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More "Threshold" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the barns a winnowing-machine was working, sending out clouds of dust. On the threshold stood Aliokhin himself, a man of about forty, tall and stout, with long hair, more like a professor or a painter than a farmer. He was wearing a grimy white shirt and rope belt, and pants instead of trousers; and his boots were covered with ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... common consent, as it appeared, the girls rose and crowded round the entrance. Ellenor lifted the latch, and, flinging the door wide open, she stood on the threshold and looked out into the inky blackness of the night. The wind howled and moaned as it entered the kitchen; and a flash of lightning tore open, for one second, the darkness of the sky. After the crash of thunder that followed, Blaisette ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin
... in our mouths, we children rushed out, but father drove us in again and bade scullery-Pekka come and help with the chest. Pekka, who had already been dozing away on the bench by the stove, was so awkward as to knock the chest against the threshold as he was helping father to carry it into the room, and he would most certainly have got a sound drubbing for it from father if only he had been younger, but he was an old fellow now, and father had never in his life ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... thee now, even at the Door and Threshold of this house, but only with this Intelligence, that Mr. Badman lies dead within. Be pleased therefore (if thy leisure will serve thee) to enter in, and behold the state in which he is laid, betwixt his Death-bed ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... well known to us. History repeats itself, and the next generation may put on record our week attempts, our doubts and fears of this day. Whether electricity will ever rival steam, remains yet to be proved; we may be on the threshold of great things. The premature enthusiasm has subsided, and we enter upon the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... of summer-time, Some twenty years or more, When Ernest lost his way, and crossed The threshold of our door. I'll ne'er forget his locks of jet, His brow of Alpine snow, His manly grace of form and face, Some twenty ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... on his way to prison, so long as he does not cross the threshold of the fortress, it is possible to deliver him. Weingarten, who, it appears to me, is much devoted to your highness, has drawn for me the plan of the route, Trenck is to take. Here it is." He handed the princess a small piece ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... could distinguish the gilt cupola of the tomb before me; and as I perceived the horseman at some distance behind, I made all possible speed until I had passed the gateway of the sanctuary. Kissing the threshold of the tomb, I said my prayers with all the fervency of one who has got safe from a tempest ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... flash that blazed Full o'er her features—oh 'twas then, As startingly her eyes she raised, But quick let fall their lids again, I saw—not Psyche's self when first Upon the threshold of the skies She paused, while heaven's glory burst Newly upon her downcast eyes, Could look more beautiful or blush With holier shame than did this maid, Whom now I saw in all that gush Of splendor from the aisles, displayed. Never—tho' ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... seems as though it would dream on for ever. It is hard to believe that in three months we shall probably be snowed up and certainly be cold. There is a feeling about this month that reminds me of March and the early days of April, when spring is still hesitating on the threshold and the garden holds its breath in expectation. There is the same mildness in the air, and the sky and grass have the same look as then; but the leaves tell a different tale, and the reddening creeper on the house is rapidly approaching ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... the Polish Election;—keeps ward on his own frontiers, with good military besom in hand, to sweep it out again if it intruded there. "What King you like, in God's name; only don't come over my threshold with ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... their magic song; away in the dim distance are the wonderful Doric temples of Paestum, which go back to the mythical times of Jason and the Argonauts. On the opposite shore is the tomb of Virgil, on the threshold of the scenes which he loved to describe,—the Holy Land of Paganism, the Phlegraean Fields, with the terrible Avernus and the Cave of the Sibyl, and all the spots associated with the Pagan heaven and hell; and in the near neighbourhood Baiae, with its awful memories of Roman luxury and cruelty, ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... I was on the threshold of the temple, and I opened the door in a manner that overthrew all obstacles. A little scream and then several sighs announced the completion of the sacrifice, and, to tell the truth, the altar of love was covered with the blood of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... She stood on the threshold, pale, and brilliant still in her blaze of anger, equal, at last, to anything. Kerr, as he signaled to her with every lineament of his enlivened face, his interest, his defiance, his uncontrollability, was not the man of her imaginary conversations. He was not here to ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... was praying in a church of Corbie, a stranger drew near and spoke to her libidinous words: "May it please God," she said, "to bring home to you the hideousness of the words you have just uttered." The stranger in shame went to the door. But an invisible hand arrested him on the threshold. Then he realised the gravity of his sin; he asked pardon of the saint and was free to ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... villagers brought others running to the scene, but no one offered assistance. Hippy and the bronco were tussling on the threshold of the car with Hippy's feet in the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... many months before I again saw the Ninth Massachusetts; but what a contrast to its appearance on that glorious April morning, in 1862, when I was the recipient of its warm hospitality among the pines on the threshold of the ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... class and learned educated speech and graceful manners. Her holidays, poor child, were somewhat dreary, for her father, an anti-social creature, had scarce a friend in the town. Save for here and there an invitation to tea from Betty or myself, she did not cross the threshold of a house in Wellingsford. But to my house, all through her schooldays and afterwards, Phyllis came, and on such occasions Mrs. Marigold prepared teas of the organic lusciousness dear to the heart ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... preternatural in my reluctance to begin. I linger at the threshold, and have a perception of very disagreeable phantasms to be encountered if I enter. I wish God had given me the faculty of writing ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and which wholly transform the recognized function and powers of governments. With these startling facts of religious and political significance before us thoughtful people are beginning to ask if we are not upon the threshold of a complete breaking down of modern civilization and the birth of a new order of things, in which direct government by the people throughout the entire world will be coincident with the rise of a universal religion based on the ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... this respect the courage of love is the more remarkable. How bravely it takes the appalling risks of life! To separate for an hour may mean that never as long as the world lasts will love hear the voice it loves again. "Good-bye," love has called gaily so often, and waved hands from the threshold, and the beloved has called "good-bye" and waved, and smiled back—for the last time. And yet love faces the fears, not only of hours, but of weeks and months; weeks and months on seas bottomless with danger, in lands rife with unknown evils, dizzily ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... disdained to save his life at the expense of his honour. When abandoned by his own regiment of dragoons, he alighted from his horse, joined the infantry, and fought on foot, until he fell covered with wounds, in sight of his own threshold. Prince Charles bore his good fortune with moderation; he prohibited all rejoicings for the victory he had obtained; the wounded soldiers were treated with humanity; and the officers were sent into Fife and Angus, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... is such a thing as happiness, that he had once possessed it, but had lost it and could never again recover it. Johanna entered and announced Privy Councillor Wuellersdorf, who was already standing on the threshold ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... table; where she clipped sponge biscuits in milk, and wondered at other people's Sundays. A weight seemed settling down on her heart. She could not bear to hear the talk; she ate her supper, and then sat down on the threshold of one of the glass doors that looked towards the west, and watched the beautiful colours on the clouds over the mountains; and softly sung to herself the tune she had heard in the morning. So the colours faded away, and the light, and the dusk grew on, and still Daisy sat in the ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... owners put on a new pressed-brick front and changed the sash from the usual small lights to two single lights of large dimensions. The transition from this 1890 front to an eighteenth century interior in a perfect state of preservation, produces upon one crossing the threshold the sensation of walking straight through the looking glass. And whither does the looking glass lead? Right into the ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... where his two and twenty comrades had devoured the banquet, which ended so disastrously for themselves. But, all this while, he had held the snow-white flower in his hand, and had constantly smelt of it while Circe was speaking; and as he crossed the threshold of the saloon, he took good care to inhale several long and deep snuffs of its fragrance. Instead of two and twenty thrones, which had before been ranged around the wall, there was now only a single throne, in the center ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... knee, vis-a-vis, wrapped to their souls in the enchantment of each other, sat the entranced voyagers. Their rods lay idle beside them; life was serious just then for people who stood on the threshold of separation. ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... with a palpitating heart and trembling limbs, I crossed the threshold of the house that was to me a ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... where trees are and flowers, into the dust and heat where passion hides as in a nest, and unspoken things lie warm. Julian was vaguely afraid of himself. It is dangerous to lean on any one, however strong. Having met Valentine on the threshold of life, Julian had never learned to walk alone. He trusted another, instead of trusting himself. He had never forged his own sword. When Siegfried sang at his anvil he sang a song of all the greatness of life. Julian was notably strong ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... floor,—footmarks of a man with large feet whose boot-soles had left a sort of sooty impression. How had this man got away? How had he vanished? Don't forget, monsieur, that there is no chimney in The Yellow Room. He could not have escaped by the door, which is narrow, and on the threshold of which the concierge stood with the lamp, while her husband and I searched for him in every corner of the little room, where it is impossible for anyone to hide himself. The door, which had been forced open against the wall, could ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... as he stood dumfounded on the threshold of the hall; and yet, at the time, my eyes sped past ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... Author has neither wish nor power to grapple with the mysteries and passions which at that epoch possessed so many souls. The Assembly marks a political period. Its political aspects have been anxiously examined, but beyond the ecclesiastical threshold there has been no ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... King saw them enter he rose, went to the door, and without giving them time to utter a word, said to La Feuillade, "Monsieur, we are both very unfortunate!" and instantly turned his back upon him. La Feuillade, on the threshold of the door that he had not had time to cross, left the place immediately, without having dared to say a single word. The King always afterwards turned his eye from La Feuillade, and would never speak to him. Such was the fall of this Phaeton. He saw that he had no more hope, and retired ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... eastward by the setting sun. At that moment I was alone on her decks. There was not a sound in her—and around us nothing moved, nothing lived, not a canoe on the water, not a bird in the air, not a cloud in the sky. In this breathless pause at the threshold of a long passage we seemed to be measuring our fitness for a long and arduous enterprise, the appointed task of both our existences to be carried out, far from all human eyes, with only sky and sea for spectators ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... to be spoke with just that moment; besides, 't was no time for them to be l'iterin' round staring, with all there was to be done. So the crowd melted away, and only Abby followed the new-married couple to their own home. She, walking behind in much perturbation of spirit, noticed that on the threshold Marie stumbled, and seemed about to fall, and that Jacques lifted her in his arms as if she were a baby, and carried her into the room. He had not seemed to notice till that moment that the child was carrying her violin-case, though to be sure it was plain enough ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... him out to the door, as he drew it on and put on his cap. The moonlight shone over the threshold, and he thought she looked ghostly as it fell upon her face. He took her hand, pressed it ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... the Madonna's breast and supports her flowing garments. His name is not found on any of his other works, and we can understand why he felt proud of such a masterpiece. Though made when on the very threshold of his career, it was never surpassed even in his later years. Some other artist afterwards designed the two little bronze cherubs who hold a crown over the Madonna's head. They are quite out of harmony with the impressive dignity of the ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... behind the screening curtains into the hall, even as I heard a heavy foot stumbling at the threshold and a somewhat husky voice offer some ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... myself, naturally," she answered. "He told me that it was an understood thing that when he was over here on business he was not even to cross the threshold of the Embassy, or hold any direct communication with any person connected with it. Everything had to be done through a third party, and generally in duplicate. There was another man, for instance, who had a copy of the same letter, but I ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Mouradour, still in his blue blouse, appeared on the threshold, reading "L'Intransigeant" attentively. ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... Abner was just about to throw open the stable door, preparatory to giving his hobbies an airing, when a latch-key was heard operating in the front door of the house itself. Then came a man's quick step, a tussle with a heavy winter overcoat, and Whyland himself appeared on the threshold. ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... Mrs. Joyce stood alone in her dark doorway to receive her guest, and, through all her flutter of hope, she felt a bitter twinge of housewifely chagrin at being discovered in such miserable quarters. The black earth flooring at her threshold gritted hatefully under her feet, and the gusts whistling through the many chinks of her rough walls seemed to skirl derisively. She was nevertheless resolved to put the best possible face upon ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... both at Washington and among the troops, was that no actual resistance to this force would be made by Young's followers, the general was told that "prudence requires that you should anticipate resistance, general, organized, and formidable, at the threshold." ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... peremptory than before. Stanley forced a laugh. "Danger! Why, of course not. Just a business talk. But go back and look after the girl. I don't want her coming out here while I've visitors." He patted her hand. His arm about her shoulder he ushered her across the threshold of the inner chamber and closed the door. Then he extinguished the lamp. Hand on pistol he felt his way toward the outer portal and, with a sudden movement flung it wide. Three men stood on the threshold. They seemed puzzled by the darkness. Out of it the host's voice spoke: "Who ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... gaped in the crimson wall. I paused for a moment on the threshold. In the dimness within a shadow stirred. I stepped forward, finding myself in a room that was tall and narrow, the ceiling hidden in gloom. Along the walls were carvings I could not clearly see. They gave a suggestion of ...
— Where the World is Quiet • Henry Kuttner
... according to their custom and laws. Long they waited, hammering noisily at the oaken doors of the hall wherein Olaf was now known to have taken refuge. But at last the door was flung open, and King Valdemar appeared on the threshold, guarded by many armed men. The crowd drew back, leaving only the chief of the vikings to speak for them and ask for justice. He told the king how Klerkon, standing within the gate, had been attacked by young Ole of the golden hair, and how without word or ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... she said decisively, as he crossed the threshold. "There's not enough silver in Sark to make a plate for ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... of Dunkeld, of the illustrious house of the Douglas, earls of Angus, the translator of Virgil, and with William Dunbar, a mendicant friar, favourite of James IV., sent by him on missions to London and Paris, we cross the threshold of a new century; they die in the midst of the Renaissance, but with them, nevertheless, the Chaucerian tradition is continued. Douglas writes a "Palice of Honour," imitated from Chaucer.[852] Dunbar,[853] with never flagging spirit, attempts every style; he composes sentimental ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... space the Count stood pausing on my threshold, whilst we craned our necks to contemplate him as though he had been an object for inquisitive inspection. Then a smothered laugh from the brainless La Fosse seemed to break the spell. I frowned. It was a climax of discourtesy whose impression I ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... Godfrey, were sitting down to breakfast when an unusual noise was heard on deck. Almost immediately afterwards the boatswain opened the door and appeared on the threshold. ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... crossed the threshold Stella met me. She took both my hands in hers and looked at me in silence. All that was true and good and noble expressed itself in ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... the door opened; a man appeared on the threshold. He was without a hat, carried a sword, and flourished a ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... did not tend to revolt, as he had proved: in publishing his Discourse on Method he halted at the threshold of Christianism without laying his hand upon the sanctuary. Making a clean sweep of all he had learned, and tearing himself free, by a supreme effort, from the whole tradition of humanity, he resolved "never to accept anything as true until he recognized it to be clearly so, and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the number of the blows. When two or more phenomena occur in the environment invariably together, they are stamped to the same depth or to the same relief, and indissolubly connected. And here we come to the threshold of a great question. Seeing that he could in no way rid himself of the consciousness of Space and Time, Kant assumed them to be necessary 'forms of intuition,' the moulds and shapes into which our intuitions ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... the romance of life is most splendid. But just because it is that, and because the issues of that hour are so far-reaching, what could be more seemly than that they should pause for a moment on the threshold and ask the Giver of all love to bless and guide them! To kneel first together before Him, and then to pass on—to acknowledge His goodness as the author of love, and then to go up on to love's high places, what ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... whole of this small oasis. The stream meandered along, shaded with green trees; here and there, among clumps of Bourbon palms, we could discern huts irregularly dotted about. I turned my eyes towards our host's threshold, and, through my glass, perceived l'Encuerado, who was still preaching. He had evidently left off chanting, for his hearers were seated round him ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... dismissed the governess by that time—what he had left to do, he could best do alone—and they came back, upon a rain night, to the scene of her long preparation. She turned to him upon the threshold, as the rain was dripping ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... and struggles of the past that we may gain from them lessons of confidence for the future, let us not forget to pay a tribute to the men who have laid the foundations of these communities, still on the threshold of their development, and on whom the great burden fell; to the French Canadians who, despite the neglect and indifference of their kings, amid toil and privation, amid war and famine, built up a province ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... Friend,—I thank you for the letter and books which crossed the threshold of this house before me, and looked like your welcome to me home. I have read the passages you wished me to read—I have read them again: for I remember reading them under your star (or the greater part of them) a long while ago. You, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... watch me intently as I moved cautiously forward. A dozen steps brought me within view of the front of the cabin. The door had been smashed in and hung dangling from one hinge. Another step, now with a pistol gripped in my hand, enabled me to obtain a glimpse within. Across the puncheon threshold, his feet even protruding without, lay a man's body; beyond him, half concealed by the shadows of the interior, appeared the outlines of another, with face upturned to the roof, plainly distinguishable because ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... the investigators of the early decades of the eighteenth century, terminating with Franklin's discovery of the nature of lightning and with the Linnaean classification of plants and animals, bring us to the close of our second great epoch; or, to put it otherwise, to the threshold ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... escaped that disgrace. The nearest approach to that equality and fraternity of which we all hear so much and see so little, was unfortunately to be found in the bar-parlor and billiard-room of the Upton Arms; but even this was lost as soon as the threshold was recrossed, and the boon-companions of the interior breathed the air of the outer world. There were several religious sects of considerable strength, and of very decided antagonistic views; any one of whose members ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... never heard before. It was half burned down, and shattered with balls, and ten thousand men were hammering at the gates; but four hundred guardsmen held it in the morning and two hundred held it in the evening, and no French foot was ever set within its threshold. But how they fought, those Frenchmen! Their lives were no more to them than the mud under their feet. There was one—I can see him now—a stoutish ruddy man on a crutch. He hobbled up alone in a lull of the firing to the side gate of Hougoumont and he beat upon it, screaming to his men to come ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... asked after the father of one, the brother of another; delicately intimated his pleasure in finding the noble order of Mohocks, that had lately died in London, resurrected in Virginia; and fairly bowed the flattered youths out of the store. He stood for a moment upon the threshold watching them go triumphantly, if unsteadily, up the street; then turned to the interior of the store to find MacLean seated upon a stool, with his head against the table, submitting with a smile of pure content to the ministrations ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... The young artist makes a pilgrimage to each of these places, eyes them wistfully at a distance, 'bosomed high in tufted trees,' and feels an interest in them of which the owner is scarce conscious: he enters the well-swept walks and echoing archways, passes the threshold, is led through wainscoted rooms, is shown the furniture, the rich hangings, the tapestry, the massy services of plate—and, at last, is ushered into the room where his treasure is, the idol of his vows—some speaking ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... faltered the girl, as she stepped timidly into the room, "but I was frightened. Someone had switched off the lights and I ran into——" She turned to the Japanese, who stood deprecating and nervous on the threshold. ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... plague within doors. And, many that shew like saints abroad, yet act the part of devils when they are at home, by giving way to this house iniquity; by cherishing of this house iniquity. This iniquity meeteth the man and his wife at the very threshold of the door, and will not suffer them to enter, no not with one foot into the house in peace, but how far this is from walking together as heirs of the grace of life, is easy to be determined. Men should carry it in love to their wives, as Christ ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... elapsed, and then a mysterious murmur filled the air, the trees swayed and tossed their branches wildly for a moment, a fierce gust of hot air swept past, and all was still again. I dashed forward and reached the doorway, and as I passed across the threshold, the canopy of cloud overhead was rent open, a blinding flash of livid lightning blazed out, illumining for a single instant the whole landscape, as well as the interior of the building, and at the same instant came a deafening crash, such as might occur were the universe suddenly to crumble ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... no milk-can on the threshold of his rooms and the door yielded to his pressure without the need of a key. With a strange sensation of reluctance he walked into the narrow passage and paused, uncertain which room to enter first. As he stood hesitating a voice from ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... been to stop on the way at a saloon for a glass of liquor. As he stood upon the threshold that morning he seemed to hear a sweet voice say: "Go on, I'se comin', papa, I'se comin' right in ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... to sell now an' them boys won't show her a step of the way an' she couldn't get here so quick all herself without bein' showed so I may as well rest a minute," said Glory to herself, and sat down on the narrow threshold to get cool and to decide upon what she ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... punch-makers had quite enough to do until the night was far spent, and it was considered time for the bride and bridegroom to be escorted by a chosen party of friends to the little cottage which was to be their future home. The pipers stood at the threshold of Jack Dwyer, and his daughter departed from under the "roof-tree" to the tune of "Joy be with you"; and then the lilters, heading the body-guard of the bride, plied drone and chanter right merrily until she had entered her new home, thanked her old friends (who did all the established civilities, ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... with me on my sea-shore walks, and rambles into the country, whenever—which was seldom and reluctantly—I bestirred myself to seek that invigorating charm of Nature, which used to give me such freshness and activity of thought the moment that I stepped across the threshold of the Old Manse. The same torpor, as regarded the capacity for intellectual effort, accompanied me home, and weighed upon me in the chamber which I most absurdly termed my study. Nor did it quit me, when, late at night, I sat in the deserted parlor, lighted only by the glimmering ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... everything retains you here just now and forbids you this useless journey. We have concealed your father's condition from you until now; but it is perhaps hopeless; and that alone should suffice to stop you on the threshold. But there are so many other reasons.... And it is not in the day when our enemies awake, and when the people are dying of hunger and murmur about us, that you have the right to desert us. And why this journey? Marcellus is dead; and life has graver duties than the visit ...
— Pelleas and Melisande • Maurice Maeterlinck
... he unlocked a safe that stood against the wall, chucked the L. 14,000 in, and shammed the iron door sharply; and, as it closed upon the Cash with a clang, the parlour door burst open as if by concert, and David Dodd stood on the threshold, looking terrible. His ruddy colour was all gone, and he seemed black and white with anger and anxiety; and out of this blanched yet lowering face his eyes glowed like coals, and roved keenly to and fro between the banker and ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division. In so far as it is not this, it is not home; so far as the anxieties of the outer world penetrate into it, and the inconsistently-minded, unknown, unloved, or hostile society, the outer world, is allowed by either husband or wife to cross the threshold, it ceases to be home; it is then only a part of the outer world which you have roofed over and lighted ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... The slave took the necklace, saying in himself, "Allah Almighty make it the last thing she shall put on in this world, for that she deprived me of the benefit of my grinder-teeth!"; and repairing to the Princess's apartment, found the door locked and the old woman asleep before the threshold. He shook her, and she awoke in affright and asked, "What dost thou want?"; to which he answered, "The King hath sent me on an errand to his daughter." Quoth the nurse, "The key is not here, go away, whilst I fetch it;" but ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... entered with a nod and the expectant, inquiring look of a busy man. As his feet crossed that sacred threshold the Colonel became all courtesy; he placed a chair for his visitor, and took his hat from his half-reluctant hand. He then opened a cupboard and brought out a bottle of whiskey ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... me to add that this co-optation is limited to a very narrow field of operation. It is confined in fact to the threshold of a man's career. Once the candidate has been consecrated official, by a board of examining officials, he belongs, both as regards advancement, promotion and the reverse, to the central authority alone, except in certain ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... then the general continued,—"See what it is to admit over the threshold any of those people without conscience or honor. Cursed be the moment in which Vinicius entered our house, for he brought Petronius. Woe to Lygia, since those men are not seeking ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... outraged, and the son was wounded. Nor were children exempt. "About Aug. 4," says one witness, "near Vottem, we were pursuing some Uhlans. I saw a man, woman, and a girl about nine, who had been killed. They were on the threshold of a house, one on the top of the other, as if they had been shot down, one after the other, as ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... door against the wall in singular, softened poise, as if all the steel had melted out of her body. And as Colter's tall shadow fell across the threshold Jean Isbel felt himself staring with eyeballs that ached—straining incredulous sight at this woman who in a few seconds had bewildered his senses with her transfiguration. He saw ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... little book, Berlin will be entirely a new scene to you, and I look upon it, in a manner, as your first step into the great world; take care that step be not a false one, and that you do not stumble at the threshold. You will there be in more company than you have yet been; manners and attentions will therefore be more necessary. Pleasing in company is the only way of being pleased in it yourself. Sense and knowledge are the first and ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... the fields, the marching clouds. There is the ear gate, and therein go trooping all sweet songs, all conversation and eloquence, all laughter with Niobe's woe and grief. There is conversation, and thereby we cross the threshold of another's mind, and wander through the halls of memory and the chambers of imagination. But these faculties are limited. The ear was made for one sweet song, not for a thousand. Conversation is with one friend living, not with Pliny and Pericles. The vision stays ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... first dawn of day Nausicaa went in haste to her father and mother to tell them of her dream. She found them in their splendid hall. Her mother sat with her maidens spinning, and the king stood on the threshold, just going forth to meet his chiefs in council. The princess approached her father and said: "Dearest father, I pray that thou wilt give me two mules and a wagon, that I may go with my maids to the river and take all the clothes ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... road. He walked along with his head in a whirl, his whole mind possessed and intoxicated by the one idea of the boundless wealth and the immense power of this extraordinary stranger. Small and sordid and mean seemed his own Elmdene as he approached it, and he passed over its threshold full of restless discontent against ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... upon the threshold suddenly remembered another interest and referred to it with no ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... barely crossed his humble threshold and sat down, when Robin clambered on his knee and put the puzzling question.—"Fasser, ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... sighed, as he crossed the threshold. "It's rather lonesome, but I'll do the best I can. ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... was here, unknowing and unknown, He stood upon the threshold stone. But hope was his, a faith sublime, That triumphs over place and time; And here, his mighty labor done, And here, his course of glory run, Awhile as more than man he stood, So large the ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... bridle-way, or boreen, that ran up directly before the door—the other by a green lane, that diverged from the boreen about a furlong below the house. He took the latter, certain that the family could not notice his approach, nor hear the noise of his horse's footsteps, until he could arrive at the very threshold.. On dismounting, he felt that he could scarcely walk. He approached the door, however, as steadily as he could. He entered—and the family, who had just finished their supper, rose up, as a mark of ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... there came a lull, and while I wondered, the door flew suddenly open and I saw Mrs. Ocumpaugh standing on the threshold, pallid and stricken, looking back at the picture made by the other two as Mrs. Carew, fallen on her knees by the bedside, held to ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... the door to see the cause of this interruption. It was my sister Jessie who entered, and paused on the threshold as she observed the presence of a stranger. She wore no covering on her head, and her brown hair fell in natural curls on her shoulders ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... and joined ropes thereto. So in much joy they drew it into the city, youths and maidens singing about it the while and laying their hands to the ropes with great gladness. And yet there wanted no signs and tokens of evil to come. Four times it halted on the threshold of the gate, and men might have heard a clashing of arms within. Cassandra also opened her mouth, prophesying evil; but no man heeded her, for that was ever the doom upon her, not to be believed, though speaking truth. So the men of Troy drew the horse into the city. And that night ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... Yugoslavia and, after 2003, in a looser union of Serbia and Montenegro. In May 2006, Montenegro invoked its right under the Constitutional Charter of Serbia and Montenegro to hold a referendum on independence from the state union. The vote for severing ties with Serbia exceeded 55% - the threshold set by the EU - allowing Montenegro to formally declare its ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... was spent; but now at last it was the month of August, and upon the night of the seventh day thereof ended the season of waiting. It is to tell that upon that night came Harold, the son of Egbert, from his hut, and stood on the threshold thereof, and awaited the rising of the moon from out the silver waters yonder. While thus he stood there appeared unto him Membril the fairy, and smiling upon him ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... eager, curious glances, and pausing more than once to note the exceeding beauty of the place. Once she stopped for a long time, and, leaning against a tree, seemed to be debating whether to turn back or go on. Deciding upon the latter, she arose, and quickening her movements, soon stood upon the threshold. Her ring was answered by Maria, who betrayed no surprise, for from the upper hall Mrs. Peters herself was closely ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes
... for furniture. All these must be replaced. A hurried trip to the city, three days of determined shopping with Zulime, and a stream of new goods (necessary to refurnish), began to set toward the threshold. The draymen plied busily between the ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... Road. The afternoon was waning when they left the church-yard; when they came within sight of the cottage the sun had sunk behind the hills. In the red, wintry light, the place looked terribly desolate. Weeds had sprung up about the house, and their rank growth covered the very threshold, the shutters hung loose and broken, and a damp greenness had crept upon the ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... worthy of the man. There was, even on the little stone staircase, a faint odour of pastille or scent spray, or something of feminine suggestion. The unwary visitor would as likely as not catch some part of his person against a silk hanging or a lurking portiere on crossing the threshold; and the impression which struck (as all rooms do strike) from the threshold was one of oppressive drapery. A man, by the way, should never know anything about drapery or draping. Such knowledge undermines his virility. This is an age of undermining knowledge. We ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... scream, a wild, despairing shriek terrified her, and her heart seemed to stand still as she bounded away from the side of the coffin. The light of the setting sun streamed through the window, and over the white, convulsed face of a feeble but beautiful woman, who was supported on the threshold by a venerable, gray-haired man, down whose furrowed cheeks tears coursed rapidly. Struggling to free herself from his restraining grasp, the stranger tottered into the middle ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... thirteenth century, all reaching Europe, some touching the very steps of the throne of Louis XIV., yet none of them carrying the leaf which contained the story of "Perrette," or of the "Brahman," to the threshold of La Fontaine's home. We ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... the toys of the nice, kind, rich children. The idea caught on with the Olympians, always open to sentiment of a treacly, woodcut order; and accordingly Charlotte, on entering one day dishevelled and panting, having been pursued by yelling Redskins up to the very threshold of our peaceful home, was curtly informed that her French lessons would begin on Monday, that she was henceforth to cease all pretence of being a trapper or a Redskin on utterly inadequate grounds, and moreover ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... doors there did stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold—then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... for which reason I have made no mention of thy name, nor of my own; and this is of set purpose lest if this poor letter fall at any time into the hands of another, he might be offended on the very threshold and so not care to go ...
— The Chronicle of the Canons Regular of Mount St. Agnes • Thomas a Kempis
... lifted the latchet Since she went out of the door— No footstep shall cross the threshold, Since she can come ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... occasions that the Continental Congress do now adjourn, while no reason whatever existed, other than the one most obvious but least apt to occur to any one, for supposing that Mr. O'Meagher had ever had a grandfather at all. And yet, as Mr. Wimples, though on the threshold of great dignity and power, walks into Mr. O'Meagher's presence, he find himself all of a tremble, and glows and chills chase each other up and down his ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... included some part of the adjacent country. The church was built in connection with the Church Extension Scheme. The parish was a quoard sacra parish, detached from St. John's. It contains a population of 4,000 souls, very many of whom never crossed the threshold of any sanctuary. His congregation amounted at the very outset, to about 1,100 hearers, one-third of whom came from distant parts ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... buxom widow weighing fourteen stone; and she, being very genteel, could not brook the idea of keeping a lodger. So one day—I have heard FitzGerald tell the story—came a timid rap at the door of his sitting-room, a deep "Now, Berry, be firm," and a mild "Yes, my dear;" and Berry appeared on the threshold. Hesitatingly he explained that "Mrs Berry, you know, sir—really extremely sorry—but not been used, sir," &c., &c. Then from the rear, a deep "And you've got to tell him about Old Gooseberry, Berry," ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... be no question of the fact that authentic history sends its roots into the subsoil of fabulous antiquity. In turning to the records of submarine exploration we are staggered on the very threshold of the question with obvious absurdity. We are depressed. We seek to dive into our subject, but find it too deep for us. If we were to put on the latest "patent improved diving-dress," with all its accompaniments ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... of Charlie that she did not hear the patter of little feet in the hall without. Tired of staying by himself, and spying the open door, Willie hastened toward it, pausing a moment on the threshold as if to reconnoiter. Something in Anna's attitude, as she lay with her long hair falling over the pillow, must have reminded him of Alice, for, with a cry of delight, he ran forward, and patting the white cheek with his soft baby hand, lisped out the word "Arn-tee, arn-tee," making Anna start ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... threshold yesterday And left the glad voice of his loved one dumb. To him the living now will come And cross his threshold in the self-same way To clasp his hand and vainly try to say Words that shall soothe ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest
... Raven and I suddenly been caught up out of that little coast village and transported to the far East on a magic carpet, to be set down in the twinkling of an eye on some Oriental threshold, we could scarcely have been more surprised than we were at the sight of that bland, smiling countenance. For the moment I was at a loss to think who and what the man could be; he was in the dress of his own country, a neat, close-fitting, high-buttoned blue jacket; there was a little ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... fingers. He straightened himself up quickly after the low bow, putting his hand with a graceful ease on the hilt of his heavy short sword ornamented with brilliantly dyed fringes of horsehair. Nina, hesitating on the threshold, saw an erect lithe figure of medium height with a breadth of shoulder suggesting great power. Under the folds of a blue turban, whose fringed ends hung gracefully over the left shoulder, was a face full of determination ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... dressing gown—to fling his own bed-quilt over some plants endangered by an unexpected frost, came very near to having a fine show of bloom and not being there to see it; but, short of this excessive zeal, when one's garden is a little one, and close to one's threshold, one may catch Jack Frost on the surface of many bits of rough and ready fencing on ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... pestilence, the air that you breathe. Thus the sweet domestic thing has done, for men, at least these four thousand years. She has been their companion, not of the home merely, but of the hearth, and the threshold; companion only endeared by departure, and showing better her loving-kindness by her faithful return. Type sometimes of the stranger, she has softened us to hospitality; type always of the suppliant, she has enchanted us to mercy; and in ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... to know more—or that there should be more to be known; for about this time two remarkable things happened. One was, that Faith found a little French book ensconced among the stockings in her basket,—and the very next morning as Mr. Linden was setting off for school, he stopped at the threshold and inquired— ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... the threshold of our argument, to have a clear understanding respecting the nature of the testimony borne by our Lord and his apostles to this ancient literature. It is upon this that the advocates of the traditional view of the Old Testament wholly ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... seen her except on the screen, they had not the least doubt that this was she. It was really Rose Andre, or rather, the Happy Princess, whom they had admired a few days before, amidst the furniture of that very sitting-room or on the threshold of that very cottage. She was wearing the same dress; her hair was done in the same way; she had on the same bangles and necklaces as in The Happy Princess; and her lovely face, with its rosy cheeks and laughing eyes, bore the same look ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... not interrupted until sundown; and then Carmen entered the room with a bowl of chocolate and some small wheaten loaves. Behind her, with an amusing show of dignity, stalked a large heron, an elegant bird, with long, scarlet legs, gray plumage, and a gracefully curved neck. When the bird reached the threshold it stopped, and without warning gave vent to a prolonged series of shrill, unmusical sounds. The startled priest sat up in his bed and exclaimed ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... out, that even if a moral nihilism could be carried through and all definite interests abandoned, the vanity of life would not be thereby corrected, but merely exposed. When our steps had been retraced to the very threshold of being, nothing better worth doing would have been discovered on the way. That to suffer illusion is a bad thing might ordinarily be taken for an axiom, because ordinarily we assume that true knowledge and rational volition are ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... ovation as soon as she crossed the threshold. Dulce, who was listening for her footsteps, rushed out into the little hall, and dragged her in, as though she were too weary to have any movement or volition of her own. And then Nan came up, in her calm elder-sisterly way, and ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... his possessions, but they all: Realism, Romanticism, Naturalism, even the unofficial sentimentalism (which, like the poor, is exceedingly difficult to get rid of), all these gods must, after a short period of fellowship, abandon him—even on the very threshold of the temple—to the stammerings of his conscience and to the outspoken consciousness of the difficulties of his work. In that uneasy solitude the supreme cry of Art for Art, itself, loses the exciting ring of its apparent immorality. It sounds far off. ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... dilapidated farm-house of the expelled steward, old Bevan, stood beautifully in a wooded glen, watered by a shallow stream, between a brook and river in size. A pretty greensward, of perpetual vivid hue, stretched quite up to the threshold—its "fold," or farm-yard, being small, and situated behind. A wooded mountain rose opposite, topped by a range of many-tinted cliffs, splintered like thunder-stricken battlements, and resembling, in their fretted and timeworn fronts, rich cathedral architecture in ruins. Extensive ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... this, Mrs. Purnell appeared on the threshold to welcome them, but to Wade's surprise, she told them that Dorothy ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... know is, that here, at four in the afternoon, the great majority of one thousand Europeans are shaking, absolutely distraught. It is evident therefrom that there is something impressive and demoralising to most people in the idea of finality, and that on the threshold of the twentieth century, courage, since it is seldom dealt in, is hardly a great living force. It makes one realise, too, that with all their faults, the aristocrats of France, who, a hundred years ago, were condemned to the shameful death of the guillotine ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... summer time, and the doors and windows were all open—he heard an angry, passionate kind of sound that was scarcely human. That sound prevented his approach from being heard; and standing at the threshold, he saw poor Mary Williams pacing backward and forward in some wild mood. Nest, cripple as she was, was walking with her, speaking low, soothing words, till the pace was slackened, and time and breathing was given to put her arm around the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... not a sound. She felt as if she must not, could not breathe. The silence, like a stealthy hand, lifted her from her chair, drew her tiptoeing and breathless toward the room in which her father was sitting. She paused at its threshold, looked. There was Hiram, in his chair by the window, bolt upright, eyes open and gazing into the infinite. Beside that statue of the peace eternal knelt Ellen, a worn, wan, shrunken figure, the hands clasped, the eyes closed, the ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... never again could the same circle be re-united at Wyllys-Roof; all who crossed the threshold that night were not ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... hardly crossed the threshold when the mere sight of books remarkable for their vast antiquity filled me with awe, or I might almost say with bewilderment: so that for a moment I could ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... the Sprout of the Lord. That can be readily accounted for, only if the Sprout of the Lord be the Messiah. For the Messiah appears everywhere as the channel through which the Lord imparts to His Church all the fulness of His blessings, as the Immanuel by whom the promise given at the very threshold of the Old Testament: "I dwell in the midst of them," is most perfectly realized. "This is the name whereby He shall be called: The Lord our righteousness," says Jeremiah, in the passage quoted.—The "Sprout of the Lord" ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... journeyed homeward with all speed, till he drew near his father's capital and making a circuit about the city, alighted on the roof of the King's palace, where he left his horse, whilst he descended into the palace and finding its threshold strewn with ashes, bethought him that one of his family was dead. Then he entered, as of wont, and found his father and mother and sisters clad in mourning raiment of black, pale-faced and lean of body. When his father saw him and was assured that it was indeed his son, he ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... before Mr. Gray could be made to understand that the great door was only open on state occasions, and even to the last he would as soon come in by that as the terrace entrance. I had been received there on my first setting foot over my lady's threshold; every stranger was led in by that way the first time they came; but after that (with the exceptions I have named) they went round by the terrace, as it were by instinct. It was an assistance to this instinct to be aware that from time ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... to cross Harmony's threshold as visitors and equals were a colonel and a young captain, who both came from Wynberg with letters of introduction from Mrs. van ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... together with an effort. The sight of the two new arrivals talking to Louis on the threshold of the restaurant, seemed for the moment to have drawn every scrap of colour from his cheeks. Nevertheless, his recovery was ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... teacher was turning to go to his desk, hearing a rustling noise toward the door, he turned to look. He was, so to speak, petrified with astonishment. There stood on the threshold of the door a woman whose beauty was such as he had never seen surpassed. She held a boy by the hand. She was a mulatto woman, tall and graceful. Her hair was raven black and was combed away from ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... stormy night, it startled him, for he remembered that the outer door had been left unlocked. Nearer and nearer it came, up the winding stairs, and on through the silent hall, tin til it readied the threshold of his chamber, where it ceased, while a ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... nature, however, I could not discern. The roof was in form a truncated pyramid; its material a rose-coloured crystal, through which a clear soft light illuminated the whole scene. Across the floor of the entrance, immediately within the portal, was a broad band of the same crystal, marking the formal threshold of the Hall. Immediately inside this stood the same Chief who had received us in the former Hall; and as we stood at the door, stretching forth his left hand, he spoke, or rather chanted, what, by the rhythmical sequence ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... silken chains of her tresses the valiant spirit of Fergus. The whole life of that heroic epoch, still writ large upon the face of the land, shall come forth clear and definite; we shall stand by the threshold of Cuculain's dwelling, and move among the banquet-halls of Emain of Maca. We shall look upon the hills and valleys that Meave and Deirdre looked on, and hear the clash of spear and shield at the Ford of the river,—and this even though ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... step through into the other world was a queasy one, but it turned out to be much the same as any other step. The only difference was that now he was in the other world looking back. From this side, the niggerhead at the threshold was sliced sharply, but it had been kicked down a little when he came through, and what with shoving the cage through and pulling it back, so that some clods of moss and dirt were scattered in the other world. For some reason, that made Ed feel better, it seemed ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams
... difference. This woman in front had found her boy's half-charred body left tied to a tree by Rebel scouts: this girl was the grandchild of Naylor, a man of seventy,—the Federal soldiers were fired at from his house one day,—the next, the old man stood dumb upon its threshold; in this world, he never would call to God for vengeance. Palmer knew these things were true. Yet Dode should not for this sink to low notions about the war. She did: she talked plain Saxon of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... he had been exceedingly anxious to learn the condition of Thomasin; but he did not venture to intrude upon a threshold to which he was a stranger, particularly at such an unpleasant moment as this. He had occupied his time in moving with his ponies and load to a new point in the heath, eastward to his previous ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... furnishings for it. It brought her a sudden sense of confusion, for as one result of that expenditure he had been forced into doing what she fancied must have been a very repugnant thing, and she had never even crossed his threshold. ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... equal, if men are free and equal anywhere in the earth, therefore I have arrived at the place I started to find, and I am a man among men, and on the strictest equality possible to men, no doubt. Yet here on the threshold I find an inequality. There are people at this table who are looked up to for some reason or another, and here is a poor devil of a boy who is looked down upon, treated with indifference, and shamed by humiliations, when he has committed no crime but that common ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... only dwelling there was on the place, must have resounded with remarkable echoes as the pioneers of the new social order alighted on its threshold. They were of cultivated families, and were nearly all from the city and neighborhood of Boston. Their hearts were open to the tender influence of buds and blossoms, the fresh springing grass and the bubbling brook. They watched the birds ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... That anxious civility which beauty can inspire The happy scene of the play before the villain comes in The ravings of a sick man are not always counted ravings The sea is a great breeder of friendship The tender care of a woman—than many pharmacopoeias The threshold of an acknowledged love There are things we repent of which cannot be repaired There is no refuge from memory and remorse in this world Think that a woman gives the heart for pleasant weather only? Thou wouldst ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... page appeared instead, ushering in with ceremonious civility a tall personage, clad in flowing white robes and muffled up to the eyes in a mantle of silver tissue,—a majestic, mysterious, solemn-looking individual, who, pausing on the threshold of the apartment, described a circle in the air with a small staff he carried, and said in ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... were not permitted to cross the threshold of the chiefs' palace. They could do no more than crawl on hands and knees to the door. In spite of the many changes infused into Hawaiian institutions, the kauwa families remain branded with a stigma, in the opinion of the natives, and the laws, ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... near Galion, that he wandered about till he reached a log cabin in a clearing. There he asked of the woman at the door if she knew where Samuel Davy lived. She laughed and bade him come in and see. Then he knew that it was his own wife speaking to him from his own threshold. ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... pass that shortly after eight o'clock, albeit a prisoner, I rode into the courtyard of the Lys de France, and, alighting, I stepped across the threshold of the inn, and strode up to a table at which I had espied Michelot. He sat nursing a huge measure of wine, into the depths of which he was gazing pensively, with an expression so glum upon his weather-beaten countenance that it defies depicting. So deep was he in his meditations, that albeit ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... and subdues them, until like the Samaritans they say, "Now we believe, not because of thy speaking: for we have heard for ourselves, and know." That is the only use of authority in a vital, realm. It can lead us up to the threshold of a great experience where we must enter, each man for himself, and that service to the spiritual life is ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... down again. I certainly had made progress. Feeling in a benevolent mood, I set forth the advantages she would reap by assuming her legal status; how at last she would shake the dust of Bohemia from off her feet, and instead of standing at the threshold like a disconsolate Peri, she would enter as a right the Paradise of Philistia which she craved; how her life would be one continual tea-party, and how, as her husband had doubtless by this time obtained his promotion, she would be authorised ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... is easily irritated, and cries, "Be quiet, Kiki!" But I go on unconscious of any wrong-doing; tic-toc, tic-toc. She jumps up distracted and opens the door wide for me: slowly, like one exiled, I cross its threshold and once outside, laugh to find myself so ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... the Threshold he has already enter'd; Now through the Fire I'll follow him: But; oh some unknown Pow'r detains my Steps. I'll try again; I cannot stir. Shall he rejoice before my Eyes? No, no; Melissa, it ought to be thy Care To see thy self and me, on this ...
— Amadigi di Gaula - Amadis of Gaul • Nicola Francesco Haym
... Lady Merton," he said from the threshold. "I think I have all your commissions. Is your ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Mrs. Wilders, imperiously. "Think you that I will cross the threshold of your piggery?" and she waited, stamping her foot impatiently whilst ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... Pausing on the threshold, M. Bombiadi with the servile and cringing tone always assumed by those frock-coated criminals, European hotel proprietors, asked humbly: "May we ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... the widow continued her work, and the light from the one candle being centred to the spot where she sat, the entry was consequently dark; but on looking up with a smile of greeting, expecting only to see Pollie, she was surprised to see her hesitate on the threshold, apparently clutching some one tightly by the dress: but directly she saw her mother, she seemed to feel she might let go her hold, her charge was safe; so running in, she threw her arms around ...
— Little Pollie - A Bunch of Violets • Gertrude P. Dyer
... feel that there are many other problems to be encountered before you will meet these which I have set forth. But we should remember that the mind holds some of such impressions a very long time. It holds them below the threshold of conscious thought, and under ideal working conditions it brings them above ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... brisk wakefulness was excellent company when he rattled the change of halfpence down upon that metal table of his, like a man who defied the night, with all its sorrowful thoughts, and didn't care for the coming of dawn. There was need of encouragement on the threshold of the bridge, for the bridge was dreary. The chopped-up murdered man, had not been lowered with a rope over the parapet when those nights were; he was alive, and slept then quietly enough most likely, and undisturbed by any dream of where he ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... concerning his treatment of her, familiar to every ear in the neighbourhood but his own. He believed political and religious differences alone separated him and Mr. Yorke. Had he known how the case really stood, he would hardly have been induced by any persuasion to cross his former rival's threshold. ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... sound, listening to the lightest footfalls: strong and clear, Basilio; light and irregular, Crispin—thus she mused. The kalao called in the woods several times after the rain had ceased, but still her sons did not come. She put the fishes inside the pot to keep them warm and went to the threshold of the hut to look toward the road. To keep herself company, she began to sing in a low voice, a voice usually so sweet and tender that when her sons listened to her singing the kundiman they wept ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... They took the management at the very threshold of our government, and, excepting the rigidly just administration of Washington, they have kept it ever since. They claimed slave representation and obtained it. For their convenience the revenues were ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... extent, a true phonetic writing—one in which the figures refer not to the thought, but to the sound of the thought. Others are not ready to concede that point. They could not have been further along than the threshold of the discovery, at all events. The Spanish missionaries were very desirous of teaching the Indians the Pater-noster, the Ave-Maria, and the Credo. Either the Indians themselves, or the priests (probably the latter), hit on the device of using painted symbols for the words and ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... single night here, if thou wilt spend the second, the events of the night will be different from those that have happened to thee in the day-time, O most righteous of Bharata's race! Today we shall spend the night at this very spot. O scion of Bharata's race! this is the threshold of the field of the Kurus. O king! At this very spot, the monarch Yayati, son of Nahusha, performed sacrificial rites, and made gifts of an abundance of gems. And Indra was pleased with those sacred rites. This is an excellent holy bathing-place on the river ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... at the threshold of his house, with a smiling face, glad to see him once more, "clothed and in his right mind," for she, too, had feared for his reason. She accompanied him in, and then, when seated at his side, gently chided him for his last night's fears, and what she called "superstitious fancies." "I hope ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... yet ingenious and skilful way. The day happens to be Lady Windermere's birthday, and at the beginning of the act her husband has given her a beautiful ostrich-feather fan. When he sends off the invitation, she turns upon him and says, "If that woman crosses my threshold, I shall strike her across the face with this fan." Here, again, many a dramatist might be content to bring down his curtain. The announcement of Lady Windermere's resolve carries forward the interest quite clearly enough for all practical purposes. ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... flaxen-haired, plump, and blue-eyed, sat knitting, and Larry's eyes grew a trifle wistful when he glanced at her. It was a very long while since any woman had crossed his threshold, and the red-cheeked fraeulein gave the comfortless bachelor dwelling a curiously homelike appearance. Nevertheless, it was not the recollection of its usual dreariness that called up the sigh, for Larry Grant had had his dreams like other men, and Miss Muller was not the woman he had now ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... another word till they reached the threshold of their own house. It was a narrow one, consisting of a ground-floor and two floors above, in the rue Belle-Normande. The maid, Josephine, a girl of nineteen, a rustic servant-of-all-work at low wages, gifted to excess with the startled, animal ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... substitute relationship is a going back to the dreamlike stage of late adolescence, putting new promises ahead of present performance, and attempting to make life stand still, so that one may continue on the threshold of maturity without ever stepping over into the place where one must make ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... depressed to the point of despair. She was tremendously lonely. This home had meant so much to her. When she first came here and neighbors had begun to drop in she had imagined herself on the threshold of a great career, that some day, possibly, Lester would marry her. Now, blow after blow had been delivered, and the home and dream were a ruin. Gerhardt was gone. Jeannette, Harry Ward, and Mrs. Frissell ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... don't give way in this fashion. You have stood manfully by me through every step of the road; don't desert me on the threshold of—" ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... Gerrard Street, is a beer-shop, but the memory of the great orator hallows the abode, and an inscription upon it proudly announces that here he lived. Dr. Johnson's house, in Gough Square, bears (or bore) a mural tablet, and standing at its time-worn threshold, the visitor needed no effort of fancy to picture that uncouth figure shambling through the crooked lanes that afford access to this queer, somber, melancholy retreat. In that house he wrote the first dictionary of the English language ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... crossed his humble threshold and sat down, when Robin clambered on his knee and put the puzzling question.—"Fasser, what ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... sitting in his shop making a golden chain, and when he heard the bird, who was sitting on his roof and singing, he started up to go and look, and as he passed over his threshold he lost one of his slippers; and he went into the middle of the street with a slipper on one foot and only a sock on the other; with his apron on, and the gold chain in one hand and the pincers in the other; and so he stood in the sunshine ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... boundary of Washington city to be fairly in the country, and ten minutes' walk in the country brings one to real primitive woods. The town has not yet overflowed its limits like the great Northern commercial capitals, and Nature, wild and unkempt, comes up to its very threshold, and even in many ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... yesterday And left the glad voice of his loved one dumb. To him the living now will come And cross his threshold in the self-same way To clasp his hand and vainly try to say Words that shall soothe the heart that's ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest
... dread of my incomprehensible tempter. Rather, a hundred times, front and defy those seven Eastern slaves—I, haughty son of the Anglo-Saxon who conquers all races because he fears no odds—than have seen again on the walls of my threshold the luminous, bodiless shadow! Besides: Lilian—Lilian! for one chance of saving her life, however wild and chimerical that chance might be, I would have shrunk not a foot from the march of ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... the Concord grave-yard to a new and picturesque burying-ground a mile southwest of Petersburg, called Oakland cemetery. The old grave, though marked by no stone, was easily identified from the fact that Ann was buried by the side of her younger brother, David, who died in 1842, upon the threshold of what promised to be a brilliant career as a lawyer. The removal was made by Samuel Montgomery, a prominent business man of Petersburg. He was accompanied to the grave by James McGrady Rutledge and a few others, who located the grave beyond doubt. In the new cemetery, the grave occupies ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... were late as well as we. Ten minutes after the hour the hearse was still standing at the door of the house, and even as our foaming horse came to a halt the coffin, supported by three men, appeared on the threshold. Holmes darted forward ...
— The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax • Arthur Conan Doyle
... all intents and purposes the village aristocrat, and when the mysterious door of Ethie's room, which had been closed so long, was opened, and the bridegroom told that he might go in, he started in surprise at the beautiful tableau presented to his view as he stepped across the threshold. As was natural, he fancied that never before had he seen three young girls so perfectly beautiful as the three before him—Ethie, ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... governess by that time—what he had left to do, he could best do alone—and they came back, upon a rain night, to the scene of her long preparation. She turned to him upon the threshold, as the rain was dripping from the ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... that it was the city of Sana'.[FN19] So he journeyed with all speed, till he drew near his father's capital and, making an airy circuit about the city, alighted on the roof of the King's palace, where he left his horse, whilst he descended into the palace and seeing its threshold strewn with ashes, though that one of his family was dead. Then he entered, as of wont, and found his father and mother and sisters clad in mourning raiment of black, all pale of faces and lean of frames. When his sire descried him and was assured ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... John Graham of Claverhouse and his bloody crew, officers or men it matters not, to cross our threshold and break bread within our walls—I, a daughter of the house of Cassillis and the widow of your faithful son? May my hand be smitten helpless forever if I write such a word, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I welcome this slayer of the saints ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... door in his wagon, got down with all the care that the successful support of his burden of years demanded, and chained Dolly to the much-gnawed post which was fixed for the purpose on the edge of the sidewalk. He ascended the steps, and was met by Abbie on the threshold. He removed his hat with old-fashioned courtesy, and gave her cold hand a quiet, ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... gaped in front of us. We stepped, as it were, right out of the carriage and into the hall, so that I failed to catch the most fleeting glance of the front of the house. The instant that I had crossed the threshold the door slammed heavily behind us, and I heard faintly the rattle of the wheels as the carriage ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... that threshold in the sun, Assault the old king smiling there . . . Such grace had ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... were fixed upon the sky, and her arms were entwined about the lamb, who lay with its head in her bosom. The vicar knelt down, and prayed. He could not bear to lose the light of his household, though he knew that the angels were waiting for her on the threshold of heaven. When he arose she slept. Ages have passed since then, and she still sleeps; and will sleep till the heavens and the earth shall have passed away. The next day was the Sabbath, and they bore her to the little churchyard where her mother was buried. Their ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... he and Davidge were presently conducted by a trim and somewhat surprised-looking parlour-maid, was one which might have been bodily lifted from the stage of any theatre devoted to work of the melodramatic order. The detective and the reporter found themselves on the threshold of a handsomely furnished dining-room, vividly lighted by lamps which threw a warm pink glow over the old oak furniture and luxurious fittings. On one side of the big table sat Professor Cox-Raythwaite and Selwood both looking a little ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... Blackwood, that Nelson would have consented now to deprive of his "birthright" the man who so far had been doing the work; but the petition was never preferred. Entering the cabin, the officer paused at the threshold, for Nelson was on his knees writing. The words, the last that he ever penned, were written in the private diary he habitually kept, in which were noted observations and reflections upon passing occurrences, mingled with occasional self-communings. They followed now, without ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... architect divine, Where vast Olympus' starry summits shine: So tell our hoary sire"—This charge she gave: The sea-green sisters plunge beneath the wave: Thetis once more ascends the bless'd abodes, And treads the brazen threshold of the gods. ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... castle, we must "do" it, after the set fashion. Reminders meet us at the threshold that it is in form a real place of defence, contemplative of wars and rumors of wars, and not a mere dwelling by any means in original design. A roadway, crooked and raked by frowning embrasures, leads up from the peaceful town to the particularly inhospitable-looking ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... began to ascend the stairs. Gray followed, Sir Lucien standing aside to give him precedence. On the second floor was a door painted in Oriental fashion. It possessed neither bell nor knocker, but as one stepped upon the threshold this door opened noiselessly as if dumbly inviting the visitor to enter the square apartment discovered. This apartment was richly furnished in the Arab manner, and lighted by a fine brass lamp swung upon chains from the painted ceiling. ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... slumbering in their sheaths O'er my threshold clamber, And the honeysuckle wreathes Its translucent amber Round the gables of my home: How is it thou ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... to undo the door. He started up and armed himself, and told them to go away. But the thieves defied him, and with a great boulder broke down the door. Then Havelok, hearing the din, rose up, and seizing the bar of the door stood on the threshold and threw the door wide open, saying, "Come in, I am ready for you!" First came three against him with their swords, but Havelok slew these with the door bar at a single blow; the fourth man's crown he broke; he smote the fifth upon the shoulders, the sixth athwart the neck, ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... gathered in the singing house he used to lie in the passage and peep over the threshold. Now and then a man would take him by the nose and lift him into the house and make him carry out a jar of water. It was so large and heavy that he had to take hold of it with both hands and his teeth. Because he was so often lifted by his nose, it grew very large, ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... recovers your antagonist may be in a tighter," Bell chuckled. "And if the man gets well and that brain injury proves permanent—I mean if the man is rendered imbecile—why, we are only at the very threshold of the mystery. It seems a callous thing to say, but this is the prettiest problem I have ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... heard proceeding slowly down a shrubbery-path on the other side of the yard wall. At any rate, that was the effect produced; for next moment, before Philip could think of escape, had he wished to escape, a door in the wall was opened, and a gentleman, pausing on the threshold, surveyed the whole scene, with the assistance of a gold-mounted eye-glass, with some evident surprise and little ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... not commonly cause insanity properly so called. The organ of the mind is a composite, or aggregate of cells, or molecules, any number or series of which may be affected with disease while the rest remain healthy. At present we are only on the threshold of investigation concerning the physical causes of insanity, and have scarcely done more than recognize the possibility of molecular disease of the brain. Hereafter science will, probably, succeed in unveiling the obscure facts of molecular ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... a given receptor has a low threshold for only one, its own specific stimulus, and a high threshold for all others; that is, the doors that guard the nerve-paths to the brain are opened only when the proper password is received. According to Sherrington's law, the individual as a whole ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... later Eli Joseph's tired step sounded on the veranda, and Rose hurried to admit him, lifting a silencing hand as soon as he had crossed the threshold. "Hannah has just gone to sleep," she whispered. "No—no, she's not sick at all." He placed an arm around her and drew ...
— The Little Mixer • Lillian Nicholson Shearon
... present in his pocket, arrived at the "Bootjack Hotel," Little Bunker's Buildings, Berkeley Square (for it must out—that was the place in which Mr. Crump's inn was situated), he paused for a moment at the threshold of the little house of entertainment, and listened, with beating heart, to the sound of delicious music that a ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... festoons of gray moss such as hangs from forest boughs. This was tied with knots of red bittersweet berries; the feathers of sea-birds were also displayed on the walls, and chains of their delicate-coloured eggs were hanging there. Caius had not stepped across the threshold before he began to suspect that he had passed from the region of the ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... opening of the door. Andy Gilgallon stood on the threshold and looked in with amazement. He had not expected to find the lady ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... step in, bright and cheerful, holding out her apron, with her head thrown on one side, and a smile on her lips. Her thick, long chestnut hair fell over her shoulder and across her breast. But we, ugly, dirty and misshapen as we were, looked up at her—the threshold door was four steps above the floor— looked up at her with heads thrown back, wishing her good-morning, and speaking strange, unaccustomed words, which we kept ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... fool, Tom," she said decisively, as he crossed the threshold. "There's not enough silver in Sark to make a ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... making good progress, checking sometimes to carve our way through some obstacle. At last we were getting a return for the precious coal expended. The sky was overcast, the outlook from the masthead flat and dreary, but hour by hour it became more obvious that we neared the threshold of the open sea. At 1 A.M. on Friday, December 30 (lat. about 711/2 deg. S., noon observation 72 deg. 17' S., 177 deg. 9' E.) Bowers steered through the last ice stream. Behind was some 400 miles of ice. Cape Crozier was 334 miles ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... building belonging to some denomination. A conference of that denomination was being held just outside the door, and the ministers wanted me to come and take part. I looked toward the door through which I must pass, and I saw two large worms with their heads together, lying directly across the threshold. In order to enter the room, I would have to step over the worms and would be in great danger of receiving a deadly bite. I said to myself, "I will not run the risk for any man's notions or ways"; and, turning on my heel, I ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... Charlie Stuart and his Highlandmen. Down the narrow way, in the drizzly dusk, ran a slight figure, entirely muffled up. Fleet of foot was the runner, and blindly she held her course. Twice she came in contact with intervening obstacles—water-stoups on a threshold, gay ribbons fluttering from a booth. She was flying from worse than death, with dim projects of begging her way to the North, to the brother she had parted from when a child; and ghastly suggestions, too, like lightning flashes, of seizing ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... with him. Then another of his startlingly sudden moves told her that she had reckoned too quickly. This move was to put her firmly aside so he could pass; and Madeline, seeing he would not hesitate to lift her out of the way, surrendered the door. He turned on the threshold. His face was still working, but the flame-pointed gleam of his eyes indicated the ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... boatbuilder, he stepped briskly across the room, pulling open the door of a cupboard. Taking out a broom, he began to sweep very carefully where the Melville group had sat or stood, and continued his sweeping across the threshold of the doorway. Then, returning, he tossed the broom into the cupboard. Stepping springily over, he dropped into his desk chair, ...
— The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip - "Making Good" as Young Experts • Victor G. Durham
... out a name as they passed the door of the concierge, a name that was not Conway, and her hand pulled Betty up flight after flight of steep stairs. On the fifth floor she opened a door with a key, and left Betty standing at the threshold till she had ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... more for the last time he went tripping down the lawn radiantly happy, turning now and again to throw back with his fingers a message from his lips to the one being in all the world for him, who stood on the threshold, adding poetry and grace to ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... virtuous life. In 1661, after his wife's death, he entered the Hermandad de la Caridad, later becoming superior of that order. In his will he endowed the brotherhood with all his wealth and requested that he be buried under the threshold of the chapel of San Jorge. His sole epitaph was to be "Here repose the bones and ashes of the worst man who ever existed in the world." Don Miguel's biography was written by his friend the Jesuit Juan de Cardeas and was added ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... word, nor boisterous laughter was heard from this crowd. Each one spoke in low and earnest tones to his neighbor; every one was conscious of the deep significance of the hour, and feared to interrupt the religious service of the country by a word spoken too loud. In silent devotion they crossed the threshold of the armory, with light and measured steps the crowd circulated through the rooms, and with solemn calmness and a silent prayer in their hearts, the people received from the hands of the veteran soldiers the weapons for the ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... had been absent three years. This man invited me to go with him to his house; at the gate of which his friends met him with many expressions of joy, shaking hands with him, embracing him, and singing and dancing before him. As soon as he had seated himself upon a mat, by the threshold of his door, a young woman (his intended bride) brought a little water in a calabash, and kneeling down before him, desired him to wash his hands; when he had done this, the girl, with a tear of joy sparkling in her eyes, drank the water; this being considered as the greatest ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... nature, which might be attended to by-and-bye, and could wait his perfect leisure. But, being now in the streets again, it occurred to him as just coming within the bare limits of possibility that Mr Tapley might, in course of time, grow tired of waiting on the threshold of the Rowdy Journal Office, so he intimated to his new friend, that if they could conveniently walk in that direction, he would be glad to get this piece of business ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... in her voice evidently affected the young man also. He came, hurrying, and when he had entered stayed upon the threshold, warm-hued with work and bringing with him the odor of the soil. His brown eyes went from one of them to the other, ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... across the threshold, and for the first time looked at the other man who had been on the point of entering. He was slight and somewhat sallow, with very high forehead and small deep-set eyes. He was dressed in ordinary evening clothes, the details ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... through which they had escaped opened before him. Grateful even for this doubtful protection, he crossed the threshold and trudged wearily along with his precious burden. Blindly trusting in the miraculous powers of Dantor, he followed the orange beacon which now seemed to smile cheerfully as it lighted his way through the ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... back upon cottons and linens for inexpensive hangings, and in all the thousand forms in which these two fibres are manufactured it would seem easy to choose those which are beautiful, durable, and appropriate. But here we are met at the very threshold of choice with the two undesirable qualities of fugitive colour, and stiffness of texture. Something in the nature of cotton makes it inhospitable to dyes. If it receives them it is with a protest, and an evident intention of casting them out at the earliest ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... pressed the hand of the last guest, and said to him at the threshold, that there was absolute need for the commercial company of which they had been talking to gain a broader foundation of activity by obtaining more and surer sources ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... the hall when she came down with her hat and coat on, and he motioned her to precede him into the cab, but giving her head a little shake, Eleanor opened the drawing-room door and, after hesitating for a moment on the threshold, went in. Mrs. Murray was sitting before the fire crying silently. At the sight of her tears Eleanor's hesitation vanished and she ran across the room and flung herself on her knees and put both her arms in a protecting fashion round the old ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... dwelling with a circle of fire. After a pause, Baker rode to the kitchen door on the side, and dismounting, rapped and halloed lustily. An old man, in drawers and night-shirt, hastily undrew the bolts, and stood on the threshold, peering shiveringly into ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... I'll play her that sonata of Beethoven that dear papa was so fond of; it is wonderful how calming it is. Adieu, doctor," she said again, pausing on the threshold of the door. "Adieu, kind doctor!" And she sent ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... Rome against the three Curiatii, who smote for Alba and lost the day—Tullus Hostilius, grandson of that first Hostus who had fought against the Sabines; and always more legend, and more, and more, sometimes misty, sometimes clear and direct in action as a Greek tragedy. They hover upon the threshold of history, with faces of beauty or of terror, sublime, ridiculous, insignificant, some born of desperate, real deeds, many another, perhaps, first told by some black-haired shepherd mother to her wondering boys at evening, when the brazen pot simmered on the smouldering fire, ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... through the darkness till a thread of light marked the threshold of a door. A knock and an answer opened it, and Martin found himself shaking hands with Kreis, a handsome brunette man, with dazzling white teeth, a drooping black mustache, and large, flashing black eyes. Mary, a matronly young blonde, was washing dishes in the little ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... later he stumbled across his threshold like a drunken man. Another draught of water revived him somewhat, and, after resting a little in the Windsor chair, he mounted the tiny staircase and ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... mother, opened the door of the room and stood upon the threshold. The scuffling of Sam and Penrod ceased instantly, and they stood hushed and stricken, while fear fell upon them. "Boys, ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... his mother and himself, might have placed affairs in a happier position. Most persons, under these circumstances, would have become bitter, but Montacute was too tender for malice, and so he only turned melancholy. On the threshold of manhood, Montacute lost his mother, and this seemed the catastrophe of his unhappy life. His father neither shared his grief, nor attempted to alleviate it. On the contrary, he seemed to redouble his efforts to mortify his son. ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... military measures adopted under power from Congress by General Grant, only suppressed organized violence in its more rampant form. It was impossible to imprison a commonwealth or to place bayonets at every threshold, and while the negro might be upheld in his right of suffrage, Federal protection could not supply him with work and bread. The intellect and the property of the South were on the side of the whites, and the blacks began to find that their choice was between submission ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... point at any time," said Sir Lulworth, "and certainly not when we're on the immediate threshold of lunch." ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... Polish story, if a witch lays a girdle of human skin on the threshold of a house in which a marriage is being celebrated, the bride and bridegroom, and bridesmaids and groomsmen, should they step across it, are transformed into wolves. After three years, however, the witch will cover them with skins with the hair. turned outward; immediately they will recover ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... stepped across the threshold and entered the room. He proceeded slowly to pull off his mittens; then looking up at the pastor's face, upon which a vague sheen fell from the stove, he ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... surprise, the door of the dining room was open. It had been opened. I paused on the threshold, staring about me. I think I fully expected to see a figure blocked in the shadows against the heavy sideboard, or looming on the other side beneath his portrait. But the room was empty; I felt it empty. Through the wide bow-windows ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... any one of my readers ever be impelled to visit the prairies, and should he choose the route of the Platte (the best, perhaps, that can be adopted), I can assure him that he need not think to enter at once upon the paradise of his imagination. A dreary preliminary, protracted crossing of the threshold awaits him before he finds himself fairly upon the verge of the "great American desert," those barren wastes, the haunts of the buffalo and the Indian, where the very shadow of civilization lies a hundred leagues behind ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... heard, and it was that and the door—But I have already told you about the door which she was still looking for, when her two companions suddenly halted, and she found herself on the threshold of the library, in full view of Mr. Van Broecklyn and ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... escape of the royal youth; and, in the disguise of a common sailor, he eluded the search of his enemies, passed the Hellespont, and found a secure refuge in the Isle of Sicily. After saluting the threshold of the apostles, and imploring the protection of Pope Innocent the Third, Alexius accepted the kind invitation of his sister Irene, the wife of Philip of Swabia, king of the Romans. But in his passage through Italy, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... there, it had been broken up, and many of them lost; yet still it must have been a noble library, for he tells us that it was "scarcely equalled in all Britain;" and adds, in the spirit of a true bibliomaniac, that he no sooner passed the threshold than the very sight of so many sacred remains of antiquity struck him with awe and astonishment. The reader will naturally wish that he had given us a list of what he found there; but he merely enumerates a selection of thirty-nine, among which we find a Grammatica Eriticis, formerly ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... life that entangles me. In my isolation I have time enough for mental inversion—for self-exploration—for idle fancies, if you will. And so I have lifted the veil for you; uncovered my inner life; taken you into the sanctuary over whose threshold no foot but my ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... half-a-dozen pairs of talon-like hands clutched frantically at her skirts, the door behind her was quickly opened. She felt her arm seized firmly, and herself dragged swiftly within the shelter of the threshold. ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... be lodged objection that she dare not disregard—her uncle's will. One other girl there was, that night at Frayne, who marked her going and sought to follow and was recalled, restrained at the very threshold by the sound of a beloved voice softly, in the Sioux tongue, calling her name. One other girl there was who knew not of her going, who shrank from thought of meeting her at any time,—in any ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... time in three years, for the first time since she had crossed the threshold of "Old Jack Means" and come under the domination of Mrs. Old Jack Means, Hannah talked cheerfully, almost gayly. It was something to have a companion to talk to. It was something to be the victor even in a spelling-match, and to be applauded ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... bright Presence, smiling, pointed where Ali towards the outer gate drew near, Upon the threshold shaking off his shoes And giving "alms of entry," as men use. "Yea!" spake th' Archangel, "sacred is the sound Of morning-praise, and worth the world's wide round, Though earth were pearl and silver; therefore I Stayed ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... was so impressed with the well-known legend of "The Bloody Footstep" that he, in three separate instances, founded fictions upon it. In his romance of "Septimius" he gives this graphic account of what he saw: "On the threshold of one of the doors of Smithells Hall there is a bloody footstep impressed into the doorstep, and ruddy as if the bloody foot had just trodden there, and it is averred that on a certain night of the year, and at a certain hour of the night, ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... goobers to sell now an' them boys won't show her a step of the way an' she couldn't get here so quick all herself without bein' showed so I may as well rest a minute," said Glory to herself, and sat down on the narrow threshold to get cool and to decide ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... guiltless suffering with the guilty, and because of their connection with the guilty, until the palaces of the Henries and the Edwards become as haunted with horrors as were the halls of the Atridae. The "pale nurslings that had perished by kindred hands," seen by Cassandra when she passed the threshold of Agamemnon's abode, might have been paralleled by similar "phantom dreams," had another Cassandra accompanied Henry VII. when he came from Bosworth Field to take possession of the royal abodes at London. She, too, might have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Berlin will be entirely a new scene to you, and I look upon it, in a manner, as your first step into the great world; take care that step be not a false one, and that you do not stumble at the threshold. You will there be in more company than you have yet been; manners and attentions ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... picking her way over the debris of the porch. At any other time its demise would have occupied the minds of the Vicarage household for days. But, until this moment, it had hardly claimed the tribute of a sigh. Mrs. Gresley did sigh as she crossed the threshold. That prostrate porch meant expense. She had understood from her husband that Dick had wantonly torn out the clamp that supported it, and that the whole thing had in consequence given way under the first snowfall. "He meant no harm," Mr. Gresley had added, ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... good night to Marable, and followed her father from the laboratory. As they crossed the threshold a stout, red-faced man in a gray uniform, a watchman's clock hanging at his side, raised his hat and smiled at the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... hall to the room in which he had found Nur-el-Din asleep on his arrival. His nerves were strung up tight for the impending encounter with this Mortimer, whoever, whatever he was. Desmond did not hesitate on the threshold of the room. He quietly opened the door and ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... of a farmer his poultry frequently go to roost at noon-day, instead of at the usual time. When the cock struts up to the door and sounds his clarion on the threshold, the housewife is warned that she may soon expect a stranger. In what is technically termed "setting a hen," care is taken that the nest be composed of an odd number of eggs. If even, the chickens would not prosper. Each egg is always marked ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 41, Saturday, August 10, 1850 • Various
... the cabin. Jerry paused on the threshold, and wheeled around. He was frightened to see the catamount within six feet of him. But he kept a cool head, and lifted his rifle, which he had meanwhile reloaded. There was no time to hesitate. He ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon
... the drinking glass offered them. This dog was much afraid of the glass, and I had only to present it to him at lunch time to make him keep his distance. I used to keep my door open at lunch, for the amusement of observing how I could make him stop exactly at the threshold without stepping over it. If he had passed over it I could always send him back by casting toward him a few drops of water from the bottom of the glass after drinking. Sitting, as was his habit, on the sill of the door, with the tip of his muzzle ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... guardian of morality, to listen to him. And you, who receive on the 20th of each month a few kopeks' gratuity for your wretched business, you get into your uniform, and in good spirits proceed to torture—bully people whose threshold you're not clean enough to pass. Then when you've had your fill of showing off your wretched power, oh, then you are satisfied, and sit and smile there in your damned ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... Dr. Burney). Westhamble, March 22, 1800. Day after day I have meant to write to my dearest father 'but I have been unwell ever since our return, and that has not added to my being sprightly. I have not once crossed 'the threshold since I re-entered the house till to-day, when Mr. and Mrs. Locke almost insisted upon taking me an airing. I am glad of it, for it has done me good, and broken a kind of spell that made me ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... of Ballinger House was long and narrow and from its bow window commanded a view of the Bay. It was as uncomely with its black walnut furniture and brown walls as the rest of that aristocratic abode, across whose threshold no loose fish had ever darted; but its dingy walls were more or less concealed by paintings of the martial Virginia ancestors of Mrs. Ballinger and her husband, the table linen had been woven for her in Ireland, the cut glass blown for her in England; the fragile china came from ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... Temple of Fame. The door is open by day and by night, and a tall, thin, sallow boy turns his back upon a log cabin in Illinois and seeks entrance. But the angel at the threshold asks hard questions: "Can you eat crusts? Can you wear rags? Can you sleep in a garret? Can you endure sleepless nights and days of toil? Can you bear up against every wind that assails your bark? Can you live for liberty and God's truth, and can you die for ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... course was liberal—when one considers how long Mrs. Siddons had appeared upon the stage before she got a firm footing on the London boards, one cannot but be astonished at the rise of this lady at one leap from the threshold to the top of her profession. It is worthy of observation that the real children of nature generally burst at once upon the view in excellence approaching to perfection; while the mere artists of the stage lag behind, labouring for years, before they attain the summit of their ambition; ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... there. He stood on the threshold of the inn, waiting for me, as it seemed, although it was not yet the hour of my appointment. As they drew me up to the door, I saw his tall, straight figure and his red hair by the light of the hall lamps. By Heaven, I felt as a lost child must on sight of his mother! I stretched ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... opinions it upheld, and the practical theatrical innovations it introduced into the theatre, like the double stage for the little Madison Square playhouse, in New York, which was the precursor of such modern paraphernalia as came later with the foreign revolving stages. He always stood on the threshold of modernism, advocating those principles which were to fructify in the decades to follow him. Such pioneer spirit was evident in his ardent advocacy of Delsarte methods of acting; his own work as an actor was coloured and influenced by the master whose pupil he became in the ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Paul Kauvar; or, Anarchy • Steele Mackaye
... waited at the threshold of an opening door, and like a child his fancy gathered door-step flowers, recking nothing of the widening space behind, the beckoning hands, the strange chambers into which shortly he must go. Some faint and far monition, some breath of colder air may have touched him, ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... "Madame Mila!" This announcement was presently followed by the entrance of little Randolph Miller, who stopped in the middle of the room and stood staring at Winterbourne. An instant later his pretty sister crossed the threshold; and then, after a considerable interval, Mrs. ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... awkward, anomalous. The servants were disconcerted, and scarcely knew how to take her fluttery yet imperious orders. For Raymond himself, as any one could see, it was all purgatory—or worse. Every room had its peculiar and disagreeable memories. There was the chamber-threshold over which they had discussed her tendency to out-mode the mode and to push every extreme of fashion to an extreme still more daring—for that black gown with spangles, or whatever, had been but the first ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... youth, thy foot unbrace, Here, youth, thy brow unbraid; Each tribute that may grace The threshold here be paid. Walk with the stealthy pace Which Nature teaches deer, When, echoing in the chase, The hunter's horn they ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... little gimcrack shanty had become to him, Mahony grasped only when he once more crossed its threshold and Polly's ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... prepare one for any such astonishing spectacle as awaits one. The rushing, foaming water amid the tumbled confusion of huge granite rocks and the open V-shaped valley, are nothing very remarkable or unusual. Then suddenly you are on the threshold of this hall of the elder gods. Demons and furies might lurk in the valley below, but here is the abode of the serene, beneficent Olympian deities. All is so calm, so hushed, so friendly, yet so towering, so stupendous, so unspeakably beautiful. You are in a mansion ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... followed the fall of the old broker in the Stock Exchange the storm seemed to be gathering for a still more destructive sweep. A few friends took up the old man and bore him out. No sooner had they passed over the threshold than a roar like that of an angry sea burst forth. Bulls and bears seemed on the verge of personal violence. The price went up and down in momentary fluctuations, and men dropped out and flew from ...
— Halsey & Co. - or, The Young Bankers and Speculators • H. K. Shackleford
... difficulties leading to a successful career, and do not decide to add one more musician to the world until you are confident of your suitability for the work. Remember that this moment of decision is a very important time and that you may be upon the threshold of a dangerous mistake. Remember that there are thousands of successful and happy teachers for ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... in them that we can compare to the exquisite idyll of Nausicaa or to the Titanic humour of the episode in the Cyclops' cave. Penelope has not the glamour of Circe, and the song of the Sirens may sound sweeter than the whizz of the arrows of Odysseus as he stands on the threshold of his hall. Yet, for sheer intensity of passionate power, for concentration of intellectual interest and for masterly dramatic construction, these latter books are quite unequalled. Indeed, they show very clearly ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... faded blue eyes were gazing past me, hopelessly sad, supremely mournful. What the deuce ailed him? I wondered angrily. The thing was almost weird. Of a sudden, with irritation, yet with dread, too, I felt myself on the threshold of a house of tragedy. The man might, from the look of him, have been watching some loved ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... hall-door. It was wide open, and the hall lined with servants, male and female, in black. In the midst, between these two rows, stood Griffith Gaunt, bareheaded, to welcome the guests. His arm was in a sling. He had received all the others in the middle of the hall; but he came to the threshold to meet Kate and her father. He bowed low and respectfully, then gave his left hand to Kate to conduct her, after the formal fashion of the day. The sight of his arm in a sling startled and affected her; and with him giving ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... recently been done, it must not be forgotten that we have scarcely advanced beyond the threshold, and that it is only by numerous and frequently repeated experiments that it is possible to arrive at satisfactory results. Agricultural inquiries are liable to peculiar fallacies due to the perturbing influence of climate, season, and many ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... kicked at the nursery door, slung in his bag of books, and stood on the threshold, pouting and glaring ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... Joel, twitching away. "I said peek, Dave. Mr. Tisbett didn't say not to do that." So both boys got as far as they could on the threshold of the big sweet-smelling barn, without stepping over the sill, and craned their necks to get a sight of ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... one morning when his attention was arrested by a heavy step outside his door. It had something familiar in it. Then he heard his name spoken in a loud voice. Some one was asking for him, and the next moment the door opened and Squire Rawson stood on the threshold. He looked worn; but his face was serene. Keith's intuition told him why he had come; and the old man did not leave it in any doubt. ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... Yet I feel that I shall stand Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore Alone upon the threshold of my door Of individual life shall I command The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand Serenely in the sunshine as before, Without the sense of that which I forbore— Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine With pulses that beat double. What I ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... less he felt her presence never Out of the room depart; Over the threshold, not the less, forever He felt her going ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... struck by lightning, remained the prince upon the threshold; behind him were seen the astonished faces of his generals, who, on tiptoe, stretched their necks to gaze, over each other's shoulders, upon ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... deserted enough, in all conscience. The door was open, and the November wind free to play through the place as it liked. I stood on the threshold, thinking. I had found out nothing about any wolf-bait, excepting the one bottle the Frenchwoman's son might or might not have left there; certainly nothing about Collins ever having got hold of any; ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... Squatting on the threshold, her emaciated arms still covering her eyes, Bakuma strove to obey. At length she faltered out the story of her double abduction. The capture by the askaris had made but little difference to her, for, as she phrased it, the beak of her ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... the life blood dyed the African heath. I saw some passing over the border line which divides life and death, with a ring of stern-browed comrades round them, leaning upon their rifles, whilst a brother or a father knelt and pressed the hand of him whose feet were on the very threshold of the land beyond the shadows. I saw others smiling up into the faces of women—the poor, pain-drawn faces of the dying looking less haggard and worn than the anguish-stricken features of their womanhood who knelt to comfort them in that last awful hour—in the hour which divides time from eternity, ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... beyond their power has to be conquered, and here Oisin wars with the giant Fomor. De Dannan and Romorian passed from Eire wrestle still in the invisible world, say the legends. We, too— would-be mystics—are met on the threshold of diviner spheres by terrible forms embodying the sins of a living past when we misused our spiritual powers in old Atlantean days. These forms must be conquered and so Oisin battles with Fomor and releases the power— a princess ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... candelabrum of six lighted candles. After J. had helped the King from the carriage he took the candelabra from the servants and preceded the King up the stairs to where I stood, according to custom, on the threshold of the door. I presented to the Crown Princess a large bouquet of red and white roses (the Danish colors), with long streaming ribbons to match, and a smaller ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... arm; she looked up quietly, smiled, and stepped across the threshold. Speed followed; Jacqueline slipped in beside him, and then I turned on Buckhurst, who had just ordered his soldiers to surround ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... plank door was ajar, but as Alleyne approached it there came from within such a gust of rough laughter and clatter of tongues that he stood irresolute upon the threshold. Summoning courage, however, and reflecting that it was a public dwelling, in which he had as much right as any other man, he pushed it open and stepped into ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Ten nights and days I lay upon my bed. Bethink thee, mistress Moon, whence came my love. And wan became my flesh, as 't had been dyed, And all my hair streamed off, and there was left But bones and skin. Whose threshold crossed I not, Or missed what grandam's hut who dealt in charms? For no light thing was this, and time sped on. Bethink thee, mistress Moon, whence came my love. At last I spake the truth to that my maid: "Seek, an thou canst, some cure for my sore pain. Alas, I am all the Mindian's! But ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... No Englishman or American ever crosses the threshold, and Kate has no brothers. The students have no money and no morals, and, what is worse, no baths. A burgess or a professional would be quite as intolerable, and no man of our class would consent to an elopement. Germans may be sentimental but they ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... noiseless attendance, its mute, watchful assiduities. The last testimonies of expiring love! The feeble, fluttering, thrilling—oh! how thrilling—pressure of the hand! The last fond look of the glazing eye turned upon us even from the threshold of existence! The faint, faltering accents struggling in death to give ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... then, in an instant, all hesitation was lost in purpose and they again advanced this time to the threshold. Judge Ostrander had just time to brace himself to meet the unknown, when the door fell back and the woman of the morning appeared in ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... these marvels, the men of science were eagerly following up the new clue to the mystery of matter which was exercising the mind of Crookes and other investigators. In 1896 Becquerel brought us to the threshold of ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... forget a harangue from the mouth of the old man, which I listened to one warm evening as he and I sat on the threshold of the stable, after having attended to some of the wants of a batch of coach- horses. It related to the manner in which a gentleman should take care of his horse and self whilst engaged in a journey on horseback, and was addressed to myself on the supposition of my one day coming ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... a deep curtsy when, opening the door to the autocratic summons of Crashaw's rat-a-tat, she saw the great man of the district at her threshold. Challis raised his hat. Crashaw did not imitate his example; he was all officiousness, he had the air of a chief ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... Rolf came scampering home from his recitations, and catching sight of his mother through the open door of the kitchen, he ran to her, calling out before he reached the threshold, "Mamma, mamma, ...
— Uncle Titus and His Visit to the Country • Johanna Spyri
... view to the admittance of such a vehicle, which when not in use is carefully enveloped in brown holland, like a harp or a chandelier during the out-of-town season, and is deposited in the hall or passage of the threshold, and in some cases in a corner of the marble-paved reception room. The presence in our studio of Don Benigno's quitrin is therefore not very remarkable. Many weeks, however, elapse before we can get rid of this unsightly piece of furniture. Several ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... no questions, nor did she keep me waiting. Ere I had time to prepare a word of that which I must say to her, she was on the threshold signing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... led him mechanically nearer and nearer to the house where she lived, all the details of his wedding-day rose in his memory, and he turned aside to see again the little church, the threshold of which they had crossed together—she exquisitely lovely in her white draperies, ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... thee! still thy Theodore! Hearts in the holy bands of Love combin'd, Death has no power to sever. Thou art mine! A little while and thou shalt dwell with me In scenes where Sorrow is not. Cheerily Tread thou the path that leads thee to the grave, Rough tho' it be and painful, for the grave Is but the threshold of Eternity. ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... hand, rose to her feet, and turned her face away to hide her emotions; then she glided noiselessly along the room, and paused at the threshold. Suddenly, impelled as by a new thought, she returned to my side and said, in ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... (She crosses the threshold. He hesitates. She turns and, holding out her hands, draws him over. He hops. On the antlered rack of the hall hang a man 's hat and waterproof. Bloom uncovers himself but, seeing them, frowns, then smiles, preoccupied. A door on the return landing is flung open. A ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... days and the nights until that month was spent; but now at last it was the month of August, and upon the night of the seventh day thereof ended the season of waiting. It is to tell that upon that night came Harold, the son of Egbert, from his hut, and stood on the threshold thereof, and awaited the rising of the moon from out the silver waters yonder. While thus he stood there appeared unto him Membril the fairy, and smiling upon him she said and ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... her face when he addressed her, made no reply; but after he had departed from the threshold, her eyes followed him, and the tears slowly forced ...
— Lha Dhu; Or, The Dark Day - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... little nephew twine his arms around your neck; though your mother, with dishevelled hair, and tearing her robe asunder, point to the breast with which she suckled you; though your father fall down on the threshold before you, pass on over your father's body. Fly with tearless eyes to the banner of the cross. In this matter cruelty is the only piety.... Your widowed sister may throw her gentle arms around you.... Your father may implore you to wait but a ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... sense of reluctance the boy obeyed. He felt the door to confession closing with finality behind him; and now that he saw all chance for dallying on its threshold cut off, he began to regret that it should so completely close. Once again the opportunity to clear his conscience had come about in an easy, natural manner; confession had been gently and tactfully invited and he had turned his back. Never again, probably, ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... Close following pace for pace, not mounted yet On his pale horse: to whom Sin thus began. Second of Satan sprung, all-conquering Death! What thinkest thou of our empire now, though earned With travel difficult, not better far Than still at Hell's dark threshold to have sat watch, Unnamed, undreaded, and thyself half starved? Whom thus the Sin-born monster answered soon. To me, who with eternal famine pine, Alike is Hell, or Paradise, or Heaven; There best, where most with ravine I may meet; Which ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... heard the door open, and yet there stood Aunt Theresa on the threshold, and with her a little old lady. The little old lady had a bright, delicately cut face, eyes of whose expressiveness there could be no question, and large grey curls. She wore a large hat, with large bows tied under her chin, and a dark-green satin driving-cloak lined ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... elevation of the dais, behind which, across Gothic columns, stretched draperies of cloth-of-gold, was placed Edward's chair of state. Around him were grouped the Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester, the Lords Worcester, Montagu, Rivers, D'Eyncourt, St. John, Raoul de Fulke, and others. But at the threshold of the chamber stood Anthony Woodville, the knightly challenger, his knee bound by the ladye-badge of the S. S., and his fine person clad in white-flowered velvet of Genoa, adorned with pearls. Stepping forward, as the count appeared, the gallant Englishman bent his knee half-way to the ground, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his knocking Long Sin appeared on the threshold and motioned to Bennett to come in, ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... that seems to have died from her face flames back. Without speaking to him, without looking at him, she turns to leave the room. On the threshold she pauses ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... William Yorke had quitted the house, shaking the dust from his shoes in anger, as he crossed the threshold. Anger as much at himself, for having ever given her up, as at Constance Channing; and still most at the Right ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... a frill to his shirt—an ornament, by the way, which did not seem to go at all well with the beard, which was continually in contact with it. It was the custom of this worthy person, after standing for a short time on the threshold inhaling the air, to come forward into the road, and, after glancing at one of the upper windows in a half mechanical way, to cross over to the logs, and, leaning over the fence which guarded the railway, to look ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... while after she got home. The dark looks of Mother Carke were always before her eyes, and a secret dread prevented her passing the threshold of her home again ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... said Ziska, holding the door open, and looking as though he were inclined to threaten. Trendellsohn paused for a moment on the threshold, fixing his eyes full upon those of his rival; but Ziska neither spoke nor made any further gesture, and then the Jew ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... with beds of old-fashioned pansies and sweet-Williams and rows of hollyhocks on all sides. The upper verandah affords a view of the Peace, here fully a mile in width, of incomparable beauty. To the visitor who steps over its threshold, Mr. Wilson's library indicates at once the reading man and the clever artificer. Scientific works of reference, good pictures, the latest magazines, certainly look inviting to ragged travellers who have opened no books, save those of nature and human-nature, for five ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
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