|
|
|
More "Matter-of-fact" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... already nearly forty years. The somewhat romantic notions entertained by Wenlock and his younger fellow passengers were rather rudely dissipated on their arrival. The work of settling he soon found was a plain matter-of-fact business, requiring constant and persevering labour. Some of the settlers remained at the town, others proceeded farther up the river to a spot near the confluence of the two rivers Schuylkill and Delaware. Wenlock, however, resolved to wait the arrival of Colonel Markham, ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston
... and for that reason expecting, that if he was made aedile before his praetorship, he would then show them magnificent hunting-shows and combats between Libyan wild beasts, chose other praetors, on purpose to force him into the aedileship. The vanity of this pretext is sufficiently disproved by matter-of-fact. For the year following, partly by flatteries to the people, and partly by money, he got himself elected praetor. Accordingly, once while he was in office, on his angrily telling Caesar that he should make ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... better. I knew my heart craved one word, however matter-of-fact, that would rekindle the hope that ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... about minerals," Billy said with matter-of-fact seriousness, "so that when I'm grown I can find the metals for us to make ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... flush passed, giving place to a feeling of horrified wonder. For Sophie was not in the least embarrassed—she spoke in the most matter-of-fact tone. And this from a child of thirteen, who did not ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... themselves we see that the first three lines are rather fine, but the fourth line is clumsy and matter-of-fact compared with the others. In the second stanza "lowly thatched cottage" may be a poetic description, but the home longing is not confined to people who have lived in thatched cottages. Tame singing birds are interesting, but home stands for higher and holier things. All he asks for ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... absorbing task for a psychologist to trace the various stages by which an impossibility was changed into a reality. Wyatt's coolness and matter-of-fact determination were his chief weapons. His popularity and reputation for lawlessness helped him. A conversation which he had with Neville-Smith, a day-boy, is typical of the way in which he forced his point of view on ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... decided that it was just a day-dream between sleeping and waking over the pages of an old book; yet when next day and the day after the invisible singer was in the orchard again, I could not be satisfied with such mere matter-of-fact explanation. ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... pretentious effort that had placed him in the horrifying predicament in which he now found himself—with the corpse of what was apparently a human being in his workshop and no available explanation that could possibly be acceptable to a matter-of-fact and ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of the Atlantic Bridge Company gasped. This was the boldest, the coldest work he had ever experienced. Many times he had witnessed public officials like Sir Thomas Drummond approach this delicate point, but never with such composure, such matter-of-fact certainty and lack of moral scruple. Evidently, however, this Englishman had come to trade and wanted a direct answer. There was no false pose, no romance here. But Jackson Wylie, Sr., was too shrewd a business man ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... clouds of chilly fire that made the ruddy west seem tame. My midday lassitude was going, my blood was running warmer again. And as the twilight and that filmy brightness replaced the dusty sunlight and robbed this unfamiliar place of all its matter-of-fact queerness, its sense of aimless materialism, romance returned to me, and passion, and my thoughts of honor and revenge. I remember that change of mood as occurring very vividly on this occasion, but I fancy that less distinctly I had felt this before ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... a perfectly matter-of-fact tone, "I've found you now, and you've got to be sensible. It's true I've had a stroke of luck, but that might fall away at any moment. I've typing waiting for you, or I can get you a post at the New York Theatre. You'd better first do my typing. I'll have it in your rooms to-morrow ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... how they were going to spend their holidays. It was surprising to me that these boys who were so ordinary during term-time should lead such adventurous lives in the holidays, and I felt a little envious of their good fortune. They talked of visiting the theatre and foreign travel in a matter-of-fact way that made me think that perhaps after all my home-life was incomplete. I had never been out of England, and my dramatic knowledge was limited to pantomimes, for which these enthusiastic students of musical ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... and it was brought about in a manner so singular and unexpected that I must leave the explanation of the matter to the psychological student, it being altogether beyond the comprehension of such a simple, matter-of-fact, unlearned seaman as myself. ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... my regiment, sir," replied Somers, giving the military salute; which excess of politeness, however, was lost on the matter-of-fact captain. ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... vain to pierce the meaning of these cryptic words. Presently the doctor said, "Perfectly normal?" more as a statement than a question, and Miss Wheaton answered in a matter-of-fact voice, "Oh, absolutely." ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... expenditure of vital energy; nothing is wasted in expression, style, spread-eagleism; everything is instinctively kept as near to the practical heart of the matter as possible. He is—to the eye of an artist—distressingly matter-of-fact, a tempting mark for satire. And yet he is in truth an idealist, though it is his nature to snub, disguise, and mock his own inherent optimism. To admit enthusiasms is "bad form" if he is a "gentleman"; "swank" ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... had all announced the fact that the detail of police would that day be withdrawn from the scene of the murder in Christie Place. With them it had been a mere matter-of-fact news item, but with the evening sheets it was different. They had had time to digest the matter, and their view of the order was one of surprise. Two or three allowed this feeling to expand itself into headlines of some size; a few also commented ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... are creatures of impulse are not creatures of despair. Suicide, I suspect, is very often the outcome of mere mental weariness—not an act of savage energy but the final symptom of complete collapse. The quiet, matter-of-fact attentions of a ship's stewardess, who did not seem aware of other human agonies than sea-sickness, who talked of the probable weather of the passage—it would be a rough night, she thought—and who insisted ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... your mother a hump," returned the plain-spoken and matter-of-fact hunter. "Nobody shud never go to promise wot they can't perform. I've lived, off an' on, nigh forty years now, and I've obsarved them wot promises most always does least; so if you'll take the advice of an oldish hunter, you'll give it ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... native city, where he died July 15, 1890. Early in life, Keller threw aside all conventional beliefs, and his religion henceforth was a deep love of and a joyous faith in all life. Although Keller was in many respects decidedly matter-of-fact, a calm objective observer with a strong leaning toward utilitarian ideals—he had all the homely virtues of his ancestry—he nevertheless delighted in a myth-creating fancy. Thus Keller is very much akin to his countryman Arnold Bcklin, whom the German world ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... return of Ware and Sylvia did not disturb them. It seemed, however, that Ware was a famous story-teller, and when he had lighted a fresh cigar he recounted a number of adventures, speaking in his habitual, dry, matter-of-fact tone, and with curious unexpected turns of phrase. Conversation in Indiana seems to drift into story-telling inevitably. John Ware once read a paper before the Indianapolis Literary Club to prove that this Hoosier trait was derived from the South. He drew a species of ellipsoid of which the Ohio ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... use of the term "Geographical Distribution." As I said, there is another aspect, and a much more important one, and that is, the relations of the various animals to one another. The horse is a very well-defined matter-of-fact sort of animal, and we are all pretty familiar with its structure. I dare say it may have struck you, that it resembles very much no other member of the animal kingdom, except perhaps the zebra or the ass. But let me ask you to look along these diagrams. Here is ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... little in being particular in an affair of such delicacy. Some writers wake their heroines at dead of night, drag them, half drest, out of a third story chamber window, lead them through a thousand perils by flood, fire, and field, till the mere matter-of-fact, common sense reader is convinced that the poor girls had neither a dry thread nor a clean one upon their persons; and no "change of raiment" so much as hinted at. I scorn so ungallant an action as to compel my heroine to make a voyage nearly ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... is given shortly here, was taken down from his lips, but it is impossible to reproduce the man's quaint phraseology. He spoke in an indifferent way, and detailed all the circumstances in a most matter-of-fact manner and without the faintest trace ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... Jean, in the matter-of-fact tone of a practical young lady; 'mewed up in these dismal castles, we shall never get princely husbands like our sisters. I might be Queen of Beauty, I doubt me whether ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not appear surprised at that demand—the Medic of a Free Trading spacer was never surprised at anything. He had his surfeit of shocks during his first years of service and after that accepted any occurrence, no matter how weird, as matter-of-fact. In addition Tau's hobby was "magic," the hidden knowledge possessed and used by witch doctors and medicine men on alien worlds. He had a library of recordings, odd scraps of information, of certified results of certain very peculiar experiments. Now and then he wrote ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... a cold, matter-of-fact voice, as of things about which she was no longer able to suffer. "So, there I was—on the street," she went on. "You have always had money, a comfortable home, education, friends to help you—all that. You can't imagine ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... just cleared the table and poured out our coffee when a woman came in to say, in a matter-of-fact tone, that there was hard fighting going on across the valley. She added calmly, as she dipped our plates into a tub, that an obus had just fallen a mile or two off, and that if we liked we could see ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... region, as hard as iron, and which will doubtless last quite as long as Southey's works retain any vitality in English literature. It is not a monument fit for a poet. There is nothing airy or graceful about it,—and, indeed, there cannot he many men so solid and matter-of-fact as to deserve a tomb like that. Wordsworth's grave is much better, with only a simple headstone, and the grass growing over his mortality, which, for a thousand years, at least, it never can over ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... many a real charm to counter-balance these lost illusions. He that really knows it, like an ardent lover with his mistress' imperfections, would have no difference; even the Guadalquivir, so matter-of-fact, really so prosaic, has an unimagined attractiveness; the crowded shipping, the hurrying porters, add to that sensation of vivacity which is of Seville the most fascinating characteristic. And Seville is an epitome of Andalusia, with its life and ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... The professions at which I felt I had the latent power to excel, were I but given a chance, were in a sphere far above us, and to mention my feelings and ambitions to my matter-of-fact practical mother would bring upon me worse ridicule than I was already forced to endure day ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... then: make me happy," said Vince to another sun-browned lad whom he had just encountered among the furze and heather—all gold and purple in the sunny islet where they dwelt—and in the most matter-of-fact way he took off his jacket; and then began a more difficult task, which made him appear like some peculiar animal struggling out of its skin: for he proceeded to drag off the tight blue worsted ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... Some matter-of-fact traditions concerning the author were furnished, a few years since, by a son of the farmer, who was sixteen years of age at the time Goldsmith resided with his father. Though he had engaged to board with the family, his meals were generally sent to him in his room, in which he passed the most ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... whispered, "I don't like you a bit. Really and truly I don't.... Now, now, no more.... Maoni can hear you, I'm sure. The idea of your going away for two days—two whole days—and marching calmly up to me and telling me of it in such a rude, matter-of-fact manner. You are unkind.... Don't.... I don't like you, Harvey... I'll tell father that you went away and left me for two whole days—to go fishing and pig-shooting, and poor Mr. Atkins had to look after me, and... ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... tact should be applied. He soothed the outraged mother and tranquillised the ecstatic daughter, and then in a matter-of-fact voice asked: "And what about the date? Do let's ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... theories as to the origin of language, which, for shortness, may be defined as the poetic and the matter-of-fact. The former (of which M. Ernest Renan is one of the most eloquent advocates) supposes a primitive race or races endowed with faculties of cognition and expression so perfect and so intimately responsive one to the other, that the name of a thing came ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... This matter-of-fact reply silenced Lucy. She would have asked, perhaps, why did I have all this money? being in a questioning frame of mind; but she knew that he would answer shortly because her father made it, and this was not any more satisfactory. So she only looked at him with ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... age of idols for China as well as for India; and the old Chinese house, once empty, swept and garnished by Confucianism, was now filled with a mob of unclean spirits each worse than the first. With more courageous logic than the more matter-of-fact Chinese, the Tibetan erected his prayer-mills[29] and let the winds of heaven and the flowing waters continually multiply his prayers and holy syllables. And these inventions were duly imported into Japan, and even now are ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... politician and a courtier, a man of the world, a mathematician engaged in the soberest details of the science, he has given to the world, in the simplest and most natural language, a series of speculations upon the great mystery of being: detailed, matter-of-fact narratives of revelations from the spiritual world, which at once appall us by their boldness, and excite our wonder at their extraordinary method, logical accuracy, and perfect consistency. These remarkable speculations—the workings ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... thought about it," she went on in her serious monotone. I don't think she even noticed my exasperated silence. "It is of no use for Allan to come and preach his wordly wisdom to me; we do not measure things by the same standard, he and I. You are better, Esther, but your hard matter-of-fact reasoning shocks me sometimes." ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... war lost half its interest in Washington. A regiment marching down Broadway was something to see, but the same regiment in Pennsylvania Avenue looked mean and matter-of-fact. A General in the field, or riding uncovered through Boston or Baltimore, or even lounging at the bar of the Continental or the Astor House or the Tremont, was invested with an atmosphere half heroic, half ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... how he did things. He set out to find a wife in the same matter-of-fact manner. He met many women; but Lucia Fennell was the only one who set his pulse beating a little faster. He felt it a shame that he should be so weak. They were at a dinner-party at the country home of ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... drowsy rhythm. What more delightful than to yield yourself entirely to the present mood and wander off somewhere, aimless except to see and feel? The trim soberness of the dusty road with its gray windings and vistas of sand-ruts becomes less matter-of-fact at length, and so you leave it to itself, and seek a path that leads to the heart of Nature and far from ways of men. Down grassy slopes and over little hillocks that pique your curiosity by shutting out the view of ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... came she made that statement to them in a plain matter-of-fact way, and just as if the thought never entered her mind that any one could doubt it after she had given her word that it was true. The men were evidently amazed and impressed to hear her say such a thing in such a sure and confident way, for prophecies boldly uttered never ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... own fertile and beautiful lands; but so it was. Perhaps the general German folk, with their speculative, easygoing, almost sentimental tendencies, needed this hard nucleus of Prussianism—and its matter-of-fact, organizing type of ability—to ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... had expected, and waited for, this message, and now it had come, she was almost afraid to read it. There were only a few words, cold and formal, the usual matter-of-fact, businesslike phraseology of ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... come here, where I know I am not welcome, upon business," he said in a calm, matter-of-fact voice. "I am tired of this place, and I think it is time that we attained the object of our journey here, namely, to find the hidden gold. That, as we all know, can only be done in a certain way, through ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... you fellows to ask how I'm getting on with Bully," and Nestie's eyes lit up with fun, for he'd a nice little sense of humour, and never could resist the temptation of letting it play upon our slow-witted, matter-of-fact intellects. "And I declare you seem to know all about what h-happens. I'll j-just tell you something about it, but it'll make you creepy," and then all the circle gathered in round Nestie. "I have to rise at five in the morning, and if I'm not down at half-past, Bulldog ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... alike everywhere. The English kiss that his sister Jenny had given him when he left home had said the same thing to him that the Vrouw van Gend's Dutch kiss said to Peter. Ludwig had taken his share of the farewell in the most matter-of-fact manner possible, and though he loved his sister well, had winced a little at her making such a child of him as to put an extra kiss "for mother" ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... you expect?" he answered in a matter-of-fact tone, "when you spend all your time in a cold, black church full of bones and ghosts? Wait till I get you away from there, wait till we're over in God's country, living in a nice little house out in Orange, N. J., ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... observations; and—what was the question that broke the silence—the exact time or the day of the month? anyhow, it was spoken without the least awkwardness; in the most matter-of-fact way in the world; and then Jacob began to unbutton his clothes and sat naked, save for his shirt, intending, ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... the finish, if it can be, showing, in their wear, as little of dust, soiling, and fly dirt as possible. There is no poetry about common housekeeping. Cooking, house-cleaning, washing, scrubbing, sweeping, are altogether matter-of-fact duties, and usually considered work, not recreation; and these should all be made easy of performance, and as seldom to be done as possible; although the first item always was, and always will be, and the last item should be, an every-day vocation for somebody; and the manner of ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... murders her in the act, that her nobler and purer self may be preserved. Such a crime might be committed in a momentary aberration, or even intense excitement, of feeling. It is characterized here by a matter-of-fact simplicity, which is its sign of madness. The distinction, however, is subtle; and we can easily guess why this and its companion poem did not retain their title. A madness which is fit for dramatic treatment is not sufficiently ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... (or action) to the place he did, he refused to see that the action he prized was more valuable through the thought it developed; consequently he reduced all actions to the same level, and prided himself upon stripping a deed of all its marvellousness or majesty. He did uncommon things in such a matter-of-fact way that he made them common by the performance. The faint spiritual double which I found lurking behind his steel and iron he either solidified with his metallic touch or pertinaciously denied ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... is rested," said The Kid, in a matter-of-fact tone, "we'll be strikin' westward. I'm kind of anxious to see what's doin' ovah in ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... thick bushes which concealed the gulf below, and as they approached these bushes the rain abruptly ceased, and the clouds began to break and drift away in the sky. "Two of you seize the girl and throw her over," said Tourmaline in a calm, matter-of-fact way, "and two others must throw the boy over. It may take four, perhaps, to lift ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... all come about in the most natural and matter-of-fact way. Mira had persisted for full an hour in her determination not to dance, but again and again had Willett and Sanders implored,—Willett with eyes as eloquent as his tongue. "None of these other ladies had yet really learned the step. Everybody longed to see it. Everybody ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... differently when he said: "'I'd rather be a kitten and cry, Mew!' than write the best poetry in the world on condition of laying aside common-sense in the ordinary transactions and business of the world."[17] "He thought," said Lockhart, "that to spend some fair portion of every day in any matter-of-fact occupation is good for the higher faculties themselves in the upshot."[18] Whether or not we consider this the ideal theory of life for a poet, we find it reasonable to suppose that a critic will be the better ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... of a diligence could be heard a league away along the highroad. The two longest sides of the square, separated by an avenue of lindens, were built in the simple style which expresses so well the peaceful and matter-of-fact life of the bourgeoisie. No signs of commerce were to be seen; on the other hand, the luxurious porte-cocheres of the rich were few, and those few turned seldom on their hinges, excepting that of Monsieur Martener, a physician, whose profession obliged him to keep a cabriolet, and to use ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... tapers a spire, or plants a pleasure-ground. Nay, is not this very interfusion of gifts, this universality of uses, in itself the bond of beauty which girdles the world like a cestus? If poetry were only rhyme, and art only painting, to what an outer darkness of matter-of-fact should we be condemning ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... corroboration of this one event very often served to puzzle me afterwards, when I listened to stories in which the major seemed a second Munchausen, but might, like in this of the duel, have been among the truest and most matter-of-fact of historians. May the reader be not less embarrassed than myself, is my sincere, if not ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... directly," Harriet said, in a matter-of-fact voice. "Get at your Spanish, Nina, and I'll be with ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... it aloud, for the vague pepper-and-salt took on familiar lines suddenly, and the matter-of-fact little features scattered so indistinguishably, as it were, though the boyishly round face became obviously one with the much-photographed trader-prince; it was Absolom Vail, ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... then seventy-five years old, and since 1862 accustomed to undisputed power, demurred to the wish of the Emperor that the other ministers should have access to him directly, and not as heretofore only through the chancellor. It is said too that the matter-of-fact and somewhat cynical Bismarck, had but scanty respect for the mystical view of his grandfather as a saint, that the Emperor everywhere proclaimed. In 1896, the 20th of February, in speaking of his grandfather, he refers to him as: "The Emperor William, that personality ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... ant, a sensual ant, an ant capable of any one of the seven deadly sins, or even of a small venial sin, is unimaginable. Equally unimaginable, of course, a romantic ant, an ideological ant, a poetical ant, or an ant inclined to metaphysical speculations. No human mind could attain to the absolute matter-of-fact quality of the ant-mind;—no human being, as now constituted, could cultivate a mental habit so impeccably practical as that of the ant. But this superlatively practical mind is incapable of moral error. It would ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... specific are the chapters from Mr. Ralph D. Paine and Mr. Burton J. Hendrick. In "Bound Coastwise" Mr. Paine has treated, with knowledge, sympathy, and imagination, an important phase of our commercial life. As an example of narrative-exposition, matter-of-fact yet touched with the romance of those who "go down to the sea in ships," the excerpt is thoroughly admirable. Mr. Hendrick, in entertaining and profitable wise, tells the story of what he considers "probably ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... on the business men of the city of Boston and the legislature of the State of Massachusetts was the most remarkable phenomenon of the kind ever witnessed in that frugal and matter-of-fact community, for he had only to announce that he wanted for his museum or department in the University a donation or an appropriation, to obtain either, so absolutely recognized was his unselfish devotion ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... you fail in, Alice?" she asked, in the most matter-of-fact tone she could assume. She knew that here in public was ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... slender, she would rather have borne her to her bed in her vigorous arms than to have abandoned her in the troubled state in which she had surprised her. Not less practical and, as her compatriots say, as matter-of-fact as she was charitable, she began to question her friend on the symptoms which had preceded that attack, when with astonishment she saw that altered face contract, tears gushing from the closed eyes, and the fragile form convulsed by sobs. Lydia ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... seeing it, I was conscious that all this was taking place around us, and then I heard Sergeant Corney say to the general, in a matter-of-fact tone: ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... controversialist skilled only in the use of the rapier and compelled at times to enter the lists with those who wielded the bludgeon, a subtle humourist who must 'carry on' with the prosaic and matter-of-fact, a lover of his own fireside who must of necessity be socially advertised with the vulgar, his spirit dwelt apart from the busy world in which ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... motives to dominate him to the exclusion of the other. Absolutism has long since ceased to speak slightingly of physical science, and of the world of perception. It is conceded that motions must be known in the mechanical way, and matters of fact in the matter-of-fact way. Furthermore, the prestige which science enjoyed in the nineteenth century, and the prestige which the empirical and secular world of action has enjoyed to a degree that has steadily increased since the Renaissance, have convinced the absolutist ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... your majesty, seems to me fanciful in the extreme; but I am a plain matter-of-fact man, and do not see visions and ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... to him at all and also in greater degree than that in which they really do: whereas the Reserved man, on the contrary, denies those which really belong to him or else depreciates them, while the mean character being a Plain-matter-of-fact person is Truthful in life and word, admitting the existence of what does really belong to him and making it neither greater ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... and all that I held—including your own self—have I relinquished. It is perhaps fitting. Haply I am punished for having wed you before I had wooed you." Again his tone changed, it grew more cold, more matter-of-fact. "I rode this way a little while ago a hunted man, my only hope to reach home and collect what moneys and valuables I could carry, and make for the coast to find a vessel bound for Holland. I have been engaged, as you know, in stirring up rebellion ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... in the hut discussing various matters. At last John crawled to the door and looked out. He was rather a matter-of-fact boy in his way, and there seemed no special excitement in his voice as he remarked: "Well, Rob, ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... enter into competition with him, so went back a first and second time to Maury when the man would not let him come aboard, whereupon Maury brought the ship to with two or three shots and Jimmy made a third attempt, and forced the Frenchman to show his papers. He tells it in such a matter-of-fact way! No extravagance, no idea of having been in a dangerous situation, he a boy of eighteen, on a French ship in spite of the Captain's rage. What a jolly life it must be! Now dashing in storms and danger, now floating in ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... in a matter-of-fact way, "it's a very pleasant expression, isn't it? But it doesn't mean anything in particular. ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... his own business more strictly than the dove. On the ground, where he came for corn, he seemed to see no other bird, and paid not the slightest heed to me in my window, but went about his own affairs in the most matter-of-fact way. Yet I cannot agree with the common opinion, which has made his name a synonym for all that is meek and gentle. He has a will of his own, and a "mild but firm" way of securing it. Sometimes, when all were busy at the corn, one of my Quaker-clad guests would take a notion, for ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... pretended to be, helpless in the wind that was blowing her down the deck as she clung to the rail, and, quietly taking her by the arm, he pulled her back to the door, where he held her until she was safely inside. This was all done in a perfectly matter-of-fact manner, and she might as well have been a steamer rug that was in danger of being blown overboard. Then before she had time to thank him, the door was blown shut, and he had resumed his solitary walk ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... afternoon, a real homesickness for his mother. He saw her, ample and comfortable and sane, so busy with the comforts of the body that she seemed to ignore the soul, and yet bringing healing with her every matter-of-fact movement. ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... not much fun in teasing Kitty, she was too matter-of-fact, so King turned his attentions to Marjorie, and with apparent innocence kicked out his foot just in time for her to stumble over it. This led to a general scrimmage, in which two Maynards, two sofa-pillows, and a footstool became very much tangled up, and Mr. Maynard ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... well," Tom said, in the dull matter-of-fact way that he had, "only I get mixed up ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... had to tell his story—from the time, that is, when his adoptive father and mother died. He told it in such a simple matter-of-fact way, yet with such quaint remarks, from their very simplicity difficult to understand, that, if the old lady, for all her trying, was not able quite to believe his tale, it was because she doubted whether the boy was not one of God's ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... upon the occasion that calls it forth, upon the person writing it and upon the person for whom it is intended. Whether it should be easy or formal in style, plain or ornate, light or serious, gay or grave, sentimental or matter-of-fact ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... and matter-of-fact query was variously received. Mrs. Dunn frowned and flushed. Malcolm frowned, also. Steve nodded emphatic approval. As for Caroline, she gazed at her ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... no word to answer this and could but harp again upon all the promise of his fine resolution. When the matter-of-fact official came to find him, Lois was close in his embrace and there were tears ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... will," answered Nick, with a hundred per cent, more confidence than he felt. A confidence somewhat increased, however, by last evening's success. "Do I begin at the neck or the waist?" he inquired in his most matter-of-fact voice, as if he were about to cord a box, or nail up ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... the United Nations believed to be the language of inter-planetary invaders. The United Nations believed them dead. Now a watch was being kept on the rocket-ship, to be sure, but it was becoming a matter-of-fact sort of vigilance, pending the arrival of the rest of the Fighting Force and the cracking of the dome of force by the scientists who worked ...
— Invasion • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... singular in one so young. It led you to suspect that the short seventeen years of her life had robbed her of all the anticipation and eagerness that is accustomed to pulse in strong young blood, and filled her with experiences that compelled her to accept existence in a half bored and wholly matter-of-fact way. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... through an essentially savage childhood of ogres and fairies, bows and arrows, sugar-plums and barbaric nursery tales, as well as a romantic boyhood of mediaeval chivalry and adventure, before they steady down into that crowning glory of our race, the solid, sober, matter-of-fact, commercial British Philistine. Hence the coco-nut in its unstripped state is roughly triangular in form, its angles answering to the separate three fruits of simpler palms; and it has three pits or weak places in the shell, through ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... Mediumship a department of Spiritualism capable of plain, matter-of-fact investigation, which could be conducted in writing and demanding no special powers of observation, the duty of investigation devolved mainly upon the ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... and the rest, headed by their captain, advanced aft, compelling, as he did so, all the seamen and passengers he met to give up their arms. The best way I can express our sensations is to say that we all felt very small; at least I did, I know. The pirates set about the business in such a quiet, matter-of-fact sort of way, that I cannot say I was in any way alarmed as to the result of the affair. Having disarmed everybody fore and aft, the pirates proceeded to get what they wanted. The mate—at least, so I supposed the man called Antonio to be—pulled out a huge pocket-book, and in the ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... in his mind as to the sincerity of Nevins. It is clear that this strange man, who, in a matter-of-fact way, asserts that he holds the power of a great convention in his grasp, could have used it for base ends; he could have chosen a man of less ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... have seemed comic communicated in that matter-of-fact tone, but somehow it struck me as tragic. That this vain, self-contained, and reticent man should confess to the frailty of humanity to a man he disliked was the measure of ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... head was cut off—it tries to get at the place with its right foot. You now cut off its right foot: the headless body deliberates, and after a while tries to do with its left foot what it can no longer do with its right. Plain matter-of-fact people will draw their own inference. They will not be seduced from the superficial view of the matter. They will say that the headless body can still, to some extent, feel, think, and act, and if so, that it must ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... see, good-naturedly ascribes the danger to mere carelessness, in bringing the torch too near to the hedge, or tossing it away at daybreak. But Varro, a more matter-of-fact observer, does not disguise the plain truth, that these disasters were often the product of pure malicious frolic. For instance, in recommending a certain kind of quickset fence, he insists upon it, as one of its advantages, that it will not readily ignite under the torch of the mischievous wayfarer: ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... request," rejoined Lady Blakeney in a more quiet, more matter-of-fact tone of voice. "You must represent me, here, when I am gone: explain as casually and as naturally as you can, that I have gone to join my husband on his yacht for a few days. Lucie, my maid, is devoted and a tower of secrecy; she will stand ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... there is none like him." A man of very little education, whom I met a day or two after in the stage-coach, observed to me: "Bright is far the more eloquent of the two, but Cobden is more felt, just because his speeches are so plain, so merely matter-of-fact and to the point." ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... obliterated record, and enable her to spell its tragic characters. If he could, he would have shrunk from this office; but all the more because he specially had to do with the mystical side of medicine, he always tried to keep his relation to her free from personal feeling, and his aim single and matter-of-fact. ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... paradise, and even they laughed at her want of wisdom: the very money which was her own in the sight of God, and which had lengthened her father's life, ought to be given back to-day to the poor, its rightful owners. If there was any other cause for her to fight blindly against the narrow matter-of-fact routine which ruled her life, she did not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... complete, so self-sufficing, of a nature so leonine, that a man, however little of a Turk he may be, regrets the presence of so great a mind in such a body, and could wish that she were wholly woman. He fears to find the strange distortion of an abnormal soul. Do not cold analysis and matter-of-fact theory point to passions in such a woman? Does she judge, and not feel? Or, phenomenon more terrible, does she not feel and judge at one and the same time? Able for all things through her brain, ought ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... why Cuthbert welcomed the coming of Owen, for somehow he fancied that the young Canadian might be built along his own lines, and able to sympathize with him as the good-hearted but crude Eli never could, since it was not in his nature to go beyond the substantial and matter-of-fact. ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... is not erroneous, only somehow its success is poor. You bear me witness that it fails. And it fails generally for very matter-of-fact reasons—most likely because one day we forget ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... we began to be a steady and matter-of-fact sort of people, and dancing in spring being beneath our dignity, we gave it up, and in course of time it descended to the sweeps—a fall certainly, because, though sweeps are very good fellows in their way, and moreover very useful in a civilised community, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... contemporary history also covering the details of this. Tamsen Donner, heroine that she was, kept a diary which would have been valuable for us, but this was lost along with her paintings and her botanical collections. The best preserved diary is that of Patrick Breen, done in simple and matter-of-fact fashion throughout most of the ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... to the exclusion of the other. Absolutism has long since ceased to speak slightingly of physical science, and of the world of perception. It is conceded that motions must be known in the mechanical way, and matters of fact in the matter-of-fact way. Furthermore, the prestige which science enjoyed in the nineteenth century, and the prestige which the empirical and secular world of action has enjoyed to a degree that has steadily increased since the Renaissance, have convinced the absolutist of the ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... is filled with a pungent matter-of-fact odour. Dora, holding her handkerchief to her nose, rushes valiantly at the offender and hurls it out of the window on to a flower-bed. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... lighter topics in a way which seemed to show entire forgetfulness of what had gone before. It seemed almost heartless to the boy to find these friends, so dear to him, able to conduct themselves in so matter-of-fact a manner while he was in the grip of his own life tragedy. But he could not blame them. He had assumed much which they had never granted. This last dinner together, made possible by his father's presence in New York, was intended as ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... excuse me," he said, fast becoming scandalised at her matter-of-fact way of approaching ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... style of architecture is something of a departure from the typical farmhouse, being designed and fashioned with no regard to symmetry or proportion, but rather, as is suggested, built to conform to the matter-of-fact and most sensible ideas of its owner, who, if it pleased him, would have small windows where large ones ought to be, and vice versa, whether they balanced properly to the eye or not. And chimneys—he would have as many as he wanted, and no two alike, in either height ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... had disappeared into the house with Peggy Blackton did Aldous feel that he had descended firmly upon his feet once more into a matter-of-fact world. MacDonald was waiting with the horses, and Blackton was pointing over toward the steel workers, and was saying something about ten thousand pounds of black powder and dynamite and a mountain that had stood a million years and was going to be ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... young man realized how skeptically Whittaker and Jerrard would view any such apprehensions as he might convey to them, reading his letter in the comfortable and matter-of-fact serenity of the city. He knew how impatient it made President Whittaker to be troubled with any subordinate's worry over details. His rule was to select the right man, say, "Let it be done," and then, after the manner of the modern financial ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... replied Prissie in her matter-of-fact voice. "Miss Oliphant has asked me to go with her ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... genius has simply befooled Lord Penzance. Seafaring men, after reading The Tempest, are ready to maintain that its author must have been for at least a year before the mast. As for Shakespeare's law, which has taken in so many matter-of-fact practitioners, one can now refer to Ben Jonson's evidence in Hall v. Russell, where that great dramatist has no difficulty in showing that if none but a lawyer could have written Shakespeare's plays, a ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... filled and lighted the pipe, did it in the most matter-of-fact sort of way. Then he remarked to the head of the copy desk, in ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... by men who profess to be guided by facts only, as if facts could not be misconceived, or figments taken for them; and therefore, one day, when somebody was speaking of a person who valued himself on being a matter-of-fact man, "Now," said he, "I value myself on being a matter-of-lie man." This did not hinder his being a man of the greatest veracity, in the ordinary sense of the word; but "truth," he said, "was precious, and not to be wasted on everybody." ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... he's not a goose. I've no doubt he's a very clever man. But you're so matter-of-fact, archdeacon, when it suits your purpose, that one can't trust oneself to any facon de parler. I've no doubt Mr Arabin is a very valuable man—at Oxford, and that he'll be a good vicar at St Ewold. All I mean is, that having passed one evening ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... the most matter-of-fact manner, presented himself her red squirrel friend, arriving from nobody knew where; and bringing not only himself but a little basket in which appeared—precisely—biscuits and strawberries. Silently all this presented itself. Wych Hazel's cheeks rivalled ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... simple and matter-of-fact. He turned radiantly to Marcia, and took her hand again. She followed him in some bewilderment, and he led her through the broad corridor which gave access to ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is the vision of a garden of Eden from which the demon has been banished. And the Demon in question is the Private Ownership of the Means of Production. His name is less romantic than those of the wonted demons of legend and folklore. But it is at least suitable for the matter-of-fact age of machinery which he is supposed to haunt and on which he casts his evil spell. Let him be once exorcised and the ills of humanity are gone. And the exorcism, it appears, is of the simplest. Let this demon once feel the contact of state ownership of the means of production ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... matter-of-fact tone in which she alluded to such interests as those which she could have ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... anointed, and had never received the seal of God, as it were, to his commission, was a fact which struck the imagination of the village as of much more importance than many greater things—being at once more visible and matter-of-fact, and of more mystical and spiritual efficacy than any other circumstance in the ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... to hard study, but to overcurious scanning of the realities of this life, and the still greater realities and more momentous possibilities of the world to come. There is a sense of the surroundings being too much for us, an alarm and a giddiness, that comes of sober matter-of-fact thought over-much prolonged. Then it happens that one or more undeniable truths are laid hold of, and considered in strong relief and in isolation from the rest: the result is a distorted and partial view of truth as a whole, and therewith the mind is troubled. Here the kindlier ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... begged, laying his hand on Sansome's forearm. "A genuine passion is the most glorious thing on earth even in callow youth! But when we old men of the world—" The pause was eloquent. "She's a headstrong filly," he went on in a more matter-of-fact tone, after a moment, "takes a bit of handling. You'll pardon me, old chap, if I suggest that you've gone ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... said I to myself in my most matter-of-fact tone, "is a little cool sense. Be quiet now and ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... he gives his mind to with a minimum expenditure of vital energy; nothing is wasted in expression, style, spread-eagleism; everything is instinctively kept as near to the practical heart of the matter as possible. He is—to the eye of an artist—distressingly matter-of-fact, a tempting mark for satire. And yet he is in truth an idealist, though it is his nature to snub, disguise, and mock his own inherent optimism. To admit enthusiasms is "bad form" if he is a "gentleman"; "swank" or mere waste of good heat if he is not a "gentleman." ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... What on earth are you poking up here for at this time of day?" was the matter-of-fact greeting. "You are to hurry up and come into our house and stay to dinner. Mother said you are allowed, so you needn't stop to ask permission; and, just think, the box that grandma sent from England has arrived, ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... book, of cases where men plodding along in a matter-of-fact way, were all at once aroused and as if awakening from a slumber they developed the possibilities within them and from that time on were different persons. You alone can decide when the turning ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... To his matter-of-fact home, which was called Stone Lodge, Mr. Gradgrind directed his steps. The house was situated on a moor, within a mile or two of a great ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... narration presented to her, that she read it not at all in the words, but in the voice, the face, the manner of the raconteur. She was amused, she was touched, she was impressed by his studiously matter-of-fact version of his enterprise. He put forward with the shy, prudish shamefacedness of the New Englander the sound financial basis of his undertaking, as its main claim on his interest, as its main value. ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... concern. It even sounded as though she did not take his news seriously, as though as to his movements she was possessed of a knowledge superior to his own. He tried to speak in matter-of-fact tones. ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... whole set of elegant volumes! It was marvellous that she should have turned the page containing just that poem! It was equally marvellous that she should have discovered the works of Victor Hugo in the matter-of-fact office of Mr. Cannon! But was it? Was he not half-French, and were not these books precisely a corroboration of what her mother had told her? Mr. Cannon's origin at once assumed for her the strange seductive hues of romance; he shared the glory of Victor Hugo. Then the voices in the ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... of procuring benefits of a more substantial nature, which I am by no means inclined to estimate at less than their worth. I do not think I am fit to marry, to make an obedient wife or affectionate mother; my imagination is paramount with me, and would disqualify me, I think, for the every-day, matter-of-fact cares and duties of the mistress of a household and the head of a family. I think I should be unhappy and the cause of unhappiness to others if I were to marry. I cannot swear I shall never fall in love, but if I do I will fall out of it again, for ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... me for you," answered Linda in equally as matter-of-fact tones; and rising, she gathered up the fish and carried them to Katy while Donald knelt beside the chilly stream and scoured his face and hands, after which Linda whipped away the scales with an improvised ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... return to Europe, might have been carried away with his disabled ship by the southern currents of the Pacific right to the shores of Australia, and his hypotheses were so ingenious and his deductions so subtle that even the matter-of-fact John Mangles, a difficult judge, and most unlikely to be led away by any flights of ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... to the North Pole? "A ship to be sure!" exclaims some matter-of-fact gentleman. Reader! It ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... rough life of far-off Tudor England live for ever. Dear old Agnes! She little thought as she struggled with her spelling and her pen that she was writing something that was immortal. If she had known, I don't think she would have bothered. She was a very matter-of-fact old lady, and was too full of worries to have ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... noted by the older among my readers, who are sure to be obsessed more or less by elderly wrangles as to whether the gospels are credible as matter-of-fact narratives, that I have hardly raised this question, and have accepted the credible and incredible with equal complacency. I have done this because credibility is a subjective condition, as the evolution ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... national vivacity, which other folks are in the habit of calling extravagance, and which, as my readers well know already, the good Gironacs had by no means got rid of, even in the course of a long sejour in the matter-of-fact metropolis ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... drew near the darky caught sight of him, pulled up "anchor" and paddled his boat to the shore. But Mr. Heatherbloom did not at once get in; his eyes rested on the bushel or so of freshly caught, bubble-blowing crabs. He strove to appear calm and matter-of-fact. ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... tendency to realism was thoroughly congenial to the matter-of-fact utilitarian spirit of the time, and was in some sense in harmony with a 'return to Nature.' But it was unconsciously becoming divorced from some of the great movements of thought, of which it failed to perceive the significance. A new inspiration was showing itself, to which critics ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... courtship of the bird of July is a beautiful sight. He is at all times peculiarly joyous, but at this season his little body seems hardly able to contain him; so great is his rapture, indeed, that it infects and inspires the most matter-of-fact student. Our bird-loving poet Celia Thaxter must have seen him in loverly mood ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... could be no question. Mr. Barradine would pay a very large sum of money to avoid the threatened disgrace. And—in the midst of her acute apprehension and distress—the plain matter-of-fact idea presented itself: that if Dale were not rendered irresponsible by jealous ire, one might hope that he would eventually fall in with Mr. Barradine's views—that he ought, for everybody's sake, to take his damages, more damages ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... Carl was full of the nauseating shame which a matter-of-fact man, who supposes that he is never pilloried, knows when a conscientious friend informs him that he has been observed, criticized; that his enthusiasms have been regarded as eccentricities; his affectionate approaches toward friendship ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... next day she divined from his half troubled look at her, and the shy modesty of his manner, that he was wondering whether he had actually babbled last night, or in a mild delirium dreamed the whole thing. Not from her might he find out. Her easy, matter-of-fact way made any such passage seem ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... only matter-of-fact geographical and mythological information in William of Tours' History of the Crusades; for instance, in his description of the Bosphorus he does not waste a word over its beauty. But, as 'fruitful' and 'pleasant' are ever-recurring adjectives with him, one cannot say that ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... people besides. Before it was over, the story-book uncle had come to know his nieces and Winton fairly thoroughly; while they, on their side, had grown very well acquainted with the tall, rather silent man, who had a fashion of suggesting the most delightful things to do in the most matter-of-fact manner. ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs
... famous cases of tragedy and passion I have heard unfolded at the Old Bailey and the Law Courts, and the intense, almost theatrical atmosphere surrounding them, and compare it to the simple setting of this story, told in matter-of-fact tones by a sergeant standing to attention. "We finished all our ammunition, sir," he began, addressing the colonel, "and took our rifles. Major Harville was shot by a machine-gun while he was detailing us to defend ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... breadth of the hall, nearly over her head. These blossoms form the letters and words, GWENNEN GWENT, or "The Bee of Gwent,"—Gwent being the ancient name of that portion of Glamorgan. The title is apt enough; for Lady Hall—that is her matter-of-fact name—is proverbially one of the busiest of her sex in all that relates to the welfare of her poorer neighbors. She is wife of Sir Benjamin Hall, member of Parliament for the largest parish in London, St. Mary-le-bone, and whose county residence is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... Gouverneur Morris demolished a vast amount of eulogy when he wrote to a correspondent in France that some boasted the Constitution as a work from Heaven, while others gave it a less righteous origin. "I have many reasons to believe," said this matter-of-fact man, who bore such a large part in recasting the phraseology of the document, "that it was the work of ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... Mediterranean coast, except from Beirut to Alexandretta or on the Silician plain or in the Gulf of Saloniki, do you have so provoking a contrast of nearby but unattainable snow with sizzling heat. This may not be always true. The day of the aeroplane, as a common and matter-of-fact means of locomotion, ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... said Rhoda, in such a sedate matter-of-fact tone despite her blush that DeWitt chuckled. He threw his arm across her shoulder and hugged ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... every occasion and from the first the foundation of everything, is something very different from the vague legends which float about of kings or saints whom death has spared, or from a readiness to see the direct agency of heaven in health or disease. It is too precise, too matter-of-fact, too prosaic in the way in which it is told, to be resolved into ill-understood dreams and imaginations. The various recitals show little care to satisfy our curiosity, or to avoid the appearance of inconsistency in detail; ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... understand the essential principles of this theory of surplus value and to judge of its truth. I have never flattered you, Jonathan, as you know; I am in earnest when I say that I am content to leave the matter to your own judgment. I attach more importance to your decision, based upon a plain, matter-of-fact observation of actual life, than to the opinion of many a very learned economist cloistered away from the real world in a musty atmosphere of books and mental abstractions. So think it ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... lasted for five minutes, but when she came back all trace of fear had left her. Her face showed quiet and matter-of-fact above the long waterproof in which she had wrapped herself. Over her arm she carried ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... later on they came to the conclusion that the letters could not be better, for from these letters they received a complete picture of their unfortunate brother's life. Sonia's letters were full of the most matter-of-fact detail, the simplest and clearest description of all Raskolnikov's surroundings as a convict. There was no word of her own hopes, no conjecture as to the future, no description of her feelings. Instead of any attempt to interpret his state of mind ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... me?" echoed Duncan, who was of a matter-of-fact mind, and was always content with things just as ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... as few brothers do. Oh, how I admired him! He was my ideal, and too often the hero of my romances. Garry would have laughed at my hero-worship; he was so matter-of-fact, effective and practical. Yet he understood me, my Celtic ideality, and that shy reserve which is the armour of a sensitive soul. Garry in his fine clever way knew me and shielded me and cheered me. He was so buoyant and charming he heartened you like Spring sunshine, and braced you ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... of wind,' captain! 'Only a capful of wind,'" said Ishmael, in a grave, matter-of-fact way, as he carefully assisted the ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... direction, only just then Nealie began to unharness the animal, setting about her task with such an air of being accustomed to it that he suddenly forgot to be awkward and nervous, walking up to the wagon and saying, in a matter-of-fact tone: "Here, Miss, I'll look to your animal, and give him his supper and a rub down, while you go in with Mother and get a ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... the material phenomena of the universe. The ideas referred to are expressed by races in the lower culture both in belief and in custom. And many of the tales which now amuse our children appear to have grown out of myths believed in the most matter-of-fact way by our remote forefathers; while others enshrine relics of long-forgotten customs and ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... did he speak to her that night and then just to say in plain matter-of-fact style: "You'd better lie down there and get some sleep. Good night." And this remark had come only after fifteen minutes of busy preparation on his part and curiosity on hers. He had gone out of the ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... St. George felt this directly he spoke to her. He shook off the impression and set himself practically to the matter in hand. He had never had greater need of his faculty for directness. His low tone was quite matter-of-fact, his ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... anyway, to lay down rules for these substantial and successful men—he who had been for all the years of his life at their command, subservient to their demands for labor—their underling? Only one thing kept him from dodging the whole issue and remaining at home—the colonel's matter-of-fact assumption that Jim had become master of the situation. How could he flee, when this old soldier was fighting so valiantly for him in the trenches? So Jim went to ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... possibly tell you how sinister, how ominous the whole thing suddenly was. It swooped down upon all of us like a black cloud. Credit me, if you will, with a highly—strung bundle of nerves (not so solid matter-of-fact as I seem, you know well enough) but it seemed to me, at that moment, that Peter was defying, consciously, with his heart in his mouth, a world of devils and that he was cognisant of all of them. The thing ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... are going to help me, aren't you, Peter?" Jack went on, seriously. "You are going to hold up a finger of warning when I get off the course. I am to be practical, matter-of-fact; there's to be an ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... simple fishermen of Templeton had been inclined to believe in miracles, the strange reappearance of the missing Martha at this particular time must have savoured of something of the sort. But being matter-of-fact folk, they contented themselves with lounging round the boat as she lay once more on the beach, staring at her, and wondering between their whiffs what the solicitors ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... said, approaching her with the camera, and speaking in the same matter-of-fact tone she used toward the older girls, "will you row across the lake and give ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... all this with such a veritable matter-of-fact air, and such liveliness—he sounded the chase and its cries, and showed King Lear tottering, and Hamlet standing dark, and the vast substance of Falstaff—that I followed the incidents excitedly, and really saw them, which was better than understanding them. I required some help from ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Max, in a matter-of-fact tone; "we've got the whole day ahead of us, to prowl around, and see what the blessed old island looks like. And perhaps we might find out a few things before dark comes on again. As I said a while ago, one night's gone. I hope now none of you want to throw up ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... passion, of man's unscrupulous savagery. During those few minutes he had been transported to New York and Paris, London and Rome. Crimes had been spoken of which made the murder for which Oliver Hilditch had just been tried seem like a trifling indiscretion. Hard though his mentality, sternly matter-of-fact as was his outlook, he was still unable to fully believe in himself, his surroundings, or in this woman who had just dropped a veil over her ashen cheeks. Reason persisted ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... an extremely matter-of-fact tone, as though there were no such things as love and ecstasy in the world, as though to indicate that in her opinion life ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... and promised, and "King" Plummer joined them in the carriage that bore them to the hall. He took his place with them in such a natural and matter-of-fact manner that Harley was confirmed in his renewed opinion that he was Sylvia Morgan's uncle, or, at least, her next ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... to strip out here," Monet said, in a matter-of-fact tone. "Just leave your clothes in a ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... full of Maoris, in all the savage splendour of tattooing and paint and feathers; but here, instead of all that romantic fancy, are three or four ordinary "long-shore" boatmen, with a pilot who steps on board in the most matter-of-fact manner possible. ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... liveliest fear of death and wounds. He was always asking himself how he would behave under fire, and somehow he found the odds heavy against his behaving well. He put roundabout questions to Dave and Teddy with the aim of discovering what they felt about it. They answered in a careless, matter-of-fact way, as men to whom it had never occurred to have any doubt about themselves. Nat was desperately afraid they might guess his reason for asking. Just here, when their friendship might have been helpful, it failed altogether. He felt angry with them ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... said matter-of-fact Amyas. "And tell his lordship that, with his good leave, I don't stir from here till morning, if I can keep awake. There is a stir in the fort, and I expect them ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... lady's, but to-day they seemed less innocent and more irritating than usual. Imogen felt that she could have boxed Mrs. Potts's silly ears. In Sir Basil's pleasant disclaimers, too, there was an echo of Miss Bocock's matter-of-fact acknowledgments that seemed to set them both leagues away from the Pottses and to make their likeness greater than ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... how could that be when the skeleton had neither eyes nor a place to carry them? It thrashed its bony arms impatiently and its ribs rattled like a xylophone. The spectators were transfixed with fear, all except the culprit, who said, through the window, in a matter-of-fact way, "I left your head on the pole at the back door." The skeleton started in that direction, seized the skull, clapped it into the place where a head should have grown on its own shoulders, and, after shaking its fists in a threatening way at the house, ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... the habit of policemen over all the world, his thumbs were stuck in his belt. He answered without offense, in tones matter-of-fact ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... truth and splendor of "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp," or "Cinderella," as surveyed from the stage-box, in his confiding infancy, any more than to believing in baubles when the time came to justly discriminate. Woe for the incredulous child, too matter-of-fact to be enlisted in the creations of fancy, and who tastes in infancy the chief bitterness of age—the incapability of surrendering ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... purred under the strokings. His fever for the East was back upon him. His weeks with Uncle Peter going over the fields where his father had prevailed had made him convalescent, but these New Yorkers—the very manner and atmosphere of them—undid the work. He envied them their easier speech, their matter-of-fact air of omniscience, the elaborate and cultivated simplicity of their dress, their sureness and sufficiency in all that they thought and said and did. He was homesick again for the life he had glimpsed. The West was rude, desolate, and depressing. Even Uncle Peter, whom he had come ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... essential modernity of Pericles' or of Plato's time to the antiquity of Homer's. In India, the faery light of an immemorial dawn mingles so with the facts of history that there is no disentangling myth from matter-of-fact; if you should prove almost any king to have reigned quite recently, his throne would still be somehow set in the mellow past and near the fountains of time. Augustan Rome, modern in all its phases, stands not so far in front of a background ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... the most pleasure to see. And I believe that my liking for you is due especially to one thing: you remind me of some one who was the great affection of my youth, a sedate and sensible little being she also, chained to the matter-of-fact side of existence, but tempering it with that ideal element which we artists set aside exclusively for the profit of our work. Certain things which you say seem to me as though they had come from her. You have the same mouth, like an antique model's. Is it that that ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... modelling of the head is quite masterly. Niccolo is looking rather to the left; his keen and hawklike countenance, and his piercing eyes, deep set and quivering within pendulous eyelids, give a sense of invincible logic and penetration. The laconic, matter-of-fact mouth, and the resolute jaw add strength and courage to the physiognomy: the nose and its disdainful nostrils are those of the haughty optimate. The head is, however, less fine than the face: a skull of rather common proportions, and a sloping though broad forehead ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... family of my own," went on Mrs. McGregor in matter-of-fact fashion, "and I've seen so many children pull through when they looked fit to die that I've learned never to quit hoping. You'll get nowhere in a fight if ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... there was no adequate consciousness and recognition of the essentials of man's nature in the older, oriental art, so there is no pathos, no humanity in the more special sense, but a kind of hardness and cruelty rather, in those oft-repeated, long, matter-of-fact processions, on the [265] marbles of Nineveh, of slave-like soldiers on their way to battle mechanically, or of captives on their way to slavery or death, for the satisfaction of the Great King. These Greek marbles, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... a little in being particular in an affair of such delicacy. Some writers wake their heroines at dead of night, drag them, half drest, out of a third story chamber window, lead them through a thousand perils by flood, fire, and field, till the mere matter-of-fact, common sense reader is convinced that the poor girls had neither a dry thread nor a clean one upon their persons; and no "change of raiment" so much as hinted at. I scorn so ungallant an action as to compel my heroine to ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... to identify himself satisfactorily, but declared that everything was "on a higher plane" in his present state of being, and that all life was "continuous and progressive." Mrs. Horner spoke of herself as a "psychic"; but otherwise she seemed oddly unpretentious and matter-of-fact; and Eugene had no doubt at all of her sincerity. He was sure that she was not an intentional fraud, and though he departed in a state of annoyance with himself, he came to the conclusion that if any credulity were played upon by Mrs. Horner's exhibitions, ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... put in the most matter-of-fact sort of way, staggered me considerably, and confirmed me in the resolution to avoid ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... emotion, in the tone of a man stating a simple matter of fact. Then he remarked in the same matter-of-fact voice that, as it happened, he was dying, so it made no difference. Perhaps he wanted her to know that a grave was ready for the secret she had just told him. There was no need to remind her of that,—she was sure of ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... chorus garbed as birds or frogs? But we reserve fuller discussion of this point until later. We might suggest an interesting comparison to the nonsense verse of W. S. Gilbert, which represents the most shocking ideas in a style even nonchalantly matter-of-fact. Does Gilbert by any chance actually wish us to believe that "Gentle Alice Brown," in the poem of the same name, really assisted in "cutting ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... offer of a drive, and soon found himself on the well-remembered road to Pleasant River. He had not trodden that dusty thoroughfare for many a year, and every tree and shrub and rock had a message for him, though he was a plain, matter-of-fact maker of pumps. There was no old home to revisit, for his stepmother had died long ago, and Jennie had conscientiously removed the family wreath from the glass case and woven some of the departed lady's hair into the funereal ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... connubial happiness was not merely a bon mot invented on the spur of the moment, to silence an awkward questioner. It was a firm conviction, which finds expression in more than one quaint utterance, but also in more than one matter-of-fact assertion. To take the ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... Derrick, in a matter-of-fact way. "No one could help admiring her. She's one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. And her performance was wonderfully clever. ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... the labouring-oar altogether on me, came to the rescue, and, with his subtle manner and oily tongue, began to make the wrong appear the right. I do not think he blinded his own sister in the least, but I fear he had too much influence over mine. Lucy, though all heart, was as much matter-of-fact as her brother was a sophist. He was ingenious in glozing over truths; she, nearly unerring in detecting them. I never knew a greater contrast between two human beings, than there was between these two children of the same parents, in this particular. I have ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... "I'm so shrunk away to nuthin', I know I can lay on the back seat if I crook myself up," she said, with a cool accent but a rather shaky voice. Seeming to realize that even her intense desire to strike the matter-of-fact note could not take the place of any and all explanation of her extraordinary request, she added, holding my eyes steady with her own: "Emma Hulett's my twin sister. I guess it ain't so queer, my wanting to ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... room with as much haste as at all became her. Paul stood motionless quite a minute after she had vanished, nor did he awaken from his reverie, until aroused by an appeal from Captain Truck, to sustain him, in some of his matter-of-fact opinions concerning England, against the visionary and bookish notions ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... Bracely," she said. "I am afraid I am much too commonplace and matter-of-fact to care about such things. It is a great loss I know, and deprives me of the pleasant society of Russian princesses. But we are all made differently; that is very lucky. I ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... on herbs to-day," responded Mrs. Todd, in the most matter-of-fact way. "I'm bent on seeing folks," and ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... all-agogness of Hendrik would have come quietly to nought, like any other popular flutter following upon a new thing under the sun. But in a romantic cause the conscientiousness of Miss Wimple, for all her seeming matter-of-fact, took on a quality of chivalry; and she displayed a Quixotism most tiltfully disposed toward any windmill of conventional proprieties that might plant itself in the way by which her beauteous and distressed damsel ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... not impossible that before the arrival of the ensuing Sunday, he might have afforded a little employment to that ancient and gloomy functionary, a coroner, and his jury. At that time, however, inquests of this sort were matter-of-fact and melancholy affairs enough; which I doubt not would have been rather a dissuasive from suicide, in the estimation of one who might be supposed ambitious of the eclat of a modern inquest; where, indeed, ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... discomfited by such words from Hannah's lips. True they were spoken in matter-of-fact tones, and without the suspicion of a whine, but as the first instance of anything approaching a lament, the occasion was historic. "Oh, Hannah, dear— it's only at first! After the first no one cares a rap what you look like, so long as ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Viney, with matter-of-fact precision, "that you've been gallivanting all alone, Cecily, on that common plain, where you're likely to meet all sorts of foreigners and tramps and savages, and Heaven knows what other vermin, I shall set my face against a repetition of it. ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... night afore last,' says he, matter-of-fact like; and I knaw'd he warn't lying—'Me and the Emperor and another gentleman.' He began to laugh. 'Rare sport he was too, the gentleman! Hear him sauce the Emperor!' Then he takes a sweeping look through his glass. 'Ye see we've a ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... fashion. The Goguelat myth may seem disconnected, and he did as a matter of fact once publish it separately; yet it sets off (in the same sort of felicitous manner of which Shakespeare's clown-scenes and others are the capital examples in literature) both the slightly matter-of-fact details of the beatification of the valley and the various minute sketches of places and folk, and the almost superhuman goodness of Benassis, and his intensely and piteously human suffering and remorse. It is like the red cloak in a group; it ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... was such an intense reality. Had there been anything excited or unreal about her companion's manner, she would not have thought twice about it; but her tranquillity and sweetness seemed to her very remarkable. Moreover, Fraulein Sonnenthal was strangely devoid of imagination; she was a matter-of-fact little person, not at all a likely subject for visions and delusions. Erica was perplexed. Once more there came to her that uncomfortable ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... Brazilians, refusing quarter and declaring his devotion to his country with his dying breath. The generally accepted report, however, is that he made a fruitless endeavor to escape from his encampment, and, overtaken by a Brazilian horseman, died in a matter-of-fact way from a lance-thrust. His grave is in that wild and lonely valley. At first a wooden cross marked the spot where he lies, but this has disappeared, and a bush, one of many that grow around, is pointed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... good-will, as you have known from the first, and you must make up your mind to accept matters as they are. You are determined to have her and I have given my consent to the marriage from purely selfish motives," Mrs. Montague returned, in a straightforward, matter-of-fact tone. "I would never have consented," she added, with a frown "if I had not feared that there is proof—besides what we possess—of Mona Forester's legal marriage, and that through it we might some time lose our fortune. ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
