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More "Abrupt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... how happy it made her to be with Aunt Adeline, walking slowly, slowly, with her round the garden, stretched out beside her on the terrace, following her abrupt moves from the sun into the shade and back again; or sitting for hours with her in the big darkened bedroom when Adeline had one of the bad headaches that attacked her now, brushing her hair, and putting handkerchiefs soaked in ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... John Jamieson, situated several miles above Emu, commands an extensive view over that noble stream, the rich margins of which are hemmed in, on the west, by the abrupt precipices of the Blue mountains. The intermediate space beyond the ford is called Emu plains. At the inn near this ford I passed the night, being desirous to cross the ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... builds up a drama. From the opening shimmer and rustle of the garden, through the Gregorian chant that solemnizes the drawing of the lots, and is interrupted by the youth's start of joy at his own luck (an abrupt glissando); through his sturdy resolve to go to war in his friend's place, on through many battles to his death, all is on a high plane that commands sympathy for the emotion, and enforces unbounded admiration ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... fracture is brilliantly crystalline. The basalt is the same as that which caps the sandstone hills of the Vindhya range throughout Malwa. The sandstone hills around Gwalior all rise in the same abrupt manner from the plain as those through Malwa generally; and they have almost all of them the same basaltic glacis at their base, with boulders of that rock scattered over the top, all indicating that they were at one time buried, in ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... surprise at the speaker, shook his head in negation, looked up at the top of the tent, and after a long pause said, in abrupt sentences, with frequent interruptions: ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... thought, coming to an abrupt halt; "I screwed down that lamp and blew into the chimney in the orthodox fashion, so it couldn't have been that I unconsciously left ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... carts along the highest ground. Again ascend Murroa and partially clear the summit. Mount Rouse. Australian Pyrenees. Swamps harder than the ground around them. Again reach the good country. Mounts Bainbrigge and Pierrepoint. Mount Sturgeon. Ascend Mount Abrupt. View of the Grampians from the summit. Victoria range and the Serra. Mud again, and a broken axle. Mr. Stapylton examines the country before us. At length get through the soft region. Cattle quite exhausted. ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... this marked the consummation of Chichikov's relations with his host, for he hastened stealthily to pack his trunk and, the next day, figured in a fresh lodging. Also, he ceased to call the Chief Clerk "Papenka," or to kiss his hand; and the matter of the wedding came to as abrupt a termination as though it had never been mooted. Yet also he never failed to press his late host's hand, whenever he met him, and to invite him to tea; while, on the other hand, for all his immobility and dry ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... been informed by Emma of the intended abrupt departure of Mary Grey, and she had begun to oppose it with all ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... cut corners on two wheels, and on one wheel, and, I was prepared to swear, on no wheels. A couple of times, with the wings retracted, we actually jetted into the air and jumped over vehicles in front of us, landing again with bone-shaking jolts. Then we made an abrupt turn and shot in under a concrete arch, and a big door banged shut behind us, and we stopped, in the middle of a wide patio, the front of the car a few inches short of a fountain. Four or five people, in diplomatic striped trousers, local ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... usually called a 'cottage-residence'—situated in a remote hamlet, and that it was not more than a hundred years old, if so much, I was led to think in my progress through the hollow rooms, with their cracked walls and sloping floors, what an exceptional number of abrupt family incidents had taken place therein—to reckon only those which had come to my own knowledge. And no doubt there were many more of which ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... relieved that she took this view of his abrupt utterances. He thought the incident was ended. He was mistaken; Elsie was able to recall each word subsequently. At the moment she was recording impressions with uncomprehending accuracy, but her mind was quite incapable of analyzing them; that ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... England, but going out for their meals. The girl was but indirectly communicative; though seemingly less from any plan of secrecy than from the habit of associating with people whom she didn't honour with her confidence. She was fragmentary and abrupt, as well as not in the least shy, subdued to dread of Madame Carre as she had been for the time. She gave Sherringham a reason for this fear, and he thought her reason innocently pretentious. "She admired ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... Osborne wanted was his formal sanction to present at the bank, as without this the transaction would not have the necessary official character. Li agreed readily enough when the matter was presented in this light; what he had objected to was Lay's abrupt demand to pay so many thousand taels out of his own ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... lackeys also had stopped their horses, which stood pawing and snorting at a respectful distance. It was an awkward moment for me. I could not stand there trying to persuade a perfectly serene man to fight. So with an abrupt pull of the rein I started my horse, mechanically applied the spur, and galloped off. A few minutes later I was out of sight of this singularly self-controlled gentleman, who resented my description of the Duke of Guise. I was annoyed for some ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... of the type so freely copied and adapted by Domenico Campagnola, we find the jagged, naked peaks of the Dolomites aspiring to the heavens. In the majority of instances, however, the middle distance and foreground to these is not the scenery of the higher Alps, with its abrupt contrasts, its monotonous vesture of fir or pine forests clothing the mountain sides, and its relatively harsh and cold colouring, but the richer vegetation of the Friulan mountains in their lower slopes, or of the beautiful hills bordering upon the overflowing richness of the Venetian ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... our deductions are not as inevitable as they are logical, which suggests that they are not "logic." An arbitrary assumption is never fair to all any of the time, or to anyone all the time. Many will resent the abrupt separation that a theory of duality in music suggests and say that these general subdivisions are too closely inter-related to be labeled decisively—"this or that." There is justice in this criticism, but our answer is that it is better to be short on the ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... plastic. As a limitation we ought to note that this almost plastic material cannot be suddenly and violently dealt with—that is to say, with the exception of some sorts of arches, you cannot form any abrupt or startling feature in brickwork, and you are especially limited ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... were choked off by a sudden swirl of the craft. She seemed about to turn completely over, and then, twisted to an uncomfortable angle, so that those within her slid to the side walls of the cabin, the M. N. 1 came to an abrupt stop. At the same time she seemed to vibrate and tremble as if in terror ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... no questions, and I will tell you no lies," the Chevalier replied on his part. Strong thought of the words Mr. Altamont had used, and his abrupt departure from the Baronet's dining-table and house as soon as he recognised Major Pendennis, or Captain Beak, as he called the Major. But Strong resolved to seek an explanation of these words otherwise ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... abrupt, so nearly impatient, that Mrs. Grail made an end of her remarks. In a little while ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... the papers a statement of the disastrous winding up of the season at Covent Garden, or rather its still more disastrous abrupt termination. After our all protesting and remonstrating with all our might against my father's again being involved in that Heaven-forsaken concern, and receiving the most positive and solemn assurances from those who advised him into it for the sake ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... but although, when viewed at a glance, it had thus a regular sloping appearance, a more careful observation showed that it was broken up into a multitude of very small vales—or, rather, dells and glens—intermingled with little rugged spots and small but abrupt precipices here and there, with rivulets tumbling over their edges and wandering down the slopes in little white streams, sometimes glistening among the broad leaves of the bread-fruit and cocoa-nut trees, ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... turned the corner, the girls joined them, and added their sympathy. But Chuck was in no mood to answer their questions, so with an abrupt "s'long" he turned at the next ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill
... assistants cried out at his abrupt entrance. Mrs. Herrington, forward beside the speech, turned ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... wish you would cure yourself of putting these abrupt questions. . . . Your Cousin Oliver is now the head of the family, remember. He has received us with uncommon cordiality, and put ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... for miles, Ruby singing at the top of her voice and the gentleman friend joining in at the chorus. Pearl's head was bent over, wobbly fashion. She was either asleep, or lost in deep thought. I have also a dim recollection of the vehicle coming to an abrupt halt, and a head thrust in at the window, saying pointedly that if we did not make less noise he would run the whole blanketty-blank gang in. This made me mad, and I wanted to fight the stranger then and there; but my warlike purpose was frustrated by the Jewels and their friend, who ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... to the summit of the cliff was made with caution, though the left flank of the adventurers was well protected by the abrupt descent they had already made from the terrace above. This left little more than the right flank and the front to be watched, the falling away of the land forming, also, a species of cover for the rear. It is not surprising, then, that the verge of the ravine ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... give him an attitude of his own. While the others follow passively in a close file, he, the captain, tosses himself about and with an abrupt movement flings the front of his body hither and thither. As he marches ahead he seems to be seeking his way. Does he in point of fact explore the country? Does he choose the most practicable places? Or are his hesitations merely the result of the absence of a guiding ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... her. I haven't been in Philadelphia since I was seven—and that's ages ago. I have no mother, and father is off in South America on business. So, you see, little sister has to tag after big sister. Oh!" She interrupted the recital with an abrupt change of manner. "I'm so sorry you've finished your coffee. Now you'll have to go. ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... of Attaf" occupies pp. 10-50, and the end is abrupt. The treatment of the "Novel" contrasts curiously with that of the Chavis MS. which forms my text, and whose directness and simplicity give it a European and even classical character. It is an excellent study of the liberties allowed to themselves by Eastern editors and scribes. In the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... be some more—" she said. Percival threw the tongs into the fender, and the dialogue came to an abrupt termination. "She" who gave a little jump was Miss Lisle, of course. But there would be some more—What? The young man revolved the matter gloomily in his mind as he paced to and fro within the narrow limits of his room. A natural impulse had caused him to interrupt Lydia's triumphant speech, which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... formed a band of several hundred warriors; and that they were now marching back towards the valley of the Huerfano—to take revenge for the death of Red-Hand, and the defeat which his party had sustained! This unexpected news brought the scalp-dance to an abrupt termination; and changed the whole aspect of the scene. The women, with loud cries, rushed towards their horses— with the intention of betaking themselves to a place of security; while the warriors looked to their arms—determined ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... for a moment or two, and then with an abrupt swing of his whole figure, eloquent of defiant resolution, he stared the Major in the face, and said in a quiet, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Boomplatz in 1848, established what went by the name of the Orange River Sovereignty, and in a year or two secured such good and peaceful government within its borders as to attract considerable numbers of English and Scotch colonists. The malcontents retired across the Vaal. Then came an abrupt change of policy in the Home Government, a sudden desire actuated mainly by fear of more native wars, to cancel all that was possible of our commitments in South Africa. The Transvaal, by the Sand River Convention, was declared independent in 1852, ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... building, ending with the chapel. In front of the chateau was an old square bastion forming a terrace, whose mossy walls were bathed by the waters of a large stagnant marsh. The west front which was plainer, was separated by only a few feet of level ground from the abrupt, wooded hill by which Tournebut was sheltered. A wall with several doors opening on the woods enclosed the chateau, the farm and the lower part of the park, and a wide morass, stretching from the foot of the terrace to the Seine, rendered access ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... assertion, as we entirely deny the accuracy or propriety, of the metaphysical analogies, in accordance with which his work has unhappily been arranged. Though these had been as carefully, as they are crudely, considered, it had still been no light error of judgment to thrust them with dogmatism so abrupt into the forefront of a work whose purpose is assuredly as much to win to the truth as to demonstrate it. The writer has apparently forgotten that of the men to whom he must primarily look for the working out of his anticipations, the most part are of limited knowledge and inveterate ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... long-necked, tall horses lifted their heads to watch her. For some seconds they seemed only mildly interested, but then a breeze moved across the lake, crinkling the surface of the water, and as it touched the opposite shore, abrupt panic exploded among the grazers. They wheeled, went flashing away in effortless twenty-foot strides, and were gone among ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... whom inversion is already developed, and who is seeking the gratification of the abnormal instinct. This appears to be a not uncommon incident in the early history of sexual inverts. That such seduction—sometimes an abrupt and inconsiderate act of mere sexual gratification—could by itself produce a taste for homosexuality is highly improbable; in individuals not already predisposed it is far more likely to produce disgust, as it did in the case of the youthful Rousseau. "He only ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... By an abrupt transition we pass from their consideration to the Hebrew classical drama modelled after the pattern of Moses Chayyim Luzzatto's. Greatest attention was bestowed upon historical dramas, notably those on the trials and fortunes of Marranos, the favorite ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... villages had an appearance of respectable age not perceptible in the settlements along the Amoor. Ten or twelve miles from our wooding place we met ice coming out of the Chorney river, but it gave us no inconvenience. The valley became wider and the hills less abrupt, while the villages had an air of irregularity more pleasing than the military precision on the Amoor. I saw many dwellings on which decay's effacing fingers were busy. The telegraph posts were fixed above Gorbitza, but the wires ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Library, Domitian A. viij. A bilingual Chronicle, Latin and Saxon, which, by internal evidence, is assigned to Christ Church, Canterbury. The abrupt ending at 1058 is no indication of the book's date: it was written late ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... incarnate in him. It is the ice of winter penetrated by the spear of the sun; that is, Glooskap. Thus, in another tale, a frozen river tries, as a man, to destroy the hero, but is melted by him. The conception of the hour when all wishes are granted, and the abrupt termination of the whole in a grand transformation scene, are both very striking. There is something like the former in Rabelais, in his narrative of the golden hatchet; as regards the latter, it is like the ending of a Christmas pantomime. Indeed, ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... to listen, as it were to the deepening dumbness of all existing things,—and to conquer the strange sensations that were overcoming him, he proceeded at a more rapid pace,—but in two or three minutes came again to an abrupt halt. For there in front of him, right across his path, lay the fallen pillar which, according to Heliobas, marked the boundary to the field he sought! Another glance at his map decided the position ... he had reached his journey's end at last! What was the time? He looked—it was just ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Nunez Vela, the first Viceroy appointed by Spain, arrived in Peru, where he found de Castro in charge of the Government. Nunez Vela's methods proved themselves arbitrary in the extreme. Scarcely had he landed when he sent an abrupt command to de Castro to resign his post, and to place himself forthwith in attendance on the new Viceroy. This action roused the anger of the Pizarro faction. Its adherents revolted and established ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... Melton customers are to forswear pigskin and severe simplicity—not to say utility and comfort. If poetic diction be different in species from plain English, then let us have it as poetical as possible, and as unlike English; as ungrammatical, abrupt, involved, transposed, as the clumsiness, carelessness, or caprice of man can make it. If it be correct to express human thought by writing whole pages of vague and bald abstract metaphysic, and then trying to explain them by concrete concetti, which bear an entirely accidental and mystical ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... admitted continuity of man's progress from the brute does not admit of the introduction of new causes, and that we have no evidence of the sudden change of nature which such introduction would bring about. The fallacy as to new causes involving any breach of continuity, or any sudden or abrupt change, in the effects, has already been shown; but we will further point out that there are at least three stages in the development of the organic world when some new cause or power must necessarily ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the exact moment of an abrupt change in nature. Yesterday, however, I watched a wonderful thing—the oncoming of ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... of their united years and opened the high gate to us and delivered us over to a mild boy. He bestowed on us, for a consideration, a bunch of wild violets, and then, as if to keep us from the too abrupt sight of the repairs and changes going on near the casino, led us first to the fish-pond, in the untouched seclusion of a wooded hill, and silently showed us the magnificent view which the top commanded, if commanded is not too proud a word for ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... to such an abrupt standstill stared at each other. Edna saw a poor, ragged, dirty, pale-faced child with wild locks; and the little girl saw Edna with the tears still coursing down her cheeks, her pretty coat and frock stained with mud, and her hat knocked very ...
— A Dear Little Girl • Amy E. Blanchard
... checked by an impatience to learn the cause of Lieutenant Raymond's abrupt appearance, and the officers approached the principal group. The former had now reached the shore, and, shuffling up the bank as fast as his own corpulency and the abruptness of the ascent would permit, hastened to the General, who stood at some little ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... last when she thought they ought to get married, and when he saw her blush deeply, even to her neck, he regretted that he had been too abrupt. There was no hurry; she must decide that herself; no need to answer now, not ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... advice had been set aside, and Parliament had been summoned for July 25th. But peace had already been secured, and immediate supply was no longer necessary. The King prorogued Parliament on July 29th, but not before the House had passed a resolution against a standing army. This abrupt dismissal of Parliament, when its presence was no longer called for, inflamed the anger against Clarendon. Those who had hoped to find an opportunity of pressing home their attack upon him in Parliament were indignant at the loss of this opportunity. Even the moderate men desired an explanation, ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... the love affairs of others is, indeed, impersonal; he is filled with concern for my Lady Castlemaine, whom he only knows by sight, shares in her very jealousies, joys with her in her successes; and it is not untrue, however strange it seems in his abrupt presentment, that he loved his maid Jane because she was in ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with a smile, which was instantly explained by an abrupt plunge from the top of a long hill down into a cutting between lichen-scaled rocks, tracing with our "pneus" as we went a series of giddy zig-zags. We had hardly twisted one way when lo! the time had come to twist in the opposite direction, and nowhere had we a radius of more than twenty ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... short a time as it now takes him to read an auction bill?" Suddenly a happy thought struck me: it was to write a novel, in which only the actual spirit of the narration should be retained, rejecting all expletives, flourishes, and ornamental figures of speech; to be terse and abrupt in style—use monosyllables always in preference to polysyllables—and to eschew all heroes and heroines whose names contain more than four letters. Full of this idea, on my returning home in the evening, I sat to my desk, and before I retired to rest, had written a novel ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... I leave the service?" he asked slowly. "I don't know;" and Durrance seized the opportunity to rise from the table and cross to the window, where he stood with his back to his companions. Feversham took the abrupt movement for a reproach, and spoke to Durrance's back, not ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... lake, broad spread; a glimpse Of clear-rimmed bay, encroaching lusk Upon a lapse of rocky vale; Beyond, a brunt-browed mountain, set Abrupt against a weary waste Of level, sparse-grown forest plain. Vanguard of Order's birth on Earth's Primeval stage, sphynx-like, the mount From chaos burst upon a world Of sea in space. It kept its head To the sun; it pierced the dense of the mists; It gathered forces, one by one, Until the land by ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... sac. His beech ridges always led to other beech ridges; his hardwood never petered out into the terrible black swamps. Sometimes Thorpe became sensible that they had commenced a long detour; but it was never an abrupt ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... indifference, with the brief appearance of the soberly-garbed young student upon the scene and his abrupt and silent departure, all the zest seemed to have gone out of Lady ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... certainly rather an abrupt and unconnected mode of commencing conversation. It might indeed be supposed to refer to the course of Gluck's thoughts, which had first produced the dwarf's observations out of the pot; but whatever it referred to, Gluck had no ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... the city wall. The place was very solitary. It was divided from the streets and mansions above by thick groves and extensive gardens, which stretched along the undulating descent of the hill. A short distance to the westward lay the Pincian Gate, but an abrupt turn in the wall and some olive trees which grew near it, shut out all view of objects in that direction. On the other side, towards the eastward, the ramparts were discernible, running in a straight line of some length, until they suddenly turned inwards at ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... charm were with her, all the strength with him. He was an abrupt and dictatorial lover, but she was a born sweetheart. At the moment when her arms were twined about him she most perfectly expressed herself. He drank in her kisses thirstily; then grasped her wrists firmly and removed them from his neck, as if he ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... ever, and having been changed, and modified constantly are to be subject to no farther development or decay, I laugh, and let the man speak. But I would have toleration for these, as I would ask it for my own opinions; and if they are to die, I would rather they had a decent and natural than an abrupt and violent death." ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the table and went into the kitchen. Glen and Reynolds looked at each other without a word. They were both surprised at Weston's words and the abrupt manner in which he left them. Moved by the same impulse, they, too, rose from the table and went out of doors. It was a beautiful evening, and the sky beyond the mountain peaks was aglow with the lingering light of departing day. ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... up the lake in person: They were about to go on board, as I Left Flueelen; but still the gathering storm, That drove me here to land so suddenly, Perchance has hindered their abrupt departure. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... corps failed to reckon with the consequences of the war that broke out suddenly in Korea in June. Two factors connected with that conflict caused an abrupt change in Marine race policy. The first was the great influx of Negroes into the corps. Although the commandant insisted that race was not considered in recruitment, and in fact recruitment instructions since 1948 contained no reference ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... as strange as she could consent, afterwards, to think it; it had been, essentially, what had made the abrupt bend in her life: he had come back, had followed her from the other house, VISIBLY uncertain—this was written in the face he for the first minute showed her. It had been written only for those seconds, and it had appeared to go, quickly, after they began to talk; but ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... particularly dingy appearance, as the gas-lights necessitated by the premature gloom of the hour gleamed dimly through a blearing window-pane here and there. The house still retained the narrow street-door, hall-way, and abrupt immediate stairway of its earlier days; and had, too, the old-style goodly single brown stone for a "stoop," along the front fall of which, in faded white block letters, as though originally done with a stencil-plate, appeared the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... changed for lichens and mosses. Through this rocky meadow now roamed, now rushed, now tumbled one of those Alpine streams the very thought of whose ice-born plenitude makes me happy yet. Its banks were not abrupt, but rounded gently in, and grassy down to the water's brink. The larger torrents of Winter wore the channel wide, and the sinking of the water in Summer let the grass grow within it. But peaceful as the place was, and ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... down the street, and twirled his rattan, as he went. The coal-digger was abrupt and distant in his greeting, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... Well, to get back to Miles Chandon. . . . He was young—a second son, you'll remember, and poor at that; a second lieutenant in the Navy, with no more than his pay and a trifling allowance. The boy had good instincts," said Miss Sally with a short, abrupt laugh. "I may as well say at once that he wanted to marry me, but had been forced ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... fearful state that it took us ten days to cover as many miles. At length we trekked over a stony nek about five hundred yards in width. To the right of us was a stony eminence and to our left, its sheer brown cliffs of rock rising like the walls of some cyclopean fortress, the strange, abrupt mount of Isandhlwana, which reminded me of a huge lion crouching above the hill-encircled plain beyond. At the foot of this isolated mount, whereof the aspect somehow filled me with alarm, we camped on the night ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... How could you!" she cried and reined Diogenes to abrupt standstill. "Go and pick it ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... Brahmanism and Mahayanist Buddhism nourished, but as in Java and Champa without mutual hostility. This period extends certainly from the sixth to the thirteenth centuries and perhaps its limits should be stretched to 400-1400 A.D. In any case it passed without abrupt transition into the second period in which, under Siamese influence, Hinayanist Buddhism supplanted the older faiths, although the ceremonies of the Cambojan court still preserve a good ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... (de la Meuse): "Anecdotes relatives a la Revolution." "He was dressed like a tough cab-driver. He had a disturbed look and an eye always in motion; he acted in an abrupt, quick and jerky way. A constant restlessness gave a convulsive contraction to his muscles and features which likewise affected his manner of walking so that he didn't walk ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... times in steam-vessels, and having seen with what care the captains endeavoured to maintain a wide offing, I could not conceive the reason of our being now so near the dangerous region. The wind was blowing hard towards the shore, if that can be called a shore which consists of steep abrupt precipices, on which the surf was breaking with the noise of thunder, tossing up clouds of spray and foam to the height of a cathedral. We coasted slowly along, rounding several tall forelands, some of them piled up by the hand of nature in the ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... complaint "nervousness;" when idleness and ennui preyed upon a languid frame, he had a startling habit of rousing the patient by a mental cautery. The poor idolized him, but the ladies pronounced him coarse, abrupt; and when ladies decide against a doctor, fate frowns ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... clauses of the treaty of Washington, in pursuance of the joint resolution of March 3, 1883, must have resulted in the abrupt cessation on the 1st of July of this year, in the midst of their ventures, of the operations of citizens of the United States engaged in fishing in British American waters but for a diplomatic understanding reached with Her ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... one that does not show an abrupt change from the story told by the teacher. It should not be merely a short outline of the important facts in history, written separately and then pieced together in chronological order, but should be written in a readable form by one who is able to distinguish the important and necessary ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education
... and copy; and before many months were passed in their new position, it would have been difficult to suppose that Mrs Austin had not been born in the sphere in which she then moved. Austin was brusque and abrupt in his manners as before; but still there was always a reserve about him, which he naturally felt, and which assisted to remove the impression of vulgarity. People who are distant are seldom considered ungentlemanlike, although they may be considered unpleasant in their manners. It is those ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... 1: We are pleading.—Ver. 5. The skill of the Poet is perceptible in the abrupt commencement of the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... card-catalogue?" he asked in a pleasant abrupt voice; and the oddness of the question caused her to drop ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... key strongly. "Cadenza," the Italian form of the same word, is used of a free flourish in a vocal or instrumental composition, introduced immediately before the close of a movement or at the end of the piece. The object is to display the performer's technique, or to prevent too abrupt a contrast between two movements. Cadenzas are usually left to the improvisation of the performer, but are sometimes written in full by the composer, or by some famous executant, as in the cadenza in Brahms's Violin Concerto, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... unsuccessfully, entered the room. The sight of this old and dear friend gave great joy. He came to engage them to dine with him the next day, having already ineffectually endeavoured to obtain them for permanent guests. They sat chatting so long with him, that they were obliged at last to bid him an abrupt adieu, and hasten and make their toilettes ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... not get along, for Milagros was a bit haughty and a climber, considering herself a social superior fallen upon evil days, while Leandro, on the other hand, was abrupt and irascible. ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... hide and seek all over the delightful big dusty old barn; until Patricia, trying to reach goal by a short cut down from the loft, came to an abrupt halt in her descent, caught on ...
— Patricia • Emilia Elliott
... was drawling, and quite gentle; but at the sound of it, Higli's laugh stopped short, and the muscles of his face contracted. If there was one man of whom he had a wholesome fear—why, he could not tell—it was this round-faced, abrupt, imperturbable American, Claridge Pasha's right-hand man. Legends of resourcefulness and bravery had gathered round his name. "Who's been stroking your chin with a feather, pasha?" he continued, his eye piercing the other ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... order to throw a few gleams of light on her past.—He leads her into the palace of our kings, and moralizes thereon; and, entering the Royal Gardens, shows the uncertainty of human events, and the insecurity of British laws, by the abrupt seizure and constrained deportation of an innocent and ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... He had the innocent expression of a fox-terrier, and rather resembled one. He was neatly and inoffensively dressed in blue serge, and although he did not look exactly like a gentleman, he would have passed for one in a crowd. When Chaldea made her abrupt entrance he was talking volubly to Pine, and the millionaire addressed him—when he answered—as Silver. Chaldea, remembering the conversation she had overheard between Pine and Miss Greeby, speedily reached the conclusion that the neat little man was the ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... brush appeared on each side of the road. Gradually Carley's strain relaxed, and also the muscular contraction by which she had braced herself in the seat. The horses began to trot again. The wheels rattled. The road wound around abrupt corners, and soon the green and red wall of the opposite side of the canyon loomed close. Low roar of running water rose to Carley's ears. When at length she looked out instead of down she could see nothing but a mass of green foliage crossed by tree trunks ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... the mountains in this country, east of the Mississippi, partake, more or less, of the same character; forming rounded ridges, seldom broken into those abrupt, ragged peaks, common in other parts of ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... wrote, sealed, and directed a note to Laura. In it she recounted what Pryor had told her of Corliss; begged Laura and her parents not to think her heartless in not preparing them for this abrupt marriage. She was in such a state of nervousness, she wrote, that explanations would have caused a breakdown. The marriage was a sensible one; she had long contemplated it as a possibility; and, after thinking it over thoroughly, she had decided it was the only thing to do. She ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... attract the production of needed supplies of essential commodities and to stimulate the consumption of those commodities that are flooding American markets. Transition to modernized parity must be accomplished gradually. In no case should there be an abrupt downward change in the dollar level or in the percentage level ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower
... first named had been intently watching the officers as, after the dismissal of their companies at the barracks, they severally joined the post commander, who had been standing on the barren level of the parade, well out toward the flagstaff, his adjutant beside him. To her the abrupt announcement caused no surprise. She had seen that Mr. Blakely was not with his troop. The jeweled hands slightly twitched, but her voice had the requisite and conventional drawl as she turned to Miss Wren: "Chasing ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... to liberate the intellect. The modern world was brought into close contact with the free virility of the ancient world, and emancipated from the thralldom of unproved traditions. The force to judge and the desire to create were generated. The immediate result in the sixteenth century was an abrupt secession of the learned, not merely from monasticism, but also from the true spirit of Christianity. The minds of the Italians assimilated Paganism. In their hatred of mediaeval ignorance, in their loathing of cowled and cloistered fools, they flew to an extreme, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... certainly not long in catching somewhat of the spirit of the Emperor; and I doubt much if the impertinence of the waiting-room was not more dreaded and detested than the abrupt speech and searching look ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the edge of the rich, flowery fields on which I trod to the midway sides of the snowy Olympus, the ground could only here and there show an abrupt crag, or a high straggling ridge that up-shouldered itself from out of the wilderness of myrtles, and of the thousand bright-leaved shrubs that twined their arms together in lovesome tangles. The air that came to my lips was warm and fragrant ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... she's good-looking enough: but she's not exactly to my taste. A little too showy, too abrupt for me. Personally I like a softer, quieter woman; but as a rule the women that I really admire haven't ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... forty years between Washington's first inauguration and Jackson's the total number of removals from office was 74, and out of this number 5 were defaulters. During the first year of Jackson's administration the number of changes made in the civil service was about 2,000. [34] Such was the abrupt inauguration upon a national scale of the so-called "spoils system." The phrase originated with W. L. Marcy, of New York, who in a speech in the senate in 1831 declared that "to the victors belong the spoils." The man who said this of ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... His abrupt, incredible recovery had been the first open manifestation of the way it worked. Not that she had tried it on him first. Before she dared do that once she had proved it on herself twenty times. She had proved it up ...
— The Flaw in the Crystal • May Sinclair
... plumy profusion. . . . Dan Burnett leads on, and presently we emerge on the largest and most beautiful of the little prairies through which we have passed. This stretch of open ground lies at the foot of the highest peak, the abrupt sides of which rise in conical shape before us. It is here, Mr. Burnett tells us, that the mountaineers who were searching for Professor Mitchell found the first trace of the way ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... greatest statesmen and orators of his time, but even his devotion to Charles James Fox had never beguiled him into any of Fox's careless, free-and-easy ways. He was sorely tried, as all {121} contemporary accounts tell us, by the abrupt and overbearing manners of his son-in-law, Lord Durham, but he always contrived, in public at least, to bear Durham's eccentricities with unruffled temper and undisturbed dignity. Such a statesman must have had a hard time of it with King William of Yvetot; but let it be ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... emergency we could traverse every apartment without access to the known doors. Trap-doors on a similar construction, communicated with the cellar:—the table, which you saw us sitting around, stood on one of those, which, on your abrupt appearance, as soon as the candles were extinguished, was with its contents, precipitated below, and we made our escape by those secret doors, judging, that although you had seen us, if we could get off, you would be ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... scenery of Bourg d'Oisans is not, as its eulogists allege, equal to that of Switzerland, it will at least stand a comparison with that of Savoy. Its mountains are more precipitous and abrupt, its peaks more jagged, and its aspect more savage and wild. The scenery of Mont Pelvoux, which is best approached from Bourg d'Oisans, is especially grand and sublime, though of a wild and desolate character. The road from Bourg d'Oisans to Briancon also presents some magnificent scenery; ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... portent. porvenir m. future. pos adv. prep.: en —— behind, after. positivamente adv. positively, certainly. postrado, -a prostrate, kneeling. postrero, -a last. precipitado, -a precipitate, headlong, rash, abrupt. precipitar(se) precipitate, hasten, rush headlong, hurry. precursor, -a m. f. precursor, herald, harbinger. preguntar ask, inquire, question. premtica f. pragmatic (a law). prender catch, take, bind, fasten; —— fuego ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... error, 'tis, like the devil, not to be cast out but with great difficulty. Whatsoever he lays hold on, like a drowning man, he never loses, though it do but help to sink him the sooner. His ignorance is abrupt and inaccessible, impregnable both by art and nature, and will hold out to the last though it has nothing but rubbish to defend. It is as dark as pitch, and sticks as fast to anything it lays hold on. His skull is so thick that it is ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... is ridiculous!" cried Murray, angrily. "Ladies, forgive me for being so abrupt, but people from the old country resent coercion in every form. I'll be as polite to your rajah as a gentleman should be, but I am not going to have my plans upset by a savage. Ned, my lad, we'll see if they ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... remark, "lodged" at Mallow. With the help of Penelope and Ralph Fenton, the afternoon was whiled away until a low-toned gong, reverberating through the house was a warning that it was time to dress for dinner, brought the impromptu concert to an abrupt end. ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... institute over which, when completed, they were to possess no influence whatever, in the management of which they were to be absolutely without voice; and the negotiation was accordingly brought to an abrupt conclusion. (We may note here that, curiously enough, the Royal Commission of 1863 proposed, in some degree, a reversion to this abortive project, and recommended the introduction of a lay element into the governing body of the ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... to supply fuel. Gilbert, whose suspicions of Pomaunkee were increased by the opposition he had offered to the selection of the place, suggested that some stout stakes should be cut, and fixed on the side of the hill where the slope, being less abrupt than in other places, ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... approached him. Sometimes he feigned that he could not hear you, and then he would make you repeat in a very loud tone what he had heard perfectly well before. However, he was really deaf in a slight degree. At other times he would overwhelm you with such rapid and abrupt interrogatories, that you had not time to understand him, and were compelled to give your answers in confusion. He used then to laugh at your embarrassment; and when he had driven you out of your presence of mind and confidence, ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... either early architecture or utter dilapidation, so loose and rough it seemed. A wind-in-the-orchard style that tumbled down here and there an appreciable fruit with uncouth bluster, sentences without commencements running to abrupt endings and smoke, like waves against a sea-wall, learned dictionary words giving a hand to street slang, and accents falling on them haphazard, like slant rays from driving clouds; all the pages in a breeze, the whole book producing a kind of electrical ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... terrestrial, have their moments of impatience and anger; and the zygaena, yielding to these passions, common to both piscine and human nature, at length determined to break through the rules of the game, and bring the play to an abrupt termination. ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... the abrupt edge of a little hill in a Southern Japanese city. There, in a great tree hanging out over the edge, had hung the bell that called together the faithful retainers of the lord of the province, when they were needed. There, nearly thirty years ago, a little ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... had escaped him before. The pull, the brace of the trestle poles just there did not seem unsound, yet instinct warned him that something was amiss in the sag of adjacent supports. His orders to Conrad, accordingly, were hurried and abrupt. ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... eastern side of the valley were abrupt, and frequently obtruded themselves in rocky prominences into its bosom, lessening the width to half the usual dimensions. One of these projections was but a short distance in the rear of the squadron of dragoons, and Dunwoodie directed Captain Lawton to withdraw, with two troops, behind its cover. ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... the pathos with which he dilated on some tale of human misery less captivating; it runs through all his poetry, and in hearing or relating a story of human wrongs or suffering, we have often seen him affected to tears, which he vainly strove to conceal by an abrupt transition to some ludicrous incident in his own personal history. As an example, which has not yet found its way to the public, we may relate the following, which he told one evening in our little domestic circle where he was a frequent ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... do not proceed with this abrupt logic: they love to bargain with necessity. M. Dupin (session of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, June 10, 1843) expresses the opinion that, "though competition may be useful within the nation, it must be prevented ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... hospital or convalescent camp to a place as Spartan as this. Instead of having a bed to sleep on, the unfortunate "detail" found himself condemned to the floor boards of a bell tent, with a very meagre allowance of well-worn blankets. In cold weather the change was abrupt and trying, but of course it had to be made sooner or later, and I suppose the men had no reasonable ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... of the Brehon Law Tracts point out that early laws are handed down "in a rhythmical form; always in language condensed and antiquated they assume the character of abrupt and sententious proverbs. Collections of such sayings are found scattered throughout the Brehon Law Tracts."[128] The sagas contain many verses which partake of the character of legal formulae, and in Beowulf there seems to be ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... followed was so abrupt, exclamatory, interjectional, and occasionally ungrammatical, as well as absurd, that it could not be reduced to writing. We therefore leave it to your imagination. After a time, the uncle and nephew subsided, and ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... the terrible story in an ecstasy of alternating joy and fury, according to the nature of the episode related. It was like living again the glorious days of the moonlighters and the rackrenters in dear old Ireland. The tale came to an abrupt end. ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... next morning we set out for the peak. All previous climbers, as we were aware, had attacked it from the west. That seemed the obvious thing to do, because the westward slopes of the mountain, while very steep, are less abrupt than those which face the rising sun. In fact, the eastern side of the Grand Teton appears to be absolutely unclimbable. But both Hall and I had had experience with rock climbing in the Alps and the Dolomites, and we knew that what looked like the hardest ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... eye. He had a German face with all the Irish expressions. A wound received in a duel had shortened one leg and gave him a singular gait, something between a jerk and a roll. His voice was deep and guttural, and his utterance rapid, decided, abrupt, like that of a man who meant all that he said, and knew that it would produce an effect. No one could look him in the eye and fail to perceive that he was every inch a man—a strong, brave, manly nature looked out in every lineament of his face. Captain Wickliffe attached his company to the regiment ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... the table, I am inclined to hold that the stigmaria may have borne the appearance rather of underground stems than of proper roots. This specimen suddenly terminates, at a thickness of two and a half inches, in a rounded point, abrupt as that of one of the massier cacti; and every part of the blunt sudden termination is thickly fretted over with the characteristic areolae. The slim tubular rootlets must have stuck out on every side from the obtuse rounded termination ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... a thing!" he replied. "The silly old josser! pulling me down there amongst the coals and rubbish for an insane idea like that! Why, the flues wouldn't admit the passage of a child; and, even then, there's a bend, an abrupt 'elbow,' that nothing but a cat could crawl up. And that's a man who's an authority on the human brain! I sent the old silly back to bed by the way he came, ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... tributaries of the Rappahannock, but the ravines on that side are not considerable. From the ridge occupied by the first line, the ground falls away to the east, until the valley of another branch of Lewis Creek is reached. The depression here is considerable, and gives an abrupt slope to the Fairview hill, which rises directly from it on the eastern side. From the first line of the creek, extends on both sides of the road a dense forest. From the latter point to Fairview heights, and to Chancellorsville, on the south side ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... the scattered savagery of the earlier stone period to the first cities, historically a vast interval, would have seemed to that still watcher, measuring by the standards of astronomy and the rise and decline of races and genera and orders, a, step almost abrupt. It took, perhaps, a thousand generations or so to make it. In that interval man passed from an animal-like obedience to the climate and the weather and his own instincts, from living in small family parties of a score or so over ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... a little pause. Westray did not look up, being awkwardly conscious that the sum was larger than Lord Blandamer had anticipated, and fearing that such an abrupt disclosure might have damped the generosity of an ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... is no one German people, no single Germany.... There are more abrupt contrasts between Germans and Germans than between ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... locality may best be described as a ground covered with fruit gardens and vineyards, narrow streets shut in by stone walls, the roads overhung by forests, the egress from which was in many places steep and abrupt. Such was the ground. One word ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... the drawing room door opened and in walked Ethel Blue and Ethel Brown Morton. The horse stopped suddenly and wiped his forehead with one of his forefeet, but maintained his horizontal position in order not to throw his rider. Elisabeth's equilibrium was somewhat disturbed by the abrupt cessation of her charger's advance but she kept a firm hold on ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... with Maurice?" she pondered, crossly; "he's backed out of helping me. Why can't he go on shingling the chicken coop?" For it was while this delightful work was under way that it, and "talk," came to an abrupt end. ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... intelligent, cheerful—in fact, a splendid girl, a girl to be enthusiastic about! But such a mere girl! A girl with so much to learn! So pathetically young and inexperienced and positive and sure of herself! The looseness of her limbs, the unconscious abrupt freedom of her gestures, the waviness of her auburn hair, the candour of her glance, the warmth of her indignation against injustice and dishonesty, the capricious and sensitive flowings of blood to her smooth cheeks, the ridiculous wise compressings of her lips, the rise and fall ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... rings upon them as upon a bell, and their fracture is brilliantly crystalline. The basalt is the same as that which caps the sandstone hills of the Vindhya range throughout Malwa. The sandstone hills around Gwalior all rise in the same abrupt manner from the plain as those through Malwa generally; and they have almost all of them the same basaltic glacis at their base, with boulders of that rock scattered over the top, all indicating that they were at one time buried, in the same manner under one great mass of volcanic matter, thrown ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... over once more the straw of these familiar topics and then fell into embarrassed silence. The father broke this with an abrupt, energetic exclamation and a ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... The abrupt change of subject seemed to have its effect upon Elmur. He turned away from the table, crossed his legs, and lit a cigarette in a leisurely manner ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... trucks—passed across the dim grey of the embankment, and were suddenly extinguished one by one in the throat of the tunnel, which, with the last, seemed to swallow down train, smoke, and sound in one abrupt gulp. ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... absurd speech of the old servant. She remembered Mehitabel from the days when in pinafores she used to visit here, and when she looked upon the tall, gaunt woman with an awe which was saved from being terror only by the fact that she had learned to associate with that abrupt speech an after gift of crisp cakes. Mehitabel was to her as much a part of the establishment as were the tall chairs, the lion-headed fire-dogs, or the silver which had belonged to her ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... trick of coming to an abrupt end without embarrassing any one. As Dan sat looking into the fire, with his thoughts far away in the past, the Maluka began to croon contentedly at "Home, Sweet Home," and, curled up in the warm, sweet nest of leaves, I listened to the crooning, ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... his usual abrupt action he put the letter in his inner pocket and proceeded to hurry his business as much as possible that he might take an earlier boat than the one he had set. And he finally succeeded by dint of working night as well as day, and ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... leads to the Queen's apartment," whispered Le Brusquet, with a shrug of his shoulders, as he led the way along the gallery, which curved with the shape of the keep. On rounding the curve it came to an abrupt ending. Here a lamp swung by a chain from the roof, and by its light we dimly saw before us a large door, firmly closed, and seeming to bar all further progress. Near the door a man was seated in an alcove in the wall, his knees almost up to his chin, his drawn sword in his hand. He swung ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... Nevertheless, the first time that his feverish eloquence brought tears and incoherent shoutings from the audience, he became suddenly fearful before the ecstasies which he had touched to life, he faltered, and brought his discourse to an abrupt end. As the crowd slowly quieted and reluctantly began to drift away there flashed on him with blinding suddenness the realization that his excitement had been as great as their own; for a moment he wondered if such passion were ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... part of Sinai, as far as we can see from the shore, reflects, in wilder forms and more abrupt lines, the opposite coast of Midian: there is, however, the important difference that the Secondaries and the quartz-veins, there so important, are here wanting. The skeletons of mountain and hill appear as if prolonged under water. The ruddy syenite is dyked and veined by the familiar ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... night-train up to London, and he thought that he would return to town by that. He had intended, when he left London, to get back as soon as possible. Then Mrs Dale, having hesitated for two or three seconds, got up and left the room, and Lily followed. "It seems very odd and abrupt," said Mrs Dale to her daughter, "but I suppose it is best." "Of course, it is best, mamma. Do as one would be done by,—that's the only rule. It will be much better for her that she should ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... two syllables. The sentiment embodied throughout is that of violent mental emotion; and it affords a further illustration of the correctness of MR. C. FORBES'S theory (Vol. i., p. 228.) that "the language of passion is almost invariably broken and abrupt." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... humor laughs with. Wit lashes external appearances, or cunningly exchanges single foibles into character; humor glides into the heart of its object, looks lovingly upon the infirmities it attacks, and represents the whole man. Wit is abrupt, scornful ...; humor is slow and shy, insinuating its ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... until I had lived for a time amid these wild scenes. My intention had been to voyage with the Morning Star, returning with her to Tahiti, but a mysterious voice called to me from the dusky valleys. I could not leave without penetrating into those abrupt and melancholy depths of forest, without endeavoring, though ever so feebly, to stir the cold brew of legend and tale fast ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... contains. It says that "His Majesty, who had entered into the negotiation with good faith, who had suffered no impediment to prevent his prosecuting it with earnestness and sincerity, has now only to lament its abrupt termination, and to renew in the face of all Europe the solemn declaration, that, whenever his enemies shall be disposed to enter on the work of general pacification in a spirit of conciliation and equity, nothing shall be ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... more brutal, more abrupt. Both intensely nervous, both highly individualised, their characters conflicted with the intensity of two real and opposing forces. A tragic aspect of it all was that it was due to Terry's teaching that Marie attained to the highly individualised character which was destined to rebel against ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... and made signals of distress, which were not regarded by him, till his officers exclaimed against his barbarity, and at last he brought to. When I had again got up with him, I sent Mr Brooks to know the reason of his abrupt departure, and to request the supply of several necessaries, which I was willing to pay for. On these terms, he spared me two of his quarter-deck guns, sixty round shot, some musket-balls and flints, a Spanish chart of the coast of Mexico, with part of China ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... stairs, swayed by a conflict of emotions. Had I indeed gone too far, been too stern and abrupt? Still it was surely better to err in this direction than to exhibit weakness, and it was only between these two that I had any choice remaining. What lay between us and our own lines was uncertain—possibly Confederate ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... and parted in the middle, was the exception. He sat in a low chair, pouting his lips, playing with his single eyeglass, and looking as sulky as an ill-conditioned school-boy. Once or twice he crossed and uncrossed his short legs with a sort of abrupt violence, laid his fat, white hands on the arms of the chair, lifted them, glanced at his rosy and shining nails, and frowned. Then he shut his little eyes so tightly that the skin round them became wrinkled, and, stretching out his ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... a rather abrupt young man," she smiled. "But you must not try to think—yet. And my name is ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... on, but scarcely had they covered a quarter of a mile when Bahama Bill called another halt. And well he might, for the trail they had been following came to an abrupt end in front of a pit several rods in diameter and twenty to thirty feet deep. The bottom of the pit was choked up with rocks, dead ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... and very high plateau in the mountains lying to the east of Ranch Number Ten. It was well watered from springs at the upper end which wandered the entire length of the tract and spilled down the cliffs which cut in abrupt fashion across the lower end, making a natural and ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... a dark pit that seemed to reach down into the very bowels of the earth, rose an abrupt plateau—and on one of its nearer elevations, almost directly under then, loomed a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... portrait-taking by his own desire, only at my cousin Holman's request the next time that he came; and then he said he should not require any more formal sittings for only such a slight sketch as he felt himself capable of making. Phillis was just the same as ever the next time I saw her after her abrupt passing me in the hall. She never gave any explanation of her rush out ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... of Orange could do with the Anglo-Saxon what it would have been impossible not to do with Spaniards or Italians. Even warlike Swiss—Teutonic tribes—will have a government with due process of law, not by the abrupt violence of the soldier. Washington could not have established a military monarchy in America had he been so wickedly disposed. Even William the Conqueror must rule the ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... brief style is that which expresseth much in little; the concise style, which expresseth not enough, but leaves somewhat to be understood; the abrupt style, which hath many breaches, and doth not seem to end, but fall. The congruent and harmonious fitting of parts in a sentence hath almost the fastening and force of knitting and connection; as in stones well squared, which will rise strong ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... forward, rear, turn round, and oppose all the resistance of a horse brought to a leap which he is afraid or unable to take. Whilst galloping down a rough and stony path, on one of whose sides was a high bank, and on the other an abrupt fall in the ground, Baltasar had come upon a deep trench or rivulet of considerable width, and this his horse obstinately refused to cross. Casting a hasty glance back at his pursuer, who was still far behind, Baltasar turned his charger, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... almost compared, for extent and beauty, to those from the church of Fourvieres, and the Montagne de Rochepot. Towards the north we surveyed not only the valleys of Montelimart and the Drome, but nearly the whole of the route of the three preceding days, bordered on the one side by the abrupt and lofty mountains, from which the latter river takes its source, and on the other by the steep banks of the Rhone. On proceeding a little farther, over a road which consisted of the native rock in all its native inequality, we caught sight of the Comtat Grignan, and ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... side of the river, behind the cottages of the fishermen, soared Mount Janiculum, dark with massive foliage, from which gleamed at frequent intervals, the grey walls of many a castellated palace, and the spires and columns of a hundred churches; on the other side, the deserted Aventine rose abrupt and steep, covered with thick brushwood; while, on the height, from concealed but numerous convents, rolled, not unmusically, along the quiet landscape and the rippling waves, the sound of ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... desertion to the enemy is somewhat abrupt, and is narrated with brevity not usual with Valmiki. In the Bengal recension the preceding speakers and speeches differ considerably from those given in the text which I follow. Vibhishan is kicked from his seat by Ravan, and then, after telling his mother what has happened, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... hear of Socrates reminding his followers that they are "weak as women," and he was the first to say "woman is an undeveloped man." But Socrates was a great admirer of human beauty, whether physical or spiritual, and his abrupt way of stopping beautiful women on the streets and bluntly telling them they were beautiful, doubtless often confirmed their suspicions. And thus far he was pleasing, but when he went on to ask questions so as to ascertain whether their mental estate compared with their physical, why, that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... to see what control over this abrupt young man she really had she ventured a very slight retrograde arm-pressure, then a delicate touch to right, to left, and forward once more. It was most interesting; he backed up, guided right and left, and started forward or halted under perfect control. What had she ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... of Norwich, Mr. Daniel Baker, Mr. Ferguson the Glasgow Home Ruler, and other veterans of reform. We held our Conference on Sunday in the old meeting-place of the Secular Society, which was approached by very abrupt steps, and being situated over stables, was not devoid of flavor. On Monday the Conference was continued in one of the rooms under the Town Hall. A long political programme was concocted. I was elected Secretary, ...
— Reminiscences of Charles Bradlaugh • George W. Foote
... very honourable position. The charm of this early book is its freedom from drag. It moves on always. The reader is hastened along; he has wonderful and unexpected views, which ravish him as the abrupt magnificences of the Pyrenees ravished Gautier. Perhaps you expect a tree, but you see a stream. Now, at last, it must be a great green hill, and behold! you peep down into an echoless mossy depth of glen. At the ...
— The Song of the Flag - A National Ode • Eric Mackay
... chagrin to Hartlib when the London plan came to an abrupt end, and Comenius transferred himself to Sweden. Thither we must follow him, for yet one other passage of his history before we leave him:— "Conveyed to Sweden in August of the year 1642," proceeds Comenius, "I found my new Maecenas at his house at Nortcoping; ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... point the Chief Justice appears to recoil from this abrupt dismissal of the clear and present danger formula for the more serious cases, and he makes a last moment effort to rescue the babe that he has tossed out with the bathwater. He says: "As articulated by Chief Judge Hand, it is as succinct and inclusive ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... as she had recovered, she wished to spend a fortnight at Dearport, beginning with a retreat that was held there. Remembering her old career there, and the abrupt close of her novitiate, she felt and spoke as if she was to be received as in penitence, but to the Sisters who surrounded her it was more as if ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... of the Voice, according to the various Touches which raise them, form themselves into an Acute or Grave, Quick or Slow, Loud or Soft Tone. These too may be subdivided into various kinds of Tones, as the gentle, the rough, the contracted, the diffuse, the continued, the intermitted, the broken, abrupt, winding, softned, or elevated. Every one of these may be employed with Art and Judgment; and all supply the Actor, as Colours do the Painter, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... dry, the words abrupt, but the detective's heart was dancing like a feather. The next turn he took was toward the handsome ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... exceeds in recklessness anything else written since the second part of Faust. The third act, culminating with the drive to Soria Moria Castle and the death of Ase, is of the very quintessence of poetry, and puts Ibsen in the first rank of creators. In the fourth act, the introduction of which is abrupt and grotesque, we pass to a totally different and, I think, a lower order of imagination. The fifth act, an amalgam of what is worst and best in the poem, often seems divided from it in tone, style and direction, and is more like a symbolic or mythical ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... mask which is puffy in the cheeks, and then she wipes the perspiration and washes her little face and fans herself and goes on again, flatfooted. All the motions are most elegant and graceful and subtle and serpentine, never an abrupt or sudden gesture, and never quite literal in any sense. After the dance was finished she came and sat by me and her skin was hot as if she had a fever. All the men were older and I must say they treated ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... but his reply was checked by an abrupt movement on the part of Mr. Spragg. There was a perceptible pause, during which Moffatt's bright black glance rested questioningly on Ralph; then he looked again at the older man, and their eyes held each other for a ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... few steps away together, when Maggie came to an abrupt standstill. The two stood for a moment as though transfixed, their eyes upon the arched entrance which led from the restaurant into the lounge. A man was standing there, looking around, a strange, menacing figure, a man dressed in the garb of fashion but with the face of a savage, with ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that I could not resist the fascination. I certainly gave her some cause for displeasure that unfortunate evening; for as Olivia has strong passions and exquisite sensibility, I should not have been so abrupt. A fit of jealousy may seize the best and most generous mind, and may prompt to what it would be incapable of saying or thinking in dispassionate moments. I am sure that Olivia has, upon reflection, felt more pain from this affair than I have. My Russian ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... on the brink of a steep washout at the upper edge of one of the benches on the mountain side just below where the abrupt slope began. They were alongside a little gully with sheer walls. I rode my horse to within forty yards of them, one of them occasionally looking up and at once continuing to feed. Then they moved slowly off and leisurely crossed the gully to the other side. I dismounted, ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... dark expanse towards the peak a long, low whistle, ending in an abrupt high note, had sounded. For a moment there was no repetition. The invisible foe was signalling for reply. From whom could answer ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... a rolling valley is divided by the River Dobrava, while due south the Tzer Mountains rise like a camel's back out of the plain and stretch right across from the Drina to the Dobrava. The southern slopes of Tzer are less abrupt than those on the north and descend gradually into the Leschnitza Valley, out of which rise the lesser heights of the Iverak Mountains. Both these ranges are largely covered by prune orchards, intersected with ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... both difficult and interesting to attempt to follow the history of the chief characters of the period; and the reader must pardon some abrupt transitions from person to person, and from group to group, while the details of some subsequent movements of the Bonaparte family must be thrown in to give a proper idea of the strange revolution in their fortunes. We may divide the characters with which we ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... came to the French and English ambassadors accordingly, complaining of the abrupt and peremptory tone of the States' reply, the suggestion of conferences for truce, in place of fruitless peace negotiations, was made at once, and of course favourably received. It was soon afterwards laid before the States-General. To this end, in truth, Richardot and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... sudden mode of proceeding: "Gracious Prince," said he, "we do not shoot an undergraduate at Cambridge even for walking over a college grass- plot.—Let me suggest to your Royal Highness that this method of ridding yourself of a poor devil's importunities is such as we should consider abrupt and almost cruel in Europe. Let me beg you to moderate your Royal impetuosity for the future; and, as your Highness's tutor, entreat you to be a little less prodigal ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the situations and emotional states which are exploited, promulgated, and dwelt upon in the set music pieces. Its purpose is to maintain the play in an artificial atmosphere, so that the transition from dialogue to song may not be so abrupt as to disturb the mood of the listener. Of all the factors in an opera, the dry recitative is the most monotonous. It is not music, but speech about to break into music. Unless one is familiar with Italian and desirous of following the conversation, which we have been ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... unequivocally to the effect that it was all right—Graham needn't worry—failed, altogether, to reassure him. Was this, after all, he wondered, what she had exploded about? She prevented further inquiry, however, by an abrupt change of the subject, demanding to be told what it was that he and his father, all these ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... contemporaries, and attracting to himself a share of their lustre; the honor, be it said, not the fortune, for he managed to remain the centre of intellectual movement as well as of the court, of literature and art as well as affairs of state. Only the abrupt and solitary genius of Pascal or the prankish and ingenuous geniality of La Fontaine held aloof from king and court; Racine and Moliere, Bossuet and Fenelon, La Bruyere and Boileau lived frequently in the circle of Louis XIV., and enjoyed in different degrees his favor; M. de la Rochefoucauld ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Wales expressed his pleasure to receive the gift of mint rock so kindly sent by Mr Jonas Bottomley, but explaining that there were so many gifts of this nature that it would be out of the question to give a privilege to one and not to another. I should offer a word of apology for making such an abrupt introduction of the next event. It was not many weeks after the above that Mr Bottomley came to an unfortunate end, his dead body being found on the canal bank at Leeds, where it was supposed he had been ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... crowed, while his care-taker bent over his labour, circumspect in every movement, nor once forgetting the precious thing on his back, who was evidently delighted with his new style of being nursed, and only now and then made a wry face at some movement of the human machine too abrupt for his comfort. Evidently he took it all as intended solely ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... suddenness with which it all went and he grew calm, coinciding as it did with the equally abrupt cessation of the humming and pattering outside—I think this was almost the strangest part of the whole business perhaps. For he just opened his eyes and turned his tired face up to me so that the dawn threw a pale light upon it through the doorway, and said, for ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... dialogues. For Plato is incapable of sustained composition; his genius is dramatic rather than oratorical; he can converse, but he cannot make a speech. Even the Timaeus, which is one of his most finished works, is full of abrupt transitions. There is the same kind of difference between the dialogue and the continuous discourse of Plato as between the narrative and speeches ...
— Laws • Plato
... money for my journey to America. The change that the years had wrought in her appearance was striking, and yet it was the same Matilda. Her brown eyes were still sparkingly full of life and her mouth retained the sensuous expression of her youth. This and her abrupt gestures gave ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... distributing about six hundred packages a week to soldiers in hospitals and eclope depots, and that during the month of January alone nine thousand six hundred packages were distributed both behind the lines and among the soldiers at the Front. This may go on for years or it may come to an abrupt end; but, like all the Frenchwomen to whom I talked, and who when they plunged into work expected a short war, she is determined to do her part as long as the soldiers do theirs, even if the war marches with the term of her natural life. She not only has given a great amount of practical ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... with the promptitude that he had looked for; the reason of this being, he supposed, that the few addresses she had made had not been lectures, announced in advance, to which tickets had been sold, but incidents, of abrupt occurrence, of certain multitudinous meetings, where there had been other performers better known to fame. They had brought in no money; they had been delivered only for the good of the cause. If it could only be known that she spoke for nothing, that might ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... transitions leads from bisexual to unisexual blossoms; and so in various other respects. Everywhere we may perceive that Nature secures her ends, and makes her distinctions on the whole manifest and real, but everywhere without abrupt breaks. We need not wonder, therefore, that gradations between species and varieties should occur; the more so, since genera, tribes, and other groups into which the naturalist collocates species are far from being always absolutely limited in Nature, though ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... was duly sworn, and then proceeded to give his evidence, in brief, abrupt sentences, without ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... water results from the juxtaposition of hydrogen and oxygen whenever this can be made sufficiently close and intimate, so, on the other hand, if water itself be placed in certain situations, hydrogen and oxygen are reproduced from it: an abrupt termination is put to the new laws, and the agents re-appear separately with their own properties as at first. What is called chemical analysis is the process of searching for the causes of a phenomenon among its effects, or rather among the effects produced by the action ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... scholar, and a most skillful physician; but ladies who expected from him those little polite attentions which the sex value so highly generally expected in vain, for he was no ladies' man, and his language and manners were oftentimes abrupt, even when both were prompted by the utmost kindness of heart. In his organization, too, there was not a quick perception of what would be exactly appropriate, and so, when, at last, he was about starting ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... Randolph was staggered. The abrupt revelation of his benefactor's name and fate, casually coupled with an invitation to dinner, shocked and confounded him. Perhaps Mr. Dingwall noticed it and misunderstood the cause, for he added in parenthetical explanation: "Yes, the man whose portmanteau ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... was hurriedly gathered up in a coil and thrown across our bows, and we were invited to hitch the loop at the end over the hook on our front thwart. The horse was then put in motion, and the downward career of our ark suffered an abrupt check, as we found ourselves rudely lugged ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... comes from the temples in bright waves, and gives singular light to the top of the head; the eyes steeped in a golden penumbra with tawny eyeballs, on a moist and blue crystalline lens like that of a child, send out a glance of astonishing acuteness; the nose, divided into abrupt polished flat places, breathes strongly and passionately, through large red nostrils; the mouth, large and voluptuous, particularly in the lower lip, smiles with a rabelaisian smile under the shade of a moustache ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... circulated upon a kind of ledge projecting along the sides of the box a little below the continuous mountain chain upon which the starry heavens were sustained. On the north of the ellipse, the river was bordered by a steep and abrupt bank, which took its rise at the peak of Manu on the west, and soon rose high enough to form a screen between the river and the earth. The narrow valley which it hid from view was known as Da'it from remotest times. Eternal night enfolded ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... flitting o'er the waters one by one! Slumber wraps the silent city, and the droning mills are dumb; One lone whippowil's shrill ditty calls her mate that ne'er will come. Sadly moans the mighty river, foaming down the fettered falls, Where of old he thundered ever o'er abrupt and lofty walls. Great Unktehee—god of waters—lifts no more his mighty head; Fled he with the timid otters?—lies he in the cavern dead? Hark!—the waters hush their sighing and the whippowil her call, Through the moon-lit mists are flying ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... Barsoomian day had ended, and then the brief period of twilight that renders the transition from daylight to darkness almost as abrupt as the switching off of an electric light, and Tara of Helium had found no sanctuary. But perhaps there were no beasts to fear, or rather to avoid—Tara of Helium liked not the word fear. She would have been glad, however, had there been a cabin, even a very tiny cabin, upon her small flier; ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the last quietude and desertion of the grave; in this dulness of the senses there is a gentle preparation for the final insensibility of death. And to him the idea of mortality comes in a shape less violent and harsh than is its wont, less as an abrupt catastrophe than as a thing of infinitesimal gradation, and the last step on a long decline of way. As we turn to and fro in bed, and every moment the movements grow feebler and smaller and the attitude more restful and easy, until sleep overtakes us at a stride and we move no more, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and the Cape of Good Hope, Vancouver steered south-wards, sighted St. Paul's Island, and sailed towards New Holland, between the routes taken by Dampier and Marion, and through latitudes which had not yet been traversed. On the 27th September was sighted part of the coast of New Holland, ending in abrupt and precipitous cliffs, to which the name of Cape Chatham was given. As many of his crew were down with dysentery, Vancouver decided to anchor in the first harbour he came to, to get water, wood, and above all provisions, of which he stood sorely in need. Port George III. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... did it almost at once, before Alice or her father could come in. Alice was out walking, she said, and her father was in the study. They would be in soon. She thus made Rowcliffe realise that if she was going to be abrupt it was because she had to be; they had both of them such a ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... rivals and enemies, of whom either the brilliancy of his achievements or his somewhat abrupt and pointed methods of controversy seem to have made him a great many, have risen up, or rather seated themselves, and written him down—well, an individual who strains the truth. Indeed, only this morning one of these inquired, in ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... minutes. It was impossible for me to accept the abrupt conclusion of the adventure, and, in spite of myself, I mused with some melancholy on the sad fate of certain men who appear and disappear in this world like the grass of the field, without leaving the least ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... the complement and counterpart of Lady Casterley, one would perhaps have singled out her brother. All her abrupt decision was negated in his profound, ironical urbanity. His voice and look and manner were like his velvet coat, which had here and there a whitish sheen, as if it had been touched by moonlight. His hair too had that ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... emptiness, two people were driving: a white girl of two-and-twenty summers and an Indian man a few years older. Back of them, in the direction from which they had come, was the outline of a straggling, desolate village. Ahead, to either side, was the rolling brown earth; and at the end of it, abrupt apparently as a material wall, the blue of a cloudless October sky. The team they were driving, a mouse-coloured broncho and a mate a shade darker, were restless after three days of enforced inactivity and tugged at the bit mightily. Though the day was perfectly still, ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... at the moment at which the cylinders (of which the temperature has just been taken and compared with that of the Seine, in order to prevent too abrupt a transition for the fry) are being carefully let ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... were still a long way from the entrance to the underground caverns in which lived the Nome King. There was a dim path, winding between stones and boulders, over which the walking was quite difficult, especially as the path led up hills that were small mountains, and then down steep and abrupt slopes where any misstep might mean a broken leg. Therefore it was the second day of their journey before they climbed halfway up a rugged mountain and found themselves at the entrance of ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... from easy, and as she descended the dark steep stairs she came to an abrupt decision. Something was wrong and despite the hirelings of Starr ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... hundred springs had been Slowly but exquisitely nurtured by the stars, And watered with the scented dew long cupped In lilies, that for rays of sun had seen Only God's glory, for never a sunrise mars The luminous air of heaven. Beyond, abrupt, A gray stone wall, o'ergrown with velvet moss Uprose. And gazing I stood long, all mazed To see a place so strange, so sweet, so fair. And as I stood and marvelled, lo! across The garden came a youth, ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... Keble added to it great attainments and brilliant gifts of imagination and poetry; but he never lost the plain, downright, almost awkward ways of conversation and manner of his simple home—ways which might have seemed abrupt and rough but for the singular sweetness and charm of his nature. To those who looked on the outside he was always the homely, rigidly orthodox country clergyman. On Isaac Williams, with his ethical standard, John Keble also impressed his ideas of ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... unmistakable doctor's gig approaching, and from it emerged Harold and Mr. Yolland. I saw now that he was a sturdy, hard-working-looking young man of seven or eight and twenty, with sandy hair, and an honest, open, weather-beaten face. He had a rather abrupt manner, but much more gentleman-like than that of the usual style of young Union doctors, who are divided between fine words and affectation and ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... There is something very impressive in the abrupt bursting in of this second voice, all unnamed. It is the reverberation, as it were, of the former, giving the preparation on the side of man for the coming of Jehovah. Israel in bondage in Egypt had been ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... his arrival. Upon the receipt of his Proclamation they wrote to him and expressed their disapprobation, but those letters never reached him, as he quitted Canada before they could have arrived. They now, it seems, consider that silence is token sufficient of their displeasure at his abrupt return; but, though no doubt he fully understands them, they ought to have conveyed their sentiments openly and distinctly. There is an appearance of pusillanimity in this reserve which does them great harm, and brings them into discredit. They ought to have told ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... hardly have accomplished that, even if she had tried at once, for almost before Violet had done speaking, Miss Bethia was upon them. Her greetings were brief and abrupt, as usual; and ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... commence with the ante-Communion service from the reading-desk. This went on in due course till the end of the Nicene Creed, when without sermon, prayers, or blessing, the morning service came to an abrupt termination. The afternoon service was identical, save that it ended with a sermon and ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... much after the manner of music; by these means too, in addition to the mode of stress-undulation, it imitates the temporal and dynamic course of action and emotion, and so tends to arouse congruous types of feeling in the mind; it is swift or slow, gliding or abrupt, retarded or accelerated. Compare the slow and retarded rhythm of "When I have fears that I may cease to be," so well adapted to express the gravity of the thought, with the rapid and accelerated movement of "Hail to thee, blithe spirit!" so full of a quick joyousness. Or compare the ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... nostrils filled with the heavy scent of the pack, Miki travelled steadily in the direction of the plain. It took him half an hour to reach the edge of it. After that he came to a wide and stony out-cropping of the earth over which he nosed the spoor to a low and abrupt descent into the wider range ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... and Turkish history of Laonicus Chalcondyles ends with the winter of 1463; and the abrupt conclusion seems to mark, that he laid down his pen in the same year. We know that he was an Athenian, and that some contemporaries of the same name contributed to the revival of the Greek language in Italy. But in his numerous digressions, the modest historian has never ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... questions, and I will tell you no lies," the Chevalier replied on his part. Strong thought of the words Mr. Altamont had used, and his abrupt departure from the Baronet's dining-table and house as soon as he recognised Major Pendennis, or Captain Beak, as he called the Major. But Strong resolved to seek an explanation of these words otherwise than from Colonel Altamont, and did not choose to recall them ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... but who had furtively been warned by the traitorous stage manager "to look sharp after their money." The camaraderie that had hitherto subsisted between that gentleman and Cleo had come to an abrupt end, she cutting him short impatiently in the course of some discussion and bidding him not to argue. In further token of his annoyance he had worded a notice she had told him to ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... did not deepen on the cheek of Gelsomina at this abrupt question, for the tie between her and Jacopo had become too sacred for the ordinary ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... time, hesitated; then, ashamed of his alarm and indecision, took a few hurried steps ahead; the next instant stopped dead in his tracks. Immediately in front of him all signs of the trail ceased; both tracks came to an abrupt end. On all sides, for a hundred yards and more, he searched in vain for the least indication of ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... invariable custom to be announced when I visited my wife's closet; but I had no mind now for such formalities, and swiftly passing two or three scared servants on the stairs, I made straight for her room, tapped and entered. Abrupt as were my movements, however, someone had contrived to warn her; for though two of her women sat working on stools near her, I heard a hasty foot flying, and caught the last flutter of a skirt as it disappeared through a second door. My wife rose from her seat, and looked ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... one summer through the Colorado mountain region. For a distance of forty-five miles the solitary road wound on and on, ever ascending through the dreamy, purple mountains. The entire route was a series of vistas that apparently came to an abrupt end at the base of an insurmountable height. The mountain wall seemed to utterly arrest progress, as it rose across the ascending valley through which the driver urged his "four-in-hand," and no way to pass beyond the next mountain ahead could possibly be discerned. But as ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... of Lent the Society of the Holy Gethsemane was visited by its ecclesiastical Visitor. This was the Bishop of the diocese, a liberal-minded man and not a very rigid ecclesiastic, abrupt, brusque, businesslike, and a good administrator. When the brothers had gathered in the community room, he took from the Superior the leathern-bound volume containing the rule of the Brotherhood and read aloud the text ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... mischievously as she made the suggestion. Piers frowned yet a moment longer, then laughed back with abrupt friendliness. ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... they looked expectantly forward to a greater revelation of the mountains, but this was constantly denied by ever-recurring successions of ridges still ahead. The long, smooth swell of the plain gradually gave way to the more abrupt formations of the foothills, and here and there in their rounded domes protruded great warts of green-grey rock where the winds of ages had whipped the sand down into the valleys. Little clusters of green poplars, like vast goatees, nestled on the northern chin of ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... standing, hand in hand, at my bedside, come to show me their colored shoes, or new frocks, or to let me see them drest for going out. No experience was so awful to me, and at the same time so pathetic, as this abrupt translation from the darkness of the infinite to the gaudy summer air of highest noon, and from the unutterable abortions of mis-created gigantic vermin to the sight of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... repose McNally's face was clouded, and the occasional spells of interest into which he somewhat studiously aroused himself could not conceal his general inattention. Her father, too, was preoccupied, and was so abrupt in his conversation as to leave small trace of the easy lightness of manner that Katherine had ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... so for the nonce. So melancholy a face may well suggest some painful family secret. But how explain the violent part played by the young man, who is not mentioned in these abrupt and hastily penned sentences! It is all a mystery, madam, a mystery which we are wasting time to attempt ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... gathered up in a coil and thrown across our bows, and we were invited to hitch the loop at the end over the hook on our front thwart. The horse was then put in motion, and the downward career of our ark suffered an abrupt check, as we found ourselves rudely lugged in ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... such I had regarded it. But I soon saw the difficulty of keeping "a state secret." I had scarcely sent in my acceptance of the appointment, when I found a letter on my table from my old Israelite friend, Mordecai, congratulating me on "my decision." It was in his usual abrupt style:— ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... It is an abrupt transition from these homely scenes, which humor commends to our liking, to the chivalrous pageant unrolled for us in the "Conquest of Granada." The former are more characteristic and the more enduring of Irving's writings, but as a literary artist his ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... as an organizer and worker. We owe everything to Wood, and he is really a thoroughly noble, good fellow, and a hero. He is a short, rather thick set, somewhat awkward, and "slouchy" man, extremely careless in his dress, blunt and abrupt in his manner, with a queer inexpressive face, little blue eyes which can look dull or flash fire or twinkle with the wickedest fun. He is so witty, sarcastic, and cutting, that he is a terrible foe, and will put the laugh even on his best ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... band had now ceased mellowing out the favorite medley which begins with "Casta Diva" and runs over into the lovely cadences of "Gentle Annie"; and the abrupt transition from that mournful strain to a light cotillon air warned four hundred holiday-people that the festive dance was about to begin on the wide floor between the engine-room and the saloon. Cotillons are a leading pastime among the people; and as the water was pretty smooth ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... suddenly broke forth a loud oath from Uliades, who, lingering a little behind the rest, had laid rough hands on the Mothon, as the latter once more attempted to pass him. With a dexterous and abrupt agility, Alcman had extricated himself from the Samian's grasp, but with a force that swung the captain on his knee. Taking advantage of the position of the foe, the Mothon darted onward, and threading the rest of the party, disappeared through the neighbouring gates ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... one of the most picturesque and beautiful streams in the world. Its bluffs never rise higher than fifty or sixty feet; it has no abrupt precipices; the whole formation about it is tertiary and drift or modern terrace; but its first eighty miles from its mouth are broad as a bay of the sea, and its narrow upper course above Pilatka, where current ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... seemed endless hours of paddling and chanting the river took an abrupt turn and the boys found themselves at the foot of a steep cliff that towered up, it seemed, for six hundred feet at least. It was formed of black basalt and was crowned with a fringe of contrasting vegetation, ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... them, smiling mistily, and asked his captain if the new tow-line had been delivered. While MacLaurin went to make inquiries, Peter watched a sampan, bow on, floating down-stream, with the intention, evidently, of making connections with the Hankow's ladder. On her abrupt foredeck was a slim figure ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... but he cared nothing for the episode. His sympathies were immediate if temporary, and experience had eaten off the very cover of the book of seals. He followed her through every mental phase she unconsciously rehearsed; and when she brought the story to an abrupt close, lacking the art to run it off into generalities, he inferred something of the last development and did not press her to continue. He pitied her grimly. But he was an intensely ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... different phases of life. The cabin life in amongst the mountains and miners, the Ranch, and town, and certainly give the palm to the first-mentioned. As we anticipated, our Ranch life was brought to an abrupt end the moment we owned to Mr. W—— how our slumbers were disturbed with the B flats; we had to return into Ouray, and have been ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... individual sections. Possibly this is due, in large measure, to later redactors of the book, or to the fragmentary reports of the prophet's addresses; perhaps, however, it also expresses something of the abrupt passion of his speeches, which, as Kautzsch says, were "more sob than speech." The general theme of this division appears in its opening words, "There is no fidelity or love or knowledge of God in the ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... too abrupt. The nun turned deadly pale, and clung to the bars of the grate for support; but the emotion was momentary. "Go on," said she, in ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... afraid my speech was rather rude and abrupt, but Mr. Lucas did not seem to mind it. His eyes still retained their amused twinkle, but he condescended to argue the point more seriously with me, and sat down in Miss Ruth's low chair, as though to bring himself more ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... seemed rather startled by this abrupt dismissal, but the steel-blue eyes of Inspector Kerry were already bent again upon the dead man, and, murmuring "good night," the doctor took ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... Ralph, and put her hand on his arm, looking steadily at Chris. Ralph laid his other hand on hers a moment, then raised it, and made an abrupt ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... said North, with trembling lips. "Oh, no, I do not—do not hate you. I am rude in my speech, abrupt in my manner. You must forget it, and—and me." A horse's feet crashed upon the gravel, and an instant after Maurice Frere burst into the room. Returning from the Cascades, he had met Troke, and learned the release of the ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... crawl up the perpendicular side of a burrow, pushing his load in front of him. The side generally selected for this attempt was the one nearest your head as you lay; and often the first intimation you had that the performance had begun was the abrupt descent on to your face of beetle and load. Neither the fall nor the subsequent profanity discouraged him in the least; on the contrary, it spurred him to greater efforts. The next attempt would land him an inch or two higher up, when ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... another by a good system of streams; since here the opposite peculiarities of the populations of the highlands and coast-lands(227) tend to produce a nationality both one and varied. Where the transitions are too abrupt, as for instance, in New Holland, they easily impede inter-communication; and, still more, where the several parts of the country are of very great extent; as, for example, the desert of North Africa, the plateau ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... differences concerning Free Trade. The strength of Lord John's Ministry in the country depended largely upon the foreign policy of Palmerston, who was disliked and mistrusted by the Court. While Palmerston was defending his abrupt, highhanded policy towards Greece in the speech which made him the hero of the hour, a war was going on between Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein, in which the Prince Consort himself was much interested. It was a question ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... "I had forgotten—but what condition, Gerald, (and here he spoke as if piqued at the abrupt manner in which his brother had concluded his half confidence), what condition, I ask, may a woman entitled to our respect, as well as to our love, propose, which should be held of more account than that severest ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... are merely oppressed; nay, rather they are persecuted. There are no people in London who are not appealed to by the rich; the appeals of the rich shriek from every hoarding and shout from every hustings. For it should always be remembered that the queer, abrupt ugliness of our streets and costumes are not the creation of democracy, but of aristocracy. The House of Lords objected to the Embankment being disfigured by trams. But most of the rich men who disfigure the street-walls with ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... to the highest order of minds, and what a change! Instead of thoughts of concrete things patiently following one another in a beaten track of habitual suggestion, we have the most abrupt cross-cuts and transitions from one idea to another, the most rarefied abstractions and discriminations, the most unheard-of combinations of elements, the subtlest associations of analogy; in a word, we seem suddenly introduced into a seething caldron ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... gracefully-curving fronds cut clear as cameos against the azure sky. Nor is it a dead level plain, as pampas and prairies are erroneously supposed always to be. Instead, its surface is varied with undulations; not abrupt as the ordinary hill and dale scenery, but gently swelling like the ocean's waves when these have become crestless after ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... nothing but a series of abrupt cliffs and headlands, six to eight hundred feet high—as well as could be judged from the distance they were off—at the base of which the waves thundered, sending up columns of spray, without any bay or opening ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... system, take that commonest of all ills that afflict humanity—headache. Surely, this is not a curative symptom or a blessing in disguise, or, if so, it is exceedingly well disguised. And yet it unquestionably has a preventive purpose and meaning. Pain, wherever found, is nature's abrupt command, "Halt!" her imperative order to stop. When you have obeyed that command, you have taken the most important single step towards the cure. A headache always means something—overwork, under-ventilation, eye-strain, underfeeding, ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... picked his way carefully among these, setting his feet down daintily in the interstices of the rocks. He climbed a long slope that proved itself to be a considerable hill when one looked back at the desert below. The farther side was more abrupt, and he took it in patient zigzags where the footing promised some measure of security. At the bottom he turned short off to the right and made his way briskly along a rough wagon ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... like the other fishermen and never worked on the land. Humming away and talking to himself he fiddled about in his shed, around his boat-house or his croft, his hands all grubby with tar and grease. If addressed, he was abrupt and curt in his answers, sometimes even abusive. Hardly anyone dared ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... the angry blood darkened his cheeks. Boston wriggled uneasily on his seat, and cleared his throat as though about to speak. But, at the instant, Lynch's booming voice came into the foc'sle, calling the watch on deck, and putting an abrupt end to ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... emotion. "You are doubtless already apprised that the King has withdrawn from the capital in anger, but you have yet to learn that he has left me no whit more satisfied than himself. I was unprepared for so abrupt a departure; and as I had still much to say to him on the subject of our disagreement, I find myself compelled to the exercise of my clerkly skill, and am now occupied in telling him in writing all that I had left unsaid. There is the letter," ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... rest, she was merely clever and fearless, and her moral inheritance was not all that might be desired; for her father had left her mother in a fit of pardonable jealousy, after nearly killing her and quite killing his rival, and her mother had not redeemed her character after his abrupt departure. On the contrary, if an accident had not carried her off suddenly, Regina's virtuous parent would probably have sold the girl into slavery. Poor people are not all honest, any more than other kinds of people are. ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... the habit of asking people to repeat their remarks. Argument should be avoided and contradicting is always discourteous. When it seems that a heated disagreement is about to ensue it is wise tactfully to direct the conversation into other channels as soon as it can be done without too abrupt a turn, for to jerk the talk from one topic to another for the obvious purpose of "switching someone off the track" ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... his steps through the winding arches, thinking with some satisfaction as he went, what a romantic incident he would have to relate to Lorimer and his other friends, when a sudden glare of light illumined the passage, and he was brought to an abrupt standstill by the sound of a wild "Halloo!" The light vanished; it reappeared. It vanished again, and again appeared, flinging a strong flare upon the shell-worked walls as it approached. Again the fierce ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... steeper, the fir-woods below were like a green sea, and white clouds above sailed along over the blue sky. The wildness of the region was, as it were, tamed by its uniformity and the simplicity of its elements. Nature, like a true poet, abhors abrupt transitions. Clouds, however fantastically formed they may at times appear, still have a white, or at least a subdued hue, harmoniously corresponding with the blue heaven and the green earth; so that all the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... angry with me, and I concluded that I had been too abrupt, in my eagerness for another man, and that my ideas on the subject were becoming warped. I decided that I must be more diplomatic in the future, in my dealings with the Captain of ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... once a mountainous and a maritime country. Abrupt mountain-walls fence it off into a great number of isolated districts, each of which in ancient times became the seat of a distinct community, or state. Hence the fragmentary character of its political history. The Hellenic ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... this opinion by contrasting creation and development as irreconcilable ideas. But this contrast does not actually exist, for as soon as we look upon creation as a divine effect, not merely belonging to the past, or appearing in single abrupt movements, but connected and universally present in time, we can seek and find it nowhere else but in the natural history of development itself.... Theologians themselves, according to the Mosaic documents, acknowledge a history of creation; natural history, ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... day, and almost instantly Drum's gruff voice could be heard in rebuke; almost as quickly the practised riders could be seen closing the outer leg and rein. Another moment and the little line was trotting almost boot to boot. Then as they neared the point where the slope became abrupt, Graham's right hand, palm forward, went straight aloft, a gesture instantly repeated by the sergeant, and in two seconds more the horses, panting a little with excitement, were pawing the turf, and Drum's voice, low and ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... be an abrupt, ill-mannered, dapper business man; purse-proud, I should call him, as there was every reason he should be, for he had earned his own fortune. He was doubtless equally proud of his new title, which he was trying to live up to, assuming now and then a haughty, domineering ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... line, I expect, on this little debate of ours. Yep! Gerald is No. 8 on Pyramid Gordon's list. He'd been a private secretary for Mr. Gordon at one time or another; but he'd been handed his passports kind of abrupt one mornin', and had been set adrift in ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... intolerable. The first comer makes no attempt to insist upon his position of advantage, because he knows that to-morrow he may be the last comer. The sense of individual inconvenience is swamped in the sense of general convenience. People laugh and rather enjoy the joke when a too sudden start or an abrupt curve sends a whole group of them cannoning up against one another. It must be remembered that the transit is rapid, so that there is no irritating sense of wasted time: and that the cars are brilliantly lighted, and, on the whole, well ventilated, so that there is no fog, ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... a pathetic tone, which in spite of his sternness, he could not suppress. "Poor, poor, forlorn girl—it was thus she begged and supplicated, but he denied her." He suddenly recollected himself, and with an abrupt motion he raised the ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... amazingly. But the Red Indian, caught blatant in the hunting stage, refused to be tamed, and could not swallow civilisation. He pined and dwined and decreased in his "reservations." The change was too great, too abrupt, too brusque for him. The papoose before long ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... low end of the Great Isabel the eye plunges through an opening two miles away, as abrupt as if chopped with an axe out of the regular sweep of the coast, right into the harbour of Sulaco. It is an oblong, lake-like piece of water. On one side the short wooded spurs and valleys of the Cordillera come down at right angles to the very strand; ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... should not be replaced by some machine even more suitable for the proper turning and stirring of the soil. The moldboard plow is, everything considered, the most satisfactory plow for dry-farm purposes. A plow with a moldboard possessing a short abrupt curvature is generally held to be the most valuable for dry-farm purposes, since it pulverizes the soil most thoroughly, and in dry-farming it is not so important to turn the soil over as to crumble and loosen it thoroughly. Naturally, since the areas of dry-farms are very large, ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe
... the mills had been quarried from the solid rock, which rose abrupt and bare on one side of the cinder-covered road, while the river, sluggish and black, crept past on the other. The mills for rolling iron are simply immense tent-like roofs, covering acres of ground, ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... continued to fall, and we felt the sloop begin to list. We played on until the chess men began to fall over. The list increased, and we went on deck. Bow-line and stern-line were drawn taut. As we looked the boat listed still farther with an abrupt jerk. The lines were now ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... taken aback by this abrupt question; but reflected and slapped his thigh: "Why, that is ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... represents the submersion at the moment at which the cylinders (of which the temperature has just been taken and compared with that of the Seine, in order to prevent too abrupt a transition for the fry) are being carefully let down into ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... ABRUPT. A word applied to steep, broken, or craggy cliffs and headlands, especially such as are ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... of Mrs. Buscot's alarm, it will be necessary to return to the receiving-room, and ascertain what occurred after Nizza's flight. Charles, who at first had been greatly annoyed by Parravicin's abrupt entrance, speedily recovered his temper, and laughed ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the subject of their conversation, and different as were the ingenuous young man and his somewhat cynical and worldly companion, they found that they were cordially agreed as to the desirability of Bubbles abandoning the practices which had led to Mr. Burnaby's abrupt departure that morning. ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... left some serious imputation upon her constitution. At last, seeing that the debate had assumed the character of a cyclone or circular storm, going round and round and round and round till one could never say where it began nor where it ended, I made some apology for an abrupt departure and retired to ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... assertions relating to herself for the second time, Lady Lydiard's meditations came to an abrupt end. She rose, took the letters in both hands to tear them up, hesitated, and threw them back in the cabinet drawer in which she had discovered them, among other papers that had not been arranged ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... for a year and a half for printing the Duke of Richmond's Letter on Reform, when he first walked out into the narrow path of the adjoining field, was seized with an apprehension that he should fall over it, as if he had trod on the brink of an abrupt declivity. The author of the loyal Speech at the Liverpool Dinner has been so long kept in the solitary confinement of his prejudices, and the dark cells of his interest and vanity, that he is afraid of being dashed to pieces ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... and desperation; but from his behaviour during his journey home after the war, from his later conversations with Lady Macbeth, and from his language to the murderers of Banquo and to others, we imagine him as a great warrior, somewhat masterful, rough, and abrupt, a man to inspire some fear and much admiration. He was thought 'honest,' or honourable; he was trusted, apparently, by everyone; Macduff, a man of the highest integrity, 'loved him well.' And there was, in fact, much good in him. We have no warrant, I think, for describing him, with many writers, ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... said, in his abrupt fashion, holding them out to her, and slightly bowing, with that nothing-doubting assurance of his, while his blue eyes (to put her entirely at her ease) smiled, frank and friendly and serene, into her ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... was held on the Theresien Wiese, a vast meadow on the outskirts of the city. The ground rises on one side of this by an abrupt step, some thirty or forty feet high, like the "bench" of a Western river. This bank is terraced for seats the whole length, or as far down as the statue of Bavaria; so that there are turf seats, I should judge, for three quarters of a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... count before the war, if he can accomplish it: and if he cannot, then he would send messengers of peace, and cede in all things he may without sin. If it be but more honour and wealth to our king,(397) should we destroy the kingdom to purchase that? Our rash and abrupt proceedings show our folly. Ver. 20. "He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed." A man will be, must be, assimilated to his company, and then partake ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... enriching himself with the labors of his contemporaries, and attracting to himself a share of their lustre; the honor, be it said, not the fortune, for he managed to remain the centre of intellectual movement as well as of the court, of literature and art as well as affairs of state. Only the abrupt and solitary genius of Pascal or the prankish and ingenuous geniality of La Fontaine held aloof from king and court; Racine and Moliere, Bossuet and Fenelon, La Bruyere and Boileau lived frequently in the circle of Louis XIV., and enjoyed in different degrees his favor; M. de la Rochefoucauld ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... distance of two and a half miles across the valley is an abrupt rocky mountain range of most irregular and picturesque formation, covered with scanty brushwood here and there, or rising into barren pinnacles and plateaux of rock. In outline and appearance this portion of the ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... dark pit that seemed to reach down into the very bowels of the earth, rose an abrupt plateau—and on one of its nearer elevations, almost directly under then, loomed ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... his daughter from walking in the sun, lest she should prove "a breeder of sinners;" for though conception (understanding) in general be a blessing, yet as Ophelia might chance to conceive (to be pregnant), it might be a calamity. Hamlet's abrupt question, "Have you a daughter?" is evidently intended to impress Polonius with the belief of the ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... I have the most perfect confidence in you, from all I have heard of you, I trust you will not think me abrupt in saying that any ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... bulged inward, as though a snake would bring it down; the coarse china shepherdesses on the mantel-shelf, and the flowers which Catherine had put there the day before. He asked a few questions, said an abrupt word or two to the mother, and they tramped downstairs again and into the street. Then Robert took him across to the little improvised hospital, saying to him on the threshold, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... began to sing at his work. He had a fluty old tenor voice, and he put in turns and quavers that no ear not of the mountains could possibly follow and fix. First it was a hymn, all abrupt, odd, minor cadences and monotonous refrain. Then he shifted to a ballad—and the mountains are full of old ballads of Scotland and England, come down from the time of the first settlers, and with local names ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... Size medium, 1-3/8 x 7/8 inches; oblong; color grayish-brown marked well down the sides from the apex with purplish-black splashes; base flattened, rounded; apex abrupt, blunt; shell slightly ridged, of medium thickness, 1.3 mm.; partitions rather thick, corky; cracking quality medium; kernel full, plump, brownish-yellow, narrow and moderately deep, sutures narrow, of moderate depth, secondary ones well defined; texture fairly solid; flavor sweet, ...
— The Pecan and its Culture • H. Harold Hume
... had been too long away from the children, especially from Roddy. Suddenly, her haste was arrested by an unexpected sight. A tiny spot of colour lay right in her pathway on the ground. It was only a yellow rose-leaf, but it brought a catch in Christine's breath and her feet to an abrupt halt. How had it come there? If it had fallen from one of Roddy's roses, it meant that he had been out of doors since she left! That set her hurrying on again, but, as she walked, she reflected that of the ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... those abrupt and perilous rocks, The Man had fallen, that place of fear! At length upon the Shepherd's mind It breaks, and all is clear: He instantly recall'd the Name, And who he was, and whence he came; Remember'd, too, the very day On which the Traveller ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... she felt that she wanted to explain how she had spent her time, and she told him in abrupt, haughty words, that having to buy some furniture in a shop a long distance off, very far off, in the Rue de Rennes, she had met Limousin at past seven o'clock on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, and that then she had gone ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... but not separated from them by so great a distance as that which intervenes between them and the main-land, there stretches beneath the water another Reef, abrupt, like the first, on its seaward side, but sloping gently toward the inner Reef, and divided from it by a channel. This outer Reef and channel are, however, in a much less advanced state than the preceding ones; only here and there a sand-flat large enough to afford ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... see, was moored parallel with the abrupt brick shore of a very narrow canal, with somber, uninviting houses close on either hand. It was as if a ship were tied up along the curb of a street. Up and down the gang planks and back and forth upon the deck hurried men in blouses ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... from the supper-table, he well-nigh fell backward when Fagon, coming forward, cried in great trouble that all was lost. It may be imagined what terror seized all the company at this abrupt passage from perfect security to hopeless despair. The King, scarcely master of himself, at once began to go towards the apartment of Monseigneur, and repelled very stiffly the indiscreet eagerness of some courtiers who wished to prevent him, saying that he would see his son again, and be ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... and the public and departmental confidence he enjoyed acting favourably upon an amiable nature, disposed him to feel friendly towards the successive Assistant Commissioners he had seen pass through that very room. There had been three in his time. The first one, a soldierly, abrupt, red-faced person, with white eyebrows and an explosive temper, could be managed with a silken thread. He left on reaching the age limit. The second, a perfect gentleman, knowing his own and everybody else's place to a nicety, on resigning to take up a higher appointment out of England got decorated ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... England find the problem of their future one not too easy to solve. Mr. Carlyle, among others, has grappled with it. His brow has long been beaded with the sweat of this great wrestling; and if he seem to some of us a little abrupt and peculiar in his movements, we must at least do him the justice to remember that he, after the manner of ancient Jacob, is struggling with the angel of England's destiny. Mr. Mill, too, with an earnestness less passionate indeed, but perhaps ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... present abode, he knew not that all his former hopes of becoming the Sachem's son-in law, and succeeding to his dignity, were already blasted by the marriage of Oriana to Henrich, and the association of the latter in the cares and the honors of the chieftainship. For some years after his abrupt departure from the Nausetts—and while he was striving for distinction, as well as for revenge, among the Narragansetts—he had contrived, from time to time, to obtain information of the proceedings of those whom he had thought it politic to leave for a time; and, as he ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... followed out for nearly two years, develops to the full the subtler side of character. Naturally not abrupt, except when nervously excited, Jolyon had become control incarnate. The sad patience of old people who cannot exert themselves was masked by a smile which his lips preserved even in private. He devised continually all ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... An abrupt ascent, long and steep, formed a pleasant change to the monotony of the rugged plain. Up this 'berg' our ponies wound their way zigzag between the rough boulders of rock which strewed the path. At the top we met several men with their train of ponies, waiting ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... interposed smoothly, "I rather think we'd better give the warden a ... a more detailed picture, shall we say? We have been rather abrupt, ...
— Criminal Negligence • Jesse Francis McComas
... at the speaker, shook his head in negation, looked up at the top of the tent, and after a long pause said, in abrupt sentences, with frequent interruptions: ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... character, from a flat beach to a range of, perhaps, the wildest and most picturesque cliffs on the east coast of Scotland. Inland the country is rather flat, but elevated several hundred feet above the level of the sea, towards which it slopes gently until it reaches the shore, where it terminates in abrupt, perpendicular precipices, varying from a hundred to two hundred feet in height. In many places the cliffs overhang the water, and all along the coast they have been perforated and torn up by the waves, so as to present singularly bold and picturesque ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... their decision. They kept on saying: "To-morrow, to-morrow..." And they turned their eyes away from their to-morrow, Christophe's mighty soul had Wild spasms Of revolt: he would not consent to his defeat: he despised suicide, and he could not resign himself to such a pitiful and abrupt conclusion of his splendid life. As for Anna, how could she, unless she were forced, accept the idea of a death which must lead to eternal death? But ruthless necessity was at their heels, and the circle was ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... been there. Lost in painful reflections, Trirodov did not hear the noise of the departing carriage; the unexpected call of the dark-faced, fascinating visitor, with his flaming speech and his fiery eyes, stirred his memory like a midday dream, like an abrupt hallucination. ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... the time being, acknowledging almost complete defeat. There was only a single consoling thought. At least, he had talked with her intimately concerning his affairs. With an abrupt change of manner, she stood up listlessly, and spoke in such a fashion as might become an old-fashioned wife, although her voice ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... death. To have gold and silver was to risk the same penalty. The heavy iron money only could be held, and this was without value in foreign parts. The soldier was part of an animated machine. His simple duty was to obey. Speech was repressed. It became abrupt, brief, pithy. Relief was found at the Lesche, near the training-ground, where talk was often free and even merry. The whole aim of the discipline was to form the soldier. Marriage was delayed for the sake of vigorous offspring. The girls were trained for motherhood. They ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... And he would grow abrupt and stern. But days would pass and in spite of himself into their talks would creep a natural friendly tone. Again he found himself friends with her—friends as though nothing whatever had happened! Could it be ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... of Harlequin had occasioned, he was seized with such a dread of the resentment of Mr Harrel, that, forgetting blows, bruises, and wounds, not one of which were so frightful to him as reproof, he made the last exhibition of his agility by an abrupt and hasty retreat. ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... short work of it, General," he said, in his bluff, abrupt fashion. "It will come rattling about their heads, and they must take to the walls behind, and these will soon give way before a steady cannonade. Or if we take the cannon up to yonder heights of Rattlesnake Hill, we can ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... rebound, once more in Paris—often as Pemberton had seen them depressed he had never seen them crushed—and communication was therefore rapid. He wrote to the boy to ascertain the state of his health, but awaited the answer in vain. He accordingly, after three days, took an abrupt leave of the opulent youth and, crossing the Channel, alighted at the small hotel, in the quarter of the Champs Elysees, of which Mrs. Moreen had given him the address. A deep if dumb dissatisfaction with this lady and her companions bore him company: ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... noise of feet began to die away, and the uneven groping tread of the twelve Americans to sound more distinctly for the lessening of the surrounding turmoil. And in another few seconds Bruce came to a halt—not to an abrupt stop, as when he had allowed an enemy squad to pass in front of him, but a leisurely checking of speed, to denote that he could go no farther with the load he ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... to the French and English ambassadors accordingly, complaining of the abrupt and peremptory tone of the States' reply, the suggestion of conferences for truce, in place of fruitless peace negotiations, was made at once, and of course favourably received. It was soon afterwards laid before the States-General. To this end, in truth, Richardot and his colleagues had ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... away to theyre owne dinner and came backe to wait on the King and Prince: but the greatest error was that the goodman of the house was neither invited nor spoken of but dined that day at the Temple." Camden's account of this dinner (Ed. 1719, Vol. II., p. 648), although very abrupt, is to the point: "The wife of Sir Ed. Coke quondam Lord Chief Justice, entertained the King, Buckingham, and the rest of the Peers, at a splendid dinner, and ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... had altogether done, and had turned his stool round to the kitchen fire, "where do you think Nina would go if she were to marry—a Jew?" There was an abrupt solemnity in the manner of the question which at first baffled the man, whose breath was heavy with the comfortable repletion which had been bestowed ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... is really going to marry Mrs. Montague," was the somewhat abrupt communication which he made with pale lips ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... a frightful mess of it. B—— led me away to the door." This woful account was, of course, an imaginary and symbolical representation of the terrors which enforced conversation caused him; the good officer's surprise at the abrupt introduction of a new subject had supplied him with the ludicrous suggestion. Mr. Curtis has given an account of ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... to be surveying that part which looked over towards the weed, and I made across to join him. Here, again, I saw that the hill fell away very sheer, and after that we went across to the seaward edge, and there it was near as abrupt as on ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... and, in short, abrupt sentences, seemed to give directions; whereupon some whitened, entire gourds, with long handles, and apparently filled with pebbles, were produced; and men took their stations with them on mats, while those who had been seated all ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... K'yahtah (Carter) and speak of playing k'yahds or of riding in the k'yahs. And they have the pleasant custom—long ago fallen into decay in the North—of frequently employing the respectful 'Sir.' Instead of the curt Yes, and the abrupt No, they say 'Yes, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... elegancies broke upon me, so deceptively did their delicacy of outlines mingle with the dark blue softness beyond. In places the coast ran up to a height of two or three hundred feet, in others it sloped down to twenty feet. For some miles it was like the face of a cliff, a sheer abrupt, with scarce a scar upon its front, staring with a wild bald look over the frosty beautiful blue of that afternoon sea. Here and there it projected a forefoot, some white and massive rock, upon which the swell of the ocean burst in thunder, and flew to almost the height of the cliff in a very great ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... jumpers, digging in like gophers on the best of Bunker Hill's claims, was brought to an abrupt termination by the appearance of one man with a gun. He came on unconcernedly, Dave's six-shooter at his hip and the strength of a lion in his stride; and the first of the gun-men, after looking him over, ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... day?" at this point the merry voice of Clem interrupted, as he came hastily in, still bearing the burden Cyn had piled upon him. Then becoming aware of Miss Kling's presence, he added to her, "I beg pardon for my abrupt entrance, but the outer door being open, I made bold to enter;" then explanatory to Cyn, "Your door was locked, as also was mine, of which Quimby has the key; and as Celeste has not yet been able to part with him, ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... he paused in front of the statue of the younger Brutus, which stood close to the statue of Julius Caesar. He gazed long and earnestly at both of the grave, solemn faces; but, suddenly, as though just awaking from a deep dream, he sharply raised his head, and, laying his hand with an abrupt movement upon Josephine's shoulder, as he looked up at the statue of Brutus with blazing, almost menacing glances, said in a voice that made the hearts of both the ladies bound ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... two, and recovered from his shock. He saw the sights, conversed with affability with all and sundry, drank agraz in the Cafe de la Luna. He must have beamed without knowing it upon Don Luis, for his brisk appearance, twisted smile and abrupt manner were familiar to that watchful gentleman by the time that, sweeping aside the curtain like a buffet of wind, he entered the goldsmith's shop in the Plaza San Benito. He came in a little before twilight one afternoon, holding by a string in one hand some swinging object, taking ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... desolate. Hanging rocks and hoar precipices overlooked the tideless ocean; black caverns yawned; and for ever, among the sea-worn recesses, murmured and dashed the unfruitful waters. Now my way was almost barred by an abrupt promontory, now rendered nearly impracticable by fragments fallen from the cliff. Evening was at hand, when, seaward, arose, as if on the waving of a wizard's wand, a murky web of clouds, blotting the late azure sky, and darkening and disturbing ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... but little of the graces of diplomacy, had much more than its usual decision. It was abrupt and unhesitating. My demand had evidently taken his "lordship" by surprise. He started from the magisterial chair, in which he was yet to awe so many successions of rustic functionaries, and with a flushed cheek asked "Whether ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... assuming the unexpected necessity for McKeith's abrupt departure—also that he had already bidden ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... of loving companionship, her only regret was that she could not die before him. John had been a loyal friend, a faithful companion, both in fair weather and foul, and now their life's journey together had come to an abrupt end. It was too dreadful to think of. It seemed to her that all these happenings of the last few days—this sudden sickness, the coming of the trained nurse, Dr. Everett's grave demeanor—was a hideous dream from which ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... an abrupt chilling and lowering of Landis' voice. "The colonel knows him? He's one of ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... across the other two, the two loose contacts thus formed being arranged in series with a battery, the line, and the receiving instrument. Such a device when slightly jarred, by the voice or other means, causes abrupt variation in the resistance of the line, and ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... plan and neither would attempt to violate it now. But this moment, with Jane's affectionate manner as a lure, was indeed a strong temptation! What might have happened did not happen, however, for a team of girls burst in at that very minute and put an abrupt end ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... finding these abrupt and repeated interruptions hindered any real talk, they pointed out to her that reasoned conversation was impossible if one of the parties persisted in not being in the room, and inquired of her whether it were peculiar to her, or typical of the inhabitants of ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... he heard his brother suggest to him, that a Dictionary of the English Language would be a work that would be well received by the publick[529]; that Johnson seemed at first to catch at the proposition, but, after a pause, said, in his abrupt decisive manner, 'I believe I shall not undertake it.' That he, however, had bestowed much thought upon the subject, before he published his Plan, is evident from the enlarged, clear, and accurate views which it exhibits; ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... contact with the free virility of the ancient world, and emancipated from the thraldom of improved traditions. The force to judge and the desire to create were generated. The immediate result in the sixteenth century was an abrupt secession of the learned, not merely from monasticism, but also from the true spirit of Christianity. The minds of the Italians assimilated paganism. In their hatred of mediaeval ignorance, in their loathing of cowled ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... on his head with a certain abrupt fierceness, and strode angrily away, before she could answer or even grasp the full significance of ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... the mellow exuberance of autumn. In the distance, running down the centre of the island, rise the Blue Mountains, their tops dimly seen through the fleecy clouds, the greater portion of the range being covered with impenetrable forests, their sides often broken into inaccessible cliffs and abrupt precipices. These forests and cliffs have afforded for several centuries an asylum and fortress to fugitive blacks, who have there set pursuit at defiance, the game and wild fruits the woods supply enabling them to find subsistence without the necessity ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... Mountain, whence the view is said to be magnificent, and proceeding northward, we first reach the Plattekill Clove, up whose steep and wooded cleft winds a wild road, chiefly used for quarrying purposes, and down whose abrupt declivity the Plattekill leaps from crag to crag in a series of fine falls and cascades. The quantity of water during the summer months, except after considerable rain, is small, but the rock formations are very interesting, reminding the traveller of wild passes ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... poles standing when we reached the spot. The men, by digging where the fireplace had been, ascertained that the Indians had quitted it the day before and, as their marches are short when encumbered with the women and baggage, we sought out their track and followed it. At an abrupt angle of it which was obscured by trees the men suddenly disappeared and, hastening forward to discover the cause, I perceived them both still rolling at the foot of a steep cliff over which they had been dragged while endeavouring ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... path whilst the ark of the covenant stood some time on the sands in the midst of Jordan; so also the martyr, with a thousand others, opened a path across the noble river Thames, whose waters stood abrupt like precipices on either side; and seeing this, the first of his executors was stricken with awe, and from a wolf became a lamb; so that he thirsted for martyrdom, and boldly underwent that for which he thirsted. The other holy martyrs were tormented ...
— On The Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae) • Gildas
... says I. 'He seems impatient at times, and when you think of his late professional pursuits one would look for abrupt actions if ...
— Options • O. Henry
... from the crown was futile, but Henry felt compunction for his abrupt recall of the monopoly. The result was that De Monts, in recognition of his losses, {61} was given a further monopoly—for the season of 1608 only. At the same time, he was expressly relieved from the obligation to take out colonists. ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... pair set out to finish their exploration of the object of their latest "strafing" feat when a battle had been brought to an abrupt close with all hands in full flight simply by a dextrous movement of Perk's arm and the tossing of a couple of innocent looking tear-bombs into the midst of ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... Excuse my Taking the Liberty in Writing to you. But as a poor Creminall Confined, hopes that you and the Gentleman in the Cabin will Pardon the abrupt Treattment, I have Used Latly, but all Owing To a Moros Way in answering when Called: Which I Acnowledge is Not showing agood Decoram: Sr, as for the Afair I Was Accused with last night it was Done intirely Thro ignorance, that is that I thought I might Speak freely without Shewing any Sedition: ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... at last, after a fortnight, of course it did not break. That would have been a violence of which English weather would not have been capable. There was no abrupt drop of the mercury, as if a trap were sprung under it, after the fashion with us. It softly gave way in a gradual, delicious coolness, which again mellowed at the edges, as it were, and dissolved in a gentle, tentative rain. But how far the rain ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... [Footnote 50: The abrupt entrance of the great moo, as of its disappearance later in the story, is evidently due to the humanized and patched-together form in which we get the old romance. The moo is the animal form which the god takes who serves Aiwohikupua's ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... Merillia again exchanged a glance which was not unobserved by Lady Enid. Then Sir Tiglath, with an abrupt and portentous gravity, exclaimed in ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... supposed inhabitants. He at the same time preserves the utmost propriety of action and passion, and gives all their local accompaniments. If he was equal to the greatest things, he was not above an attention to the smallest. Thus the gallant sportsmen in CYMBELINE have to encounter the abrupt declivities of hill and valley: Touchstone and Audrey jog along a level path. The deer in CYMBELINE are only regarded as objects of prey, "The game's a-foot," etc.—with Jaques they are fine subjects to moralise upon at leisure, "under the shade of ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... stepped aside, with a half bow, to facilitate the exit of the Marquis, who bent gracious acknowledgment of the courtesy. Then, with an abrupt start of surprise, the two men straightened themselves. Directly in front of them, leaning lightly against the brass-rail which guarded the entrance to the Board Room, stood ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... if the abrupt departure of her lover was in some sense a relief to Etta Sydney Bamborough. For, while he, lover-like, was grave and earnest during the small remainder of the evening, she continued to be sprightly and gay. The ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... witch, displeased at her son's choice, maliciously arrests by witchcraft the birth of Willie's son. Willie's travailing wife sends him again and again to bribe the witch, who refuses cup, steed, and girdle. Here our version makes such abrupt transitions, that it will be well to explain what takes place. The Belly Blind or Billie Blin (see Young Bekie, First Series, pp. 6, 7) advises Willie to make a sham baby of wax, and invite his witch-mother to ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... up at her flushed face beside him. Instead of a law-book, he flung down a time table in which he had been investigating the trains to a quail shooting club in the southern part of the state: The transition to Mr. Hodder was, therefore, somewhat abrupt. "Why, Nell, to look at you, I thought it could be nothing else than my somewhat belated appointment to the United States Supreme Court. How has Hodder changed? I always thought ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... longed and yet dreaded to communicate. But Nick made no farther effort to bridge the gulf of his own preoccupations; and Mr. Buttles, after an expectant pause, went on: "If you see me here to-day it is only because, after a somewhat abrupt departure, I find myself unable to take leave of our friends without a last look at the Ibis—the scene of so many stimulating hours. But I must beg you," he added earnestly, "should you see Miss Hicks—or any other member of the party—to make no ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... also once more brought the story of David's adventures to an abrupt end. "And it really is the end this time, David," I said severely. (I ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... movement of the native with the spear as he slipped into the wood, the sudden advance of Jared Long, whose face became like a thunder-cloud, when every hope of a friendly termination vanished, and the abrupt halt of the bowman, showed that all parties had thrown off the cloak of good will ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... this legendary period, that unless we break from it at once, we shall have no space left to give any idea whatever of the manner in which Mr Grote treats the more historical periods of his history. We must be allowed, therefore, to make a bold and abrupt transition; and, as every one in a history of Greece turns his eye first toward Athens, we shall, at one single bound, light upon the city of Minerva as she appeared in the age of Solon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... half right in his estimate of Miss Keene's feelings, although the result was the same. The first shock to her delicacy in his abrupt speech had been succeeded by a renewal of her uneasiness concerning his past life or history. While she would, in her unselfish attachment for him, have undoubtingly accepted any explanation he might have chosen to give her, his continued reserve and avoidance of her left full scope ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... of Herrera's abrupt departure was to prepare for the execution of a plan so wild and impracticable, that, in his cooler moments, it would never have suggested itself to him, although, in his present state of excitement, he fancied it perfectly feasible. He had ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... square bastion forming a terrace, whose mossy walls were bathed by the waters of a large stagnant marsh. The west front which was plainer, was separated by only a few feet of level ground from the abrupt, wooded hill by which Tournebut was sheltered. A wall with several doors opening on the woods enclosed the chateau, the farm and the lower part of the park, and a wide morass, stretching from the foot of the terrace ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... the daytime there were long rows of windows in the roof, which let in a vague, dusky, inadequate twilight. At night those windows were shuttered. This meant that the shadows were a little sharper and the contrasts of light and shade a trifle more abrupt. All other changes that Joe could see were the normal ones due to the taking down of scaffolding and the fastening up of rocket tubes. It was clear that the shape of the Platform proper would be obscure when all its rocket ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... your children as you should be, at all times? Husband, are you as kind and gentle toward your wife as you should be? Do you believe you fill the Bible measure in this particular? Are you as gentle to your domestic animals as you should be? or do you have impatient feelings and act in a hasty, abrupt manner towards them? If you meet with something quite provoking from your wife or the children or the animals, do you keep as mild and sweet as you know you should? Now, I hope you will examine closely. ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... a little, shyly, as if asking help were quite another matter, especially about unknown things. But pondering this one a minuteit looked so harmless,out it came, in Hazel's usual abrupt fashion. ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... from the center toward the sides. 3. Keep the stack evenly trodden, or it will settle unevenly, and the stack will lean to one side accordingly. 4. Increase the diameter from the ground upward until ready to draw in or narrow to form the top. 5. Aim to form the top by gradual rather than abrupt narrowing. 6. Top out by using some other kind of hay or grass that sheds the rain better than clover. 7. Suspend weights to some kind of ropes, stretching over the top of the stack to prevent the wind from removing the material put on to protect ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... orders and that afternoon Albert and he had the "business talk." Conversation at dinner was somewhat strained. Mr. Fosdick was quietly observant and seemed rather amused about something. His wife was dignified and her manner toward her guest was inclined to be abrupt. Albert's appetite was poor. As for Madeline, she did not come down to ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... proof of the 'Graphic Arts,' and sent it off with a new finish, as the other seemed too abrupt. Spent a good deal of time over the finish, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... Mauleon approached, the financier brought his speech to an abrupt close. He knew in the Vicomte de Mauleon the writer of articles which had endangered the Government, and aimed no pointless shafts against its ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... high, with his two sailing ships, the Erebus and the Terror, whose progress southward was impeded by this mighty obstacle. He examined the ice wall from a distance, however, as far as possible. His observations showed that the Barrier is not a continuous, abrupt ice wall, but is interrupted by bays and small channels. On Ross's map a bay of considerable magnitude ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... which his Excellency accosted me. It was so novel and unexpected from a man, whose discretion, humanity, and decorum I had from the first of our acquaintance stood in admiration of, that I was for some time unable to make any coherent answer to questions so abrupt, and in a great measure to me unintelligible. The terms, I think, were these: 'I desire to know, sir, what is the reason, whence arises this disorder and confusion?' The manner in which he expressed them was much stronger and more severe than the expressions themselves. When I recovered ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... insensible officer across the quarter-deck, but as they reached the side abreast the wreckage of the superstructure they came to an abrupt halt. ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... Mr. Ray's abrupt announcement was a surprise to the dense throng of listeners is putting it mildly. To say that it was received with incredulity on part of the soldiery, and concern, if not keen apprehension, by old friends of Sandy's father who were present, ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... start up of a sudden; and, in the hurry of his elevation, overturned his plate into the bosom of the baron. The emergency of this occasion would not permit him to stay and make apologies for his abrupt behaviour; so that he flew into another apartment, where Pickle found him puking and crossing himself with great devotion; and a chair, at his desire, being brought to the door, he slipped into it more dead than ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... him up the lake in person: They were about to go on board, as I Left Flueelen; but still the gathering storm, That drove me here to land so suddenly, Perchance has hindered their abrupt departure. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... obliged him to go away in the middle of his instructions. I think he was feverish that night. Every now and then he spoke so rapidly that I could hardly follow him. Then there were pauses in which he seemed lost, and abrupt changes of subject, as if he could hardly control the order of his thoughts. And in all the evident strain and anxiety to say everything that he wished to say to me appeared that morbid fancy of its being "the ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Lord Malmesbury was now again in France, treating for peace with fair hopes of success, since the Preliminaries of Leoben had removed England's opposition to the cession of the Netherlands, the discomfiture of the moderate party in the Councils brought his mission to an abrupt end. Austria, on the other hand, had prolonged its negotiations because Bonaparte claimed Mantua and the Rhenish Provinces in addition to the cessions agreed upon at Leoben. Count Ludwig Cobenzl, Austrian ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... the fishing clauses of the treaty of Washington, in pursuance of the joint resolution of March 3, 1883, must have resulted in the abrupt cessation on the 1st of July of this year, in the midst of their ventures, of the operations of citizens of the United States engaged in fishing in British American waters but for a diplomatic understanding reached with Her Majesty's Government in June ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the silence of surprise occasioned by my abrupt entrance.—"My name, Mr. Inglewood, is Francis Osbaldistone; I understand that some scoundrel has brought a complaint before you, charging me with being concerned in a loss which ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... [227] The 'abrupt and laconic structure' of Glover's periods appears at the very commencement of Leonidas, which has something military in its movement, but rather the stiff gait of the drilled soldier than the proud ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... you had a poetical streak in you, sergeant," said Dick, who marked his abrupt change from the discussion of the war to a ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... interview which had kindled such fires within her had already come to an abrupt conclusion. For as Stane declined her suggestion Miskodeed ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... who, with a short abrupt reply to the good-natured greeting of Sir Reginald, had scrambled down from his saddle, and stood fixing his large gray eyes upon Gaston, whose tall active figure and lively dark countenance seemed to afford him an ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... heard from me, sir," answered Charles gravely, "that I have any difficulties at all. Excuse me if I am abrupt; I have had many persons calling on me with your errand. It is very kind of you, but I don't want advice; I was a fool ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... must be very ill-bred, very loutish, and very badly taught, my friend, to speak to me in that fashion, without first taking off your hat, without observing rationem loci, temporis et personae. What! you begin by an abrupt speech, instead of saying Salve, vel salvus sis, doctor doctorum eruditissime. What do ...
— The Jealousy of le Barbouille - (La Jalousie du Barbouille) • Jean Baptiste Poquelin de Moliere
... gives a majority, which, though not compact, is decided at once against the extreme Tory and the extreme Radical party. With such a House of Commons the great interests of the Throne and the Constitution are safe. An abrupt dissolution would ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... dark eyes glanced indifferently at Miss Adams, but gazed with a smouldering fire at the younger woman. Then he gave an abrupt order, and the prisoners were hurried in a miserable, hopeless drove to the cluster of kneeling camels. Their pockets had already been ransacked, and the contents thrown into one of the camel-food bags, the neck of which was tied up by Ali ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... came closer, and stood tense and ready. The lancing plane cut through one end of their control room, and Stevens leaped with his companion toward the new-made opening; while the air shrieked outward into space and their suits bulged suddenly with the abrupt increase in pressure differential. While they were in midflight, the frightful blade of destruction cleaved its way through the control board and through the spot upon which they had been standing a moment before. As they passed the severed edge, en route into open spare, Stevens ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... served us admirably. The abrupt character of the slopes momentarily increased, but these remarkable stone steps, a little less difficult than those of the Egyptian pyramids, were the one simple natural means by which we were enabled ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... had been dead when her brother and sister-in-law arrived. A sudden attack of fainting had resulted in death. This abrupt termination of her illness was not quite unexpected by herself or her friends, as it was known she had disease of the heart, and the doctors had given warning that such might be her end. However, she herself had not liked to look this probability in the face, and had preferred ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... all this sameness rose a hill in that abrupt manner which strikes a peculiar character into this southern landscape, and upon the hill were jutting rocks and a broken mass of strangely-jumbled masonry-roofs rising out of roofs, gables crushing gables, feudal towers, great walls, and one tall heaven-pointing spire. ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... Kangourou, clad in a suit of gray tweed, which might have come from La Belle Jardiniere or the Pont Neuf, with a pot-hat and white thread gloves. His countenance is at once foolish and cunning; he has hardly any nose or eyes. He makes a real Japanese salutation: an abrupt dip, the hands placed flat on the knees, the body making a right angle to the legs, as if the fellow were breaking in two; a little snake-like hissing (produced by sucking the saliva between the teeth, which ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... been described by Renan: "The view from the town is limited; but if we ascend a little to the plateau swept by a perpetual breeze, which stands above the highest houses, the landscape is magnificent. On the west stretch the fine outlines of Carmel, terminating in an abrupt spur which seems to run down sheer to the sea. Next, one sees the double summit which towers above Megiddo; the mountains of the country of Shechem, with their holy places of the patriarchal period; the hills of Gilboa, ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... hints, often, I fear, too didactic and abrupt, upon the full use of one's time to the great end of living (as distinguished from vegetating) without briefly referring to certain dangers which lie in wait for the sincere aspirant towards life. The first is the terrible danger of becoming ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... smelt of trade, having shops in the lower stories; in the outskirts, where there are cottages in other cities, there were mills here; the trees, which some deluded dreamer had planted on the flat pavements, had all grown up into abrupt Lombardy poplars, knowing their best policy was to keep out of the way; the boys, playing marbles under them, played sharply "for keeps"; the bony old dray-horses, plodding through the dusty crowds, had speculative eyes, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... man bade them an abrupt good night, and left the room to retire to his own chamber. Cora felt sorry for him, despite all his harshness. She stepped ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... that people behind her smiled, as her abrupt pause upon the stairs arrested their own progress, and she was promptly urged forward again by her ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... There were numerous abrupt bends to the river just below the Florida town, and with that swift current it was difficult to navigate around these places successfully. By degrees, of course, Frank expected to become more familiar with both the engine ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... peculiarity of mind or character are reflected in the style. It may be gay, humorous, serious, sad, melancholy, according to the state of the writer's feelings. It may be colloquial or stately, concise or diffuse, plain or florid, flowing or abrupt, feeble or energetic, natural or affected, commonplace or epigrammatic,—as varied, in fact, as the character and mental constitution of the writers. But every writer has a prevailing style; and it is an interesting ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... minute Roberts stood there, the fire from the open grate lighting his face, his big capable hands loose at his sides. He made no motion to leave, nor for a space to speak; characteristically abrupt, he turned, facing ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... the mouth of the cave and looked the wall over carefully. Then, on one side and the other, she ran along the base of the wall to where its abrupt bulk merged from the softer-lined landscape. Returning to the cave, she entered its narrow mouth. For a short three feet she was compelled to crouch, then the walls widened and rose higher in a little round chamber ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... case is that in which the decline in prices is abrupt—at the beginning at all events—and is precipitated by much forced liquidation of a character disastrous to the enterprises forced to undertake it. In short, when it is brought about by an industrial ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... and inconsequence, and for the vain iterations which suggest that the author has forgotten what he said. In places there are dead allusions to persons and tales which are left dark, e. g. vol. i. pp. 43, 57, 61, etc. The digressions are abrupt and useless, leading nowhere, while sundry pages are wearisome for excess of prolixity or hardly intelligible for extreme conciseness. The perpetual recurrence of mean colloquialisms and of words and idioms peculiar to Egypt and Syria[FN306] also ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... instance, when making ministerial statements on matters connected with finance, or foreign policy, or important changes in the law—this short, abrupt, devil-may-care style is changed for one eminently adapted to the object. No one can then complain of a want of the proper information. All the historical facts, or figures, or principles, or general details, are then marshalled forward with ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... feelings and anxieties. He was startled at last into an exclamation of fright by receiving an unexpected slap on his shoulder, which came from Mr. Bennett, who, rising at that moment, gave this as a token of having arrived at a happy solution of the difficulty. In this respect he was as abrupt as Dr. Chellis ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the German lady had eaten pieces of game-pie with her knife, instead of using her fingers, as a lady should, before forks were invented. On the following morning the Lady Goda had been taken away again by her husband, and her experiences of court life had been brought to an abrupt close. If the great Earl Robert of Gloucester had deigned to bestow a word upon her, instead of looking through her with his beautiful calm blue eyes at an imaginary landscape beyond, her impressions of life at the Empress's court might ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... temperament. Both aimed at colossal achievements in their respective fields of action. The imagination of both was fired by large and simple rather than luxurious and subtle thoughts. Both were uomini terribili, to use a phrase denoting vigour of character and energy of genius, made formidable by an abrupt, uncompromising spirit. Both worked with what the Italians call fury, with the impetuosity of daemonic natures; and both left the impress of their individuality stamped indelibly upon their age. Julius, in all ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... friendship, and continues:—'Now, of whom shall I proceed to speak? Of whom but Mrs. Montagu? Having mentioned Shakespeare and Nature, does not the name of Montagu force itself upon me? Such were the transitions of the ancients, which now seem abrupt, because the intermediate idea is lost to modern understandings. I wish her name had connected itself with friendship; but, ah Colin, thy hopes are in vain.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 101. See post, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... had got into a hollow in the valley, and at this moment, as he sat in his summer-house, was looking from a verge abrupt into what seemed a bottomless gulf of humiliation. For his handsome London house, he had little better than a cottage, in which his study was not a quarter of the size of the one he had left; he had sold two-thirds of his books; for three men and four ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... exactly what to think of such an abrupt ending to the roadway, and sat down behind a large rock to meditate. As he sat there a voice within the cliff said, "Open the door," and a door in the cliff opened itself. A man richly dressed came out, followed by several others, whom he told that they were going to a town at a considerable ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... it is described as Extrait, it seems to contain, at all events, the greater part of the missing chapters to which I have already referred, Chapters IV. and V. of the last volume of the Memoirs. In this manuscript we find Armelline and Scolastica, whose story is interrupted by the abrupt ending of Chapter III.; we find Mariuccia of Vol. VII., Chapter IX., who married a hairdresser; and we find also Jaconine, whom Casanova recognises as his daughter, 'much prettier than Sophia, the daughter of Therese Pompeati, whom I had left at London.'[3] It is curious that this ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... BLUFF. An abrupt high land, projecting almost perpendicularly into the sea, and presenting a bold front, rather rounded than cliffy in outline, as ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... of Sir John Jamieson, situated several miles above Emu, commands an extensive view over that noble stream, the rich margins of which are hemmed in, on the west, by the abrupt precipices of the Blue mountains. The intermediate space beyond the ford is called Emu plains. At the inn near this ford I passed the night, being desirous to cross ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... illustrate the right way and the wrong way of introducing religious conversation. In his office there was sitting one day a sort of lay preacher, who was noted for lugging in his favorite topic in the most forbidding and abrupt manner. A sea captain came in, who was introduced ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... river, from the inch-deep streamlet that crosses the village lane in trembling clearness, to the massy and silent march of the everlasting multitude of waters in Amazon or Ganges, owe their play, and purity, and power, to the ordained elevations of the earth. Gentle or steep, extended or abrupt, some determined slope of the earth's surface is of course necessary, before any wave can so much as overtake one sedge in its pilgrimage; and how seldom do we enough consider, as we walk beside the margins of our pleasant brooks, how beautiful and wonderful is that ordinance, of which every ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... about for some less abrupt way of broaching the subject uppermost in his mind than he now found himself obliged to use. With a husky voice that trembled as ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... narrow trail which threaded its way over a yawning chasm. He moved slowly, shuffling one foot ahead and dragging the other after it. In this way he had gone perhaps one hundred feet when the path seemed to come to an abrupt end. His foot dangled over nothing. He almost lost his balance. When he recovered himself, he was so weak and dizzy that it was with difficulty he clung to the rock. In a moment he was able to think. He had been moving on a downward slope and it was probable that this was only ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... not even look at your card when it was brought to me," she said, with an abrupt change of the subject; "had I done so I would not have kept you waiting so long. Tell me something about yourself, Saberevski; and why it is that you have deemed it wise, or perhaps necessary to become an expatriate, and to deprive St. Petersburg and all who are ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... of this was a salon—this was where the Chinese panels were to find a haven—and already cream-and-gold furniture had been placed at artistic angles with blue velvet hangings for an abrupt contrast. There was a multitude of books bound in dove-coloured ooze; cut glass, crystal, silver candelabra sprinkled throughout. Men were working on fluted white satin window drapes, and Mary glanced toward the dining room to view the antique mahogany ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... She looks sideways at my face, already with the quiet controlled watchfulness of a woman interested in a man, she smiles and she talks of flowers and sunshine, the Canadian winter—and with an abrupt transition, of old times we've had together in the shrubbery and the wilderness of bracken out beyond. She seems tremendously grown-up and womanly to me. I am talking my best, and glad, and in a manner scared at the thrill her newly discovered beauty gives me, and keeping up my dignity ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... after a few words more of chat, did he press his hands on his eyes and shake a puzzled head; then, after an abrupt turn up and down the room, come back to where he stood at first and ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... a time there was an abrupt turn in the road, and she suddenly came upon smooth and even ground that was thick with pine needles. She recognized it as the road of her dream. There stood the selfsame towering pines, and on the moss were the selfsame yellow ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... understand from the rapt moments of her own production, how disordering a thing it is to bring foreign matter to one's mental solution in an abrupt fashion. She saw that the organisation of ideas for expression is a delicate process; that it never occurs twice the same, and that the genuine coherence is apt to be at its best in the first trial, for one ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... reciprocity. Should a child occasionally be killed, the payment of a small fine will satisfy the accommodating spirit of the authorities. The ill-favored mother was not, therefore, in any way bound to answer this somewhat abrupt question; but, observing the appearance of high gentility, and touched by the engaging manner of the interrogator, she answered, that her appetite had of late been uncertain, and that she was endeavoring to restore it by a little ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... fractured by forces which would be insufficient to break a healthy bone. In locomotor ataxia the fractures affect especially the bones of the lower extremity, and may occur before there are any definite nerve symptoms, but they are more often met with in the ataxic stage, when the abrupt and uncontrolled movements of the limbs may play a part in their causation. They may be unattended with pain, and may fail to unite; when repair does take place, it is sometimes attended with an excessive formation of callus. Joint ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... wound round a swell, to turn this way and that, always going up. I began to see similar mounds of rock all around me, of every shape that could be called a curve. There were yellow domes far above and small red domes far below. Ridges ran from one hill of rock to another. There were no abrupt breaks, but holes and pits and caves were everywhere, and occasionally deep down, an amphitheater green with cedar and pinon. We found no vestige of ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... simplicity, graphic and vigorous, and glowing with the thoughts and images of a luminous though unpolished mind, flowed from his lips majestic and resistless. Added to all was that awakening voice whose echoes had so long resounded through thy great North-west. Now it rang out, stern, abrupt, imperious, like the call of a trumpet to battle; now softened down to tones broken, tender, and pitying as those of a bereaved father sorrowing over his hapless children; then, as visions of the utter extinction of his race would break upon his prophetic soul, ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... stockings fitted a leg which might have been envied by a porter, and his breadth of shoulder was extreme. He had a slouch, probably contracted by long poring over the desk; and his address was as abrupt as his appearance was unpolished. His forehead was large and bald, eye small and brilliant, and his cheeks had dropped down so as to increase the width of his lower jaw. Deep, yet not harsh, lines were imprinted on the whole of his countenance, ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... when the strong and helpful, yet tender and sympathetic, friendship of Alfred Tennyson and Arthur Hallam was at its height, there came a brief and abrupt word from Vienna to the effect that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... can give an idea of the rapid, abrupt, elliptical style of this familiar correspondence, where the meaning is sometimes suggested by a single word, unintelligible to any but those for ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... flutter of surprise, the Martians had shown no interest in the abrupt termination of the year's divinations. They melted away, a trifle more silently perhaps than usual, when I shattered the magic globe, but with their invariable indifference, and having handed the reviving Heru over to some women who led her ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... unusual matter it contains. It says that "His Majesty, who had entered into the negotiation with good faith, who had suffered no impediment to prevent his prosecuting it with earnestness and sincerity, has now only to lament its abrupt termination, and to renew in the face of all Europe the solemn declaration, that, whenever his enemies shall be disposed to enter on the work of general pacification in a spirit of conciliation and equity, nothing shall be wanting on his part to contribute ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... and Parliament had been summoned for July 25th. But peace had already been secured, and immediate supply was no longer necessary. The King prorogued Parliament on July 29th, but not before the House had passed a resolution against a standing army. This abrupt dismissal of Parliament, when its presence was no longer called for, inflamed the anger against Clarendon. Those who had hoped to find an opportunity of pressing home their attack upon him in Parliament were indignant at the loss of this opportunity. Even the moderate men ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... from the plateau to the Great Gheet are steep and abrupt. The other rivers rise in wet marshes, in some places impassable. The French left was on the crest of the ridge, above the marshes of the Little Gheet, and extended to the village of Autre Eglise; while the extreme right stood on the ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... to tell him he was being rude and forgetting that he spoke to a lady," said Ernest Travers. "One makes every allowance for a father's sufferings; but they should not take the form of abrupt and harsh speech to a sympathetic fellow-creature—nay, to anyone, let alone a woman. His sacred ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... free flourish in a vocal or instrumental composition, introduced immediately before the close of a movement or at the end of the piece. The object is to display the performer's technique, or to prevent too abrupt a contrast between two movements. Cadenzas are usually left to the improvisation of the performer, but are sometimes written in full by the composer, or by some famous executant, as in the cadenza in Brahms's Violin Concerto, written ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... preparing to infect foreign countries with their correspondence, our Bretons did not run away on Thursday. It is true that when they saw the Saxons emerging from their holes and shouting hurrah, our Bretons were a little troubled by this abrupt and savage joke, but"—then follows the statement of several of the heroes themselves that they fought like lions. The fact is, as I have already stated in my letter of yesterday, the Mobiles fought only tolerably ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
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