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Bystander   Listen
noun
Bystander  n.  One who stands near; a spectator; one who has no concern with the business transacting. "He addressed the bystanders and scattered pamphlets among them."
Synonyms: Looker on; spectator; beholder; observer.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bystander" Quotes from Famous Books



... literary occupation is getting through the press the Letters of Paul, of whose lucubrations I trust soon to send you a copy. As the observations of a bystander, perhaps you will find some amusement in them, especially as I had some channels of information not accessible to every one. The recess of our courts, which takes place to-morrow, for three weeks, will give me ample time to complete this job, and also the second volume of Triermain, which is nearly ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... walked about aimlessly. They seemed to have no friends among the pleasure-seekers. At last, however, as they stood reading a public notice posted at the entrance of the town-hall or yamen, a bystander asked them ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman

... who divided its strength, would be used and must be used. Whether such a party would always choose precisely the best man may well be doubted. In a party once divided it is very difficult to secure unanimity in favour of the very person whom a disinterested bystander would recommend. All manner of jealousies and enmities are immediately awakened, and it is always difficult, often impossible, to get them to sleep again. But though such a party might not select the very best leader, they have the strongest motives to select a very good leader. The maintenance ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot

... the Rose of Sharon?' he exclaimed. He threw himself at her feet, and pressed the hem of her garment to his lips with an ecstasy which it would have been difficult for a bystander to decide whether it were mockery or enthusiasm, or genuine feeling, which took a sportive air to veil a devotion which it could not conceal, and which it cared not ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... members. The abolitionists of the United States have been treated by too many influential Friends, as well as by the leading professors of other denominations, as a party whose contact is contamination; yet to a bystander it is plainly obvious that the true grounds of offence are not always those ostensibly alleged, but the activity, zeal, and success with which they have cleared themselves of participation in other men's sins, and by which they have condemned the passive acquiescence of a society making a ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge

... it. Soames was standing near it, in his soft hat and his waterproof cape, all through the afternoon. Anybody who knew him would have recognized the portrait at a glance, but nobody who didn't know him would have recognized the portrait from its bystander: it "existed" so much more than he; it was bound to. Also, it had not that expression of faint happiness which on that day was discernible, yes, in Soames's countenance. Fame had breathed on him. Twice again in the course of the month I went to the New English, ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm

... the August day is innocent of all suggestion of rain, he carries instead of a riding cane a matronly umbrella. When he rides a horse, and he rides several with a singularly intimate and finished method, he hands the umbrella to a reverential bystander; when the trial is over the umbrella is reassumed. If anything were needed to accent its artless domesticity, it would be the group of boys, horse copers in ambition, possibly in achievement, who sit in a row under a fence, with their teeth grimly clenched ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... contour of the head and face which was particularly attractive, especially to women of the more cultivated and impressionable sort. His thin grayish hair was rather long—not of that pronounced length which inevitably challenges the decision of the bystander as to whether the wearer be fool or poet, but still long enough to fall a little carelessly round the head and so take off from the spruce conventional effect of the owner's irreproachable ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... alluding to conquests over bears and panthers, and even the buffalo, which last memorial is remarkable enough, having among them survived all traces of the buffalo itself. But, excepting these vague hints, I could not find any bystander capable of giving me a further explanation of any point on which I inquired, than that it was 'an old custom;' or, if they wished to be more explicit, with a self-satisfied air, they would gravely remark that it was 'the green-corn dance,'—which I knew as well as they. Could I have ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... of her companions. 'Only when she had spoken, it seemed as if nothing could follow but obedience.' Once, when she had given some direction, a doctor ventured to remark that the thing could not be done. 'But it must be done,' said Miss Nightingale. A chance bystander, who heard the words, never forgot through all his life the irresistible authority of them. And they were spoken ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... they should have been, and the nose was unsatisfactory. But the eyes under their long lashes were shrewdness itself, and there was an individuality in the voice, a cheery even-temperedness in look and tone, which had a pleasing effect on the bystander. Her dress was neat and dainty; every detail of it bespoke a young woman who respected both herself and ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... A bystander once said: "Why don't you climb onto him and stay with him till he gets sick o' pitchin'; that's what a ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland

... thus, long before the little supper, with which it was the major's practice to regale his friends every evening, made its appearance, we had established a perfect understanding together,—a circumstance that, a bystander might have remarked, was productive of a more widely diffused satisfaction than I could have myself seen any just cause for. Mr. Burton was also progressing, as the Yankees say, with the sister; Sparks had booked himself ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... had been sold as a slave, and afterward purchased his freedom. Then there was Felix, the ex-slave, another protege of Claudius, who trembled when Paul of Tarsus told him a little wholesome truth. These men were all immensely rich, and once, when Claudius complained of poverty, a bystander said, "You should go into partnership with a couple of your freedmen, and then your finances would be all right." The fact that Narcissus, Pallas and Polybius constituted the real government is nothing against them, any more than it is to the discredit of certain Irish refugees ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... within the last ten years, as the apartments in all the hotels. After looking at several of them in the Rue de la Loi, accompanied by a French friend, who was so obliging as to take on himself all the trouble of inquiry, while I remained a silent bystander, I had the curiosity to go to the Hotel d'Angleterre, in the Rue des Filles St. Thomas, hot far from the ci-devant Palais Royal. The same apartments on the first floor of this hotel which I occupied ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... power of the court to impose is a mere bagatelle, compared to the distinction of scientifically man-handling four of society's finest in one afternoon. As one bystander remarked in the classic phraseology ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... Puebla, and equal to those of a first-class hotel in Mexico itself. As the landlady seemed to have no disposition to do aught for us, we decided to look elsewhere. At a second so-called hotel we found a single bed. At this point, a bystander suggested that Don Pedro Barrios would probably supply us lodging; hastening to his house, I secured a capital room, opening by one door directly onto the main road, and by another, opposite, onto the large patio of his place. The room was large ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr

... to touch his hands and to kiss the skirt of his robe, till Clarendon, with some difficulty, rescued him and conveyed him home by a bye path. Cartwright, it is said, was so unwise as to mingle with the crowd. Some person who saw his episcopal habit asked and received his blessing. A bystander cried out, "Do you know who blessed you?" "Surely," said he who had just been honoured by the benediction, "it was one of the Seven." "No," said the other "it is the Popish Bishop of Chester." "Popish dog," cried the enraged Protestant; ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... safety of the tapestry curtain which hung in the doorway. There for a little while he conducted an innocent bystander business, which presently ended in disaster. Up to the moment, the Mud Turtle had been silent, but now from his throat came a yelp which drowned the rattle of ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley

... strong hold of Prescott, and it was inflamed at the new mention of the Secretary's name. If it were any other it might be more tolerable, but Mr. Sefton was a crafty and dangerous man, perhaps unscrupulous too. He remembered that light remark of the bystander coupling the name of the Secretary and Lucia Catherwood, and at the recollection the red flushed ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... horizon infinitely remote, beyond which lay single mountains, like ships becalmed hull-down at sea. The immensities filled the world— the simple immensities of sky and land. Only by an effort, a wrench of the mind, would a bystander on the advantage, say, of one of the little rocky, outcropping hills have been able to narrow his ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al

... other, "and observe what is yet more worth your study;" and he pointed to the third bystander, whose face, sharp and attenuated, was bent with an absorbed, and, as it were, with a hungering attention over ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts

... Grange, as she had at first intended, was therefore impossible, and she resolved to ask the hospitality of Mistress Stanhope for a few days. She hoped Master Drury was there, but of this she could not feel sure; but whether or no he was there, she must go, and she made instant inquiry of a bystander for Captain Stanhope's house. After some little difficulty she found it, and to her joy heard that Master Drury was there. He seemed much astonished to see Maud, and Mistress Stanhope was in no little alarm at ...
— Hayslope Grange - A Tale of the Civil War • Emma Leslie

... upper lip and that slobber of blood, it was a face that he knew, She kept on putting her hand up to the gap and screaming. Douglas Stone sat down at the foot of the couch with his knife and his forceps. The room was whirling round, and he had felt something go like a ripping seam behind his ear. A bystander would have said that his face was the more ghastly of the two. As in a dream, or as if he had been looking at something at the play, he was conscious that the Turk's hair and beard lay upon the table, and that Lord Sannox was leaning ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle

... OEDIPUS Doth any bystander among you know The herd he speaks of, or by seeing him Afield or in the city? answer straight! The hour hath come to clear ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles

... happens to us in this world, that when we come with our heart in our hands to some person or other,—when we pour out some generous burst of feeling so enthusiastic and self-sacrificing, that a bystander would call us fool and Quixote;—it often, I say, happens to us, to find our warm self suddenly thrown back upon our cold self; to discover that we are utterly uncomprehended, and that the swine who would have munched up the acorn does not know what to make of the pearl. That ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... begun. At first they eyed each other steadily, and made feints, and changed their ground. And this went on so long that at last some irreverent bystander, longing to see business done, cried out, "Allons, mes amis, avancez." And at that moment a skilful thrust from Malin wounded Poivre in the face, and the first blood was drawn. But Malin received it back with interest, ...
— The French Prisoners of Norman Cross - A Tale • Arthur Brown

... surprise to the country, because Mr. Polk was wholly unknown to the people as a statesman. Like Governor Hayes, when nominated in 1876, he belonged to the "illustrious obscure." The astonished native who, on hearing the news, suddenly inquired of a bystander, "Who the devil is Polk?" simply echoed the common feeling, while his question provoked the general laughter of the Whigs. For a time the nomination was somewhat disappointing to the Democrats themselves; but they soon rallied, and finally ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian

... a hunch," said the reluctant Hicks, sadly, "that things ain't a-comin' out right! In the words of the immortal Somebody-Or-Other, 'This 'ere ain't none o' my doin'; it's a-bein' thrust on me!' All right, my comrades, I'll be the innocent bystander, but heed me—look out for ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice

... possible that Roddy was on the trail of that tremendous buck. If so, it would be a chase worth following—a diversion rendered the more exquisite to Lanyard by the spice of novelty, since for once he would figure as a dispassionate bystander. ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... to kindle the flame?" inquired I of a bystander; for I was desirous of knowing the whole process of the affair from ...
— Earth's Holocaust (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... A transport rider without a voice is as a tenor in the same fix. He may—and does—get so hoarse that it is a pain to hear him; but as long as he can croak in good volume he is all right. Mere shouting will not do. He must shriek, until to the sympathetic bystander it seems that his throat must split wide open. Furthermore, he must shriek the proper things. It all sounds alike to every one but transport riders and oxen; but as a matter of fact it is Boer-Dutch, nicely ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... "Dignity!" exclaimed Mr. Curran; "My Lord, upon that point I shall cite you a case from a book of some authority, with which you are, perhaps, not unacquainted." He then briefly recited the story of Strap, in Roderick Random, who having stripped off his coat to fight, entrusted it to a bystander. When the battle was over, and he was well beaten, he turned to resume it, but the man had carried it off. Mr. Curran thus applied the tale:—"So, my Lord, when the person entrusted with the dignity of the judgment-seat lays it aside for a moment to enter into a disgraceful personal contest, it ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... they landed on Earth, they had the Steele names, but by the time that cleared, you were outbound with another set of papers. It may have confused them, because they knew David Briscoe was dead—and there was just a chance you were an innocent bystander who could raise a real row if they pulled you in. Did old ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... for the girl. 'Poor creature, it's little she knows!' he sighed. 'Let her enjoy herself while she can!' But was it possible, when Flora used to smile at him on the Braid ponds, she could have looked so fulsome to a sick- hearted bystander? ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson

... stand where there was any press of people, and Hugh chanced to be looking downward, he was sure to see an arm stretched out—under his own perhaps, or perhaps across him—which thrust some paper into the hand or pocket of a bystander, and was so suddenly withdrawn that it was impossible to tell from whom it came; nor could he see in any face, on glancing quickly round, the least confusion or surprise. They often trod upon a paper like the one ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... stare at him; he looked his questioner up and down with such insolence that the boy's fists involuntarily doubled; then he turned his back and walked away. A bystander laughed with amusement. He also was an Englishman, but wore the ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne

... further infliction of punishment, for that time. He says: "This landlord was the most abominably wicked man that I ever met with; full of horrid execrations, and threatenings of all Northern people. But I did not spare him; which occasioned a bystander to express, with an oath, that I should be 'popped over.' We left them distressed in mind; and having a lonesome wood of twelve miles to pass through, we were in full expectation of their waylaying, or coming after us, to put ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... see Booth in Hamlet [he says], and Booth sent for Sam to come behind the scenes, and when Sam proposed to add a part to Hamlet, the part of a bystander who makes humorous modern comment on the situations in the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... Adams over to Pattin's," suggested a bystander; "an' they do say he's a reg'lar rip-roarer at prayin'! But 'twould take four hours to ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... put out a hand to touch her arm, withdrew it as though he had been stung, and then hastily stood as he felt her hand rest upon his arm. He led her slowly to the edge of the platform. Then she heard his footsteps passing, heard the voices of two men—for now a bystander had gone across to do something for the plunging horses, one of which had thrown itself under the buckboard tongue. She heard the two men as they worked on. "Git up!" said one voice. "Git around there!" Then came certain oaths on the ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough

... beard it lay across one cheek like a red and purple band ending in a black mark at the tip on his ear. He wore a handsomely embroidered turban and carried a blue cloak. When the game, which he watched with interest, was finished and the new owner of the robe had taken possession of it, the bystander said, "How fareth the King whose robe ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock

... Eternal!" shouted a bystander enthusiastically. "We've got Law in San Francisco at last.... Hurrah for Bill Spofford and ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... officer who bore no scars or other evidence of hardships undergone, but who acquired great reputation after the war. He "could not submit to such degradation," etc., threw away his spurs and chafed quite dramatically. When a bystander suggested that we cut our way out, he objected that we had no arms. "We can follow those that have," was the reply, "and use the guns of those that fall!" He did not accede to the proposition; but later ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore

... when I saw four carts approaching. In each of them were three persons sitting, with their arms closely pinioned. On each side of the carts rode public officers, the sheriffs, city marshals, the ordinary of Newgate, and others. I asked a bystander where they were going and what was to be done to them, for I did not know at the time ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... to make me out a quitter?" I had succeeded in working loose my heavy gold belt, and I dashed it on the table in front of them. "There! Now you send for some gold scales, right now, and you divide that up! Right here! Damn it all, boys," I ended, with what to a cynical bystander would have seemed rather a funny slump into the pathetic, "I thought we were all real ...
— Gold • Stewart White

... Herapath had been well known in that district, there was a vast amount of interest aroused thereabouts by the news. Indeed, people were beginning to chatter on the sidewalks, and at the doors of the shops. And as Mr. Tertius turned away in the direction of Portman Square, he heard one excited bystander express a candid opinion. ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher

... not the office of the chief, sir; you will find him on the other side of the hall," said a bystander. ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... stream of strangers. What did it signify that the figure was insignificant by comparison, and the face with nothing distinguished in its pallor, under its red beard and moustache?—"a little foxy-headed fellow," any sharp-tongued bystander might have called him. It was a well-known face where all the others were drearily unknown, a Redcross face in London, the face of a man who might have shown himself an enemy, yet had proved a friend in need; and though there had been presented ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler

... impartial attitude of the bystander at a street fight. Smothered in the embraces of Daughter of the Pigeon, covered with embarrassment, I struggled and cursed, and had desperately decided to fling her bodily over the eight-foot wall of the paepae into the jungle, when another arrival dashed up ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... madly forward, when the count stopped her, and giving her in charge of a bystander, cried: "Take care of this woman, if possible, I will save her children." Darting through the open door, in defiance of the smoke and danger, he made his way to the children's room, where, almost suffocated by the sulphurous cloud that surrounded him, he at last found ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... how frequently have the deathbeds of true believers been blessed to the eye-witness of the triumphs of grace over sin, death, and hell! Often has the careless bystander received the first saving impression of divine truth, whilst the dying Christian has experienced and testified the supports of love and mercy in the trying hour. At such seasons, faith wields a bright and burning torch, which ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond

... An unprejudiced bystander might have objected that the operation was needless, and that this long, lank creature would have been all the better with even shorter legs: but no such thought occurred to his loving pupils. One on each side, they did their ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll

... afternoon in Nineteen hundred, lounging with one shoulder to a wall of the dingy salesroom and idly thumbing a catalogue of effects about to be put up at auction; but his insouciance was so unaffected that the inevitable innocent bystander might have been pardoned for perceiving in him a pitiable victim ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... away every moral obligation to itself. Whether men reflect again upon this internal management and artifice, and how explicit they are with themselves, is another question. There are many operations of the mind, many things pass within, which we never reflect upon again; which a bystander, from having frequent opportunities of observing us and our conduct, may make ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler

... centre. Nothing can be more unlike one's preconceived ideas than the gambling itself, or the aspect of the gamblers around the tables. Of the wild excitement, the frenzy of gain, the outbursts of despair which one has come prepared to witness, there is not a sign. The games strike the bystander as singularly dull and uninteresting; one wearies of the perpetual deal and turn-up of the cards at rouge-et-noir, of the rattle of the ball as it dances into its pigeonhole at roulette, of the monotonous chant of "Make your game, gentlemen," or "The game is made." ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... A BYSTANDER [on the lady's right] He won't get no cab not until half-past eleven, missus, when they come back after dropping their ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw

... that many of the Otoes had become such dogs that he was weary of governing them, and that his arms being broken, he could no longer be a great warrior. He gave some messages for his friend, the agent, who was expected at the village, and then turning to a bystander, told him he had heard that day that he had a bottle of whiskey, and ordered him to bring it. This being done, he caused it to be poured down his throat, and when drunk he sang ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... subtle dexterities, acquired by sagacious experience in searching for valuable little trinkets in great libraries, just as in other pursuits. A great deal of that appearance of dry drudgery which excites the pitying amazement of the bystander is nimbly evaded. People acquire a sort of instinct, picking the valuables out of the useless verbiage, or the passages repeated from former authors. It is soon found what a great deal of literature has been the mere "pouring out of one bottle into another," as ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... this young couple met. They were almost close together before either of them knew anything of the other's approach. A bystander would have discovered sufficient marks of confusion in the countenance of each; but they felt too much themselves to make any observation. As soon as Jones had a little recovered his first surprize, he accosted the young lady with some of the ordinary forms ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... the tailor," proclaimed an awe-stricken bystander. (Legend takes strange twists in Our Square as elsewhere.) Some outlander, ignorant of our traditions, prescribed in a ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... Oleander. The brown lady, who was again at her post on deck, walked up to her in silence, uninvited, and with a commanding air waved the thing away. 'Dat manchineel. Dat poison. Throw dat overboard.' R——-, who knew it was not manchineel, whispered to a bystander, 'Ce n'est pas vrai.' But the brown lady was a linguist. 'Ah! mais c'est vrai,' cried she, with flashing teeth; and retired, muttering her contempt ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... Matilda's head was inimitable and indescribable. It was not arrogance or affectation; it was perfectly natural to the child; but to a bystander it would have signified that she was aware Maria's views and statements were not to be relied upon and could not be made the basis of either opinion or action. She took off her things, and without another word made her way to the room of her elder sisters. They were ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner

... reluctance and astonishment, was done. Returning to the house I saw the landlord, who then showed himself in his true colors, the most abominably wicked man I ever met with, full of horrid execrations and threatenings upon all northern people; but I did not spare him; which occasioned a bystander to say, with an oath, that I should be "popped over." We left them, and were in full expectation of their way-laying or coming after us, but the Lord restrained them. The next house we stopped at we found the same ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... curtain. But they never found him out; they all danced to Cromwell's tune, but none discovered that the pipe they heard was in their Protector's mouth. Even Ludlow, with all the proverbial opportunities of a bystander, though most anxious to know his great opponent's game, never guessed that he had patched up the Insurrection of March 1655, from the beginning ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... the use of so much talk about it? Why don't you hustle the old thing out," remarked a bystander, the respectability of whose appearance contrasted broadly with his manners; "she is some crack-brained abolitionist. Making so much fuss about a little nigger! Let her go into the nigger car—she'll be ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb

... index as itself, it immediately disappears. I remember once dropping the eyeball of an ox into water; it vanished as if by magic, with the exception of the crystalline lens, and the surprise was so great as to cause a bystander to suppose that the vitreous humour had been instantly dissolved. This, however, was not the case, and a comparison of the refractive index of the humour with that of water cleared up the whole matter. The indices were identical, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... had needed no telling, because it had become suddenly the most obvious fact in the world in which I moved. Only a fool would gaze up at the sky during a storm burst and remark to a bystander, "It thunders." Yet even now I saw that what she realised was not the gravity of the financial crisis, but its injurious effect upon my health ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... observed one bystander. "I was standing right here an hour ago, and up he leaped and grabbed him. The squid was too tired. He wasn't quick enough. He did back up, but that lobster he calculated on his doing that. He's been figuring on his movements for a long time ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... twenty years of age, he had struck his dagger with all his might into a door, exclaiming, as he did so, "Would that the blow had been in the heart of Orange!" For this he was rebuked by a bystander, who told him it was not for him to kill princes, and that it was not desirable to destroy so good a captain as the Prince, who, after all, might one day reconcile himself with ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... card go down at one corner of the board; saw a bystander fumbling for a five dollar bill; saw the bill laid on the card; saw it turned up—and it ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead

... votes. It is not claimed by the indictment that these votes were counted or put into the ballot box—or affected the result. The defendants simply received the votes. What they did with them, does not appear. Any bystander, who had received these votes, could be convicted under this indictment ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous

... personal fascination. I also visited the public market, where a man in one of the stalls bought a book, remarking at the same time that he supposed he ought to buy four, as he had that number of wives. A bystander asked if this did not sound very strangely in the ears of one so unaccustomed to a plurality of wives. I quickly responded that the men of Utah must have large hearts to be capable of taking in four wives, or even more, when our men ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms

... for among my poorer parishioners as the gift of the picture of this or that member of the old dynasty. 'I have got all of them, only except Princess Mary,' an old woman said to me last week, and she nearly cried with pleasure when I brought her an old Bystander portrait that filled the gap in her collection. And on Queen Alexandra's day they bring out and wear the faded wild-rose favours that they bought with their pennies in ...
— When William Came • Saki

... proper thing to do," declared another bystander. "The Ripley kid has no kick coming to ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock

... be doing a good service to all Rosemont if it proves that young people can have a good time without making the 'innocent bystander' pay for it." ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith

... no leisure to observe either this or any other particular, the whole of his faculties being concentrated in the management of the animal attached to the chaise, who displayed various peculiarities, highly interesting to a bystander, but by no means equally amusing to any one seated behind him. Besides constantly jerking his head up, in a very unpleasant and uncomfortable manner, and tugging at the reins to an extent which rendered it a matter of great difficulty ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... to inform Meehaul, took two ribbons out of her pocket, one white and the other black, both of which she folded into what would appear to a bystander to be a simple kind of knot. When the innkeeper's son and the waiter returned to the hall, the former asked her what the nature of her business with him might be. To this she made no reply, except by uttering the word husht! and pulling the ends, first of ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... many suitors as hairs on her head," replied the bystander. "She wants to marry the Prince of Moonshine, but he only dresses in silver, and the King thinks he might find a richer son-in-law. The Princess will go to ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... well imagine, this scientific gentleman did not appear to take the slightest interest in his explanations. On the contrary, with those expressive shrugs of the shoulder and shakes of the head which convey so much to the bystander without absolutely committing the actor,—with an occasional sly, mysterious, undertone remark to his colleagues,—he indicated very plainly, that, though his humanity would not permit him to give a worthy man cause for so much unhappiness, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... Fenians, which had the effect of making the Englishmen again fall back in confusion. It is certain that these shots were discharged for no other purpose than that of frightening the crowd; one of them did take effect in the heel of a bystander, but in every other case the shots were fired high over the heads of the crowd. While this had been passing around the van, a more tragic scene was passing inside it. From the moment the report of the first ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown

... be said for and against this rule on both sides. A broader method to the lawyer seems shockingly loose and slipshod. The rules of evidence to the bystander seem an inhuman farce. The first allows an atmosphere to be created from which the whole truth may be reached. Would not an ordinary person, if he wanted to find out about the accident, read the newspapers, ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells

... matter a little fire kindleth!" the moralizing bystander of the period might have observed, as he took note of the electrical condition of the political atmosphere of York, and, indeed, of the whole Province—the result of the indiscretion of one man, and the partisan frolic of half a dozen lads, who had inherited, with the bluest ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam

... repulsive even than Boone Helm. The latter was brave, but Gallegher was a coward, and spent his time in cursing his captors and pitying himself. He tried to be merry. "How do I look with a halter around my neck?" he asked facetiously of a bystander. He asked often for whiskey and this was given him. A moment later he said, "I want one more drink of whiskey before I die." This was when the noose was tight around his neck, and the men were disgusted with him for the remark. One remarked, "Give him ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough

... ingenuous adroitness, it may be seen, Shirley was inveigling himself into the heart of the affair, in his favorite disguise as that of the "innocent bystander." His innate dramatic ability assisted him in maintaining his friendly and almost impersonal role, with a success which had in the past kept the secret of his system from ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... angry with creatures of his own creation for thinking what they cannot help thinking, and being what they cannot help being. Every one has heard of the Predestinarian, who, having talked much of his God, was asked by a bystander to speak worse of the Devil if he could; but comparatively few persons feel the full force of that question, or are prepared to admit God-worshippers in general, picture their Deities as if they were demons. 'Recognise,' exclaims the Roman Catholic Priest, ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell

... Dr. Short's palm and pressed it. Of the two hands, which met for a moment then, one was soft and melting, the other a bunch of bones; but both were very white, and so equally adroit, that a double fee passed without the possibility of a bystander suspecting it. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... self-agitations I had used to come at it, had wearied and thrown me into a kind of unquiet sleep: for, if I tossed and threw about my limbs in proportion to the distraction of my dreams, as I had reason to believe I did, a bystander could not have helped seeing all for love. And one there was it seems; for waking out of my very short slumber, I found my hand locked in that of a young man, who was. kneeling at my bed-side, and begging my pardon for his boldness: but that being a son to the lady to whom, ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland

... however, the lucky gambler returned to the room—but only to be a spectator, as he firmly said. Alas! his resolution failed him, and he quitted the tables indebted to a charitable bystander for a livre or two, to pay for ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... the carriages, horsemen, and promenaders for hours on end without any sense of weariness. And when a bystander, seeing that I was a stranger, took compassion upon my ignorance and condescended to point out to me the various celebrities present, my pleasure was complete. There certainly is no place like London ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby

... out a bystander, whose sympathies had been awakened for the much suffering heathen. "I saw him running for all he was worth. That's pretty ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.

... through the rafters of an unfinished house, and nearly killed himself; a bystander declared that he ought to be employed, as he ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various

... already descending. Carrie played the piano in the other room. The General snorted over something in his city paper. Mrs. Kitty had disappeared on household business. Pete and Pup, having been mistaken one for the other by some innocent bystander, ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... was drowned not very long ago in the river running under our windows. A few days afterwards a field-piece was dragged to the water's edge and fired many times over the river. We asked a bystander, who looked like a fisherman, what that was for. It was to "break the gall," he said, and so bring the drowned person to the surface. A strange physiological fancy and a very odd non sequitur; but that is not our present point. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... become of him if he is not sold?" Hugh asked of a bystander, who replied, "Go back to the old place to be kicked and cuffed by the minions of the new proprietor, Harney. You ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes

... was throughout the duration of Greek thought too narrowly conceived. It was frequently thought and spoken of as the life of a spectator or bystander or onlooker, as a life withdrawn or isolated, cut off from what we should call ordinary human business and concerns, a life into which we, or at least a few of us, could escape or be transported at rare intervals and under exceptionally favourable circumstances. Yet in principle it was open ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various

... commonplace folk hope to enjoy, but it was a copartnership of two smart people, aided by two bunches of quills. Each pretended to admire the other with an extravagance of show which made it hard for the bystander to ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... in the least want to get arrested, and he was terrified at the idea of making even so short a speech as was here the order of the night. But, of course, his honour was at stake, there was no way out. He handed his torch to a bystander, and mounted the scaffold. "Is this a free country?" he cried. "Do we have free speech?" And Jimmie's first effort at oratory ended in a jerk at his coat-tail, which all but upset the frail ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair

... spoke of my visit to Niagara—the one wonder of the world that answers its warranty—and to Montreal. As I spoke of the strong and general Canadian feeling of loyalty to the English Crown and connection, a Yankee bystander observed— ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... chances are altogether favourable for your withstanding the assaults of disease. No doubt the vast majority of people prefer not to follow this advice. A considerable number of them resort to various magic cults, such as letting sudden drafts of cold air in upon the inoffensive bystander with a view to exorcising the germs. But it remains that the medical advice is sound: it amounts to saying, "Keep yourself in the best physical condition possible and you will run the minimum chance ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry

... extreme attachment to the Scriptures was regarded, in those days, as a sure characteristic of heresy; and Forrest was soon after brought to trial, and condemned to the flames. While the priests were deliberating on the place of his execution, a bystander advised them to burn him in a cellar; for that the smoke of Mr. Patrick Hamilton had infected all those ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume

... of all virtues. "There was something," it has been well said, "so awful, and yet so Christ-like in its awful sternness, in the expression which came over that beautiful face when he heard of anything base or cruel or wicked, that it brought home to the bystander our Lord's judgment ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... night and a gang of workmen was now clearing the ruins. But as Charles and his mother came by the corner, the knot of people parted and gave passage to a line of stretchers—six stretchers in all, and on each a body, which the bearers had not taken the trouble to cover from view. A bystander said that these were men who had run back into the building to drink the flaming spirit, and had dropped insensible, and been crushed when the walls fell in. The boy had never seen death before; and at the sight of it thrust upon him in this brutal form, he put out a hand towards ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... prevent injury by rough handling. A leather shield may be used for this purpose, which is cut with two holes, one for the key and the other to permit the operator to observe the numbers on the dial. The shield answers a further purpose of preventing any bystander from noting the numbers on ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... should have been here a few days ago!' one bystander said to us; 'you might then have seen the "OEdipe Roi" of Corneille given in this amphitheatre, by the troupe of the Comedie Francaise. Never before was a fete so brilliant seen at Orange! People flocked hither from fifty ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... the defensive. The man was in bad training, and luckily I had the advantage by an inch or so in length of arm. Before five minutes was over, I had caught enough of the bystander's remarks to know that my noble host had betted a pony that I should be knocked down in a quarter-of-an-hour. My one object now was to make him lose his money. My opponent did his utmost for his ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... your mind, any," he told Ware, "it isn't such a case of innocent bystander as you may think. This man is the one who hired Saleratus Bill to abduct me in the first place; and probably to kill me in the second. I have a suspicion he ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... was just "t'other one." Then the Lanes went to Green River where some lodge was having a parade. They were watching the drill when a "bystander that was standing by" said something about the "fine regalia." Instantly "Mis' Lane" thought of her unnamed child; so since that time Gale has had ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart

... said Mrs Dean in a resigned tone, such as would have made a bystander think that the whole business was settled. It was not, however, for the next day most likely the whole argument would be gone through ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn

... was right. Hard labour and natural gift had secured their harvest; but that vivid personal element in success which captivates and excites the bystander seemed, in David's case, to have been replaced by something austere, which pointed attention and sympathy rather to the man's work than to himself. When he was young there had been intoxication for such a spectator as Ancrum in the magical rapidity and ease with which he seized ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... played the violin seemed to recognise Mildred as a better player than herself. She handed her fiddle to a bystander and the gavotte proceeded, the three old ladies bowing and holding up their skirts and pointing their toes with the grace of bygone times. Never, I think, did reality seem more like a dream. "But who are these three women?" I asked myself, and, sinking on ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore

... the death for an insult such as that," Ali remarked, as usual surveying the scene from his chosen role as bystander. As a child he had survived the unspeakable massacres of the Crater War, nothing had been able to crack his surface ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton

... prominent features that impress themselves on our vision. The lesser details, the waving field, the blooming bush, the evergreen moss, the singing bird and fragrant rose, which attract the attention and admiration of the immediate bystander, are lost to our view by the distance. But the range of forest-clad hills, the winding river, the crystal lake, the wide expanse of fertile plains and snow-capped mountain peaks, determine the landscape and claim ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus

... But how was I to know that the harmless little shopping expedition would resolve itself into a domestic tragedy, with Herr Nirlanger as the villain, Frau Nirlanger as the persecuted heroine, and I as—what is it in tragedy that corresponds to the innocent bystander in real life? That ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... the sea had gained considerably in height, and, a few minutes afterwards all the horrors of a tempest seemed impending. The wind roared around me, pushing on the waves with a frothy velocity that, to a bystander, not to an inmate amidst them, would have been beautiful. It whistled with shrill and varying tones from the numberless crevices in the three immense rocky mountains by whose semicircular adhesion I was ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay

... with difficulty caught in Elliot's cloak, and the sword for a moment hampered. Before Le Gallais could extricate it, Elliot, with a savage cry, ran in upon him, drawing back his elbow, so as to stab his adversary with a shortened sword. A scuffle ensued, of which no bystander could follow with his eye the full details, till the Scot's sword was seen to turn upwards, and the point to pierce his own throat. Each combatant fell backwards, Le Gallais bleeding from the left hand, and Elliot spouting black gore from ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene

... much you may have shown them what they are. You are like the surgeon who tears the bandages from the numerous wounds of his ulcerated patients, and, instead of giving fresh remedies, you expose them to the air and disgust of every bystander, who, laughing, exclaims, 'How ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... voice from a neighbouring window. And immediately afterwards the barrel of a gun was thrust forth and a shot fired at the enthusiast. But though Solomon Eagle never altered his position, he was wholly uninjured—the ball striking a bystander, who fell to the ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... literature and romance in which she found herself entirely at home. The feeling with which Macaulay and his sister regarded books differed from that of other people in kind rather than in degree. When they were discoursing together about a work of history or biography, a bystander would have supposed that they had lived in the times of which the author treated, and had a personal acquaintance with every human being who was mentioned in his pages. Pepys, Addison, Horace Walpole, Dr. Johnson, Madame de Genlis, the Duc de St. Simon, ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... Nicol Brinn drew a copy of the Sketch from the rack, and studied the photographs of more or less pretty actresses with apparent contentment. He had finished the Sketch, and was perusing the Bystander, when, the car having climbed a steep hill and swerved sharply to the right, he heard the rustling of leaves, and divined that they were ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer

... crowd who watched the gallows being raised was a little lad, the town swineherd, who asked a bystander the ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt

... demanded of an imaginary bystander. "He doesn't know! Well, stick your head down over his engine-room grating some day, sing The Boyne Wather—and find out! Now, then, do you happen to know what kind of Irish Mike Murphy is? You ought to. You were shipmates with him in ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... dress was emerging from the water, and then a dripping fur tippet, and then the bonnet, making the gradual revelation to him who it was. For one instant he covered his face with his hands, half-hiding an expression of agony so intense that a bystander who saw it, said, "Take comfort, sir: she has been in but a very short time. She'll recover, I don't doubt." Hope leaped to the bank, and received her from the arms of the men who had drawn her out. The first thing she remembered ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... you to suspect his love for me?" asked Paulina. "It has never yet shaped itself in words. A woman's own instinct generally tells her when she is truly loved; but how came you, a bystander, a mere looker- on, to ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... a statuesque ire, and Wayne went philosophically on. "Take the advice of a singularly wise bystander. At least treat it with the contempt of silence until you've consulted the lady. Caning people in New York is attended with some degree of notoriety and she would have to share it. When you're in Rome, be ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... was to stand.(1566) Dangerfield, another professional informer, was made to undergo a punishment scarcely less severe. He survived the punishment, but only to die from the effect of a vicious blow dealt him by a bystander as he was being carried back to gaol ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe

... sooner was he in battle, where his squadron was received with the fire of more than a thousand guns, than, as if that artillery, like music, had driven away all care and painful thoughts, his countenance brightened; and, as a bystander describes him, his conversation became joyous, animated, elevated, and delightful. The Commander-in-Chief meantime, near enough to the scene of action to know the unfavourable accidents which had so materially weakened Nelson, and yet too distant to know the ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey

... was heard. It came from a bystander lying flat on his belly inside the mouth: he had crawled in as far as ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith

... incarnation. It is not the intrinsic value of each that we here regard, but the value of the ownership one has in each. 'Deacon Giles and I,' said a poor man, 'own more cows than any five other men in the county.' 'How many does Deacon Giles own?' asked a bystander. 'Nineteen.' 'And how many do you?' 'One.' And that one cow, which that poor man owned, was worth more to him than the nineteen which were Deacon Giles's. So, when you have determined whose the style is which enfolds a thought, whose the thought is, is as little ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... life again, total abstainer as he often was, he would, I expect, denounce the principle involved in 'Local Option.' I am not at all sure he would not borrow a guinea from a bystander and become a subscriber to the 'Property Defence League;' and though it is notorious that he never read any book all through, and never could be got to believe that anybody else ever did, he would, ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell

... proposition, and looks upon the individual making it as little better than a fool; for didn't he see the ball placed under the thimble, and therefore must it not be there still? His idea on this point is soon confirmed—a bystander takes up the bet, the thimble is raised, and there sure enough is the ball—just where he ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... without a word slunk to his place among his fellows. Wilson watched him as curiously as though he had been merely a bystander. And yet when he realized that the man had done his bidding, had done it because he feared to do otherwise, he felt a tingling sense of some new power. It was a feeling of physical individuality—a consciousness of manhood in the arms and legs and back. To him man had until now been purely ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... pillars of society even in the playhouse. Le Foyer was hissed repeatedly at the Theatre Francais. Night after night the proceedings ended in the ejection and arrest of forty or fifty spectators. Even to a mere outsider, an idle bystander of the boulevards, this complete exposure of the social, moral, and political hypocricies of a nation seemed exceptionally brutal. Le Foyer and "Le Jardin" could only have been written by a man passionately devoted to the human ideal ("each as she may," as Gertrude Stein so beautifully ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... appeal to fists came the appeal to chance and luck—the "odd or even" marbles, the "longest straw," and like devices came into vogue. The arbitration of a bystander, particularly of "a big boy who could whip the others," and the "expedient of laying a wager to secure the postponement of a quarrel," are very common. But the most remarkable institution at McDonogh is undoubtedly ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... unintelligible; hence the amazement and blank wonder of the public at some of the finest passages of Turner, which look like a mere meaningless and disorderly work of chance; but, rightly understood, are preparations for a given result, like the most subtle moves of a game of chess, of which no bystander can for a long time see the intention, but which are, in dim, underhand, wonderful way, bringing out ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... throngs of strangers undisprivacied. He makes his life a public gallery, Nor feels himself till what he feels comes back In manifold reflection from without; While we, each pore alert with consciousness, Hide our best selves as we had stolen them, 210 And each bystander a detective were, Keen-eyed ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... infinitely sad smile curled her lips. It was the beginning of the third day since Starr Wiley had issued his ultimatum. He must carry his threat into execution or admit it to have been sheer bluff. Curiously, she looked upon the impending crisis with the impassivity of a bystander. What ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... the Diana, with its precious freight disappeared from view, Mr. Middleton was called upon to bid another farewell to his eldest daughter. "Reckon the old fellow likes one girl better than the other," said a bystander, who had witnessed both partings. And yet Mr. Middleton did well, and his look and manner was very affectionate as he bade Julia good-bye, and charged her "not to be giddy and act like a fool, ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes

... this the difficulty of my position in this controversy. Mr. Martineau, while defending himself, deprecated the profanity of my other opponent, and the atheistic nature of his arguments. He spoke as a bystander, and with the advantage of a judicial position, and it is called "wanton and outrageous." A second writer goes into detail, and exposes some of the garbling arts which have been used against me; it is imputed[4] to ill temper, ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman

... put by a bystander; but instead of answering, it went on as though continuing the ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... at that time. Improvements since. Naples and "King Bomba"; Robert Dale Owen's statement to me. Catechism promoted by the Archbishop of Sorrento. Liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius; remark of a bystander to me. The doctrine of "intercession" illustrated. Erasmus's colloquy of "The Shipwreck." Moral condition of Naples. Influence of this Italian experience upon my ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... next morning Uncle Tobe, dressed in sober black, like a country undertaker, and with his mid-Victorian whiskers all cleansed and combed, would present himself at his post of duty. He would linger in the background, an unobtrusive bystander, until the condemned sinner had gone through the mockery of eating his last breakfast; and, still making himself inconspicuous during the march to the gallows, would trail at the very tail of the line, while the short, straggling ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... meteors. The chronicles of the West agree with those of the East in reporting such phenomena. A remarkable display was observed on the 4th of April, 1095, both in France and England. The stars seemed, says one, "falling like a shower of rain from heaven upon the earth;" and in another case, a bystander, having noted the spot where an aerolite fell, "cast water upon it, which was raised in steam, with a great noise of boiling." The chronicle of Rheims describes the appearance, as if all the stars in heaven were driven like dust before ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... horse is mine, and OUGHT to remain perpetually in my possession: I reckon on the secure enjoyment of it: by depriving me of it, you disappoint my expectations, and doubly displease me, and offend every bystander. It is a public wrong, so far as the rules of equity are violated: it is a private harm, so far as an individual is injured. And though the second consideration could have no place, were not the former previously established: for otherwise the distinction of MINE and THINE would be unknown in society: ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume

... pavilion. Farfrae was footing a quaint little dance with Elizabeth-Jane—an old country thing, the only one she knew, and though he considerately toned down his movements to suit her demurer gait, the pattern of the shining little nails in the soles of his boots became familiar to the eyes of every bystander. The tune had enticed her into it; being a tune of a busy, vaulting, leaping sort—some low notes on the silver string of each fiddle, then a skipping on the small, like running up and down ladders—"Miss M'Leod of Ayr" was its name, so Mr. ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... sauntering round the town, a savage-looking Bosniak starting up, exclaimed, "Giaours, kafirs, spies! I know what you come for!—Do you expect to see your cross one day planted on the castle?" The threat of a complaint to the Bey only provoked fresh insolence; and, warned by a Christian bystander that the whole town would soon be in commotion, they prudently beat a retreat, and reached the Servian ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various

... did not take long; but it was nearly half-past six before they reached the village street. Jones's shop and motor garage were shut up for the night; but a kindly bystander told Geoffrey where the man lived. Unfortunately, the man was not at home. His wife, who seemed somewhat aggrieved at his absence, gave it as her opinion that he was likely to be found ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham

... preamble, let the law be added: If a man smite another who is his elder by twenty years or more, let the bystander, in case he be older than the combatants, part them; or if he be younger than the person struck, or of the same age with him, let him defend him as he would a father or brother; and let the striker be brought to trial, and if convicted ...
— Laws • Plato

... up on their haunches, flung the lines with a smile to the nearest bystander, and walked up the aisle with her free, swinging step, followed by a girl carrying a baby. The ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... patient, but which the patient is expected to fit. Diseases run their course, and so do remedies; but it might be well to inquire what relation there is between the course of the one, and that of the other. The unvarying treatment of a disease looks odd to a thinking bystander. The same medicines are administered in case after case; the dose follows the symptom with the certainty of fate. The patient dies—the patient recovers. What then? The doctor has done his best—everything has been ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various

... eyes, too—and I must have had mirth in mine, also, because I remember that at precisely that minute I thought up a perfectly wonderful joke on Elizabeth and Jane and their mother. Of course, the poor Laird will not see the point of the joke, but then he's the innocent bystander, and innocent bystanders are ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... fundamental principle of art, the demand for unity. But we recognized also that this unity involves complete isolation. We annihilate beauty when we link the artistic creation with practical interests and transform the spectator into a selfishly interested bystander. The scenic background of the play is not presented in order that we decide whether we want to spend our next vacation there. The interior decoration of the rooms is not exhibited as a display for a department store. The men and women who carry ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg

... a member of the legislative body. "I am very glad to hear it," said a bystander, "for no man ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon

... his lad, coming home, and the pigeons along wi' 'em," she felt inclined to run too; but a fit of shyness came over her, and she demurely decided to wait by the school-gate till they came her way. They did not come. They stopped. What were they doing? Another bystander explained, "They're shaking hands wi' Daddy, and I reckon they're making him put up t' birds here, to see 'em go home to ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing

... stateroom, when the spell of restlessness was on him, waiting for the sounds of his neighbour's return before he might venture forth, was nothing; anything were preferable to figuring as the innocent bystander at another encounter between the Brooke ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... tell me," he inquired of a bystander, "whether there is any conveyance between this place ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... them both in his mouth, and emits a quantity of unmistakable smoke.) Now, in case you should imagine this is a deception, and I produce the smoke from my throat in some manner, will you kindly try my esoteric tobacco, Sir? (To a bystander, who, not without obvious misgivings, takes a few whiffs and produces smoke, as well as a marked impression upon the most sceptical spectators.) Having thus proved to you the existence of a Spirit World, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 27, 1892 • Various



Words linked to "Bystander" :   looker, spectator



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