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More "Narrator" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gentleman were hushed, I drew a long breath and looked round the room, striving, with the best energy of my imagination, to throw a tinge of romance and historic grandeur over the realities of the scene. But my nostrils snuffed up a scent of cigar smoke, clouds of which the narrator had emitted by way of visible emblem, I suppose, of the nebulous obscurity of his tale. Moreover, my gorgeous fantasies were wofully disturbed by the rattling of the spoon in a tumbler of whiskey punch, which Mr. Thomas Waite was mingling for a customer. Nor did ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... treated. We never know how Waka circumvented Malio and restored her grandchild to the husband designed for her. The whole thing sounds like a dramatic innovation with farcical import, which appeared in the tale without motivation for the reason that it had none in its inception. The oral narrator is rather an actor than a composer; he may have introduced this episode as a surprise, and its success as farce perpetuated ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... the boat; that the people of Boussa who had eaten of it all died, because it was human flesh, and that they knew we white men eat human flesh. I was indebted to the messenger of Yarro for a defence, who told the narrator that I was much more nice in my eating than his countrymen were. But it was with some difficulty I could persuade him that if his story was true, it was the people's own fears that had killed them; that the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... intelligible malpractices the gossips of Salem took little heed. One of them said that such an action showed Satan's prompting, but they all preferred to listen to the grander guilt of the blasphemous sacraments and supernatural rides. The narrator ended with saying that Hota was to be hung the next morning, in spite of her confession, even although her life had been promised to her if she acknowledged her sin; for it was well to make an example of the first-discovered witch, and it was also well that she was an Indian, a heathen, ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... reader to lose sight of the author; no, he piques himself on being the great showman, and would scarcely take it as a compliment if you entered into the interest of the tale, unless as an exhibition of the narrator's talent. But then he handles his wires so cleverly, and is really so immensely superior to the fictitious individuals whom he places before us, that it is no great wonder if we prefer Alexander Dumas or Jules Janin to their heroes. The Germans, relying on their own powers of belief, have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... official having been promoted, was ambitious of being designated, in the newspapers, "active and intelligent," and gave information against a gang of coiners; "Wot wos the consequence?" continued the narrator. "Somehow or another, that p'leseman was never more heered on. One fine night he went on his beat; he didn't show at the next muster; and it was s'posed he'd bolted. Every inquiry was made, and the 'mysterious disappearance of a p'leseman,' got into the noospapers. Howsomnever, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... in those days," responded the grey old narrator, with a smile for his wife. "My great-great-grandmother was a beautiful woman, and she was well aware of that fact. Her husband was a jealous devil, as unreasonable as a jackass, and as stubborn as an ox. To make a long story short, after they had been married five ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... "Perhaps," added the narrator, "even less agreeable to the delinquent would have been, had he heard it, her description of his physical appearance. Alluding to the fact that his head was undoubtedly too large for his body, she said, 'My husband has the head of a goat, and he has ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... servants. But when Yahweh "plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues'' suspicion was aroused, and the Pharaoh rebuked the patriarch for his deceit and sent him away under an escort (xii. 10-xiii. 1). This story of Abram and his increased wealth (xiii. 2) receives no comment at the hands of the narrator, and in its present position would make Sarai over sixty years of age (xii. 4, xvii. 1, 17). A similar experience is said to have happened to Abraham and Sarah at Gerar with the Philistine king Abimelech (xx. E), but the tone of the narrative is noticeably more advanced, and the presents ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... country. With this power of practical foresight, he was often better able even than some of the generals to foresee and appraise results. This topographical knowledge also gave him that power of wonderful clearness in description which is the first and best quality necessary to the narrator of a series of complex movements. A battle fought in the open, like that at Gettysburg, or one of those which took place during the previous campaigns, on a plain, along the river, and in the Peninsula, is comparatively easy to describe, especially when viewed from an eminence. These ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... the impression derogatory to the neighbor's esteem and good name. Of course, if mere curiosity makes us listen and our pleasure and amusement are less at the expense of the neighbor's good name than excited by the style of the narrator or the singularity of the facts alleged, the fault is less; but fault there nevertheless is, since such an attitude serves to encourage the traducer and helps him drive his points home. Many sin who could and should prevent excesses of this kind, but refrain ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... Phronsie off into a corner, where she told him all the doings of the day—the disappointment of the cake, and how it was finally crowned with flowers; all of which Phronsie, with no small pride in being the narrator, related gravely to her absorbed listener. "And don't you think, Bensie," she said, clasping her little hand in a convincing way over his two bigger, stronger ones, "that Polly's stove was very naughty ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... his bell, the deputies were taking their seats, the curtain was about to rise. As a faithful narrator of the session we desire our readers to attend, we think it safer and better in every way to copy verbatim the report of the debate as given in one of the morning papers of ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... violated poetic justice by escaping; for, seeing the mischief they had done, they were the first to run away, witnessed the destruction of the town from a neighboring hill, and were afterwards married, the narrator of this incident coming to the sensible conclusion that "it was too bad entirely that the wans that got away were the wans that, be rights, ought ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... instincts of the organism.... The child never gets tired of demanding the repetition of a game ... he wants always to hear the same story instead of a new one, insists inexorably on exact repetition, and corrects each deviation which the narrator lets slip by mistake.... According to this, an instinct would be a tendency in living organic matter impelling it towards reinstatement of an earlier condition, one which it had abandoned under ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... Ruth took her way down the street. The question as to whether the doctor had gone beyond the bounds of their brief acquaintance had of course been presented to her mind; but if a slight flush came into her face when she remembered the nature of the narrative and the personality of the narrator, it was quickly banished by the sweet assurance that in this way he had honored her beyond the reach ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... and metre (such as they are) were purely accidental with my narrator; but as they occurred verb. et ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... "Well," the narrator went on to say soberly, "two fellows told me they'd heard that same shriek. One was hunting a stray heifer when he found himself near the quarry, and then got a shock that sent him on the run all the way home, regardless of trees he banged into, for it was ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... lived for a year with a banshee, or fairy woman,[45] by whom he had a son. When this son grew up he went to the country of the Fians,[46] and there he entered into the service of their king, who was no other than the celebrated Oisin. The Gaelic narrator calls him "Oisin, Righ na Feinne," that is, "Ossian, King of the Fians"; but the collector of the story,[47] who had no doubt obtained the translation on the spot, renders Righ na Feinne as "King of the Picts." No explanation or comment is given, and one ...
— Fians, Fairies and Picts • David MacRitchie
... woman, and child in England were made to read him; and I would that you in America would take him to heart. He is a tonic, a deep refreshing drink, with a strange and wonderful flavour; he is a mine of new interests, and ways of thought instinctively right. As a simple narrator he is well-nigh unsurpassed; as a stylist he has few, if any, living equals. And in all his work there is an indefinable freedom from any thought of after-benefit—even from the desire that we should ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... his way to the easy-chair arranged each night in a good position for the narrator of the evening, and baptised "The Singstool" by Mr. Graves. Mr. Graves was an ardent Wagnerian, and especially devoted to ...
— Mother • Owen Wister
... came news of the progress of the fighting. The boys were holding splendidly, indeed were gradually eating into the enemy front. They brought weird stories of his comrades, incidents pathetic, humorous, heroic, according to the temperament of the narrator. But from more than one source came tales of Knight's machine gun section to which McCuaig was attached. Knight himself had been killed soon after entering the line, and about his men conflicting tales were told: they were holding a strong point, they were blown ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... not relate the actual circumstances of the case correctly;" that is to say, Galt had found out, in the interval, that it was open to contradiction and disproof, and it has since been disproved in the Athenaeum. So much for a story discredited by the narrator himself. Of these facts AEGROTUS is entirely ignorant, and therefore proceeds by the following extraordinary circumstantialities to uphold it. "The late President of the Royal Academy knew Maclean; and his son, the late Raphael West, told ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... agreed, he spent the short time that was left in getting it by heart, retiring into a vaulted chamber with some highly educated slaves, and remaining at work till after the consuls had taken their seat. Being sent for he at last came out, and, as Rutilius the narrator and eye-witness declared, with such a heightened colour and triumph in his eyes that he looked like one who had already won his cause. Laelius himself was present. The advocate spoke with such force and weight that scarcely an argument passed unapplauded. ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... Jamie Ferguson Dr. John Leaver was telling a story. He was apparently telling it to Dr. Burns, who listened with great interest, but at the same time shy Jamie Ferguson was listening too. There were curious points in the story when the narrator turned to the boy in the bed and inquired, smiling: "Could you do that, Jamie?" to which questions Jamie usually replied in the negative. They were mostly questions concerning backs and legs and hips, and the boy ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... Foljambe told the story, with a good deal of angry comment. The Countess was much amused, a fact which did not help to calm the narrator. ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... narrator and the narrative I included under the word Dichtung (poetry), so that I could for my own purpose avail myself of the truth of which I was conscious. In every history, even if it be diplomatically written, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... into modern languages. The Grandes Chroniques de S. Denis speak of jugleor, enchanteor, goliardois, et autres manieres de menestrieux. Chaucer, in his description of the Miller, calls this merry narrator of fabliaux a jangler and a goliardeis. In Piers Ploughman the goliardeis is further explained to be a glutton of words, ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... which they have preserved upon less interesting subjects. It was, therefore, with great pleasure, that I extracted from my military friend some curious particulars respecting that time; they are mixed with that measure of the wild and wonderful which belongs to the period and the narrator, but which I do not in the least object to the reader's treating with disbelief, providing he will be so good as to give implicit credit to the natural events of the story, which, like all those which I have had the honour to put under his notice, actually ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... remained blind in that eye to the end of his life. [Footnote: Long afterwards Chantrey the sculptor, who had suffered a similar misfortune, exclaimed, "What! are you too a brother Cyclops?" but, as the narrator of the story used to add, Mr. Murray could see better with one eye than most people with two.] His father withdrew him from Dr. Burney's school, and sent him in July 1793 to the Rev. Dr. Roberts, at Loughborough House, Kennington. In committing him to the schoolmaster's charge, ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... introduced Delancey at the house where Acme resided. Whether her charms really tempted the friend to endeavour to supplant George, or whether he considered the latter's attentions to the young Greek to be without definite object, and undertaken in a spirit of indifference, the narrator could not explain; but it was not long before Delancey considered himself as a principal in the transaction. Acme, whose knowledge of the world was slight, and whose previous seclusion from society, had rendered ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... ourselves to the condition of human things. The history of the Revolution is glorious and sad as the day after the victory, or the eve of another combat. But if this history is full of mourning, it is also full of faith. It resembles the antique drama where, while the narrator recites his story, the chorus of the people shouts the glory, weeps for the victims and raises a hymn of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... soldiers sitting around on the floor eating bread and molasses by the light of a dilapidated tallow candle." Next morning they entered upon the mountain road leading to Laurel Forge, which they found still nearly impassable. In the words of the narrator, "It was nothing but mud, mud, of the worst kind. Thus we travelled for many weary miles till we came to where a number of the Thirty-Seventh Regiment had been encamped with their teams. The road grew worse as we proceeded. We began now to pass a good many stragglers and wagons, some of ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... learning, gentle and amiable in his manners, and in his life a model of virtue and holiness. He was in the cabinet when Santa Anna was president, concerning which circumstance an amusing story was told us, for the correctness of which I do not vouch, but the narrator, a respectable citizen here, certainly believed it. Seor Portugal had gone, by appointment, to see the president on some important business, and they had but just begun their consultation, when Santa Anna rose and left the room. The Minister waited—the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... tenor tremor bachelor junior oppressor possessor liquor surveyor vapor governor languor professor spectator competitor candor harbor meteor orator rumor splendor elector executor factor generator impostor innovator investor legislator narrator navigator numerator operator originator perpetrator personator predecessor protector prosecutor projector reflector regulator sailor senator separator solicitor supervisor survivor tormentor testator transgressor translator ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... "belong rather to the biography of the regiments than to the history of the army." The historian has, in this case, the evident right to sum up the whole. He cannot do more than seize the principal outlines of the struggle, and it is not given to any one narrator, however conscientious he may be, to fix, absolutely, the form of that horrible cloud which ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... that it is the history of a patent medicine—the nostrum of the title. But the rise and fall of Tono-Bungay and its inventor make only a small part of the book. It is rather the history of the collision of the soul of George Ponderevo (narrator, and nephew of the medicine-man) with his epoch. It is the arraignment of a whole epoch at the bar of the conscience of a man who is intellectually honest and powerfully intellectual. George Ponderevo transgresses most of the current codes, but he ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... I have thought it right to follow Wade's narrative, which appears to me by far the most authentic, if not the only authentic account of this important transaction. It is imperfect, but its imperfection arises from the narrator's omitting all those circumstances of which he was not an eye-witness, and the greater credit is on that very account due to him for those which he relates. With respect to Monmouth's quitting the field, it ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... however, one historical event, the narrator of which represents the Indians to have been in an entirely different condition from what they are now, or have been since. This is the account of Ferdinand de Soto's expedition to Florida. There are two historians of this expedition. One is Garcilasso ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... of morals in these parts is in some sort lax. A mother and son were pointed out at the theatre, as being pronounced by the Milanese world to be of the Theban dynasty—but this was all. The narrator (one of the first men in Milan) seemed to be not sufficiently scandalised by the taste or the tie. All society in Milan is carried on at the opera: they have private boxes, where they play at cards, or talk, or any thing else; ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... present he worked back through the past to the killing of Jim Dent and the flight of Joseph Weir, extracting tales of early fights, raids, accidents, big storms, violent deaths and killings, making elaborate notes, winning the narrator's confidence and gradually drawing forth the facts ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... passed two whole days there without help. On the third day the Germans arrived and the narrator gave himself up for lost. But the German Captain, with whom the Frenchmen had divided their food and drink, begged that they be cared for. Ultimately they were taken to the German camp and their wounds attended to. But in a few minutes the camp became the centre ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... a flash which threw into relief the narrator's gnarled red face under its grey-black stubble. Pressed into the hollow of the dark leather armchair, it stood out an instant like an intaglio of yellowish red-veined stone, with spots of enamel for the eyes; then the fire sank and in the shaded lamp-light ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... have his sympathies enlisted in behalf of what is pure, honorable, and praiseworthy, and to have his indignation excited against what is low, ignoble, and unworthy. The true fabulist, therefore, discharges a most important function. He is neither a narrator, nor an allegorist. He is a great teacher, a corrector of morals, a censor of vice, and a commender of virtue. In this consists the superiority of the Fable over the Tale or the Parable. The fabulist is to create a laugh, ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... views are expressed on a variety of topics; but it must surely be unnecessary to tender an apology for the free utterance of these sentiments; for, when recording the progress of a revolution affecting the highest interests of man, the narrator cannot be expected to divest himself of his cherished convictions; and very few will venture to maintain that a writer, who feels no personal interest in the great principles brought to light by the gospel, is, on that account, more competent to describe ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... cordial waters at the same time by a questioning poise of the head (a whole century of polite breeding had not achieved so nice a gesture) to which was united an equivalent but contrary balance of the bottle asked the narrator as plainly as was ever done in words if he might treat him with a cup of it. Mais bien sur, noble stranger, said he cheerily, et mille compliments. That you may and very opportunely. There wanted nothing ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... saying," resumed the narrator, "that she was heartily weary of the part she was playing; that its monotony sickened her; that they had secured the victims, and fate had been kind enough to remove the only stumbling block in their path, save the old man himself; that she considered my very sensible demise a direct ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... exclaimed a voice. And stolen the picture doubtless had been. Some dexterous thief, profiting by the profound attention with which the eyes of all were fixed upon the narrator, whilst all ears, drank in his singular story, had managed to take down and carry off the portrait. The company remained plunged in perplexity, almost doubting whether they had really seen those extraordinary eyes, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... was thrown from the hammock to the floor, striking violently on the knee of the affected side. On examination, it was found that in the fall the hip had somehow been set. This greatly interested Dr. Smith, and he questioned the narrator again and again as to the exact position of the thigh, the knee and the leg, at the ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... record of his youthful years, however, remains to us; if we believe that at the age of eighteen he was a student of Cambridge, it is only on the strength of a reference in his "Court of Love", where the narrator is made to say that his name is Philogenet, "of Cambridge clerk;" while he had already told us that when he was stirred to seek the Court of Cupid he was "at eighteen year of age." According to Leland, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... the daughter of a carpenter and bee-keeper. On her mother's death, this man married a young woman, and allowed her, as stepmother, to persuade him to place the narrator, Tatiana, in a convent, where she (Tatiana) lived from the age of nine till adolescence, and, meanwhile, was taught her letters, and also a certain amount of manual labour; until, later, her father married her off to a friend of his, a well-to-do ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... his serene voice, described for the third time the various vicissitudes of our story. But despite our narrator's fine accent and stylish turns of phrase, the German ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... you The Mask (METHUEN) as a craftsmanlike essay in imaginative realism; ruthlessly candid and self-revealing, but free from that tiresome obsession of the ultra-realists that everything that has ever happened is equally important in retrospect. The narrator, Vanya Gombarov, a Russian Jew, discourses reflectively and detachedly, as it were from behind a mask, to an English artist friend about his early childhood in his own land and the dismal adventures of the Gombarov family in that underworld ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... North Carolina, where the lady gay possessed 'relations;' and this narrative, wofully muttered about among our crew, and accompanied with a due amount of sighs and head-shakings, had depressed them most fearfully, not withstanding the character of the narrator. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... predecessors. It is in disquisition that he rejoices, and succeeds; it is the argumentative matter which excites and sustains him. His style seems to languish when the effort of ratiocination gives place to the task of the narrator. We fancy we see him resume the pen with listlessness, when nothing remains for the historian but to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... Ship-master and a Boatswain] In this naval dialogue, perhaps the first example of sailor's language exhibited on the stage, there are, as I have been told by a skilful narrator, some inaccuracies and ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... see yonder hill?" said my narrator, pointing in the direction of a hill skirting some corn-fields before us; "there, close to that clump of elm-trees, stood Eric Rensel's cottage. Descending that hill, I met Thora, returning homewards, laden with a little basket full of fruit and flowers. She smiled when she observed me, ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... the Mysteries of Udolpho, condensed into the pithy effect of a ten-line paragraph, could not possibly have so affected the narrator's auditory. Silence, the purest and most noble of all kinds of applause, bore ample testimony to the barbarity of the baker, as well as to Bolton's knack of narration; and it was only broken after some minutes had elapsed by interjectional ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Then the narrator went on to tell how Lazarus died, describing, with tears and a choking voice, the distress they were in, and how they sent a message to the Lord Jesus, and he did not come, and how they wondered and wondered; and thus on he went, winding up the interest by the graphic ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of the old man is rather that of a trained writer than of an ignorant fisherman, and here Poe sacrifices the personality of his hero to vividness of incident. What he wishes to accomplish is to impress us with a terrible experience. He does not care to make us see the narrator as a man, yet the story is not devoid of touches of strong human interest; if it were it would be less powerful. The fisherman and his brothers will not take with them their sons on their perilous fishing trip. The youngest brother is carried away in the first blast of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... His knowledge was very much less accurate than that of modern writers who have had the benefit of research and comparison. But there was enough of history, of biography, and of tradition to enable him to form a true idea of the man. He himself as a narrator was neither specially friendly nor specially hostile. He has told what was believed at the time, and he has drawn a character that agrees perfectly with all that we ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... old cat," as Mr. Naylor unkindly put it. Cynthia had told her story; she wanted a richer sympathy than Doctor Mary's common-sense afforded; out of this need the revelation came to Gertie in innocent confidence, and, with the narrator's tacit approval, ran through the family and its intimate friends. If Cynthia had been as calculating as she was guileless, she could not have done better for herself. Mrs. Naylor's motherliness, old Naylor's courtliness, ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... doubt. He was an anomaly, and famous for being so; though, perhaps, his well-known eccentricity was taken advantage of by his witty friends, and many a story fathered on Selwyn which has no origin but in the brain of its narrator. ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... of Mr. Blunt's facial muscles. Very slight; but I, staring at the narrator after the manner of all simple souls, noticed it; the twitch of a pain which surely must have been mental. There was also a suggestion of effort before he went on: "I suppose you know how he got hold of her?" in a tone of ease which was astonishingly ill-assumed ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... slow degrees that the conversation had arrived at this pass. Harry had never as yet declared his own love either to the mother or daughter, and now appeared simply as a narrator of this terrible story. But at this point it did appear to him that he must introduce himself ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... Saturday was one of those petty occurrences, intra-mural, localised, almost civic, which, in uneventful lives and stable orders of society, create a kind of national unity, and become the favourite theme for conversation, for pleasantries, for anecdotes which can be embroidered as the narrator pleases; it would have provided a nucleus, ready-made, for a legendary cycle, if any of us had had the epic mind. At daybreak, before we were dressed, without rhyme or reason, save for the pleasure of proving the strength of our solidarity, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... (to all seeing) equally Occidental with myself. It was plain, thus far, that I should have to get into India and out of it again upon a foot of fairy lightness; and I believe this first suggested to me the idea of the Chevalier Burke for a narrator. It was at first intended that he should be Scottish, and I was then filled with fears that he might prove only the degraded shadow of my own Alan Breck. Presently, however, it began to occur to me it would be like my Master to curry favour with the Prince's ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... down to any special house, street, or number, which is, of course, a decided advantage when you are hunting for a needle in a haystack. And the Moscow saints and parishes have such names!" Here the narrator's feelings overcame him, and when I asked for some of the parochial titles he was too limp to reply. I had already noticed the peculiar designations of many churches, and had begun to suspect myself of stupidity or my cabman and other informants of malicious jesting. Now, however, I investigated ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... the period of the Renaissance, however, the truth has not been accredited; the painter of religious subject is no longer regarded as the narrator of a fact, but as the inventor of an idea. [Footnote: I do not mean that modern Christians believe less in the facts than ancient Christians, but they do not believe in the representation of the facts as true. We look upon ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... was exploited, perhaps, more than any other feature of his creed, as then interpreted, i.e., the sentimental regard for the lower animals.[43] But there is lacking here the inevitable concomitant of Sterne's relation of a sentimental situation, the whimsicality of the narrator in his attitude at the time of the adventure, or reflective whimsicality in the narration. Sterne is always whimsically quizzical in his conduct toward a sentimental condition, or toward himself in the analysis of ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... how it was that the doctor himself remained awake when such a powerful narcotic was administered, the narrator did not lose his presence of mind nor his absence of conscience, and said the doctor had, during the operation, held his nose tight with his two fingers. The doctor had since been offered thousands of tomans for the precious bottle, but would ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... his guard, he opened his wallet, which was well stocked, and retailed his stories, many of them so very rich, that I doubted the capacity of the Attache to out-Herod him. Mr. Slick received these tales with evident horror, and complimented the narrator with a well simulated groan; and when he had done, said, "Ah, I see how it is, they have purposely kept dark about the most atrocious features of slavery. Have you never seen ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... pleasure in teasing him with one of her extravagant inventions. But repeatedly as he said this to himself, he could not believe it for a moment; a strange shudder passed through him; unable to utter a word, he stared at the beautiful narrator with an immovable gaze. Undine shook her head sorrowfully, drew a deep sigh, and then proceeded ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... lamented Forbes paid The tribute to his Minstrel's shade; The tale of friendship scarce was told, Ere the narrator's heart was cold— Far may we search before we find A heart so manly and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... as unconscious in his zest of narrator that he was giving pain as an entomologist in his zest for collecting when he pins a live moth in his cabinet, resumed: "Your father and Guy Darrell were warm friends as boys and youths. Guy was the elder of the two, and Charlie Haughton (I ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... him. "If they [the French] had been but four to one," was the calm, phlegmatic answer of the ten-year-old boy, "they would never have taken Corsica; but when they were ten to one...." "But you had a fine general—Paoli," interrupted the narrator. "Yes, sir," was the reply, uttered with an air of discontent, and in the very embodiment of ambition; "I should much like to emulate him." The description of the untamed faun as he then appeared is not flattering: his complexion sallow, his hair stiff, his figure slight, his expression lusterless, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... the narrator, "dat's what I 'lowed ter myse'f when I seed him. He was arter a lump o' dat green truck wid white berries 'pon it—mizzletoe, dey calls its name. When I got dar, he was comin' down de tree holdin' it by de stem wid he teef. He wouldn't fling it down, kase he's feard he'd spile de berries. ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... truth must be told, it was Mrs. Portman herself who was the chief narrator of the story of Pen's loves. Whatever tales this candid woman heard, she was sure to impart them to her neighbours; and after she had been put into possession of Pen's secret by the little scandal at Chatteris, poor Doctor Portman ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... enormous fur cloaks, and wore those large leather boots from which was given to them the name of Large-feet or Patagonians. Their stature was not, however, so gigantic as it appeared to our simple narrator, for it varies from 5ft. 10in. to 5ft. 8in., being somewhat above the middle height among Europeans. For arms they had a short massive bow, and arrows made of reed, of which the point was formed ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... written so much else, in collaboration with her cousin and comrade, "Martin Ross"—Miss Violet Martin, of Ross, in County Galway. It did not so fall out; and though in this volume one is aware that the narrator is often (by a sort of sub-conscious habit) speaking out of two minds, from a dual complex of associations, and though considerable fragments of Martin Ross's own writing give a justification to the joint signature, yet one of the two comrades ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... resentment against him as this young creature's husband." Here is another, less dangerous, which he took from an actual occurrence made known to him when he was at Bonchurch. "The idea of my being brought up by my mother (me the narrator), my father being dead; and growing up in this belief until I find that my father is the gentleman I have sometimes seen, and oftener heard of, who has the handsome young wife, and the dog I once took notice of when I was a little ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... not remember the Frenchman's name?" said Morcerf, quite ready to aid the memory of the narrator. Monte Cristo made a sign ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... The "cher Hal['e]vy" who is the protagonist of the amazing dialogue. / Marco Landi, the protagonist and narrator of a story which is skilfully contrived and excellently told, is a fairly familiar ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... the present palace of Dolma-Batchi he told of Euphrosyne, the daughter of the Empress Irene; and seeing how the sorrowful fortune of the beautiful child engaged Lael's sympathies, he became interested as a narrator, and failed to notice the unusual warmth tempering the air about Tchiragan. Neither did he observe that the northern sky, before so clear and blue, was ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... friends (said the narrator, with a sigh) here was an end to this fortune and to my luck, at that bout, at any rate. Still, gentlemen (went on the little hump-backed man in the bright yellow waistcoat), I maintain there ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... his chin sunk within the collar of his white waistcoat, and scrutinizing the narrator with a steadfast though impassive glance, made the faintest possible ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... ladies and gentlemen, if I may venture to take a small illustration of my present position from my own peculiar craft, I would say that there is this objection in writing fiction to giving a story an autobiographical form, that through whatever dangers the narrator may pass, it is clear unfortunately to the reader beforehand that he must have come through them somehow else he could not have lived to tell the tale. Now, in speaking fact, when the fact is associated with such honours as those with which you have enriched me, there is this singular ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... this achieved; for—the good Marcus subdued his voice—Satan himself more than once overthrew what the monks had built, and, together with the demons whom Benedict had driven forth, often assailed the holy band with terrors and torments. Had not the narrator, who gently boasted a part in these beginnings, been once all but killed by a falling column, which indeed must have crushed him, but that he stretched out a hand in which, by happy chance, he was holding a hammer, and this—for a hammer is cruciform—touching the great pillar, turned its fall in ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... reorganised, all batteries were increased to six guns, and there was plenty of work to keep everyone busy. The narrator of these rambling notes, after a period of two years' service with the Brigade, here transferred his allegiance to the sister howitzer battery of the Division, known as "The Grey Battery," from the fact that ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... than if you had read a library. As to whether any one else will read it, I have no guess. I am in an off time, but there is just the possibility it might make a hit; for the yarn is good and melodramatic, and there is quite a love affair—for me; and Mr. Wiltshire (the narrator) is a huge lark, though I say it. But there is always the exotic question, and everything, the life, the place, the dialects—trader's talk, which is a strange conglomerate of literary expressions and English and American slang, and Beach de Mar, or native English,—the very trades and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... some days, and the bear, at last, would not touch his victuals till the boy's return. This peculiar friendship was at last discovered, and the story narrated to the Duke, who sent for the boy, and took care of him, admitting him into his own household. The narrator observes that the boy died a year or two after this unusual occurrence had taken place. I have no doubt but that many more instances might be brought forward by others to establish my supposition. To us, all wild animals of the same ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... speaker paused, overcome as much by his feelings as by weakness, and, during the silence that followed, Cabot stole away, ostensibly to see that the dynamo was running smoothly. When he returned the narrator had recovered his calmness, and was ready to ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... whose shop had confined him, or whose wife had locked him up, hears the tale of luxury with envy, and, at last, inquires what was their petition. Of the petition nothing is remembered by the narrator, but that it spoke much of fears and apprehensions, and something very alarming, and that he is sure it is against the government; the other is convinced that it must be right, and wishes he had been there, for he loves wine and venison, and is resolved, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... part without, soe they go under water, where at first they can not stay long, but after practice, the leanest stay an hour and a halfe, even till the oyle of the spunge be corrupted.... Thus they gather spunges from more than an hundred fathom deep," &c. All this is very wonderful, but the narrator stamps the value of his tale by telling us immediately afterward that "Samos is the only place in the world on whose rocks the spunges grow." So that, in the words which he elsewhere makes use of, "we applaude hys belief, but keep our owne." We do not, however, mean to assert that there are not sponges ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... bettered. But I would not admit perfect excellence to any other of his stories. These two have a proportion and a perspective which are lacking in the others, the horror or weirdness of the idea intensified by the coolness of the narrator and of the principal actor, Dupin in the one case and Le Grand in the other. The same may be said of Bret Harte, also one of those great short story tellers who proved himself incapable of a longer flight. He was always like one of his own gold-miners who struck a rich pocket, but ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... The tribute to his Minstrel's shade; The tale of friendship scarce was told, Ere the narrator's heart was cold: Far may we search before we find A heart so manly ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Goff that found me," concluded the aged narrator. "I recognized his voice when I came to, the next day. He was looking for lost sheep and stopped to inquire. He took me to his home, doctored me, cared for me, and brought me home. I owe him my life, not only for the rescue, but for his kindly ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... find I have omitted thus far may seem to you to throw a little light on this matter. It does not help me much. Lib was a wonderful listener, as well as a narrator. Miss Jane sometimes took an occasional boarder. Teachers, clergymen, learned professors, had from time to time tarried under her roof. And while these talked to one another, or to some visitor from neighboring hotels, little Lib would sit motionless and silent by ...
— Story-Tell Lib • Annie Trumbull Slosson
... that Jeremiah faced and the source from which it sprang are revealed by the fate which befell another denouncer of the land in the Name of the Lord. Of him, the narrator uses a form of the verb to prophesy different from that which he uses of Jeremiah, thus guarding himself from expressing an opinion as to whether the man was a genuine prophet. This is a further tribute to the moral effect of Jeremiah's person ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... David's cheeks. He had snatched up and was kissing the precious bits of metal the narrator ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... tornado at sea and the Rackbirds on land, and afterwards filled the eyes of many of the women with tears of relief as she told of their escapes, their quiet life at the caves, and their subsequent rescue by the Mary Bartlett. But it was the cross-examinations which caused the soul of the narrator to sink. Of course, she had been very careful to avoid all mention of the gold mound, but this omission in her narrative proved to be a defect which she had not anticipated. As she had told that she had lost everything except ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... on reliable authority, that the original Mr. Black, whose Christian name was Andrew, was a famous teller of stories and narrator of facts regarding the persecution of the Covenanters, especially of the awful killing-time, when the powers of darkness were let loose on the land to do their worst, and when the blood of Scotland's ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... (to make a start) that the listener or the reader of a story should alone have the right to fidget as he listens or reads; to come and go at his pleasure; to interrupt at his convenience. Something of these privileges should be shared by the narrator; and in this history we have taken them. You may swing your legs or divert your attention as you read; but we too must be permitted to swing our legs and slide off upon matters that interest us, and that indirectly are relevant to the history. Life is not ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... when his leisure served him, to Fontenoy as he went everywhere, by virtue of his quality of free lance and golden-tongued narrator of western news. The stress of thought at the moment was to the West and the empire that had been purchased there; and a man from beyond Kentucky, with tales to tell of the Mississippi Territory, brought his own welcome to town, tavern, and plantation. If this were ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... materials for the formation of theoretic views, and illustrating an obscure but most interesting chapter in the marvelous history of human nature. It is written with perfect modesty, and freedom from pretense, doing credit to the ability of the author as a narrator, as well as to her fairness ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... at the picture conjured up by this vivid description, and it was a full minute before the narrator could go ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... story seldom make it funny. It needs the right words, with every word in its proper place. Here and there, perhaps once in a hundred times, a story turns up which needs no telling. The humour of it turns so completely on a sudden twist or incongruity in the denouement of it that no narrator, however ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... employment, though he was not then chosen as confidential messenger between the two queens. A little later he is visible in the exercise of his old vocation as the tutor of Mary herself. "The Queen readeth daily after her dinner," says the same careful narrator, "instructed by a learned man, Mr. George Buchanan, somewhat of Lyvie." These few words set before us a curious scene. Mary at the height of her good resolutions and good beginning, keeping up her literature as well as all her pleasures, ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... those from Europe, to reduce the young republic to subjection. Congress named an especial and a secret committee, therefore, for the express purpose of defeating this object. Of this committee Mr.——, the narrator of the anecdote, ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... together of somewhat disconnected and sometimes nearly indecipherable memoranda, and the reduction of the mass to consecutive form, are all that has been required of me or would have been permitted to me. The expedition to Labrador mentioned by the narrator has not returned, nor has it ever been definitely traced. He does not undertake to prove that it ever set out. But he avers that all which is hereafter set down is truly told, and he leaves it to mankind to accept the warning which it has fallen to him to convey, or await ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... told as we sat down, and every one was taking a lively interest in it, the narrator was a bearded man of fifty, and he was telling to the delight of the others how his son had once got the better of him in Brussels before the war. There were other stories of matters equally foreign to war. The private on one side of me told me he was the manager for Belgium ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... is confined to instruction by examples; nor by Fables is anything else[1] aimed at than that the errors of mortals may be corrected, and persevering industry[2] exert itself. Whatever the playful invention, therefore, of the narrator, so long as it pleases the ear, and answers its purpose, it is recommended by its merits, ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... was described by a Charleston bookseller, who saw him in his store in 1796, carelessly turning over books. "At length," continues this narrator, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... country, and it naturally brought him visitors, with their doubts, and fears, and cases of conscience. Among these a singular instance is recorded in the Life of Badman. 'When I was in prison,' says the narrator, 'there came a woman to me that was under a great deal of trouble. So I asked her, she being a stranger to me, what she had to say to me? She said she was afraid she should be damned. I asked her the cause of those fears. She told me that she had, some time ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... matches and yer sevenpence, and baith his legs are broken, and the doctor says he'll dee; and that's a'.' And then, putting down the fourpence on the table, the poor child burst into great sobs. 'So I fed the little man,' said the narrator; 'and I went with him to see Sandy. The two little things were living almost alone; their father and mother were dead. Poor Sandy was lying on a bundle of shavings. He knew me as soon as I came in, ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... the commencement of the Captivity. Von Bohlen, in his Introduction to the Book of Genesis, says the narrative was drawn from the Zend Avesta. Rosenmuller, in his commentary on the passage, says the narrator had in view the Zoroastrian notions of the serpent Ahriman and his deeds. Dr. Martin Haug an acute and learned writer, whose opinion is entitled to great weight, as he is the freshest scholar acquainted with ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... consisting mainly of spectral testimony; and narrates the appearances and doings of spectres assaulting the "afflicted children," not as mere matters alleged, but as facts. It is true that he appears as a narrator; yet, in the manner and tenor of his statement, he cannot but be considered as endorsing the spectral evidence. Speaking of the examining Magistrates, and saying that it is "now," that is, in 1697, "generally ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... from the three chords which he had been using all his life." Paer, a cunning Italian, was fond of letting people know that he had known Beethoven, and of telling stories more or less unfavourable to the great man, and flattering to the narrator. The critical young men of the new generation were, however, not altogether fair in their judgments; Cherubini, at least, and Boieldieu too, deserved better ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... commonly represented by historians as rather defective, if he was remarkable at all, on the moral side of his character. Yet Raleigh can declare proudly, that all the time he was on the Oronoko, 'neither by force nor other means had any of his men intercourse with any woman there;' and the narrator of the incidents of Raleigh's last voyage acquaints his correspondent 'with some particulars touching the government of the fleet, which, although other men in their voyages doubtless in some measure observed, yet in all the ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... the hero and Yetive the heroine. He told her of the days when Lorry, a fugitive with a price upon his head, charged with the assassination of Prince Lorenz, then betrothed to the princess, lay hidden in the monastery while Yetive's own soldiers hunted high and low for him. The narrator dwelt glowingly upon the trip from the monastery to the city walls one dark night when Lorry came down to surrender himself in order to shield the woman he loved, and Quinnox himself piloted him through the underground passage into the very heart of ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... have faded from my treacherous memory except one, which I will endeavor to relate. I fear, however, it derived its chief zest from the manner in which it was told, and the peculiar air and appearance of the narrator. He was a corpulent old Swiss, who had the look of a veteran traveller. He was dressed in a tarnished green travelling-jacket, with a broad belt round his waist, and a pair of overalls with buttons from the hips to the ankles. He was of a full rubicund countenance, with a double chin, aquiline ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... seeking victims for his persecuting zeal, when Jesus suddenly appeared to him and Saul was changed from a persecutor to a believer in Christ (Acts 9:3-7). The account is very brief. For an event which has had such tremendous results, the narrator is very reticent; a light from heaven, a voice speaking, and a person declaring that He is Jesus. Paul gives us two accounts of his conversion and how it took place (Acts 22:6-15; 26:12-18). The men who were with Paul saw a light and heard a voice, ...
— Bible Studies in the Life of Paul - Historical and Constructive • Henry T. Sell
... bad, Miss," agreed the narrator. "And the feel of that water as I struck it! It was like a bath of sword-points. Well, that's where the oar comes in! Bless the bit of wood it was cut from, it sure was a ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... narrative poems designed for edification was secured by their recital in churches. Wholly fabulous some of these are—as the legend of St. Margaret—but they were not on this account the less welcome or the less esteemed. In certain instances the tale is dramatically placed in the mouth of a narrator, and thus the way was in a measure prepared for ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... made up for his shortcomings. She was the only one who could meet Farrar on his own ground, and rarely a meal passed that they did not have a tilt. They filled up the holes of the conversation with running commentaries, giving a dig at the luckless narrator and a side-slap at each other, until one would have given his oath they were sworn enemies. At least I, in the innocence of my heart, thought so until I was forcibly enlightened. I had taken rather a prejudice to Miss Trevor. I could find ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... what has been said about the selection of materials: only those materials should be admitted to a story which contribute to its main incident, which are consistent with one another, and which could have been known by the narrator. ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... these witnesses we must first of all discover their origin. It is evident that the narratives of the no-compromise party of the right or the left can have but slender value where controverted points are concerned; whence the conclusion that the authority of a narrator may vary from page to page, or even from line ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... tracks near the house the day before. When she got to the stile she ran up the steps—and on the top one she stood still, for there—" She made a dramatic pause and reached for another tray of tomatoes. Arnold stopped stirring the pot and stood motionless, his eyes fixed on the narrator, the spatula dripping tomato-juice all along his white trousers. "There on the other side, looking up at her, was a bear—a big ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... Daramulun's, and of deceit and failure of knowledge in Baiame.(1) Of this I was unaware, or neglected it, for I explicitly said that I followed Mr. Howitt's account, where no such matter is mentioned. Mr. Howitt, in fact, described the Mysteries of the Coast Murring, while the narrator of the low myths, Mr. Matthews, described those of a remote tribe, the Wiraijuri, with whom Daramulun is not the chief, but a subordinate person. How Mr. Matthews' friends can at once hold that Daramulun was "destroyed" by Baiame (their chief deity), and also that ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... all professional jealousies. Miss Parke, a concert-singer, was once angry because Billington's name was in bigger type. The latter ordered her name to be printed in the smallest letters used; "and much Miss Parke gained by her corpulent type," says the narrator. Lord Mount Edgcumbe tells us that the operas in which she specially excelled were "La Clemenza di Scipione," composed for her by John Christian Bach; Paesiello's "Elfrida"; "Armida," "Castore e Polluce," and others ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... interview as "a most curious mixture of most heterogeneous subjects, of intermitting friendliness with the most passionate outbreaks," and strove in his account to deepen the shadows of his picture by discreet silence as to certain points—a trick he may have learned from Whitworth. The unfriendly narrator declares that Napoleon, when told that his soldiers were only boys, flung his hat into a corner, and hissed, "You do not know what passes in a soldier's mind; I grew up in the field, and a man like me troubles himself ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... aged handicraftsman, it is true, who had been a citizen of London at the period of Sir Thomas Overbury's murder, now some thirty years agone; he testified to having seen the physician, under some other name, which the narrator of the story had now forgotten, in company with Doctor Forman, the famous old conjurer, who was implicated in the affair of Overbury. Two or three individuals hinted, that the man of skill, during ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... always felt the want of some enduring thread—though, as some one says in a like emergency, it be only packthread—on which his tales may be strung—something to fill up the pauses, and prevent the utter solution of continuity between tale and tale—something that gives the narrator a reasonable plea for going on again, and makes the telling another story an indispensable duty upon his part, and the listening to it a corresponding obligation upon ours; and ever since the time when that young lady of unpronounceable and unrememberable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... sketches of American naval officers, and the novel "Jack Tier; or The Florida Reef" (1846-1848). Though hardly one of Cooper's greatest works, "Autobiography" remains significant because of: (1) its unusual narrator—an embroidered pocket-handkerchief—that is surely the first of its kind; (2) its critique of economic exploitation in France and of the crass commercial climate of ante-bellum America; and, (3) its constant exploration ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... evidence. When the writer of these introductory lines (Walter Hartright by name) happens to be more closely connected than others with the incidents to be recorded, he will describe them in his own person. When his experience fails, he will retire from the position of narrator; and his task will be continued, from the point at which he has left it off, by other persons who can speak to the circumstances under notice from their own knowledge, just as clearly and positively as ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... list of their personages;—and the dramatists of old used to tell us who was in love with whom, and what were the blood relationships of all the persons. In such a narrative as this, any proceeding of that kind would be unusual,—and therefore the poor narrator has been driven to expend his first four chapters in the mere task of introducing his characters. He regrets the length of these introductions, and will now begin at once the action of ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... have examined many Indians in reference to these details," says the narrator, an Augustin monk writing in 1554, "and they have all confirmed them as eye-witnesses" (Lettre sur les Superstitions du Perou, p. 106, ed. Ternaux-Compans. This ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... It was more than Udo did. Just now he was with her in her garden, telling her for the fifth time an extraordinarily dull story about an encounter of his with a dragon, apparently in its dotage, to which Belvane was listening with an interest which surprised even the narrator. ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne
... that these are drawn from some Hebrew source. They are saturated with Old Testament phraseology and constructions, and are evidently translated by Luke. It is impossible to say whence they came, but no one is more likely to have been their original narrator than Mary herself. Elisabeth or Zacharias must have communicated the facts in this chapter, for there is no indication that those contained in this passage, at all events, were known to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... no means a flawless book, though its defects are trivial enough. The illusion of Huck as narrator fails the least bit here and there; the "four dialects" are not always maintained; the occasional touch of broad burlesque detracts from the tale's reality. We are inclined to resent this. We never wish to feel that Huck is anything but a real character. We want him ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... their chairs close together, and a long conversation ensued, Lucia being the chief narrator, while her companion, whom she addressed from time to time as Emilia, did little more than listen and throw in exclamations of wonder, surprise, ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... mentioned,—if the cause of every fact and event is stated,—if they appear to be proved by witnesses,—if they are in accordance with the opinions and authority of men, with law, with custom, and with religion,—if the honesty of the narrator is established, his candour, his memory, the uniform truth of his conversation, and the integrity of his life. Again, a narration is agreeable which contains subjects calculated to excite admiration, expectation, ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... in the great fight. Other people believe that Kamehameha I. fought his first battle here. On this point, I have heard a story, which may have been taken from one of the numerous books which have been written concerning these islands—I do not know where the narrator got it. He said that when Kamehameha (who was at first merely a subordinate chief on the island of Hawaii), landed here, he brought a large army with him, and encamped at Waikiki. The Oahuans marched against him, and so ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... coffee-house of a rather superior class we found one of the so- called "story-tellers." The audience sit round in a half-circle, and the narrator stands in the foreground, and quietly begins a tale from the Thousand and One Nights; but as he continues he becomes inspired, and at length roars and gesticulates like the veriest ranter among ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... determined to make Gaston talk. To deepen a man's love for a thing, get him to talk of it to the eager listener—he passes from the narrator to the advocate unconsciously. Gaston was not to talk of England, but of the North, of Canada, of Mexico, the Lotos Isles. He did so picturesquely, yet simply too, in imperfect but sufficient French. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... named Sexton, were now left awaiting their fate: the former, the narrator of this melancholy ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... reasons apart I did not desire to seem madder than I admittedly am,—and I lacked sufficient plausibility to enable me to concoct, on the spur of the moment, a plain tale of the doings of my midnight visitor which would have suggested that the narrator was perfectly sane. So I ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... story is not well known, probably because it is a tale of home; yet it has passed down from one stork grandam to another for a thousand years, and each succeeding narrator has told it better and better, and now we shall ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... friend, Prince Moliterno, bachelor chief of a historic house, the soul of honour, "land-poor"; owning leagues and leagues of land, hills and mountains, broken towers and ruins, in central Basilicata, a province described as wild country and rough, off the rails and not easy to reach. Moliterno and the narrator had gone there to shoot; Corliss had seen "surface oil" upon the streams and pools; he recalled the discovery of oil near his own boyhood home in America; had talked of it to Moliterno, and both men had become more and more ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... the particulars which had yet transpired. Her aunt was no very methodical narrator, but with the help of some letters to and from Sir Thomas, and what she already knew herself, and could reasonably combine, she was soon able to understand quite as much as she wished of the ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... forth. Dr. Trendon, his sturdy frame half in shadow, had slouched far down into himself. Only the regard of his keen eyes fixed upon Slade's face, unwaveringly and a bit anxiously, showed that he was thinking of the narrator as well as of the narrative. The others had fallen completely under the spell of the tale. They sat, as children in a theatre, absorbed, forgetful of the world around them, wrapped in a more vivid element. ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... hands of two physicians that his hoarseness proceeded from a disease of the lungs; which certificate he published in the church, in the presence of the whole congregation: and by this means he was cured, or rather excused of the shame of the disease. And this,' certifies the narrator, 'I know to be true, by the relation of divers honest men of that parish. And truly if one of the jury had not been wiser than the others, she had been condemned thereupon, and upon other as ridiculous matters as this. For the name of witch is so odious, and ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... with her mouth like crumpled rose-petals, her ivory and peach-blossom complexion, her soft contralto voice, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, as per foregoing bald description, and as per what can, by imaginative effort, be pictured from the Pujolic hyperbole, by which I, the unimportant narrator of these chronicles, ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... the Delaware,—which unavoidably took ten days,—and round to New York again. D'Estaing was ten days behind him at the Delaware, twelve days at Sandy Hook, and only one day ahead of him in entering Newport, outside which harbor he had lain ten days before sailing in. An English narrator in the fleet, speaking of the untiring labor between June 30, when the English army reached Navesink, and the arrival of the French fleet on the 11th of July, says: "Lord Howe attended in person as usual, and by his presence animated the zeal and quickened the industry of officers and ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... the gayest manner imaginable, very minute details as to one of the temporary liaisons of Count Lucien. I do not guarantee the authenticity of the anecdote, and I experience in writing it more embarrassment than the senator displayed in relating it, and omit, indeed, a mass of details which the narrator gave without blushing, and without driving off his audience; for my object is to throw light upon the family secrets of the imperial household, and on the habits of the persons who were nearest the Emperor, and not to publish scandal, though ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... over, and we will admit that there was no doubt in his mind as to the genuineness of the story he had listened to. It did not appear that there was the least possibility of its being a false tale. It was not the beautiful face of the narrator and proposer that had led him to this conclusion. It was the probability and reasonableness of the story itself; but with his usual caution he determined to investigate. He was not prepared to accept any statement, ...
— Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist - Dudie Dunne Again in the Field • Harlan Page Halsey
... leave my position as narrator, and speak from my individual standpoint, I would say Brook Farm and what it stood for was to world-benighted travellers, seeking for sustenance, like a city set on a hill. It was a small, glimmering light of social ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... but it is needless to reiterate that these results and observations are merely experimental. In another place I hope to reproduce the stories in the original, by phonetic methods. I have here given English versions of some of the stories recorded, as translated for me by the narrator, or by Mrs. Brown, and added some explanations which may be of assistance to a person listening when songs or stories are being rendered on ...
— Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore • J. Walter Fewkes
... Jones's aunt died, on that night, in Timbuctoo. Yet Herr Parish (p. 282) seems to think that the argument of fallacious memory comes in part, even when an hallucination has been reported to another person before its fulfilment. Of course all depends on the veracity of the narrator and the person to whom he told his tale. To take a case given:[3] Brown, say, travelling with his wife, dreams that a mad dog bit his boy at home on the elbow. He tells his wife. Arriving at home Brown finds that it was so. Herr Parish appears ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... say that the problem is worth the trouble. What I am certain of, however, is that it is not to be solved, for I am not at all clear about it myself by this time. All I can say is that the personality of the narrator was extremely suggestive quite apart from the story he was telling me. I heard a few years ago that he had died far away from his beloved Naples where that "abominable adventure" did really ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... and with a trembling hand he broke the seal. Alas for his futile hopes! Not at the close of the page, as in the one received by Ella, but at the very commencement of the letter, was the mournful intelligence communicated, and while the narrator deeply deplored the event, he intimated, at the same time, that not a doubt existed in his own mind, or in the minds of her friends, as to the certainty of her ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... should she wish to search. But she never touched the drawer. The key which locked it she placed in an envelope, and put it apart under another lock and key. Though she listened, though she could not but listen, to the old woman's narrative, yet she rebuked the narrator. "There should be no talking about such things," she said. "It had been," she said, "her uncle's intention to make his nephew the owner of Llanfeare, and she believed that he had done so. It was better that ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... be pulled down or disturbed; but of such intelligible malpractices the gossips of Salem took little heed. One of them said that such an action showed Satan's prompting, but they all preferred to listen to the grander guilt of the blasphemous sacraments and supernatural rides. The narrator ended with saying that Hota was to be hung the next morning, in spite of her confession, even although her life had been promised to her if she acknowledged her sin; for it was well to make an example of the first-discovered witch, and it was also well that she was an Indian, a heathen, whose ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... perchance never have been in Poland—perhaps never even in Paris—since this non-sending forth of seven thousand Parisians was better understood by every gamin du faubourg than apparently by the sincere narrator ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... listened with few interruptions but a question now and then. Occasionally a sudden flush of passionate pain swept across his face, as some phrase, implying rather than expressing Warwick's love or Sylvia's longing, escaped the narrator's lips, and when she described their parting on that very spot, his eye went from her to the hearth her words seemed to make desolate, with a glance she never could forget. But when the last question was answered, the last appeal for pardon brokenly uttered, nothing ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... increased, as the army moved on, by Xerxes's system of compelling the forces of every kingdom and province through which he passed to join the expedition; so that, at length, when the Persian king fairly entered the heart of the Greek territory, Herodotus, the great narrator of his history, in summing up the whole number of men regularly connected with the army, makes a total of about five millions of men. One hundred thousand men, which is but one fiftieth part of five millions, is considered, in modern times, an immense army; and, in fact, half even of that number ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Ever since the period of the Renaissance, however, the truth has not been accredited; the painter of religious subject is no longer regarded as the narrator of a fact, but as the inventor of an idea.[35] We do not severely criticise the manner in which a true history is told, but we become harsh investigators of the faults of an invention; so that in the modern religious mind, the capacity of emotion, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the conspirators in the wood, but something of the terms of the dialogue. The gravity of Calvert increased as the other proceeded. He saw more deeply into the signification of certain portions of this dialogue than did the narrator; and when the latter, after having expressed his disappointment at the non-appearance of Stevens on the field of combat, at least congratulated himself at having driven him fairly from the ground, the other shook ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... disappointed in him," But, after reading a few more lines, he cheered up. For the Efreet finished as a flame, and the Princess as a "body of fire." "And when we looked towards him," continued the narrator, "we perceived that he had ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... gruesome details—highly pleasing to their narrator—and went up to look at his dead grandfather. He had never seen much of him, but they had kept up a regular correspondence, and always been on terms of affection, and he was sorry that he had not ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... too often deficient in the finer modulations. But he makes one forget this by his entrain, sincerity, and sympathy with his subject. As a composer he is less satisfactory; it is the first impression or nothing in his art. Apart from his luscious, tropical colour, he is a sober narrator of facts. Ay, but he is a big chap, this amiable little Valencian with a big heart and a hand that reaches out and grabs down clouds, skies, scoops up the sea, and sets running, wriggling, screaming a joyful band of naked boys and ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... of the very minor changes made in this version. (Indeed, two very necessary words were clearly dropped by accident.) An editor might have corrected "Wickliffe's 'Epigoniad'" to "Wilkie's 'Epigoniad'," but is unlikely to have added "Tuckerman's 'Sicily'" to the list of books read by the narrator. Griswold was not above forgery (in Poe's letters) when it suited his purpose, but would have too little to gain by such an ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... up the light so greedily, seemed just fitted to give effect to such legendary lore. The huge logs crackled and burned with glowing warmth; the blood-red glare of the Yule log flashed on the faces of the listeners and narrator, on the portraits, and the holly wreathed about their frames, and the upright old dame, in her antiquated dress and trinkets, like one of the originals of the pictures, stepped from the canvas to join our circle. It ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... with whom they were shortly closeted, listened carefully and silently to Viner's account of all that had happened. He was one of those never-to-be-sufficiently-praised individuals who never interrupt and always understand, and at the close of Viner's story he said exactly what the narrator was thinking. "The real truth of all this, Mr. Viner," he said, "is that this is probably one of the last chapters in the history of the Lonsdale Passage murder. For if you find this woman and the men who are undoubtedly her accomplices, you will most ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... oil, and all hearts were made lighter and each purse heavier, with every new arrival of good fortune; as if they had been one great family, each one smiling on another's prosperity. "But now,"—and the face of the narrator is less joyous as he turns from then to now,—"things are not what they were. Our island is becoming like what they tell me the world at large is." And the old man will re-light his pipe, and with a sad smile he will give you the names of his ancestors, from ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... she heard Hilary's voice talking fast and eagerly in the drawing-room. She had had five or six minutes start to tell her tale in, and a good deal can be said in five or six minutes, provided that the listener does not hinder the narrator by interruptions. And Mrs. Danvers had not once interrupted, and Hilary had therefore been able to make such good use of her time that she had given her mother a full and complete account of the way in which her first suspicions that there was something ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... as much by his feelings as by weakness, and, during the silence that followed, Cabot stole away, ostensibly to see that the dynamo was running smoothly. When he returned the narrator had recovered his calmness, and was ready ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... would not turn out to be clever—at any events not poetical. He is fond of gossip, and apt to speak slightingly of some of his friends, but is loyal to others. His great defect is flippancy, and a total want of self-possession." The narrator also dwells on his horror of interviewers, by whom at this time he was even more than usually beset. One visitor of the period ingenuously observes—"Certain persons will be chagrined to hear that Byron's mode of life does not furnish the smallest food for calumny." Another ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... the son of Dall, even he who was the narrator of stories to Conor the king, the men of Ulster sat at their ale; and before the men, in order to attend upon them, stood the wife of Feidlimid, and she was great with child. Round about the board went drinking-horns, ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... could be bettered. But I would not admit perfect excellence to any other of his stories. These two have a proportion and a perspective which are lacking in the others, the horror or weirdness of the idea intensified by the coolness of the narrator and of the principal actor, Dupin in the one case and Le Grand in the other. The same may be said of Bret Harte, also one of those great short story tellers who proved himself incapable of a longer flight. He was always like one of his own gold-miners who struck ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the story that were worth considering. One was the smartness of its hero, Jim Smiley, in taking the stranger in with a loaded frog; and the other was Smiley's deep knowledge of a frog's nature—for he knew (as the narrator asserted and the listeners conceded) that a frog likes shot and is already ready to eat it. Those men discussed those two points, and those only. They were hearty in their admiration of them, and none of the party was aware that a first-rate story had been ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... whether any one else will read it, I have no guess. I am in an off time, but there is just the possibility it might make a hit; for the yarn is good and melodramatic, and there is quite a love affair—for me; and Mr. Wiltshire (the narrator) is a huge lark, though I say it. But there is always the exotic question, and everything, the life, the place, the dialects—trader's talk, which is a strange conglomerate of literary expressions and English and American slang, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The narrator of this story, and the chief actor in the simple drama was George Edmonds. I mention this little event because it shows that the spirit of hostility to tyranny, and the scorn of oppression, cruelty, and persecution, which he manifested in his after life, were inborn, and a part of his nature. The ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... to tell us who was in love with whom, and what were the blood relationships of all the persons. In such a narrative as this, any proceeding of that kind would be unusual,—and therefore the poor narrator has been driven to expend his first four chapters in the mere task of introducing his characters. He regrets the length of these introductions, and will now begin at once the ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... worthy of swelling the theme of history; and doubly thrice happy is it in having such an historian as myself to relate them. For, after all, gentle reader, cities of themselves, and, in fact, empires of themselves, are nothing without an historian. It is the patient narrator who records their prosperity as they rise—who blazons forth the splendor of their noontide meridian—who props their feeble memorials as they totter to decay—who gathers together their scattered fragments as they rot—and who piously, at length, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... him and Uranio. Next day is celebrated the feast of Pales, an account of which is given at length, and is followed by a song in which Galicio sings the praises of his mistress Amaranta, of whom the narrator proceeds to give a minute description. After another singing-match between Logisto and Elpino the company betake themselves to the tomb of Androgeo, whose praises are set forth in prose and rime. ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... form of "Scripture," which Auntie Jan "told" every morning after breakfast to the children. Jan was a satisfactory narrator, for the form of her stories never varied. The Bible stories she told in the actual Bible words, and all children appreciate their ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... celebrated Suger of St. Denis decorated one of the porches of his church with mosaic, in smalt, marbles, and gold; animal and human forms were introduced in the ornament. But this may not have been work actually executed on the spot, for another narrator tells us that Suger brought home from Italy, on one of his journeys, a mosaic, which was placed over the door at St. Denis; as it is no longer in its position, it is not easy to determine which ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... not a seer of the first degree, a narrator of the penetrative order, I should be vastly puzzled over this singular action on ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... great battle," resumed the narrator, in cheerful tones, as one larking with history, "between a king of England and his rebels. He was in the thick ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... partakers," The notion of a Fitzgerald stigmatizing a De Burgh as an Irishman is delightful, and eminently characteristic of the sort of wild confusion prevailing on the subject. The whole story indeed is so excellent, and is told by the narrator with so much spirit, that it were pity to curtail it, and as it stands it would be too long for these pages. The result was that Clanricarde and his Irish allies were defeated with frightful slaughter, between seven and eight thousand ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... any fault with the matrix of this opal is probably blasphemous. But I own that I could do without the Shandean prologue and epilogue of the narrator and his man-servant Daniel Cameron. And though, as a tomfool myself, I would fain not find any of the actions of my kind alien from me, I do find some of the tomfoolery with which Nodier has seasoned the story superfluous. Why call a damsel "Folly Girlfree"? What would a Frenchman ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... thing and are willing and ready to receive the impression derogatory to the neighbor's esteem and good name. Of course, if mere curiosity makes us listen and our pleasure and amusement are less at the expense of the neighbor's good name than excited by the style of the narrator or the singularity of the facts alleged, the fault is less; but fault there nevertheless is, since such an attitude serves to encourage the traducer and helps him drive his points home. Many sin who could and should prevent excesses ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... Agathemer, "in the autumn, before Andivius died; in fact, before we had any reason to dread that the end of his life was near. Entedius saw it, perhaps he would be a more suitable narrator than I." ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... leaned down and said something the narrator did not catch, but from the expression of his face it must have been very spoony: with a bride such as that charming Nellie, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... train," said the narrator, quietly and not without some readiness. "They kept him prisoner in a cave for months, and then they took him hundreds of miles away to the forests of Alaska. There a beautiful Indian girl fell in love with him, but he remained ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... an adventure only, is I suppose one of the most wonderful and mysterious experiences ever undergone by mortal men, I feel it incumbent on me to explain what my exact connection with it is. And so I may as well say at once that I am not the narrator but only the editor of this extraordinary history, and then go on to tell how it found ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... conscience is not sensitive and dominant, memory and imagination will become so confused that facts and fancies will fail to be separated. The imagination will be so allowed to invest events and experiences with either a halo of glory or a cloud of prejudice that the narrator will constantly tell, not what he clearly sees written in the book of his remembrance, but what he beholds painted upon the canvas of his own imagination. Accuracy will be, half unconsciously perhaps, sacrificed to his own ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... continued the narrator placidly. "Jake said somebody'd get them that likely needed them worse than Minnie Morrison. Well, in the afternoon, after we'd visited a while, Jake hired a livery rig an' we drove out to the orphant ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... but disciplined him. "He had already forgotten that he was rich, he must forget that he was a father." His child was taken, clothed in rags, beaten and spurned. Obedience compelled the father to look upon his child wasting with pain and grief, but such was his love for Christ, says the narrator, that his heart was rigid and immovable. He was then told to throw the boy into the river, but was stopped ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... custom was based upon the wanderings of the Virgin and St. Joseph in Bethlehem in search of repose. For eight days these wanderings of the holy pair to the different posadas were represented. On Christmas Eve, says the narrator, "a lighted candle was put into the hand of each lady [this was at a sort of party], and a procession was formed, two by two, which marched all through the house ... the whole party singing the Litanies.... A group of little children, dressed as angels, joined the procession.... ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... near madness. Mad people do such things; those who carry on the work of the world as useful and law-abiding citizens do not. I may add that I myself had the privilege of hearing at first hand the narrator's own account of this incident, which was much emphasized by his gestures and tones. Wordsworth's unexpected sally was in reply to a timid question by the late Professor Bonamy Price, then a young man, concerning the ...
— Noteworthy Families (Modern Science) • Francis Galton and Edgar Schuster
... handling of it. The question of the proper method of narration is to a considerable extent a matter of suitability—of giving the narrative an appropriate setting; it is also a matter of the point of view of the narrator—whether he is to tell the story as one of the actors, or simply as an impersonal observer. A dozen master story writers would tell the same tale in a dozen different ways, and each of them would seem to be the right way; for each writer would view ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... asleep, and before he woke the rest of the company were gone, and had left him in the posture wherein he was found. It is said the king gave him a cup which was found in his hand, and dismissed him." The narrator affirms "that the cup was still preserved, and known by the name of the fairy cup." He adds that Mr. Steward, tutor to the then Lord Duffers, had informed him that, "when a boy at the school of Forres, he and his school-fellows were once upon a time whipping their tops in the churchyard, ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... the place and occasion, ready to imitate on every opportunity —listen with fair attention. They are perhaps pleased with the subject matter of the tale, possibly by its wording, and very probably by the voice and presence of the narrator. They hear an old story, one of the many that help to form the social cement of the nation in which they live. This is of some slight value, though the story is only one of scores which they hear or read in their early years at school. The story has no special ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... to perform," said the narrator. "He gets his breakfast early in the morning and starts out at once, mounted on horseback, and with a horse that is more or less unruly. Each stock-rider, or stockman, as we call him, has a particular ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... his involuntary appearance in the full uniform of a Turkish Zaptieh, with other surprising and endless episodes, that at the last we had in the midst of our gasps of helpless laughter to implore the narrator to stop for the sake of our sides and the resounding ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... men passed two whole days there without help. On the third day the Germans arrived and the narrator gave himself up for lost. But the German Captain, with whom the Frenchmen had divided their food and drink, begged that they be cared for. Ultimately they were taken to the German camp and their wounds attended to. But in a few minutes the camp became the centre of a violent attack, and ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... accompanied by the Kurile Alexei and a common sailor. The lieutenant-governor soon appeared. He was in complete armour, and attended by two soldiers, one of whom carried his long spear, and the other his cap or helmet, which was adorned with a figure of the moon. 'It is scarcely possible,' says the narrator, 'to conceive anything more ludicrous than the manner in which the governor walked. His eyes were cast down and fixed on the earth, and his hands pressed closely against his sides, whilst he proceeded at so slow ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... Risk thanked the narrator in behalf of the auditory, adding, "The storm will probably change to a thaw before morning, and if it does we must be on hand bright and early, for it will bring the main ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... Sailing's Grove. Among the excursionists was General Sherman who gloried in the undertaking and expressed regret that at his age he could hardly anticipate living until the completion of the work. The party was very enthusiastic, and as the narrator naively puts it "as the commissary was well supplied, the ...
— The Story of the First Trans-Continental Railroad - Its Projectors, Construction and History • W. F. Bailey
... is a railroad engineer and is ten years older than I," the narrator said in the beginning. "I wasn't quite nineteen when we were married—two years ago. For some time, we got along all right; then we began to quarrel. ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... adopt in the description of each of them must not, in any way, lead you to prejudge my opinion respecting the rank which they hold among the French themselves. In this respect, I shall abstain from every sort of reflection, and, confining myself to the simple character of a faithful narrator, shall leave to your sagacity to decide ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... Regions, where Charon, the ghostly boatman, is busy ferrying souls across the River Styx. The ferryman bids his attendant Mercury see that all his passengers embark carrying nothing with them; and the narrator describes how, after various Shades had qualified for their passage, "A tall Man came next, who stripp'd off an old Grey Coat with great Readiness, but as he was stepping into the Boat, Mercury demanded half his Chin, which ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... when he had half accomplished his task, the dispute about the domain of Little Zwornik arose, on which he and his companion, a German, were thrown into prison, being accused of being a Servian captain in disguise. They were subsequently liberated, but shot at; the ball going through the leg of the narrator. This is another instance of the intense hatred the Servians and the Bosniac Moslems bear to each other. It must be remarked, that the Christians, in relating a tale, usually make ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... course of our intimacy. While thus acknowledging a debt, I must also avow that another motive strongly prompts me upon this occasion. I am not aware of any one, to whom with such propriety a volume of anecdote and adventure should be inscribed, as to one, himself well known as an inimitable narrator. Could I have stolen for my story, any portion of the grace and humour with which I have heard you adorn many of your own, while I should deem this offering more worthy of your acceptance, I should also feel more confident of ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... tactful in drawing a distinguished guest out, also failed. When the dinner was over, however, and we had reached the cigars, Mark Twain started in telling a story in his most captivating way. His peculiar drawl, his habit in emphasizing the points by shaking his bushy hair, made him a dramatic narrator. He never had greater success. Even the veteran Mark himself was astonished at the uproarious laughter which greeted almost every sentence and was ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... to a tradition current among the tribes of that region, Walk in the Water, a Roanoke chief of great celebrity, commenced his tale. Undoubtedly most of the Indians present were as well acquainted with the story as the narrator, but that circumstance seemed to abate nothing of the interest with which it was listened to; it certainly did not diminish the attention of the audience. In this respect, these wild foresters deserve to become a pattern for careful imitation. ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... asked how it was that the doctor himself remained awake when such a powerful narcotic was administered, the narrator did not lose his presence of mind nor his absence of conscience, and said the doctor had, during the operation, held his nose tight with his two fingers. The doctor had since been offered thousands of tomans for the precious bottle, but ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... of what passed reads, more than almost any other in the gospels, like notes taken at the time by one who was present. We can almost put it again into the form of brief notes.... We can scarcely doubt that it was the narrator John who was the witness ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed
... but with unconquerable shrinkings; and above all things, filled with a profound sense of the folly and weakness of his conduct. It may be conceived with what curses he assailed the memory of the fair narrator of Hyde Park; her parting laughter rang in his ears all night with damning mockery and iteration; and when he could spare a thought from this chief artificer of his confusion, it was to expend his wrath on Somerset and the career of the amateur detective. With the coming of day, ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... snatched out the servant's sword, and with it slew him. A bystander wrested away the sword, and a foreigner in the crowd struck down the murderer, while other foreigners bore off their comrade's body. The narrator, to Ralegh's assurances that he could not be mistaken, since he had witnessed the whole affair as it happened round the stone, replied that neither could he be, for he was the bystander, and on that very stone he had been standing. He showed ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... theft and all that concerned it. At the slightest question he poured out excited information. Xavier had been a servant in the house. Mrs. King, who was religious and zealous, had found in him a convert. He had become a Protestant to please her. (At this point the narrator shrugged his shoulders again.) Then Xavier had asked higher wages; upon that there was a quarrel, ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... hands but allowed me to make full notes, and afterwards at my request re-read the whole, in order that I might make sure of my facts. The story which now follows is, of course, not quoted from the lips of the first narrator, but is based upon the notes made by her granddaughter in which are embodied the recollections of the conversations she ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... tale is told to the new generation—to the little ones sitting around with open eyes and gaping mouths—they naturally ask, "Where did all this occur?" The narrator must satisfy this curiosity, and so he replies, "On yonder mountain-top," ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... fell to the floor unheeded, this time she really put her spectacles in their proper place and stared through them at the narrator. ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... beautiful Irish accent, and Henry liked him. The attraction seemed mutual, and Henry found himself drawn into a remarkable relation about a fairy-hill in Connemara, and fairy lights that for several nights had been seen glimmering about it; and how at last he—that is, the narrator—and a particularly hard-headed friend of his had kept watch one moonlit night, with the result that they had actually seen and talked with the queen of the fairies and learned many secrets of the ——. The narrator here ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... is. Perhaps the reader will cast it aside at once as a worthless fiction,—the idle vagary of an excited brain. The compiler, of course, cannot vouch for its truth, but would respectfully invite the attention of the reader to the following testimonials presented by those who have known the narrator. The first is from Edward P. Hood, with whom Mrs. Richardson resided when ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... Poles, at this terrible moment, recognized each other as brothers, and rather than spill fraternal blood, they extricated themselves from a combat as if it were a crime. That is the version of an eyewitness and narrator, a ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... of the afternoon's performances, beginning with his experience as a lobster catcher. Seth smiled, then chuckled, and finally burst into roars of laughter, in which the narrator joined. ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... and go; and a thousand rumours, false mixed with true, wander up and down, and circulate confused words. Of these, some fill the empty ears with conversation; some are carrying elsewhere what is told them; the measure of the fiction is ever on the increase, and each fresh narrator adds something to what he has heard. There, is Credulity, there, rash Mistake, and empty Joy, and alarmed Fears, and sudden Sedition, and Whispers of doubtful origin. She sees what things are done in heaven and on the sea, and ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... that the narrator mixed up together certain leg-ends which related to other places in the country—that he took little springs, and mingled his own thoughts with his relations; but Otto listened to him with great interest. The discourse turned also upon the family at ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... drummer. And we listened to his anecdote. It was successful with his audience; but when he launched fluently upon a second I strolled out. There was not enough wit in this narrator to relieve his indecency, and I felt shame at having been surprised ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... a visit paid at will, which is reported at first hand in the "Proceedings of the Psychical Research Society." The narrator, Mr. John Moule, tells how he determined to make an experiment of the ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... of his creed, as then interpreted, i.e., the sentimental regard for the lower animals.[43] But there is lacking here the inevitable concomitant of Sterne's relation of a sentimental situation, the whimsicality of the narrator in his attitude at the time of the adventure, or reflective whimsicality in the narration. Sterne is always whimsically quizzical in his conduct toward a sentimental condition, or toward himself in the analysis ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... thought a thing amiss of each other. I presume that the most insidious falsehoods are daily carried to you, as they are brought to me, to engage us in the passions of our informers, and stated so positively and plausibly as to make even doubt a rudeness to the narrator; who, imposed on himself, has no other than the friendly view of putting us on our guard. My answer is, invariably, that my knowledge of your character is better testimony to me of a negative, than any affirmative which my informant ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... a wondrous tale of western life, and never did narrator get into so close relation with his auditor as did this young ranchman ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... his persecuting zeal, when Jesus suddenly appeared to him and Saul was changed from a persecutor to a believer in Christ (Acts 9:3-7). The account is very brief. For an event which has had such tremendous results, the narrator is very reticent; a light from heaven, a voice speaking, and a person declaring that He is Jesus. Paul gives us two accounts of his conversion and how it took place (Acts 22:6-15; 26:12-18). The men who were with Paul saw a light and heard a voice, but not what was said. It is ...
— Bible Studies in the Life of Paul - Historical and Constructive • Henry T. Sell
... to that rule," thought I, for I remembered the stories which I had heard in the cabin; and I also recollected the conduct of their narrator, Captain Blake, towards the starving ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... the Arabian tale, has probably no special mythical significance, but was rather suggested by the exigencies of the story, in an age when the old mythologies were so far disintegrated and mingled together that any one talisman would serve as well as another the purposes of the narrator. But the lightning-plants of Indo-European folk-lore cannot be thus summarily disposed of; for however difficult it may be for us to perceive any connection between them and the celestial phenomena which they represent, the myths concerning ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... I am about to recount perplex the reader, it can hardly do so more than it has perplexed the narrator. Explanations, let me say at the start, I have none to offer. That which took place I relate. I have had no special education or experience as a writer; both my nature and my avocation have led me in other directions. ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... with more interest than you could have thought possible under the pressure of bodily distress. And Helen Rolleston's hazel eye dwelled on the narrator ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... antiquity, regardless alike of the frailty of their tenement and of the enjoyments of the numerous and vigorous swarms that are culling the fresher sweets of a virgin world. But as this is a subject which belongs rather to the politician and historian than to the humble narrator of the homebred incidents we are about to reveal, we must confine our reflections to such matters as have an immediate relation to ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... function was limited. But the fishermen regarded him as a fine player, and he did not care to imperil a serious reputation by telling frivolous ghost stories. So Mary, who had heard the story long ago from George's own lips, did duty as narrator:— ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... and spent a night with him. In his Ornithological Biography he gives the following narrative which he received from Boone, that evening as they sat at the cabin fire. We give the story in the words of the narrator: ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... I, interrupting the narrator, "I have heard enough. Spare me for the present. Your statements must be corroborated. This is all I ask. Leave the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... minute description of events previous to Christian Vellacott's disappearance, omitting nothing. The relation was somewhat disjointed, somewhat vague in parts, and occasionally incoherent. The narrator repeated himself—hesitated—blurted out some totally irrelevant fact, and finished up with a vague supposition (possessing a solid basis of truth) expressed in doubtful English. It suited Mr. Bodery admirably. ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... guard, he opened his wallet, which was well stocked, and retailed his stories, many of them so very rich, that I doubted the capacity of the Attache to out-Herod him. Mr. Slick received these tales with evident horror, and complimented the narrator with a well simulated groan; and when he had done, said, "Ah, I see how it is, they have purposely kept dark about the most atrocious features of slavery. Have you ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... that the old lady was crazy, or else she really had an important story to tell. In either case, it was his duty to let Fleming Stone hear it, at first hand, if possible. But he felt sure that to call in the rest of the household, or to take the narrator out to them would—as he expressed it to himself "upset her applecart and ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... turbulent images, which had impaired its efficacy, to a personal recollection of circumstances that had ceased to affect him. His features, for instance, became more human, his eye more significant of his feeling, and his whole manner more quiet and restored. He looked upon the narrator with an awakened interest, surveyed Darby, as if he scarcely knew how or why he came there, and then ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... "Mighty dangersome," acquiesced the narrator, "dat's what I 'lowed ter myse'f when I seed him. He was arter a lump o' dat green truck wid white berries 'pon it—mizzletoe, dey calls its name. When I got dar, he was comin' down de tree holdin' it by de stem wid he teef. He ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... interesting subjects. It was, therefore, with great pleasure, that I extracted from my military friend some curious particulars respecting that time; they are mixed with that measure of the wild and wonderful which belongs to the period and the narrator, but which I do not in the least object to the reader's treating with disbelief, providing he will be so good as to give implicit credit to the natural events of the story, which, like all those which ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... romanticism or who have a taste for heroines that "stiffen in a sudden stroke of passion looking for the instant electrically beautiful," let me commend The Red Planet (LANE). As a matter of fact Betty, the heroine, is quite a dear, and the narrator, Major Meredyth, a maimed hero of the Boer War, who looks at this one from the tragic angle of an invalid chair, is, apart from a habit of petulant and not very profound grousing at Governments in The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various
... ideas and superstitions have in some manner become attached to a recent name; tradition has a knack of bringing forward its dates; stories of immemorial antiquity are related as though they were the experience of the narrator's father or grandfather, and are modernised to suit that supposition. Legend never sticks at absurdity or anachronism. From some versions of the story it would appear that Tregeagle could not have lived earlier than the seventeenth century, ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... entertain the audience with some mythological legend. It was so clear that during this recital the chorus remained unnecessarily idle and superfluous, that the next improvement was as natural in itself, as it was important in its consequences. This was to make the chorus assist the narrator by occasional question ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... they were as pleased with it as the fair narrator herself. Everything just as it should be, you see. Off we skip like the most heartless things in the world, which is what children are, but so attractive; and we have an entirely selfish time; and then when we have need of special attention ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... Nibelungenlied, where you are made to feel so vividly (one of the few modern and therefore clear things therein) the long, dreary road from Worms to Bechlarn, and thence to Etzelburg, though of none of them is there anything beyond a name. For the Nibelungen story had been localized in what to narrator and audience was a reality, the country in which themselves lived, where themselves might seek out the abbey in which Siegfried was buried, the well in the Odenwald near which he was stabbed; where they knew from merchant ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... to choose between the role of actor or that of mere spectator or narrator. Neither the one nor the other can be forced upon him. The actor's role arises not from intelligence but simply from instinct. The actor identifies himself with the personages he represents. He renders ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... restraining the duchess from rushing up to the embrace of her son, whom she had not seen for a considerable time, and insisting on her receiving him in state. "How horribly cold it was," said the narrator. "Yes," said Lamb, in his stuttering way; "but you know he is ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... but there is no need to inquire which is the more correct account. The former two may have omitted a fact, or St Matthew may have combined the story with that of the two blind men already noticed, of which he is the sole narrator. But in any case there are, I think, but two recorded instances of the blind praying for cure. Most likely there were more, ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... Ken related the following tale. He was, I may observe in passing, a naturally fine narrator. There were deep, lingering tones in his voice, and he could strikingly enhance the comic or pathetic effect of a sentence by dwelling here and there upon some syllable. His features were equally ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
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