone in her dark doorway to receive her guest, and, through all her flutter of hope, she felt a bitter twinge of housewifely chagrin at being discovered in such miserable quarters. The black earth flooring at her threshold gritted hatefully under her feet, and the gusts whistling through the many chinks of her rough walls seemed to skirl derisively. She was nevertheless resolved to put the best possible face upon ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... both at Washington and among the troops, was that no actual resistance to this force would be made by Young's followers, the general was told that "prudence requires that you should anticipate resistance, general, organized, and formidable, at the threshold." ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... peremptory than before. Stanley forced a laugh. "Danger! Why, of course not. Just a business talk. But go back and look after the girl. I don't want her coming out here while I've visitors." He patted her hand. His arm about her shoulder he ushered her across the threshold of the inner chamber and closed the door. Then he extinguished the lamp. Hand on pistol he felt his way toward the outer portal and, with a sudden movement flung it wide. Three men stood on the threshold. They seemed puzzled by the darkness. Out of it the host's voice spoke: "Who ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... gaped in the crimson wall. I paused for a moment on the threshold. In the dimness within a shadow stirred. I stepped forward, finding myself in a room that was tall and narrow, the ceiling hidden in gloom. Along the walls were carvings I could not clearly see. They gave a suggestion of ...
— Where the World is Quiet • Henry Kuttner
... according to their custom and laws. Long they waited, hammering noisily at the oaken doors of the hall wherein Olaf was now known to have taken refuge. But at last the door was flung open, and King Valdemar appeared on the threshold, guarded by many armed men. The crowd drew back, leaving only the chief of the vikings to speak for them and ask for justice. He told the king how Klerkon, standing within the gate, had been attacked by young Ole of the golden hair, and how without word or ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... she said decisively, as he crossed the threshold. "There's not enough silver in Sark to make a plate for ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... of Dunkeld, of the illustrious house of the Douglas, earls of Angus, the translator of Virgil, and with William Dunbar, a mendicant friar, favourite of James IV., sent by him on missions to London and Paris, we cross the threshold of a new century; they die in the midst of the Renaissance, but with them, nevertheless, the Chaucerian tradition is continued. Douglas writes a "Palice of Honour," imitated from Chaucer.[852] Dunbar,[853] with never flagging spirit, attempts every style; he composes sentimental ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... space the Count stood pausing on my threshold, whilst we craned our necks to contemplate him as though he had been an object for inquisitive inspection. Then a smothered laugh from the brainless La Fosse seemed to break the spell. I frowned. It was a climax of discourtesy whose impression I ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... Godfrey, were sitting down to breakfast when an unusual noise was heard on deck. Almost immediately afterwards the boatswain opened the door and appeared on the threshold. ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... crossed the threshold Stella met me. She took both my hands in hers and looked at me in silence. All that was true and good and noble expressed itself in ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... the door opened; a man appeared on the threshold. He was without a hat, carried a sword, and flourished a ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... did not tend to revolt, as he had proved: in publishing his Discourse on Method he halted at the threshold of Christianism without laying his hand upon the sanctuary. Making a clean sweep of all he had learned, and tearing himself free, by a supreme effort, from the whole tradition of humanity, he resolved "never to accept anything as true until he recognized it to be clearly so, and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the number of the blows. When two or more phenomena occur in the environment invariably together, they are stamped to the same depth or to the same relief, and indissolubly connected. And here we come to the threshold of a great question. Seeing that he could in no way rid himself of the consciousness of Space and Time, Kant assumed them to be necessary 'forms of intuition,' the moulds and shapes into which our intuitions ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... the romance of life is most splendid. But just because it is that, and because the issues of that hour are so far-reaching, what could be more seemly than that they should pause for a moment on the threshold and ask the Giver of all love to bless and guide them! To kneel first together before Him, and then to pass on—to acknowledge His goodness as the author of love, and then to go up on to love's high places, what ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... whole of this small oasis. The stream meandered along, shaded with green trees; here and there, among clumps of Bourbon palms, we could discern huts irregularly dotted about. I turned my eyes towards our host's threshold, and, through my glass, perceived l'Encuerado, who was still preaching. He had evidently left off chanting, for his hearers were seated round him ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... dismissed the governess by that time—what he had left to do, he could best do alone—and they came back, upon a rain night, to the scene of her long preparation. She turned to him upon the threshold, as the rain was dripping ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... and struggles of the past that we may gain from them lessons of confidence for the future, let us not forget to pay a tribute to the men who have laid the foundations of these communities, still on the threshold of their development, and on whom the great burden fell; to the French Canadians who, despite the neglect and indifference of their kings, amid toil and privation, amid war and famine, built up a province ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... Friend,—I thank you for the letter and books which crossed the threshold of this house before me, and looked like your welcome to me home. I have read the passages you wished me to read—I have read them again: for I remember reading them under your star (or the greater part of them) a long while ago. You, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... watch me intently as I moved cautiously forward. A dozen steps brought me within view of the front of the cabin. The door had been smashed in and hung dangling from one hinge. Another step, now with a pistol gripped in my hand, enabled me to obtain a glimpse within. Across the puncheon threshold, his feet even protruding without, lay a man's body; beyond him, half concealed by the shadows of the interior, appeared the outlines of another, with face upturned to the roof, plainly distinguishable because ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... the investigators of the early decades of the eighteenth century, terminating with Franklin's discovery of the nature of lightning and with the Linnaean classification of plants and animals, bring us to the close of our second great epoch; or, to put it otherwise, to the threshold ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... escaped that disgrace. The nearest approach to that equality and fraternity of which we all hear so much and see so little, was unfortunately to be found in the bar-parlor and billiard-room of the Upton Arms; but even this was lost as soon as the threshold was recrossed, and the boon-companions of the interior breathed the air of the outer world. There were several religious sects of considerable strength, and of very decided antagonistic views; any one of whose members ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... never heard before. It was half burned down, and shattered with balls, and ten thousand men were hammering at the gates; but four hundred guardsmen held it in the morning and two hundred held it in the evening, and no French foot was ever set within its threshold. But how they fought, those Frenchmen! Their lives were no more to them than the mud under their feet. There was one—I can see him now—a stoutish ruddy man on a crutch. He hobbled up alone in a lull of the firing to the side gate of Hougoumont and he beat upon it, screaming to his men to come ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... asked after the father of one, the brother of another; delicately intimated his pleasure in finding the noble order of Mohocks, that had lately died in London, resurrected in Virginia; and fairly bowed the flattered youths out of the store. He stood for a moment upon the threshold watching them go triumphantly, if unsteadily, up the street; then turned to the interior of the store to find MacLean seated upon a stool, with his head against the table, submitting with a smile of pure content to the ministrations ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... The young artist makes a pilgrimage to each of these places, eyes them wistfully at a distance, 'bosomed high in tufted trees,' and feels an interest in them of which the owner is scarce conscious: he enters the well-swept walks and echoing archways, passes the threshold, is led through wainscoted rooms, is shown the furniture, the rich hangings, the tapestry, the massy services of plate—and, at last, is ushered into the room where his treasure is, the idol of his vows—some speaking ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... faltered the girl, as she stepped timidly into the room, "but I was frightened. Someone had switched off the lights and I ran into——" She turned to the Japanese, who stood deprecating and nervous on the threshold. ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... plague within doors. And, many that shew like saints abroad, yet act the part of devils when they are at home, by giving way to this house iniquity; by cherishing of this house iniquity. This iniquity meeteth the man and his wife at the very threshold of the door, and will not suffer them to enter, no not with one foot into the house in peace, but how far this is from walking together as heirs of the grace of life, is easy to be determined. Men should carry it in love to their wives, as Christ ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... elapsed, and then a mysterious murmur filled the air, the trees swayed and tossed their branches wildly for a moment, a fierce gust of hot air swept past, and all was still again. I dashed forward and reached the doorway, and as I passed across the threshold, the canopy of cloud overhead was rent open, a blinding flash of livid lightning blazed out, illumining for a single instant the whole landscape, as well as the interior of the building, and at the same instant came a deafening crash, such as might occur were the universe suddenly to crumble ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... no milk-can on the threshold of his rooms and the door yielded to his pressure without the need of a key. With a strange sensation of reluctance he walked into the narrow passage and paused, uncertain which room to enter first. As he stood hesitating a voice from ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... been to stop on the way at a saloon for a glass of liquor. As he stood upon the threshold that morning he seemed to hear a sweet voice say: "Go on, I'se comin', papa, I'se comin' right in ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... to sell now an' them boys won't show her a step of the way an' she couldn't get here so quick all herself without bein' showed so I may as well rest a minute," said Glory to herself, and sat down on the narrow threshold to get cool and to decide upon what she ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... punch-makers had quite enough to do until the night was far spent, and it was considered time for the bride and bridegroom to be escorted by a chosen party of friends to the little cottage which was to be their future home. The pipers stood at the threshold of Jack Dwyer, and his daughter departed from under the "roof-tree" to the tune of "Joy be with you"; and then the lilters, heading the body-guard of the bride, plied drone and chanter right merrily until she had entered her new home, thanked her old friends (who did all the established civilities, ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... with me on my sea-shore walks, and rambles into the country, whenever—which was seldom and reluctantly—I bestirred myself to seek that invigorating charm of Nature, which used to give me such freshness and activity of thought the moment that I stepped across the threshold of the Old Manse. The same torpor, as regarded the capacity for intellectual effort, accompanied me home, and weighed upon me in the chamber which I most absurdly termed my study. Nor did it quit me, when, late at night, I sat in the deserted parlor, lighted only by the glimmering ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... everything retains you here just now and forbids you this useless journey. We have concealed your father's condition from you until now; but it is perhaps hopeless; and that alone should suffice to stop you on the threshold. But there are so many other reasons.... And it is not in the day when our enemies awake, and when the people are dying of hunger and murmur about us, that you have the right to desert us. And why this journey? Marcellus is dead; and life has graver duties than the visit ...
— Pelleas and Melisande • Maurice Maeterlinck
... he unlocked a safe that stood against the wall, chucked the L. 14,000 in, and shammed the iron door sharply; and, as it closed upon the Cash with a clang, the parlour door burst open as if by concert, and David Dodd stood on the threshold, looking terrible. His ruddy colour was all gone, and he seemed black and white with anger and anxiety; and out of this blanched yet lowering face his eyes glowed like coals, and roved keenly to and fro between the banker and ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division. In so far as it is not this, it is not home; so far as the anxieties of the outer world penetrate into it, and the inconsistently-minded, unknown, unloved, or hostile society, the outer world, is allowed by either husband or wife to cross the threshold, it ceases to be home; it is then only a part of the outer world which you have roofed over and lighted ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... The slave took the necklace, saying in himself, "Allah Almighty make it the last thing she shall put on in this world, for that she deprived me of the benefit of my grinder-teeth!"; and repairing to the Princess's apartment, found the door locked and the old woman asleep before the threshold. He shook her, and she awoke in affright and asked, "What dost thou want?"; to which he answered, "The King hath sent me on an errand to his daughter." Quoth the nurse, "The key is not here, go away, whilst I fetch it;" but ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... entered with a nod and the expectant, inquiring look of a busy man. As his feet crossed that sacred threshold the Colonel became all courtesy; he placed a chair for his visitor, and took his hat from his half-reluctant hand. He then opened a cupboard and brought out a bottle of whiskey ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... me to add that this co-optation is limited to a very narrow field of operation. It is confined in fact to the threshold of a man's career. Once the candidate has been consecrated official, by a board of examining officials, he belongs, both as regards advancement, promotion and the reverse, to the central authority alone, except in certain ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... then the general continued,—"See what it is to admit over the threshold any of those people without conscience or honor. Cursed be the moment in which Vinicius entered our house, for he brought Petronius. Woe to Lygia, since those men are not seeking ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... outraged, and the son was wounded. Nor were children exempt. "About Aug. 4," says one witness, "near Vottem, we were pursuing some Uhlans. I saw a man, woman, and a girl about nine, who had been killed. They were on the threshold of a house, one on the top of the other, as if they had been shot down, one after the other, as ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... door against the wall in singular, softened poise, as if all the steel had melted out of her body. And as Colter's tall shadow fell across the threshold Jean Isbel felt himself staring with eyeballs that ached—straining incredulous sight at this woman who in a few seconds had bewildered his senses with her transfiguration. He saw ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... little book, Berlin will be entirely a new scene to you, and I look upon it, in a manner, as your first step into the great world; take care that step be not a false one, and that you do not stumble at the threshold. You will there be in more company than you have yet been; manners and attentions will therefore be more necessary. Pleasing in company is the only way of being pleased in it yourself. Sense and knowledge are the first and ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... the fields, the marching clouds. There is the ear gate, and therein go trooping all sweet songs, all conversation and eloquence, all laughter with Niobe's woe and grief. There is conversation, and thereby we cross the threshold of another's mind, and wander through the halls of memory and the chambers of imagination. But these faculties are limited. The ear was made for one sweet song, not for a thousand. Conversation is with one friend living, not with Pliny and Pericles. The vision stays ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... first dawn of day Nausicaa went in haste to her father and mother to tell them of her dream. She found them in their splendid hall. Her mother sat with her maidens spinning, and the king stood on the threshold, just going forth to meet his chiefs in council. The princess approached her father and said: "Dearest father, I pray that thou wilt give me two mules and a wagon, that I may go with my maids to the river and take all the clothes ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... road. He walked along with his head in a whirl, his whole mind possessed and intoxicated by the one idea of the boundless wealth and the immense power of this extraordinary stranger. Small and sordid and mean seemed his own Elmdene as he approached it, and he passed over its threshold full of restless discontent against ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... upon the threshold suddenly remembered another interest and referred to it with no ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... barely crossed his humble threshold and sat down, when Robin clambered on his knee and put the puzzling question.—"Fasser, ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... sighed, as he crossed the threshold. "It's rather lonesome, but I'll do the best I can. ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... was here, unknowing and unknown, He stood upon the threshold stone. But hope was his, a faith sublime, That triumphs over place and time; And here, his mighty labor done, And here, his course of glory run, Awhile as more than man he stood, So large the ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... bridle-way, or boreen, that ran up directly before the door—the other by a green lane, that diverged from the boreen about a furlong below the house. He took the latter, certain that the family could not notice his approach, nor hear the noise of his horse's footsteps, until he could arrive at the very threshold.. On dismounting, he felt that he could scarcely walk. He approached the door, however, as steadily as he could. He entered—and the family, who had just finished their supper, rose up, as a mark of ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... there came a lull, and while I wondered, the door flew suddenly open and I saw Mrs. Ocumpaugh standing on the threshold, pallid and stricken, looking back at the picture made by the other two as Mrs. Carew, fallen on her knees by the bedside, held to ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... the door to see the cause of this interruption. It was my sister Jessie who entered, and paused on the threshold as she observed the presence of a stranger. She wore no covering on her head, and her brown hair fell in natural curls on her shoulders ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... and joined ropes thereto. So in much joy they drew it into the city, youths and maidens singing about it the while and laying their hands to the ropes with great gladness. And yet there wanted no signs and tokens of evil to come. Four times it halted on the threshold of the gate, and men might have heard a clashing of arms within. Cassandra also opened her mouth, prophesying evil; but no man heeded her, for that was ever the doom upon her, not to be believed, though speaking truth. So the men of Troy drew the horse into the city. And that night ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... Yugoslavia and, after 2003, in a looser union of Serbia and Montenegro. In May 2006, Montenegro invoked its right under the Constitutional Charter of Serbia and Montenegro to hold a referendum on independence from the state union. The vote for severing ties with Serbia exceeded 55% - the threshold set by the EU - allowing Montenegro to formally declare its ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... was spent; but now at last it was the month of August, and upon the night of the seventh day thereof ended the season of waiting. It is to tell that upon that night came Harold, the son of Egbert, from his hut, and stood on the threshold thereof, and awaited the rising of the moon from out the silver waters yonder. While thus he stood there appeared unto him Membril the fairy, and smiling upon him ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... eager, curious glances, and pausing more than once to note the exceeding beauty of the place. Once she stopped for a long time, and, leaning against a tree, seemed to be debating whether to turn back or go on. Deciding upon the latter, she arose, and quickening her movements, soon stood upon the threshold. Her ring was answered by Maria, who betrayed no surprise, for from the upper hall Mrs. Peters herself was closely ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes
... for furniture. All these must be replaced. A hurried trip to the city, three days of determined shopping with Zulime, and a stream of new goods (necessary to refurnish), began to set toward the threshold. The draymen plied busily between the ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... Road. The afternoon was waning when they left the church-yard; when they came within sight of the cottage the sun had sunk behind the hills. In the red, wintry light, the place looked terribly desolate. Weeds had sprung up about the house, and their rank growth covered the very threshold, the shutters hung loose and broken, and a damp greenness had crept upon the ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... worthy of the man. There was, even on the little stone staircase, a faint odour of pastille or scent spray, or something of feminine suggestion. The unwary visitor would as likely as not catch some part of his person against a silk hanging or a lurking portiere on crossing the threshold; and the impression which struck (as all rooms do strike) from the threshold was one of oppressive drapery. A man, by the way, should never know anything about drapery or draping. Such knowledge undermines his virility. This is an age of undermining knowledge. We ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... scream, a wild, despairing shriek terrified her, and her heart seemed to stand still as she bounded away from the side of the coffin. The light of the setting sun streamed through the window, and over the white, convulsed face of a feeble but beautiful woman, who was supported on the threshold by a venerable, gray-haired man, down whose furrowed cheeks tears coursed rapidly. Struggling to free herself from his restraining grasp, the stranger tottered into the middle ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... thirteenth century, all reaching Europe, some touching the very steps of the throne of Louis XIV., yet none of them carrying the leaf which contained the story of "Perrette," or of the "Brahman," to the threshold of La Fontaine's home. We ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... the toys of the nice, kind, rich children. The idea caught on with the Olympians, always open to sentiment of a treacly, woodcut order; and accordingly Charlotte, on entering one day dishevelled and panting, having been pursued by yelling Redskins up to the very threshold of our peaceful home, was curtly informed that her French lessons would begin on Monday, that she was henceforth to cease all pretence of being a trapper or a Redskin on utterly inadequate grounds, and moreover ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... doors there did stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold—then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... for which reason I have made no mention of thy name, nor of my own; and this is of set purpose lest if this poor letter fall at any time into the hands of another, he might be offended on the very threshold and so not care to go ...
— The Chronicle of the Canons Regular of Mount St. Agnes • Thomas a Kempis
... lifted the latchet Since she went out of the door— No footstep shall cross the threshold, Since she can come ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... occasions that the Continental Congress do now adjourn, while no reason whatever existed, other than the one most obvious but least apt to occur to any one, for supposing that Mr. O'Meagher had ever had a grandfather at all. And yet, as Mr. Wimples, though on the threshold of great dignity and power, walks into Mr. O'Meagher's presence, he find himself all of a tremble, and glows and chills chase each other up and down his ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... included some part of the adjacent country. The church was built in connection with the Church Extension Scheme. The parish was a quoard sacra parish, detached from St. John's. It contains a population of 4,000 souls, very many of whom never crossed the threshold of any sanctuary. His congregation amounted at the very outset, to about 1,100 hearers, one-third of whom came from distant parts ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... buxom widow weighing fourteen stone; and she, being very genteel, could not brook the idea of keeping a lodger. So one day—I have heard FitzGerald tell the story—came a timid rap at the door of his sitting-room, a deep "Now, Berry, be firm," and a mild "Yes, my dear;" and Berry appeared on the threshold. Hesitatingly he explained that "Mrs Berry, you know, sir—really extremely sorry—but not been used, sir," &c., &c. Then from the rear, a deep "And you've got to tell him about Old Gooseberry, Berry," ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... be no question of the fact that authentic history sends its roots into the subsoil of fabulous antiquity. In turning to the records of submarine exploration we are staggered on the very threshold of the question with obvious absurdity. We are depressed. We seek to dive into our subject, but find it too deep for us. If we were to put on the latest "patent improved diving-dress," with all its accompaniments ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... of Charlie that she did not hear the patter of little feet in the hall without. Tired of staying by himself, and spying the open door, Willie hastened toward it, pausing a moment on the threshold as if to reconnoiter. Something in Anna's attitude, as she lay with her long hair falling over the pillow, must have reminded him of Alice, for, with a cry of delight, he ran forward, and patting the white cheek with his soft baby hand, lisped out the word "Arn-tee, arn-tee," making Anna start ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... threshold yesterday And left the glad voice of his loved one dumb. To him the living now will come And cross his threshold in the self-same way To clasp his hand and vainly try to say Words that shall soothe ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest
... Raven and I suddenly been caught up out of that little coast village and transported to the far East on a magic carpet, to be set down in the twinkling of an eye on some Oriental threshold, we could scarcely have been more surprised than we were at the sight of that bland, smiling countenance. For the moment I was at a loss to think who and what the man could be; he was in the dress of his own country, a neat, close-fitting, high-buttoned blue jacket; there was a little ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... fingers. He straightened himself up quickly after the low bow, putting his hand with a graceful ease on the hilt of his heavy short sword ornamented with brilliantly dyed fringes of horsehair. Nina, hesitating on the threshold, saw an erect lithe figure of medium height with a breadth of shoulder suggesting great power. Under the folds of a blue turban, whose fringed ends hung gracefully over the left shoulder, was a face full of determination ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... dressing gown—to fling his own bed-quilt over some plants endangered by an unexpected frost, came very near to having a fine show of bloom and not being there to see it; but, short of this excessive zeal, when one's garden is a little one, and close to one's threshold, one may catch Jack Frost on the surface of many bits of rough and ready fencing on ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... pestilence, the air that you breathe. Thus the sweet domestic thing has done, for men, at least these four thousand years. She has been their companion, not of the home merely, but of the hearth, and the threshold; companion only endeared by departure, and showing better her loving-kindness by her faithful return. Type sometimes of the stranger, she has softened us to hospitality; type always of the suppliant, she has enchanted us to mercy; and in ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... to know more—or that there should be more to be known; for about this time two remarkable things happened. One was, that Faith found a little French book ensconced among the stockings in her basket,—and the very next morning as Mr. Linden was setting off for school, he stopped at the threshold and inquired— ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... the threshold of our argument, to have a clear understanding respecting the nature of the testimony borne by our Lord and his apostles to this ancient literature. It is upon this that the advocates of the traditional view of the Old Testament wholly ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... seen her except on the screen, they had not the least doubt that this was she. It was really Rose Andre, or rather, the Happy Princess, whom they had admired a few days before, amidst the furniture of that very sitting-room or on the threshold of that very cottage. She was wearing the same dress; her hair was done in the same way; she had on the same bangles and necklaces as in The Happy Princess; and her lovely face, with its rosy cheeks and laughing eyes, bore the same look ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... not interrupted until sundown; and then Carmen entered the room with a bowl of chocolate and some small wheaten loaves. Behind her, with an amusing show of dignity, stalked a large heron, an elegant bird, with long, scarlet legs, gray plumage, and a gracefully curved neck. When the bird reached the threshold it stopped, and without warning gave vent to a prolonged series of shrill, unmusical sounds. The startled priest sat up in his bed and exclaimed ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... out, that even if a moral nihilism could be carried through and all definite interests abandoned, the vanity of life would not be thereby corrected, but merely exposed. When our steps had been retraced to the very threshold of being, nothing better worth doing would have been discovered on the way. That to suffer illusion is a bad thing might ordinarily be taken for an axiom, because ordinarily we assume that true knowledge and rational volition are ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... ovation as soon as she crossed the threshold. Dulce, who was listening for her footsteps, rushed out into the little hall, and dragged her in, as though she were too weary to have any movement or volition of her own. And then Nan came up, in her calm elder-sisterly way, and ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... his possessions, but they all: Realism, Romanticism, Naturalism, even the unofficial sentimentalism (which, like the poor, is exceedingly difficult to get rid of), all these gods must, after a short period of fellowship, abandon him—even on the very threshold of the temple—to the stammerings of his conscience and to the outspoken consciousness of the difficulties of his work. In that uneasy solitude the supreme cry of Art for Art, itself, loses the exciting ring of its apparent immorality. It sounds far off. ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... dilapidated farm-house of the expelled steward, old Bevan, stood beautifully in a wooded glen, watered by a shallow stream, between a brook and river in size. A pretty greensward, of perpetual vivid hue, stretched quite up to the threshold—its "fold," or farm-yard, being small, and situated behind. A wooded mountain rose opposite, topped by a range of many-tinted cliffs, splintered like thunder-stricken battlements, and resembling, in their fretted and timeworn fronts, rich cathedral architecture in ruins. Extensive ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... this, Mrs. Purnell appeared on the threshold to welcome them, but to Wade's surprise, she told them that Dorothy ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... know is, that here, at four in the afternoon, the great majority of one thousand Europeans are shaking, absolutely distraught. It is evident therefrom that there is something impressive and demoralising to most people in the idea of finality, and that on the threshold of the twentieth century, courage, since it is seldom dealt in, is hardly a great living force. It makes one realise, too, that with all their faults, the aristocrats of France, who, a hundred years ago, were condemned to the shameful death of the guillotine ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... summer time, and the doors and windows were all open—he heard an angry, passionate kind of sound that was scarcely human. That sound prevented his approach from being heard; and standing at the threshold, he saw poor Mary Williams pacing backward and forward in some wild mood. Nest, cripple as she was, was walking with her, speaking low, soothing words, till the pace was slackened, and time and breathing was given to put her arm around the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... not a sound. She felt as if she must not, could not breathe. The silence, like a stealthy hand, lifted her from her chair, drew her tiptoeing and breathless toward the room in which her father was sitting. She paused at its threshold, looked. There was Hiram, in his chair by the window, bolt upright, eyes open and gazing into the infinite. Beside that statue of the peace eternal knelt Ellen, a worn, wan, shrunken figure, the hands clasped, the eyes closed, the ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... never again could the same circle be re-united at Wyllys-Roof; all who crossed the threshold that night were not ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... hardly crossed the threshold when the mere sight of books remarkable for their vast antiquity filled me with awe, or I might almost say with bewilderment: so that for a moment I could ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... the Sprout of the Lord. That can be readily accounted for, only if the Sprout of the Lord be the Messiah. For the Messiah appears everywhere as the channel through which the Lord imparts to His Church all the fulness of His blessings, as the Immanuel by whom the promise given at the very threshold of the Old Testament: "I dwell in the midst of them," is most perfectly realized. "This is the name whereby He shall be called: The Lord our righteousness," says Jeremiah, in the passage quoted.—The "Sprout of the Lord" ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... journeyed homeward with all speed, till he drew near his father's capital and making a circuit about the city, alighted on the roof of the King's palace, where he left his horse, whilst he descended into the palace and finding its threshold strewn with ashes, bethought him that one of his family was dead. Then he entered, as of wont, and found his father and mother and sisters clad in mourning raiment of black, pale-faced and lean of body. When his father saw him and was assured that it was indeed his son, he ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... before Mr. Gray could be made to understand that the great door was only open on state occasions, and even to the last he would as soon come in by that as the terrace entrance. I had been received there on my first setting foot over my lady's threshold; every stranger was led in by that way the first time they came; but after that (with the exceptions I have named) they went round by the terrace, as it were by instinct. It was an assistance to this instinct to be aware that from time ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... to cross Harmony's threshold as visitors and equals were a colonel and a young captain, who both came from Wynberg with letters of introduction from Mrs. van ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... together with an effort. The sight of the two new arrivals talking to Louis on the threshold of the restaurant, seemed for the moment to have drawn every scrap of colour from his cheeks. Nevertheless, his recovery was ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... teacher was turning to go to his desk, hearing a rustling noise toward the door, he turned to look. He was, so to speak, petrified with astonishment. There stood on the threshold of the door a woman whose beauty was such as he had never seen surpassed. She held a boy by the hand. She was a mulatto woman, tall and graceful. Her hair was raven black and was combed away from ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... stormy night, it startled him, for he remembered that the outer door had been left unlocked. Nearer and nearer it came, up the winding stairs, and on through the silent hall, tin til it readied the threshold of his chamber, where it ceased, while a ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... nature, however, I could not discern. The roof was in form a truncated pyramid; its material a rose-coloured crystal, through which a clear soft light illuminated the whole scene. Across the floor of the entrance, immediately within the portal, was a broad band of the same crystal, marking the formal threshold of the Hall. Immediately inside this stood the same Chief who had received us in the former Hall; and as we stood at the door, stretching forth his left hand, he spoke, or rather chanted, what, by the rhythmical sequence ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... silken chains of her tresses the valiant spirit of Fergus. The whole life of that heroic epoch, still writ large upon the face of the land, shall come forth clear and definite; we shall stand by the threshold of Cuculain's dwelling, and move among the banquet-halls of Emain of Maca. We shall look upon the hills and valleys that Meave and Deirdre looked on, and hear the clash of spear and shield at the Ford of the river,—and this even though ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... step through into the other world was a queasy one, but it turned out to be much the same as any other step. The only difference was that now he was in the other world looking back. From this side, the niggerhead at the threshold was sliced sharply, but it had been kicked down a little when he came through, and what with shoving the cage through and pulling it back, so that some clods of moss and dirt were scattered in the other world. For some reason, that made Ed feel better, it seemed ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams
... difference. This woman in front had found her boy's half-charred body left tied to a tree by Rebel scouts: this girl was the grandchild of Naylor, a man of seventy,—the Federal soldiers were fired at from his house one day,—the next, the old man stood dumb upon its threshold; in this world, he never would call to God for vengeance. Palmer knew these things were true. Yet Dode should not for this sink to low notions about the war. She did: she talked plain Saxon of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... he had been exceedingly anxious to learn the condition of Thomasin; but he did not venture to intrude upon a threshold to which he was a stranger, particularly at such an unpleasant moment as this. He had occupied his time in moving with his ponies and load to a new point in the heath, eastward to his previous ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... furnishings for it. It brought her a sudden sense of confusion, for as one result of that expenditure he had been forced into doing what she fancied must have been a very repugnant thing, and she had never even crossed his threshold. ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... equal, if men are free and equal anywhere in the earth, therefore I have arrived at the place I started to find, and I am a man among men, and on the strictest equality possible to men, no doubt. Yet here on the threshold I find an inequality. There are people at this table who are looked up to for some reason or another, and here is a poor devil of a boy who is looked down upon, treated with indifference, and shamed by humiliations, when he has committed no crime but that common ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... only dwelling there was on the place, must have resounded with remarkable echoes as the pioneers of the new social order alighted on its threshold. They were of cultivated families, and were nearly all from the city and neighborhood of Boston. Their hearts were open to the tender influence of buds and blossoms, the fresh springing grass and the bubbling brook. They watched the birds ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... That anxious civility which beauty can inspire The happy scene of the play before the villain comes in The ravings of a sick man are not always counted ravings The sea is a great breeder of friendship The tender care of a woman—than many pharmacopoeias The threshold of an acknowledged love There are things we repent of which cannot be repaired There is no refuge from memory and remorse in this world Think that a woman gives the heart for pleasant weather only? Thou wouldst ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... page appeared instead, ushering in with ceremonious civility a tall personage, clad in flowing white robes and muffled up to the eyes in a mantle of silver tissue,—a majestic, mysterious, solemn-looking individual, who, pausing on the threshold of the apartment, described a circle in the air with a small staff he carried, and said in ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... were not permitted to cross the threshold of the chiefs' palace. They could do no more than crawl on hands and knees to the door. In spite of the many changes infused into Hawaiian institutions, the kauwa families remain branded with a stigma, in the opinion of the natives, and the laws, ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... near Galion, that he wandered about till he reached a log cabin in a clearing. There he asked of the woman at the door if she knew where Samuel Davy lived. She laughed and bade him come in and see. Then he knew that it was his own wife speaking to him from his own threshold. ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... pass that shortly after eight o'clock, albeit a prisoner, I rode into the courtyard of the Lys de France, and, alighting, I stepped across the threshold of the inn, and strode up to a table at which I had espied Michelot. He sat nursing a huge measure of wine, into the depths of which he was gazing pensively, with an expression so glum upon his weather-beaten countenance that it defies depicting. So deep was he in his meditations, that albeit ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... and subdues them, until like the Samaritans they say, "Now we believe, not because of thy speaking: for we have heard for ourselves, and know." That is the only use of authority in a vital, realm. It can lead us up to the threshold of a great experience where we must enter, each man for himself, and that service to the spiritual life is ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... down again. I certainly had made progress. Feeling in a benevolent mood, I set forth the advantages she would reap by assuming her legal status; how at last she would shake the dust of Bohemia from off her feet, and instead of standing at the threshold like a disconsolate Peri, she would enter as a right the Paradise of Philistia which she craved; how her life would be one continual tea-party, and how, as her husband had doubtless by this time obtained his promotion, she would be authorised ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... is easily irritated, and cries, "Be quiet, Kiki!" But I go on unconscious of any wrong-doing; tic-toc, tic-toc. She jumps up distracted and opens the door wide for me: slowly, like one exiled, I cross its threshold and once outside, laugh to find myself so ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... the Threshold he has already enter'd; Now through the Fire I'll follow him: But; oh some unknown Pow'r detains my Steps. I'll try again; I cannot stir. Shall he rejoice before my Eyes? No, no; Melissa, it ought to be thy Care To see thy self and me, on this ...
— Amadigi di Gaula - Amadis of Gaul • Nicola Francesco Haym
... Lady Merton," he said from the threshold. "I think I have all your commissions. Is your ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Mrs. Wilders, imperiously. "Think you that I will cross the threshold of your piggery?" and she waited, stamping her foot impatiently whilst ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... Pausing on the threshold, M. Bombiadi with the servile and cringing tone always assumed by those frock-coated criminals, European hotel proprietors, asked humbly: "May we ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... the widow continued her work, and the light from the one candle being centred to the spot where she sat, the entry was consequently dark; but on looking up with a smile of greeting, expecting only to see Pollie, she was surprised to see her hesitate on the threshold, apparently clutching some one tightly by the dress: but directly she saw her mother, she seemed to feel she might let go her hold, her charge was safe; so running in, she threw her arms around ...
— Little Pollie - A Bunch of Violets • Gertrude P. Dyer
... feel that there are many other problems to be encountered before you will meet these which I have set forth. But we should remember that the mind holds some of such impressions a very long time. It holds them below the threshold of conscious thought, and under ideal working conditions it brings them above ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness |
