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More "Postman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... without loss a brisk fire of explosive missives which continued unchecked for some weeks. Speaking quite candidly, and dropping the language of the Press Bureau for the moment, there has never been a time when the postman's rat-tat has occasioned me ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... position; and then it has set him watching for the reviews—who would ever have suspected John of knowing that books were reviewed? Why, he's actually found out about the Clipping Bureau, and whenever the postman rings I hear John rush out of the library to see if there are any yellow envelopes. Of course, when they do come he'll bring them into the drawing-room and read them aloud to everybody who happens to be here—and the Bishop is sure to happen to ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... pursuit of all classes, and the postman is probably the only man who leaves letters for the vulgar pursuit of lucre! Even the vanity of servant-maids has undergone a change—they now study 'Cocker' ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... in Highams Park, Chingford, says a contemporary, a postman picked up a package containing one ounce of butter. To his eternal credit let it be said that he at once took it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... moment she heard the postman's whistle outside; and a little later the servant brought up her mail. The first letter, large, soiled, thick, bore the postmark Flagstaff, and her address in ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... occasionally: but, although there are doubtless many acute minds in power, and many great men in public situations, yet the majority of the people of intellect and of wealth in the United States keep aloof whilst this order of things remains: for, from the penny-postman and the city scavenger to the very President himself, the qualification ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... "no marriage" there, there could be no families to wait upon and cook for. Weeden, also, was doubtful. Having never been to London, the alternative happiness was not properly within his grasp, whereas the Postman might be transferred from the metropolis to the stars at any minute of the day or night. Those London letters he brought settled his case beyond all ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... salad to it from the greengrocer's next door; but though he and Dolly waited and watched till long after the child's bed-time, taking occasional snatches of bread and butter, still Susan did not arrive. At length a postman entered the little shop with a noise which made Oliver's heart beat violently, and tossed a letter down upon the counter. He carried it to the door, where there was still light enough to read it, and saw that it was in ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton
... highly-decorated villas, amiably performing their tasks while the mighty slept; fishermen and fat fisher-girls, industriously repairing endless brown nets on the other side of the parapet of the road; a postman and a little policeman; a porcelain mender, who practised his trade under the shadow of the wall; a few loafers; some stable-boys exercising horses; and children with adorable dirty faces, shouting in their ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... when Margery was called in from her first ramble in the fields, she found the postman at ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... comes, though,' said Gillian; and in due time the locked letter-bag was delivered to Lady Merrifield, and Primrose waited eagerly to act as postman. ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that Crossjay began to dance with an appetite, and was despatched to besiege a bakery. Clara felt lonely without him: apprehensively timid in the shuttered, unmoving village street. She was glad of his return. When at last her letter was handed to her, on the testimony of the postman that she was the lawful applicant, Crossjay and she put out on a sharp trot to be back at the Hall in good time. She took a swallowing glance of the first page ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a woman on whom the police might do worse than keep an eye; but, reflected Gimblet, he was not the police, and the dishonesty of this scheming widow was really no concern of his. As he reached his door, a postman was leaving it, and two or three letters had been pushed through the flap. He let himself in and took them out of the box. They were not of great importance. A bill, an appeal for a subscription to some charity, a couple of advertisements and the catalogue ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... the corner of the church to see the facade, she found herself before the post-box, which was so dusty and rusty that it seemed as if the postman never came near it. She put her letter in it under the ingenuous gaze of ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... and became exceedingly unpopular in Ballymoy. The Resident Magistrate hated being obliged to enforce unnecessary laws such as that which forbids cyclists to ride on footpaths, and that which ordains the carrying of lighted lanterns on carts at night. The postman, at the other end of the official scale, liked loitering on his rounds, and had adopted a pleasant habit of handing on letters to any wayfarer who might be supposed to be proceeding in the direction of the place to which the letters were addressed. Every ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... reply on the second morning after despatching his missive; but none came. The third morning arrived; the postman did not stop. This was Saturday, and in a feverish state of anxiety about her he sent off three brief lines stating that he was coming the following day, for he felt sure ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... said this to you if I hadn't believed this thing ought to be clinched the minute there was a chance to do it. It's been hanging off and on long enough. Love you? Why, bless my soul, sir, she's been thinking of nothing else for the past two or three days but the coming of the postman, expecting a letter from you, not considering that you didn't know where to address her, or that it was rather scant time for a letter to come from La Guayra, where Captain Stearns would take you if he succeeded ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... house, and I made Jack spend the night there. I reckoned it might be as well to keep him within reaching distance for the next day or two. He showed up at breakfast in the morning looking like a calf on the way to the killing pens, and I could see that his thoughts were mighty busy following the postman who was delivering those letters. I tried to cheer him up by reading some little odds and ends from the morning paper about other people's troubles, but they ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... really leave the field: that very evening an aged man, in green spectacles, was inquiring about the postal arrangements to Vizard Court; and next day he might have been seen, in a back street of Taddington, talking to the village postman, and afterward drinking with him. It was Poikilus ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... alien object in view—a figure whose right of presence I instantly, passionately questioned. I recollect counting over perfectly the possibilities, reminding myself that nothing was more natural, for instance, then the appearance of one of the men about the place, or even of a messenger, a postman, or a tradesman's boy, from the village. That reminder had as little effect on my practical certitude as I was conscious—still even without looking—of its having upon the character and attitude of our visitor. Nothing was more natural than that these things ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... distinctly: the rain was pouring down in torrents; the dust-man had come to the house where I was in service; I went down with the dust-bin and stood for a moment in the doorway, and looked at the dreadful weather. Then the postman gave me a letter; it was from you. Heavens! how that letter had travelled about. I tore it open and read it; I cried and laughed at the same time, and was so happy! Therein was written that you were staying in the hot countries, ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... letters, for which the postman had been paid three and twopence, and Mr. Garth was forgetting his tea and toast while he read his letters and laid them open one above the other, sometimes swaying his head slowly, sometimes screwing up his mouth in inward debate, but not forgetting ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... of Frederick of Sicily there lived a man named Nicolo Pesce,—Nicholas the Fish. This man's powers seem to have been decidedly superhuman. He was evidently an amphibious animal. He appears to have acted the part of ocean-postman in these old times, for it is related of him that he used to carry letters for the king far and wide about the Mediterranean. On one occasion a vessel found him out of sight of land in the discharge of ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... looking upon cathedrals and public buildings and city squares, where monuments to soldiers were as common as daisies in a summer field. Suddenly, on a certain morning, I came upon a little plot of grass and trees, near the great postoffice in St. Botolph's, Aldergate, which is called the "Postman's Park," and at one end of it saw the little open gallery, erected in 1887 by the great painter, George F. Watts, with its forty-eight tablets placed in commemoration of certain heroes and heroines who died unknown in the endeavor to save ...
— Heroes in Peace - The 6th William Penn Lecture, May 9, 1920 • John Haynes Holmes
... ninety-nine invariably pay their letters properly, while time after time the hundredth sends his with the abominable big 2 stamped upon it, and your servant walks in and worries you by the old statement that the postman is waiting. Let me advise every reader to do what I intend doing for the future: to wit, to refuse to receive any unpaid letter. You may be quite sure that by so doing you will not lose any letter that is worth having. A class of people, very closely analogous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... day after his arrival at Moscow, Laptev went into the warehouse, the workmen packing the goods were hammering so loudly that in the outer room and the office no one heard him come in. A postman he knew was coming down the stairs with a bundle of letters in his hand; he was wincing at the noise, and he did not notice Laptev either. The first person to meet him upstairs was his brother Fyodor Fyodorovitch, who was so like him that they passed for twins. This resemblance ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... know; but he was for no dispute with Bess and kept his want of knowledge to himself. Yes; Richard was to write Dorothy every day; and she, for her sweet part, was likewise to write Richard every day. The good Bess, like an angel turned postman, would manage the ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... hat by mistake out of the restaurant?" asked Syme, smiling wildly. "Have I by any chance got a number stuck on to me somewhere? Have my boots got that watchful look? Why must I be a policeman? Do, do let me be a postman." ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... The postman's buggy had stopped at our mailbox. Phillida ran down to meet the event of the morning. Her laughing chatter came back to me while she waited, fists thrust in middy pockets, for the old man to sort our letters from his bags. It did not appear so hard ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... gardens of Strelitz, and that the young ladies' conversation was, strange to say, about husbands. "Who will take such a poor little princess as me?" Charlotte said to her friend, Ida von Bulow, and at that very moment the postman's horn sounded, and Ida said, "Princess! there is the sweetheart." As she said, so it actually turned out. The postman brought letters from the splendid young King of all England, who said, "Princess! because you have written such a beautiful letter, which does credit to ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Wildney; "there goes the postman's horn! Shall I run and get the letter-bag as he passes ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... she sent up to the Manor, post haste, as soon as it arrived. The telegraph-boy who conveyed it, got sixpence for himself as a reward for the extra speed he had put on in running all the way from the village to the house, thereby outstripping the postman, who being rotund in figure was somewhat heavily labouring up in the same direction with the last delivery of letters for the day. Miss Vancourt's correspondents were generally very numerous,—but on this occasion there was only one ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... small farmer who is his cousin. I wish you could see him walking into his cousins' curds and cream, and into their dairies generally! Yesterday morning, between eight and nine, I was sitting writing at the open window, when the postman came to the inn (which at Loch Earn Head is the post-office) for the letters. He is going away, when Fletcher, who has been writing somewhere below-stairs, rushes out, and cries, 'Halloa there! Is that the Post?' 'Yes!' somebody answers. 'Call ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... that to a quarter to ten, comes the postman with his first delivery of letters for the day. Our Terrace is the most toilsome part of his beat, for having to serve both sides of the way, his progress is very like that of a ship at sea sailing against the wind. R'tat he goes on our ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... Apollonius' diligent hand; the orders were twice as many as they had formerly been. The postman brought great piles of letters into the house. Apollonius accepted an advantageous offer made by the owner and leased the slate quarry. He understood the management of the works from his stay in Cologne, and he employed a former acquaintance from that city whom he knew to be an ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... Tonans;—'Some other woman,' Sir Lukin said, and himself. He reported the cookery as matching the: conversation, and that was princely; the wines not less—an extraordinary fact to note of a woman. But to hear Whitmonby and Diana Warwick! How he told a story, neat as a postman's knock, and she tipped it with a remark and ran to a second, drawing in Lady Pennon, and then Dacier, 'and me!' cried Sir Lukin; 'she made us all toss the ball from hand to hand, and all talk up to the mark; and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the chill blast of the night, stood our little old gray postman with some letters in his hand. "Oh!" ...
— Different Girls • Various
... way about. The migratory systems of domestic experience said nothing to her, nor, thus far, had the charts of matrimony either. In the sphere of life to which a walk-up leads, the charts were dotted with but the postman and the corner druggist. Men and plenty of them she had met, but they too said nothing and not at all because they were dumb, but because, as the phrase is, they did not talk her language. But for every exception there is perhaps a rule. The one man ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... postman handed in a letter. It was from Obedstown. East Tennessee, and was for Washington. He opened it. There was a note saying that enclosed he would please find a bill for the current year's taxes on the 75,000 acres of Tennessee Land ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... being cleared, the Major took forty winks on the sofa, and we two beat a retreat, lit up our pipes in the passage, and were just turning out when the postman's double knock came, but no showers of letters in the box. Derrick threw open the door, and the man handed him a fat, stumpy-looking roll in ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... Cook's leaving to be married: I'm afraid she's neglected this sea-kale. Dear, dear! what love will do for people's minds, to be sure. Put your hair straight, Isobel, dear, or Mary will think Jack has been kissing you! I saw her kiss the postman yesterday. Mary, I mean! You're eating like a pigeon, Jack! Gracious me! Where's the pepper? Mary! Ring the bell, Isobel. I must speak to that postman; he's made Mary forget to put any pepper in the cruet, and any one might have ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... is very clever. The 'sailor king' comes in as effectively to give vraisemblance to the narrative as 'Crabtree's little bronze Shakspeare that stood over the fireplace,' and the 'postman just come to the door with a double letter ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... night, after having wished you good night, the postman, who had been delayed by the snow, brought me a very distressing letter. The senior vicaire informs me that my book has been a source of grief to Monseigneur, and has already overshadowed the spiritual joy with which he looked forward to the festival of ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... Coming up rather quietly somewhat later, she found me sitting under the big maple, surreptitiously studying a range and furnace catalogue borrowed of Westbury. We decided on Acme Hummers and I gave the order to the postman next morning. ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... sentence: the postman's knock came to the door, and she bounded off to see what he had brought, leaving Miss Dasomma in fear lest she should appropriate a letter not addressed to her. She returned with a look of triumph—a look so wildly exultant that her hostess was momentarily alarmed ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... two qualities in the Englishman: his bravery and his common sense. We know that the Englishman is true to his given word, and that even in the antipodes he never changes his habits. As I write, the postman brings me a letter from the front, dated Oct. 17. The cavalryman who sends it tells of our Allies. "We are fighting the enemy's cavalry," he writes, "and for two days my brigade was in action with the British. They know how to fight and they astonish ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... street, just as it was entering the town, with a little tilbury harnessed to a white horse, which was going in the opposite direction, and in which there was but one person, a man enveloped in a mantle. The wheel of the tilbury received quite a violent shock. The postman shouted to the man to stop, but the traveller paid no heed and pursued his road ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... postmaster-general must be appointed, whose duty is to write down the names of the players, and the names of the cities they have chosen to represent. The postman is blindfolded and led to the middle of the room, whilst the other players are seated round it. The postmaster-general then begins to announce that a letter has been sent from one town to another, say from Denver to Chicago. ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... as she was walking back from the station and asked her if Mr. Bingham had gone. When she replied that this was so, she had distinctly heard him murmur, "Thank God! thank God!" Subsequently she discovered also that he bribed the old postman to keep count of the letters which she sent and received ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... delivered. Had you been the penny postman of Mr. Robert Murray, of whom we heard so much in London last spring, you could not have handed it in more directly. Why did you not talk the Duke fair? He is a gracious nobleman, and kind of heart, save when he is thwarted or angered. Some little ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... my printers know not: nor the postman—nor the correspondent, who riseth in his wrath and curseth over ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... friend as nobody's a match for. It was no good sending any letter there. She wouldn't take in any letter, bless you,' said the Captain, 'under them circumstances! Why, you could hardly make it worth a man's while to be the postman!' ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... lowering herself by surrendering up her charms to a captain's coxswain. She informed him that her father might be said to have been royally connected, being a king's messenger (and so, indeed, he might be considered, having been a twopenny postman), and that her mother had long scores against the first nobles in the land (she was a milk-woman), and that she had dry-nursed a young baronet, and was now, not merely a ladies' maid, but a lady's ladies' maid. All this important and novel communication sunk deep in my father's mind, ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... Hadley's innocent fun. He hadn't harmed anyone, even if he did squirt a little water on the postman and a delivery boy. She had not minded it herself, and no one had been rude to him until I'd come chasing in and handled him so rough. That was an outrage, and Martha thought I ought to get a ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... and wrote at once to a bookseller in London for a copy of The Chorus in Green, as the author had oddly named the book. He wrote on June 21st and thought he might fairly expect to receive the interesting volume by the 24th; but the postman, true to his tradition, brought nothing for him, and in the afternoon he resolved to walk down to Caermaen, in case it might have come by a second post; or it might have been mislaid at the office; they forgot parcels sometimes, especially when the bag was heavy and ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... from the day on which she had fled he was starting out as usual, early in the morning, for another day of hopeless, weary tramping in the city, when the postman handed him a letter addressed in her handwriting. It was to him like a voice from the grave, and read ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... expected a more than cordial welcome and a kiss at the door, and longing redoubled his haste. Presently the postman called to him and handed him a small but heavy parcel, which was addressed in a fair clear hand which he at once recognized. He stepped into the first shop to give the messenger his receipt, but when once in the street again his ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... morning, at half-past seven, the postman who conveyed letters to the village, noticed at the cross-road, not far from the high road, a large splash of blood not yet dry. He said to himself: "Hallo! some boozer must have got ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... me to say in a note. I did not want to send my anger to you over a distance of two or three hundred miles by the postman. But now that we are together ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... entitle him to the appellation of Doctor from his landlady and the boy at' Child's." There is another allusion to the house in the Spectator. "Sometimes I"—the writer is Addison—"smoke a pipe at Child's, and while I seem attentive to nothing but the Postman, overhear the conversation of every table in the room." Apart from such decided lay patrons as Addison, Child's could also claim a large constituency among the medical and learned ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... mother a gentleman wished to see her? and why was I out of humour for the rest of the day, because it proved to be a music-master come to offer his services to our school? and what stopped my breath for a moment, when the postman having brought a couple of letters, my mother said, 'Here, Agnes, this is for you,' and threw one of them to me? and what made the hot blood rush into my face when I saw it was directed in a gentleman's hand? and why—oh! why did that cold, sickening ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... Albert's peril, and in so nervous a state that she will not hear of my quitting her for a moment. We have indeed received a lesson, that no rank, however exalted, can protect from the strokes of Providence, or the uncertainties of human life. But the postman ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of Oldenburg's to Hartlib there had been enclosed a letter from Oldenburg, and another from young Ranelagh, to Milton. Two such letters, at all events, Milton had received, and undoubtedly through Hartlib, who was still the universal foreign postman for his friends. We can guess the substance of the two letters. Young Ranelagh does not seem to have troubled Milton with his speculations on the generation of pearls, or his story of the German baron and his ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... was leaving, Ganimard passed the postman, who was bringing a letter for M. de Vaudreix. That afternoon, the public prosecutor was informed of the case and ordered the letter to be given up. It bore an American postmark and contained the following lines, ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... find, on casting up accounts, that you are my debtor by several sheets and one epistle. I shall bring my action;—if you don't discharge, expect to hear from my attorney. I have forwarded your letter to Ruggiero; but don't make a postman of me again, for fear I should be tempted to violate your sanctity of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... my fame through London rings In well-bred speech and argot; At mild suburban tea-makings The postman knocks, and poor dear things Tear wildly at the parcel-strings When MUDIE gives ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... night was ushered in somewhat prosaically, not by the sound of a foeman's horn being wound in the distance, but by the postman's knock. There was only one letter, but that was an important looking one addressed to Rendel, in a big, square envelope with an official signature in the corner. It was, however, marked "private and confidential," and was not written in an official capacity. Rendel as he looked at it, saw ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... Toward eight o'clock the postman came, and asked for Inspector Jordan. The old man had to sign a receipt in acknowledgment of ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... to his church?" he cried. "Not one male bach or one female fach. Go there the next Sabbath, and the black muless will not say to you: 'Welcome you are, persons Capel. But there's glad am I to see you.' A comic sermon you will hear. A sermon got with half-a-crown postal order. Ask Postman. Laugh highly you will and stamp on the floor. Funny is the Parson in the white frock. Ach y fy, why for he doesn't have a coat preacher like Respecteds? Ask me that. From where does his Church come from? She is the inheritance of Satan. The only thing he had to leave, and he left her ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... out half a dozen together, pretty much with the same tone and emphasis as though he had said a twopenny postman; "the ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... he returned, laughing; "you can have the postman who delivered the letters here—nothing more; ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... Boys grow impatient. A mother's logic. The postman's whistle makes Hal nervous. "Who is Ad Interim?" Uniforms are ready. A surprise for Mrs. Overton. ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... day a very primitive kind of postman brought me a letter from Sheldon. That astute individual told me that he declined to advertise, or to give any kind of publicity to ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... went into the library. Down in the next block she saw the postman, and thought she would wait for him. She felt all unnerved this morning. Things were happening which she did not understand, and then she felt so "left out of things." She wanted to do things for Karl; she would love to hover over him while he was not well, but he seemed ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... the post herself. But in Italy so many things can be arranged. The postman was a friend of Gino's, and Mr. Kingcroft ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... unlooked for at the cottage, that the postman never included it in his rounds; and the contents of the pigeon-hole appropriated to them at the office was seldom inquired for, except on mail-days, when there might be an off-chance of an English letter for Miss Opie. Even Bluebell, who for ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... entertainment came to her door unsought, in the form of constant arrivals and departures among the neighbours. And each of them was the beginning or the end of a mystery, which she probed to the bottom with the aid of the postman, the baker, the butcher, and the tradesmen who were left lamenting with their bills unpaid. Never before in her wanderings had she got so completely in ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... at Home," beginning: "To have brought to Miss Anthony all the testimonials which Rochester would have laid at her feet tonight would have made me appear at the banquet like the modern Santa Claus—the postman at Christmastide." Rev. Frederick W. Hinckley, of Providence, began ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... I know it's nothing to boast of even on earth. Up here, it's simply contemptible. Now that you gods are too old for your work, you've made me the miserable drudge of Olympus—groom, valet, postman, butler, commissionaire, maid of all work, ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... accepting his Uncle William's advice, John sent the manuscript of his story to the editor of Blackwood's Magazine; and each morning, after he had done so, he eagerly awaited the advent of the postman. But the postman, more often than not, went past their door. When he did deliver a letter to them, it was usually a trading letter for ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... are alike. My missis said 'No' to me the first time." And then you went and told the gardeners—I suppose you had all the gardeners together in the potting-shed, and gave them a lecture about it—and when you had told them, you said, "Excuse me a moment, I must now go and tell the postman," ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... to me you must not name Chiswick, but Grove House, Turnham Green, as otherwise it goes into another postman's walk, who walks it back again to the office, and it does not reach me, per Turnham Green, peripatetic, till the next day, which is ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... was on his feet again, hatless, looking quite frantic, and striking out at Dudley, who was ducking and dipping quite coolly, and again the same horrid sound, only this time it was double, like a quick postman's knock, and Captain Oakley was on ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... at about half-past three, the mail was just being distributed, and Mrs. Cope was waiting as usual to pounce on her letters; you know she was always watching for the postman. She was standing so close to me that I couldn't help seeing a big official-looking envelope that was handed to her. She tore it open, gave one look at the inside, and rushed off upstairs like a whirlwind, with the director shouting after her that she had left all ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... resumed her occupation of making worsted lattice-work in the carpet, anxiously listening to the twopenny postman, who was hammering his way down the street, at the rate of a penny a knock. The house was as quiet as possible. There was only one low sound to be heard—it was the unhappy Tibbs cleaning the gentlemen's boots in the back kitchen, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... the door-handle in his clammy grasp; he had to cover it with a handkerchief to get a firm hold. He turned discreetly, and the door was pushed open in perfect stillness, except for that dreadful husky thumping of his own heart. At this moment the postman's hard knock at the door nearly made him cry out aloud. Then he entered; a dreadful visitor, had anyone seen him. She did not see him; she was asleep, sound asleep; in the dirty brown twilight of a London winter day, he could make out that much. He ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... saw Joan Devereux passing through the hall. He got up and hurried after her. "Would you mind addressing this for me?" He held out the envelope. "I've managed to spoil the paper inside, but I don't want to tax the postman too highly." ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... at Stroud, and next morning started for Port Stephens. There having been some delay in getting my horse, I was obliged to push over the first seven miles in little more than a quarter of an hour, the postman having waited for me ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... deposited a letter in any of the street boxes, the operative should be on hand and be prepared to drop his letter into the box immediately on the top of it. Another operative was then to await the visit of the postman on his round for collection, when he would step up to him and making a pretense of a mistake in the address of a letter which he had mailed, would from its position be enabled to obtain a glimpse of the suspected letters ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... she used to do when a young girl, the progress of the vegetation in the garden, the fresh flowers blooming, and the birds and insects as they flitted about among the trees and bushes. How eagerly she looked out for the arrival of the postman at his accustomed hour of passing the house, and her heart sank with disappointment as day after day he went by ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... Jack was, of course, known to everybody—as well known as the burly parson, the tall policeman, and the lazy girl who acted as postman and strolled about the parish once a day delivering the letters. When Jack trotted down the village street he received as many greetings as any human inhabitant—"Hullo, Jack!" or "Morning, Jack," or "Where be ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... came down in his boots and breeches, and had his red coat ready at the fire while he sat at breakfast. The meet was fifteen miles off and he had sent on his hunter, intending to travel thither in his dog cart. Just as he was cutting himself a slice of beef the postman came, and of course he read his letter. He read it with the carving knife in his hand, and then he stood gazing at his mother. "What is it, Larry?" she ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... Fraenkel mentioned to me the fact that letters pass between them. In a way, I suppose, she shouldn't do it. A post-mistress is in a delicate position. And yet why not? One may say without prejudice that a certain man writes to his wife. We might even have assumed it, since we see the postman deliver letters with our own eyes. Miss Fraenkel, however, overstepped the bounds of prudence when she implied something wrong. Her exact words, as far as I can remember, were, 'It is funny ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... between the bamboos added a metallic note to the tree's reedy whimperings, and the postman tramped along the short garden path ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... and little things distracted me. I could no longer bend to my desk for five hours in complete absorption. How my wife endured me during those years I can not explain. The chirp of my babies' voices, the ring of the telephone, the rattle of the garbage cart, the whistle of the postman—each annoyance chopped into my composition, and as my afternoons and evenings had no value in a literary way, I was often completely defeated for the day. Altogether and inevitably my work as a fictionist sank into an ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... gathered weight and momentum like a snowball rolling down hill, for I had always insisted that, with a big family like mine, I could never bother to go camping. I wanted to be where things were handy: running water from a faucet, bathtubs and gas and linoleum, a smoothly cut lawn and a morning postman. Go camping with ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... elements. Our step on the boards recovers its buoyancy. We are rocked to rest at night by a gentle movement which soothes you into the dreamless sleep of childhood, and we wake with the certainty that we are beyond the reach of the postman. We are shut off, in a Catholic retreat, from the worries ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... list of the different people who come to the home of a family in town to provide for its wants (such as the grocer's boy, the milkman, the postman, etc.). Compare with a farmer's home with respect ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... meeting, Mr. Belcher, sitting comfortably in his city home, received from the postman a large handful of letters. He looked them over, and as they were all blazoned with the Sevenoaks post-mark, he selected that which bore the handwriting of his agent, and read it. The agent had not dared to attend the meeting, but he had had his spies there, who reported to him fully the authorship ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... missing him very pleasurable,—feeling sure of his return; also the painful thrill every morning when the postman knocked. And to sit in retrospect of the summer was delicious. There may have been flaws in its present; there were none in its past. Her ambition to write was dormant. A woman's brain in love is like a garden planted with one flower. There may be room for a weed or ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... "No, it's the postman," answered Ted. "He's taking a letter into our house. Hey, Mr. Brennan!" he called, as he saw the gray-uniformed mail carrier entering the ...
— The Curlytops and Their Playmates - or Jolly Times Through the Holidays • Howard R. Garis
... himself against the clock. One ministrant is sewing a button on to his boot, another with blotting paper and hot iron is removing a stain from his coat, divested for the purpose; one is pouring out his coffee, another is cutting his bread, a third is watching for his newspaper by the postman. And suddenly he whirls everything into a whirlpool just as men, if Rosalie watches them long enough, always whirl everything into ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... houses, would be suicidal, for it would be easy for the ruffians to knife me or to gag me and fling me into a ditch. On the other hand, to attempt to stop strangers and explain the situation was impossible, because of the frantic folly of the situation itself. Long before I had persuaded the chance postman or carrier of so absurd a story, my companions would certainly have got off themselves, and in all probability would have carried me off, as a friend of theirs who had the misfortune to be mad or drunk. The last thought, however, was an inspiration; though a very ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... of dreams and quite its own excuse for being. But strange things come in the mail,—pieces of turf in which are growing tiny plants, boxes of rice, jelly, breakfast food, cooked fish still warm; and once a sack of mail is emptied upon my door-stone—not by the postman but by a man who the day before drove past with a little child. Other recurring motifs are strawberries, yeast, Bologna sausage, ice cream— once poured over slices of clear, transparent fruit which I eat, this ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... suspicions could take no exact form, as all he was certain of was, that his children were perpetually writing—and not writing letters. We have seen how the communications from their publishers were received "under cover to Miss Bronte." Once, Charlotte told me, they overheard the postman meeting Mr. Bronte, as the latter was leaving the house, and inquiring from the parson where one Currer Bell could be living, to which Mr. Bronte replied that there was no such person in the parish. This must have ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... detailed explanations of the great event. The letter had been brought by the foot postman in the middle of the morning. It had come by the mail steamer from Palma, arriving in Iviza the night before. If he wished to answer it he must do so without loss of time. The boat would return ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... save the postman a miserable Christmas, we follow the example of all unselfish people, and send out our cards early. Most of the cards had finger-marks, which I did not notice at night. I shall buy all future cards in the daytime. ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... as well be buried alive as live here. In fact, I am buried alive; I feel it. I stood at the window three hours this blessed day, and saw nothing but the postman. No: it isn't a pity that I hadn't something better to do; I had plenty: but that's my business, Mr. Caudle. I suppose I'm to be mistress of my own house? If not, I'd ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... it came to pass that few except the postman mounted Oleron's stairs; and since men who do not write letters receive few, even the postman's tread became so infrequent that it was not heard more than once or twice a week. There came a letter from Oleron's publishers, asking when they might expect to receive the ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... time mails were dispatched monthly to England, and semi-weekly between Quebec and Montreal, or Halifax. At Baie des Chaleurs the visits of the postman must, we conclude, have been few and far between, as they were only favored with a mail ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... baby, and it nearly killed me. I set him down in his cradle and I said: 'There, my boy! I don't go down to Chagmouth again till you can walk back yourself!' And I didn't! He was three years old before I went—even to the post office. How do I manage about stamps? Why, the postman brings them for me and takes my letters. The grocers' carts come round from Kilvan, and the butcher calls once a week, and what can you want more? I say when I've got a nice place like this to live in I'll stay here, and not worry myself with ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... sunny. Inland lay the most beautiful landscape ever seen; and far off were ranges of tall hills, the highest peaks of which were white with glittering snows. Along the sands by the sea came towards me a man accoutred as a postman. He gave me a letter. It was from you. ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... so completely out of the world that it only had a postal delivery twice a day. The early post was delivered at eight o'clock, so that the good people of the place could discuss their little items of outside news over their breakfast-tables. The postman went round with his evening delivery at seven. He was not overwhelmed by the aristocracy of Rosendale Manor, and, notwithstanding Mrs. Bertram's open annoyance, insisted on calling there last. He said it suited him best to do so, and what suited Sammy ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... rain was pouring down in torrents, the scavengers were before the house where I was in service, and I had come up with the dust, and remained standing at the door—it was dreadful weather—when just as I was there, the postman came and gave me a letter. It was from you! What a tour that letter had made! I opened it instantly and read: I laughed and wept. I was so happy. In it I read that you were in warm lands where the coffee-tree grows. What a blessed land that must be! You related so much, and ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... record a fleeting glimpse of truth. But you spoil every denouement by those flat, drab, obliterating strokes of your brush that I have so often complained of. If you would rise to the literary pinnacle of your dramatic senses, and paint them in the high colors that art requires, the postman would leave fewer bulky, self-addressed ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... wayside, whose steps travelled in the contrary direction to his heart. Oh, how interminably long did the short days of December and January appear! There was one bright hour for me, among all my hours,—it was when I heard from my room the step, the voice, and the rattle of the postman, who was distributing the letters in the neighborhood. As soon as I heard him I opened my window; I saw him coming up the street, with his hands full of letters, which he distributed to all the maid-servants, and waited ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... to take an interest in the affairs of others. The fact has been amply demonstrated by innumerable postmasters and postmistresses who have profited from their contact with the communities' correspondence. That the postman, too, is likely to be well informed is shown in a quotation by Punch of a local letter-carrier's apology to a ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... did, and on the morrow The postman brought us news. Miss WHITE expressed her sorrow At having to refuse. Of all her many reasons This seemed to me the pith: Six months before (or rather more) She'd ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... door; my Father would bend at me a corrugated brow, and murmur, under his breath, 'What's that?' and then, at the sound of footsteps, would bolt into the verandah, and around the garden into the potting-shed. If it was no visitor more serious than the postman or the tax-gatherer, I used to go forth and coax the timid wanderer home. If it was a caller, above all a female caller, it was my privilege to prevaricate, remarking innocently that ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... uniform; the ticket-takers, guards, and sweepers at the Bahnhof were in uniform,—but all wearing the same kind of cap, with the probability of having been wound up freshly each morning for their daily work. Even the postman delivered peaceful invoices to the consul with his side-arms and the air of bringing dispatches from the field of battle; and the consul saluted, and felt for a few moments the whole weight ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... he told her. "I was living in Golders Green, and suddenly one morning I was tired of the country that wasn't country, and the butcher boy and the postman. So I moved as far into the centre of things as I could and took a room in St. Martin's Lane close at hand here. Then one evening I was wandering about, a desolate Sunday evening when the town is given over to cats. I suddenly came across the Chapel. I like going into London ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... war come to us like far-off echoes from another world. The only sensation of our day is when, just after darkness has fallen, the sound of a whistle in the tiny street of thatched cottages announces that the postman ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... letters from hospitals asking for funds; there were appeals from sick people seeking admission to hospital. There were long, legal letters and little, scented letters lying wonderingly together in the postman's bag. There were notes from tailors to gentlemen begging to remind them; and there were answers from gentlemen to their tailors, in envelopes bearing the crests of Pall Mail clubs, hinting of temporary embarrassment, but mentioning ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... stables themselves seemed alive with coachmen, carriages, and motor-cars. The road itself was the only secluded spot you could have pointed out for the third of a mile about—but that was without a living thing upon it, and nothing but a postman's cart passed me for an hour ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... now, she must be told. I will go in first and break it to her. Of course there is nothing else that can be done until we get Edgar's letter. I will send a man off on horseback to the post-office, we shall get it an hour earlier than if we wait for the postman ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... of it," she said. "We're thirsty...." She came back into the room. "The postman's just come," she said with a nod and a smile to Esther. "Lydia will bring our letters up if there are any." She turned again to Micky. "Well, truant! And what have you been ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... than the Baron's horse as they went past on the way to the post; the scarlet jacket glided along quickly, heading the others. Gold Star and Orbit were much fancied. Curlew, Halton, and Sniper had friends. Postman was the outsider, a two-hundred-to-one chance; only a few pounds went on him for the ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... to lame Mary, the postman's wife, for she is always longing to see the fields," they answered; "but these roses are for you, dear little boy; they are all for you," and putting them into his hands they went ...
— Very Short Stories and Verses For Children • Mrs. W. K. Clifford
... Then the postman was heard blowing his horn, and Robert rushed out in the rain to stop his cart and give him the letter. And that was how it happened that, though all the children meant to tell their mother about the Sand-fairy, somehow or ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... days lost, always presuming that the diabolical postman would dare to repeat his attempt and produce ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... milk here and there in a sporadic fashion as haphazard as a bee among the flowers. Contrast, says the socialist, the wasted labors of the milkman with the orderly and systematic performance of the postman, himself a little fragment of socialism. And the milkman, they tell us, is typical of modern industrial society. Competing railways run trains on parallel tracks, with empty cars that might be filled and with vast executive organizations which do ten ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... following out his threads, the old man paced a mile down the camp to the post-office, for he had heard the postman's horn, and he expected important letters from England, from his friend and agent ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... eyes open, and, owing to his daughter's benevolent efforts on his behalf, had them fully occupied. He went to sea firmly convinced that she would do something foolish in the matrimonial line, the glowing terms in which he had overheard her describing the charms of the new postman to Mrs. Kingdom filling him with the ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... concoctions of the expired year. Indeed, we should as little think of taking these compositions as examples of the merits of their authors as we should think of measuring the valuable services of Mr. Walker, the postman, or Mr. Bell, the dust-collector, by the copy of verses they leave at our doors as a provocative of the expected annual gratuity—effusions with which they may fairly be classed for their intrinsic worth no less than ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the 'Flying Postman,' madam, with the great speech of Mr. Burke in it about the port of Boston; but it won't do a mossel o' good, madam, though he do tell 'em to keep their hands out o' the ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... make a fine observation, if you think it worth finishing; but I have not time. Is not this a terrible long piece for one evening? I dined to-day with Patty Rolt at my cousin Leach's,(22) with a pox, in the City: he is a printer, and prints the Postman, oh hoo, and is my cousin, God knows how, and he married Mrs. Baby Aires of Leicester; and my cousin Thomson was with us: and my cousin Leach offers to bring me acquainted with the author of the Postman;(23) and says he does not doubt but the gentleman will be glad of my acquaintance; ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... another a tall, thin man with a monocle in his left eye; the third, she found to her surprise, was none other than Jim Bennett the postman. The tall man held in his arms ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... quality of local postman, Goguelat carries all the news of the countryside, and a good deal of practice acquired in this way has made him an orator in great request at up-sittings, and the champion teller of stories in the district. Gondrin looks upon him as a very knowing fellow, and something of a wit; and ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... you spoil every denouement by those flat, drab, obliterating strokes of your brush that I have so often complained of. If you would rise to the literary pinnacle of your dramatic senses, and paint them in the high colors that art requires, the postman would leave fewer bulky, self-addressed envelopes ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... impel to wrong, Nor always doing just as bid, But sterling as the minted quid. And I have loved thee in my fashion, Shared with thy face my frugal ration, Squandered my balance at the bank When thou didst chew the postman's shank, And gone in debt replacing stocks Of private cats and Plymouth Rocks. And, when they claimed the annual fee That seals the bond twixt thee and me, Against harsh Circumstance's edge Did I not put my fob in pledge And cheat the minions of excise Who otherwise ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various
... I live here a perfect dream life; when I awake, it is with pain. Nothing attracts or holds me, or rather what attracts and holds me, is in the distance. How can I avoid being deeply melancholy? It is only the post that keeps me alive; with the most passionate impatience I expect the postman every morning about eleven. If he brings nothing or brings something unsatisfactory, my whole day is a desert of resignation. Such is my life! Why do I live? Often I make unheard-of efforts to get something from abroad; lately, for instance, I had my new poem printed, ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... possible interest in the letter that the postman had just brought, but he was far too polite to disturb the landlady or her servant, who were not yet through ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... corner cupboards appears to have been made in an advertisement of a Dutch joiner in "The Postman" of March 8th, 1711; these cupboards, with their carved pediments being part of the modern fittings of a room in the time of ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... thing for young ladies to live in a household in which free correspondence by letter is permitted. "Two for mamma, four for Amelia, three for Fanny, and one for papa." When the postman has left his budget they should be dealt out in that way, and no more should be said about it,—except what each may choose to say. Papa's letter is about money of course, and interests nobody. Mamma's contain ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... the pharmacy of M. Rapin, against which its walls rested without interspace; a simple citizen of Combray, who might have had her number in the street had the streets of Combray borne numbers, and at whose door one felt that the postman ought to stop on his morning rounds, before going into Mme. Loiseau's and after leaving M. Rapin's, there existed, for all that, between the church and everything in Combray that was not the church a clear line of demarcation which I have never succeeded in eliminating from my ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... unless he is provoked. But more things provoke an Irish terrier than one might imagine. The postman provoked my old one so much that it bit the letters out of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... should much have liked to get as far as Erzeroum, in the heart of Asia Minor. But as time failed me I contented myself with travelling at full speed for one day, along the road leading thither, with the Tartar or postman who carried the mails, so as to obtain some idea of the country. When I say road I speak figuratively. It was not even a path. It was a mere track across the woods and rocks and ravines of that ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... eagerly. Then there was a knock on the door. Constance opened, and an icy blast swept into the room. The postman stood on the steps, his instrument for knocking (like a drumstick) in one hand, a large bundle of letters in the other, and a yawning bag across the pit ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... were just starting off to the office, after having finally made our submission to Mrs Nash, and induced her, with a promise "never to do it again," to withdraw her threat to turn us out, when the postman appeared coming ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... contrary," he remarked, half to himself, "the owner was found. Only he returned the letter back to the postman after he had opened it and found that it was just a note of no importance which I scribbled just to see if he was keeping in touch with things from ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... except when in anger, and has no distinguishing marks except the absence of a piece of the right ear, which was carried off by a marauding Irish terrier. He answers with a growl to many names, including that of Timon. He will also answer to a piece of raw meat, another dog or a postman. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... recognizes two qualities in the Englishman: his bravery and his common sense. We know that the Englishman is true to his given word, and that even in the antipodes he never changes his habits. As I write, the postman brings me a letter from the front, dated Oct. 17. The cavalryman who sends it tells of our Allies. "We are fighting the enemy's cavalry," he writes, "and for two days my brigade was in action with the British. They know how to fight and they astonish us by their ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... letters from the postman, and carried the morning paper up to Mr. Morris's study, and I always put away the clean clothes. After they were mended, Mrs. Morris folded each article and gave it to me, mentioning the name of the owner, so that I could lay it on his bed. There was no need for her ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... is no joke, especially if you are waiting for letters. I know perfectly well I can't hear from you and Jack for an age, and yet I watch for the postman three times a day, as a hungry ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... department has many surprises in store for the American tourist. Mail delivery everywhere free, even in a rural commune remote from the railroad he may see a postman on his rounds two or three times a day. When money is sent him by postal order, the letter-carrier puts the cash in his hands. If he wishes to send a package by express, the carrier takes the order, which soon brings to him the ...
— Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum • James W. Sullivan
... retirement of Mr. George Lewis in 1882, and later had succeeded to the managership) was able to produce evidence that it was not so much weariness of the flesh as the fact that the porter was playing cards with a postman waiting with the mails and a stranded passenger waiting for the train which led to his late arrival at ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... the middle of July, he was coming out of his hall-door, when the postman handed him two letters, one of which was directed to his sister. Suspecting the party from whom it came, and that a knowledge of its contents might lead to some discovery useful to him in frustrating the writer's ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... morning raced by on wings. Of course Mary Jane had to show the cart and doll's clothes to Betty and they had to walk around the block to give the doll an airing. Then, just as they got back to Mary Jane's apartment, the postman came with a box from grandpa and grandma. Betty was invited up for the fun of opening it and she was glad to come both for the fun and for the big pieces of grandmother's candy that she got when the box was opened. Then ...
— Mary Jane's City Home • Clara Ingram Judson
... came that night was ushered in somewhat prosaically, not by the sound of a foeman's horn being wound in the distance, but by the postman's knock. There was only one letter, but that was an important looking one addressed to Rendel, in a big, square envelope with an official signature in the corner. It was, however, marked "private and confidential," ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... poet, whom some of our contemporaries erroneously reported as dead, has arrived in London from his tour in the East. He is for the present a guest of the Honorable Francis Villiers." The consequence of this and other similar announcements was, that the postman seemed never to be away from Villiers's door; and every time he came he was laden with letters and cards of invitation, addressed, for the most part, to Villiers himself, who, with something of dismay, saw his study table getting gradually covered with accumulating piles of society litter, such ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... better call on that man, Q., as you come away from the palace," said Mrs. Quiverful, pointing to an angry call for money from the Barchester draper, which the postman had left at the vicarage that morning. Cormorant that he was, unjust, hungry cormorant! When rumour first got abroad that the Quiverfuls were to go to the hospital, this fellow with fawning eagerness had pressed his goods upon the wants of the poor clergyman. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... seems, every one reads, also writes. There are few streets where the callous postman does not occasionally render some doorstep desolate by the delivery of a rejected manuscript. Fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind, and the first steps in the career of a successful man of letters are always interesting. You remember how Franklin slyly dropped ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... it the custom to put the letter-box up a tree? Why do they not fix it to the front door as we do? I should hate having to climb up a tree to get my letters. Besides, it is not fair to the postman. In addition to being most exhausting, the delivery of letters must to a heavy man, on windy nights, be positively dangerous work. If they will fix it to a tree, why not fix it lower down, why always among the topmost branches? But, maybe, I am misjudging the country," he continued, ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... picked up and said it had first struck a man a few yards from him and killed the man. A woman carrying a basket told us, with trembling lips, that men and women were lying about the streets dead. The postman assured us that Scarborough was in flames. A road worker told us we should be turned back, and another man warned us to beware of a big hole in the road further along, large enough to swallow our horse and trap; yet we could certainly see no flames issuing from Scarborough, which ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... father? I heard the postman's knock." As she spoke, Rose looked rather anxiously at her frowning parent. "Good news, I hope—the English mail arrived ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... and could only be persuaded to eat fresh meat with difficulty, being afraid she should not like it. One girl who came from a lonely cottage in a distant 'coombe-bottom' of the Downs was observed never to write home or attempt to communicate with her parents. She said it was of no use; no postman came near, and the letters they wrote or the letters written to them never reached their destination. 'Coombe-bottom' is a curious duplication—either word being used to indicate a narrow valley or hollow. An unfortunate child who lived there had never been so well since the ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... that, Asenath called her up-stairs. The postman had rung five minutes before, and Kate had carried up ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the letter box in the door clicked. It was the postman on his rounds. Kennedy walked over and picked up ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... pathos and a power, which she never attained before or since. But he was sorry when she stopped, for he had to come out of a most wonderful castle in the air and say "Thank you." When she went away he looked vaguely at her and let her hand fall, as was only natural. How we listen for the postman when we are longing for a letter and sick with hope deferred! But who thinks of him when he has dropped it into the box and is going down the street? Horace felt almost sure as he said good-bye that Love had found out ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... For these things make our world: there are no lectures, operas, concerts, theatres, no music of any kind, except what the waves may whisper in rarely gentle moods; no galleries of wonders like the Natural History rooms, in which it is so fascinating to wander; no streets, shops, carriages; no postman, no neighbors, not a door-bell within the compass of the place!... The best balanced human mind is prone to lose its elasticity and stagnate, in this isolation. One learns immediately the value of work to keep one's wits clear, cheerful, and steady; ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... breakfast the postman brought a post-card for her mother. Bloomah's heart was in her mouth when Mrs. Beckenstein clucked her tongue in reading it. She felt sure that the epidemic had invaded one of ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... When the postman entered, poor Rouletabille's heart beat rapidly. On that answer he waited for depended the formidable part he meant to play before quitting Russia. He had accomplished nothing up to now, unless he could play his part in ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... German would have declined to draw any conclusion whatever. But just as every German citizen however humble, becomes eventually a privy counsellor, a knight of various eagles of diverse classes, an overstationmaster, or a royal postman, so German science for the past hundred years has permitted no fact to languish in its native insignificance. All have been promoted to be the sponsors of imposing theories. And Hauptmann's theory, which got him the degree of Ph.D., maxima ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... more poignant torture. Next day, while Rudolph Musgrave was making out the list of honorary pall-bearers, the postman brought a letter which had been forwarded from Chicago. It was from Agatha, written upon the morning of that day wherein later she had been, as Patricia ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... course.... A calm, complete sleep of utter prostration—utter nervous prostration. And can one wonder? Poor fellow, poor fellow!' He walked to the window and peered between the blinds. 'Sparrows, sunshine—yes, and here's the postman,' he said, as if to himself. Then he turned sharply round, ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... come—nine costly letters, for which the postman had been paid three and twopence, and Mr. Garth was forgetting his tea and toast while he read his letters and laid them open one above the other, sometimes swaying his head slowly, sometimes screwing up his mouth in inward debate, but not forgetting to cut off ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... My Postman, though I fear thy tread, And tremble as thy foot draws nearer, 'Tis not the Christmas Dun I dread, MY mortal foe is much severer, - The Unknown Correspondent, who, With undefatigable pen, And nothing in the world ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... mailbox on the fence of the chefferie, the chief's office, and on the trees alongside the road at regular intervals, and the driver took mails from people who hailed him. Arriving at a chefferie, the stage halted, the district mutoi, or native policeman-postman, appeared leisurely, opened the locked box on the diligence, looked at ease over the contents, took out what he liked, and put back the remainder, with the postings ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... "in such issues as I have been able to find of the Scots Postman, or the New Edinburgh Gazette, there is no mention of the Scots Atalantis" (Letters, p. 306, n. 1). The title of this work and of Defoe's Atalantis Major are derived from Mrs. Manley's New Atalantis or Secret Memoirs and ...
— Atalantis Major • Daniel Defoe
... out of the window, she saw the postman suddenly surrounded by a whole flock of little girls, and heard one of them say, "Oh, haven't you got a valentine for me?" And then the whole flock cried, "And for me? and for me?" And the postman laughed good-naturedly, and, looking through his pack of letters, took out two or three ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... the front door, and began polishing the brass knob. "Ach!" she exclaimed. "Come in, child—do! You a chill will take. If it is the postman you want, ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... his Windsor uniform, ever mistaken for a two-penny postman; if so, what great man imagined ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Helstonleigh Cathedral was striking eight, and the postman was going his rounds through the Boundaries. Formerly, nothing so common as a regular postman, when on duty, was admitted within the pale of that exclusive place. The Boundaries, chiefly occupied by the higher order of the clergy, did not condescend ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... let me tell you what happened," she said. "When the postman came she gave him the letter for Alice, and he gave her the box. She didn't give him this letter because she hadn't stamps enough—see, it has but one—or perhaps she meant to use it as a threat; there was somebody ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... wayfarers' arrival at Dotheboys, Mrs. Squeers, arrayed in a dimity night-jacket, herself a head taller than Mr. Squeers, was always introduced with great effect, as seizing her Squeery by the throat and giving him two loud kisses in rapid succession, like a postman's knock. The audience then scarcely had time to laugh over the interchange of questions and answers between the happy couple, as to the condition of the cows and pigs, and, last of all, the boys, ending with Madame's ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... through the lower end of the hall, she saw Mary sitting at the typewriter in the alcove that had been curtained off for an office. She was about to call to her to stop and get ready for a tramp before dark, when the postman's whistle sounded across the street. He was making his four o'clock rounds. It was a rare occurrence for him to pass the house at this time of day without leaving something. All winter it had been the hour at which Phil's daily letter was most likely ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... and collars of her mistress, which she wore a few nights ago at a ball), and returns with something heavy in it, for the arm is extended in carrying it, and the stranger disappears. She still lingers, she is expecting some one. It is the postman, he gives her three or four letters, one of which is for herself. She reads it approvingly, and then carefully puts it into her bosom, but that won't retain it no how she can fix it, so she shifts it to her pocket. It is manifest Posty carries a verbal ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... all round when, the day before Christmas, the postman came along the bleak and flimsy street and left a letter for him. Cope was away from the house, and Rosalys, studying the envelope's penmanship and even its postmark, found vague confirmation of her theory: some college girl—one of ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... has ever had the misfortune to pass through such a time in their own proper persons. The day of any one's departure is always wretched, but much more is it wretched, when the person departing is a lover, whose face will not be seen and of whom no postman will bear tidings for ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... could be crammed in, anyhow, at the roof, and rattled and shaken into the smallest compass. By a bold poetical licence, most of these Noah's arks had knockers on the doors; inconsistent appendages, perhaps, as suggestive of morning callers and a Postman, yet a pleasant finish to the outside of the building. There were scores of melancholy little carts, which, when the wheels went round, performed most doleful music. Many small fiddles, drums, and other instruments of ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... nearly killed me. I set him down in his cradle and I said: 'There, my boy! I don't go down to Chagmouth again till you can walk back yourself!' And I didn't! He was three years old before I went—even to the post office. How do I manage about stamps? Why, the postman brings them for me and takes my letters. The grocers' carts come round from Kilvan, and the butcher calls once a week, and what can you want more? I say when I've got a nice place like this to live in I'll stay here, and not worry myself with ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... second-hand bookshop in London, an old man sat reading Gibbon's History of Rome. He did not put down his book when the postman brought him a letter. He just glanced indifferently at the letter, and impatiently at the postman. Zerviah Holme did not like to be interrupted when he was reading Gibbon; and as he was always reading Gibbon, an ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... running off directly, with her long hair streaming in the wind, when her mother called to her to put something on; and she came back, snatched her garden-hat and holland cape from their peg, and flew away again. Yes, the old postman was standing gossiping with Mrs. Giles at her garden gate, just as Mr. Cunningham had foreseen. When Jessie breathlessly inquired if there were any letters for the Rectory, the old man answered composedly, 'Yes, Missy, three letters for your house—two for your reverend father, and one for ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... she was walking back from the station and asked her if Mr. Bingham had gone. When she replied that this was so, she had distinctly heard him murmur, "Thank God! thank God!" Subsequently she discovered also that he bribed the old postman to keep count of the letters which she sent and received ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... got a stack of stuff for the postman, myself. Bills and checks they are, mostly. Serena usually attends to the house bills, but she's kind of under the weather this morning. Say, Gertie," gravely, "it costs a sight to run this ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... moved for in the House of Commons, on Tuesday evening, the 24th of June: and at the same time a writ for electing a Member for Colchester, in the room of Richard Hart Davis, was moved for. I never heard a word of this till Thursday afternoon at four o'clock, when the postman brought me my Wednesday's paper, just as I was sitting down to dinner at Rowfant, in Sussex. After dinner I read the account, and I made up my mind to start for that city the next morning. I rode ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... resolved to follow the lady's advice, and place his "affections upon a worthier object than Caroline Dalton;" and, thought he to himself, she shall at last see that I have found one; nor shall wild Tom, my graceless nephew, who lives upon my fortune, ever more touch one penny of it. The postman rapped, and in a few minutes his housekeeper appeared with many apologies for bringing to him her own newspaper, but perhaps in it he might be able to find the names of some of the new novels that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... reasoning, to get at the secret of all this exuberance, this perennial flow of high spirits; indeed, one had only to watch the letter box at Number 204, Clarges Street, to get at the bottom of it instantly; for twice a week the postman dropped into it a letter addressed in an undoubtedly feminine "hand" to Captain Horatio Burbage, and invariably ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... the storm," he wheezed out glancing malignantly at his wife. "Do you hear? The postman has lost his way!... I... I know! Do you suppose I... don't understand?" he muttered. "I know all ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... move!" she said, flushing. "I shall be back directly. But I must put up a letter. I hear the postman!" She ran over the grass, leaving the two men in acute discomfort. Falloden thought again, with rising excitement: "She planned it! She wants me to do something—to take ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... waters at Spa, with best effects for Mrs. Cooper—not over-strong since the Paris days. They left its grass of "ghostly green" when the "dog-star raged with all its fury," and "came on old Aix-la-Chapelle, well-cloaked and carriage windows closed." In compliment to the republic of letters the postman called on Cooper here, and like tribute was also paid two posts farther on, where he was asked if he "was the man who wrote books!" That day was well spent when they reached the terrace above the Rhine and got their first view of the towers of Cologne. In "fine, lofty ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... became exceedingly unpopular in Ballymoy. The Resident Magistrate hated being obliged to enforce unnecessary laws such as that which forbids cyclists to ride on footpaths, and that which ordains the carrying of lighted lanterns on carts at night. The postman, at the other end of the official scale, liked loitering on his rounds, and had adopted a pleasant habit of handing on letters to any wayfarer who might be supposed to be proceeding in the direction of the place to ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... five hours in complete absorption. How my wife endured me during those years I can not explain. The chirp of my babies' voices, the ring of the telephone, the rattle of the garbage cart, the whistle of the postman—each annoyance chopped into my composition, and as my afternoons and evenings had no value in a literary way, I was often completely defeated for the day. Altogether and inevitably my work as a fictionist sank into an unimportant ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... be able to decipher this, written at steam speed with a breaking pen, the hotfast postman at my heels. No excuse, says you. None, sir, says I, and touches my 'at most civil (extraordinary evolution of pen, now quite doomed—to resume—) I have not put pen to the Bloody Murder yet. But it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Uncle Sam appeared in the form of the postman, who paused on his way across the lawn ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Clifford who spoke. There was a brittle, intensely Gallic intonation about the query with its upward inflection, reminding one somehow of a postman's knock, ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... separate cabin, with a rough square table in it, and some book-boxes equally rude. No man entered it, excepting George and me. Here for two hours I worked undisturbed,—how happy the world, had it neither postman nor door-bell!—worked upon my Traces of Sandemanianism in the Sixth and Seventh Centuries, and then was ready to render such service to The Cause and to George as the day might demand. Thus I rode to Lincoln or to Foxcroft to order supplies; I took my gun and lay in wait on Chairback ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... of February was Sunday, but on Monday morning the postman brought a sheaf of letters ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... to him my position of diplomatic postman, hunted like a wild beast, and the brave gentleman in his quality of royalist claimed the danger over Chessel of receiving me. As we came in sight of Clochegourde the past eight months rolled away like a dream. When we entered the salon ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... next afternoon, and little Pansy ran to open it, expecting to see the postman, but the knocking was only a bit of Tom's fun. Frank had left for Hull the evening before to meet him, and here was Tom the sailor, tall and bonny and dark. Pansy jumped into his arms like a baby, ...
— Crusoes of the Frozen North • Gordon Stables
... take you home through the garden then—and, yes, I believe I'll stay to break a muffin with Mrs. Henderson. Don't you want to tell me what a little girl like you did in a big city and—and read me part of that London letter I saw the postman give Judy ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... in, at about half-past three, the mail was just being distributed, and Mrs. Cope was waiting as usual to pounce on her letters; you know she was always watching for the postman. She was standing so close to me that I couldn't help seeing a big official-looking envelope that was handed to her. She tore it open, gave one look at the inside, and rushed off upstairs like a whirlwind, with the director shouting after her that she had left all her other letters behind. ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... the spine do mean as theer's feet walkin' 'pon my graave, I s'pose," she thought, as a heavy knock at the front door interrupted her reflections. Hastening to open it, Joan found the postman—a rare visitor at Drift. He handed her a letter and prepared ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... to receive another letter. She had resolved to let her father see the arrival of this one, be the consequences what they might: the dread of losing her lover by this deed of honesty prevented her acting upon the resolve. Five minutes before the postman's expected arrival she slipped out, and down the lane to meet him. She met him immediately upon turning a sharp angle, which hid her from view in the direction of the vicarage. The man smilingly handed one missive, and was going on to hand another, ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... after the public meeting, Mr. Belcher, sitting comfortably in his city home, received from the postman a large handful of letters. He looked them over, and as they were all blazoned with the Sevenoaks post-mark, he selected that which bore the handwriting of his agent, and read it. The agent had not dared ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... letter in the envelop, and put a stamp on it, and stood on the front piazza so as to give it to the postman herself. ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... keeper's despair; though, to be sure, he has staunch lieutenants in his under-keepers; and towards the end of the day he can always count on two sympathising allies in the postman and the policeman. These two never fail to come out in the afternoon to join the beaters. It is amusing to watch the demeanour of the beaters in the policeman's presence. Some of them, it is possible, have been immeshed by the law, and have made the constable's acquaintance ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... warm golden evening, fit for October, and I was watching (with regret) a lot of little black pigs being turned out of my garden, when the postman handed to me, with a perfunctory haste which doubtless masked his emotion, the Declaration of Futurism. If you ask me what Futurism is, I cannot tell you; even the Futurists themselves seem a little doubtful; perhaps they are waiting for the future to find out. But if you ask me what its Declaration ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... think you might have said something more to me than "Is that yourself?" You couldn't say less to the postman. ...
— O'Flaherty V. C. • George Bernard Shaw
... the Direction be written very plain; this will save the postman trouble, and facilitate business ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... David, if you can." And Eve, thoroughly depressed, relapsed into silence. The postman's rap was heard, and soon after a long inclosure was placed in ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... seemed something uncanny in so accurate a reproduction of Mrs Fanshawe's description. Was there, indeed, no such person? Did she exist purely as a dummy figure, to be dangled before the eyes of credulous beginners? Claire sighed, and buried her last lingering hope; and at that very moment the postman's rap sounded at the door, and a square white envelope was handed in, addressed in feminine handwriting ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the postman some morning were to leave at your door a thing of thirty-five heads and three appendices, and you discovered that it came from an old friend whom you had long known and greatly valued—this vast mass of legal ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... Forty-five's share ended and his began. Still it wasn't as if anybody ever wanted to swarm up the pillar. But there was a party wall, and that was a serious thing. It was so low that a child could clear it at a stride. And when the postman and errand boys and tradespeople went their rounds, instead of going down Forty-five's front walk and up Granville's, they all straddled insolently over the party wall. Ransome said it was "like their bally cheek," by which he meant that it was an insult ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... Tuesday morning on which Mr Johnson was going to show the fashions, the post-woman brought two letters to the house. I say the post-woman, but I should say the postman's wife. He was a lame shoemaker, a very clean, honest man, much respected in the town; but he never brought the letters round except on unusual occasions, such as Christmas Day or Good Friday; and on those days the letters, which should have been delivered at eight in ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the best of his good things. A gentleman with the same Christian and surname took lodgings in the same house. The consequence was, eternal confusion of calls and letters. Indeed, the postman had no alternative but to share the letters equally between the two. "This is intolerable, sir," said our friend, "and you must quit." "Why am I to quit more than you?" "Because you are James the ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... dear, a letter was left here to-day by the postman. As it was directed to the street and number, it did not go to your box. Here it is. I have read it; and rather sad news it brings. Cousin Augustus is failing, so his daughter writes, and it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... and charge for their wares in inverse ratio to the experience of their customers; for regular subscribers receive their papers through the post-office, and, if we are in such unseemly haste as to care for the news before the ten o'clock delivery—or the eleven o'clock, if the postman has not found it convenient otherwise—we must buy on the street, though we live but half a block from the newspaper office, which opens at ten. By noon, every one is awake. The restaurants are full of breakfasters, ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... lights. I was looking down the dingy street from behind the curtains of my little window at the postman who was working his way slowly from side to side delivering his messages of hope and fear, and was wondering whether I was among those to whom he bore tidings of joy or sorrow. I had few correspondents, and no expectations, and so it was with surprise that I saw him ultimately turn in at ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... with a sign of shuddering assent. Her daily Tribuna, which the postman brought her, had in fact contained that morning a letter describing the burial—after three months!—of the remains of the army slain in the carnage of Adowa on March 1. For three months had those thousands of Italian dead lain a prey to the African sun and the ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... go beyond that corner, but he could look and see what was coming, and perhaps he could see the postman and ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... a more than cordial welcome and a kiss at the door, and longing redoubled his haste. Presently the postman called to him and handed him a small but heavy parcel, which was addressed in a fair clear hand which he at once recognized. He stepped into the first shop to give the messenger his receipt, but when once in the street again his impatience was not to be checked, so he broke the seal, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... Professor W. Minto was editor of the "Examiner," that one day in August, 1876, in the very heart of the dead season for books, I happened to be in the office of that newspaper, and was upbraiding the whole body of publishers for issuing no books worth reviewing. At that moment the postman brought in a thin and sallow packet with a wonderful Indian postmark on it, and containing a most unattractive orange pamphlet of verse, printed at Bhowanipore, and entitled "A Sheaf gleaned in French Fields, by Toru Dutt." This shabby little book of some two hundred pages, without preface or introduction, ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... "Hullo," he said, "postman, were you; not conjuror? I didn't expect any mail here. However, let's see. Murray's writing, by James!" he muttered, as he flattened out the grimy scrap of paper, and then he whistled-with surprise ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... repeated themselves to Halleck, as he walked homeward. He found the postman at the door with a newspaper, which he took from him with a smile at its veteran appearance, and its probable adventures in reaching him. The wrapper seemed to have been several times slipped off, and then slit up; it was tied with ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... were delivered. Had you been the penny postman of Mr. Robert Murray, of whom we heard so much in London last spring, you could not have handed it in more directly. Why did you not talk the Duke fair? He is a gracious nobleman, and kind of heart, save when he is thwarted or angered. Some little talk as to the rebels' numbers ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... this conclusion with a sigh, and then, hearing the stable clock strike five, remembered that it was post time. Perhaps there would be a letter from home. At any rate she would run down to the lodge and meet the postman. It was such a cheering thought that she felt almost happy again, and ran along whistling and swinging her straw-hat in her hand. The drive was long and very winding, so that she did not at first perceive that there was someone in ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... there would be ample time to wash up. Then she went to her bedroom, and, dragging out her trunk, slid it unaided down the stairs. Back again in the bedroom, she carelessly glanced at the money in her purse, and then put on her things for the journey. Waiting, she stood at the window to look for the postman. Presently she saw him in the distance; he approached quickly, but spent an unendurable minute out of sight in the shop next door. When he emerged Hilda was in anguish. Had he a letter for her? Had he not? He seemed to waver at the gateway, and to decide to enter.... ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... received her with her usual kindly greeting. All was calm and peaceful, and while Halcyone controlled herself to talk in an ordinary voice, the postman's knock was heard. He passed the Professor's door on the road to Applewood and left the evening mail, when ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... of strength and turned about. Off in the distance he saw the mounted postman jogging on his way toward the village and he dashed ahead! Bob, with his smouldering puppy nature coming unexpectedly to his help, scampered on, crazily barking and yelping as he had never permitted himself to do in ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... their books, Fritz seemed asleep already; of the big people at the other end, grandfather's face was quite hidden in his newspaper, which he had kept over from last night on purpose to have something to read in the train, knowing that they would start before the postman came in the morning, and mother and auntie were talking together, ...
— The Adventures of Herr Baby • Mrs. Molesworth
... is for you, sir," she says, delivering the packet to Luttrell, who consigns it hastily to his coat-pocket; "and this for you, Miss Molly," giving the letter. "The postman says, sir, as 'ow they only come by the afternoon, but I am of the rooted opinion that he ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... client, had assured Jane the South African employer would take an early opportunity of doing. The reality had not corresponded with the glowing picture. The employer had failed in duty, the husbands-aspirant had not appeared. Ephemeral flirtations there had been, with a postman, with a trooper of the Cape Mounted Police, with an American bar-tender. But not one of these had breathed of indissoluble union, though each had wanted to borrow her savings. And Emigration Jane had "bin 'ad" in that way before, and gone with her bleeding heart ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the first day of June, and the country was in all its glory. The foliage was of the softest green, the trees were covered with blossoms, and the shrubs with flowers. The roads were perfect; the large, fine-looking coachman, with his white gloves and reins, his rosy face and lofty bearing and the postman in red, blowing his horn as we passed through every village, made the drive seem like a journey in fairyland. We had heard that England was like a garden of flowers, but we were wholly unprepared for ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... When I say that absolutely nobody came in, of course I except the postman. He brought a couple of letters during the morning. I mean that absolutely nobody came past the barrier in the outer office—the usual thing, you know, like a counter, with a frame of ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... thought, "civility is civility, and, being rather a scarce article, should meet with some return. Here's the letter, young man, and I hope you will pay for it; for if you do not I must pay the postage myself." "You are the postwoman, I suppose," said I, as I took the letter. "I am the postman's mother," said the old woman; "but as he has a wide beat, I help him as much as I can, and I generally carry letters to places like this, to which he is afraid to come himself." "You say the postage is ninepence," said ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... had observed the first portion of this maxim religiously, but he had failed to pay equal regard to the latter. He had committed himself to paper in the shape of a very bulky and very passionate love-letter, which was duly delivered by the morning postman and laid at the side of Miss Miller's plate upon ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... in search of funds for Mercer's hospital and broke, drooping, and shed a cluster of violet but one white stars. They floated, fell: they faded. The shepherd's hour: the hour of folding: hour of tryst. From house to house, giving his everwelcome double knock, went the nine o'clock postman, the glowworm's lamp at his belt gleaming here and there through the laurel hedges. And among the five young trees a hoisted lintstock lit the lamp at Leahy's terrace. By screens of lighted windows, by equal gardens a shrill voice went crying, wailing: Evening ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... afternoon the plumbers came to do a little job to the kitchen boiler. The dog, being engaged at the time in the front of the house, driving away the postman, did not notice their arrival. He was broken-hearted at finding them there when he got downstairs, and evidently blamed himself most bitterly. Still, there they were, all owing to his carelessness, and the only thing to be done now was to see ...
— Evergreens - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... Riding paper states that a postman picked up a pound Treasury note last week. It is said that he intends to have it valued by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... Mrs. Tracy had almost entirely forgotten the fact, that she possessed a piece of goods so supererogatory as her husband (a property too which her children had never quite realized), when all on a sudden, one ordinary morning, the postman's-knock brought to her breakfast-table ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... of flowers—of fierce young growth after the fruitful winter rains. The short-lived grass, green now as that of an English meadow, was picked out into patterns by the scarlet of the Running Postman; purple sarsaparilla festooned the stems of the scrub; there were vast natural paddocks, here of yellow everlastings, there of heaths in full bloom. Compared with the dark, spindly foliage of the she-oaks, the ti-trees' waxy flowers stood out like orange-blossoms against firs. On damp or marshy ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... the chalet. The postman had been there but he had brought no letter from Hope. I waited about home, expecting to hear from her, all that day, only to see it ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... day he was to go to Stratton, and in the morning a letter was brought to him by the postman; a letter, or rather a very short note. Guildford was the postmark, and he knew at once that it was from ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... it's nothing to boast of even on earth. Up here, it's simply contemptible. Now that you gods are too old for your work, you've made me the miserable drudge of Olympus—groom, valet, postman, butler, commissionaire, maid of all work, parish beadle, ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... important concoctions of the expired year. Indeed, we should as little think of taking these compositions as examples of the merits of their authors as we should think of measuring the valuable services of Mr. Walker, the postman, or Mr. Bell, the dust-collector, by the copy of verses they leave at our doors as a provocative of the expected annual gratuity—effusions with which they may fairly be classed for their intrinsic worth no less than their ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... after these events the postman brought a letter for Goneril. This was such a rare occurrence that she blushed rose red at the very sight of it and had to walk up and down the terrace several times before she felt calm enough to read it. Then she went upstairs and knocked ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... telephone to order of the grocer and butcher, made beds, swept rooms, and sat down with a new magazine, dropped at the door by the postman, to run her eyes over the pictures. One or two things she was sure her father would like; a sketch of Massenet she must call to Rose Bartlett's attention. She planned luncheon and began the peeling of potatoes with a page of Keats propped on the table beside her—a trick ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... blossoms. Down in the neglected flower-beds the crocuses and snowdrops were nodding and whispering to each other. "Yes," they said, "some new people are coming to live in the old house, and there are children among them. Mr. Breeze, the postman, knows all about them, but he could not stop to tell us much this morning, for he was in a hurry. Now we shall be cared for, and watered, and there will be some pleasure in blossoming. When the children come, we will tell them how those vulgar weeds pushed ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... particular fancy for one of the postmen who delivers letters here, though he was not the man whom I have already had occasion to mention. It was the duty of this postman I now allude to, besides delivering letters, to carry a letter-bag from one receiving house to another, and this big bag he used to give Bass to carry. Bass always followed that man through all the villas in the neighborhood where he had deliveries to make, and he invariably parted with ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... and Collins and Mrs. Collins at the station together and I heard them say they were going to the opera. That was the first time I'd seen Collins and his wife together since they separated. And this morning the postman told me that Mrs. Collins had spent the night in her own house—that she and her husband evidently had ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... on the day after his arrival at Moscow, Laptev went into the warehouse, the workmen packing the goods were hammering so loudly that in the outer room and the office no one heard him come in. A postman he knew was coming down the stairs with a bundle of letters in his hand; he was wincing at the noise, and he did not notice Laptev either. The first person to meet him upstairs was his brother Fyodor Fyodorovitch, who was so like him that they passed for twins. This ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the day set for the Brentwoods' westward flitting that the postman, making his morning round, delivered David Kent's asking at the house in the Back Bay sub-district. Elinor was busy packing for the migration, but she left Penelope and the maid to cope with the problem of compressing two trunkfuls ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... yet just as much a little boy as ever. I still feel overwhelmingly dependent on your good opinion and love. I'm glad that they are black days when you have no letters from me. I love to think of the rush to the door when the postman rings and the excited shouting up the ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... a tete-a-tete meal, but Bee made it very pleasant. After breakfast Ishmael left Bee to her domestic duties and went up into the office to look after the letters and papers that had been left for him by the penny postman ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... Schlachtstadt's burgher's mind, there were police in uniform, street-sweepers in uniform; the ticket-takers, guards, and sweepers at the Bahnhof were in uniform,—but all wearing the same kind of cap, with the probability of having been wound up freshly each morning for their daily work. Even the postman delivered peaceful invoices to the consul with his side-arms and the air of bringing dispatches from the field of battle; and the consul saluted, and felt for a few moments the whole weight ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... waited, starting up every time she heard the postman's whistle and the ringing of the bell. And then at last one night, as she paced up and down the narrow white little room, she heard the landlady climbing the stairs, advancing along the hall, and there ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... a little timid about the venture, fearing that I might get him into trouble, but when he became convinced that I would do nothing of the kind he consented. I had a warder in the prison who in consideration of an occasional tip used to act as my postman, sending my letters to my friends and bringing in theirs to me. This was a deadly offense against the rules, but as the permitted correspondence was outrageously limited I saw no reason why I should deprive myself of letters when I had the chance ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... me most about this," he said, "is the revelation of your shortcomings as a wife. You ought to think me the picture of manly beauty. Baby does. She thinks that, next to the postman, ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... washers and cleaners at the doors of highly-decorated villas, amiably performing their tasks while the mighty slept; fishermen and fat fisher-girls, industriously repairing endless brown nets on the other side of the parapet of the road; a postman and a little policeman; a porcelain mender, who practised his trade under the shadow of the wall; a few loafers; some stable-boys exercising horses; and children with adorable dirty faces, shouting in their high treble as they played at hopscotch. I felt very ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... for the competitive examination, and had now ridden over to Barnstaple to forestall the country postman ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... on the morning following the 30th of April; things began to happen even before the postman had made his first rounds. The operators at the telephone switchboards were rushed at an unconscionably early hour, considering that their station compassed the Avenue. The President was trying to get the trustees, Saint Margaret's, ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... have sent a letter off yesterday to the neighbouring station if I had only known that the postman had been delayed from starting until this morning. There is a camel on this run which I will endeavour to ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough
... two morning deliveries of London letters in Steynholme, one at eight and another at half past ten. Grant waited until the postman had left a publisher's circular (the only letter for The Hollies by the second mail). Then, in a fever of impatience, he jammed on a hat and went out. He would wait no longer. He would telegraph Scotland ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... moved the kiss was equivalent to the hand-shake of loftier society. Everybody who came to the back door kissed Violet. The carrier did; so did the grocer, the baker, the butcher, the gardener, the postman, the policeman, and the fishmonger. They were men of widely differing views on most points. On religion, politics, and the prospects of the entrants for the three o'clock race their opinions clashed. But in one respect they were unanimous. Whenever they came ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... reads, and then complain he is neglected[533]. There is no reason why any person should exert himself for a man who has written a good book: he has not written it for any individual. I may as well make a present to the postman who brings me a letter. When patronage was limited, an authour expected to find a Maecenas, and complained if he did not find one. Why should he complain? This Maecenas has others as good as he, or others who have got ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... to give it to me. It's no use for him to say he hasn't one, when he has a whole packet in his hand now, and a lot more in his bag, no doubt. Are you going to give me a letter or not?" he continued, turning to the postman. ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... by and the postman did not appear. Herman had put a padlock on the outside of her bedroom door, and her hope of finding a second key to fit ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... instanced. Systems concocted in a hurry, in a half-commercial or wholly commercial and in a wholly presumptuous manner, pushed like religious panaceas and advertised like soap—Pitman's System, Barnum's System, Quackbosh the Gifted Postman's System, and all that sort of thing—do nothing but vulgarize, ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... Well, then, her father, the King, had the news sent all through the kingdom that his daughter was named at last, and then everybody sent her letters. She had bags and bags full of mail every day, and they had to put on an extra postman. And she had valentines in the mail, and catalogues, and birthday presents, and samples of dresses, and seeds for flowers, and,—and magazines, and,—and,—and one day a little live kitten came to her in the ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... Frederick of Sicily there lived a man named Nicolo Pesce,—Nicholas the Fish. This man's powers seem to have been decidedly superhuman. He was evidently an amphibious animal. He appears to have acted the part of ocean-postman in these old times, for it is related of him that he used to carry letters for the king far and wide about the Mediterranean. On one occasion a vessel found him out of sight of land in the discharge of ocean-postal duty—bearing despatches of the king from Sicily to Calabria. They took ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... for everybody, the position he had to keep up and consider for the sake of his family, the scandal there would be if this story got about; and described in one breath both his determination to hush it up, and his conviction that it would be utterly impossible to do so. Whenever the postman knocked he went to the door to look for a letter, and coming back empty-handed each time, he invariably remarked that it was disgraceful, simply disgraceful, and he had never heard of such a thing in all his life. There was blame and severity in his attitude toward poor Mrs. Frayling; he ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... a walk this beautiful morning," he said next, "and am a little late getting at my mail. Suppose you come in and sit at my desk with me, and we will see what the postman has brought. He brings me so ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... and Mrs. Zwicker had been in Ems for nearly three weeks they took breakfast one morning in the open air. The postman was late and Effi was impatient, as she had received no letter from Innstetten for four days. The coming of a pretty waitress to clear away the breakfast dishes started a conversation about pretty housemaids, and Effi spoke ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... home. He inquired her whereabouts of the waiters in the cafe, the grocer's assistants, the girls at the laundry, the police, and the postman. At last, following the direction of a neighbour, he found her poulticing an old lady, for she was a nurse. Her face was purple and she reeked of brandy. He sent her to watch the corpse. He instructed her to cover it with a sheet, and ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
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