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More "Curtain" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the pupils continued to stare at the sky where the fleecy clouds floated; he doubled back his neck so that he might still see the light of day, but all too soon he had to go down into the water, and that foul curtain shut out the sight of ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... the wedding-day, she remains hiding in a corner of the house, and the groom is forbidden to enter. At a Yezedee marriage, the bride is covered from head to foot with a thick veil, and when arrived at her new home, she retires behind a curtain in the corner of a darkened room, where she remains for three days before her husband is permitted to see her. In Corea, the bride has to cover her face with her long sleeves, when meeting the bridegroom at the wedding. The Manchurian bride ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... been kept a secret, so that the details came as a surprise to the other members of the party. Nerissa stood by her side, clad in a flowing costume, the component parts of which included a dressing-gown, an antimacassar, and a flowered chintz curtain; but, despite the nature of the materials, the colouring was charming, and frizzled hair, flushed cheeks, and sparkling eyes, transformed the sober Esther into a very personable attendant on the lady of Belmont. There was nothing of the dressing-gown ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... them as he chose. His minions, who wore hideous masks, had nothing much to say, So an IRVING was not wanted to do their part of the play. On this eventful night the house was packed from roof to pit, And the Manager was jubilant at having made a hit. The Curtain drawing slowly up, revealed a flowery glade, In which the Fairy Starlight and her lovely maidens played. The wicked Demon then came on, and round the stage did glower; No mortal man could e'er withstand his wrath or evil power. Last of all came Burleybumbo with his crew, a motley ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... on the ridge waiting for the morning; For a while the suspense was prolonged. At last, after what seemed to many an interminable period, the uniform blackness of the horizon was broken by the first glimmer of the dawn. Gradually the light grew stronger until, as a theatre curtain is pulled up, the darkness rolled away, the vague outlines in the haze became definite, and the whole scene ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... spoke in a tone of such calm conviction, that Mrs. Hardy was filled with wonder and fear. She went to the curtain, and, as we have already recorded, she called the ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... better, and so do the police of Paris, and both powers must be grimly entertained by the resolute British belief, knowing what they have known, and doing what they have done through the last ten years. What Victor Hugo calls "the drop-curtain, behind which is constructing the great last act of the French Revolution," has been a little shaken at the bottom lately, however. One seems to see the feet of a rather large ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... done; the curtain drops, Slow falling to the prompter's bell: A moment yet the actor stops, And looks around, to say farewell. It is an irksome word and task; And, when he's laughed and said his say, He shows, as he removes the mask, A face that's anything ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... late when the Irishman returned from his mission of kindness, and he found the fire nearly out, the tent closed, and all his comrades sound asleep, so, gently lifting the curtain that covered the entrance, he crept quietly in, lay down beside Bill Jones, whose nasal organ was performing a trombone solo, and in five minutes was ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... happiness be ever open to thee. May no sorrow distress thy days; may no grief disturb thy nights. May the pillow of peace kiss thy cheek, and the pleasures of imagination attend thy dreams; and when length of years makes thee tired of earthly joys, and the curtain of death gently closes around thy last sleep of human existence, may the Angel of God attend thy bed, and take care that the expiring lamp of life shall not receive one rude blast ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... with them, followed after Guillaumette Dyonis, who led them by the streets and squares and alleys as if her eyes had seen the light of day. They reached the foot of the rampart, and by the stairway of a tower that was left unguarded, they mounted onto the curtain-wall. There had been no time to furnish it with its hoardings of wood; so they went along in the open. They proceeded toward the Porte Saint-Honore, by this time enveloped in clouds of dust and smoke. It was there the Marechal ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... the fog suddenly rolled away like a curtain, and the last gleam of the setting sun showed them an island several miles to the north, on the shore of which the keen-eyed captain made out a few white specks ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... indeed; for it is like a narrow couch set beside the window, low-roofed and curtained, so that it might seem, but that it has some height above the pavement, to have been drawn towards the window, that the sleeper might be wakened early;—only there are two angels who have drawn the curtain back, and are looking down upon him. Let us look also and thank that gentle light that rests upon his forehead for ever, and dies ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... in curtain velocity, ease and speed of operation, simplicity of construction, freedom from ...
— Bromide Printing and Enlarging • John A. Tennant
... room. The various halls were narrow, indeed so narrow that two persons meeting in them could not without difficulty pass each other. The beds, which brought a dollar a month, were one above another in tiers or recesses in the walls. Generally a curtain of a reddish hue depended in front of them. They reminded one of the berths in a ship or of the repositories of the dead in the Roman Catacombs. Two hundred and twenty-five persons were lodged in this dark, mysterious labyrinth. ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... latch of the door, under which a little pool of water was now standing, and leaned out. There seemed to be a curious cessation of immediate sounds. From somewhere straight ahead of him, on the other side of that black velvet curtain of darkness, came the dull booming of the wind, tearing across the face of the marshes; and beyond it, beating time in a rhythmical sullen roar, the rise and fall of the sea upon the shingle. But near at hand, for some reason, there was ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the curtain upon this dismal picture, by a short extract from one of Cranmer's letters, in which this great and good man thus ingeniously urges the necessity of the Scriptures being translated into the English language; a point, by the bye, upon which neither he, nor Cromwell, nor Latimer, I believe, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... has the appearance of a building of to-day. The eastern end and the chancel are partitioned off for the use of the nuns attached to the Hotel Dieu; the sister who conducts us round this part of the building raises a curtain, softly stretched across the chancel-screen, and shews us twenty or thirty of them ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... stage, and between it and the orchestra, runs a tolerably deep linear opening, the receptacle for the aulaeum, or curtain, the fashion of which was just the reverse of ours, as it had to be depressed instead of elevated when the play began. This operation, performed by machinery of which we have no clear account, was called aulaeum premere, as in the ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... in the darkness And lifted the curtain of Mind; I saw that fingers could be Also eyes to the blind. I touched, I thought, I saw, And the dark shades rolled aside. And to you my heart pays tribute. Dear ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... man, four tables down, safely ensconced behind the pink pages of an evening paper, and for a couple, at the far end, in the window—a young Frenchwoman, whose coquettish hat and trim rounded figure were silhouetted against the yellow silk curtain, and a precocious black- haired youth, with a skin like pale, pink satin, round eyeglasses and an incipient moustache. His attention was entirely occupied with the young woman; hers entirely occupied with herself. And of this Dominic Iglesias was ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... (The Curtain rises upon King Argimenes, sitting upon the ground, bowed, ragged, and dirty, gnawing a bone. He has uncouth hair and a dishevelled beard. A battered spade lies near him. Two or three slaves sit at back of stage eating raw cabbage-leaves. The tear-song, the chaunt of the low-born, rises at intervals, ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... unarmed, but his face betrayed neither fear nor any other emotion. He was standing with his back to the doorway of his bedroom. A thick curtain of navy blue calico concealed the interior of this room from the view of any one in the living room, and Larmer had seen no one but ...
— The Brothers-In-Law: A Tale Of The Equatorial Islands; and The Brass Gun Of The Buccaneers - 1901 • Louis Becke
... over and his words brought down the curtain. In silence the half-breeds turned and slunk away. They passed back over their tracks. Each knew that the sooner he reached the camp again, the sooner would safety be assured. As the last man departed Baptiste stepped up to Jacky and Bill, ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... were uttered, a fearful cry was heard, and the weird troop fled away screaming, like ill-omened birds. The caldron sank into the ground; the dense mist arose like a curtain; and the moon and stars shone brightly down ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the led, she noiselessly slips the curtain on that side as far forward as it will come. Then she returns to LEAR, who draws her to him and ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... and he adds that the government teachers and books are "all positively heathen or quite destitute of all religion." In some parts of the country the government schools secure the attendance of high-caste girls by allowing them to be placed behind a curtain, and thus screened from the eyes of the male teacher or inspector, as all the women of such classes are screened from male visitors. Even the physician sees only a hand protruded from under a curtain, and by the touch of this, with a few unsatisfactory ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... terrifying menace. Several times, then, Mary wished to go to the window, hoping that the sight of her, of which she had so often proved the influence, would disarm this multitude; but each time she saw this banner unfurling itself like a bloody curtain between herself and the people—a terrible rendering ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... cousin was pronounced the best fucker. Whilst the strumming was going on in the parlour, people bought cigars, and tobacco—for it was really sold there,—little did they guess the fun going on behind that rod curtain ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... dwelling-houses. At length, on the corner of a narrow lane, through which he was passing, he beheld the broad countenance of a British hero swinging before the door of an inn, whence proceeded the voices of many guests. The casement of one of the lower windows was thrown back, and a very thin curtain permitted Robin to distinguish a party at supper, round a well-furnished table. The fragrance of the good cheer steamed forth into the outer air, and the youth could not fail to recollect that the last remnant of his travelling stock of provision had yielded to his morning appetite, ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... she acted," said Harry, with a laugh, "and old Scratch isn't half bad 'nough. Say! She wanted to have a wedding for her best doll the other day, and she cut a lace curtain off a yard from the floor to make a wedding ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... morning she awakened feeling quite different. Those birds!—What were they singing about? She got up and raised the curtain, and then drew in a long breath of delight. For it was a radiant spring morning, breathing gladness and joy and all beautiful things. Oh how beautiful off there in the trees!—the trees which were just coming back to life after their long sleep. She too had been asleep—but ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... two places on the island suitable for plays: one in the bungalow and the other down on the sandy point; the latter lends itself to the purpose readily, there are two trees which make a splendid support for wires on which to hang the curtain, and just east of these the ground slopes enough to make a ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... had come out from his curtain, a squat, formidable figure, monstrous in chest and arms, limping slightly on his distorted leg. His skin bad none of the freshness and clearness of Montgomery's, but was dusky and mottled, with one huge mole amid the mat of tangled black hair which thatched his mighty breast. ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Street wore its air of respectability like a garment, clean and somber, in an environment of careful behavior. Greenwich Village, not having fully awakened to the commercial advantages of being a locale, had not yet stretched between itself and the rest of New York that gauzy and iridescent curtain of sprightly impropriety and sparkling intellectual naughtiness, since faded to a lather tawdry pattern. An early pioneer of the Villager type, emancipated of thought and speech, chancing upon No. 11 Grove, would have despised ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... with the eels, and your lips with the crabs; and your two white hands under the sharp rule of the salmon. Five pounds I would give to him that would find my true love. Ohone! it is you are a sharp grief to young Mary ni-Curtain!' ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... of him my heart leaped—and seemed to suspend its functions, so intense was the horror which this man's presence inspired in me. My hand clutching the curtain, I stood watching him. The lids veiled the malignant green eyes, but the thin lips seemed to smile. Then Smith silently pointed to the hand which held a little pipe. A sickly perfume assailed my nostrils, and the explanation ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... out into the hall and, with some difficulty, owing to his injured back, up the stairs. A curtain hung beside the arch where de Spain stood, and this he now drew around him. Gale walked into the hall again, searched it, and waited at the foot of the stairs. De Spain could hear Duke's rough voice up-stairs, but could neither distinguish his words nor hear any response ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... dim light in the kitchen; the curtain had not been drawn. Emarine paused and looked in. The sash was lifted six inches, for the night was warm, and the sound of voices came to her at once. Mrs. Palmer ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... entertain a high opinion of the Countess's heart, declared that Mademoiselle d'Estrelles would find in him a friend and father. After which flattering assurance, Madame de la Roche-Jugan seated herself in a solitary corner, behind a curtain, whence they heard sobs and moans issue for a whole hour. She could not even breakfast; happiness had taken ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... filled my soul I woke—the vision fled: The moonbeams through the curtain stole, Ah! 'twas ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... in an ecstasy of love and longing, Giles stirred. Instantly Sue hid herself behind a curtain: here she could see ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... silenced, harps and violins have taken their places. The sermon is long and prosy, and we rejoice that it is the last. Then the service of the day goes on until they come to the "Gloria in excelsis." The organ peals out again, the black curtain—which has hidden the high altar—parts in the middle, and displays a perfect blaze of gold and jewels: all the bells in the city begin to ring: the carriages, which have been waiting ready harnessed in court yards, ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... he wears on extraordinary occasions. The Justice had nine, and all of them were destined by him to be assembled around his body on this day. He kept them hung up in a row on wooden pegs behind a seed-cloth, which partitioned off one part of the room from the other like a curtain. First the under ones of silver-gray or red woolen damask, adorned with flowers, and then the outside ones of brown, yellow and green cloth. These were all adorned ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... understand, by a gentleman, who, though on no very cordial terms with him, forgot every other feeling in a generous pity for his fate, and in honest indignation against those who now deserted him. "Oh delay not," said the writer, without naming the person to whom he alluded—"delay not to draw aside the curtain within which that proud spirit hides its sufferings." He then adds, with a striking anticipation of what afterwards happened:—"Prefer ministering in the chamber ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... "The darkness will hide me, And the night throw its curtain about me," Even darkness for thee is not dark, But the night shines clear as ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... stagnant scene; and yet, often and often, in the busiest moment, when commonplace has its strongest hold upon me, and I feel actually interested in the ordinary pursuits of my fellow-beings, of a sudden, a great curtain seems to fall around, and enclose me on every side; and, instead of the staid and sober visages of the throng, vague and shadowy faces gleam around me, and magnificent eyes, bright and dreamy, glance and flash before me like the figures on a phantasmagoria. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... it. I was aware that a cup shaped microphone—or something very similar—hung over the table, about on a level with my eyes, had I been sitting in the chair. Beyond that I saw nothing, until Strange had moved forward and drawn aside a curtain that ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... seats in the East Room, which opened from the parlor, at a little table by the chimney. The astral lamp from the center table in the parlor shone into our room, intercepting any view toward us. I sat by the window, the curtain of which was drawn apart, and the shutters unclosed. A few yellow leaves stuck against the panes, unstirred by the melancholy wind, which sighed through the crevices. Charles was at my right hand, by the mantel; the light from a candelabra illuminated him and Mr. Somers, while Helen and I were in ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... tiled; there was glass in the window, a latch on the door, which had been repaired, and the lichen-covered walls had been scraped, fresh pointed, and white-washed. When the party got inside they discovered an equally agreeable change. A thick curtain divided the room; a screen kept off the draught when the door was opened; the walls were whitened, and there was a cupboard, and a table and chairs, and several shelves, on which rested some neat crockery. ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... fancied to linger near the object of its care, unobtrusively, and, it might almost be added, invisible. When, however, the sun came burnished and glorious, out of the waters of the east a gun was fired, to bring a coaster to the side of the "Dolphin;" and then it seemed that the curtain was to be raised on the closing scene of the drama. With his crew assembled on the deck beneath, and the principal personages among his captives beside him on the poop, ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... had disappeared, and all over the west the yellow sky came down evenly, like a gold curtain, on the still sea that seemed to have solidified into a slab of dark blue stone,—not a twinkle on its immobile surface. Across its dusky smoothness were two long smears of pale ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... the elevation they had gained. From this ridge they looked down the lake, and the eye could take in an extent of many miles, with its verdant wooded islands, which stole into view one by one as the rays of the morning sun drew up the moving curtain of mist that enveloped them; and soon both northern and southern shores became distinctly visible, with all their bays, and capes, and swelling oak and pine ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... A thousand lamps On pit, stalls, boxes, brightly blaze, Impatiently the gallery stamps, The curtain now they slowly raise. Obedient to the magic strings, Brilliant, ethereal, there springs Forth from the crowd of nymphs surrounding Istomina(*) the nimbly-bounding; With one foot resting on its ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... at three; for I was bid To breakfast with the Dean at nine, And thence to Church. My curtain slid, I found the dawning Sunday fine, And could not rest, so rose. The air Was dark and sharp; the roosted birds Cheep'd, 'Here am I, Sweet; are you there?' On Avon's misty flats the herds Expected, comfortless, the ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... up a piece of cretonne from the rubbish on the floor—"this has been a paper holder—there's beads sewed on it around the flowers; and do you see yon little shelf? It's got tack marks on it; she's had a white curtain on it, with knitted lace. I know she has, and see, Pa"—looking behind the window casing—"yes, sir, she's had curtains on here, too. There's the tack. She had them tied back, too, and you can see where they've had pictures. I know just what Mrs. Cavers is like—a ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... his whip three times, and the clown jumped on Frisky's back, over the plush curtain and ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Country • Laura Lee Hope
... drawing-room. She was nervous, probably because of Jasper Milvain, whom she had met but once—last spring—and who on that occasion had struck her as an alarmingly modern young man. In the shadow of a window-curtain sat a slight, simply-dressed girl, whose short curly hair and thoughtful countenance Jasper again recognised. When it was his turn to be presented to Miss Yule, he saw that she doubted for an instant whether ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... in an underskirt. She sat up quickly, and listened. There was a swish of water outside. Now and again she heard a slight movement of the rudder chains in their boxes. Then, all aglow with wonder and excitement, she jumped out of bed and drew the curtain of one of the two tiny portholes that gave light ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... advantageously situated for defense, at the extremity of a plain, variously estimated at from 500 to 700 yards wide, whose dead level surface afforded at no point shelter from view or shot to an assailing party. The forts were connected by a curtain of rifle-pits containing a re-entrant angle, thus providing for a reciprocal enfilading fire in case either ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... be continued all through orthodox materia medica. Each drug breeds new disease symptoms which are in their turn cured (?) by other poisons, until the insane asylum or merciful death rings down the curtain on the tragedy ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... who cared about moonlight? Janey said to herself indignantly. She was the only one who looked up to Mrs. Hurst's window, where there was a faint light, and when the voices became audible Janey perceived some one come behind the curtain and look out. The girl was divided between her faithful family feud against Mrs. Hurst, and a vague sense of satisfaction in her presence as a Marplot, who one way or other ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... she parried the compliment deftly, and straightway fell to pondering as to what circumstance the remark might refer. Glancing toward the open window, she caught a reflection of herself where the glass, backed by the dark green curtain, made a mirror. She had forgotten to rearrange her hair, and her burnished silver-shot locks remained rolled back lightly from her white forehead without the ugly, concealing front! I rejoiced inwardly, for the spontaneous tribute ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... And she saw, as if a curtain had fallen from before her eyes, that this was no more the fair-haired, wan-faced, trembling child who came from Ladyfield to ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... my tender years I was taken to the matinee, usually the most thrilling feature of the spectacle to me was the scene depicted on the drop-curtain. I know not why only the decorators of drop-curtains are inspired to create landscapes of such strange enchantment, of a beauty which not alone beguiles the senses—I speak from the standpoint of the ten-year-old—but throws wide to fancy ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... further conserve the precious water of the lake, Omega now extended the folds of the cloud curtain down to its shores thus completely enclosing it. And as this further reduced the evaporation to a remarkable extent the hopes of Omega and Thalma took on new life. Here they visioned Alpha and his children living and dying in peace, now that ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow
... his own slippered feet, the venerable sage hurried to the door and shot-to the bolt. Then drawing the curtain carefully across the window looking out across the court to various windows on the opposite side, bade Israel proceed ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... and Alice's first idea was that this might belong to one of the doors of the hall; but, alas! either the locks were too large, or the key was too small, but at any rate it would not open any of them. However, on the second time round, she came upon a low curtain she had not noticed before, and behind it was a little door about fifteen inches high: she tried the little golden key in the lock, and to her great delight ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. With a Proem by Austin Dobson • Lewis Carroll
... thing which the body, to be healthy, demands for food is Sun-light, that invaluable medicine for all forms of nervous disease, which Americans, more than any other people, curtain carefully out for fear of fading carpets and furniture. But what are French moquettes, brocade, or satin, compared with rosy cheeks, clear complexions, and steady nerves? If we would only draw up the shades, open the shutters, and loop the heavy curtains out of the ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... boys came on an errand to the lady who lived in the house which the grape-vine shaded. It was reviving to come out of the city's heat and dust, and enter that pleasant parlour, screened from the fiercer rays of the summer's sun by its green curtain of leaves. The hot pavement and the glaring walls of the city seemed far distant, for the charm of the country was spread over that retired room. All city sights were shut out, and peace ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
... in me I was once more the creature of all the conventional scruples: I was repeating, before the looking-glass of my self-consciousness, all the stereotyped gestures of the 'man of honour.'... Oh, the sorry figure I must have cut! You'll understand my dropping the curtain on it as ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... the space under the bed is regarded as an admirable receptacle for a collection of boxes, parcels, hat-boxes, old boots, and other interesting relics, while they are effectually concealed from view by a species of curtain reaching from the bed to the floor. The drapery which thus hangs down is dignified by the name of a "valance," and though originally intended for the purpose of embellishment and ornamentation, it is better that decorative art should be more limited in its application, so as not ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... I,—and when Sleep Came o'er my sense, the dream went on; Nor, through her curtain dim and deep, Hath ever lovelier vision shone. I thought that, all enrapt, I strayed Through that serene, luxurious shade, Where Epicurus taught the Loves To polish virtue's native brightness,— As pearls, we're told, that fondling doves Have played with, wear a smoother ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... of the curtain, JEM and KITTY are discovered sitting with their backs to one another, evidently sulking. JEM looks round every now and then, trying to catch his wife's eye, and she studiously avoids his glance. At ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... blackness and the curtain lifts again upon a very different Olaf from the young northern lord who parted from Iduna at the place ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... the zenith by a clearly cut line—the edge of a black cloud—and on one side all was darkness, on the other a dazzling sheen of stars, glittering and bright as he thought he had never seen them before; while the darkness was being swept away, and fresh stars sprang out from the dense curtain minute by minute, and seemed to rain down myriads of ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... under the mosquito curtain. It was very still, breathless, hot! The venomous insects were thick;—they filled the room with a continuous ebullient sound, as if invisible kettles were boiling overhead. A sign of storm.... Still, it was strange!—he could ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... reminiscences might well, perhaps most agreeably, drop the curtain here; for strange and stirring incidents awaited the two friends on their return to Europe, after a rather prolonged sojourn amongst the animated hospitalities of a ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... been spying among the close-packed faces for a sight of Rhoda. Rhoda was now standing up amid gathering hisses and outcries. Her eyes were bent on a particular box, across which a curtain was hastily being drawn. "My sister!" she sent out a voice of anguish, and remained with clasped hands and twisted eyebrows, looking toward that one spot, as if she would have flown to it. She was wedged in the mass, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to the side of the bed, and withdrew the curtain. Amine lay insensible, but breathing heavily; her eyes were closed. Philip seized her burning hand, knelt down, pressed it to his lips, and burst into a paroxysm of tears. As soon as he had become somewhat composed, Father Seysen persuaded him to ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... When our first parent knew Thee from report divine, and heard thy name, Did he not tremble for this lovely frame, This glorious canopy of light and blue? Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew, Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, Hesperus, with the host of heaven, came, And lo! Creation widen'd ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... repose, and guided by the lamps which burned around the royal quarters, the dauntless Scots reached the tent. Wallace had already laid his hand upon the curtain that was its entrance, when an armed man with a presented pike, demanded, "Who comes here?" the regent's answer laid the interrogator's head at his feet; but the voice had awakened the ever watchful king. Perceiving his own danger ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... fragrant paste, they adorned her with sixteen ornaments, and put on her twelve trinkets, and having arrayed her in a red boddice they seated her, fully adorned. Then the young Rukminee, accompanied by all her handmaidens, went, with the sound of music, to perform her devotions. Screened by a curtain of silk, and surrounded by crowd upon crowd of companions, she appeared among the swarthy group who accompanied her as beautiful, as amid dark blue clouds, the moon with ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... shuddered with a fear that some hidden decay of Helen Merival's own soul enabled her to so horrify her audience with these desolating roles, and when the curtain fell on The Baroness, he was resolved to put aside the chance of meeting the actress. Was it worth while to be made ashamed and bitter? She might stand revealed as a coarse and selfish courtesan—a worn and haggard enchantress whose failing life blazed back to youth ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... in my eyes. I tried to keep them down, but it would not be; I kept filling up, till, for a few moments, I shook with sobs. For a long time I knelt there, holding her hand; and surely it is the darkest hour I ever lived. Afterwards I stood by the open window and looked through the crevice of the curtain. The shouts, laughter, and cries of the two children had come up into the chamber from the open air, making a strange contrast with the death-bed scene. And now, through the crevice of the curtain, I saw my ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... soft, warm air. But he neither shouted nor shook hands with the cook's boy, for he stood with Captain Marsham and the doctor, waiting for the explanation of the heavy, increasing roar which came from somewhere behind the vast curtain of mist which lay drifting to the north-west, a couple of hundred yards on the starboard bow, and rising up to the skies, now one glorious span of ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... here for?" said he aloud. "You are far too cunning not to guess, and I had better tell you plainly," cried he, sitting down and looking out across the courtyard through an opening he made in the puckered curtain. "There is a very pretty woman ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... and could go but a little way in a day. The fourth night came, and they sat in their lodge, very tired and hungry. No one spoke, for those who are hungry do not care for words. Suddenly the dogs began to bark, and soon, pushing aside the door-curtain, ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... entrance of a dwelling-house was invariably left open until the family retired for the night. Mosquitoes abound in Manila, coming from the numerous malarious creeks which traverse the wards, and few persons can sleep without a curtain. To be at one's ease, a daily bath is indispensable. The heat from 12 to 4 p.m. is oppressive from March to May, and most persons who have no afternoon occupation, sleep the siesta from 1 to 3 o'clock. The conventional lunch-hour all over the Colony is noon precisely, and dinner at about 8 o'clock. ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... interrupted by a thief come with intent to steal, a thief armed with a revolver, the sight of this weapon alone would be sufficient to insure his not moving from his seat. I can understand the open drawers and cupboard; that is explained by the thief's hasty search for booty. But the torn window curtain and the overturned chairs ...
— The Case of the Registered Letter • Augusta Groner
... a Rope to draw it up, and a Curtain hanging before it. Gilding for the Pillar and the Cross. 2 Pair of Gallows. 4 Scourges and a Pillar. Scaffold. Fanes to the Pageant. Mending of Imagery occurs 1469. A Standard of red Buckram. Two red ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... me 'tis different. In the curtain'd night, A Form comes shrieking on me, With such an edg'd and preternatural cry 'T would stir the blood of clustering bats from sleep, Tear their hook'd wings from out the mildew'd eaves, And drive them circling forth— I tell ye that I fight with him until The sweat like ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... these things hid? wherefore have these gifts a curtain before them? are they like to take dust, like Mistress Mall's picture? why dost thou not go to church in a galliard and come home in a coranto? My very walk should be a jig; I would not so much as make water but in a sink-a-pace. What dost thou mean? is it a world to ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... chair with a mended leg—these rude conveniences comprised my total list of housekeeping effects, not forgetting, of course, the dish-pan, the stubby broom, and the coal-scuttle, along with the scanty assortment of thick, chipped dishes and the pots and pans on the shelf behind the calico curtain. There was no bureau, only a waved bit of looking-glass over the sink in the corner. My wardrobe was strung along the row of nails behind the door, a modest array of petticoats and skirts and shirt-waists, with a winter coat and a felt ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... lost father," said the Idiot. "The heroine then sings a pathetic love song about her Baboon Baby, in a green light to the accompaniment of a lot of pink satin monkeys banging cocoa-nut shells together. This drowsy lullaby puts the Lieutenant and his forces to sleep and the curtain falls on their capture by the Pirate and his followers, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... that he has changed his mind again. He is now going in for amateur theatricals and is using you for a theatre. First thoughtfully draping a little rubber drop curtain across your proscenium arch to keep you from seeing what is going on behind your own scenes, he is setting the stage for the thrilling sawmill scene in Blue Jeans. You can distinctly feel the circular saw at work and you can taste a hod of ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... day and the next the idlers in the Court House yard knew all the business, and rolled it under their tongues. They loved a tragedy, and this curtain had gone up with promise. Had they not seen Lewis Rand walk into the yard—had they not spoken to him and he to them—had they not watched him enter the Court House? The boy who minded the sheriff's door found himself a hero, and the words treasured that fell from his tongue. It was true that ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... his pliant little cousin suited him better than any one he knew. "Day-star of my eyes!" he exclaimed, "consolation of my soul! Memories of injustice, discomfort, and sadness fall into the waters of oblivion rolling at thy feet. I see neither past nor future. The rose-hued curtain of youth and hope falls behind and ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... new piece, the last of seven, for 'tis The custom now to represent that number. 'Tis written by a Dilettante, and The actors who perform are Dilettanti; 410 Excuse me, gentlemen; but I must vanish. I am a Dilettante curtain-lifter. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... received its name from its various colors in different individuals. It is a thin, circular shaped, contractile curtain, suspended in the aqueous (watery) humor behind the cornea and in front of the lens, being perforated a little to the nasal (nose) side of its centre by a circular opening, the pupil, for the transmission of light. By its circumference it is continuous with the ciliary body, and its ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... upon the so-called "well-made play" which Scribe, Sardou, and their school could concoct for the delight of Frenchmen; he has exposed the insignificance of the accidents and catastrophes, and the coming down of the curtain "on a hero slain or married." He has compelled sensible people to look to the theatre for something more than sentiment, romance, ingenuity; for something relevant to the larger issues of life. That he has done; and it is doubtful if any English-speaking and English-writing man now alive, excepting ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... that, at fall of dew, Ere eve its duskier curtain drew, Was freshly gathered from its stem, She values as the ruby gem; And, guarded from the piercing air, With all an anxious lover's care, She bids it, for her shepherd's sake, Awake the New Year's frolic wake: When faded in its altered hue, She reads—the rustic ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... curtain aside with one hand and looks out. As he gazes his face grows sterner, and he lifts his hand above his head in menace. LAVARCAM looks on with terror, and as he drops the curtain and looks back on her, she lets her face ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... gone Thomasin crept upstairs in the dark, and, just listening by the cot, to assure herself that the child was asleep, she went to the window, gently lifted the corner of the white curtain, and looked out. Venn was still there. She watched the growth of the faint radiance appearing in the sky by the eastern hill, till presently the edge of the moon burst upwards and flooded the valley with light. Diggory's form was now distinct on the green; he was moving ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... whether I saw your pearls. When I first spoke to you—a child with all autumn's glory blazing at your back, did I have eyes for trees and skies and landscapes; though they were splendid and profligate in their beauty? No. I saw you—only you! If you had stood against a drab curtain it would have been the same. You were a child, too young to stir an adult heart to love or passion.... What was it then that fixed you from that ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... Guards passed me, bearing a litter between them. 'Oh, you can look if you like,' cried one; so I drew back the checked curtain. On a mattress was stretched a woman decently dressed, with a child of two or three years lying on her breast. They both looked very pale. One of the woman's arms was hanging down; her hand had been carried away. 'Where are they wounded?' I asked. 'Wounded! they are dead,' was the reply. 'They ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... That is the place to look, not off at the clouds—and nothing is too insignificant to escape investigation. For see: I can write on a very thin piece of paper, roll it into a string, thread it into a bodkin, and weave it into a rug, curtain, quilt, and so forth; or press it lengthwise into a crack in the floor. A favorite way is to tie it to a real piece of string, and throw them carelessly into a wastebasket, thus making them appear to have been ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... readers could here realize a touch, at least, of that peculiar sensation with which a single chord, floating from a window as we pass, stops us and holds us spellbound—a touch of that pleasant suspense with which we sit before the curtain in the theatre while the orchestra is still tuning! Or am I wrong? Can the soul stand more deeply in awe of everlasting beauty than when pausing before any sublime and tragic work of art—Macbeth, OEdipus, or whatever it may be? Man wishes and yet fears to be moved beyond his ordinary habit; ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... "Why, throw yourself in state on the stage, as other gentlemen use, sir."—"Away, wag; what, would'st thou make an implement of me? 'Slid, the boy takes me for a piece of perspective, I hold my life, or some silk curtain, come to hang the ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... in his study, to the persons for whom they were designed. The artist was enjoined to place them on two separate easels,—that of the actress to stand nearest the door of the studio, and both to be concealed by a curtain until the ladies should give the signal for their exposure. The portrait of the English lady, we will here remark, had, by her request, been hitherto seen only by the artist. There was a mystery in this arrangement, which piqued, excessively, the curiosity of the painter, ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... small room. The dark panelling of this apartment was irradiated by streams of yellow light slanting through the disbanded thunder clouds, and in the central brightness hung a picture concealed by a curtain of faded velvet. ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... animal fate without life or purpose. It may be that our little tragedy has touched the gods, that they admire it from their starry galleries, and that at the end of every human drama man is called again and again before the curtain. Repetition may go on for millions of years, by mere choice, and at any instant it may stop. Man may stand on the earth generation after generation, and yet each birth be ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... themselves. Mrs Lee tells us of a fox-terrier named Fop, who used to hide his eyes, and suffer those playing with him to conceal themselves before he looked up. I should have liked to see jolly Fop at his sports. If his playfellow hid himself behind a curtain, Fop would go carefully past that particular curtain, looking behind the others and the rest of the furniture, and when he thought he had looked long enough, seize the concealing curtain, and drag it ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... a tall pine-tree, he crept cautiously towards Lalita's wigwam. When he reached the opening, he remained very still and listened. There was not a stir or sound of any one moving in the camp. Throwing aside the curtain, he quickly entered the lodge, snatched Lalita from her couch, and in an instant had her beside him on his horse and was galloping rapidly back to the village of ...
— Thirty Indian Legends • Margaret Bemister
... scented, and not much to my liking; however, I drank it and felt grateful to this good soul for her hospitality and showing us a little Grecian home life. At one side of the room there was a part shut off by a curtain which we concluded was a box-bed, but Stephen had a look in and found it full of shelves with blankets and articles of clothing. "But where do the devils sleep?" Stephen kept on saying, and by resting his head on his hands and snoring he tried to get the woman to understand that he was curious ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... that she be not further bruised while it becomes her shelter, her refuge. Who she is, what her life has been, where she comes from, how she happens to arrive here—these are privacies into which of course we do not intrude. Immediately behind herself she drops a curtain of silence which shuts away every such sign of her past. But there are other signs of that past which she cannot hide and which it is our privilege, our duty, the province of our art, to read. They are written on her face, on her hands, on her bearing; ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen
... beautifully clean. Only you have to get at your room through somebody else's. Mine is beyond the Baronne's and Madame de Vermandoise gets at hers through the Comtesse de Tournelle's. Hers is the most ridiculous place, with a red curtain hanging across so that sometimes it can be turned into two; and such a thing happened last night. "Antoine" went in with the Comte de Tournelle to help him to shut the window, as Madame de Tournelle couldn't, when a gust of wind blew the door shut, and whether there was a spring ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... my heart may be set at rest and my mind eased.' Thou knowest, O my son, that those who love are prone to imagine evil: so do me the favour to go with me and read the letter, standing without the door, whilst I call his sister to listen behind the curtain, so shalt thou dispel our anxiety and fulfil our need. Quoth the Prophet (whom God bless and preserve), 'He who eases an afflicted one of one of the troubles of this world, God will ease him of a hundred troubles;' and according to another tradition, 'Whoso relieves his brother of one of the troubles ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... and listen," Anna answered. Owen threw open the window, and with his gesture a fold of the heavy star-sprinkled sky seemed to droop into the room like a drawn-in curtain. The air that entered with it had a frosty edge, and Anna bade Effie run to ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... and in other areas of the world, heartening political victories have been won by the forces of stability and freedom. Slowly but surely, the free world gathers strength. Meanwhile, from behind the iron curtain, there are signs that tyranny is in trouble and reminders that its structure is as brittle as ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower
... with thunderous detonations, bursting in a lather of rage. Out beyond, the billows appeared to be sheared flat by the force of the wind, yet that ceaseless upheaval of spume showed that the ocean was in furious tumult. For moments at a time the whole scene was blotted out by the scud, then the curtain would tear asunder and the wild scene would leap up ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... dolls, (boys and girls) dressed up to show off the fashions. I should be sorry to see you finified up so. Then, there was a beautiful baby's cradle, lined with soft, white satin, with a rich lace curtain, fit for Queen Victoria's baby, or your mother's; and a tiny little robe and cap lying near it, delicate as a ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... first hour. On the second day the eyes are closed upon the approach of a flame; on the eleventh the child seemed to enjoy the sensation of light; and on the twenty-third to appreciate the rose color of a curtain by smiling at it. Definite proof of color discrimination was first obtained in the eighty-fifth week, but may, of course, have been present earlier. When seven hundred and seventy days old the child could point to the colors yellow, red, green, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... wilderness, the length and breath of which he wished to inspect so as to discover a place where he could rest quietly, when he suddenly came to a precipitous fall of the ground, concealed from him by a thick curtain of leaves. Startled and taken by surprise, the ground seemed to him to sink under his feet. He instinctively caught hold of some branches to keep himself from falling, pricking his hands with the thorns, and breaking a slender bough, finally rolling in company with dust and earth, torn-out ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... of love had been spoken, he turned himself on his pillow, and lay silent for a long while,—for hours, till the morning sun had risen, and the daylight was again seen through the window curtain. It was not much after midsummer, and the daylight came to them early. From time to time she had looked at him, and each hour in the night she had crept round to him, and given him that which he needed. She did it all with ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... each other: it shone, the witness and the sanction of that internal voice, which we owned, but heard not. Our lips drew closer and closer together, till they met! and in that kiss was the type and promise of the after ritual which knit two spirits into one. Silence fell around us like a curtain, and the eternal Night, with her fresh dews and unclouded stars, looked alone upon the compact of our hearts,—an emblem of the eternity, the freshness, and the unearthly though awful brightness of the love which ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fancies drifting on your thought, you count for the hundredth time the figures upon the curtains of your bed; you trace out the flower-wreaths upon the paper-hangings of your room; your eyes rest idly on the cat playing with the fringe of the curtain; you see your mother sitting with her needle-work beside the fire; you watch the sunbeams, as they drift along the carpet, from morning until noon; and from noon till night you watch them playing on the leaves, and dropping spangles on the lawn; and ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... qualities having long been looked upon as attributes of wisdom. Rita, going first, climbed over the front wheel of the ugliest old woman's covered wagon, and entered the temple of its high priestess. The front curtain was then drawn. The interior of the wagon was darkened, and the candle in a small red lantern was lighted. The hag took a cage from the top of the wagon where it had been suspended, and when she opened the door a small screech owl emerged and perched upon the shoulders ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... to that country and that people as the masters of this earth. For I must tell you, gentlemen, with all the earnestness at my command, that until you have seen that ship in action, seen its incredible speed, its maneuverability, its lightning-like attack and its curtain of gas, you can have no conception of our helplessness. And the insignia that she carries is the flag of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... she starts, and her face brightens up, as the gate swings on its hinges, and a tall man comes with rapid eager step up the walk. John moves uneasily in his sleep, but unnoticed by her, for she stands back in the shadow of the curtain, and eagerly watches the new comer in his approach. Her father sits up in his chair, and after looking sadly at her for a moment, then sinks back with a sigh, as though he would wish to go to sleep again ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... administration of justice, through the interposition of the chamberlain as rumour affirmed, the persons who had been imprisoned as accomplices were released from their confinement: Dorus disappeared, and Verissimus kept silence for the future, as if the curtain had dropped and the ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... those monstrous superadditions with which the convention was afterwards clothed. However this may be, there must have been at hand for working up the materials into a plausible form, some drill sergeant of evidence behind the curtain, who had his own interest to serve or revenge to gratify. The two particulars in the narrative that one feels least disposed to question, are, that James Device stole a wether from John Robinson of Barley, to provide a family dinner on Good Friday, and that when the ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... a circus net!" Teddy went on. "You can hold one end, and I'll hold the other. But we won't make the tower any higher for a while. I'll get a curtain for a net." ...
— The Curlytops and Their Pets - or Uncle Toby's Strange Collection • Howard R. Garis
... Night! When our first parent knew Thee from report divine, and heard thy name, Did he not tremble for this lovely frame, This glorious canopy of light and blue? Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew, Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, Hesperus, with the host of heaven, came, And lo! Creation widen'd ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... round him, shaking their heads, his Mother falls fainting at his feet, as Curtain falls upon a strong and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... mass stretched from the South to the North-West and then there was a wide opening into another flat sandy plain. Far, far beyond this a distant range of high mountains could hardly be distinguished, for a sand-storm was raging in that direction and veiled the view with a curtain of dirty yellowish grey. ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... in one of these empty benches and see, as a shadow out of the past, a lively scene presented on the now deserted stage—the voice of eloquence rings clear out of the dead centuries, the play-house resounds with the applause of the shades that fill the seats about me—and, then, the curtain of mystery is dispelled by the bright sunlight that floods all the landscape, and I see nothing but ruins everywhere. The play is over. The shades have gone ...
— My Three Days in Gilead • Elmer Ulysses Hoenshal
... was not carried as far, and the exact date is not ascertainable, but the incident is well remembered by the family and occurred between 1853 and 1856. One day the Resident was crossing his study when, for some reason or another, he looked behind a curtain screening a recess. He then saw a man standing there with a large knife in his hand. General Sleeman, who was unarmed, challenged the man as being a Thug. He at once admitted that he was such, and under the spell of a master-spirit allowed himself to be disarmed without ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... as she looked. She had never seen anything so somber, so sinister, as that precipitous curtain of rock and its riband of ice. It looked like a white band ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... other hand, the ox-eyed Juno, who had gained a pair of black eyes overnight in one of her curtain lectures with old Jupiter, displayed her haughty beauties on a baggage wagon; while Vulcan halted as a club-footed blacksmith lately promoted to be a captain of militia. All was silent awe or bustling preparation: ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... but without rain: it was rather dark, too, though not so as to prevent us from seeing the clouds careering swiftly through the air. The dense curtain which had overhung and obscured the horizon was now broken, and large sections of the sky were clear, and thinly studded with stars that looked dim and watery, as did indeed the whole firmament; for in some places black clouds ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... the fair widow's welfare,' Miss M'Gann commented, as she watched him from behind the hall-door curtain. 'I hope he won't get the d. t.'s like number one, and live off her. Think she'd have had warning to wait a ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... not move. "Twenty-five and thirty-five makes sixty," she muttered. "Tell them I'll come if they hold the curtain till I am in the dressing-room. Say I'll have to wear her costumes, and the dresser must have everything ready. ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... of immigration; the occupation of the continent with Christian institutions by a strange diversity of sects; the great providential preparations as for some "divine event" still hidden behind the curtain that is about to rise on the new century,—and here the story breaks ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... to make no public announcement of what had happened before the hour came for drawing up the curtain. A scrappy rehearsal for the benefit of Grace Danver and the two or three other ladies who were affected by the necessary rearrangement went on until the last possible moment, then Mr. Peel presented himself before the drop and made ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... steadily, a cold, finely-spun, straight-hung curtain, veiling all the muffled sleeping valley. There was an inconceivable silence about her as she drew her snow-shoes over the velvet-like masses of the snow. But within her were ringing echoes of the ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... and deep recesses; Where the lion and the tiger, Where the panther and the leopard, And the jaguar and hyaena, And the tan wolf and the ocelot, In the daytime hold their parley, And resort for wakeful slumbers, Till the dusky hand of black night Draweth down her curtain on them; Then they leave the sylvan passes To traverse the open valley, Prowling after luckless surfeit, Lurking by the lakes and rivers For the panting prey which cometh To allay its thirsty feelings ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... sounds again those merry Celtic strains Which oft have called light feet to lilting dance, But now they mean the order to advance. Along the river's bank, beyond the hill Two thousand foemen lodge, unconquered still. Ere falls night's curtain on this bloody play, The army must proceed, with feint ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Paris in the vale of Ida. And, while I was lost in admiration of myself, just as the peacock is of his plumage, imagining that the delight which I took in my own appearance would surely be shared by all who saw me, a flower from my wreath fell on the ground near the curtain of my bed, I know not wherefore—perhaps plucked from my head by a celestial hand by me unseen. But I, careless of the occult signs by which the gods forewarn mortals, picked it up, replaced it on my head, and, as if nothing portentous had happened, I passed out from my abode. Alas! what clearer ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio
... "You never see it again. I've thrown a stick in up above, and it simply whisks over and gets sucked underneath the curtain of water at once, and disappears altogether until it reaches the smooth water, ever so ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... nobody Breakfasts here on the naked Table; but on the cloth set a large Tea Board with the Cups...." "London, Feb. 14, 1765. Mrs. Stevenson has sent you ... Blankets, Bedticks.... The blue Mohair Stuff is for the Curtains of the Blue Chamber. The Fashion is to make one Curtain only for each Window. Hooks are sent to fix the Rails by at the Top so that they might ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... belief, and in another moment I distinguished something like the outline of a path stretching away before me. Following it rapidly—as rapidly as I dared—I came to a corner, as it seemed to me, turned it blindly, and stopped short, peeping into a curtain of solid blackness which barred my path, and overhead mingled confusedly with the dark shapes of trees. But this, too, after a brief hesitation, I made out to be a wall. Advancing to it with outstretched hands, I felt the ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... been considerably enlarged. The slight partition terminating the interior extremity of the mess-room, and dividing it from that of one of the officers, had been removed; and midway through this, extending entirely across, was drawn a curtain of scarlet cloth, against which the imposing figure of the governor, elevated as his seat was above those of the other officers, was thrown into strong relief. There was another change, that escaped not the ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... experiment to carry out. I made as you saw a determination of the angle at which this weight of 250 grams just slipped on the ice. The lower surface of the weight, the part which presses on the ice, consists of a light, brass curtain ring. This can be detached. Its mass is only 61/2 grams, the curtain ring being, in fact, hollow and made of very thin metal. We have, therefore, in it a very small weight which presents exactly the same surface ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... had been listening behind the curtain, immediately hastened to communicate the news to the rest of ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... during the opera season. He would go there early in the evening, and beg people to pay his way in. If he didn't find a philanthropist he would buy a ticket himself, but he never gave up hope until he knew that the curtain had risen. ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... rose from the crowded seats. It seemed as if the spectators wanted to give vent to their feelings. A curtain at the back of the hall was drawn aside, and Judge Bolitho, with bowed head and staggering footsteps, found his ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... uttered these words, she straightway escorted Pao-y as far as outside the door, from whence having seen him mount into the sedan chair, she dropped the curtain; whereupon Ming Yen and her brother, the two of them, led the horses and followed behind in his wake. Upon reaching the street where the Ning mansion was situated, Ming Yen told the chair to halt, and said to Hua Tzu-fang, "It's advisable ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... that its power was undiminished. Back to town from mountain and sea shore filtered the warm-weather idlers, but no more letters came from St. Petersburg to the hill by the Hudson. So far as our girls were concerned, a curtain of silence had fallen ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... proscenium or front, stretching out upon the orchestra by means of a wooden platform, which has disappeared, and the postscenium or side scenes. There was, also, a hyposcenium or subterranean part of the theatre, for the scene-shifters and machinists. The curtain or siparium (a Roman invention) did not rise to the ceiling as with us, but, on the contrary, descended so as to disclose the stage, and rolled together underground, by means of ingenious processes which Mazois has explained to us. Thus, the curtain fell at ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... the astonishing memory of this country lad: and the applause that greeted the reciter might well be calculated to awaken his latent vanity. It was like being called before the curtain after the first act by a young actor on his first appearance. And I believe every one understood the meaning of the verses, which seemed to imply that the hungry prodigal, famishing for food, was fed with husks instead of grain. Contentment with wretchedness is not good preaching, ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... everyone to know are, that any sore throat—with only a single white spot on the tonsil—may be diphtheria, but that when the white spot or deposit not only covers the tonsil or tonsils (see Tonsilitis) but creeps up on to the surrounding parts, as the palate (the soft curtain which shuts off the back of the roof of mouth from the throat), the uvula (the little body hanging from the middle of the palate in the back of the mouth), and the bands on either side of the back of the mouth at its junction with the throat, then ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... appeared from behind the white curtain of fog, and the boys and girls saw. that Mr. Carson ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young
... in answer to my rap. I obeyed the signal, and found myself in a room of tolerable dimensions and multiplied utilities. A decayed silk curtain of a dingy blue, drawn across a recess, separated the chambre a coucher from the salon. It was at present only half drawn, and did not, therefore, conceal the mysteries of the den within; the bed was still unmade, and apparently of no very inviting cleanliness; a red handkerchief, ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... syringed, late in the evening. On the next morning (30th) the bush looked as fresh as ever, and at night the leaves went to sleep. It may be added that a small branch while growing on the bush was enclosed, by means of a curtain of bladder, during 13 days in a large bottle half full of quicklime, so that the air within must have been intensely dry; yet the leaves on this branch did not suffer in the [page 338] least, and did not close at all during the hottest ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... house to the back door. As he passed the lighted sitting-room windows he saw a monstrous shadow with steadily moving hands on the curtain. He fumbled his way through the lighted room, in which sat Adoniram Judd closing shoes and his son Henry knitting. When the door opened Henry, whose shadow Jerome had seen on the window-pane, looked up with the vacant ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Portieres (curtain doors) have superseded folding doors. These should be in shades to contrast with the general blending of the colors in the room. The fabrics mostly used are India goods, but they may be of any material, ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... pointing upwards. Nearer were several more narrow windows along the side of the room, and that beside her bed had the lattice open, so that she saw a sloping green bank, with a river at the foot; and there was a trim garden between. Opposite to her there seemed to be another window with a curtain drawn across it, through which came what perhaps had wakened her, a low, clear murmuring tone, pausing and broken by the full, sweet, if rather shrill response in women's voices. Beneath that window was a little altar, with a ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... These, with the curtain, block-forts, and a deep ditch over which was a log bridge, composed the military works at Tioga; and this was the place into which we now walked, a sentry directing us to Block-House No. 2, ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... in haste, Her heart a bit uncertain, And neither time nor love to waste, She watches through the curtain. ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... a tongue impressed with honey from every wind? Why an ear, a whirlpool fierce to draw creations in? Why a nostril wide inhaling terror, trembling, and affright? Why a tender curb upon the youthful, burning boy? Why a little curtain of flesh on the bed ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... morning it was found by the soundings, etc., that we were near our port, but a thick fog hid the land from our sight. About nine o'clock the fog began to rise, and seem'd to be lifted up from the water like the curtain at a play-house, discovering underneath, the town of Falmouth, the vessels in its harbor, and the fields that surrounded it. This was a most pleasing spectacle to those who had been so long without any other ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... and separation between the civil and military powers of the continent? And what a compliment does he pay to our understandings, when he recommends measures, in either alternative, impracticable in their nature? But here, gentlemen, I will drop the curtain, because it would be as imprudent in me to assign my reasons for this opinion, as it would be insulting to your conception to suppose you stood in need of them. A moment's reflection will convince every dispassionate mind of the physical impossibility of carrying ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... fire, top left centre. The door is top right centre. On the left side is a window. Four large grandfather clocks are standing here and there round the room. In front of the fire is seated a little wee bit of a pigeen. The Stranger is seated by the window, apart from the rest. As the curtain rises one of the clocks strikes two, another strikes eleven, while the others remain silent. It is thus impossible to tell what time it is. The Stranger gazes out of the window. No one speaks. The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... the white pellets into that vapoury greyness. As they touched the curtain, they hissed as if they had been thrown into a fire; they melted; and upon the transparency of the drapings, as upon a sheet of gauze, showed faint streaks, where, melting, they ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... subtle influence has pervaded many a brilliant home and circle where other influences might easily have prevailed. In a time when calumny would attack an Archangel, and when its bitter barbs have been known to reach even the humanly perfect life of Queen Victoria, no shadow has ever crossed the curtain of her character. Of her tact—a quality which she possesses in common with the Prince of Wales—stories are innumerable, and of her quiet, unostentatious, continuous charity and natural kindliness of heart ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... drew her to the window, from whence she cast a covert glance from behind the curtain. But she saw neither hen nor cock. Had they been able to run away? Where were ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... original regarded it as an ambitious piece of work. If so, they were right in the sense that they have attempted something very much beyond their powers. In the view of the gentleman who addressed us at the fall of the curtain (I understand that he was one of the authors) it offered magnificent opportunities (I think "magnificent" was the word) for the brilliant gifts of two of the actors. Certainly it covered a good bit of ground, what with this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... the base, and, to prevent scaling, rose to a height of some thirty or forty feet: there were towers at intervals of a bowshot, from which the archers could seriously disconcert parties making attacks against any intervening points in the curtain wall; the massive gates were covered with raw hides, or were plated with metal to resist assaults by fire and axe, while, as soon as hostilities commenced, the defence was further completed by wooden scaffolding. Places thus fortified, however, at times fell almost without an attempt at resistance; ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... silence; no voice, no cry from within reaches the ear; the chal must be tenanted only by the shadows. Not so! At the far end of a passage, into which the sullage water drips, forming ill-smelling pools, a greasy curtain is suddenly lifted for a minute, disclosing several flickering lights girt about with what in the distance appear to be amorphous blocks of wood or washerman's bundles. Grope your way down the passage, push aside the curtain with your ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... are beneath the canopy of heaven, Also beneath the canopy of beds Four-posted and silk curtain'd, which are given For rich men and their brides to lay their heads Upon, in sheets white as what bards call 'driven Snow.' Well! 'tis all hap-hazard when one weds. Gulbeyaz was an empress, but had been Perhaps as ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... likewise to the fateful bedroom. Here, after protesting fearfully that they would ruin him by this conspirative meeting, he added that he was not out of sympathy with the times, and volunteered to stand sentinel. Accordingly, he was posted at the ragged window-curtain, where, with excess of caution, he signalled whenever he saw a Christian, in uniform or no. At every signal David's oratory ceased as suddenly as if it had been turned off at the main, and the gaberdined figures, distributed over the ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... and talk with her a little, and she readily shows you all her little possessions,—her chest on the earthen floor, her one chair and stool, her tallow-candle stuck against the wall, her husk mattress rolled together, with the precious blue cloak inside of it. Behind a curtain of coarse straw-work is a sort of small boudoir, holding things more private, an old barrel with the winter's fuel in it, a few ears of corn hanging against the wall, a pair of shoes, and a shelf with a large pasteboard box. The box she opens ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... said the other, looping back the curtain she had until now held in her hand. "Whereas our systems are braced by a more uniform temperature to endure the severity of our frosts, ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... suds, and, if the water still looks dark after another washing, take still another. Boil and rinse as in directions given for other clothes. Starch with very thick hot starch, and dry, not by hanging out, and then ironing, but by putting a light common mattress in the sun, and pinning the curtain upon it, stretching carefully as you pin. One mattress holds two, which will dry in an hour or two. If there is no sun, lay a sheet on the floor of an unused room, and pin the ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... broad hills that curtain around This sanctuary of nature, 'mid a wilderness found, Whose echoes low whisper, "Bid the world farewell, And with ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... and there arose from among the heavy folds of the curtain that had almost entirely concealed him, a student who advanced with the dignity of a Jupiter and the grace of an Apollo. Duty was his theme. The words flowed in a resistless torrent from his lips. Every thought breathed beauty and sublimity, every gesture was the "poetry of motion." More ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... memory and the wonder in his dreaming thought, and he woke early to other voices under his window. But now the voices, though young, were many and were German, and the march of feet and the stamp of hooves kept time with their singing. He drew his curtain and saw the street filled with broken squads of men, some afoot and some on horseback, some in uniform and some in civil dress with students' caps, loosely straggling on and roaring forth that song whose words he ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... awake to the fact that he had eaten nothing, for more than twenty-four hours. After he had taken the meal, he sat in Percy's room, until it was time to go to General Trochu's; keeping himself, however, in a position so as to be hidden by the curtain—for the sight of him evidently excited the patient. Percy was, as far as his brother could see, in just the same state as before: sometimes talking to himself, in disconnected sentences; sometimes raving wildly, and imagining himself repeating ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... the precious water of the lake, Omega now extended the folds of the cloud curtain down to its shores thus completely enclosing it. And as this further reduced the evaporation to a remarkable extent the hopes of Omega and Thalma took on new life. Here they visioned Alpha and his children living and dying in peace, now that the monster was no more. With ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow
... surprising mechanical faculty, and great patience and skill in passing the figures he contrives through the programme arranged for them. Having read one of his novels, you feel as if you had been amused with a puppet-show of rare merit, and you would like to have the ingenious mechanician before the curtain. So much cleverness, however, seems to be thrown away on the entertainment of a single evening, and you sigh for its application to some work of more lasting usefulness; and the perpetual motion occurs to you as the thing worthiest such powers. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... not desire the problem play. It demands a play that will end with a curtain definite, convincing. But in the problem plays of the past it finds the material it fain would see applied to a bolder, unequivocal purpose. In the eight years that have elapsed since the production of Pinero's "Tanqueray," the public's stomach has ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... had pressed aside the heavy curtain framing the window until she could command the stoop. Two men were waiting there. "Oh!" she breathed, almost reeling back upon Tottie. "Oh, don't let 'em in! Don't! I can't see anybody! Say I'm gone! Oh, please, Tottie! I'm gone for good." She was beside Barbara again, and was almost lifting the ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... really to work off some portion of his uneasiness, which was growing with every moment. He was terrified at first upon general principles, as any other boy of eleven years old would have been. Then he was afraid that the Indians would by some accident, lean something against the curtain of small roots between two other big trees, and that the curtain might not be strong enough to support it, in which event their hiding-place would be discovered at once. He was afraid, too, that some slight noise inside the fortress ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... kind of curtain seems dropped over the brain, covering it, smothering it, while yet the body and its nerves are tingling with sensation. It is like the fire-curtain of a theatre let down between the stage and the audience, a merciful intervention ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and been married, and he guessed he was not going to show the white feather chasing jackrabbits. They could sound the bugle charge as soon as they got ready, and they would find him in the game till the curtain was ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... house, and forming a medium of general communication, more or less directly, with all the other apartments. At one extremity, this spacious room was lighted by the windows of the two towers, which formed a small recess on either side of the portal. At the other end, though partly muffled by a curtain, it was more powerfully illuminated by one of those embowed hall-windows which we read of in old books, and which was provided with a deep and cushioned seat. Here, on the cushion, lay a folio tome, probably of the Chronicles of ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... water-colours, or the portraits of the dead, or works of art more than usually skittish in the subject. It was perhaps in the hope of finding something of this last description that M'Naughten's comrade pulled aside the curtain of the first. He was startlingly disappointed. There was no picture. The frame surrounded, and the curtain was designed to hide, an oblong aperture in the partition, through which they looked forth into the dark corridor. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rays of the candle fell upon the window. Willie drew back the curtain. Snow was tightly banked up against ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... bucket to hold the head after it has been cut off, an incense-burner, a pail of water, and a basin. The above rules apply equally to the ceremonies observed when the hara-kiri takes place in a garden. In the latter case the place is hung round with a white curtain, which need not be new for the occasion. Two mats, a white cloth, and a rug are spread. If the execution is at night, lanterns of white paper are placed on bamboo poles at the four corners. The sentence ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... on a great adventure, full of thrill and excitement; the curtain which surrounded our private life was being lifted; we stood on the threshold of momentous events. The cottagers who laboured by their humble homes stood for a moment and watched our train go by; now ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... up. The curtain which covered the wall in the background was drawn aside, and on a platform sat a little insignificant-looking man, with a table before him and a sofa beside him. On the table stood a wooden goblet. ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... [Draw the curtain: the king sits sleeping, his sword by his side. Enter Austria, before whom cometh Ambition, and bringing him before the chair, King John in sleep maketh signs to avoid, and holdeth his own crown fast ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... covenant. I saw that my brother's death had thwarted the conspiracy. Smith was so obviously frightened—despite his pretense of defiance—that I believed he had learned his needed lesson. And I accepted the incident as a private tragedy on which the final curtain had now fallen. ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... the other arms; but, as I was saying, she died before she got her mind made up, and now they kept this picture over the head of the bed in her room, and every time her birthday come they hung flowers on it. Other times it was hid with a little curtain. The young woman in the picture had a kind of a nice sweet face, but there was so many arms it made her look too spidery, seemed ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... there were present also notaries on each side of him, who kept the Caesar rapidly and continually informed of all the questions which were put and all the answers which were given; and by his pitiless orders, urged as he was by the persuasions of the queen, who kept her ear at the curtain, many were put to death without being permitted to soften the accusations brought against them, or to say a word ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... sudden pull, she jerked open the window and stood before the blank green-tinged oblong of darkness that seemed to press into the room like a menacing, heavy, wind-urged curtain. ...
— The Moon is Green • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... interest the reader, we will raise the curtain and show our young hero in the capacity of editor. The time is ten days after Mr. Anderson's absence. Harry was accustomed to do his work as compositor in the forenoon and the early part of the afternoon. From three to five he occupied the editorial ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... hole, and after Willie was asleep, she stole down to the reception-room to see the damage for herself. She found the hole, or what was intended for it, smiling as she examined the few loose threads; and then she hunted for the stool, finding it under the curtain where Eudora had placed it, and finding, too, that letter dropped by Jim. The others were gone, appropriated by Mrs. Richards, who always watched for the western mail and looked ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... netting, was a little bed, the woodwork gayly painted with knots of bright flowers. Near it, against the wall, was a black walnut bureau. A work-table with spiral legs stood by the window, which was hung with a green and gold window curtain. Opposite the window the closet door stood ajar, while in the corner across from the bed was a tiny ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... air in an empty room, just swelling the curtain; the flowers in the jar shift. One fibre in the wicker arm-chair creaks, ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... the big windows, was the rolling prairie, with the touch of early fall on it, sometimes revealed in a light curtain of haze, at which a fellow could gaze and imagine he saw the squaws of the savage tribes gathering the maize for the coming winter's store, while the braves rode ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... mind, and gradually lulling me to slumber, I was suddenly aroused by a sound like that of the rustling of a silken gown, and the tapping of a pair of high-heeled shoes, as if a woman were walking in the apartment. Ere I could draw the curtain to see what the matter was, the figure of a little woman passed between the bed and the fire. The back of this form was turned to me, and I could observe, from the shoulders and neck, it was that of an old woman, whose dress was an old-fashioned gown, which, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... son ever entered the room without some special reason, and it was too far away from the rest of the house for casual visitors to intrude themselves. The short passage, within the more modern house, which led to the bridge was reached by a door hung with a leather curtain securely arranged to prevent draughts, and no one ever lifted this curtain except those who had a ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... grass, and the wet flowers flashed out diamonds. And then as I sat there watching, and intensely happy as I imagined, suddenly the certainty of grief, and suffering, and death dropped like a black curtain between me and the beauty of the morning, and then that other thought, to face which needs all our courage—the realisation of the awful solitariness in which each of us lives and dies. Often I could cry for pity of our forlornness, ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... rear was impressive—a wide up-and-down plain studded with out-cropping of rocks, and patches of snow. We were then on top of the Chinese Wall, and the view to the west was grand. At the moment hail was falling thick and white, and to stand above the streaked curtain, as it fell into the abyss was a strange new experience. Below, two thousand feet, lay the spruce forest, and it sloped and dropped into the White River Valley, which in turn rose, a long ragged dark-green slope, up to a bare jagged peak. ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... with rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes, greeted the audience with an enchanting smile; the king, whose brow seemed unusually gloomy and clouded, cast only a hesitating and anxious glance over the house, and then withdrew behind the crimson curtain ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... the music of "Mind the Paint" continues for a while. Then it ceases and, after a short silence, the curtain rises again. The supper-tables have disappeared and the saloon is empty of people. The musicians and their music-stands and stools have also gone, and faintly from the distance comes the sound of a waltz. Two settees, matching the rest of the furniture, ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... the West, Athanasius was frequently admitted to the Imperial presence; at Capua, Lodi, Milan, Verona, Padua, Aquileia, and Treves. The bishop of the diocese usually assisted at these interviews; the master of the offices stood before the veil or curtain of the sacred apartment; and the uniform moderation of the primate might be attested by these respectable witnesses, to whose evidence he solemnly appeals. [116] Prudence would undoubtedly suggest the mild and respectful tone that became ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... chorus rang out, and amidst a burst of applause the curtain fell. The applause continued so strongly that the curtain was immediately raised again, and the delighted audience viewed once more ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... imaginary dame, a conception of Douglas Jerrold, famous for her "Curtain Lectures" all through the night for 30 years to her ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... obliged to add before the curtain is dropped upon this nocturnal drama, that my friend was guilty of an astonishing piece of Vandalism. When my landlady had deposited the sleeping child in his large, exquisitely carved and canopied bed (which, as he ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... dinna ken onything anent it. As for yon braw boxie, I ne'er set een on it, na, nor the fine ring, till the policeman pu'ed it doon frae the tap o' the window curtain. And the fine watch, they fund on me, and said belongit to Sir Lemuel Levison; that watch waur gied to me by a gude freend," said Rose, wiping the great ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... some time hated it. Why it was continuing on that lifted note he could not guess. With a little twitch of the lips, the sign of a grim amusement, he thought this might even be an orator, some wardroom Demosthenes, practising against the lonely curtain of the night. ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... erecting the one which we were engaged to build. We did our best to solve the problem, by hanging up at the end of the doomed hovel—which had been a salt-store in its day, and was in damp weather ever sweating salt-water—a hanging partition of mats, that somewhat resembled the curtain of a barn-theatre; and, making our beds within, we began pulling down piecemeal, as the materials were required, that part of the erection which lay outside. We had very nearly unhoused ourselves ere our work was finished; and the chill blasts of October, especially when they blew ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... prepared to listen to the revelations that awaited her. She had long had a curiosity to know what "Bohemia" meant, and now she expected to find out. They were nowhere near their own crowd. In fact, she couldn't see Elise or Mona, though Philip was visible between some rickety armour and a tattered curtain. Very handsome he looked, too, his dark, and just now gloomy, face thrown into ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... originally performed. At its first representation, however, the audience was reported to have been saddened by its "unhappy ending." Pressure was forthwith put upon me to reconcile Philip and Ottoline at the finish, and at the third performance of the play the curtain fell upon the picture, violently and crudely brought about, of Ottoline in ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... of the theatre is a phantasy world. With the rising of the curtain we forget our outside life; we live the part of the hero or the heroine. To this day I always leave a theatre with a vague depression of spirits; everyday humdrum life chills me when I come out to the street. Reality is always difficult to face. The great popularity of the cinema is due ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... into three shelves, and did her best to make the room look pleasant and inviting to the little stranger. In fact, before she was through with the work she became really very much interested in it. She had put a clean white quilt upon the bed, and looped up the curtain with a handsome crimson ribbon, taken from the stock in the wardrobe. She had swept and dusted every corner and crevice; she had displayed all her ornaments to the best advantage, and put fresh cologne in the bottles. She had even brought from some sanctum, ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... much about that," said Denham as we neared the fortified gateway, with its curtain of empty wagons. "I'm beginning to think that we're being a great deal of ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... lodger for her use, as it was rather larger than the one Mrs Vivian occupied, and more convenient for the reception of a visitor. On the farther side of this apartment was a door leading out to the back part of the house. It was seldom used now, and a curtain hung before it, as the weather was cold and a strong current of air came through it. In an upper panel of this door was a small glass window, now disused, for some alterations had been made in the back premises which blocked out the light. The panes of this window ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... that strange isolated incident in their married life. For an instant the curtain of the past had swung aside, and some strange glimpse of a forgotten life had come to them. But it closed down, never to open again. They live their narrow round—he in his shop, she in her household—and yet new and wider horizons ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sire,—yea, all things loved below, Fair pictures damasked on a vapor's fold, Fade like the roseate flush, the golden glow, When the bright curtain of the day ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... supposition that the inhabitants facilitated domestic operations by emptying casual vessels out of the windows. The dirty little casements on the ground floor exhibited without exception a rag of red or white curtain on the one side, prevailing fashion evidently requiring no corresponding drapery on the other. The Court was a cul de sac, and at the far end stood a receptacle for ashes, the odour from which was ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... sign from Mustapha, the curtain which concealed part of the tent was withdrawn, and four lovely girls, clothed in light, fluttering apparel, appeared and commenced a graceful, beautiful dance, to the music of the mandoline. When they had finished, they retired to the curtain, and looked with great, wondering eyes ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... to the hill, and Morse left Molly at her gate. As she walked slowly up the road, she could see the light in Theodore's window, and his shadow thrown on the curtain. ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... defensive system platoons may not be able to advance to the Attack without a barrage, and it is essential that all movements should conform exactly to the timing of the barrage and that the troops should keep under the back edge of the shrapnel curtain, so as to deliver their assault before the enemy has time to bring rifles and machine guns into play. Under such circumstances, Ground scouts must be dispensed with. Such a position will not be attacked without careful ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... Wits, resembled that of two statesmen in a late reign, whose characters are very well expressed in their two mottoes, viz., Prodesse quam conspici [LORD SOMERS], and Otium cum dignitate [CHARLES MONTAGU, Earl of HALIFAX]. Accordingly the first [ADDISON] was continually at work behind the curtain, drew up and prepared all those schemes, which the latter still drove on, and stood out exposed to the World, to receive its praises ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... chain of strong fortresses, which the French possessed on the Belgian frontier, formed a curtain, behind which Napoleon was able to concentrate his army, and to conceal, till the very last moment, the precise line of attack which he intended to take. On the other hand, Blucher and Wellington were obliged to canton their ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... during which Duchemin saw the long lashes of the Comtesse de Lorgnes curtain momentarily her disastrous violet eyes: it was a sign of assent. Immediately it was followed by the least of negative movements of her head. She was looking directly at Phinuit, who, so far as Duchemin could see, made no ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... postpone your correspondence with the Spanish generals, and let your influence come in hereafter, as auxiliary to something more formal and official. I do not hesitate to give it clearly as my opinion to you, (but this opinion and this business should be concealed behind a curtain,) that the favourable moment of the Spanish operations in the Floridas ought to be improved to the utmost extent of our means, provided the Spaniards, by a junction of their maritime force with that of his most Christian Majesty, under the command of the Chevalier de Ternay, will ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... prayer, when the sight and sound of the world is shut out. An inexpressible sweetness and joy and satisfaction come into the heart. How near God seems! How calm and precious is the hour! How our spirits drink in of the water of life! How we seem to talk face to face with our Lord, and how the curtain seems drawn back till our eyes behold the secrets of the Eternal! We give ourselves over to the supreme enjoyment of the hour. But alas! in a short time we find ourselves no longer on the mountain, but out in the broad plain of life, and how tame and ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... compares this with the North America of 1853, its twenty-two millions of European origin, and its thirty-one States, will venture to assign limits to our growth; will dare to compute the time-table of our railway progress, or lift so much as a corner of the curtain that hides the crowded events of the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... thousand strong—into the Confederacy; she lifted the lid of her treasury to Lincoln, and in answer to his every call, sent him a soldier, practically without a bounty and without a draft. And when the curtain fell on the last act of the great tragedy, half of her manhood was behind it—helpless from disease, wounded, ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... conspicuous upon the British than upon the American side of the history of this campaign. Not only the general, who had his reputation to defend, but high officials, whose guiding hand was seen behind the curtain, were called to the bar of public opinion. The ministers endeavored to make a scapegoat of the general; the general, to fix the responsibility for defeat upon the ministers. His demand for a court-martial ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... laid him in the cradle, which stood beside the table. She remained leaning over him for an instant to assure herself that he was asleep; then she let down the curtain in the already darkened room. Then she busied herself with supple and noiseless movements, walking with so light a step that she scarcely touched the floor, in putting away some linen which was on ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... author knew that the fire of a genius unequalled in its way had gone out. Two or three, who were acquainted with the man even better than with his books, sighed, and thanked God! They thanked God that the old man's prayer had at last been answered, and that the curtain had been drawn on a life which in reality terminated ten years before, when old age became more than ripe. But Landor's walk into the dark valley was slow and majestic. Death fought long and desperately ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... was making up (he was accustomed to making-up in another sense, as his wig and whiskers could testify) to charming young lady. Such was the scene. He asked her to accept him. Her reply was to show him the heading of this advertisement in the Times:—"YOUTH WANTED." Tableau! Exit Beau. Curtain. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... when the sun in bed Curtain'd with cloudy red Pillows his chin upon an orient wave, The flocking shadows pale Troop to the infernal jail, Each fetter'd ghost slips to his several grave; And the yellow-skirted fays Fly after the ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... When the curtain rises, HECTOR ALLEN, a youngish man of forty, with an attractive intellectual face, is seen standing by the dining-table in the inner room, draining his liqueur-glass, with WALTER COZENS to the right of him, lighting a cigarette. WALTER is a few years younger ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... view, enclose a figure, the same in shape but of greater dimensions. There is a historical event foretold, the fall of Jerusalem. It is close up to the eyes of the disciples, and is comparatively small. Carry out the lines that touch its corners and define its shape, and upon the far distant curtain of the dim future there is thrown a like figure immensely larger, the coming of Jesus Christ to judge the world. All these little premonitions and foretastes and anticipatory specimens point onwards to the assured termination ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the style with which the Catholic sovereigns opened another year's campaign of this eventful war. It was like commencing another act of a stately and heroic drama, where the curtain rises to the inspiring sound of martial melody and the whole stage glitters with the array of warriors and the pomp of arms. The ancient city of Cordova was the place appointed by the sovereigns for the assemblage of the troops; and early in the spring of 1486 the fair ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... Sarah's girls at a play like Sudermann's "John the Baptist," as the curtain rises and falls upon the great scenes I sit and think of him and what it would have meant to him if in all those poverty-stricken years of his ministry he could have had such a vision of his dear Bible people at home in Judaea. It's foolish, of course, but I still long to do something for him, ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... the two seats are converted into a bed, with the second bed pulled down from the roof, on which mattresses, blankets, and sheets are all arranged with a projecting board at the head and foot, and a curtain in front, so that one is quite private, and we slept like tops. We had also a dining-car on, where every luxury of the season, to strawberries and cream, were served by the blackest of niggers in the whitest of garments, for the sum of a dollar ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... freezing-point. But the dog knew; all its ancestry knew, and it had inherited the knowledge. And it knew that it was not good to walk abroad in such fearful cold. It was the time to lie snug in a hole in the snow and wait for a curtain of cloud to be drawn across the face of outer space whence this cold came. On the other hand, there was keen intimacy between the dog and the man. The one was the toil-slave of the other, and the only caresses ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... beautiful of the church's treasures which, strange to say, is a piece of modern sculpture given by the present "Monseigneur of Avignon." It is small, and badly placed on a marble altar of discordant toning, with a draped curtain of red gilt-fringed velvet for its background. Yet in spite of these inartistic surroundings it has lost none of its tender charm. Seated, with a scroll on her knees, the aged mother is earnestly teaching the young Virgin who stands close ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... the public wants. If it is not true, so much the worse for truth. If it falsifies the story, well, a lying story with a "punch" is better than a true one that lacks a fire-spitting climax. The audience which judge a play by the effect of its "curtain," will not complain of a trifling illogicality in narrative, or a little juggling with what might happen if the story were life. Of what the editor wants I find a typical example in a recent number of a popular magazine. The story is well written; it is interesting ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating "'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door, —Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;— ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... all the din the bell that precedes the rise of the curtain became audible. "They've rung; they've rung!" The rumor reached the boulevard, and thereupon followed a stampede, everyone wanting to pass in, while the servants of the theater increased their forces. Mignon, with an anxious ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... The bedroom curtain was flung aside, and Jessie, arrayed carefully in her best shirtwaist and skirt, suddenly appeared in the doorway. Her eyes were glowing with excitement and fear. But her rich coloring was alight with warmth, and the man stared in admiration. ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... door now. It was late afternoon. The house was very still, with the stillness of a dwelling that has long been uninhabited. The two stood there a moment, peering into the darkened rooms. Then Hosea Brewster strode forward, jerked up this curtain, that curtain with a sharp snap, flap! He stamped his feet to rid them of slush. He took off his hat and threw it high in the air and opened his arms wide and emitted a whoop of sheer ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... decided to put the box in a safer place. Going to the window, and drawing aside the curtain, he opened it. Listening intently for a moment, and hearing nothing, he returned to the table, lighted a small dark lantern, extinguished the candle, and taking up the box after closing and locking it, he left the room, and walked softly through the ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... impossible. Although the weather was warm the window was tightly shut and a thick curtain ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... stooped and peered into the dark shadow between the dashboard and the back curtain. All she could make out at first were a pair of thin ankles and "Congress" shoes in agitated motion. These bobbed up and down behind the overturned seat ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Peak, soaring to an almost immediate summit twenty thousand feet above the sea; on the left, in the distance, was just visible the receding snow dome of the South Peak, with its two horns some five hundred feet higher. The mists were passing from the distant summits, curtain after curtain of gauze draping their heads for ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... the devil—anything that would make you lift the curtain a little. For instance, what do you think of this society ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... finger, peered over the green silk curtain out into the darkening street. A young man, tall and rather thin, in a blue suit and wide gray-felt hat, was walking slowly and with a slight limp up the cross street, evidently ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... do, but it was still more dangerous to stumble into some object and make a noise. He darted forward, circuiting a workbench, a stool, a small hand forge. Again the flashlight gleamed. Against the side wall, near the rear, was another workbench, with a sort of coarse canvas curtain hanging part way down in front of it, evidently to protect such things as might be stored away beneath it from dust, and Jimmie Dale sprang for it, whipped back the canvas, and crawled underneath. He was not an instant too soon. As the canvas fell back ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... light reflected from a hundred windows flashed and blazed in wondrous glory, until the city seemed a dream of unearthly splendor and fairy loveliness, in which the people moved in wonder and in awe. Only for a moment it lasted. A heavy cloud curtain was drawn hurriedly across the west as though the scene in its marvelous beauty was too sacred for the gaze of men whose souls were dwarfed by baser visions. For an instant a single star gleamed above the curtain in the soft green of the upper sky; then it too vanished, ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... she knew so well that she never thought about them except when, as indeed often happened, she had nothing else to think about. Most of the provincial populations received her annual visits with enthusiasm. Among them she found herself more excitingly applauded before the curtain, her authority more despotic behind it, her expenses smaller, and her gains greater than in London, for which she accordingly cared as little as London cared for her. As she grew older she made more money and spent less. When she ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... approached by a long bare staircase, whereon, in an airy situation, one of the P. Salcy Family—a stout gentleman imperfectly repressed by a belt—took the money. This occasioned the greatest excitement of the evening; for, no sooner did the curtain rise on the introductory Vaudeville, and reveal in the person of the young lover (singing a very short song with his eyebrows) apparently the very same identical stout gentleman imperfectly repressed by a belt, than everybody rushed out ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... with it on. I can at least keep my face clean." She raised the curtain and took a liberal bite of the apple—so nonchalantly that I ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... in justice. An old woman full of lamentation, led us to the sick couch, where lay a creature, beautiful in shape as a houri. The Frank physician was desired by the old woman to feel her pulse through the curtain, but he laughed at her beard (for she had no small one), and drew aside the curtains and took hold of a hand so small and so delicate, that it were only fit to feed the Prophet himself near the throne of the angel Gabriel, with the immortal pilau prepared for true believers. Her ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... in his ears, and the murderous combat brought a restlessness that pleased him. But human nature is strange—passing strange. At intervals he was mild and gentle. Standing upon the battlefield, when night had drawn her silvery curtain over the ghastly and hideous spectacle, when the booming shot and frightful discord—the shriek, the groan, the shout, and ceaseless rush of angered men were passed away, he had looked round upon the cold and bloody scene, and wept—his sternness ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... The curtain was at last drawn up, the day before yesterday, and discovered the new actors together with some of the old ones. I do not name them to you, because to-morrow's Gazette will do it full as well ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... people care to encounter. . . . One might fancy that the tide of life was stemmed by Mr. Jasper's own Gatehouse. The murmur of the tide is heard beyond; but no wave passes the archway, over which his lamp burns red behind the curtain, as if the building were a ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... fair lady, for the false, The fickle love's rememberance, What though another claim the waltz— The curtain soon will ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton
... centered. Shut that eye, and you had the features and expression of an ordinary man; cover up those features, and the eye shone out like Eblis's own. Nature had apparently observed this too, and had, by a paralysis of the nerve, ironically dropped the corner of the upper lid over it like a curtain, laughed at her handiwork, and turned him loose to ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... every moment. He was terrified at first upon general principles, as any other boy of eleven years old would have been. Then he was afraid that the Indians would by some accident, lean something against the curtain of small roots between two other big trees, and that the curtain might not be strong enough to support it, in which event their hiding-place would be discovered at once. He was afraid, too, that some slight ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... arrangement of the chandeliers, as bright as rows of gas-jets, amongst the hangings of the friezes. A huge canvas at the back represented a sunlit Indian landscape, and in the enormous space between the lowered curtain and the scenery, some black spots seemed as if dancing, strange silhouettes of the visitors in their dress clothes, standing out clearly against the yellow background like the shadows ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... still burning. He thought it was Phoebe, the maid, going to bed; and with no very gracious feelings towards her for having deprived him of his own night's rest, he was wishing that she might have the toothache or something else to keep her awake, when suddenly through the white window curtain he perceived a broad light in the room—it increased every moment—and he saw the figure of a female rush past it, and attempt to open the window—the drawing of the curtains showed him that the room was on fire. A moment's thought, and he ran for the ladder ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... voice, though the voice was a shriek. I remember that I broke forth with words like these—"I do not fear, my soul does not fear"; and at the same time I found the strength to rise. Still in that profound gloom I rushed to one of the windows—tore aside the curtain—flung open the shutters; my first thought was—LIGHT.—And when I saw the moon high, clear, and calm, I felt a joy that almost compensated for the previous terror. There was the moon, there was also the light from the gas-lamps in the deserted slumberous street. ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... said Maurice, thoughtfully. He was thinking of Mademoiselle of the Veil and her prophecy of ravens. "I don't know that I shall be able. It is my opinion that your part in the affair is only a curtain-raiser to graver things. Every one of importance in town goes about with an air of expectancy. I never saw anything like it. It is the king, the archbishop and the chancellor against two hundred thousand. You're a soldier; ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... imaginative fervour as "a psalm," "a fairy-tale," and "an aurora borealis." They none of them ever agreed as to the dress she wore that evening; but Eliza Thick, who was perhaps the most observant, declared that it looked like a chintz curtain. I think it must have had small sprigs of flowers printed on it. Her eyes, exclaimed the broken-hearted gas-man, were like "a twilight with only two stars." Perhaps he meant a street with ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... the new theatre, in my time, made the greatest noise; in which his curtain, when it was still quite new, had certainly an uncommonly charming effect. Oeser had taken the Muses out of the clouds, upon which they usually hover on such occasions, and set them upon the earth. The statues ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... with that wonderful presence of mind she was destined to preserve in the most difficult crises of her future life, thrust the young man against the carved back of her bed, and concealed him completely beneath the ample curtain: she then signed to Cancha to go forward and meet the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Rosemary hung up a calico curtain across the one bedroom, so that Annie-Many-Ponies might have a corner to call her own. She stayed; and Luck rewrote two reels of his scenario so that there should be a place in it for a beautiful Indian girl who rode like a whirlwind and did not know the meaning of fear, ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... I thought it vast in extent; though Herman Mordaunt assured me it was no great things, in that point of view, as compared with most of the playhouses at home. But the ornaments, and the lights, and the curtain, the pit, the boxes the gallery, were all so many objects of intense interest. Few of us said anything; but our eyes wandered over all with a species of delight, that I am certain can be felt in a theatre only once. Anneke's sweet face was a picture of youthful expectation; an expectation, ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... lift the curtain From the antedating ages and uncertain When what is was not, and tides of pristine being Beat on shores forgot, and ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... we watched him—Hubba sitting on the table's edge, and I standing by him—a leathern curtain that went across a door at the upper end of the hall was pulled aside, and a lady came into the place. Stately and tall, with wondrous black hair, was this maiden, and I knew that this must be that Osritha of whom the ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... like Ambition to distinguish himself in a noisy manner, partly by Vociferation or talking loud, and partly by his bodily Agility. This was a very lusty Fellow, but withal a sort of Beau, who getting into one of the Side-boxes on the Stage before the Curtain drew, was disposed to shew the whole Audience his Activity by leaping over the Spikes; he pass'd from thence to one of the entering Doors, where he took Snuff with a tolerable good Grace, display'd his fine Cloaths, made two ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... through all the corridors and halls of the temple, and the god and Ramses had returned to the chamber of repose, the curtain concealing the sacred boat slipped apart and the beautiful child ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... his people. "It is well." And with a reverent inclination of his head, he walked away. Margarita, still dawdling surlily over her work in Father Salvierderra's room, heard Alessandro's voice, and running to discover to whom he was speaking, caught these last, words. Peering from behind a curtain, she saw the look with which he said them; saw also the expression on ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... his chair. He supposed that he had imagined the whole thing. He had not seen anything definitely; he had merely felt that eyes were watching him; what had seemed a figure across deck might have been the oil coat hanging on a peg or a curtain blowing out of a window. The more he thought over the matter the more assured was he that he had allowed his imaginings to make a fool of him. And by the time the sun flooded the decks next morning he was ready to ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... hysterics. Kitty tore off the scribbles, not the least sign of laughter in her eyes, and sought the window-seat in the living-room. There was one word which stood out strangely alien: haberdasher. Why that word? Was it a corner of the curtain she had been striving to look behind? Had Thomas been a haberdasher prior to his stewardship? And was ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... stopped him. In the eyes of the old man was the strained serious look that always a little frightened David. At such times Jesse Bentley's eyes did not look straight ahead but wavered and seemed to be looking at nothing. Something like an invisible curtain appeared to have come between the man and all the rest of the world. "I want you to come with me," he said briefly, and his eyes looked over the boy's head into the sky. "We have something important to do today. You may bring the bag ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... played the opening bars of the martial music. With the first notes the vast audience rose. I looked up at the row of wounded leaning heavily against the rail, their eyes fixed and staring on the curtain. I noticed the officers in the boxes, their eyes glistening. I heard a convulsive catch in the throats of persons about me. Then ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... they might affirm this relationship as often as they wished: the only thing that was interesting him just at that time was a certain knee that was seeking his under the table, transmitting its gentle warmth through a double curtain of silk. ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... scarcely move my arms, convinced as I was that I was in my death agony, and somewhat afraid, I must admit, at having succeeded in playing such a nasty trick on Perrin. But my surprise was great when the curtain fell at the close of the piece and I got up quickly to answer to the call and bow to the audience without languor, without fainting, feeling strong enough to go through my part again if it ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... applause, white gloves clapping, heads shaking. The noise was strange and rattling. What a curious multiple object a theatre-audience was! It seemed to have a million heads, a million hands, and one monstrous, unnatural consciousness. The singers appeared before the curtain—the applause rose up ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... is to support the infantry. It does this in three ways: 1st, By firing at the hostile infantry. 2d, By putting out of action the hostile artillery so that it cannot fire at the infantry. 3d, By demolishing the obstacles in front of the enemy's works. It smothers the enemy with a curtain of fire, so that the infantry can move forward without ruinous losses. Cooeperation with the infantry is essential. If the infantry is defeated the artillery covers its withdrawal; if the infantry is successful the artillery moves forward and assists in reaping the full reward ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... He drew aside the curtain of the shibrayah gingerly, as if he expected a trick mechanism that might explode a ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... her for the beautiful Tree," shouted the children, craning their necks away from the portrait to get a glimpse of the curtain-veiled Tree in the other room. "Please can't we have ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... scriptural meaning of the word. Indeed, it is marvelous how any man who is familiar with his Bible, and knows that the Scriptures usually describe the sky by metaphors conveying the very opposite ideas to those of solidity or permanence—as, "stretched out like a curtain," "spread abroad like a tent to dwell in," "folded up like a vesture," and the like—should allow himself to be imposed on by the impudent falsehood of Voltaire, that the Bible teaches us that the sky is a solid metallic or ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... Quality Street. Now and again ladies pass in their pattens, a maid perhaps protecting them with an umbrella, for flakes of snow are falling discreetly. Gentlemen in the street are an event; but, see, just as we raise the curtain, there goes the recruiting sergeant to remind us that we are in the period of the Napoleonic wars. If he were to look in at the window of the blue and white room all the ladies there assembled would draw themselves up; they know him for a rude fellow who smiles at the approach of maiden ...
— Quality Street - A Comedy • J. M. Barrie
... own generation—the acts of contemporary patriots—now claim our attention; but we are reluctant as yet to turn over the page, and drop the curtain on the scenes with which we have hitherto been dealing, and which we feel we have inadequately described. We have spoken of the men whose speeches from the dock are on record, but we still linger over the history of the events in which they shared, ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... dinner-waggons, and a frame against the wall from which, by means of clips, churchwarden pipes depended stem downwards; and by each clip was a label bearing a name. On the table stood an enormous jar of tobacco. A number of ill-washed glasses decorated the dinner-waggons. There was not a curtain, not a blind, not a picture. The further end of the room away from the door contained a huge fireplace, and on the wooden mantelpiece ticked a ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... Doctor. 'God forbid! May she live to laugh at it, as long as she CAN laugh, and then say, with the French wit, "The farce is ended; draw the curtain."' ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... the backward swing of the chair, overturned and quenched. The splintering of glass mingled its small sound with an ominous thud in the thick darkness. It was the end of all things; the falling of an impenetrable curtain over a horror half sensed, yet all the ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... or pierced by oily, writhing dykes that blazed with metallic scintillations. Anon came some yawning cleft or an assemblage of dizzy rock-needles, fused into whimsical tints and attitudes, spiky, distorted, over-toppling; then a bold tufa rampart, immaculate in its beauty, stainless as a curtain of silk. And as the boat moved on he looked into horrid dells which the rains had torn out of the loose scoriae. Gaping wounds, they wore the bright hues of corruption. Their flanks were blotched with a livid nitrous efflorescence, with flaring sulphur, unhealthy verdure ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... season of peace, Return, sweet Evening, and continue long! Methinks I see thee in the streaky west, With matron-step slow moving, while the night Treads on thy sweeping train; one hand employed In letting fall the curtain of repose On bird and beast, the other charged for man With sweet oblivion of the cares of day; Not sumptuously adorned, nor needing aid, Like homely-featured night, of clustering gems, A star or two just twinkling on thy brow ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... as in slight reluctance to say; then the curtain, which he saw about to rise, came to his aid. "I'll tell you next time." But when the next time came he only said he'd tell her later on—after they should have left the theatre; for she had immediately reverted to their topic, and ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... the next scene in that drama of death was to be the last; and, judging from his experience of the one already played, he felt keenly apprehensive as to the result. He had been fully aware, before the curtain fell upon the first act, that his life could then have been taken; and, conscious of a certain inferiority to his antagonist, he now felt cowed, and ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... who cannot be brought to believe that an English gentleman will pursue a course of policy, as the governor of a colony, which the Queen of England has too much good sense to assume, even if she could do it, in the United Kingdom. Indeed, if a glance is taken behind the curtain, English statesmen will be noticed to have been liberal and well inclined towards the colonists, and have only erred when purposely misled by those whom they had appointed to places of which it was and is a ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... rise and fringed about its edge by even blacker shadows. And above it danced a million fire-flies weaving ceaselessly to and fro, waving their soft lanterns. They hung, a cloud of twinkling radiance, upon a soft black curtain. ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... struggle in the hollow. The curtain of vines was torn, the boughs of a sumach bent and broken, the fallen leaves groun underfoot. In one place there was ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... and great mountains, and the glorious colour effects which prevail in spring and autumn, would fascinate the least imaginative; partly mysterious, with the Great Barrier knocking at your door, and the smoke of Erebus by day and the curtain of Aurora by night; partly the associations of the place—the old hut, the old landmarks, so familiar to those who know the history of the Discovery Expedition, the stakes in the snow, the holes for which ice was dug to water the ship, Vince's ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... with respect to their being before the earth, or any visible creature. "In the beginning God created the heavens" (Gen 1:1), &c. Neither do I think that the heavens were made of that confused chaos that afterwards we read of. It is said, he stretched out the heavens as a curtain, and with his hand he hath spanned the heavens (Psa 104:2; Isa 40:22; 48:13).; intimating, that they were not taken out of that formless heap, but were immediately formed by his power. Besides, the Holy Ghost, treating of the creating of heaven and earth, he only saith, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... an open carriage, for I would rather have been assassinated at once than have lived in the constant fear of being so. I afterwards made a descent on the Isle of Capri, which succeeded. I attempted one against Sicily, and am curtain it would have also been successful had the Emperor fulfilled his promise of sending the Toulon fleet to second my operations; but he issued contrary orders: he enacted Mazarin, and unshed me to play the part ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... become larger, and at last merge into the ciliary or accommodation muscle of the eye. The circular space thus left in front by the termination of the choroid is occupied by the iris, a thin, circular curtain, suspended in the aqueous humor behind the cornea and in front of the crystalline lens. In its center is a round opening for ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... shouted back. "I'll be ready in five minutes;" and out of bed he crept, sleepy and confused, into the chilly air of the little room. He had no matches, but there was a short curtain before the window, and when he pulled it back the moonlight came faintly in—enough for him to distinguish the few objects in the room. He dared not attempt to wash, he was so afraid of being late. He managed to get out his oldest pair of trousers, and hurried on his ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... the wall is beginning to rise above the rubbish and the debris; we must build a home for the new-found joy, even if as yet it only sings drowsily and faintly within our hearts, like the awaking bird in the dewy thicket, when the fingers of the dawn begin to raise the curtain of ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the Christ within. But some time after, when A. T. was married, and had a Son, he told me that Raffaelle was all right: that no Man's face was so solemn as a Child's, full of Wonder. He said one morning that he watched his Babe 'worshipping the Sunbeam on the Bedpost and Curtain.' I risk telling you this again for the sake of the Holy Ground you are ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... door opened, and one of her brothers put in his head. At once Amina began to scream and roll herself in the window curtain. "A man in the harem! Oh! oh! oh! Were there no slippers at the door?" And her screaming brought Lucy awake ...
— Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... heard Little Arthur sigh so pitifully. It was those sensitive eyes we looked for in the sleeping-car windows, and all in vain. I think I saw the wealth of clustering ringlets, or at least the makings of it. I am almost positive I saw curl-papers as the curtain ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... which one can but draw a curtain, and stand "eyes front". Look this way, look that, what answer is there, what reason, what explanation, of the hidden martyrdoms of the work-a-day world, which the blank wall of heaven seems to ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... and thinking of Aurora, he forgot where he was, till the dismal howling of wood-dogs deep in the forest woke him. It was almost pitch dark under the tall beeches, the highest of the trees preventing the beams of the moon from illuminating the path till later in the night. Like a curtain the thick foliage above shut out the sky, so that no star was visible. When the wood-dogs ceased there was no sound beyond the light fall of the horse's hoofs as he walked upon the grass. Darkness and silence prevailed; he ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... I saw a curtain move at that window on the left a while ago," commented Astro, "and all ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... the things for the meals—the table, the pots and pans, and the sideboard; at the other end was the bedroom. In a corner stood Mother Barberin's big bed, in the opposite corner, in a little alcove, was my bed under a red figured curtain. ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... obliged to lend us a Part of their Tongue before we can know how they are Conquered? They must be made accessory to their own Disgrace, as the Britons were formerly so artificially wrought in the Curtain of the Roman Theatre, that they seemed to draw it up in order to give the Spectators an Opportunity of seeing their own Defeat celebrated upon the Stage: For so Mr. Dryden has translated ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... will do for that part. But it's the other part of it—the soul of the thing. These men, lots of them, are but little more than boys—big, strong, strapping fellows with the whole of life before them. And they are—blind. Whichever way they turn a big black curtain shuts them in. And it's those four black curtains that I want you to paint. I want you to give them something to look at, something to think of, something to live for. And you can do it. And when you have done it, you'll find ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... measurement between the angles of the two southern bastions is 123 feet, and that of the curtain wall connecting these bastions is 78 feet. Some curious relics have been found in the fort,—among others, a steel mill for making wafers for the Host. It was found in 1848, in a remarkable state of preservation, and is now in an English ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... Mr. Peaess; "you can do nothing now—the curtain has been up these ten minutes; Horatio and Marcellus are coming off, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various
... reach us. Then the glory of the roses would burst upon us, and we looked up from them to the flowering orange trees. Wherever there was a stretch of meadow, violets and daisies and buttercups ran through the grass. Plowed land was sprinkled with mustard and poppies. The olive had been like a curtain. When it lifted as we drew near, we forgot that there ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... and went and laid itself down at the Morgue. But for this I will not vouch. Only of this be sure. 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy.' More and more the light peeps through the chinks. Soon, amidst music ravishing, the curtain will rise, and the glorious scene be displayed. Adieu! Remember me. Ha! 'tis dawn," Pinto said. And ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in the shape of a verandah to relieve its formality. Behind its front railings there were no trim laurel bushes—only an uncomfortable bed of equal parts of mould and broken red tiles, in which a withered juniper was dying hard; at the windows were no bright curtain-folds or hanging baskets of trailing fern to give a touch of colour, but dusty wire blinds and hangings ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... pocketed it all, thanking them in a low voice, with his surly mien, but with a look that was for the first time smiling and affectionate. Then he climbed into his berth, drew the curtain, and lay quiet, thinking over his affairs. With this money he would be able to purchase some good food on board, after having suffered for lack of bread for two years; he could buy a jacket as soon as he landed in Genoa, after having gone about clad ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... they were,—but for the agony of the recollection that rushed upon him. He would have gone staggering out of the pavilion to seek the remains of his Clorinda, and save them from the wolves; but his friends told him they were at hand, under the curtain of his own tent. A gleam of pleasure shot across his face, and be staggered into the chamber; but when he beheld the body gored with his own hand, and the face, calm indeed, but calm like a pale night without stars, he trembled so, that ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... of junction of that coat with the sclerotic by a thickened edge—the ciliary processes. At the line of junction of the sclerotic and cornea the iris passes across the interior of the eye. This (which may be viewed as a dependency of the choroid) is a muscular curtain perforated by an aperture termed the pupil. The retina will be recognized as a delicate, glassy layer, lining the ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... tremendous account of the doings of one gale? And let it be observed that we have lifted only one corner of the curtain and revealed the battlefield of only one small portion of our far-reaching coasts. What is to be said of the other parts of our shores during that same wild storm? It would take volumes instead of chapters to give the thrilling incidents of disaster and heroism in full ...
— Battles with the Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... half mast the rest of that day, and minute guns were fired at sunset. And there was something sad and solemn in the dull, booming sound as it echoed and reechoed over that broad and mysterious sea. And when night came, and drew a dark curtain around the ship, and her timbers murmured and complained, and every sail stood out in shadow against the clear sky, and the surface of the water seemed alive with sprites, flitting and dancing here and there, groups of sorrowing ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... the wall in a strained and uncomfortable attitude. He rushed forward and seized it in his arms, when, to his horror, the head slipped off and rolled on the floor, the body assumed a recumbent posture, and he found himself clasping a white dimity bed-curtain, with a sweeping-brush, a kitchen cleaver, and a hollow turnip lying at his feet! Unable to understand this curious transformation, he clutched the placard with feverish haste, and there, in the grey morning light, he read these ...
— The Canterville Ghost • Oscar Wilde
... extinguishment in the ocean. At the same time, the hull of the vessel and every projecting point in the coast-line of the bay stood out in relief against the bright emerald-green tint of the sea. A moment afterwards, the darkness of night descended suddenly upon us like a vast curtain ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... hills in shades of red and brown; and, fearful that man, who is inclined to overlook nearby joys and pleasures for more distant and less certain ones, might overlook the familiar hills, even though freshly painted, hides her far-off attractions with a hazy curtain. ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... did so the slender erectness of that figure in advance, the square set of the broad shoulders, the easy air of authority with which he cleared the way. Without ceremony Farnham flung aside a heavy brocaded curtain, glancing inquiringly into the smaller room thus revealed. It contained a square table and half a dozen chairs. Three men sat within, their feet elevated, quietly smoking. The gambler coolly ran his ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... that same shore line, but the people had vanished. There was only the thick, steamy mist, the tropic jungle crowding down to the shore, and the waves rolling in monotonously from the waste of gray ocean beyond the curtain ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... himself, "'Tis well! I will indeed gladden thee, O Accurst." Then he turned and espied a street which was no thoroughfare, and one of its houses at the upper end adjoined the tenement wherein was his bride; so he went up to it and behold, its gateway showed a curtain drawn across and a lamp hung up and an Eunuch sitting upon the door-bench. Now this was the mansion of a certain noble who was lord over a thousand of his peers and his name was the Emir Yunas:[FN155] he was an angry man and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... of fair size, fully equipped with all the tools of the trade, the walls blackened by smoke, the earthen floor littered with debris, a leathern apron hanging over the anvil. A curtain drawn aside formed a smaller, separate apartment, with puncheon floor, lighted by a small window through which a gleam of sun fell. I caught therein glimpse of a bunk full of disarranged blankets, a straight-back chair, and a small table, ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... struggle brings defeat Because Fate holds no prize to crown success; 65 That all the oracles are dumb or cheat Because they have no secret to express; That none can pierce the vast black veil uncertain Because there is no light beyond the curtain; That all ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson
... off by a ridge covered with herbaceous vegetation;—but to the south-west it is open, over a gorge of which both sides are shrouded in sombre green-crests of trees forming a solid curtain against the sun. Beyond the outer and lower cliff valley-surfaces appear miles away, flinging up broad gleams of cane-gold; further off greens disappear into blues, and the fantastic masses of Carbet loom up far higher than before. St. Pierre, in a curve of the coast, ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... cupolas of Quebec, there is a fertile area of meadow and cornfield stretching from Dorchester bridge to the deep ravine and Falls over which the Montmorency, La Vache, hangs its milk-white curtain of spray. On the river shore, in 1759, stood Montcalm's earth and field works of defence. Parallel to them and distant about half a mile, the highway, over which H.R.H. Prince Edward's equipage pranced daily, during the summers of 1791-3, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... poisoned at the end in the most admirably retributive fashion. There are actually two villains—a pomp and prodigality (for your villain is a more difficult person than your hero) very unusual—one of whom is despatched at the end of the second volume and the other at the actual curtain. There is the proper persecuting minister—Louvois in this case. There are valiant and comic non-commissioned officers. There is a brave, witty, and generous Count; a lover of the "fatal" and ill-fated ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... was the bed nearest the window. The curtains were all drawn round it except the half curtain at the bottom, on the side of the bed furthest from the window. Arthur saw the feet of the sleeping man raising the scanty clothes into a sharp little eminence, as if he was lying flat on his back. He took the candle, ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... really mend that rent in the curtain tomorrow," she said anxiously, inspecting it as if it were the only thing of any importance just then. "Those curtains have not worn as well as they should, considering the price I paid. Dear me, Charlotta has forgotten to dust the stair railing AGAIN. I really ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... in the most elevated part of the town. From a gallery we could survey at once the summit of the Silla, the serrated ridge of the Galipano, and the charming valley of the Guayra, the rich culture of which was pleasingly contrasted with the gloomy curtain of the surrounding mountains. It was in the dry season, and to improve the pasturage, the savannahs and the turf covering the steepest rocks were set on fire. These vast conflagrations, viewed from a distance, produce the most singular effects of light. Wherever ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... said the prince, addressing the whole company, and not looking at any one in particular; 'you know, Verzhembitskaya must be called before the curtain to-night.' ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... A curtain hung across the door of the inner chamber, through which Philammon could hear plainly the steps of some one walking up and down ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... very like the Lady of Greifenstein. The stage was always set; the scenery was always of the best and newest; the vacant boxes and the yawning pit were brilliantly lighted; the costumes were by the best makers; the stage manager was punctual and in his place; the curtain went up every day for the performance; but Frau von Greifenstein's theatre was silent and untenanted, not a voice broke the stillness, not a rustle of garments or a flutter of a programme in a spectator's hand made the silence less intense, not an echo of ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... Maggie entered, smiling to me as she did so; her left hand lingered fondly for a moment on her father's grey locks, then she sat down unbidden to the piano. My own face was partially shaded by the window curtain, so that I could study that of my fair cousin as she played without appearing rude. Was she beautiful? that was the question I asked myself, and was trying hard to answer. Every feature of her face was faultless, her mouth and ears were small, she had a wealth of ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... but she could not sleep. A full moon strained its rays through the tattered curtain, and as it climbed, she watched the panel of light on the wall opposite steal down past a text above the washstand, past the washstand itself, to the bare flooring. "God is love" said the text, and Molly had paid a pedlar twopence for it, ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... very much ashamed of himself, when, to his surprise, instead of receiving tickets in return, he heard a loud exclamation behind the wall, followed by a confused sound of scuffling, and the hole suddenly disappeared. The next moment a little bell tinkled, and the wall rose slowly before them like a curtain, carrying the trees with it apparently, and he and the Goblin were left standing in a large open space paved ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... the welcome, and the introductory remarks passed rapidly as the pull at two sides of a curtain opening on a scene that stiffens ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... down my pen, "you are a prophet in disguise, the prophet sent to lift the curtain which is before my eyes. Which way shall I go to find these real men and real women, to look upon these tragic happenings? For Heaven's sake direct me. Where, for instance, does ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to which led five steps of silver, and on its right and on its left were many chairs of gold and silver. Quoth Tohfah, "The Shaykh led me to the estrade and seated me on a chair of gold beside the throne, and over the dais was a curtain let down, gold and silver wrought and broidered with pearls and jewels." And she was amazed at that which she beheld in that place and magnified her Lord (extolled and exalted be He!) and hallowed Him. Then the kings of the Jann came up to that throne ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... know if I can give any kind of freshness to these words, but I wish to try. To begin with, I notice the highly-imaginative and picturesque form into which the Apostle casts his thoughts here. He, as it were, draws back a curtain, and lets us see two royal figures, which are eternally opposed and dividing the dominion between them. Then he shows us the issues to which these two rulers respectively conduct their subjects; and the question that is trembling on his lips is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... my earliest youth I dreamed in hues volcanic. I saw each day open Like a curtain of flame. Black slaves attended My waking moments; Three ebony slaves Washed sleep from my white body. Three ebony slaves Around my ivory smoothness Folded heavy robes Of crimson and white. And as I issued forth Into the blue vault of the daylight ...
— Spectra - A Book of Poetic Experiments • Arthur Ficke
... a kind of joyful frenzy, and ran about the room grasping at everything that happened to be in his way. He seized one of the bed-posts, and it became immediately a fluted golden pillar. He pulled aside a window-curtain in order to admit a clear spectacle of the wonders which he was performing; and the tassel grew heavy in his hand—a mass of gold. He took up a book from the table. At this first touch, it assumed the appearance of such a splendidly-bound and gilt-edged volume as one often meets ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... seen in the infrequency with which, in philosophical literature, metaphysical questions are discussed directly and on their own merits. Almost always they are handled as if through a heavy woolen curtain, the veil of previous philosophers' opinions. Alternatives are wrapped in proper names, as if it were indecent for a truth to go naked. The late Professor John Grote of Cambridge has some good remarks about this. 'Thought,' he says,'is not a professional matter, not something for ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... saw, was a kind of nymph, her spread drapery forming the receptacle. "I must get one of those," he thought. "I wonder what they cost." Then he puffed violently again. The doctor had risen and was pacing the cabin floor slowly over by the red curtain that concealed the bunk. O'Malley absent-mindedly watched him, and as he did so the words he had heard kept on roaring at the ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... limestone, veined and dappled with colours which melted into each other with every possible variety of colour. On the summit of the cave were three festoons, or rather wrinkles, in the rock, run up parallel like the folds of a curtain when it is drawn up. Each of these was hung with icicles of various length, and nearly in the middle of the festoon in the deepest valley of the waves that ran parallel to each other, the stream shot from the rows of icicles ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... visit the lodge-gates of Newcome Park the moon shining on their carving? Is there any pleasure in walking by miles of grey paling, and endless palisades of firs? Oh, you fool, what do you hope to see behind that curtain? Absurd fugitive, whither would you run? Can you burst the tether of fate: and is not poor dear little Rosey Mackenzie sitting yonder waiting for you by the stake? Go home, sir; and don't catch cold. So Mr. Clive returns to the King's Arms, and goes up to his bedroom, and he hears ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... word and therefore immoral. Bell objected from the bottom of his silly soul that Lady Macbeth should soil her mouth with it. "Blanket of the dark," he says, "is an expression greatly below our author. Curtain is evidently better." "Was the hope drunk wherein you dressed yourself?" Whereat Bell again complains that Lady Macbeth is "unnecessarily indelicate." "Though this tragedy," says Bell, "must be allowed a very noble composition, it is highly reprehensible for exhibiting the ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... care to follow me to my stage-box, I imagine he will hardly see the curtain rise upon just the Venice of his dreams—the Venice of Byron, of Rogers, and Cooper; or upon the Venice of his prejudices—the merciless Venice of Daru, and of the historians who follow him. But I still hope that he will be pleased with the Venice he sees; and will ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... for no one of real interest lived in the humble dwellings which lined it. To the left was the front of her own house at right angles to the strategic window, and with regard to that a good many useful observations might be, and were, made. She could, from behind a curtain negligently half-drawn across the side of the window nearest the house, have an eye on her housemaid at work, and notice if she leaned out of a window, or made remarks to a friend passing in the street, or waved salutations with a duster. Swift upon such discoveries, she would execute a flank ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... before this crisis of the engagement that the curtain of night had enveloped the scene; but instead of this circumstance abating the fury of war, which had now completely drenched the field with the blood of the combatants, the rage of battle appeared only to increase as the night advanced. Still ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... may state that I have had personal knowledge of all the negociations and questions at issue above referred to, and I can only declare that I have confined myself to facts; these will stand out in a much clearer light when the curtain is raised and the events of the last two years in this sorely afflicted part of the ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... did not recoil, but before entering the shop he was not sorry to have an opportunity to reconnoitre. He approached cautiously, and peered through the window at a place where a rent in the curtain allowed him some view of the interior. Behind the counter a woman who looked some fifty years of age was seated, mending a soiled dress by the light of a smoking lamp. She was short and very stout. She seemed literally weighed down, and puffed out by an unwholesome ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... could not see more than a few hundred yards. I hired a boat for myself, and I pulled after them. I could see the blur of their craft, but they were going nearly as fast as I, and they must have been a long mile from the shore before I caught them up. The haze was like a curtain all round us, and there were we three in the middle of it. My God, shall I ever forget their faces when they saw who was in the boat that was closing in upon them? She screamed out. He swore like a madman and jabbed at me with an oar, ...
— The Adventure of the Cardboard Box • Arthur Conan Doyle
... But* I to you be all so good and true, *unless As ever was wife since the world was new; And but* I be to-morrow as fair to seen, *unless As any lady, emperess or queen, That is betwixt the East and eke the West Do with my life and death right as you lest.* *please Cast up the curtain, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... cathedral, and from Betsey Trotwood's domain we get a view of the chalk cliffs and downs at Dover. A happy conceit throws shadow pictures of the principal characters upon a sheet as they cross the stage just before the first curtain rises.—MATTHEW WHITE, JR., ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... it is of no use even to think of it.' And taking off his hat," slightly raising his hat, as salutation and finale, "he retired precipitately behind the curtain of the interior corner of the tent," says the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... while a child, and now An amorous youth; then for a season turned Into the wealthy householder: then stripped Of all his riches, with decrepit limbs And wrinkled frame man creeps towards the end Of life's erratic course and like an actor Passes behind Death's curtain ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... mediocrity; they are the verses, in fact, of a very clever man. It is when his cleverness is out of its depth, that he most palpably fails. A human being by Voltaire bears the same relation to a real human being that stage scenery bears to a real landscape; it can only be looked at from in front. The curtain rises, and his villains and his heroes, his good old men and his exquisite princesses, display for a moment their one thin surface to the spectator; the curtain falls, and they are all put back into their box. The glance ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... a few days gave me a clearer idea than I had ever had what it is to be blinded suddenly, helplessly. With a little stretch of the imagination I knew then what it must be when the great curtain shuts out suddenly the light of day, the stars, and the firmament itself. I see the blind man's eyes strain for the light, as he fearfully tries to walk his old rounds, until the unchanging blank that everywhere spreads before him stamps the reality of the dark ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... disclosed their silver linings, and over the whole earth there spread a broad smile, as if the hypocritical performance had been part of the original deception. I am confident now that it was, for that brief drenching of trees and sward was almost the last noticeable preparation before the curtain rose. The next day there was a deep, unbroken quiet across our piece of world, as if a fragment of eternity had been quietly slipped into the place of one of our brief, noisy days. The trees stood motionless, ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... deep trance of shadow, felt no throb To such soft wooing answer: thro' its dream Brown rivers of deep waters sunless stole; Small creeks sprang from its mosses, and amaz'd, Like children in a wigwam curtain'd close Above the great, dead, heart of some red chief, Slipp'd on soft feet, swift stealing through the gloom, Eager for light and for the frolic winds. In this shrill moon the scouts of winter ran From the ice-belted north, and whistling shafts Struck maple and struck sumach—and ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... do not suspect the wealth under my feet; that there is as good as a mine under me wherever I go. How many pickerel are poised on easy fin fathoms below the loaded wain. The revolution of the seasons must be a curious phenomenon to them. At length the sun and wind brush aside their curtain, and they see ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... of our position, that we can not positively assert a future active in the indicative mood. Try and form to yourselves a phrase by which it can be done. Should you succeed, you would violate a law of nature. You would penetrate the dark curtain of the future, and claim to yourself what you do not possess, a power to declare future actions. Prophets, by the help of the Almighty, had this power conferred upon them. But in the revelation of the sublime truths they ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... strolled over its tesselated acres, he was the first person she encountered. She had not been one of the superior tourists who are "disappointed" in Saint Peter's and find it smaller than its fame; the first time she passed beneath the huge leathern curtain that strains and bangs at the entrance, the first time she found herself beneath the far-arching dome and saw the light drizzle down through the air thickened with incense and with the reflections of marble and gilt, of mosaic and bronze, her conception of greatness rose and dizzily rose. ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... revolution had been in a social sense. It was impossible to tell to what class in pre-revolutionary days any particular member of the audience had belonged. I was struck by the new smartness of the boy officers of the Red Army, of whom a fair number were present. As we waited for the curtain to rise, I thought how the mental attitude of the people had changed. A year ago, we lived with exhilaration or despair on a volcano which might any day erupt and sweep away the new life before any one had become accustomed to live ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... the Soviets have run into increasing difficulties. Their hostile policies have awakened stern resistance among free men throughout the world. And behind the Iron Curtain the Soviet rule of force has created growing political and economic stresses ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... balcony. MRS. CARLEY, on balcony, calls, "Here comes DICK!" GEORGIANA hesitates and then goes close to the window. She stands in a chair so as to see over the others' heads, hidden behind the curtain of the half-open window, and watches. The music is louder as they pass under the balcony; a flag is seen almost on level with the balcony floor. Those on the balcony wave and shout, and shouts are heard in ...
— Her Own Way - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... compelled for months, one after another, to direct a brainless farce? Of course the people lumped together in the technical term as "the front of the house" have a remedy, and after the first night or two only appear in the auditorium when the curtain is down, or, to be more accurate, just before it descends, when all hands are expected ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... right of the window was a door covered with a plush curtain. Mrs. Wilton sat down near the table and watched this door. She thought it must be through it that the soothsayer would come forth. She laid her hands listlessly one on top of the other on the table. This must be the tenth seer ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... forces of matter to operate, thy making work went on. Thou didst produce, O Spirit! the sun and moon and five planets, and pure and beautiful was their light. The vault of heaven was spread out like a curtain, and the square earth supported all on it, and all creatures were happy. I, thy servant, presume reverently to thank Thee." Farther on he says: "All the numerous tribes of animated beings are indebted to Thy favor for their being. ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... first thing of significance to him, as has been said, is movement. The first attempts of the infant at anything like steady attention are directed to moving things—a swaying curtain, a moving light, a stroking touch, etc. And further than this, the moving things soon become more than objects of curiosity; these things are just the things that affect him with pleasure or pain. It is movement that brings ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... York, I was taken by Mr. James Gordon Bennett to Niblo's Garden, where I saw "The Black Crook." We witnessed the performance from a private box and my breath was fairly taken away when the curtain went up on the fifth act. Needless to say, that was the first time I had ever witnessed a musical show and I thought it the most wonderful spectacle ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... be in the position of the manager of a country theatre who, just as the curtain is about to be drawn up, is obliged to come forward and announce that the amateur gentleman who had solicited the part of Macbeth, who had attended all the rehearsals, and whose only difficulty, which was about money, seemed to be in a ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... now New Year's Day. The theatre was closed, and only a half- blind porter sat at the entrance to the stage, on which there was not a soul. I stole past him with beating heart, got between the movable scenes and the curtain, and advanced to the open part of the stage. Here I fell down upon my knees, but not a single verse for declamation could I recall to my memory. I then said aloud the Lord's Prayer, and went out with the persuasion, that because I had spoken from the stage on New Year's Day, I should in the ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... revelations that awaited her. She had long had a curiosity to know what "Bohemia" meant, and now she expected to find out. They were nowhere near their own crowd. In fact, she couldn't see Elise or Mona, though Philip was visible between some rickety armour and a tattered curtain. Very handsome he looked, too, his dark, and just now gloomy, face thrown into relief by ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... house was ornamented as a theatre, and I thought it vast in extent; though Herman Mordaunt assured me it was no great things, in that point of view, as compared with most of the playhouses at home. But the ornaments, and the lights, and the curtain, the pit, the boxes the gallery, were all so many objects of intense interest. Few of us said anything; but our eyes wandered over all with a species of delight, that I am certain can be felt in a theatre only once. Anneke's sweet face was a picture of youthful ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... "Queer, that curtain of fog that seems to lie on the actual site of the south pole," he continued, glancing over the report again. "So Storm thinks that Tommy crashed in it, and that it's a million to one against their ever finding his remains. What's this about beetles? ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... hand, Publius with white head and upraised hands blessing them, Nero, a mangled corpse, Nattalis in his dying agonies persecuted by the vindictive Rufa, and Galba hailed as Caesar by the assembled Romans. So, upon a magnificent tableau, slowly falls the lawny curtain. ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... solitude. It came to him almost as a shock to realize that things were happening in the world round about him quite as heroic, in the eyes of the High Gods, as the battle between Sypher's Cure and Jebusa Jones's Cuticle Remedy. The curtain of life had been lifted, and a flash of its inner mysteries had been revealed. His eyes still were dazed. But he had received the gift of vision. He had seen beyond doubt or question the heart of Septimus Dix. He knew what he had done, why he had ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... Paul, of one of the governesses of the Netherlands. It is just the finest portrait that ever was seen. Only a half-length, but such a majesty, such a force, such a splendor, such a simplicity about it! The woman is in a stiff black dress, with a ruff and a few pearls; a yellow curtain is behind her—the simplest arrangement that can be conceived; but this great man knew how to rise to his occasion; and no better proof can be shown of what a fine gentleman he was than this his homage to the vice-Queen. A common bungler would have painted her in her best clothes, with crown ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Nevertheless, nothing could be more agreeable to the sight; so that instead of alarming, it gave pleasure. It appeared every night whilst the count stayed at Marseilles. This prince, having once cast his hands upon it, to see if it was not something attached to the bed curtain, the spectre disappeared that ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... opportunity to try his faculty of hissing, and to tune his cat-call to the best advantage; by which means, I have known those musical instruments so well prepared, that they have been able to play in full concert at the first rising of the curtain. ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... now skimming past the tall grove of trees, which stood on that side of the channel and denied further view. Of the whole of the low shores of the island, only this bight remained to be revealed. And suddenly the curtain was raised; they began to open out a haven, snugly elbowed there, and beheld, with an astonishment beyond words, the ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... come-ons sit while the professor massages their soul. They never see him, Dan figurin' in that way it would be harder to pick the professor out at police headquarters when the district attorney got around to him. We hadn't been there a minute, when the curtain at the other end of the room opens and in blows the stout dame, floppin' down in the chair with a sigh as the professor pulls open the grate to feed her the oil. Dan pulls us back in the dark, and I notice she was so excited that she shook all over like a ten ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... walk through music between great candles under eternal stars, hand-in-hand with a tall white figure. But nothing ever did happen to make her cross that boundary; the hymn ceased, the "Amen" died away, as if a curtain fell. The congregation subsided. Reluctantly she would sink ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... shall find their faces only Moonbeams in the boughs that shake; And their revels, but the rush Of night-winds through bough and brush. Yet my dreaming—is it more Than mere dreaming? Is some door Opened in my soul? a curtain Raised? to let me see for certain I have lived ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... forming up were well clear of it. After three minutes on the opening line it was to advance at the rate of 100 yards every three minutes. One round of smoke shell was to be fired at each lift, which obviously would not be so easy to identify as in the case of an overhead barrage. A smoke curtain was also to be fired on the Northern edge of the Foret d'Andigny. The Life Guards Machine Gun Battalion were to help with their barrage, also a Company of the 6th Machine Gun Battalion. Three sections of our own Machine Gun Battalion were allotted to us, to be used mainly in defence against ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... in eager haste, and find old Mrs. Grumbit hard at the one thousand nine hundred and ninety-ninth pair of worsted socks; and fat Mr. Arthur Jollyboy sitting opposite to her, dressed in the old lady's bed-curtain chintz and high-crowned cap, with the white kitten in his arms and his spectacles on his chin, watching the process with intense interest, and cautioning her not to forget the "hitch" by any means; ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... concealed by a curtain, which, contrary to the modern custom, was drawn down when the play began, and ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... who was sitting in the adjoining chamber, but Maurice and Gaston. The curtains partially concealed the bed and the two who lay prostrate beside it; the white, haggard, terrified countenance of Madame de Gramont was alone visible. As Mrs. Lawkins endeavored to extricate her from the folds of the curtain, Maurice and Gaston removed the fallen arrow to which the drapery was still attached. Afterwards Gaston, who was nearest to Mrs. Lawkins, assisted her in raising the helpless countess and placing her upon the bed. Then ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... time the upper and lower schools were divided by a curtain, about which there is a remarkable story. A boy, having torn this curtain, was saved from one of Busby's terrible floggings by his school-mate assuming the fault, and bearing the rod in his place. This brave ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... were a great many gentlemen sitting around the tables and upon the sofas, reading. Among them Rollo soon found Mr. George. He had established himself in a comfortable arm chair, near a great window that looked out upon the square. But he was obliged to keep the curtain down, on account of the beggars outside, that gave him no peace as long as they ...
— Rollo in Rome • Jacob Abbott
... until he was so exhausted through loss of blood that he could do no more, whereupon the gentleman and his servant lifted him upon the bed and finished him with their daggers. They then drew the curtain and went away, leaving the dead body shut up in ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... bakery on this corner, with two gaslights flaring in its window. Several flat pies and small cakes were displayed there, and a limp curtain, on a string, shut off the shop, where a dozen people were waiting now. A bell in the door rang violently, whenever anyone came out or in. Susan knew the bakery well, knew when the rolls were hot, and just the price and variety of the cookies ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... incumbrances, which, till he makes application of his art to it, surround the statue, and load it with obscurities and disfigurement. The man, who, without long study and premeditation, rushes in at once, and expects to withdraw the curtain, will only find ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... the floor, and tacked up a white tablecloth which I had in my trunk, for a curtain; spread my one deer skin rug upon the floor, made up the cot bed with my blankets, opened my trunk, hung up a few garments, and was settled. This is the first spring bed I have slept upon since Mr. H. took the velvet couch away from the Mission. I found the boarded walls ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... I, and the public in my opinion, expect from you [as a dramatic writer]. If you are desirous of an applauding spectator, who will wait for [the falling of] the curtain, and till the chorus calls out "your plaudits;" the manners of every age must be marked by you, and a proper decorum assigned to men's varying dispositions and years. The boy, who is just able to pronounce his words, and prints the ground with a firm ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... possibilities. It was by accident that she got her chance in the pantomime—some one wouldn't do at the last minute, and they gave Miss Dewing a trial. She was well liked by her associates in spite of the fact that she was a bit offish and vanished from their world the minute the curtain fell." ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... Caldigate would not have paid away that large sum of money had he not thought that by doing so he was buying off Crinkett and the other witnesses. Of course there had been a marriage in Australia, and therefore the arrival of Dick Shand was to him only a lifting of the curtain for another act of the play. An attempt was to be made to get Caldigate out of prison, which attempt it was his duty to oppose. Caldigate had, he thought, deceived and inflicted a terrible stain on his family; and therefore Caldigate ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... heights of Alem, seen from the Bosphorus, are one great forest always beautifully green. Even as the Prince looked at them, they lost color, as if a hand out of the cloud had suddenly dropped a curtain of white gauze over them. He glanced back over the course, then forward. The donjon was showing the loopholes that pitted its southern face. Excellent as the speed had been, more was required. Half the distance remained to be overcome—and the enemy ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... men in the world who really knew why—Sergeant Bellews and Lecky and Graves and Howell. They knew that somewhere behind the Iron Curtain a twenty-kilowatt transmitter had been turned on. It produced a wave of the type and with the characteristics that would have been produced by a transmitter built from the diagram sent through Betsy and Al and Gus for people in the United States to build. ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... in his seat and raised the thong used to urge on his animal; but Marcia, hearing the clamour, thrust the curtain aside again and, motioning the slave to restrain himself, threw several denarii to her would-be host. At the same moment, the horses suddenly quickened their gait, and the pursuer, keeping his hold, was jerked ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... walking home beneath the Arch of Constantine and past the vaguely lighted monuments of the Forum. There was a waning moon in the sky, and her radiance was not brilliant, but she was veiled in a thin cloud curtain which seemed to diffuse and equalize it. When, on his return from the villa (it was eleven o'clock), Winterbourne approached the dusky circle of the Colosseum, it recurred to him, as a lover of the picturesque, that the interior, ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... all went agley; the whole pack was arrested; and when the curtain fell on a happy group of boarders in midnight deshabille there was every promise that the misdemeanants would receive a month's imprisonment or at least a caution to be of good behaviour for ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... seats, and then the children looked around, waited eagerly for the curtain to go up, while Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey talked together. More and more people came in. There were a large number of children, for it was a play especially for them, though, of course, lots of ...
— Bobbsey Twins in Washington • Laura Lee Hope
... a voice came from the other side of the green curtain which separated the shop from the ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... curling hair. Her sweet face was towards him, its pallor relieved only by the long shadow of the dark lashes and the bent bow of the lips. One white wrist and hand hung down almost to the floor, and beneath the spread curtain of the sunlit hair her bosom heaved softly in her sleep. She looked so wondrously beautiful in her rest that he stopped almost awed, and gazed, and gazed again, feeling as though a present sense and power ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... coming a great cloud, with wings like a hawk, I thought; but some said afterwards that, when they saw it, it had fingers like a man's hand, and others said it was like a great tower, with battlements. However that may be, it grew nearer and larger, and it was blue and dark like that curtain there; and there was no wind to stir it, for the windows had ceased rattling, and the dust was quiet in the streets; and still it came on quickly, growing as it came; and then there came a far-away sound, like a heavy waggon, or, some said, like a deep voice complaining. ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... beads there; and jars of milk or baskets of dates elsewhere. At the fountain yonder, contrived in the wall, mud approached by rugged, sloppy steps, water-carriers, wide-mouthed negro slaves, male and female, with brass curtain-rings in their ears, and skins blacker than the moonless midnight, come and go the whole day long, and gossip or wrangle with loafers in coarse mantles and burnous of stuff striped like leopard-skin. Beside the silent, gliding, ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... will respect you," interrupts the Dean. Nothing else being forthcoming, Savage continues: "Handel is absolute master of everything but Death and Destiny. Now he didn't like all this tuning up before the audience; he said you might as well expect the prima donna to make her toilet in front of the curtain"— ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... practised deception; she even told a lie. Hamlet asked her where her father was, and she said he was at home, when he was really listening behind a curtain.' Poor Ophelia! It is considered angelic in Desdemona to say untruly that she killed herself, but most immoral or pusillanimous in Ophelia to tell her lie. I will not discuss these casuistical problems; but, if ever an angry lunatic asks me a question which I cannot ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... His Humour," probably first acted late in the summer of 1598 and at the Curtain, is commonly regarded as an epoch-making play; and this view is not unjustified. As to plot, it tells little more than how an intercepted letter enabled a father to follow his supposedly studious son to London, and there observe his life with the gallants ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... into which the bedroom window opened. The window looked dark and ominous. It was covered by a faded green curtain. One corner of the curtain was slightly turned up, which made it possible to look ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... much too small?" asked the dealer in an innocent tone. "Well, there's plenty more there. And perhaps you had better be trying on this suit behind the curtain here while I'm hunting ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... work; the North had played its grim comedy to the final curtain, making sport of men's affections and turning love to rankling hate. But into the mind of each man crept a certain craftiness. Each longed to strike, but feared to face the consequences. It was lonesome, here among the white hills and the deathly silences, yet they reflected that it would be ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... troubled look now overspreading his features springs not from grief, nor has anger aught to do with it. Instead, it is all apprehension. For now, as though a curtain had been suddenly lifted before his eyes, he sees beyond it, there perceiving for himself and his companions danger such as they had not yet been called upon to encounter. All along the route their thoughts were turned to Naraguana, and on him rested ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... to watch. Presently the light which had returned to the sitting-room vanished altogether, and a fainter gleam stole out from what she knew to be the window of Maurice's room. She said "Good-night" softly, as if he could hear her, dropped her curtain, and was soon ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... the audience. He had only played it for a week, when one Saturday evening the audience, after calling the manager himself three times, set up a cry for "Laflin." The obsequious attendant pretended to consider it as a fourth call for the manager, and made as if to move the curtain aside for him once more; but, with a magnanimity rare indeed in a "star" of his magnitude, "No, no!" he said; "it is Mr. Laflin they want. Quick, lad, ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... limits of the political world he checks his researches, he discreetly lays aside the use of his most formidable faculties, he no longer consents to doubt or to innovate, but carefully abstaining from raising the curtain of the sanctuary, he yields with submissive respect to truths which he will not discuss. Thus, in the moral world everything is classed, adapted, decided, and foreseen; in the political world everything ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... dressing gown and cap, she pushed aside the curtain into the aisle and crept out, meaning to steal a march on the others. She let the curtain fall with a little gasp of astonishment, for as she looked, two other curtains moved stealthily, animated by unseen hands, and ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... Captain! Then the Captain might know all about the murder, and he would reveal it without breaking the seal—unless it were to crack a bottle—and all would end happily. As it is, all ends miserably, or would so end, but for the Captain, whose last words before the fall of the Curtain, uttered in his best French, are "Ong Avong! Marsh!" From which it may be inferred that they are going into a dismal swamp, but it is magnificent, if not la guerre, and this cry of the Captain has a true military ring about it that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... falls, but the music of "Mind the Paint" continues for a while. Then it ceases and, after a short silence, the curtain rises again. The supper-tables have disappeared and the saloon is empty of people. The musicians and their music-stands and stools have also gone, and faintly from the distance comes the sound of a waltz. Two settees, matching the rest of the ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... and children, have powers of making each other happy or miserable with which no public coercion can deal. If a marriage could be dissolved every morning it would not give back his night's rest to a man kept awake by a curtain lecture; and what is the good of giving a man a lot of power where he only wants a little peace? The child must depend on the most imperfect mother; the mother may be devoted to the most unworthy children; in such relations ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... next each other and just wobbled the curtain occasionally it would have been friendly!" sighed Rhoda, sinking down on the solitary chair and gazing forlornly round her new abode. A bed, a wash-stand, a chest of drawers with a glass on top, a small fixture wardrobe, and about three yards of space on which ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... interesting for its late date. At the left side is a small monument to the founder's memory; on a corbel stands a short column bearing an inscribed slab, and above the slab is a shield under a carved curtain. Inside are some tombs—two of them being Flemish brasses—and great tile pictures covering the walls. These give the life of Sao Lorenzo Giustiniani, patriarch of Venice, and canon of San Giorgio in Alga, where the founder of the Loyos ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson
... way to a higher, happier life. That's whatever! an' this dramy of existence, as I once hears Colonel Sterett say, would be a frost an' a failure an' bog plumb down at that, if you was to cut out the leadin' lady roles an' ring up the curtain with nothin' but bucks in ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... nobleman was put in arrest: the duke of York was then persuaded to pay his respects to the king in his tent; and, on repeating his charge against the duke of Somerset, he was surprised to see that minister step from behind the curtain, and offer to maintain his innocence. Richard now found that he had been betrayed; that he was in the hands of his enemies; and that it was become necessary, for his own safety, to lower his pretensions. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... above, and at the side of the fireplace a sword and belt. All this Tom had time to remark by the light of the fire, which was burning brightly, while his host produced a couple of brass candlesticks from his cupboard and lighted up, and drew the curtain before his window. Then Tom instinctively left off taking his notes, for fear of hurting the other's feelings (just as he would have gone on doing, and making remarks on everything, had the rooms been models of taste and comfort), and throwing his cap and gown on ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... Number Three Cook tried to raise an ill-done roti, when He tripped o'er ARTHUR'S heels, and fell upon his abdomen; And presently the various plats were mingled on the floor; And the subsequent proceedings let us draw a curtain o'er. ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... them. These of course were the birds that make the nests. The mouth of the cave partly prepared me for what I was to see. I had expected a small entrance, but here it was, I should say, sixty feet in height and of great width, the entrance being partly overhung with a curtain of luxuriant creepers. The smell of guano had been strong before, ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... afternoon, and already, in the west, the sky was beginning to put on some of its sunset splendours. In the east, framed to Peter's vision by parallel lines of poplars, it hung like a curtain of dark-blue velvet. ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... the image is projected upside down by the lens on the plate, and that the bottom of the picture is taken before the top. The camera mechanism admits light, which makes the picture, in the manner of a roller blind curtain. The slit travels from the top to the bottom and, the image on the plate being projected upside down, the bottom of the object appears on the top of the plate. For instance, the wheels are taken before the head of ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... Sardinia went in state to the Carlo Felice Theatre at Genoa, and presented to the public, says an Italian correspondent, his niece, the betrothed bride of the heir-apparent of the house of Austria. At seven the court arrived, the curtain rose, and displayed the whole corps dramatique, who sang Dio Salve il Re; or an Italian version of the words and music of our "God save the King," in which Madame Caradori took the principal part. Thus our national ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various
... CURTAIN RISES DISCLOSING CARVIL and Bessie moving away from sea-wall. Bessie about twenty-five. Black dress; black straw hat. A lot of mahogany-coloured hair loosely done up. Pale face. Full figure. Very quiet. Carvil, blind, unwieldy. Reddish whiskers; slow, deep voice produced ...
— One Day More - A Play In One Act • Joseph Conrad
... was more cleanly and decent than we had been led to expect. The window of the low front room, which was large and rather bowed, still retained the remains of its former shop-like appearance, was modestly screened in the inside by a green curtain; and the step of the door was nicely ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... and raised herself on tiptoe, hoping to see something through the crack in the red curtain which hung over the window of the large room where the revellers were gathered. She was poor and ragged, and the goodly smell of the ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... dawn quickened into day Dominic drew aside the curtain and looked out. Behind the dark branches, where they cleared the housetops and met the open sky, thrown wide upward to the zenith, was the rose-scarlet of sunrise, holding, as it seemed to him, at once the splendour of battle ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... should like to sit up and watch tonight, that we may see who it is that comes and does my work for me.' The wife liked the thought; so they left a light burning, and hid themselves in a corner of the room, behind a curtain that was hung up there, and watched what ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... any event, the Juliet of the evening stood before the curtain, smiling, bowing to right and left. The citizens of Fairhaven were applauding her with a certain conscientious industry, for they really found Romeo and Juliet a rather dull couple. The general opinion, however, was that Miss Montmorenci seemed ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... as they did of perspective, and as little of spiritual expression as they did of landscape-painting. What do I care for the birds pecking at Zeuxis's grapes, or Zeuxis himself trying to draw back Parrhasius's curtain? Imitative art is the lowest trickery. There are twenty men in England now capable of the same sleight of hand; and yet these are recorded as the very highest triumphs of ancient art by the only men who have handed down to us any ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... to show thee in what light I regard thy restoration Back to health, the estimation In which I regard the wight Who so skilfully hath cured thee. A surprise I have procured thee, And for him a fit reward: Raise the curtain, draw the cord, See, 't is death! If this . . . (A curtain is drawn aside, and Carpophorus is seen beheaded, the head being at some ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... of Scipio, with courtiers in golden cuirasses and tall plumes, and peacocks and huge Flemish horses—a rich profusion of crimson and blue drapery and stout-limbed soldiery. On a bracket, above a green silk curtain, was a silver statuette of Madonna and the Bambino Gesu, with a red lamp flickering feebly before. By the windows a low divan heaped with velvet cushions and skins. But for a coffer and a prayer-desk and a curtained ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... the room and never was,' said I, resuming my seat, and looping up the curtain that I might ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... water a cold, damp current of air seemed to sweep around the curve of the bluff along with the rush of the river. As he climbed he came to a warmer wave of air, and the dusk closed softly around him, as if nature were casting a friendly curtain over the drowsing earth; and the roar of the river came up to him, no longer angrily, but in a ceaseless, ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... in the height of our jubilant self-gratulation, some sweet and gracious figure, full of heavenly wisdom, could have twitched the gaudy curtain aside for a moment and shown us other things than these; who could have assured us that we all, however stupid and dreary and awkward and indolent, however vexed with low dreams and ugly temptations, yet ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... nothing that it does not touch and handle. Your partiality for days of chivalry blinds you a little. The men were splendid—women shone with their reflected splendour—you see them through an illuminated haze, and, as you were not behind the curtain, imagine their minds as cultivated as their beauty was believed to be great. The mantle of chivalry hid all the wrongs, but the particular ones from which they rescued them. If the men are worse, our women are far better—more ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... THE curtain rises, disclosing the ushers of the theater still moving up and down the aisles. Cries of "Program!" "Program!" are heard. There is a buzz of brilliant conversation, illuminated with flashes of opera glasses and the ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... Lady Vincent. She met the visitor, however, at dinner, which was served some hours earlier than usual in order to give the play-going party time enough to reach their destination before the rising of the curtain. She found Mrs. MacDonald to be a thin, pale, shabby woman, about forty years of age; one of those poor, harmless, complacent creatures who, when they can de so without breaking any law of God or man, are willing to compromise ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... asleep. He went up to her, raised her gently in his arms, and carried her into her own room; so perfectly sound asleep was she, that she hardly stirred, even when he laid her on her bed; and then, drawing the curtain round her, he ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... voices and the ring of arms more than once. But our guide, without pausing, led us to a small room lighted by a hanging lamp. "I will inform M. de Pavannes of your arrival," he said respectfully, and passed behind a curtain, which seemed to hide the door of an inner apartment. As he did so the clink of glasses and the ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... is in a full front view, the figure turned a little to one side and nude to the waist, the hands are folded on the lap and hold a flower, a gauze-like drapery falls about the left shoulder and the arms, but does not conceal them; the background is a brocade or tapestry curtain. ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... and coppery lights in these long, rippling tresses, so that I lay for some time content to watch as she combed with smooth-sweeping motions of arm and wrist; but suddenly this arm grew still and I knew that she was viewing me through this silky curtain as it hung. ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... and garnished. An old lumber pile and several soap boxes had been pressed into service for shelves and counters and were artistically covered with an old lace curtain. Gertie was just putting a vase of real flowers on a table as a finishing ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... man's preference was made 'wonderfully so' too. And it was in this wise. On a certain sunny afternoon, the young woman found herself in a conservatory that opened off a drawing-room, being divided from it only by a hanging Indian curtain; a hanged Indian curtain she used to call it ever afterwards; but that was bad grammar, and bad ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... she wished to do. She had to take the Countess's word that further effort would be useless, but she felt thwarted, as if the curtain had fallen by mistake in the middle of an act, and the characters on the stage had availed themselves of the chance to ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... under this head the speech of the whole grex, or the "Nunc plaudite" of an actor that closes a number of the plays. It is no more than the bowing or curtain-calls of today[160], unless it was an emphatic announcement to the audience that the ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... the old quarter, and has led us a sad life. . . . Papa is harassed day and night; we have little peace, he is always sick; has two or three times fallen down in fits; what will be the ultimate end, God knows. But who is without their drawback, their scourge, their skeleton behind the curtain? It remains only to do one's best, and endure with ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... fourth side of the wall there hung a curtain of silvery-gray spider-web, and the voice seemed to come from it. The hero went toward it, but he saw nothing, for the spider that was spinning it moved so fast that no eyes could follow it. Presently it paused up in the left-hand corner of the web, and then Teddy saw it. It looked very little ...
— The Counterpane Fairy • Katharine Pyle
... happier to me than it really was, by contrast with all the after-years. For then the curtain of the future was as impenetrable to me as to other children: I had all their delight in the present hour, their sweet indefinite hopes for the morrow; and I had a tender mother: even now, after the dreary lapse of long years, a slight trace of sensation accompanies ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... reached the window, there a sudden dizziness attacked her. She clutched at the curtain with both hands. What if he had gone already? What if she were never to see ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... from his curtain, a squat, formidable figure, monstrous in chest and arms, limping slightly on his distorted leg. His skin bad none of the freshness and clearness of Montgomery's, but was dusky and mottled, with one huge mole amid the mat of tangled black hair which thatched his mighty ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... darkness that lies ahead of us. Earthly hopes are only the mirrors in which the past reflects itself, as in some king's palace you will find a lighted chamber, with a great sheet of glass at each end, which perpetuates in shining rows the lights behind the spectator. A curtain veils the future, and earthly hope can only put a mirror in front of it that reflects what has been. But the hope that is set on God draws back the curtain, and lets us see enough of a fixed, eternal future to make our lives bright and our hearts calm. The darkness remains; ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... up, looking towards the lake. He saw two men pushing a boat into the lake. Through the shifting curtain of smoke and waving fire he studied them out of blistered eyes. They were not men ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... with God could not be doubted. One has no motive for being at enmity with Him when one is well in the land, and has never had to ask Him for anything. From the grand salon of the Manila home, a little door, hid behind a silken curtain, led to a chapel—something obligatory in a Filipino house. There were Santiago's Lares, and if we use this word, it is because the master of the house was rather a poly- than a monotheist. Here, in sculpture and oils, were saints, martyrdoms, and miracles; a chapter could scarcely ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... it to be. The floor was hard earth, the walls were unlined, the meagre household goods were scattered about in a way that did not say much for his friend's hutkeeper, a shelf with a few old books and papers on it, was the only sign of culture, and a rough curtain of sacking dividing the place in two, was the only thing that was not common to every hut in all that part of ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... greeting stirred the kindness of my listeners to a protest, and as soon as I could, I changed to other subjects. With the fall of the curtain many old friends came on to the stage, and presenting me with roses, assured me that I had won the hearts of my audience, after which I ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... have." I gathered from her tone that the Joan of Arc expression had departed. Had Primgate wanted to paint her at that particular moment I should have suggested Katherine—during the earlier stages—listening to a curtain lecture from Petruchio. "Are you suggesting that all women should ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
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