"Unobtrusively" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a little before two o'clock. While Baptista waited a funeral procession ascended the road. Baptista hastened across, and by the time the procession entered the cemetery gates she had unobtrusively joined it. ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... said, said he, 'Boys, you are not many, but you are a noble few.'" Some listened to the booming of the sparring batteries; two or three who had lost close friends or kinsmen moped aside. The frank sympathy of all for these made itself apparent. The shadiest hazel bushes unobtrusively came into their possession; there was an evident intention of seeing that they got the best fare when dinner was called; a collection of tobacco had been taken and quietly pushed their way. Some examined knapsack and haversacks, good oilcloths, belts, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... Woodlanders is filled with notable illustrations of an interest in minute things. The facts are introduced unobtrusively and no great emphasis is laid upon them. But they cling to the memory. Giles Winterbourne, a chief character in this story, 'had a marvelous power in making trees grow. Although he would seem to shovel in the earth quite ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... dared not trust their feelings; even Alicia sniggered unobtrusively; Grandfather Claiborne chuckled, and Aunt Missouri frankly collapsed into her rocking-chair, bubbling with ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... innovation than to put on his coat. Mildred smiled mentally when she saw him lowering at the head of the table, but an icicle could no more continue freezing in the sun than he maintain his surly mood before her genial, quiet greeting. It suggested courtesy so irresistibly, and yet so unobtrusively, that he already repented his lack of it. Still, not for the world would he have made any one aware of his compunctions. Mrs. Atwood and Susan had their doubts about Roger, fearing that he would rebel absolutely and ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... was boarded by a half dozen youngish men, unobtrusively ready for trouble, and headed by a tall youth who limped slightly and wore an extremely anxious expression. He went forward and commenced a series of experiments with levers and brake, in which process incidentally he liberated a quantity of sand onto the rails. ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... college since he was called to be its head, and no name is higher than his as a teacher. With him have been associated fit and eminent coadjutors in the various departments of instruction. If the work of the college has been done quietly and unobtrusively, it has been done well. The faculty of Williams have not been ambitious to make a university amid the Berkshire Hills, nor to enter into a strife with other institutions for the purpose of swelling the number ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... recognition of King Joseph. On this special demand—which no doubt was made less harsh in form by the report of Champagny, which has been preserved—Austria did not give way, nor did she refuse: she delayed, still constantly and unobtrusively engaged in warlike preparations, which were actively pushed forward by the Archduke Charles ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... whistle would allow, and before I had been playing many minutes the snakes came gliding out, swinging their heads backwards and forwards and from side to side as though they were under a spell. Selecting a huge black snake, who bore unobtrusively my safety mark, I pounced down upon him and presented my bare arm. After teasing the reptile two or three times I allowed him to strike his teeth deep into my flesh, and immediately the blood began to run. I also permitted several other fangless snakes ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... despite Tom's surly displeasure. Not until a friend stopped them for a word or two was the distracted parent enabled to escape from that spidery embrace; then, indeed, he slipped it as a filibustering schooner slips its moorings, and made off as rapidly and as unobtrusively ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... of promise; that God, for the moment, is not concerned; that the soul is secure and safe, and the body and its needs the only object of present solicitude. The process is gradual. The turning away and the loss are not at once and from the beginning of seductive influences, but slowly and unobtrusively in the guise of hope and high expectation. There is Ambition, with its glittering prospects, with its proffered rewards and castles of air. To the young man and young woman, just entering the arena of ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... tenants down in his elevator. Then he opened the door and came in. With him was the young man I had often seen in the office next to mine, as I passed, and a young woman on whom I had never set my eyes before. No sooner had they opened the door than the young man began to speak, and Lemuel stood unobtrusively to ...
— The Water Goats and Other Troubles • Ellis Parker Butler
... D'Arragon took a chair, and even as he did so Mathilde came to the table, calm and mistress of herself again, to pour out the coffee, and do the honours of the simple meal. D'Arragon, besides having acquired the seamen's habit of adapting himself unconsciously and unobtrusively to his surroundings, was of a direct mind, lacking self-consciousness, and simplified by the pressure of a strong and steady purpose. For men's minds are like the atmosphere, which is always cleared by a steady breeze, while a changing wind ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... Young Deaves unobtrusively sought to turn over the letter on his desk, but she caught the movement out of the tail of her eye, and, whirling round, ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... the first time she had succeeded in seeing Victor alone during all the five days of his stay. Unobtrusively but effectively he had avoided her, shutting himself, when he was not in the sick-room, in his own room, under the pretext of fatigue or correspondence. And she had not submitted to this without repeated efforts to ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... the dark hallway to Adam's room with cat-like tread, the searchlight that had been a part of his road equipment in his pocket, a bag of wood-ash, purloined the day before from Hannah's kitchen, and the battered box tucked unobtrusively beneath his coat. He locked himself in and drew a long, gasping breath of ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... to this pass—and he never had expected anything so good—Speug withdrew unobtrusively behind a clump of trees, and then ran swiftly to a hollow where Nestie was waiting ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... mother's best help in this endeavor, for there her child meets with all sorts of other children. The very influence of the place, and the ever-ready help of the teacher are on his side. Every effort he makes to do right is met and welcomed. In every stand that he takes against temptation, he is unobtrusively reinforced. Moreover, the wrong-doing of his comrades is never allowed to retain the attractive glitter that it sometimes acquires on the play-ground. It is promptly held up to general obloquy, and the good child finds to his surprise that he is not the only one ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... with the power of facile adaptation, and he unobtrusively bent his efforts toward convincing his new acquaintances that, although he was alien to their ways, he was sympathetic and to be trusted. Once that assurance was given, the family talk went on much as though he had been absent, and, as he sat with open ears, he learned the rudiments ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... the mine and the mill, had moved to the sanctum of the Blue Goose, with the idea of furthering his benign influence. Hartwell, Morrison, and Pierre were sitting around a table in the private office, Hartwell impatient for action, Pierre unobtrusively alert, Morrison cocksure to ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... too ill to come, so she sent me. She told me I was not to let it be sold away from us for less than ten pounds, or she sh—should be m—m—miserable," and the poor little fellow began to cry. Rosa followed suit promptly but unobtrusively. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... the hollow tree in which lovers dump letters, to be extracted later; she did not consider George's feelings at all. He had offered to help her, and this was his job. The world is full of Georges whose task it is to hang about in the background and make themselves unobtrusively useful. ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... night there, the four spacemen wrapped in their sleeping rolls by the flitter, the aliens in their globe ship. The Terrans did not miss the fact that the others had unobtrusively posted guards at the only two places where the mountain could be climbed. And each of those guards cradled in the crook of his arm ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... power of observation is of that intuitive strength which catches at a glance the salient and distinctive points of every thing he sees. He has shown rare cleverness, too, in mingling throughout the work, agreeably and unobtrusively, so much of the history of India, and yet without ever suffering ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... rude commercial horde that laughed loudly and ate uncouthly at the board of the Barbarian, we shall sit at table with people born to the only manner said to be worth possessing;—if we except, indeed, the visiting tribe of Bines, who may be relied upon, however, to behave at least unobtrusively. ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... time associated with the society of women had been of anything but a mental character. There was the effort of putting one's best physical foot in advance, the effort of keeping one's person conspicuously in evidence and one's intellect as unobtrusively in abeyance—the material effort of appearing always in one's best trousers, the moral effort of presenting always one's worst intelligence. It had seemed to him until he met Laura—and his opinion was the effect ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... instructions and reluctantly earned a modest fee. He even refused to express surprise at my lord's story; one wife in London, another in Paris; why, many a southern gentleman had two families—quadroons being plentiful, why not? Culver unobtrusively yawned, and, with fine courtesy, ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... Sproul departed unobtrusively from Smyrna, with the radiant Mr. Bodge in a new suit of ready-made clothes as ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... set eyes upon her firstborn, and Sir Burnham, who did, readily reconciled himself to the loss of such a daughter. The announcement which should have appeared joyfully under the press-heading "Births" was unobtrusively inserted under "Deaths," and Sir Burnham being fortunately far from the haunts of the social paragraph writers, this unfortunate event aroused comparatively little comment in the English journals; beyond one or two formal ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... seething and struggling chaos. She is one of those rare women who, while apparently only listening, can give you back your own thoughts clarified. Mr. Garborg relates most charmingly how she straightens out the tangles in her husband's plots, and unobtrusively draws him back, when, as frequently happens, he has switched himself off on a side-line and is unable to recover his bearings. And this occurs as often in his conversation as in his manuscripts, which he never despatches to ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... his eyebrows, and he observed that Tex sent more than one glance toward Jake. Bill interpreted those glances to suit himself, and while he unobtrusively led Jake into a shed to give him a hurried grooming before saddling another horse, Bill ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... tumescence in both sexes, it is sufficient for one sex alone, usually the male, to take the active part. This point attracted the attention of Kulischer many years ago, and he showed how the dances of the men, among savages, excite the women, who watch them intently though unobtrusively, and are thus influenced in choosing their lovers. He was probably the first to insist that in man sexual selection has taken place mainly through the agency of dances, games, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the real estate office. The utmost jocularity and humour prevailed, except in one corner where a very earnest young man drove home the points of his argument with an impressive forefinger. Bob dropped unobtrusively into a seat, and prepared to enjoy his never-failing interest in the California landscape with its changing wonderful mountains; its alternations of sage brush and wide cultivation; its vineyards as far as the eye could distinguish the vines; its grainfields seeming to fill ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... and continued to eat. When he had finished he got his lariat from the saddle, swung to Siegfried's pony, and rode unobtrusively forward to the remuda. The horses were circling round and round, so that it was several minutes before he found a chance. When he did, the rope snaked forward and dropped over the head of the strawberry roan. The horse stood trembling, making not the least resistance, even while ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... tried Miss Pole, myself, every one, and finally said: 'I shall go alone.' She went. At the end of five minutes she returned unobtrusively with a green baize board, and ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... the others and walked unobtrusively along the Row with them in the direction of Wendell and breakfast, but when he reached Torrence he quite as unobtrusively slipped through the doorway and sought his room to repair his appearance and relieve ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... hosts. They indulged in rather longer prayers, but this only increased the respect in which they were held. They went to church like other people; and if they omitted the usual reverences paid to the images, they did it so unobtrusively that it struck ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... unobtrusively as the day went on. Presently he considered that she was slightly flushed. Shortly after the evening meal of singularly unappetizing Darian rations, she drank thirstily. He did not comment. He brought out cards and showed her a complicated game of solitaire in which mental arithmetic ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... the nymph. She was making her debut into great society. What would her mother have said if she could have seen her there? Her father would have said nothing. He would have fainted unobtrusively, for the ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... better than did the Sultan's own Prime Minister that there was in consequence much joking and laughing. The Sultan then was a most dignified, intelligent, and charming old gentleman. He was popular both with his own people, who loved him with a religious fervor, and with the English, who unobtrusively conducted his affairs. ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... we had left Breukelen and were gliding on, along the lily-burdened river toward Amsterdam, she unobtrusively made it her business to protect me from the sallies of the enemy, even engaging that enemy herself, as if she were my squire at arms. Now, if never before, she was worth her weight in gold, and as I saw her politely entangle the unwilling ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... bidding her a formal good-night. By doing this you would, perhaps, remind others that it was getting late, and cause the party to break up. If you meet the lady of the house on your way to the drawing-room door, take your leave of her as unobtrusively as possible, and slip away without attracting the attention of her ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... body that was distinguished from others,—that of a man who had been selected as a chieftain or ruler for the very reason that he surpassed the rest of his tribe in stature, and who now lies thus conspicuously inhumed upon the mountain-top, while the bones, of his followers are laid unobtrusively together in their burrows upon the plain below. The second habitual error is, that in this comparison of ages we divide time merely into past and present, and place these in the balance to be weighed against each other; not considering that the present is in our estimation not more than a ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... could say it of some things in "Charles I."—of the way he gave up his sword to Cromwell, of the way he came into the room in the last act and shut the door behind him. It was not a man coming on to a stage to meet some one. It was a king going to the scaffold, quietly, unobtrusively, and courageously. However often I played that scene with him, I knew that when he first came on he was not aware of my presence nor of any earthly presence: he seemed to be ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... brusquely from the other woman's hand and scanned it frowningly, her vivid red underlip caught between her teeth. Miss Clifford looked embarrassed. Esther moved unobtrusively across the room and examined the crystal lustres on ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... think; he has a positive passion for helping others. It is extraordinary what pains he will take to do a kind thing unobtrusively. ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... mention of anything dutiable in this declaration by 140 which corresponds with any of the goods mentioned in the first cable from Paris," a collector remarked unobtrusively to Herndon, "nor in 156 corresponding ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... Unobtrusively they opened for business, for he knew that publicity would spoil his chance of success. (Once convince a Londoner that he is one of a select few who know a restaurant, and he will stand an hour waiting for a table.) The first customer to enter received such attention that he ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... confusion, they were seated at the antique mahogany, with the dent near one edge where a Yankee cavalryman had rested his spurred foot too carelessly once upon a time. It was then observed that Hen, having silenced her great clapper, was unobtrusively gone from the midst. The circumstance proved of interest ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... was openly quizzical; he dodged a laughing backhander from Piers with a neat gesture of apology. It had not escaped his notice that the letter Piers had read had disappeared unobtrusively into an ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... morning, she had scarcely realised how unobtrusively she had been, as it were, their connecting link in all difficult or delicate matters, where their natures were not quite in tune. But now, Roy being a man, they must come to terms in ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... underchewing and overeating will cause mental and physical degeneration is much more valuable than the ability to demonstrate that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. This knowledge can be given so unobtrusively that the child does not realize that it is learning, for there are ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... The city editor unobtrusively studied Banneker out of placid, inscrutable eyes, soft as a dove's, while he chatted at large about theaters, politics, the news of the day. Afterward the applicant met the Celtic assistant, Mr. Mallory, who broadly ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the Fitzgerald patrol remains as the most tragic happening in the long and remarkable history of the Mounted Police. But, as already suggested, it startled our people into a fuller realization of what the men of the Force were and are doing so unobtrusively for the country at such constant risk to themselves. The passing of Fitzgerald and his companions on that frozen way will not have been in vain if our Canadian lads learn new lessons from the men whose silent tents are, at the end of the ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... hasten a lingering guest; and, with equal force of logic, mine host of the "Packhorse" spoke to White, the village carpenter, about a full-sized coffin; and his wife set the old crone to make a linen shroud, unobtrusively, in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... as we can perceive, Raleigh's success as a courtier was unclouded from 1582 to 1586, and these years are the most peaceful and uneventful in the record of his career. He took a confidential place by the Queen's side, but so unobtrusively that in these earliest years, at least, his presence leaves no perceptible mark on the political history of the country. Great in so many fields, eminent as a soldier, as a navigator, as a poet, as a courtier, there was a limit even to Raleigh's versatility, and he was not a statesman. ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... patriotic devotion will seem an impossibly distasteful consummation; and about tastes there is no disputing, but tastes are mainly creations of habit. Except for the disquieting name of the thing, there is today little stands in the way of a cosmopolitan order of human intercourse unobtrusively displacing national allegiance; except for vested interests in national offices and international discriminations, and except for those peoples among whom national life still is sufficiently bound ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... nursery, both boys were in bed. Merton's blue eyes were wide open, and fixed on her with mournful earnestness; Basil was asleep, the clothes tucked in well under his chin. He lay on his back, his mouth slightly opened; he was snoring gently, but unobtrusively. Poor child! no doubt he was tired enough. But how had Merton managed to make ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... Leseigneur, for Hippolyte called her so, on the chance of being right, he examined the room, but unobtrusively and by stealth. ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... if they were legitimate partners in a risky enterprise. We had to do it, though. Until they showed their hand we could do nothing but stand pat and wait for developments; and if they watched us unobtrusively, we did the same by them. It is not exactly soothing to the nerves, however, to be in touch all day and then lie down to sleep at night within a few feet of men whom you imagine are only awaiting the proper moment to introduce a chunk of lead ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... was futile; in spite of himself he shrank from people and hid himself unobtrusively in a corner of the first place he entered. He was hurt, wounded, sick to death; he longed to creep away somewhere and be alone ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... advertisement. She wrote in a formal way, giving her telephone number. That afternoon, apparently as soon as the letter had been delivered, a call came. The following morning she was the private secretary of Murray Dodge, sitting unobtrusively before a typewriter desk in a sort of little anteroom that guarded the door ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... haphazard as an abiding place. By camping-out expeditions and the cautious gleaning of facts from those who had the repute of knowing the country, useful information had been acquired unobtrusively. We were determined to have the best obtainable isle. More than one locality was favourably considered ere good fortune decided to send us hither to spy out the land. A camp-out on the shore of then unnamed Brammo ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... on it had become a battalion, which marched rapidly in the direction of the barracks of the Fifth Regiment of regulars in the old Presidio. At the next corner the leader of the battalion unobtrusively saluted a man in uniform who stepped suddenly out of a doorway. A few Japanese words were exchanged in ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... arise easily, and to the very end connect themselves naturally and unobtrusively with the characters of which they are a part, is to be said perhaps more truly of this than of any other of Dickens's novels. There is a profusion of distinct and distinguishable people, and a prodigal wealth of detail; but unity ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... found the responsibility of looking after her and Elsie not a little sobering; and he was quite alive to the fact that at Monte Carlo, that place of call of the adventurers of the world, one's womankind need a protecting male presence. Quietly and unobtrusively Sir Tancred seconded him in this matter; if Dorothy had the fancy to take the air in the gardens after dinner, she found that he or Lord Crosland, or both of them, deserted the tables till she went back to the hotel, and strolled with her and the children. She ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... Linnville. She did have a great many letters from people who we were surprised to hear had ever heard of us, and they were very interesting. Still it did take time to read them; and after she had finished them all, Mrs. Jameson commenced to speak on her own account. She had some notes which she consulted unobtrusively from time to time. She dwelt mainly upon the vast improvement for the better in our condition during the last hundred years. She mentioned in this connection Robert Browning, the benefit of whose teaching was denied our ancestors of a hundred ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... kitchen Nora, and Old John's son at the wheel of our one motorcar, were not beautifully and entirely adequate, so unassumingly and so perfectly did Jerry unmistakably "fit in." (There are no other words that so exactly express what I mean.) And in the end, even his charm and his triumph were so unobtrusively complete that I never thought of being surprised at the prompt capitulation of both Father ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... made their way as the bell clanged, and the throng filed into their places most reverently. It was a pleasant sight. I came into rank unobtrusively at the back, among the rustling and nudging lay brethren. In other circumstances it would have amused me to see the grave faces they turned towards the altar, and to hear all the while the confused scuffling as they trod on each other's toes, ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... you and bow before your perpetual kindnesses and goodness,—all the more because you exercise them unobtrusively, as it were in the shade, without any flourish of trumpets ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... now an outcast, an Ishmaelite, with every man's hand raised against him. It was not the first time. For this quiet-going man had unobtrusively learnt many tongues, and, while no one heeded him, he had studied the ways of this Eastern land with no ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... Patty unobtrusively deflected the rest of the committee from a consideration of Fra Angelico, and the three heads bent delightedly over ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... Unobtrusively, Hank dropped toward the tail of the group. He spent a long time peering at two silver panthers, gifts of the first Queen Elizabeth of England to Boris Godunov. The Progressive Tours assembly passed on into ...
— Combat • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... "not actually burdened with fat." Yes, she was a very cleanly, very thin, very prudent, very particular person, that never joined in any sports or amusements; never joked or participated in any happy events in a happy, joyous fashion, but lived unobtrusively, and, I may say, coldly, in her own prim, cold, bloodless, ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... beautifully his own. One of his oils represented a peasant-girl of the south, leaning upon a black fence, looking off into her own gray future, with that wistful, patient gaze so common to the low-class Russian. The background was a shadowy suggestion of steppe farm-land, unobtrusively implying vast distances of bluish-gray. The other work, more pretentious in subject but even more severely simple in treatment, was that of a woman of fashion, seated by a table on which stood a lighted lamp, the glow from which shone full ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... gentleman," as the Autocrat has wisely said, is always "calm-eyed." There is just enough abstraction in his look to denote his individual power and the capacity for self-contemplation, while he is, nevertheless, quietly and unobtrusively observant. He does not seek, neither does he evade your observation. Snobs and prigs do the first; bashful and mean people do the second. There are some men who, on meeting your eye, immediately assume an expression quite different from the one which they previously ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... not at all despair. Unobtrusively he gradually multiplied the proofs of his gallantry; and by slow degrees the object of his attentions suffered her demeanour towards ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... the descent of a host of thieves and scoundrels to commit wide-spread plunder would teach the public somewhat severely how much they owe to the efficient management of this department of railway business, and how well, constantly and vigilantly—though unobtrusively—their interests are ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... is the thought of man, there was also another stream of mental activity flowing in the darker recesses of Mr. Brumley's mind. Unobtrusively he was trying to count the money in his ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... institution?" "No," was the reply, "he was a benevolent institution." Women of our class may be, they ought to be, "benevolent institutions." And such women exist among us; pity is there are so few of them. They can unobtrusively be centres of happiness, and knowledge, and generous attitudes of mind. Now there ought to be more of such women, and I look to our High Schools with hope. They ought to make ...
— Three Addresses to Girls at School • James Maurice Wilson
... his universal sympathy is the doctrine, not very profound or novel, that opposite qualities complement one another, and must be joined in order to give life a happy completeness. This thread runs through many plays, sometimes unobtrusively, as in La fiera, Amor y ciencia, La de San Quintn, sometimes erected into the dogma of primary concern, as in Alma y vida (the union of spirit and physical vigor), La loca de la casa (evil and good, ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... lower animals. "It's a disgrace to one's face, which ought to be exclusively for better things. It's really too primitive, this penny-in-the-slot sort of arrangement. There ought to be a tiny trap-door in one's chest somewhere, so that one could just slip food in unobtrusively, at a meal, and go on talking and laughing as if nothing ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... full of permanent examples of the results of Mr. Rentoul Smiles's spiritual attitude towards his fellow-men, Edward Henry was presented to Isabel Joy. The next instant the two men and the housekeeper had unobtrusively retired, and he was alone with his objective. In truth, Seven Sachs was a ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... evening of music or whist, or to an occasional public concert. The color began to come back into the cheeks whence it had been so long absent, and that glint of grief in the gray eyes grew dimmer. I spoke no word of love, but unobtrusively carried on a campaign to let her see how badly I yearned for her. The new books, the best sweets, the prettiest flowers, such delicate compliments as sincerity could dictate—all these I gave her and watched patiently to see the dawning of love on ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... disappointed when he discovered that that protuberance beneath the conductor's brass-buttoned coat was nothing more deadly than a leather wallet, pretty well filled with bills and loose silver—for that isolated railroad did a good cash business and discriminating conductors grew unobtrusively wealthy. And what was still more strange to Pete was the fact that the conductor seemed to know where each person was going, without having to refer to any penciled notation or other ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... way. Sadly against her will she gave way. One morning in early March, she absented herself from her place in the class-room without even taking leave of her beloved schoolgirls, whom she had tried so hard unobtrusively to train up towards a rational understanding of the universe around them, and sat down to write a final letter of farewell to poor straight-laced kind-hearted Miss Smith-Waters. She sat down to it with a sigh; for Miss Smith-Waters, ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... distant deep voice of Dr. Aloys Ormond was dimly audible, coming from the direction of the lecture room, and Cavender followed its faint reverberations down a narrow corridor until he reached a closed door. He eased the door open and slipped unobtrusively into the back of the ...
— Ham Sandwich • James H. Schmitz
... their heaviness, but which gratified all by their undoubted grandeur and dignity. The quiet yet splendid generosity of Chantrey was equally characteristic of his country. He assisted the needy largely and unobtrusively. Instances of his bounty are on record which would do honor to the wealthiest patron of art. How much more luster do they shed upon the indefatigable day-laborer? If we follow the sculptor from his studio to the open ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... parts of the country, and from almost every class, I have received many and cordial assurances that my former books were sources not only of pleasure, but also of help and benefit, and I am deeply grateful for the privilege of unobtrusively entering so many households, and saying words on that subject which is inseparable ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... unobtrusively to another excited cluster. There the same procedure was followed. A quiet-voiced man was talking, lauding the exploit of the three embattled Earthmen, skillfully and subtly enkindling enthusiasm, raising wholesome doubts as to the invulnerability ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... a sensation of moving unobtrusively aside from a direct encounter. He looked across the room and started at something which he ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... countenance, except for the aggressive hardness in his eyes. Vane had noticed this look, and it had aroused his dislike, but he had not observed it in the eyes of Miss Horsfield, though it was present now and then. Nor did he realize that while she chatted she was unobtrusively studying him. She had not favored him with much notice when she was in his company on a previous occasion; he had been a man of no ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... cook of the Seamew could collect his scattered senses a pattering sounded on the stairs, and a bulldog came unobtrusively into the room. It was a perfectly bred animal, with at least a dozen points about it calling for notice and admiration, but all that the cook noticed was the excellent preservation of ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... advice to you two? (To CARVE.) You said you didn't want to be Ilam Carve. Don't be Ilam Carve. Let Ilam Carve continue his theoretical repose in the Abbey and you continue to be somebody else. It will save a vast amount of trouble, and nobody will be a penny the worse. Leave England—unobtrusively. If you feel homesick, arrange to come back during a general election, and you will be absolutely unnoticed. You have money. If you need more, I can dispose of as many new pictures as you ...
— The Great Adventure • Arnold Bennett
... passively, and of drifting further toward darkness. We must possess ourselves with an almost infinite patience and vigilance. She, after all, must bear the brunt of this fight with death; but we must be ever on hand to give her support, and it must be given also unobtrusively, with all the tact we possess. We can let her see that we are more cheerful in our renewed hope, but we must ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... and trembles! He had not seen, in the quiet maiden, moving among and ministering to the children so unobtrusively, the one he had parted from years before—the one to whom he had been so false. But her voice has startled his ears with the familiar ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... the greater number of her patients do not belong to any of these classes absolutely, but that some of them have tendencies leading in these various directions. And it is her privilege to recognize the trend of her sick patient's mental workings, and to so deftly and unobtrusively encourage the recognition of facts as things which are to be used—not as stumbling-blocks—that her mental nursing, as her physical, shall be directed toward health. She can help her patient to accept illness and suffering as realities ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... the depth of what he feared concerning Lufa—that she was simply, unobtrusively, unconsciously, ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... uproar created by Bruce's defiant announcement in the Express of Blind Charlie's threatened treachery. That sensation reigned for a day or two, then was almost forgotten in a greater. This second sensation made its initial appearance quite unobtrusively; it had a bare dozen lines down in a corner of the same issue of the Express that had contained Bruce's defiance and Doctor Sherman's departure. The substance of the item was that two cases of illness had been reported from the negro quarter in River Court, and that the doctors said the symptoms ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... than a heedless glance. That, at least, was La Mothe's first impressions. But when he saw the same face in the lower hall, again at the stair-head, yet again in the ante-room, and recognized that the plainly dressed serving-man had kept them under observation at every turn, unobtrusively but of evident purpose, he decided that a casual stranger could not have penetrated to the heart of Amboise without first giving a good account of himself. The watcher was Hugues, the Dauphin's valet. And yet when Villon gently ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... minutes, conscious of the foot-lights, Miss Flagg maintained upon her lovely face a fixed and intent expression, and then slowly and unobtrusively drew back to a seat in the rear of the box. In the' darkest recesses she found Holworthy, shut off from a view of the stage by ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... he proceeds slowly and unobtrusively to instruct them. It takes only a few lines until he has made them believe all he wants them to; before the end of his oration he has them crying out upon the murderers of their beloved Caesar, for whose lives ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... surprise of the young master of the house, Owen made no attempt to dissuade. Very unobtrusively he pointed out that for many years he had been accustomed to carry out the wishes of Harry's father, and that he was bound to fulfill his last wish ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... out of the house, still as death, except for Mrs. Marston's soft yet all-pervading snores. Out in the graveyard, where as yet no bird sang, it was as if the dead had arisen in the stark hours between twelve and two, and were waiting unobtrusively, majestically, each by his own bed, to go down and break their long fast with the bee and the grass-snake in refectories too minute and too immortal to be known by the living. The tombstones seemed taller, seemed to have a presence behind them; the lush grass, lying grey and heavy with dew, seemed ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... content. He probably knew then, as Mr. Gerard certainly did, that war must come. But he also knew that if he struck too early he would divide the nation. He waited till the current of opinion had time to develop, carefully though unobtrusively directing it in such a fashion as to prepare it for eventualities. So well did he succeed that when in the spring of 1917 Prussia proclaimed a revival of her policy of unmitigated murder directed not only against belligerents but avowedly against neutrals also, ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... well in the county—she had made him to be accepted, not only by reason of his wealth, but also because he was her husband; she had roused no one's envy—she had never given cause for spite or jealousy—she had made him popular as well as herself. They had lived quietly and unobtrusively; they had, of course, had everything of the best; their horses and carriages were irreproachable, but they had not had more of them than their neighbours. They had entertained freely, and they had given their guests ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... after the day's work he took a back seat; he went about with the poorest boys and behaved as unobtrusively as possible. But sometimes a desperate mood came over him, and at times he would make himself conspicuous by behavior that would have made old Lasse weep; as, for example, when he defiantly sat upon a ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the hair back from Betty's hot forehead, while Amy sprinkled some toilet water on a fresh handkerchief and slipped it unobtrusively into Betty's other hand, "we'll just sit here and wait ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... worthy of the least notice: but he soon found that he must either abandon this line of policy or himself be left out in the cold, for the Montijos, one and all, persisted in including Jack in the conversation; and very quietly and unobtrusively, but none the less firmly, contrived to make Senor Alvaros understand that the young Englishman was already regarded as one of themselves. Seeing this, he changed his tactics and artfully endeavoured to entrap Jack into an expression of opinion upon the politics of the island: but the ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... tall forest creature with yearnings, which interfered with her appetite for sand-dabs. He might unobtrusively have stayed, she thought, and put himself at her service. Not the most clinging Old Man of the Sea could continue to cling if that square-chinned bronze statue pointed out the wisdom of letting go. But no doubt he was at home near Bakersfield, before this—Angela seldom named Nick in ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... that the snow-walls melted under this ordeal; nothing of the sort. Their tendency to do so was checked effectually, not only by a sharp frost, but by the solid backing of snow behind them; and the little that did give way in close proximity to the fire ran unobtrusively down to the earth and crept away under the snow towards the sea, for Bellew had made his camp with the fire at its lower end, so that not a drop of water could by any means reach the ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... atrocious designs upon Bernard, and mean to checkmate them. If, after such a letter, she has the cheek to send us her Yankee girl to chaperon, I shall consider her lost to all sense of shame and all notions of decency. But she won't, of course. She'll withdraw her unobtrusively." And Lucy flung the peccant sheet that had roused all this wrath on to the back of ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... easiest thing in the world. This ease was, however, the result of a splendid mastery of his art. Thus he arranges the fifty-two figures in the School of Athens, or the three figures of the Madonna of the Chair, so simply and unobtrusively that we might imagine such feats were an every-day affair. Yet in both cases he solves most difficult problems of composition with a success scarcely paralleled ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll |
