"Ball" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... A popular assembly, like the House of Commons, or the French Chamber, or the American Congress, is commanded by these two powers,—first by a fact, then by skill of statement. Put the argument into a concrete shape, into an image, some hard phrase, round and solid as a ball, which they can see and handle and carry home with them, and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... who played with ideas as one tosses a ball, without perceiving that they continually exchanged the same ones, protested in the name of thought ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... appreciated the sacrifice of the late dances, for she knew her little companion had a passionate pleasure in this exercise, taking her steps to the music like a conscientious fairy. Society, moreover, had no drawbacks for her; she liked even the tiresome parts—the heat of ball-rooms, the dulness of dinners, the crush at the door, the awkward waiting for the carriage. During the day, in this vehicle, beside her stepmother, she sat in a small fixed, appreciative posture, bending forward and faintly smiling, as if she had been ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... less than a quarter of an hour after that she found Cucurullo sitting on one of the stone chain-posts outside the Palazzo Altieri, his two long legs hanging down almost to the pavement, and his humped body looking like a large ball covered with a short brown cloak, and surmounted by a servant's high-crowned black felt hat with a wide brim. He was not asleep, for he hardly ever slept, and he knew his mistress's light step before he saw her at his elbow. In a moment he had explained ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... his back, a hat on his head, an umbrella under his arm, and a large stable-lantern in his hand? Yet what would be thought, on the other hand, if he precipitated himself into the inhospitable night and the war of the elements in his ball-dress? "When the king came in to see the guests, he saw a man who had not on a wedding-garment;" he saw a man who determined to live in the Church as he had lived out of it, who would not use his privileges, who would not exchange reason for faith, ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... some time, the same quantity of water may be taken daily before each meal. Supposing no action takes place on rising or shortly after, a small injection of warm water may be resorted to. After each movement of the bowels, a small hand-ball syringeful of cold water should be thrown into the rectum and retained. A soup plateful of coarse oatmeal porridge (made with water and taken according to the Scotch method, viz., by filling half the spoon with the hot porridge and the other with cold milk) each night at ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... indeed resemble his countryman Heine. One of the necessities of his nature was human society—not simply society, however, but people who could appreciate him, who could fall in with his moods, and either follow intelligently when he led, or lend him a stimulating and helping hand to keep the ball of wit and jollity rolling. An illustration of this is found in the fact that he "did not love the society of women. If he could not mystify them, or draw them into the circle of his fantasies, or discover in them any decided talent for comicality, he preferred ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... animal, however, bounded out of the way, when I, having my gun loaded, fired at the bull, which was not three yards from me. The ball penetrating his chest, he fell dead. The Indians now returned, and began cutting up the cow. While they were so engaged, another cow, which they supposed to be the mother of the one they had killed, galloped towards us, ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... of books follow; one "The First Three Gospels", by the Reverend Estlin Carpenter; the other on "Use and Disuse", directed against the doctrine of use-inheritance, by Mr. Platt Ball, who not only sent the book but appealed to him for advice as to his future course in undertaking a larger work on the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... her over the seas, as a man hands his lady down a ball-room. She was so swift so strong: throbbing-full of life. He loved her, and began to ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... in the burning sun, blew loudly the air of the soldier's song: "Now, adieu, Louisa, wipe your face, every ball does not hit." Mournfully the melody sounded in the stillness, like accusing spirits who wept the insult of the ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... for she thought to herself, she would have liked to go to the dance too; and at last she begged her mother very hard to let her go. "You! Cinderella?" said she; "you who have nothing to wear, no clothes at all, and who cannot even dance—you want to go to the ball?" And when she kept on begging—to get rid of her, she said at last, "I will throw this basinful of peas into the ash heap, and if you have picked them all out in two hours' time you shall go to the feast too." Then she threw the peas into the ashes; ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg
... novel markedly resemble, in structure, acts of a play; in particular, the striking third part, entirely concerned with the events of a week and full of flashing pictures, such as the scene of the Town Ball. But the culmination of this part, indeed, the climax of the whole book, comes in the scene of the Fair, with its atmosphere of carnival, its delirium of outdoor mood, and its tremendous encounter between Brandon and ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... is, and worn and battered, As I lift it from the stall; And the leaves are frayed and tattered, And the pendent sides are shattered, Pierced and blackened by a ball. ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... confinement; Colonel Rawlings, Colonel Hobby, Major (Otho) Williams, etc. Rawlings and Williams were wounded, others were also wounded, among them Lieutenant Hanson (a young Gent'n from Va.) who was Shot through ye Shoulder with a Musq't Ball of which wound he Died ye end ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... foreign affairs came to Sir Frederick and unbosomed himself of his troubles. He said: "According to the usual procedure I ought to give a ball in honor of the union of our house with the royal family of England. My palace is large enough, but my salary is only eight hundred a year, and the expense would eat ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... the Carder lived a Spinner. This man used to put a ball of cotton on a stick, and then he pulled out a bit of the cotton without breaking it, and tied it to another little stick with a weight on it. Then he twisted the weight, and set it a-spinning; and as it span, he held the cotton ball in one hand, and pulled out the cotton with the other, working ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... Provosts of Eton and King's (who at that time owned this piece of patronage) Warden of King's Hall at Cambridge, that royal foundation which was eventually absorbed into Trinity College. As Warden (I quote from Mr W. W. Rouse Ball's privately printed account of King's Hall) he introduced into the College "some scheme of reorganization, which involved a division of the Society into four classes, fellows, scholars, commoners, and servi-commoners.... The scheme, whatever it was, was abandoned on Blacman's resignation" ...
— Henry the Sixth - A Reprint of John Blacman's Memoir with Translation and Notes • John Blacman
... Isvoschtschik stopped before a pavilion where music was jingling inspiriting tunes; up the steps we were hurried, and at the top found ourselves, travel-stained and tired, in the midst of a wild and furious Finnish, or, to speak more properly, Russian ball. ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... them in succession. On the evening of June 15th, news was brought to the Duke at Brussels that the enemy had passed the frontier and were engaging the Prussian outposts. He at once gave the necessary orders for the advance, and after midnight showed himself at the now famous ball of the Duchess of Richmond. At eleven the next forenoon he was at QuatreBras, where his army was engaged in beating off an attack by Marshal Ney, while Blucher was being pounded by Napoleon a few miles ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... to Lady Clonbrony—'and so, Miss Nugent, you are going to have great doings, I'm told, and a wonderful grand gala. There's nothing in the wide world equal to being in a good, handsome crowd. No later now than the last ball at the Castle that was before I left Dublin, Miss Nugent—the apartments, owing to the popularity of my lady-lieutenant, was so throng—so throng—that I remember very well, in the doorway, a lady—and a very genteel woman she was too, though a stranger ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... the river bank one afternoon to rest after an unusually exciting game of ball when they had just managed to nose out their ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... a gay company, the King's representative being as keen a pleasure-seeker as the rest. On Frontenac's suggestion, private theatricals were added to the polite diversions of Quebec. The Marquis de Tracy's ball far back in 1667 had given grievous offence to the Jesuits, and the unholy acting of plays was now declared an open profanity. Nicomede and Mithridate were condemned as immoral; but when Tartuffe, Moliere's mordant satire upon religious hypocrisy, was put ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... we all three listened; and Raffles was right. Then I saw two things in one glance. Raffles had stepped a few inches backward, and stood poised upon the ball of each foot, his arms half raised, a light in his eyes. And another kind of light was breaking over the crass features of our ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... dinner was announced, all the Turkish officers went into an adjoining room, and turning their faces to the east, prostrated themselves to the floor in prayer. Then we were all conducted to a large salon, where each being provided with a silver ewer and basin, a little ball of highly perfumed soap and a napkin, set out on small tables, each guest washed his hands. Adjacent to this salon was the dining-room, or, rather, the banqueting room, a very large and artistically frescoed ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... ran after him. The driver was horribly afraid, and lashed on the horses, as everybody else had done before, and they, taking fright, galloped away over the log-road with a marvellous clatter. Meanwhile, however, the young nobleman saw by the light of the moon how that the apparition flattened a ball of horse-dung whereon it trod, and straightway felt sure within himself that it was no ghost. Whereupon he called to the driver to stop; and as the man would not hearken to him, he sprang out of the carriage, drew his rapier, and hastened to attack the ghost. When the ghost saw this ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... are not at all difficult to naturalize in a well-drained, shady spot in the garden, should be lifted with a good ball of earth and plenty ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... heaping his plate with rich cakes, "has been made before now in strange places. Why not here? We sit here in close touch with one of the most interesting phases of modern life. We can even hear the voice of fate, the click of the little ball as it finishes its momentous journey and sinks to rest. Why should we, too, not speak of ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Parbleu! gentlemen, if you saw me naked, you would laugh! Look at my hand, a saber-cut across the palm, to the bone, to save my head, taken up with three stitches, and five days afterwards I was playing ball with an English general, a prisoner in Madrid, against the wall of the convent of the Santa Maria de la Castita! At Arcola, by the great devil himself! that was an action. Every man there, gentlemen, swallowed as much smoke in five minutes as would smother you all in ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... yearly leaf. Upon the Brussels carpet was a massive mahogany dining table, and facing the window a Georgian chiffonier, brass railed and surmounted by a convex mirror. The mantlepiece was draped in red serge, ball fringed. There were bronzes upon it and a marble clock, while above was an overmantel, columned and bemirrored, upon the shelves of which reposed sorrowful examples of Doulton ware and a pair of wrought-iron candlesticks. ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... life before my friends had done wishing me joy. Yet I chose with caution—a girl bred wholly in the country, who never knew luxury beyond one silk gown, nor dissipation above the annual gala of a race ball. Yet she now plays her part in all the extravagant fopperies of fashion and the town with as ready a grace as if she never had seen a bush or a grass-plot out of Grosvenor Square! I am sneered at by all my acquaintance, and paragraphed in the newspapers. She dissipates my fortune, and contradicts ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... king, wishes to know from the abbot: "What is the distance from heaven to earth; what God is doing in heaven; what the Pope is thinking of." The cook, disguised as the abbot, answers: "As long as this ball of thread. Rewarding the good, and punishing the wicked. He thinks he is speaking with the abbot, and on the contrary, is talking to ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... represent the world by a Scarabeus, because this insect pushes, in a direction contrary to that in which it proceeds, a ball containing its eggs, just as the heaven of the fixed stars causes the revolution of the sun, (the yolk of an egg) in an ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... that country. Whereupon Mr. Jefferson solemnly asks us "to observe the double entendre on the word King." Du Ponceau told this to Tenche Coxe, who told it to Jefferson. Such stuff is repeated in connection with descriptions of how General and Mrs. Washington sat on a raised sofa at a ball, and all the dancers bowed to them,—and how Mrs. Knox mounted the steps unbidden, and, finding the sofa too small for three, had to go down. We are told that at one time John Adams cried, "Damn 'em! you see that an elective government will not do,"—and that at another he complimented ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... dignity, but artist-like admired aptness and gracefulness, even in the most insignificant trifles, that in this drama called Nausicaa, or "The Washerwomen," in which, after Homer, the princess at the end of the washing, amuses herself at a game of ball with her maids, Sophocles himself played at ball, and by his grace in this exercise acquired much applause. The great poet, the respected Athenian citizen, the man who had already perhaps been a General, appeared publicly in woman's clothes, and as, on account ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... conversation was prudent, Tracy asked with a grim little smile whether the picket line was sufficiently advanced. The whole was characteristic of his thoroughness in the performance of duty and his silent way of letting it speak for itself. He was struck in the breast and knocked down by a spent ball in the assault by Reilly's brigade at Utoy Creek on August 6th, but in a week was on duty again, though he never wholly recovered from the injury to his lungs. [Footnote: Being in delicate health after the war, he was made Governor of the National Home for disabled soldiers at Dayton, ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... people in general that I have been forced to put on all my address, and employ my best skill to conciliate matters. It begins to work a little favourably, but not certainly, because the perverseness of these folks, built upon their disaffection, makes the task very difficult. We had a little ball last night, to celebrate His Majesty's birthday—purely military; that is the men were all officers except one. The female branches of the Tory families came readily enough, but not one man would accept the invitation because it was the King's birthday. If it had not ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... veritable embodiment of the new spirit which is invading the Bladesover system and altering England. Mr. Ponderevo is restless and discontented. He does not like Wimblehurst. "One rubs along. But there's no development—no growth. They just come along here and buy pills when they want 'em—and a horse-ball or such. They've got to be ill before there's a prescription. That sort they are. You can't get 'em to launch out, you can't get 'em ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... able to return it, except to a wise man. For suppose I do return it to him, he cannot receive it, he is not any longer able to receive such a thing, he has lost the knowledge of how to use it. You would not bid me throw back [Footnote: i.e. in the game of ball.] a ball to a man who has lost his hand; it is folly to give any one what he cannot receive. If I am to begin to reply to the last argument, I say that I should not give him what he is unable to take; but I would return it, even though he is not able to receive it. I cannot lay him ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... all my days if I might pass them in such a place. In fact half the pleasure of inhabiting this spacious saloon would be that of using one's legs, of strolling up and down past the windows, one by one, and making desultory journeys from station to station and corner to corner. Near by is a colossal ball-room, domed and pilastered like a Renaissance cathedral, and super-abundantly decorated with marble effigies, all yellow and grey ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... it, please," said Polly, lying back in her chair and covering her eyes with her hand. "It cuts like a knife to part with dad's last present. Well, I'm rightly punished. What a fool I was to get all those Japanese things from Spilman and that fancy ball-dress for the ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... With a ball through his right foot, Bud hopped out of the path of the stream of lead and discharged each revolver once at the same spot. The result was a broken hand and a wrecked gun for Stelton, who, unfortunately, did not know that ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... future to her personal and rather pampered tastes was what she most took for granted, so that he could see her, for all her Dresden-china shoes and her flutter of wondrous befrilled contemporary skirts, skip by the side of the coming age as over the floor of a ball-room, keeping step with its monstrous stride and prepared for every figure of the dance. Her outlook took form to him suddenly as a great square sunny window that hung in assured fashion over the immensity of life. There rose toward it as from a vast swarming plaza a high tide of emotion and ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... the head with the flat of a lance, and when they turn to guard against it, a lance is thrust into the heart. Since breechloaders have begun to be used by the walrus-hunters, they often prefer to kill the harpooned walruses with a ball instead of "lancing" them. To shoot an unharpooned walrus, on the other hand, the walrus hunters formerly considered an unpardonable piece of thoughtlessness, because the animal was in this way generally wounded or killed without any advantage accruing. They therefore ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... "The ball had penetrated the breast below the throat. It did not bleed much externally; but Bertrarn, accustomed to see gun-shot. wounds, thought it the more alarming. "Good God! what shall we do for this poor woman?" said he to Hazlewood, the circumstances superseding the necessity ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... not, that one after another the five horses fell, pierced with missiles or crushed and stunned by rocks crashing down from above, that Kent himself was shot through the brain, and Wren skewered through the arm by a Tonto shaft, and plugged with a round rifle ball in the shoulder. Sergeant Carmody bound up his captain's wound as best he could, and by rare good luck, keeping up a bold front, and answering every shot, they fought their way to this little refuge in the rocks, and there, behind improvised barricades or bowlders, "stood off" their savage ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... through all the cells, And strong with thyme the new-made honey smells. So in their caves the brawny Cyclops sweat, When with huge strokes the stubborn wedge they beat, And all the unshapen thunderbolt complete; Alternately their hammers rise and fall; Whilst griping tongs turn round the glowing ball. With puffing bellows some the flames increase, And some in waters dip the hissing mass; 220 Their beaten anvils dreadfully resound, And AEtna shakes all o'er, and thunders under-ground. Thus, if great things we may with small compare, The busy swarms their different labours share. Desire of profit ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... were made by other divinities to avert the conflict, but without success. The battle was a strenuous one. Ao Ch'in received a ball of fire full on his head, and his army was threatened with disaster when Tz'u-hang Ta-shih appeared with his bottle of lustral water. He sprinkled the combatants with this magic fluid, using a willow-branch ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... of my face an' whirled around a few times an' then sort o' crumbled up in a heap, with him still shuttin' off the circulation in my legs. "Down!" sez he, "an' now the ball is dead." ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... and fought bravely against each other, while a battle was a kind of glorified tournament. "It is a shame," he used to say, "that a man of spirit should be exposed to be killed by a miserable stone or iron ball against which he cannot ...
— Bayard: The Good Knight Without Fear And Without Reproach • Christopher Hare
... to parties nowadays," said Mrs. Linforth, and Sir John Casson, leaning his back against the wall of the ball-room, puzzled his brains for the name of the lady with the pleasant winning face to whom he had just been introduced. At first it had seemed to him merely that her hearing was better than his. The "nowadays," however, showed that ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... leaped through the smoke hole of the igloo at East Cape she rolled like a purple ball off the roof. Jumping to her feet she darted down the row of igloos. Pausing for a dash into an igloo, she emerged a moment later bearing under one arm a pile of fur garments and under the other ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... mean to add to my scanty little stack the pleasure of attending on you. You are quite an event in my life. I look forward to reading to you and writing for you, as some girls look forward to a new dress, or a first ball. Do you think it very strange of me to tell you so openly just what I have in my mind? I can't help it! I say what I think to my father and to our poor neighbors hereabouts—and I can't alter my ways at a moment's ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... metres. While he was examining this monstrous production of the vegetable kingdom, the report of his piece had caused a great many blacks to come out of their huts, who advanced towards Mr. Correard, doubtless, with the hope of obtaining from him some powder, ball, or tobacco. While he was loading his piece, he fixed his eyes upon an old man, whose respectable look announced a good disposition; his beard and hair were white, and his stature colossal; he called himself Sambadurand. When he ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... to find principally vertebrates of the reptile and bird order, they carried guns and cartridges loaded with buckshot and No. 1, trusting for solid-ball projectiles to their revolvers, which they shoved into their belts. They also took test-tubes for experiments on the Saturnian bacilli. Hanging a bucket under the pipe leading from the roof, to catch any rain that might fall—for they remembered ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... Batti.—(A ball.) A subsept of the Uika clan of Gonds in Betul, so named because their priest stole balls of cooked mahua. They do not kill or eat goats or sheep, and throw ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... omens, aforesaid witness deposes that the sceptre, ball, and cross were struck by lightning out of King John's hand, in the Schools quadrangle at Oxford, immediately on the accession of William the Reformer; and all the world is cognusant that York Minster, the Royal Exchange, and the Houses of Parliament were destroyed by fire near about the commencement ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... "Kaus al-Banduk;" the "pellet bow" of modern India; with two strings joined by a bit of cloth which supports a ball of dry clay or stone. It is chiefly ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Gervaise, for a while, remained undecided. She was tempted to kick the bundle of dirty clothes on one side, and to sit down and sew. But Lantier's regular breathing ended by reassuring her. She took the ball of blue and the piece of soap remaining from her last washing, and going up to the little ones who were quietly playing with some old corks in front of the window, she kissed them, and said in ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... center of a cavity set into a table like a circular wash-basin, with an outer rim turned slightly inward. The "croupier" revolves the wheel to the right. With a quick motion of his middle finger he flicks a marble, usually of ivory, to the left. At the Vesper Club, always up-to-date, the ball was of platinum, not of ivory. The disc with its sloping sides is provided with a number of brass rods, some perpendicular, some horizontal. As the ball and the wheel lose momentum the ball strikes against the rods and finally ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... of parting at length approached. At half an hour before mid-night, a period ascertained by the consumption of the huge waxen torch, the ball which was secured to it fell clanging into the brazen basin placed beneath, and announced to all the hour of rest. The old glee-man paused in his song, instantaneously, and in the middle of a stanza, and the household were all on foot at the signal, some retiring to their own apartments, others lighting ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... a light line round his waist. He swarmed up the bare pole. He rove the line through the block at the top of the staff and slid to earth again. He bent the halyard to the flag. It ran up, a neat ball. With a sharp chuck at the line Mr. Phillips broke it out. The Royal Standard of Salissa fluttered in the ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... away from the fair grounds Tish was very silent; but just as we reached the Bailey place, with Bettina and young Jasper McCutcheon batting a ball about on the tennis court, ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... however, shows the Captain's remark to be perfectly just," said Barbican. "Rodman's ordinary 15 inch Columbiad requires a charge of 100 pounds of mammoth powder to throw a ball of 500 pounds weight. What could such a charge do with a ball weighing 30 times as much or 15,000 pounds? Reflect on the enormous weight everything must have on the surface of the Sun! Your hat, for instance, would weigh 20 or 30 pounds. ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... an affair as the breakfast, and was quite as noisy, without the tears. Then came the dessert and some more toasts. Then came the tea and coffee; and then, the ball. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... ye the soft word," says Flannagan, "an' apologies for takin' ye for a decorated rubber ball, an' bouncin' ye on the floor! 'Twas wrong of me. Sure, now, Misther Bill, an' is there more needed between gentlemen?" He looked for help to Madame Bill, who gazed at the smoke of her cheroot and ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... always said, 'The Lord loved him best.' You never knowed Pelican. He was all sorts of a character—got his nickname from his nose—they weren't no other one like it, and him and that nose made history in the river country. His first marriage was to Addie Stringer, up at Ball's Landing, and it was all right as fer as it went. They started on their honeymoon from Ball's Landing on the steamer Little Tiger. They was goin' down to Wide Awake, some thirty miles. The boat caught fire, Pelican swum out on a crackerbox, and when they found the body ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis
... "Menagiana," vol. iii. p. 376. Edition of 1716. Equally happy were Lord Chesterfield's lines to a young lady who appeared at a Dublin ball, with ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... hesitate?" inquired Mr. Archer. "The poor souls who are fallen to such a way of life, pray what have they to lose? If they get the money, well; but if a ball should put them from their troubles, why, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with satisfaction. He was a farmer's son, and seldom had any money in his possession. He already had twenty-five cents saved up toward the purchase of a junior ball, and the stranger's gratuity would just make up the sum necessary to secure it. He was in a hurry to make the purchase, and, accordingly, no sooner had he received the money than he started at once for ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... this clerical vagabond, Beecher, blessed the weapons, and encouraged the party to go forth and "do or die" in the sublime "cause of nigger freedom!" In all human probability, sweet Mary Dutton's rifle may have sped the ball that pierced the side of Sheriff Jones, the officer of the law, while in the honest discharge of a sworn duty! Subsequent murders, where pro-slavery men were shot down with these rifles, we attribute to the omen that Beecher ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... as the Miss Mowbray I had seen at the birthday ball looked no more than eighteen, and—I was told—confessed to twenty. The Mowbrays, I learned by a little further research in Burke, were distantly connected by marriage with the family of Baumenburg-Drippe. This seemed an odd coincidence, ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... cruelty to the humble, to the meek, to the undiscerning, to the thoughtless? Nor age, nor business, nor distress can erase the dear image from my imagination. In the same week, I saw her dressed for a ball, and in a shroud. How ill did the habit of death become the pretty trifler! I still behold the smiling earth—A large train of disasters were coming on to my memory, when my servant knocked at my closet-door, and interrupted me with a letter, ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... gloom; balked of their prey, and savage for some amends. There was a moment's pause—a hurried, eager consultation; then he heard the well-known sound of a charge being rammed down, and the sharp drawing out of a ramrod; there was a flash, a report, a line of light flamed a second in his sight; a ball hissed past him with a loud, singing rush, and bedded itself in the timber, a few inches above his uncovered hair. A dead silence followed; then the muttering of ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... creatures may kill a person, especially within the period from the seventeenth day of Tammuz to the ninth day of Ab, when the demons exercise their power. The most dangerous one among them is Keteb, the sight of whom kill men as well as animals. He rolls like a ball and had the head of a calf with a single horn on ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... vote just as we feel about it," said General Ashley. "One black-ball will keep them out. 'N' means 'No'; ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... Sposina, upon this her first appearance in public. On this interesting and trying occasion, her accepted lover stands during the performance behind her chair, and is assiduous in his attentions. The next amusement at which, according to etiquette the Sposina appears, is a ball, to which she goes attended by her lover, and one or both of her parents. The bouquet, the emblem of her engagement goes with her, which never quits her hand, except when she dances, and is then laid on her seat, until ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various
... was leaning out of the window, Kline fired a pistol at me, but the shot went too high; the ball broke the glass just above my head. I was talking to Gorsuch at the time. I seized a gun and aimed it at Gorsuch's breast, for he evidently had instigated Kline to fire; but Pinckney caught my arm and said, "Don't shoot." The gun went off, just grazing Gorsuch's shoulder. Another conversation then ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... your ball?" was his next question, "or Clarence's ball, as you don't seem to take much interest in it, ma'am? You are afraid of being brought in contact with the iron pots, eh? You might crack or go to pieces, who knows, and what would become of me, a wretched widower." ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... cannot wicket-keep at all, He's frightened of a cricket ball. He reads indoors for hours and hours. He knows ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... symbols as used in the pamphlet are produced by inverting or reversing existing letters; but these may possibly be makeshifts, used in place of more ambitious shapes which were beyond the reach of his printer; he suggests, for instance (p. 20) "the sign Taurus with a Foot-Ball between his horns" as one of his vowel symbols. On the whole, we find the vowels much less systematically tackled than the consonants, and it is proposed that accents ("cambrils") should for the most part be used to provide extra symbols; the pamphlet, however, ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.
... had opportunities of observing him closely, vehemently denied the charge, declaring that he was much impressed by beauty in women, and noted the least defect, whether of feature, demeanour, or dress. She declared that, on one occasion, while commending her preparations for the ball-room, he suggested the looping up of one particular fold. At once she recognized the voice of the expert and hailed the experiment as an artistic triumph. Hester's recollections, it is true, belong to the lonely years spent in the Lebanon, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... when there was no school, and I went out on the green to play ball with my companions or fly my kite, Frau Eberlein used to put something to eat in my pocket. Lipp soon spied it out, and he knew how to get a part, or even the whole of my luncheon for himself. He would pick up a pebble off the ground, slip it from one hand to the other several ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... sulky and suspicious mood, and would not let his master catch him. There were no alluring morsels left to bribe him with; for the eggs must be kept for Tom, and a chocolate ball Thor despised as ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... not, they say, light the coach as they should do. I thought this morning to have seen my Lord Sandwich before he went out of town, but I come half an hour too late; which troubles me, I having not seen him since my Lady Palls died. So W. Hewer and I to the Harp-and-Ball, to drink my morning draught, having come out in haste; and there met with King, the Parliament-man, with whom I had some impertinent talk. And so to the Privy Seal Office, to examine what records I could find there, for my help in the great business I am put upon, of defending the present ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... recovered his self-love as a man, as a Fleming, as the master of a household, and he now took pleasure in the thought of surprising the whole country. He resolved to give a special character to this ball by some exquisite novelty; and he chose, among all other caprices of luxury, the loveliest, the richest, and the most fleeting,—he turned the old mansion into a fairy bower of rare plants and flowers, and prepared choice ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... whole march. On July 1st the Missouri was reached at a point where now stands Fort Rice. General Sully and the First Brigade had arrived there the day before. The crossing was made by the boats that brought up the First Brigade. The column was immediately directed toward Cannon Ball river, where 1,800 lodges of Indians were reported to be camped. The Indians fled before the approaching troops. On the last of July the Heart river was reached, where a camp was formed, and the tents and teams left behind. Thus ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... the size of the water-wheel as the pressure increased permitted the use of the same pattern of machinery at the different shafts. The water was brought to the wheel by a discharge-pipe, some nine feet long, having a vertical movement by ball-and-socket joint, so that at pleasure, by dropping the pipe, the machinery could be run at various speeds, or entirely stopped. At the end of this discharge-pipe was a cast tapered nozzle, about 31/2 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... palms and crossed flags. Great masses of bamboo and California ferns were tied with red, white and blue streamers between the windows, and, beside these decorations, which were new for the occasion, were purple and yellow banners, left from the night of the Native Sons' Grand Ball and Reception, a month ago, and, arched above the stage the single word "Welcome" in letters two feet high, which dated back to the Ladies of Saint Rose's Parish Annual Fair and Entertainment, in May. If the combined effect of these was not wholly artistic, ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... men danced round it, and sang to the accompaniment of the fiddler's violin. All went on merrily till after the sun had set, and the moon had risen, but I took no part in the festivity; for what had a little mouse to do with a forest ball? I sat down amidst the soft moss, and held fast my sausage-stick. The moon shone brightly on a place where there was a solitary tree surrounded by moss so fine—yes, I venture to say as fine as the Mice-King's skin—but it had a green tint, ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... evidence of the religious unrest which soon became more widespread. Before long the Yorkshireman, John Wycliffe, was studying arts at the little north-country foundation of the Balliols at Oxford, and John Ball, the Essex priest, was preaching his revolutionary socialism to the villeins. "We are all come," said he, "from one father and one mother, Adam and Eve. How can the gentry show that they are greater lords than ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... with breathless suspense. In five minutes the pursuers would gain the creek, and in ten, drive our dismayed battalions, like chaff before the wind. I hurried to my horse, that I might be ready to escape. The shell and ball still made music around me. I buckled up my saddle with tremulous fingers, and put my foot upon the stirrup. But a cheer recalled me and a great clapping of hands, as at some clever performance in the amphitheatre. I looked again. A battery from our position across the ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... this figure in the street, and live, and even smile at the recollection. But conceive of her in a ball-room, with the bare, brawny arms that she invariably displays there, and all the other corresponding development, such as is beautiful in the maiden blossom, but a spectacle to howl at in such an ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... town in the north of Holland. All the cheese-fanciers are out, thumping the cannon-ball Edams and the millstone Goudas with their bare red knuckles, plugging in with a hollow steel tool for samples. In Holland the business of judging a crumb of cheese has been taken with great seriousness for centuries. The abracadabra is comparable to that of the wine-taster or tea-taster. These ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... in to explain the strange scene to her mother. Mrs. Carr was, as usual, knitting. She rose up suddenly, confused at the strange apparitions before her, and let her knitting fall on the floor. The ball rolled swiftly towards Mr. Wheeler, and tangled the yarn around his feet. He jumped up and down, all the while brandishing his cane, and muttering, "Pshaw! pshaw! Damn knitting! Always did hate the sight on't." But, kicking out to the ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... disappointed soul. Could there be any misery on earth worse than a cold stone bench, a bowl of sorrel soup, and a chapter of Saint Augustine to flavour it? And when they had only just touched the very edge of the London season! Why, he would not get a single ball that ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... so-called animal trainers were departing Kathlyn managed to drop at Winnie's feet a little ball of paper which the young sister maneuvered to secure without being observed. She was advised to have no fear of the lions in the arena, to be ready to join Kathlyn in the arena when she signified the moment. Winnie would have entered a den of tigers ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... and Mrs. Forest grew really alarmed. She rose and placed her knitting on the high chimney-piece—she generally put it there out of the way of the cat, who played with the ball—and opened the door and peered out into the darkness. There was a sound of footsteps along the frozen high road. She listened intently, but the horses began to move about in the stable close by and she could no longer ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... I was invited by a man I met at the Warings. He's quite a nice creature, but I can't dine and go even to a charity ball and dance with him all night absolutely on my own. Mother wouldn't let me, ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... hungry dejection in his look and gait; at his elbow passed an errand-lad, swinging his basket round and round, and with his shrill whistle riving the very timbers of the roof; while a more observant schoolboy, half-way through, pocketed his ball, and eyed the distant beadle as he came looming on. It was that time of evening when, if you shut your eyes and open them again, the darkness of an hour appears to have gathered in a second. The ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... old pump to prime in the morning and a little hanging garden of Babylon full of babies to keep warm and to keep fed and to keep from falling on their boneless little cocos! I might even have married Theobald Gustav von Brockdorff and turned into an embassy ball lizard and ascended into the old family landau of his aunt the baroness, to disport along the boulevards therein very much like an oyster on the half-shell. I might have done all that, and I might not. But it's all for the best, as the greatest pessimist who ever ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... gnashing her iron teeth until they broke. And ever since then little Prince Ivan and the little sister of the Sun play together in the castle of cloud that hangs over the end of the world. They borrow the stars to play at ball, and put them back at ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... other parts have gathered. Some years since, the writer was led to investigate the world-wide myth of the Man in the Moon, in its legendary and ludicrous aspects; and one study being a stepping-stone to another, the ball was ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... broadside to the fort, and Manning, sending a messenger for Lovelace, opened fire on the enemy. One cannon ball passed through the Dutch flagship from side to side; but the balls from the fleet began pounding against the walls of the fort. Six hundred Holland soldiers landed on the banks of the Hudson above the town and were quickly joined by four hundred Dutch citizens in arms urging ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... charms while a circus needs not the excuse of children to justify it in the Negro's eyes. Some of the holidays are celebrated, and when on the coast the blacks dubbed the 30th of May "Desecration Day," there were those who thought it well named. Active sports, with the occasional exception of a ball game, are not preferred to the more quiet pleasure of sitting about in the sunshine conversing with friends. America can not show a happier, more contented lot of ...
— The Negro Farmer • Carl Kelsey
... hour or so, therefore, and then stop for five minutes and join them in a game of leapfrog, if that is the order of the day. If they invite you to go with them on a hike or picnic, refuse at your peril; and if you happen to be out on the ball ground when one side is short a player, do not be afraid of losing your dignity, but jump at the chance of taking a hand in the game. Some one has said that "familiarity breeds contempt, only if one of the persons be contemptible," and this dictum might well be applied to the management ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... bush. Then were heard shots, cries, and noise. The watchman ran in calling out, "Look out, they are coming," and immediately arrows and javelins rattled against the stockade, and the savages rushed on, singing their dreadful war-songs. But their arrows and javelins were little use against powder and ball, and they soon had to retire. They were reinforced, however, and returned again and again to the attack, and did not desist till the fight had lasted two hours ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... poor work and earn money," she said, on the tone that young women adopt when the spirit moves them to preach to young men. And when the spirit does move them to that, things may be looked upon as having advanced an appreciable distance, the ball may ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... he, "I will behold your own brown hair," and he turned to her. But again he cried out in surprise and horror. For there was no brown hair on Lallakalla's head, but her head was bare and shaven as clean as the ball of ivory on the staff that the ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... of that myself," he replied. "The only trouble would be—could anybody stop looking at the scenery long enough to hit a ball? Majesty, look!" ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... in the middle of the crown the hair was very long; their head was wrapt in a great many folds of stuff, and their cloaths seemed to be made neither of wool nor silk; they were very soft, and of different colours. Two only of the eleven who were slain had fire-arms with powder and ball. I tried their pieces, and found that they were much heavier than yours, and did not kill at ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... an officer of the Prussian army, and the other as a Bonn student—were children together. At dinner one evening at this new Sayn house, as we were tasting some Russian dish of soured milk (the mother was a Russian), we reminded each other of our ball on Twelfth Night at Rome, when the youngest of these boys happened to become king "by the grace of the bean," and spent some hours seated in state with gilt-paper crown and red-velvet mantle till he was too sleepy to oversee his subjects' revels any longer; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various |
