"Postman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... come here?" said Mr. Linden smiling,—"what have you been doing, to be afraid of me? Faith, has your postman been remiss?" ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... skin if unexpectedly encountering female acquaintances in remote places at incustomary hours: quiet reflections upon the course of the day: a cleaner sensation when awaking after a fresher sleep since matutinal noises, premonitions and perturbations, a clattered milkcan, a postman's double knock, a paper read, reread while lathering, relathering the same spot, a shock, a shoot, with thought of aught he sought though fraught with nought might cause a faster rate of shaving and a nick on which incision plaster with precision ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... child and her husband's widow; so she turned her hand to every odd job which offered, and went to work in the fields when nothing else could be had. Whenever there was sickness in the place, she was an untiring nurse; and, at one time, for some nine months, she took the office of postman, and walked daily some nine miles through a severe winter. The fatigue and exposure had broken down her health, and made her an old woman before her time. At last, in a lucky hour, the Doctor came to hear of her ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... a colon or period at "bright," and {223} beginning a new sentence with "He comes;" and thus making the poet use the vulgar colloquialism "'tis the horn over the bridge," instead of the remark, that the postman is ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 14. Saturday, February 2, 1850 • Various
... the letters from the postman, and carried the morning paper up to Mr. Morris's study, and I always put away the clean clothes. After they were mended, Mrs. Morris folded each article and gave it to me, mentioning the name of the owner, so that I could lay it on his bed. There was no need for her to tell me the names. ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... seven o'clock next morning Nicky-Nan, who had breakfasted early and taken post early in the porchway to watch against any possible ruse of the foe—for, Bank Holiday or no Bank Holiday, he was taking no risks—spied Lippity-Libby the postman coming over the bridge towards him with his ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... you at last, Mrs. Peyton," said the well-known voice of the postman, breaking in upon ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... a start on the morning following the 30th of April; things began to happen even before the postman had made his first rounds. The operators at the telephone switchboards were rushed at an unconscionably early hour, considering that their station compassed the Avenue. The President was trying to get the trustees, Saint Margaret's, ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... There never was such a gentleman for objecting to being dusted, and the way those big books of his that he presses his bits of chickweed and groundsel in do hold the dust is awful. If you wished to do him some kindness you'd get him away for a bit, so that I could turn his rooms inside out. Postman, sir." ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... all the French and Belgian officers. It is difficult sometimes to distinguish them. I got fooled by a Belgian postman, and then went to work and ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... The horror which had been present with her night and day for so long a while twenty-five years ago rushed upon her afresh, so that she could not speak. She sat living over again the bitter days when Luffe was shut up with his handful of men in the fort by Kohara. She remembered the morning when the postman came up the garden path with the official letter that her husband had been slain. And at last ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... doctor, in full uniform, his revolver on the table, was giving a consultation to an old couple, a farmer who had been suffering from varicose veins for the last seven years and had waited until his wife had them also, before he would consult the doctor, when the postman ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... said the hoary old sinner, little suspecting that he was to be the dupe of his own artifice: "You get the husband invited out to dinner, have him well ply'd with wine by your friends: You assume the dress of a Postman—give a thundering rap at her door, which always denotes either the arrival of some important visitor or official communication; and when you can see her, flatter, lie, and swear that her company is necessary to your ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... the twins to the door. For some reason the Professor could not have explained, they all three walked out on tiptoe. Old Mr. Brent, the postman, was passing, and the twins ran after him and each took a hand. Malvina was still standing where the Professor had left her. It was very absurd, but the Professor felt frightened. He went into the kitchen, where it was light and cheerful, and started Mrs. Muldoon on Home Rule. ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... mail or express, covered with postage-stamps of so much more cost than the value of the waste words they overlie, that one comes at last to groan and change color at the very sight of a package, and to dread the postman's knock as if it were that of the other visitor whose naked knuckles ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Boys grow impatient. A mother's logic. The postman's whistle makes Hal nervous. "Who is Ad Interim?" Uniforms are ready. A surprise for Mrs. Overton. "Lieutenants" ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... postman a miserable Christmas, we follow the example of all unselfish people, and send out our cards early. Most of the cards had finger-marks, which I did not notice at night. I shall buy all future cards in the daytime. Lupin (who, ever since he has had the appointment ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... about the times that Ma can't find her pocketbook, And how we have to hustle round for it to help her look, But there's another care we know that often comes our way, I guess it happens easily a dozen times a day. It starts when first the postman through the door a letter passes, And Ma says: "Goodness gracious me! ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... the baby hastened, Till he reached the office door: "I'se a letter, Mr. Postman, Is there ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... A postman whom I knew delivered the letters only once every three days, alleging, as unanswerable argument in his defence, that his brother's ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... pretty, shy simpleton of a lass you will meet by the round dozen in our country, who grows into the plump wife of Master Church-warden-in-broadcloth, bears a half-score children, gets flushed after midday dinner, and would sooner miss church than the postman any day in the year. Such was Molly Lovel at nineteen, honestly handsome and honestly a fool, whom in Bankside they knew as ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... the shadow of the room, slipped on a dark-colored wrap, and, standing away from the window, safe beyond the reach of prying eyes, waited patiently for the postman. He appeared about five o'clock and simultaneously another man turned the corner near the post-box and spoke to him. Then, together, they disappeared from view ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... and reared, and came to man and woman-hood, in that nest of little chambers; so that the face of the earth was peppered with the children of the manse, and letters with outlandish stamps became familiar to the local postman, and the walls of the little chambers brightened with the wonders of the East. The dullest could see this was a house that had a pair of hands in divers foreign places: a well-beloved house—its image fondly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bonnet, the blue shirt of the Socialist: against all these, and a hundred examples of the swagger of unreflecting life, did a little brass knocker in Gray's Inn warn me the other evening. I had knocked as no one should who is not a postman, with somewhat of a flourish. I had plainly said, in its metallic reverberations, that I was somebody. As I left my friends, I felt the knocker looking at me, and when I came out into the great square, framing the heavens like an astronomical chart, the big stars ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... paper; but I persevered, and finally I accomplished my letter. It seemed odd to put a postage-stamp on birch bark, and I smiled to think how surprised the home-people would be to get such a letter. They were surprised, and they told me afterward that the postman laughed when he ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... the postman came—a rather rare occurrence with us; for, except with notes from pupils, notices of proben, or other official ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... unless he is provoked. But more things provoke an Irish terrier than one might imagine. The postman provoked my old one so much that it bit the letters out of his hand ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... enlightened philanthropy that won him the respect of all parties. When he was named as director of the post-office in 1822, many people of his circle blamed him for taking a place beneath him. "Congratulate me," he said, laughing, "that I have not been offered that of postman; I should have taken it just the same if I had thought I could be useful." And he added: "It was thought that it would be a sinecure for me. Far from that, I gave myself up wholly to my new employment, and I worked so hard at it, than in less than a year my eyes, previously ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... special injunction not to leave Cecilia, and she was in a mood that made disobedience extremely dangerous. Cecilia quite understood that she was being watched. No letters had yet come from Bob, and she knew that her stepmother had been hovering near the letter-box whenever the postman had called. Mrs. Rainham had accompanied them on their walk the day before; a remark of Avice's revealed that she meant to do so ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... the spot. I could hear voices at Voisins, as if all the world had rushed into the street. Then I saw Amelie running down the hill. She said nothing as she passed. The postman picked himself up, passed me a letter, shrugged his shoulders, and pushed his ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... bad first. Secretaryships and that sort of thing? You might as well ask for a peerage. I'd be ANYTHING—I'm strong; a messenger or a coalheaver. I'd put on a gold-laced cap and open carriage-doors in front of the haberdasher's; I'd hang about a station to carry portmanteaux; I'd be a postman. But they won't LOOK at you; there are thousands as good as yourself already on the ground. GENTLEMEN, poor beggars, who've drunk their wine, who've kept ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... not to see each other in the two weeks that followed Alice's luncheon, Norma had seen Chris three times. He had written her on the third day, and she had met the postman at the corner, sure that the big square envelope would be there. They had had luncheon, far down town, and walked up through the snowy streets together, parting with an engagement for the fourth day ahead, a matinee and tea engagement. ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... breakfast-time the postman brought the letter, and the youngest girl running out on to the gravel brought it up to her ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... you can." And Eve, thoroughly depressed, relapsed into silence. The postman's rap was heard, and soon after a long inclosure ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... street where we first noticed the stove-pipes sprouting from the pavement, we saw a postman in the regulation costume of the French postman, with the regulation black, shiny wallet-box hanging over his stomach, and the regulation pen behind his ear, smartly delivering letters from house to house. He did not knock at the doors; he just stuck the letters through the empty ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... the postman some morning were to leave at your door a thing of thirty-five heads and three appendices, and you discovered that it came from an old friend whom you had long known and greatly valued—this vast mass of legal stuff, without a word or a turn of courtesy in it—what would you ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... and, being rather a scarce article, should meet with some return. Here's the letter, young man, and I hope you will pay for it; for if you do not, I must pay the postage myself." "You are the postwoman, I suppose," said I, as I took the letter. "I am the postman's mother," said the old woman; "but as he has a wide beat, I help him as much as I can, and I generally carry letters to places like this, to which he is afraid to come himself." "You say the postage is ninepence," said I, "here's a shilling." "Well, I call that honourable," ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... the time that Maggie went to look at the crocuses immediately before breakfast, she was all but at her ease again. Enough, however, of anxiety remained to make her hurry out to the stable-yard when she heard the postman on his way ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... have fished them up in the open sea. Then we might have found out the road they had come by taking the exact latitude and longitude, and studying the atmospheric and submarine currents; but with such a postman as a shark, that goes against wind and tide, there's no clew whatever ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... very much, and it would always be a grief, she thought, that she and Knight had not been married by her old friend. Every night she prayed for a letter, waking with the hope that the postman might bring one: and five days after the sending of her telegram her heart leaped at sight of a fat envelope addressed in Mrs. ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... fortune, and I am certain that he never for one moment calculated upon the chances of any part of that fortune ultimately coming to himself. So that when, one fine spring morning, about three months before the time of which I am writing, the postman brought him the wedding cards of Sir Michael and Lady Audley, together with a very indignant letter from his cousin, setting forth how her father had just married a wax-dollish young person, no older than Alicia herself, with flaxen ringlets, and a perpetual giggle; for I am sorry ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... to the experience of their customers; for regular subscribers receive their papers through the post-office, and, if we are in such unseemly haste as to care for the news before the ten o'clock delivery—or the eleven o'clock, if the postman has not found it convenient otherwise—we must buy on the street, though we live but half a block from the newspaper office, which opens at ten. By noon, every one is awake. The restaurants are full of breakfasters, and Dominique's, which chances to stand on the most crowded ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... The rural postman carried a brass cowhorn, and made a practice of sounding it as he mounted the road leading to Culvercoombe. Its note, sounding through the clear morning air, aroused Tilda from her brown study, and she ran lightly up the slope to catch ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... early in March in the year 1702. As Jack Deane was approaching London, he heard a postman shouting, "Sad ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... fumblingly, and his attitude was decidedly of the "head-over-tip" character. Young "Quickfire," on the contrary, was erect as a dart, nimble on his pins as a girl at her first dance, and smart in delivery as a newly-promoted Postman, or the Parcels Express. He was all over his man in a brace of shakes, and the "Whopper," who looked as though he could have knocked holes in him if he could have hit him, could hardly land a "little one in" once in the course of a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 7, 1891. • Various
... facetiously describes the circumstance.[119] "Several animals thus intrusted with despatches or records were liberated by different ships; but, as the truth must be told, I fear in many cases the next night saw the poor 'postman,' as Jack termed him, in another trap, out of which he would be taken, killed, the skin taken off, and packed away to ornament at some future day the neck of some fair Dulcinea. As a 'sub,' I was admitted ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... old croaker! Why can't you let well enough alone, without mentioning more evil? You know the old saying that to speak of trouble is to invite its visitation. Surely, there was nothing about to-day's postman to suggest disaster. George is a typical ranchman, and my husband used to point him out to visitors as what a man might be, who grew up, or old, where 'there was room enough.' Big-hearted, full of fun, tender as a woman, but intolerant of meanness and evil ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... quite an original, this Captain Jan; a man who knew the forty miles of underground workings in Botallack as well, I suppose, as a postman knows his beat; a man who dived into the bowels of the earth with the vigour and confidence of a mole and the simple-minded ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... you will be able to decipher this, written at steam speed with a breaking pen, the hotfast postman at my heels. No excuse, says you. None, sir, says I, and touches my 'at most civil (extraordinary evolution of pen, now quite doomed - to resume - ) I have not put pen to the Bloody Murder yet. But it is early on my list; and when once I get to it, three weeks should see the last ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... following morning the post-cart, summoned by an early message from Mrs. Morran, appeared outside the cottage. In it sat the ancient postman, whose real home was Auchenlochan, but who slept alternate nights in Dalquharter, and beside him Dobson the innkeeper. Dickson and his hostess stood at the garden-gate, the former with his pack on his back, and at his feet a small stout wooden box, of the kind ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... gaining strength, however, and realize how complete the prostration was, and how radical the reconstructive processes had to be. The seclusion in which I live, surrounded by pine woods, a mile and a half from the nearest post office (tho' a postman brings our letters) and an equal distance from such supplies as a village can afford, is a little trying in some ways, but a real boon to ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... human nature to take an interest in the affairs of others. The fact has been amply demonstrated by innumerable postmasters and postmistresses who have profited from their contact with the communities' correspondence. That the postman, too, is likely to be well informed is shown in a quotation by Punch of a local letter-carrier's apology to a lady on ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... sure. McAndless told McArdle, and he told Smith the postman, and the postman told the McAleenans, and said he had seen letters about it. And McAleenan was up in McMinns the other night and told them, and I believe you never saw such an astonished crowd of people in ...
— The Drone - A Play in Three Acts • Rutherford Mayne
... Hall. Now and then a shadow sped across the tarn, darkening the ripples that sparkled like silver when the cloud drove on. Osborn frowned, for he had meant to go fishing and it was a morning when the big, shy trout would rise. His game-keeper was waiting at the boathouse, but the postman had brought some letters that made him put off ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... that Nellie had left the home nest and come to live her life in the busy town. She knew almost nothing about her aunts, and had never seen them; for Dr. Latimer dwelt in a far-off country village, and the distance from it to the city was very great. The postman would occasionally bring a letter, book, or paper to the doctor; and every Christmas a hamper filled with choice meats and other dainties would find its way to the house, showing that the young nephews ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... beg your pardon for so long a silence in the late reign; I knew nothing worth telling you; and the great event of this morning you Z, will certainly hear before it comes to you by so sober and regular a personage as the postman. The few circumstances known yet are, that the King went well to bed last night; rose well at six this morning; went to the water-closet a little after seven -, had a fit, fell against a bureau, and gashed his right temple: the valet de chambre heard a noise and a groan, and ran in: the King ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... sea-shore. The day was singularly clear and sunny. Inland lay the most beautiful landscape ever seen; and far off were ranges of tall hills, the highest peaks of which were white with glittering snows. Along the sands by the sea came towards me a man accoutred as a postman. He gave me a letter. It was from you. It ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... it, and I folded it, And put a seal upon it, 'Twas a seal almost as big As the crown of my best bonnet; For I wouldn't have the postman Make his remarks upon it, As I'd said inside the letter I loved him faithfully, And he knows it—oh, he knows it— ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... and the maid, who opened it, came to tell my mother a gentleman wished to see her? and why was I out of humour for the rest of the day, because it proved to be a music-master come to offer his services to our school? and what stopped my breath for a moment, when the postman having brought a couple of letters, my mother said, 'Here, Agnes, this is for you,' and threw one of them to me? and what made the hot blood rush into my face when I saw it was directed in a gentleman's ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... fateful letter from Frank King. It arrived on a January morning—on a clear and brilliant forenoon, just as Nan and her younger sister were going out for a walk, tempted by the sunlight and the colours of the sea. Madge herself took it from the postman at the door; glanced at the address, hastily opened the envelope, and guessed at, ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... and other historians anybody but a German would have declined to draw any conclusion whatever. But just as every German citizen however humble, becomes eventually a privy counsellor, a knight of various eagles of diverse classes, an overstationmaster, or a royal postman, so German science for the past hundred years has permitted no fact to languish in its native insignificance. All have been promoted to be the sponsors of imposing theories. And Hauptmann's theory, which got him the ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... permission of the manageress Carl had obtained an afternoon off, and, changing his coat, he mounted his bicycle and set forth toward Overstrand. On his way he nodded to the local constable, to the postman on his rounds, to the driver of the char a banc. He had been a year in Cromer and was ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... answered, "Very well. I will just change out of these clothes and then I am ready"—or words to that effect. I heard this plainly as they passed the window of my pantry. Then Mr. Marlowe went up to his bedroom, and Mr. Manderson entered the library and rang for me. He handed me some letters for the postman in the morning and directed me to sit up, as Mr. Marlowe had persuaded him to go for a drive in ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... air from the builder. He no longer dares come out and fight in the open, for he knows that public sentiment is against him. The people understand—to what an extent is shown in a report of a Tenement House Committee in the city of Yonkers, which the postman put on my table this minute. The committee was organized "to prevent the danger to Yonkers of incurring the same evils that have fallen so heavily upon New York and have cost that city millions of money and thousands of lives." It sprang from the Civic League, was appointed ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... (and Noel's last) shadowy glimpse of Wayeeses, the huge white wolf which I had come a thousand miles over land and sea to study. All over the Long Range of the northern peninsula I followed him, guided sometimes by a rumor—a hunter's story or a postman's fright, caught far inland in winter and huddling close by his fire with his dogs through the long winter night—and again by a track on the shore of some lonely, unnamed pond, or the sight of a herd of caribou flying wildly from some unseen danger. Here is ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... to its close when a carriage halted in front of the Fontenay house. Since Des Esseintes received no visitors, and since the postman never even ventured into these uninhabited parts, having no occasion to deliver any papers, magazines or letters, the servants hesitated before opening the door. Then, as the bell was rung furiously again, they peered through the peep-hole ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... the old nurse was to be trusted, and therefore told her story and her secret. "Even now," she said at the end of her story, "the postman is riding from London with the warrant in his bag. I must stop him and make him give it up to me, or my father's head is ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... she looked out of the window, she saw the postman suddenly surrounded by a whole flock of little girls, and heard one of them say, "Oh, haven't you got a valentine for me?" And then the whole flock cried, "And for me? and for me?" And the postman laughed good-naturedly, and, looking through his pack of letters, took out two or three ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... rare and unlooked for at the cottage, that the postman never included it in his rounds; and the contents of the pigeon-hole appropriated to them at the office was seldom inquired for, except on mail-days, when there might be an off-chance of an English letter for Miss Opie. Even Bluebell, who for the first ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... air above my head, and I flicked with my whip to drive the locust away. Immediately afterwards I heard the sharp double report of a Mauser, like a postman's knock, and after that again the shrill moan, infinitely melancholy, of a flying bullet; and away to my left, about two hundred yards, the sand rose in a fountain. It was my first experience under fire, and I confess ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... postman!' she said, as a shuffling, active man came through an opening in the shrubbery and across the lawn. She vanished, and met him in the porch, afterwards coming in with her hands behind ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... The postman stopped at the little green gate next morning, and Ida flew to receive his packet. It was a letter for her—a bulky letter—in a hand she knew well, and her heart seemed to stop beating as she looked ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... that the young ladies' conversation was, strange to say, about husbands. "Who will take such a poor little princess as me?" Charlotte said to her friend, Ida von Bulow, and at that very moment the postman's horn sounded, and Ida said, "Princess! there is the sweetheart." As she said, so it actually turned out. The postman brought letters from the splendid young King of all England, who said, "Princess! ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... farm, even in this country where we enjoy the even balance of the seasons, rain and shine, shine and rain, should be devoid of that irrigation from the currents of the world's thought which is so essential to the complete life. From the papers which the postman puts in the box flow the true waters of civilisation. You will find within their columns how to be good or how to make pies: you will get out of them what you look for! And finally, down the road from your farm, so that you can hear the ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... the postman had gone away from Belton, so that there might be no possibility of any recall of her letter, 'I have something to tell you which I ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... me, Bridget?" trilled Grace Harlowe as she raced across the lawn to the front steps with the reckless enthusiasm of a small boy. A glimpse of the postman's retreating back had brought her scurrying from the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... Just then the postman came in with a large package of letters, and when I began opening them, and extracting money orders, drafts, checks and currency, he gazed steadily for a ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... The postman's time for passing was just after Melbury's men had assembled in the spar-house; and Winterborne, who when not busy on his own account would lend assistance there, used to go out into the lane every morning ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... should be called on to give evidence, which I was unwilling to do; and, after consulting a solicitor, I endeavored in the meantime to forget the disagreeable affair. Then one morning, when the snow lay thick on the shingles, and the creek in the ravine was frozen almost to the bottom, the fur-wrapped postman brought ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... postman," answered Ted. "He's taking a letter into our house. Hey, Mr. Brennan!" he called, as he saw the gray-uniformed mail carrier entering the ...
— The Curlytops and Their Playmates - or Jolly Times Through the Holidays • Howard R. Garis
... soldier—a Yankee. Yes ma'am. They sends me thirty dollars every month, before the fourth. Postman brings it right to me here at the house. They ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... a sign of shuddering assent. Her daily Tribuna, which the postman brought her, had in fact contained that morning a letter describing the burial—after three months!—of the remains of the army slain in the carnage of Adowa on March 1. For three months had those thousands of Italian dead lain a prey to the African sun and the African vultures, before ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to bore you, even jure divino) We've the same cause in common, John—all but the rhino; And that vulgar surplus, whate'er it may be, As you're not used to cash, John, you'd best leave to me. And so, without form—as the postman won't tarry— I'm, dear Jack ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... shiny hat. An' whin he wint into a shop, sure they niver axed him to show the color av his money at all, but the man 'ud say, 'God save ye! Sure ye can pay whin ye plaze, an' I'll sind it be the postman whin he goes by.' An' the ould King 'ud say, 'Oh, I wont throuble ye. Bedad, I'll carry it,' an' aff the blessed ould King 'ud go, wid his bundles undher his arm, an' the crown on his head, as happy as a widdy wid ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... and drenches The benches; It jumps into pumps and comes out with a roar; It pounds like a postman at lodges— Then dodges And runs up the lane when they ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... it to lame Mary, the postman's wife, for she is always longing to see the fields," they answered; "but these roses are for you, dear little boy; they are all for you," and putting them into his hands they ...
— Very Short Stories and Verses For Children • Mrs. W. K. Clifford
... last stroke of the bell rang out above the babble of the men's voices and the shuffling noise of their feet moving about, the four strokes being sounded in pairs, "cling-clang, cling-clang!" like a double postman's knock, a slim gentlemanly young man, with brown hair and beard and moustache, who was dressed in a natty blue uniform like mine, save that he wore a longer jacket and had a band of gold lace round his ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... was the door-mat on which the thoughts of his last book had wiped their sandals before they went in; and his remark that to ask a literary man to write a letter after his day's work was like asking a penny-postman to take a walk in the evening for the pleasure ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... reseda-green shade, except when in anger, and has no distinguishing marks except the absence of a piece of the right ear, which was carried off by a marauding Irish terrier. He answers with a growl to many names, including that of Timon. He will also answer to a piece of raw meat, another dog or a postman. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... heard the news," she began, "about this Captain James? A sailor,—with a wooden leg, I have no doubt. What would the poor, dear, deceased master have said to it, if he had known who was to be his successor! My dear, I have often thought of the postman's bringing me a letter as one of the pleasures I shall miss in heaven. But, really, I think Mr. Horner may be thankful he has got out of the reach of news; or else he would hear of Mr. Smithson's having made up to the Birmingham baker, and ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... despatched to besiege a bakery. Clara felt lonely without him: apprehensively timid in the shuttered, unmoving village street. She was glad of his return. When at last her letter was handed to her, on the testimony of the postman that she was the lawful applicant, Crossjay and she put out on a sharp trot to be back at the Hall in good time. She took a swallowing glance of the first page of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... whose right of presence I instantly, passionately questioned. I recollect counting over perfectly the possibilities, reminding myself that nothing was more natural, for instance, then the appearance of one of the men about the place, or even of a messenger, a postman, or a tradesman's boy, from the village. That reminder had as little effect on my practical certitude as I was conscious—still even without looking—of its having upon the character and attitude of our visitor. Nothing was more natural than that these things ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... The unfairness of Fate was souring him. A man expects trouble in his affairs of the heart from soldiers and sailors, and to be cut out by even a postman is to fall before a worthy foe; but milkmen—no! Only grocers' assistants and telegraph-boys were intended by Providence to ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... evening and all the next day without getting any message. It was only on the following day, at about ten o'clock in the morning, as he was starting to call on M. Deschamps, the notary, that he received from the postman a small billet, which he knew to be from Valentine, although he had not before seen her writing. It was to ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... As Jennings departed the postman came up the stairs with the late letters. Cuthbert found one from Juliet and opened it at once. ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... I reported at Fulham. More hours of waiting. I discovered an old postman who had also enlisted in the R.A.M.C., and as he "knew the ropes" I stuck to him like a leech. In the afternoon an old recruiting sergeant with a husky voice fell us in, and we marched, a mob of civilians, through the London streets to the railway ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... two younger ladies again went on clipping and arranging their papers, while Mrs. Woodward renewed her protest that she would do her best as to reading their production. While they were thus employed the postman's knock was heard, and a letter was brought in from the far-away Australian exiles. The period at which these monthly missives arrived were moments of intense anxiety, and the letter was seized upon with eager avidity. It was from Gertrude to her mother, as all these letters ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... the morning raced by on wings. Of course Mary Jane had to show the cart and doll's clothes to Betty and they had to walk around the block to give the doll an airing. Then, just as they got back to Mary Jane's apartment, the postman came with a box from grandpa and grandma. Betty was invited up for the fun of opening it and she was glad to come both for the fun and for the big pieces of grandmother's candy that she got when the box was ...
— Mary Jane's City Home • Clara Ingram Judson
... lived. It looked as if it had a story—and it had. It was told me not long ago by an old friend. I call him a friend, for whenever I went to the institution where he was a doorkeeper, I went back in memory to the years when he was our postman. In those days your postman was your friend. You thought over what your Christmas gift to him would be as much as a member of your family. Not like it is nowadays, when he drops your letters through a slit ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... to give Bass to carry. Bass always followed that man through all the villas in this neighbourhood where he had deliveries to make, and he invariably parted with him opposite to the gate of the Convent of St. Margaret's, and returned home. When our gate was shut here to prevent his following the postman, the dog always leaped a high wall to get after him. One day when the postman was ill, or detained by some accidental circumstance, he sent a man in his place. Bass went up to the man, curiously scanning his face, whilst the man rather retired ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... I'm a fierce bad postman," Rupert dryly acknowledged. "But I ain't likely to confuse ladies on the way downstairs. You're sure ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... Claire Fromont donned a large straw hat for the first days of August were warm and glorious—and went herself to drop it in the little box from which the postman collected the mail from the chateau ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... dry,— Its central dimple holds a drowning fly Strong is the pine by Maine's ambrosial streams, But stronger augers pierce its thickest beams; No iron gate, no spiked and panelled door, Can keep out death, the postman, or the bore. Oh for a world where peace and silence reign, And blunted dulness verebrates in vain! —The door-bell jingles,—enter Richard Fox, And takes this letter from his ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... my shoulders the night I went through the river. He had found it lying on the beach half a mile below the ford. It had been washed out to sea and returned again by the waves. After that we called it "the travelled shawl." Every Monday morning the toot of the postman's horn was heard in the village, and one of us immediately went across to get the mail. The bridge being gone, we had to wade the river at the shallowest place, near the sea. When I waded across on such occasions I ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... domestic purposes, and especially in bleaching linen. Besides, they did not wash more than four times a year, as was done by families in the olden time, and it may be added, that Pencroft and Gideon Spilett, whilst waiting for the postman to bring him his newspaper, distinguished ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... contributing for a wage, to the convenience of everyday life in these latter times, is more waited and watched for, and brings more of joy, and more of sorrow when he comes, than the postman. ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... New-York transacts business in Canton." How does he do it? He has an agent there to whom he sends his orders, and he transacts the business. But how does he get his letters? The clerk writes them, the postman carries them on board the ship, the captain commands the sailors, who work the ropes which unfurl the sails, the wind blows, the vessel is managed by the pilot, and after a weary voyage of several months, the ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... growing prettier every year, since large business houses spare neither skill nor money in getting them up. The most interesting thing about them, to "grown-ups," is the way they are made; and perhaps even you youngsters, who watch eagerly for the postman, "sinking beneath the load of delicate embarrassments not his own," would like to know how satin and lace and flowers and other dainty things ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... and not for the profit of a few."[1130] "The Post Office to-day is an organised sweating-den. The Government get the largest possible amount of work for the lowest possible wages. That is capitalist wage-slavery under Government control."[1131] "The country postman has to walk excessive distances for miserable wages in order that the profit on the Post Office may be filched from the employees and from the public by the Chancellor ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... this conclusion with a sigh, and then, hearing the stable clock strike five, remembered that it was post time. Perhaps there would be a letter from home. At any rate she would run down to the lodge and meet the postman. It was such a cheering thought that she felt almost happy again, and ran along whistling and swinging her straw-hat in her hand. The drive was long and very winding, so that she did not at first perceive that there was someone in front of her who seemed to be bound ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... acceptance. And he could not, with a slow-moving pen upon a table of pine, answer all the communications that came. Before the war two letters for him in half a year was an occasion worthy of comment. Now each day, over the mountains upon a pacing roan, the postman came, and the mail-pouches, swung as saddle-bags, swayed in unison with the horse's step. Most of the letters were for ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... NELL,—I did not "swear at the postman" when I saw another letter from you. And I hope you will not "swear" at me when I tell you that I cannot think of leaving home at present, even to have the pleasure of joining you at Harrogate, but I am obliged to you for thinking of me. I have nothing ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... when she had been pointing out the lilacs to little Henry, and now came in from the square with a branch of them in her hand, the postman gave her a letter; the handwriting of which made her start as if it had been ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... was so thoroughgoing that Mama Therese even failed to notice the passage of the postman on his last round of the day. Ordinarily, for reasons best known to herself and which Sofia had never thought to question, Mama Therese preferred personally to receive all letters and contrived to be on hand at the postman's customary hours of call. But to-night ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... Moreover, the postman had heard from a gendarme that the railway-station at the sub-prefecture was occupied by soldiers. He himself, when he left Saint-Elophe, had seen army telegraphists on ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... and bleak day in February, and the little party were all at breakfast, when a quick and, it must be owned, very unfamiliar step was heard running up the attic stairs. The rope was pulled with a vigorous tug, and a postman's hand ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... Why, they cut them out of the same newspaper; they've got the same reading on the back! And I—I don't know what to believe now. And there are all those letters at home that I haven't answered yet; and they keep coming—why, I just dread to see the postman turn down our street. And one man—he wrote twice. I didn't like his first letter and didn't answer it; and now he says if I don't send him the money he'll tell everybody everywhere what a stingy t-tight-wad I am. And another man said he'd come and TAKE it if I didn't send ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... Geoffrey went away Mr. Davies had met her as she was walking back from the station and asked her if Mr. Bingham had gone. When she replied that this was so, she had distinctly heard him murmur, "Thank God! thank God!" Subsequently she discovered also that he bribed the old postman to keep count of the letters which she sent and ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... freedom of language. Nor did Mr. Sheldon's announcement of his profession confine itself to the brass-plate and the glass-case. A shabby-genteel young man pervaded the neighbourhood for some days after the surgeon-dentist's advent, knocking a postman's knock, which only lacked the galvanic sharpness of the professional touch, and delivering neatly-printed circulars to the effect that Mr. Sheldon, surgeon-dentist, of 14 Fitzgeorge-street, had invented some novel method of adjusting ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... could notice anything in the garden, his attention was attracted by the sight of Daniel Magor, the postman, standing at the gate and fumbling with the latch. Thomas dropped the loaf and the knife, and went out to meet him, leaving the house-door wide open to the beautiful morning sunshine, which poured in in a wide stream right across the kitchen, lighting ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Oakley was on his feet again, hatless, looking quite frantic, and striking out at Dudley, who was ducking and dipping quite coolly, and again the same horrid sound, only this time it was double, like a quick postman's knock, and Captain Oakley was ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... which she knew must come as a cruel blow to Walter, she had given to the postman with her own hands, and it was now on its way south. As she sat on the summit of that heather-clad hill she was wondering what effect her written words would have upon him. He had loved her so devotedly ever since they had been children ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... to go beyond that corner, but he could look and see what was coming, and perhaps he could see the postman and ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... man, the clerk and the farmer—everyone visited by the postman—is becoming more and more familiar with letters. The day has passed when anyone is deceived by a carelessly handled form letter. Unless a firm feels justified in spending the time and money to ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... glad moment for her—the arrival of the postman. He was late, of course, but when he did come he brought her a budget of letters and parcels that convinced her she was not forgotten by her absent schoolgirl friends. With a hasty glance over them, she put them on one side until after dinner, ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... "If an additional postage of one penny per letter were to be charged to every person who prefers making the postman, or rather the public, wait until his servant shall think proper to open the door to receive a handful of prepaid letters, which could rapidly be dropped, exactly as they were posted, through a receiving slit ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... where lodgings could be at once obtained. The subject of difference put aside, they talked again freely and affectionately of this sudden escape from a life which in any case Mrs. Hannaford could not have endured much longer. About nine o'clock, the quiet of the house was broken by a postman's knock; Olga ran to take the letter, and exclaimed ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... to them one of Mr. John Bright's speeches. The Squire did not exactly know, or care to know, who Mr. John Bright might be, but he gathered enough from Fat Jack's guttural elocution to cause uneasiness. He declared that if ever the postman brought such a thing into the village again he would never allow a letter to be delivered on his estate. But with all this bluster, the common people knew that their landlord wished them well, and they were ready to do anything ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... was a little timid about the venture, fearing that I might get him into trouble, but when he became convinced that I would do nothing of the kind he consented. I had a warder in the prison who in consideration of an occasional tip used to act as my postman, sending my letters to my friends and bringing in theirs to me. This was a deadly offense against the rules, but as the permitted correspondence was outrageously limited I saw no reason why I should deprive myself of letters when I had the chance to have them, and as I took good care that the great ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... those flat, drab, obliterating strokes of your brush that I have so often complained of. If you would rise to the literary pinnacle of your dramatic senses, and paint them in the high colors that art requires, the postman would leave fewer bulky, self-addressed envelopes ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... very busy with her sewing; sometimes she would have another woman helping her. I think she must have derived a fair income from her work. I know, too, that at least once each month she received a letter; I used to watch for the postman, get the letter, and run to her with it; whether she was busy or not, she would take it and instantly thrust it into her bosom. I never saw her read one of these letters. I knew later that they ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... not therefore without effect; reminiscences, sorely pulpy and broken at the edges, were offered and accepted with a laughter in which sober ears might have detected a strangely alien sound; and adventures were related in which truth was no necessary element to reception. In the case of the postman, for instance, who had been dismissed for losing a bag of letters the week before, not one of those present believed a word he said; yet as he happened to be endowed with a small stock of genuine humour, his stories were regarded ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... more nervous than usual. I had expected a letter from America for some days past, and none had arrived. On this evening I knew the mail was due, and I waited anxiously for the last ring of the postman at ten o'clock; but I was doomed to listen in vain. There was the sharp, loud ring next door, but not at ours; and I went to my room earlier than the others, really to give way to a few tears ...
— J. Cole • Emma Gellibrand
... addressed to her mother. By the postmark on it Nan knew it must have been tucked under the door by the postman more than a week before. Somehow he had failed to ring their bell when he left the letter. The missing tack in the edge of the hall carpet had allowed the document to slide out of sight, and it might have been hidden for weeks ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... the postman's knock was heard in the street outside. Julie Le Breton started, for no one whose life is dependent on a daily letter can hear that common sound without a thrill. Then she smiled sadly at herself. "My joy is over ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to silver Upon her matron brow; The years were eight-and-twenty Since we breathed our marriage vow, And our grandchildren were playing Hunt-the-slipper on the floor, When they saw the postman standing ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... that his children were perpetually writing—and not writing letters. We have seen how the communications from their publishers were received "under cover to Miss Bronte." Once, Charlotte told me, they overheard the postman meeting Mr. Bronte, as the latter was leaving the house, and inquiring from the parson where one Currer Bell could be living, to which Mr. Bronte replied that there was no such person in the parish. This must have been the misadventure ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the day after his arrival at Moscow, Laptev went into the warehouse, the workmen packing the goods were hammering so loudly that in the outer room and the office no one heard him come in. A postman he knew was coming down the stairs with a bundle of letters in his hand; he was wincing at the noise, and he did not notice Laptev either. The first person to meet him upstairs was his brother Fyodor Fyodorovitch, who was so like him that they passed for twins. This resemblance always ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... and early summer he had walked down that sun- and shadow-flecked suburban road, and rested on that particular iron chair. The butcher's and fishmonger's boys going their rounds, the policeman on his beat, the postman wearily footing it, the daily governess returning from her morning's occupation, had become used to his appearance there; and he watched each one going upon ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... members a hearty reception, and in his club he rather enjoyed himself for the hour, forgetting that conditions were different outside. On the streets he met men who bowed to him somewhat stiffly, and met others who recognized him plainly enough, but who did not bow. The postman brought daily a bunch of letters, addressed in various forms of stern commercial handwriting to George Henry Harrison, but these often lay unopened and neglected ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... the poet who wrote this song was Gagan. He was almost illiterate; and the ideas he received from his Bauel teacher found no distraction from the self-consciousness of the modern age. He was a village postman, earning about ten shillings a month, and he died before he had completed his teens. The sentiment, to which he gave such intensity of expression, is common to most of the songs of his sect. And it is a sect, almost exclusively confined to that lower floor of society, ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... pursuit of all classes, and the postman is probably the only man who leaves letters for the vulgar pursuit of lucre! Even the vanity of servant-maids has undergone a change—they now study 'Cocker' and neglect ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... stamp" (ten cents) entitles a letter to immediate delivery by special messenger. The tendency for the establishment of slight divergency in language between England and America is seen in the terms of the post-office as in those of the railway. A letter is "mailed," not "posted;" the "postman" gives way to the "letter-carrier;" a "post-card" is expanded into a "postal-card." The stranger on arrival at New York will be amused to see the confiding way in which newspaper or book packets, too large for the orifice, are placed on the top of the street ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... opening their valentines, which a "really" postman brought with his gray uniform and his whistle and his ...
— Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper and Other Stories • Anonymous
... face of his master had recovered its ordinary expression. "It is the postman," said Rodin, showing the letters which he held in his hand; "there ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... person to regulate things differently. The landlord, wise in his generation, provided newspapers liberally as well as beer, and had his reward. The people who gathered there of an evening included two or three farmers, a couple of professional gentlemen—not the vicar; a man of property, the postman, the carrier, the butcher, the baker and other tradesmen, the farm and other labourers, and last, but not least, the village sweep. A curious democratic assembly to be met with in a rural village in ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... reads, also writes. There are few streets where the callous postman does not occasionally render some doorstep desolate by the delivery of a rejected manuscript. Fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind, and the first steps in the career of a successful man of letters are always interesting. ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... say, as they might be coming up the steps; "suppose the postman had a letter for 266 Glenn Avenue, and the numbers were so dull and streaked he couldn't read them! Think how we'd feel if that should ...
— Sunny Boy in the Country • Ramy Allison White
... discipline of the place, their opposites—good temper, a light and happy disposition, and a civil tongue—received their meed of recognition even from the bigger fellows, like Pagan I. or II., or that Captain of the School, often spoken of with bated breath—Postman, Murphy's father, mated afterwards to the great beauty, Barbara, both being of ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... Hart received the first of his long series of honours. It came with delightful unexpectedness, with no warning of its arrival; simply, one day as he was going to see his lawyer, Mr. (afterwards Sir Nicholas) Hannen, a passing postman handed him a little brown-paper parcel with Swedish stamps on it. As he had neither acquaintance nor official correspondence with Sweden or Norway, he was completely puzzled as to what it might contain. Greatly to his surprise, ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... two later, and before she had had time to form any plans, the postman brought a letter with the postmark of St. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... a small room belonging to the people of the house, asked for pen, ink, and paper, and dictated, in a low voice to his boy, a letter, which he ordered him to put at once into the post-office. The boy ran off with the letter and was but just in time, for the postman's horn was sounding. The next morning Farmer Price was sitting beside his wife and Susan sorrowing that his week's leave was nearly at an end, and that they had not enough money to give to the man who was willing to go in his place, when a ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... had the opportunity, but no news came of him. India was a long way off, and letters were often six months or even a year in coming, she knew. She was, therefore, though anxious, not alarmed, but she could not help watching with a beating heart each day at the hour the postman was wont to pass her door, in the expectation that he would stop with ...
— The Two Shipmates • William H. G. Kingston
... to see the postman when he came this evening," said Olive. "He just bulged with parcels. They were ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... disorderliness and warm humanity of her Irish home, after the run of the stables and the kennels, and the freedom of the village, after the chats with the pedlars and the beggars, and the borrowing and blowing of the postman's bugle, after the queenship of a host of barefooted gossoons, her loyal messenger-boys. Now her mere direct glance under reproof was considered "hardi." "Droop your eyes, you bold child," said the shocked Madame Agathe. A fancy she took to a French girl was checked. "On defend les ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... the expired year. Indeed, we should as little think of taking these compositions as examples of the merits of their authors as we should think of measuring the valuable services of Mr. Walker, the postman, or Mr. Bell, the dust-collector, by the copy of verses they leave at our doors as a provocative of the expected annual gratuity—effusions with which they may fairly be classed for their intrinsic worth no less ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "I ponder these thoughts, and they comfort me." Meanwhile we can always {47} stand it for twenty-four hours longer, if only to see what to-morrow's newspaper will contain, or what the next postman will bring. ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... and Parson John was looking forward to the morrow, when he could take his accustomed place at the parish church. He and Nellie were sitting quietly in the little room, when Mr. Larkins entered with the mail. The postman had met with an accident on the icy road, and was several hours behind time. Usually Dan went to the office, but on this occasion Mr. Larkins was down to the store, and had brought along the mail for ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody |
