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More "Reticent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "All the same, I don't see why you should always have dirty nails." He never confided in me again, and I would have died rather than have reminded him of his kindly indiscretion; but when he passed me in the playground he seemed to look at me with a kind of reticent interest, and it occurred to me that after all my queerness might not be such a bad thing, might even be something ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... was so reticent, for she knew that he had himself married the daughter of a Roman prince, and she concluded that he must know much ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... come: a romance which probably affected the flow of her spirits, and helped to disincline her for literary composition, for some time after its occurrence. In this case, as in the other, the author of the Memoir was rather reticent; but shortly after its publication his sister, Caroline Austen, was induced to put down in writing the facts as she knew them. No one could be better qualified to do this, for she was a person of great ability, ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... I read and re-read it, a cold, hard letter. I said as much to my aunt some days after this; but she wisely urged that my father was ever a reticent man, who found it difficult to let even his dearest see the better ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... love, may smile upon it, since you are here at once present and veiled. Like this pearl of the ocean-garden, you will dwell on the fine, white, level sand where your beautiful life expands, hidden by a wave that is transparent only to certain friendly and reticent eyes. I would gladly have laid at your feet a work in harmony with your perfections; but as that was impossible, I knew, for my consolation, that I was gratifying one of your instincts by offering you ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... but there are a good many other operations, such as the removal of cancers, tumors, etc. The doctors were quite willing to answer questions, within certain limits; but when I asked them about the composition and properties of their drugs they became reticent at once and said that they were secrets. They do not use chloroform in operations, but they all asserted, and their assertions were corroborated by Mr. Ng Choy, that they possess drugs which throw their patients into a profound sleep, during which the most severe operations can be painlessly ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... variations in the moods of its inmates, which must have arisen from some other cause than the price of stock or the condition of the crops. Outside of the family circle, however, they were serenely reticent. ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... brought him news of Brian. He was healthy and happy and wrote no word of coming in. There, Whitaker felt himself, Brian was over-reticent. ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... that any man could call himself Heneage's particular friend," he answered. "He is exceedingly reticent about himself and his doings. He is a man whom none ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... story, and a genuine one to boot, is worth recording. A well-known racing man travelling on a steamer round the coast was attracted by a seedy, out-of-elbows individual seated all alone. He got into conversation with him. The seedy stranger was reticent about himself, but voluble about others, particularly those who were making their piles in Western Australia—he was going there if he had to walk. The idea of a man walking was a repulsive thought to a racing ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... considered a rich joke in that locality that a city woman who was trying to farm, had applied for these ducks just as they had completed their labors for the season of 1888-'90; they were also extremely venerable, and the reticent owner rejoiced to be relieved of an expensive burden at good rates. Knowing nothing of these facts in natural history, I pondered deeply over the double phenomenon. I said the hens seemed normal only as to appetite; the ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... for Peter, and going on toward the East. She appeared to be demented, and sang snatches of savage songs. Peter never knew of her presence, nor would any one inform her of his whereabouts. He was reticent about his life among the Indians, and no details of that feature of his career became ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... he spoke no word, for he knew his friend to be extremely reticent in regard to matters of the heart. For some time he had suspected him of what he styled a weakness in that organ. "Now," thought he, ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... letters were from the neighbourhood of Auchy and described the fighting for the canal. He is a little inconsistent now and then, and one day says he has more cigarettes than he can smoke, and the next bewails the steady shortage of tobacco. As to his heroic actions he is reticent; but we know that many of the finest deeds have been performed by him. He has saved lives and guns and is in sight of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... the original Tampu-tocco. The chroniclers were willing enough to accept the interesting cave near Paccaritampu as the place where Manco Ccapac was born, and from which he came to conquer Cuzco. Why were the sworn witnesses so reticent? It seems hardly possible that they should have forgotten where Tampu-tocco was supposed to have been. Was their reticence due to the fact that its actual whereabouts had been successfully kept secret? Manco ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... bow and spear of some red-cheeked lass; or he might walk on as an old bachelor, too cautious to be caught at all. But none believed that he would become the victim of a grand passion for a poor, reticent, high-bred, high-minded specimen of womanhood. Such, however, was ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... to be, in its own way, as reticent as hers, "I was passing your gate," he explained, "when I happened to find this, lying by the roadside. I took the liberty of ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... alone any self-made reputation,—and he knew it; more than that, he knew that I was charmed at the first greeting; probably he liked it, possibly he liked me. What he saw in me I never discovered. Van, though demonstrative eventually, was reticent and little given to verbal flattery. It was long indeed before any degree of intimacy was established between us: perhaps it might never have come but for the strange and eventful campaign on which we were so speedily launched. Probably we might have continued on our original status of dignified ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... sailing. His Nina and Elise were beautiful sailing yachts, and would have been an ornament to any waters. Clark was described by village contemporaries as a man of somewhat peculiar temperament. He was naturally reticent, and seemed to be most highly appreciated by his intimates. In educational matters he was greatly interested, having given largely to Williams College, of which he was a graduate and Doctor of Laws. He contributed generously to the welfare ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... oppressive, uncomfortable, muggy, unventilated; narrow, cramped; close-mouthed, secretive, reticent, reserved, uncommunicative, taciturn; dense, solid, compact, imporous; near, adjacent, adjoining; intimate, confidential; parsimonious, stingy, penurious niggardly, miserly, illiberal, close-fisted; exact, literal, faithful; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Abbot Samson, as he went along in this abstemious, reticent, rigorous way, were more than tongue can tell. The Abbot's mitre once set on his head, he knew rest no more. Double, double toil and trouble; that is the life of all governors that really govern: not the spoil of victory, only ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... seem very reticent. His father as good as said, as I think I told you, that this was a voyage of discovery, a search for something he wanted to take back, and which was to make his country very great. But he has never said what, and it would be so very ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... As we know, he has succeeded in finding and getting out of the country an Inca dagger which, I believe, bears a very important inscription. I do not know anything definite about it, as these people are very reticent. But no doubt he has told you all about it by this time. If it should prove of value, I depend on you to let me know, so that I may act at this ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... though she had been thus reticent and quiet in her joy, though she was resolved to be discreet, and knew that there were circumstances in her engagement which would for a while deter her from being with her accepted lover as other girls are with theirs, did not mean to estrange herself from her cousin George. ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... which the chief came to his tent, and did what he could to draw him. In this part of his narration, the mulatto with modest naivete, hints of his own adroitness; how he threw his inquisitor off the scent, and became at length disembarrassed of him. He is even more reticent about an incident, soon after succeeding, but referred to it at an early part of ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... Burnside and Forbes returned from Paris. They told us their experience had been interesting, but were very reticent as to particulars, and though we tried hard to find out what they had seen or done, we could get nothing from them beyond the general statement that they had had a good time, and that General Trochu had been considerate enough to postpone a sortie, in order to let them ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... It is singular how reticent owners of automobiles are concerning the shortcomings and eccentricities of their machines; they seem leagued together to deceive one another and the public. The literal truth can be found only in letters of complaint written to the manufacturers. The man who one moment says his machine is a paragon ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... way," the prince said, "I would beg you to seek out the captain of the boat in which you came here, and bid him come to me this time tomorrow evening. I would fain hear from him somewhat further details as to how you escaped from the Spaniards, for I observed that in this matter you were a little reticent as to your share in it. He may be able to tell me, too, more about the strength of the Spanish garrisons in Bergen and its neighbourhood ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... people—from old friends. However he did not inquire of Carley about her friends. She talked unremittingly for an hour, before she satisfied his hunger. But when her turn came to ask questions she found him reticent. ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... While reticent as to his part at Gettysburg, he spoke with feeling of what his corps had been through, and knowing that both Mr. May and I were Massachusetts men took an evident pleasure in commending the regiments from ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... that to pour port wine into the reticent Flintwinch was, not to open him but to shut him up. Moreover, he had the appearance of a perfect ability to go on all night; or, if occasion were, all next day and all next night; whereas Mr Blandois soon grew indistinctly conscious of swaggering too fiercely and boastfully. ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... been called to other service. Her words to Alessa reflect her sadness, and also her entire submission. It is noticeable that she respects the secrets of her hosts with dignity, giving no hint on the matters that occupied her beyond the reticent statement to her mother: "I believe that if you knew the circumstances you ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... for his children was intense there could be no question about; but it was nevertheless of a peculiarly reticent nature. He had rarely, if ever, been seen to caress them. The boy told tales of how papa would kiss him, even weep over him, in solitude; but he would not give him so much as an endearing name in the presence of others. Poor Maude had called him all the pet names ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... morning, when we set forth on our journey, the Hindu told me that he could get nothing from the lamas, who were very reticent. I will not stop to describe the life of the monks in those convents, for it is the same in all the cloisters of Ladak. I have seen the celebrated monastery of Leh—of which I shall have to speak later on—and learned there the strange existences ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... definite section to be learned; he left this to his pupil, in whose industry and interest in his work he had sufficient confidence. He rarely bestowed any praise. A grim smile of satisfaction, and sometimes a "Very well, sir," were all that he would vouchsafe; but to others he would be less reticent, and once he was heard to say, "I have so far missed my own way, but John Cairns ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... had still another; her husband was a Roman Catholic, and would not go with her to St. Mark's Church. True, she had known him to be a Catholic when she married him; but she had not known or dreamed that these Catholics were so set and obstinate in their religion. He had been so reticent upon the subject that she had supposed him quite indifferent. Once married, she could convert him; O, that would be a very easy matter. He need go to St. Mark's but once to be so delighted that he would wish to go there ever after. She had consented to be ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... and sensibility, he looked what he spoke, the exquisite Florentine, to these broad-vowelled Venetian lasses; did not smile, but seemed never out of temper; and was certainly not timid. Self-possessed, reticent he was; but not ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... I know no one more reticent on such subjects. He actually told you that he had the seventy-five ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... embarrassed her father's spirits. Was he trying to muster courage to acknowledge his wrong in persecuting her? Was he really "under concern" for his own soul? or was he unhappy because she was not more gay and worldly? It was useless for her to conjecture; he was a reticent man, and allowed no one ...
— Elizabeth: The Disinherited Daugheter • E. Ben Ez-er
... gravely, speaking of his trip, "one of my bearers spoke English well, and quite an intimacy sprang up between us. Since his companions could not utter a word in our language, we conversed freely without being understood. He was reticent at first concerning the impending danger and professed to know nothing of it, but this forenoon be gave me to understand, in words that could not be mistaken, that the whole country would ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... more, and looked after him without stopping her pace. She came on. She had no pockets to stick her hands in, but she also was swaggering. There was a left and right movement of her shoulders, an impetus and retreat of her hips. Something very strong and yet reticent about her surging body. She passed the traveller ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... The bagman told the steward that he could not compliment him on the quality of his liquor, but the steward said nothing. He did not even seem interested—only bored. He had heard the same remark often before, no doubt. He was a fat, solemn steward—not formal, but very reticent—unresponsive. He looked like a man who had conducted a religious conservative paper once and failed, and had then gone into the wholesale produce line, and failed again, and finally got his present billet through the influence of his creditors and two clergymen. He might have been a sociable fellow, ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... taxed her with the fact, getting from her the reply that she 'often cried.' "Little by little, being a kind and sympathetic man, he drew from her the story I have told you. Georges became his patient also, but was always reticent in regard to 'le jeu.' Dr S. tried to dissuade him from visiting the tables, on the ground that the atmosphere in the saloons would prove poisonous to him and perhaps even fatal. But although, in deference to this counsel, the young man shortened somewhat ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... a pity we know so little of the life of this Monsignor Perrelli. He is disappointingly reticent about himself. We learn that he was a native of the mainland; that he came here, as a youth, afflicted with rheumatic troubles; that these troubles were relived by an application of those health-giving waters which he lived to describe in one of the happiest sections of his ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... Captain Nichols first left England. It was a matter upon which he was reticent, and with persons of his kind a direct question is never very discreet. He hinted at undeserved misfortune, and there is no doubt that he looked upon himself as the victim of injustice. My fancy played with the various forms of fraud and violence, ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... Helen so strong an ally as she proved. But our ideas were no novelty to her, as we soon discovered. In truth, at nine years old, she was a bit of an enthusiast. She read with avidity religious biographies furnished by Miss Blomfield. She was delicate in health, but reticent and resolute in character. She was ready for any amount of self-sacrifice. She contributed liberally to our box; and I fancy that she and Polly continued it after I had ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... that this patrician who had his passion should not return it. To the child of the camp, though she often mocked at caste, all the inexorable rules, all the reticent instincts of caste, were things unknown. She would have failed to comprehend all the thousand reasons which would have forbidden any bond between the great aristocrat and a man of low grade and of dubious name. She only thought of love as she had always seen ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... He is usually reticent in his manner with strangers, (but this is readily explained by his imperfect command of English, and his reluctance to expose his deficiency) though voluble to the last degree when he falls in with his ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... and daughter. They say Alister is a devoted husband, but he comes no more to the Island. He has changed out of his old boat, and his late shipmates say vaguely that he has removed somewhere Sunderland or Cardiff way, and trades to the North Sea. Tom is very reticent about Maggie, though Miss Bell, the postmistress, might tell, if she were not a superior person, and as used to keeping a secret at a pinch as Father Tiernay himself, how many letters he receives with the post-mark of ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... less aggressive, and explained that the green was intended to be the first coating of his picture. It was, he admitted in response to a remark, an absolutely new method, invented by himself. But subsequently he became more reticent; he explained he was not going to tell every passer-by the secret of his own particular style, and added some scathing remarks upon the meanness of people "hanging about" to pick up such tricks of ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... also just as reticent about his whereabouts on the night of the murder. During the examination of the other witnesses, especially that of his partner, he had seemed perturbed and anxious, but directly that was over he became ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... the court, and with downright scorn and contumely by its masculine members. But whatever might have been the hour of his departure, it was certain that from half past ten A. M. until nine P. M., when he was brought home by a policeman, Charles Summerton was missing. Being naturally of a reticent disposition, he has since resisted, with but one exception, any attempt to wrest from him a statement of his whereabouts during that period. That exception has been myself. He has related to me the following ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... perfections, but in the following one he was scarcely mentioned, and my mother, who had never seen Oxford in June, was so delighted with everything that she did not tell me much about anybody. Still I could not help wondering what had happened, for Nina was not usually reticent without ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... of the colour-sense, like all else, should be gradual; springing as it were from small seed. Be reticent, try small things first. You are not likely to be asked to do a great window all at once, even if you have the misfortune to be an independent artist approaching this new art without a gradual training under the service ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... not so much for geometric ornament as for simple pattern that I here make my plea, for that reticent work of which so much was at one time done in this country—mere back-stitching, for example, or what looks like it, in yellow silk upon white linen; or the modest diaper, archaic, if you like, but inevitably characteristic, ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... feature be due to Rusticiano I cannot say, but I have not been able to trace anything of the same character in a cursory inspection of some of his romance-compilations. Still one finds it impossible to conceive of our sober and reticent Messer Marco pacing the floor of his Genoese dungeon, and seven times over rolling out this magniloquent bombast, with sufficient deliberation to be overtaken by the pen of ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... red silk handkerchief knotted sailor-fashion about his strong neck, story after story flashed out, clear and dramatic, from his answers. The bunch of houses there on the shore? Yes, that had a history. The people living there were a dark-featured, reticent lot, different from other people hereabouts. It was said that one of the Spanish galleons went ashore there, and the men had been saved and had settled on the spot and married Devonshire women, but their descendants had never lost the tradition of their blood. Certainly their speech and their customs ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... and down he thought again of that night when he had last seen Beatrice. How splendid she had looked in her boat on the water; how unreserved, and yet how reticent she was; how beautiful, and yet how unconscious of her beauty. What a foil she made to that dreadful little ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... Livingstone. The introduction was hardly necessary, for in his features there was much of what were the specialities of his father. There was an air of quiet resolution about him, and in the greeting which he gave me he exhibited rather a reticent character; but I attributed that to a receptive nature, which augured ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... had been prospecting and mining in Arizona part of the time since the war; and that he had been very successful was evidenced by the unlimited amount of money with which he was supplied. As to the details of his life during these years he was very reticent, in fact he would not talk of them ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and breeches, and, "hang it all," we have a better leg than Jones. What a pity riding-breeches are made so baggy nowadays. Why is it that male fashions tend more and more to hide the male leg? As women have become less and less ashamed of theirs, we have become more and more reticent of ours. Why are the silken hose, the tight-fitting pantaloons, the neat kneebreeches of our forefathers impossible to-day? Are we grown more modest—or has there come about a falling ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... strange impulse that made him speak in this way to an untaught child. With those who were far more likely to understand him he was the most reticent of men. ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... and although I cannot narrate them in words as fascinating and glowing as yours, yet they are engraved no less vividly on my mind, and, like beautiful genii, accompany me everywhere. Only before others they are bashful and reticent ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... those who are too weak or too unlucky to take what they desire. They have a sad and quiet beauty of their own, the beauty of second thoughts and subdued emotions, of choice and scholarly English, moving in the more fluid and reticent harmonies of prose almost as daintily as if it were moving to the measure of verse. Dowson's care over English prose was like that of a Frenchman writing his own language with the respect which Frenchmen pay to French. Even English things had to come to him through France, ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... least. She has got a splendid forehead—powerful and clear—and almost too much character about the square brows and the calm eyes. I should have taken her to be a strongly intellectual woman, of the finer and more reticent type. ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... went on, the general grew more and more affable and, if possible, less and less reticent. He had, he assured me, been the constant victim, either of men or of circumstances. At the military academy he had trained for the cavalry only to find himself assigned to the tank corps. He had reconciled himself, pursued his duties with zeal, and was shunted off to the infantry, ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... clamorous for cigars and drink, but mighty discreet and vexatiously reticent. Yes, he had taken a letter to Medland; yes, and another to Perry; no, he had no idea what the missives were about. He believed Medland was to see the Governor to-morrow, but it was beyond him to conjecture the precise object of the interview. Was it resignation or dissolution? ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... seemed to have become even more gloomy and anxious and reticent than ever, and a circumstance which she did not see fit to mention to her children increased her anxiety ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... affair," Doctor Norton observed to Mr. Mencke, as she left the room, determined to draw out his reticent companion if ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... cheery whistle floating up to them. The physician spoke with a depth of feeling he had never betrayed before, while Dan, troubled as he was, listened in wonder to his friend, who had always been so reticent in matters such ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... undisguised that we find it difficult to believe that the narrative can have emanated from his lips. But the freaks of a burdened conscience are not to be easily accounted for. The most callous or reticent criminal sometimes is aroused to a recognition of his wickedness, and burns to communicate to another the fearful secret whose deposit has become intolerable to himself. And fortunately the confession of the princely felon does not stand alone. The son of another of the wretches who ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... the Civil War she published, with some reserves and some additions, the journal she had kept during her life on the plantation. As to her personal relations, except as touching the slaves, the book is entirely reticent, but it is plain that slavery as she saw it made life under those conditions literally intolerable. Below all special cruelties, she writes, she felt the ever-present, vivid wrong of living on the unpaid labor of servants. The special wrongs were constant. Thus she describes the parting of a family ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... twitched with repressed emotion. She was evidently an affectionate, reticent woman, who found it difficult ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... adversaries, sometimes they find habit too strong for them, and lunge home in spite of themselves. Besides, he began to be really interested in Madame Lescande—in her coquettish ways, at once artful and simple, provoking and timid, suggestive and reticent—in ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the readjustment of exchange solved the problem presented to the American market was entirely in harmony with his predictions and very flattering to his judgment. His companion, Mr. Basil G. Blackett, was a reticent young man who seldom intruded himself into the discussion, but it was noticeable that whenever he was asked for an expression of opinion he showed himself to be thoroughly informed as to facts and sound in judgment. The Committee was certainly under an obligation to these gentlemen for the ...
— The New York Stock Exchange in the Crisis of 1914 • Henry George Stebbins Noble
... said Mr. Crowder. "The young woman looked at me, and I looked at her. She was a pretty girl with black eyes. I did not express my opinion of her, but she was not so reticent. 'You look like a good old man,' she said. 'I think you may be trusted. Come!' Her speech was provincial, and she was plainly a servant. I followed her. 'Now for the ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... expression, and that she was a person of singular purity of mind. Hawthorne's father, whom my friend knew well, she describes as a warm-hearted and kindly man, very fond of children. He was somewhat inclined to melancholy, and of a reticent disposition. He was a great reader, employing all his leisure time at sea ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... appears to have been always curiously timid and reticent; to have suffered from excessive moral cowardice. On his first arrival in London and association with the young painters of the day, he began to feel some shame at his early imprudence, and some alarm lest it should present ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... am I trusted with them? Secrets are a bond that not even love can overcome. It is to talk secrets you run away from me to Madame Raynal. Where did you lodge at Frejus, Mademoiselle the Reticent?" ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... was brave, reticent of his plans, not inclined to exploit his own merits, and he did not wear his heart or his mind upon his sleeve. His inmost thoughts were his own. What impressed us at this first sight of him was his calm, unruffled demeanor, ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... I may never have to re-live the horrors of the next hour. In spite of my bluff and hearty ways, in times of trouble I am as reticent as a clam. I was determined to hide my agony and anxiety from the well-meaning people of the Moose Hotel. I hurried to the railway station to send a telegram to the Professor's address in Brooklyn, but found the place closed. A boy told me ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... Mateo and Angono I have obtained an abundance of whatever I sought and at the same time have learned by talking with the mountaineers and "curanderos," what uses they make of their plants. The "curanderos" know a great deal concerning these uses, but become very reticent as soon as they are questioned about them. Whether it is dread of ridicule or selfishness or fear that silences them, the fact remains that it is no easy matter to glean any useful facts from them. And yet by tact and friendliness one may ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... characteristics of the mind, and doubtless many qualities of the thought and feeling of men and women owe their origin to the same source as brilliant plumage, antlers, combs and wattles. Thus the shy, retiring, reticent, self-effacing, languishing, adoring excesses of maidenhood and the peculiar psychological manifestations of the late forties must probably be understood from this point of view. So, also, must the bold, swaggering, assertive, compelling bearing of youth ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... deficient in delicacy, and her dark hair was too luxuriant to be amenable to the imperfect discipline to which it had been accustomed; but the eye of Andrea, sharpened by criticising Raphael, could hardly have found a line to alter in her. The dress of that year was scarcely more reticent in its revelations than the first wet cloth with which a sculptor swathes his kneaded clay; and pretty women walked in it with almost the same calm consciousness of power which Phryne displayed before her judges. The girl who now entered Farnham's library had ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... flowers. Dr. Evans is so clever and entertaining. Every one likes him, and every door as well as every jaw is open to him. At the Tuileries they look on him not only as a good dentist, but as a good friend; and, as some clever person said, "Though reticent to others, their Majesties had to open their ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... much more reticent in their judgment on these allegations of Belgian cruelties. None the less the Berlin Government must be held responsible for them being scattered throughout the land. After Germany's official representative ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... enjoined secrecy on the children in regard to the money. She was naturally reticent, and dreaded the gossip of the little town, which made a nine-days' wonder of every small happening; and had besides that self-respecting pride which dislikes to thrust its misfortunes on a careless world. But ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... game of chess, Penhallow followed his wife and Mark Rivers into his library. "Well, Mark," he said, "you have had this boy long enough to judge; it is time I heard what you think of him. You asked me to wait. The youngster is rather reticent, and Leila is about the only person in the house who really knows much about him. He talks ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... the only anecdote ever told of Hendricks after he was forty—for he was not a man about whom anecdotes would hang well, though the town is full of them about John Barclay. So Hendricks lived a strong reticent man, who succeeded in business though he was honest, and who won in politics by choosing his enemies from the kind of noisy men who make many mistakes, and let every one know it. The time came when he did not avoid Molly Brownwell; she felt that he was not afraid to see her in any circumstances, ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... the happy home. Guillaume was becoming more and more annoyed about Salvat's affair, not a day elapsing without the newspapers fanning his irritation. He had at first been deeply touched by the dignified and reticent bearing of Salvat, who had declared that he had no accomplices whatever. Of course the inquiry into the crime was what is called a secret one; but magistrate Amadieu, to whom it had been entrusted, conducted it in a very noisy way. The newspapers, which he in some degree took into ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the last day of his life Ned Talbot could never inhale the fragrance of a narcissus or a hyacinth without a spasm of painful remembrance. It brought back so vividly the intoxicating joy of that meeting. They talked together in lover-like fashion, Lilias alternately shy and reticent, and queening it over him with absurd little airs of authority, at which he laughed with a lover's delight, until presently a tap came to the door, and Agatha's face peeped round the corner to announce that tea had been taken out ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Borrow’s stepdaughter—which he seems not to have been able to do—it is pretty certain that she could have told him nothing of that mysterious seven years. For about this subject the people to whom Borrow seems to have been most reticent were his wife and her daughter. Indeed, it was not until after his wife’s death that he would allude to this period even to his most intimate friends. One of the very few people to whom he did latterly talk with anything like frankness about this period in his life—Dr. Gordon Hake—is dead; and perhaps ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... senior, and had married Henry Muir, a merchant of New York City. This gentleman had cordially united with his wife in offering Madge a home, and his manner toward the young girl, as far as his absorbed and busy life permitted, had been almost paternal. He was a quiet, reticent man, who had apparently concentrated every faculty of soul and body on the problem of commercial success. Trained to business from boyhood, he had allowed it to become his life, and he took it very seriously. It was to him an absorbing game—his vocation, and not a means to some ulterior end. He ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... became of Mookerjee? Soothly, who can say? Yar Mahommed only grins in a nasty way, Jowar Singh is reticent, Chimbu Singh is mute. But the belts of all of them simply ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... these are "ipsissima verba," and that I here insert the letter in full, as the warmest and most honourable palinode I could have received from a man so usually reserved and reticent as was my ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... evident that the tomb had been ransacked in search of treasure; but our guide was very reticent about it. He admitted, however, on further questioning, that he had found a broken "metlate," or maize-grinder, in the grave. Velasquez got down into the deepest hole, and unearthed some more fragments of ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... could tell me whither I should direct my search. The father was a strange man, loving travel and change and movement, restless and unsatisfied with the world, rich and free to make his own caprice his guide through life; reticent he was, moreover, and thoughtful, not given to speaking out his intentions. Those who administered his affairs in his absence were honourable men, bound by his especial injunction not to reveal his ever-varying ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... prose work that minute care in composition which had previously characterized his verse—taking a near, new or salient situation, and setting it before the reader in a pretty combination of kindly realism and reticent humour. In the novels, Prudence Palfrey (1874), The (Queen of Sheba (1877), and The Stillwater Tragedy (1880), there is more rapid action; but the Portsmouth pictures in the first are elaborated with the affectionate touch shown in the shorter humourous tale, A Rivermouth Romance ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... head again, but slowly this time. Helena embraced and coaxed, but to no effect. Even with her chosen friend, Magdalena was reticent, not from choice, but necessity. But Helena, whose love was great and whose intuitions were diabolical, leaped to the secret. "I know!" she exclaimed triumphantly. "It's ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... moderation under both good fortune and bad. He will know how to be exalted and how to be abased. He will neither be delighted with success nor grieved by failure. He will neither shun danger nor seek it, for there are few things which he cares for. He is reticent, and somewhat slow of speech, but speaks his mind openly and boldly when occasion calls for it. He is apt to admire, for nothing is great to him. He overlooks injuries. He is not given to talk about himself or about others; for he does not care that he himself should be praised, ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... though he shared Marzio's opinions, he held his tongue in the house. He understood how necessary to him the mother's sympathy must be, and, with subtle intelligence, he knew how to create a contrast between himself and his master by being reticent at the ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... very few people knew this, he was too shy to give expression to the high aspirations that thrilled his heart, and only in such songs as this did his soul find a medium of expression. There was a day coming swiftly upon him, that was to try to the utmost all the pent up valour of his reticent nature, but as yet that day was all undreamed of. And Christina Lindsay, remembering when that day came, this Temperance meeting, recalled with self-abasement that she had thought that Gavin Grant could not have chosen a song more unlike ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... for even your Irishman, brimming to confide, is reticent when he stands before his holy ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... speech of Mr. Harrington Surtaine to the staff of the Worthington "Clarion." Newspapers are reticent about their own affairs. In this case it is rather a pity, for the effort is said to have been an eminently successful one. Estimated by its effect, it certainly was, for it materialized with quite spiritistic suddenness, from out the murk of uncertainty and ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... theory even if the police had not found tracks of his feet in the laurels. But who hanged the man Raoul with a hangman's rope? That is the supreme mystery of all. The Putney police can offer no information on the subject, and Scotland Yard is as reticent. The circumstances of the discovery are as follows. At three o'clock on the morning of the 4th, Police-Constable Robinson, who was patrolling his beat, entered the garden, as is customary when houses are empty, to see if any ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... others in erecting a flume and in tunnelling. And then Smith's Pocket was found to be only a pocket, and subject, like other pockets, to depletion. Altho Smith pierced the bowels of the great red mountain, that five thousand dollars was the first and last return of his labor. The mountain grew reticent of its golden secrets, and the flume steadily ebbed away the remainder of Smith's fortune. Then Smith went into quartz-mining; then into quartz-milling; then into hydraulics and ditching, and then ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... among the treasures of earth, but as the stars for ever and ever. When the messenger of the fallen Napoleon III. had brought his unexpected surrender after Sedan, and the flush of startling victory had mantled even the cheek of the pale and reticent Von Moltke, had shaken the leonine composure of Bismarck, and affected the heroic William I. almost to tears, the courtly Frederick forgot himself and the victory of the cause he had helped to win, in sympathy ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... light of day his grandfather's cobbler's awl? And yet it is difficult to be altogether silent! It may not be necessary for any of us to be always talking of our own parentage. We may be generally reticent as to our uncles and aunts, and may drop even our brothers and sisters in our ordinary conversation. But if a man never mentions his belongings among those with whom he lives, he becomes mysterious, and almost open ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... in stating his desire to learn everything possible about American methods of business while he remained in New York, and he asked a few questions of Mr. Hatch, but never pressed a point when the gentleman seemed reticent over it. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... victim of this outrage carried to my house, and, his wounds not proving serious, he was soon well, and able to think of resuming his journey. He was very reticent concerning the motive of his servant for attempting his life, and foolishly, to my mind, made no effort to trace the miscreant. When leaving he said that in all probability he would return this way a few weeks later. So, my friend, he may ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... they do then? I was pardonably interested in the matter, and inquired of Madame de Kries. She was reticent, but I extracted from her the information that they were hurriedly married again. One could laugh if the matter had not been so terribly serious to them and to their boy. For by now those events had actually happened, and Mrs F. was not indeed in possession of but next in succession ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... sat with the letter in her hand and the paper on her lap. She was meditating deeply, but what was in her mind Anson never knew. She had grown more and more reticent of late. She sighed, rose, and ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... climax, the real heart of his whole two days, was after Sunday dinner when he went out to call upon Ruth Macdonald. And it was characteristic of his whole reticent nature, and the way he had been brought up, that he did not tell his mother where he was going. It had never occurred to him to tell her his movements when they did not directly concern her, and she had never brought herself up to ask him. It is ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... inheritor, as you know—for I'm sure nobody has been reticent upon the subject—of these broad lands," with a sweep of the hand towards the plains outside. "Captain Monk is now pleased to inform me that he thinks of substituting for me ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... the Bishop learnt at last the whole story of Hester's birth and of her tragic death. The beauty of Meynell's relation to the mother and child was plainly to be seen through a very reticent narrative; and to the tale of those hours in Long Whindale no man of heart like the little Bishop could have listened unmoved. At the end, the two men clasped hands in silence; and the Bishop looked wistfully at the priest that he and the diocese ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... accost me or otherwise disturb me while I was writing or reading; yet at other times they could be positively impertinent, especially if excited. The islander is very nervous; when he is quiet, he is shy and reticent, but once he is aroused, all his bad instincts run riot, and incredible savageness and cruelty appear. The secret of successful treatment of the natives seems to be to keep them very quiet, and never to let any excitement arise, a point in ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... myself to show how reticent the Arcadia makes us. It happens that I have a connection with Nottingham, and whenever a man mentions Nottingham to me, with a certain gleam in his eye, I know that he wants to discuss the lace trade. But it is a curious fact ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... in that reticent and elusive soul which prompted his request, the minister now felt that he could not know; but perhaps the pang that Lemuel inflicted on himself had as much transport as anguish in it. He believed that he had for ever cut himself off from the companionship that seemed highest and holiest ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... Sciences, what else is there to depend on?" thinks French cultivated society: "and has not Monsieur done a feat in that line?" Monsieur, with fine ex-military manners, has a certain austere gravity, reticent loftiness and polite dogmatism, which confirms that opinion. A studious ex-military man,—was Captain of Dragoons once, but too fond of study,—who is conscious to himself, or who would fain be conscious, that he is, in all points, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... reticent for a matter of ten miles or more after leaving the little station behind. His attention seemed to be engaged strictly in the study of objects beyond ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... vain Andrew Scalp, "My initials, I guess, Are known, so I sign all my poems, A.S." Said Jerrold, "I own you're a reticent youth, For that's telling only two ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... as soon have sought chivalric tenderness in a bronze statue, or a polished obelisk of porphyry. To-day as he curiously watched the quivering yet proud little girlish face, her brave struggles to meet the emergency touched some chord far down in his reticent stern nature, and he suddenly stooped, and took her hand, folding it up ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... friend about her mother's name before she took that of Nightingale. Very slight hints had sufficed to make her reticent about Graythorpe. Colonel Lund had once said to her: "Of course, your mother was Mrs. Graythorpe when she came to England; that was before she changed her name to Nightingale, you know?" She knew ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... with dignity and grace, he values his subject, and treats him with a certain courtly reverence, yet never once sinks into the panegyrist, and while apparently most frank—so frank, that the reticent English people may feel the intimacy of his domestic narratives almost painful—he is never once betrayed into a momentary indiscretion. The almost idyllic beauty of the relation between the Prince Consort and the Queen comes out ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... clerk in the office, a very much younger man, named Sundown, and Nickem could not make his proposition to Mr. Masters till Sundown had left the office. Nickem himself had only matured his plans at dinner time and was obliged to be reticent, till at six o'clock Sundown took himself off. Mr. Masters was, at the moment, locking his own desk, when Nickem winked at him to stay. Mr. Masters did stay, and Sundown did at ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... be described by comparing it to that which you experience when some one combs your head or draws his finger softly across your heel. You listen and listen until you drop your head. Pleasant, exceedingly pleasant! like the sleep after a bath. Ivan Nikiforovitch, on the contrary, is more reticent; but if he once takes up his parable, look out for yourself! He can ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... know when he is coming my way"—a statement which Syd and I could easily believe. For, with all John's faults, and he had many of them, he was one of the least obtrusive of men where hospitality came in, and one of the most reticent about himself and his own affairs; and we, who worked with him, knew him almost exclusively as a good fellow in the department, and a capital companion for ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... phrase, was a "brute after his own peculiar fashion." Brute or human, the big master-mechanic had the manners of a gentleman, and his easy good-nature broke down all the barriers of reserve that his somewhat reticent companion ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... time, was a changed man—changed from bad to worse; from being retired and reticent, he had come, by reason of advancing years, or mayhap that which had left the terrible scar on his face, to be garrulous. When, once in a while, employment sought him (for he never sought employment), whatever remuneration he received went its way for something that left him dingy ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... since, far more important. It is unfortunately impossible to give any trustworthy statistics of the position of banking in the United Kingdom extending back for more than forty or fifty years. Even the Scottish banks, who have been less reticent as to their position than the English banks, did not publish their accounts generally till 1865. The figures of the total deposits and cash balances in the Irish joint-stock banks were published collectively ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... distinguished changes in her face also. It bore the marks of sleeplessness and suffering. Pride still made her eyes reticent and cold, but the old outrageous ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... obstacles. He rejoiced. He had been wise to leave the city for the fresh, unspoiled country—the city with all its mean little fears, its petty immoralities, and its very trifling great concerns. He did not analyse, more than to remember, once, that the not reticent German would approve his mood. He had sought the soothing quiet with the unfailing instinct of the ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... he continued, "though I will not ask you to renew your pledge, I must caution you strictly to be reticent. To-morrow your precognition must be taken; and outside of that, do you know, I think least ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... has become more majestic, as well as more open, by the clearing away of the Luckenbooths: but nothing can be finer than the touch of the graphic yet reticent pencil which sets down before us the glimmering of the irregular lights which seemed at last to twinkle in the middle sky. This was how the main street of Edinburgh still appeared when Scott himself was a boy, and no ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... Peters was born a slave January 30, 1860 in Missouri somewhere. Her mother was colored and her father white, the white parentage being very evident in her color and features and hair. She is very reticent about the facts of her birth. The subject had to be approached from many angles and in many ways and by two different persons before that part of ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... until the day before where she was to go with Aunt Victoria. It was the habit of the family to conceal all such arrangements from the children, and indeed from each other as much as possible. Aunt Victoria observed that Caroline was singularly reticent, and Mrs. Caldwell complained that Aunt Victoria made a mystery of everything. It was a hard habit, which robbed Beth of what would have been so much to her, something to look forward to. Since she knew that ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... have been altogether unable to hold intercourse with his brother-artists. And, lastly, who are the pianist friends that were as devotedly attached to him as the most romantic of his aristocratic worshippers? The fact that Chopin became subsequently less social and more reticent than he had been in his early Paris days, confined himself to a very limited number of friends and families, and had relations of an intimate nature with only a very few musicians, cannot, therefore, be attributable to ill-health alone, although that too had, no doubt, something to do with it, directly ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... animosa contentio est: victa morte finit saepe vitam, spiritu prius deficiente quam captu. Meditantur iuveniores versusque quos imitentur accipiunt: audit discipula intentione magna et reddit vicibusque reticent; intelligitur emendatae correptio et ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... by chance or business into that unknown, outlying country. But many even of the people of the parish were ignorant of the strange events which had marked the first year of Mr. Soulis's ministrations; and among those who were better informed, some were naturally reticent, and others shy of that particular topic. Now and again, only, one of the older folk would warm into courage over his third tumbler, and recount the cause of the minister's ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... even that any such cry as we heard could, in this day and generation, ring through such an assemblage, unless it came with ventriloquial power from his own lips? You observed that he turned his back; that his face was hidden from us. Discreet and reticent as we have all been, and careful in our criticisms of so bizarre an event, there still must be many to question the reality of such superstitious fears, and some to ask if such a sound could be without human agency, and a very guilty agency, too. Inspector, I am but a child in your estimation, ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... great measure, no doubt, on account of the mystery as to his authorship, his fame became something oppressive. At one time as many as sixteen parties of visitors applied to see Abbotsford in a single day. Strangers,—especially the American travellers of that day, who were much less reticent and more irrepressible than the American travellers of this,—would come to him without introductions, facetiously cry out "Prodigious!" in imitation of Dominie Sampson, whatever they were shown, inquire whether ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... reflection he concluded that it was just as well to use a sprat to catch a mackerel. In plain English, he determined, with reservations, to gratify Mrs. Parry's curiosity, so that he might get a sight of what she had to show him. If he were reticent, she would show him nothing; whereas if he told her all about the evidence at the inquest—and that was public property—she would certainly open her mind to him. Moreover, Steel knew the value ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... obvious,' I said to him, 'that if the treasure is buried outside, someone must have dug the hole. A man so timorous and so reticent as your uncle would allow no one to do this but himself. Higgins maintained the other evening that all picks and spades were safely locked up by himself each night in the tool-house. The mansion itself was barricaded with such exceeding care that ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... the purse he had to claim from him. His new uncle's liberality had made him rich, and a certain natural reserve had held him silent in his Puritan relative's house about any person not likely to find favour in Martin Holt's estimation. He had been equally reticent about his strange adventure with the gipsies, though he scarce knew why he should not speak of that. But, as a matter of fact, every day brought with it such a crowd of new impressions that the earlier ones had already partially faded ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Lureth me, draweth me, all the day. Once, when the season wooed me so, Lion Llewellyn, thou lovedst to go, Pacing before or close beside, Reticent, quaint, and dignified, Roaming with me, wandering wide; And if ever thy feet inclined, Weary with roving, to lag behind, When were my arms to aid thee slow? "Muver will ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... problems the young man may have, for they must all shape themselves by this; and introduces something of artificial,—not properly of hypocritical, for that too is fatal if found out,—but of calculated, reticent, of half-sincere, on the Son's part: an inevitable feature, plentifully visible in their Correspondence now and henceforth. Corresponding with Papa and his Grumkow, and watched, at every step, by such an Argus as the Tobacco-Parliament, real frankness of speech is not quite the recommendable ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... people were not slow in asking Mrs. Spruce whether Miss Vancourt was coming back for Christmas? But to all enquiries that estimable dame gave the same answer. She 'didn't know nothink.' The groom Bennett was equally reticent. He had received 'no orders.' Mr. Stanways, the agent, and his wife, both of whom had become very friendly with all the villagers, were cheerfully talkative on every subject but one,— that of Miss Vancourt and her movements. All they could or would say was that her ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... his guest's resolute taciturnity, and the very weight of the silence eventually opened his own lips. From moment to moment the impulse to talk grew stronger within him. There was something as compelling as heat in this reticent visitor whose soul was so intent on inward problems that it perceived nothing of interest in an epaulet of gold on the ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... intervals of work, on the subject of League football in general and Manchester United in particular. The subject is not hard to master if one sets oneself earnestly to it; and Psmith spared no pains. The football editions of the evening papers are not reticent about those who play the game: and Psmith drank in every detail with the thoroughness of the conscientious student. By the end of the fortnight he knew what was the favourite breakfast-food of J. Turnbull; what Sandy Turnbull wore next ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... garrulous, loquacious, communicative, voluble, unreserved. Antonyms: reserved, reticent, uncommunicative, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... seemed to Morriston, gave Gifford food for disagreeable reflection. Why, indeed, should Henshaw be hanging about in the grounds of Wynford, and give so unconvincing a reason? What troubled Gifford most was that the man's reticent attitude precluded all hope of his learning anything of his plans which could usefully be imparted to Miss Morriston. Evidently there was nothing to be got out of him; the rather open confidence he had displayed on his first appearance at Branchester had ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... but they neither grew cool nor dull for the waiting. He detested concealment and secrecy more than most people, but his disinclination to speak of any matter until he was sure of it had given him the reputation of being both reticent and calculating. Giovanni now no longer concealed from himself the fact that he was annoyed by what was passing, but he denied, even in his heart, that he was jealous. To doubt Corona would be to upset the whole fabric of his existence, which ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... Ellis brooded over a deep anger. He was not a man to yield lightly of his best; but he had given to Hal, first a fine loyalty, and later, as they grew into closer association, a warm if rather reticent affection. For the rough idealist had found in his employer an idealism not always as clear and intelligent as his own, yet often higher and finer; and along with the professional protectiveness which he had assumed over the younger man's inexperience had come an honest ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... son's wife, now hastening over the snow to the house her husband had left under a cloud eight years before, had no fear of him, and, maybe, no deep regard for him. He respected her, as did all who knew her—a very reticent, thoughtful, busy being, who had been like a well of comfort to so many that had drunk and passed on out of her life, out of time and time's experiences. Seventy-nine years saw her still upstanding, strong, full of work, and fuller of life's knowledge. It was ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... will have to plow through these pages if you have not already met him, but for his faults, they were printed all over him like cities on a map. He was stubborn, rather reticent, sometimes unreasonable, and carried with him that air of stolid self-confidence which is apt to be found in one who has surmounted obstacles and risen in spite of handicaps. It was often said in the troop that one never knew ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... good as told him," muttered the ruffled fair, too angry to be reticent, "that I had no one to drive me to-morrow; and I think it was real rude asking that Bluebell Leigh before my face,—a mere nursery governess—and not giving me so much as the ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... of your bracing influence! Oh, the Polonaises . . ." And then he in his turn began to play, but not the melancholy fiery lyrics that had soothed Laura's unsatisfied heart. Val, a thorough musician, went for sympathy to the classics. Impulsive? There was not much impulse left in this quiet, reticent man, who with his old trouble fresh on him could sit down and play a chorale of Bach or a prelude of Mozart, subordinating his own imperious anguish to the grave universal daylight of the elder masters. Long since ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... shade. The roguish twinkle in his small piercing eyes contrasts strongly with the sombre, stolid expression of the Finnish peasants sitting near him. He has much to relate about St. Petersburg, Moscow, and perhaps Astrakhan; but, like a genuine trader, he is very reticent regarding the mysteries of his own craft. Towards sunset he retires with his companions to some quiet spot on the deck to recite evening prayers. Here all the good Mahometans on board assemble and stroke their beards, kneel on their little strips of carpet and prostrate ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... occasion had she been at home. She had then sought him out In his solitary villa, and of this visit, of this conversation with the old man so lofty of soul, so humble in heart, so ardent in spirit, so modest and reticent, she had retained an ineffaceable memory. He was dead, they wrote. He had passed away, bowing gently and humbly to the Divine Will. Shortly before his death he had dreamed continually during a long night, of the words addressed to the faithful servant ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... I found this type of angler to be remarkably reticent as to experience and method. Moreover, the tackle used was amazing to me. Stiff rods and heavy lines for little fish! I gathered another impression, and it was that bonefish were related to dynamite and chain lightning. Everybody who would listen to my questions ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... as in her body, there is always a reserve of energy, a dignified self-respect; there is never any self-abandonment. She has sung first in French, now she comes on in an Italian air, and afterwards is not too coyly reticent in taking an encore which is in English, to a piano accompaniment, and when that is over she hastens to bring the accompanist by the hand to her side before the audience, and bows, sweetly and graciously, with a gesture of the whole body, ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... It is unfortunately impossible to give any trustworthy statistics of the position of banking in the United Kingdom extending back for more than forty or fifty years. Even the Scottish banks, who have been less reticent as to their position than the English banks, did not publish their accounts generally till 1865. The figures of the total deposits and cash balances in the Irish joint-stock banks were published collectively from the year 1840 by the care of Dr Neilson Hancock, but it is only of quite recent ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... into power under the premiership of Lord Grey. Although he was pledged to parliamentary reform, his cabinet was composed entirely of noblemen, with only one exception. There was no greater aristocrat in all England than this leader of reform,—a cold, reticent, proud man. Lord Russell was also an aristocrat, being a brother of the Duke of Bedford; so was Althorp, the son and heir of Earl Spencer. The only man in the new cabinet of fearless liberality of views, the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... is strange, for I know no one more reticent on such subjects. He actually told you that he had the seventy-five thousand pounds ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... Hunter and Dyer and two staff captains. Hunter, compact and dark and reticent, walks about the empty chamber in full uniform, his bright buttons and sash and sword contrasting with his dark blue uniform, gauntlets upon his hands, crape on his arm and blade, his corded hat in his hands, a paper collar just apparent above ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... without kin; I am in a place that did not know me at birth. And so, when holidays come around, there is no place anywhere for me. I have friends, of course; I don't think I've been a very sulky, shut-in, reticent fellow; and there is many a board that has a place for me—but not at Christmastime. At Christmas, the dinner is a family gathering; and I've no family. There is such a gathering of kindred on this occasion, such a reunion of family folk, that there is no place for a friend, even if the friend ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... the mocking man of the world. When suddenly observed, his face always had a sad, grave aspect, and it was often hard for him to throw off this seriousness and to put on his harlequin's mask. Upon religious matters he was always reticent, but reverent. Only upon rare occasions would he discuss serious subjects at all, and only with a chosen few. In one letter which has been published he departs from his usual ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... very reticent in his information. What was the use of telling this young man anything; he would not ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... again." Aunt Barbara rarely said that now, for with each fleeting year the chance for Ethie's coming grew less and less, until now she seldom spoke of it to Betty, the only person to whom she ever talked of Ethie. Even with her she was usually very reticent, unless something brought the wanderer to mind more vividly than usual. Cleaning her room was such an occasion, and sitting down upon the floor, while she darned a hole in the carpet which the turning ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... she had not been reticent about her feelings made Tai-y unwittingly flush scarlet. Taking hold of her sleeve, she screened her face; and, turning her body round towards the inside, she pretended to be fast asleep. Pao-y drew near her. He was about to pull her round ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Mana, Annie, Mary, Alice, and Maggie, with bunches of small boys and girls on the floor. It was then that boxes of delicacies from home were opened and devoured. How grateful she was to all her friends! "The gifts," she would write, "are veiled in a mist of love, real Scottish love, reticent but deep and strong, full of pathos and prayer; the dear love inspired in our strong rugged Scots character by the Holy Ghost and moulded by our beloved Presbyterianism of the olden time; love that does not forget with the passing years." Two ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... with a duchess shall speak of his father's small shop, or bring into the light of day his grandfather's cobbler's awl? And yet it is difficult to be altogether silent! It may not be necessary for any of us to be always talking of our own parentage. We may be generally reticent as to our uncles and aunts, and may drop even our brothers and sisters in our ordinary conversation. But if a man never mentions his belongings among those with whom he lives, he becomes mysterious, and almost open to suspicion. It begins to be known that nobody knows anything of such a man, ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... young woman in the habiliments of sophisticated lands who sat here now, her heavy hair, piled high, lighted warmly in the illumination of the window. Her skin, clear white, had lost its sunburn in the moister climate between the two ranges of mountains. Quiet, reticent, reserved—cold, some said; but all said Molly Wingate, teacher at the mission school, was beautiful, the most beautiful young woman in all the great Willamette settlements. Her hands were in her lap now, and her face as usual was grave. ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... riding in a locomotive cab, where, with the constant rattle and roar, conversation is very difficult, the engineman, Truman Stump, had become a most reticent man, who rarely spoke unless it was necessary. He had thus gained the reputation of being ill-tempered and morose, which was exactly what he was not. Everybody admitted, though, that he was a first-class engine-driver, and one who could always be relied upon to do exactly ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... way with my mother," stoutly said Anne, drawing up her dignified little head. And she kept her resolution, for though a little excited by her first taste of lively youthful companionship, she was naturally a thoughtful reticent child, with a character advanced by companionship with her mother as an only child, through a great sorrow. Thus she was in every respect more developed than her contemporary Lucy, who regarded her with wonder as well as ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... has also been a resident during many winters, and his descriptions of the Valley, when wrapped in snow and ice, are intensely interesting. Though always ready to give information, he is naturally reticent, and never forces his stories or reminiscences upon visitors; indeed it requires some persuasion to hear him talk about himself at all. For some years Mr. Clark was postmaster of Yosemite; and he has made many trips on foot, both ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark
... you would like it, dear," said Dora absently; while her eyes grew dim and vague, and around her mouth settled the white, hard line, that, in her reticent nature, showed an emotion no less intense because it ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... that he might not be a man of taste, but, for his part, he thought she looked 'the jolliest girl' he had ever seen. In his heart he meant that he thought she looked like a goddess or an angel (for the Baby was a reverent youth), but he veiled his real feeling under this reticent phrase. ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... did they do then? I was pardonably interested in the matter, and inquired of Madame de Kries. She was reticent, but I extracted from her the information that they were hurriedly married again. One could laugh if the matter had not been so terribly serious to them and to their boy. For by now those events had actually happened, and Mrs F. was not indeed in possession of but next in succession to a considerable ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... her room-mate each nightfall with eagerness. Annie by this time had found harder and worse paid work in another factory. She came in with her hands scarred and torn, her nails broken and stained. She had grown more reticent of late. ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... beyond anything I ever saw," he said. "I meant to ask John about it. He used to talk to me and write to me often about her, and lately he hasn't; when I came I saw the reason, and so you see I felt reticent on the subject." ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... of the arch-conspirators knew; they were blinded by self-interest. And the archbishop? The Marshal rubbed his nose again, not, however, because it was cold. Did any one know what was going on behind the smiling mask which the reticent prelate showed to the world? The Marshal poked his chin above his collar, and the wrinkles fell away ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... does seem very reticent. His father as good as said, as I think I told you, that this was a voyage of discovery, a search for something he wanted to take back, and which was to make his country very great. But he has ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... much conversation in the sign-language between the two parties. It was evident that Nalboon, usually stern and reticent, was in an unusually pleasant mood. The viands, though of peculiar flavor, were in the main pleasing to the palates of ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... ordinary politician, who can allow a former policy noiseless and forsaken to sink into the maelstrom of neglected and unrequited love. Prolific in schemes is the procedure of a minority party, not the least is the selection of a standard-bearer, who has been the most sparse and reticent in utterance, hence a record the least assailable, that extracts from his opponents the exclamation of one in Holy Writ, "Oh, that mine ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... Alister is a devoted husband, but he comes no more to the Island. He has changed out of his old boat, and his late shipmates say vaguely that he has removed somewhere Sunderland or Cardiff way, and trades to the North Sea. Tom is very reticent about Maggie, though Miss Bell, the postmistress, might tell, if she were not a superior person, and as used to keeping a secret at a pinch as Father Tiernay himself, how many letters he receives with the post-mark of ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... season the corporal writes little, and articles by the regular staff, upon the height to which cantonment hedges should be allowed to grow, are apt to be dull. For news we depend on Tom. He appears reticent at first, but be patient. Let him put the soap on, and then ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... not one who was readily inclined to think evil of anyone, but in her own gentle heart she could not help feeling a repugnance for the man who had just left them. Jack was not so reticent. ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... return of Waldon with Edwards. Waldon seemed to realize without knowing just what it was, that something was about to happen. He drove his boat back to the Lucie again in record time. This was Kennedy's turn to be reticent. Whatever it was he was revolving in his mind, he answered in scarcely more than monosyllables whatever questions were ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... his office for a consultation with the members of his new Cabinet. Judah P. Benjamin, his chosen chief counselor as Secretary of State, was unusually reticent. The details of the inauguration were quickly agreed on and Davis hastened to return to his room at the White House to complete his ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... religious; and they sought entertainment with such of the passengers as were congenial, though in this Isaac Hecker was more ready than his companions. Father Walworth tells an incident characteristic of both himself and his transcendental companion. He was admonishing young Hecker to be more reticent among the crew and was asked why. "You wouldn't like to kneel down and kiss the deck before all those sailors," said Walworth. "Why not?" was the reply. "Then do it." And down dropped Hecker to the deck and kissed it ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... away, his cheery whistle floating up to them. The physician spoke with a depth of feeling he had never betrayed before, while Dan, troubled as he was, listened in wonder to his friend, who had always been so reticent in ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... was interrupted by our segundo and the trail foreman riding up to the cow pen. The two had been up the river during the afternoon, looking over the cattle on the range, for as yet we had not commenced gathering. Nancrede was very reticent, discovering a conspicuous lack of words to express his opinion of what cattle ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... friend or helper from whom I reserve no secrets has been rendered more impressive than ever by the Freud-Jung methods of relieving mental disorders through (in part) a sort of mental house-cleaning, or bringing into the open the patient's hidden distresses and even his most intimate and reticent desires. Into the psychology of the healings that are brought about by this psychoanalysis we need not go, except to note that one constant factor appears to be the turning of a private possession into a social possession, and particularly the consciousness that another understands. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... was reticent about was the story of his uncle. Poor, crack-brained visionary, he had gone to his account now, and what need was there to ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... he wanted. Then he would shyly stammer out his request. Never would they accost me or otherwise disturb me while I was writing or reading; yet at other times they could be positively impertinent, especially if excited. The islander is very nervous; when he is quiet, he is shy and reticent, but once he is aroused, all his bad instincts run riot, and incredible savageness and cruelty appear. The secret of successful treatment of the natives seems to be to keep them very quiet, and never to let any excitement arise, a point in ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... not need to be always spoken. There is very little chance of us Northerners erring on the side of letting our hearts speak too fully and frequently. Perhaps we should be all the better if we were a little less reticent, but at any rate you and I can surely trust each other after so many years, and now and then, as to-day, let ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... rhythm, style, and diction is the form of Bjrnson's verse: compact, reticent, suggestive, without elaborate verbal ornamentation, strong with "the long-vibrating power of the deeply felt, but half-expressed." It challenges and stimulates the soul of the hearer or reader to an intense activity of appropriation, which ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... to require of him any statement of his own beliefs. He does not conceive it to be his duty to furnish his students with any fixed conclusions as to doctrine but only to aid them in coming to conclusions for themselves. The apostle Paul was not so reticent. He was not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, but rather gloried in it. He even pronounced his anathema upon any who taught other doctrine. It is no wonder that our modern critics cry, "Back to Christ," ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... and what a long weary dream of misery I had passed through! I hardly knew even then how bad I had been. When I spoke to Esau he used to screw his face up full of wrinkles, and shake his head, while Mr Raydon was as reticent. ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... discovered, for the woman was not at all reticent, that she had been a low comedian and a dancer at Drury Lane Theatre, and like most comedians, high tragedy was her passion, and had ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... prison-born whelp, but as he grew out of cub-hood his character and his stature alike seemed to justify it. Influenced by the example of his gentle foster-mother, he was docility itself toward his tamer, whom he came to love well after the reticent fashion of his race. But toward all others, man and beast alike, his reserve was cold and dangerous. Toomey, apparently, absorbed all the affection which his lonely nature had to spare. In return for this singleness of regard, Toomey trained him with a firm patience which never forgot ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... doubt that Mr. Carson was in heart thoroughly a religious man. It is the element of religion alone, which, in the midst of such temptations, could form a character of such remarkable purity. He was too reticent to speak of his own feelings and there were but few, if any, of the thoughtless men around him who ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... of old china or a human being—whatever it might be, it was along the avenue of taste that he gently made his way up to it. His favourite word of commendation was pleasing, and if he ever brought himself to say (and he was not a man who scattered his judgments, rather was he extremely reticent of them) of a man, and still more of a woman, that he or she was unpleasing, you almost shuddered at the fierceness of the condemnation, knowing, as all Locker's intimate friends could not help doing, what the word meant to him. 'Attractive' ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... City. This gentleman had cordially united with his wife in offering Madge a home, and his manner toward the young girl, as far as his absorbed and busy life permitted, had been almost paternal. He was a quiet, reticent man, who had apparently concentrated every faculty of soul and body on the problem of commercial success. Trained to business from boyhood, he had allowed it to become his life, and he took it very seriously. It was to him an absorbing game—his vocation, ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... boat in which you came here, and bid him come to me this time tomorrow evening. I would fain hear from him somewhat further details as to how you escaped from the Spaniards, for I observed that in this matter you were a little reticent as to your share in it. He may be able to tell me, too, more about the strength of the Spanish garrisons in Bergen and its neighbourhood than ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... nothing was affected but the liver; they multiplied and varied their prescriptions; the malady ignored those prescriptions, and went steadily on. Mr. Lusignan was terrified but helpless. Rosa resigned and reticent. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... Aldrich applied to his later prose work that minute care in composition which had previously characterized his verse—taking a near, new or salient situation, and setting it before the reader in a pretty combination of kindly realism and reticent humour. In the novels, Prudence Palfrey (1874), The (Queen of Sheba (1877), and The Stillwater Tragedy (1880), there is more rapid action; but the Portsmouth pictures in the first are elaborated with the affectionate touch shown in the shorter humourous tale, A Rivermouth Romance ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... for them, and lunge home in spite of themselves. Besides, he began to be really interested in Madame Lescande—in her coquettish ways, at once artful and simple, provoking and timid, suggestive and reticent—in short, charming. ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... always, To regain favor with Papa. And this, Papa being what he is, gives a twist to all other problems the young man may have, for they must all shape themselves by this; and introduces something of artificial,—not properly of hypocritical, for that too is fatal if found out,—but of calculated, reticent, of half-sincere, on the Son's part: an inevitable feature, plentifully visible in their Correspondence now and henceforth. Corresponding with Papa and his Grumkow, and watched, at every step, by such an Argus as the Tobacco-Parliament, real frankness of speech is not ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... accusation of childishness by confessing her positive reason, so she answered, 'The man is a kind of man . . . I was not there long; I was glad to escape. He . . .' she hesitated: for in truth it was difficult to shape the charge against him, and the effort to be reticent concerning Nevil, and communicative, now that he had been spoken of, as to the detested doctor, reduced her to some confusion. She was also fatally anxious to be in the extreme degree conscientious, and corrected and modified her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of this outrage carried to my house, and, his wounds not proving serious, he was soon well, and able to think of resuming his journey. He was very reticent concerning the motive of his servant for attempting his life, and foolishly, to my mind, made no effort to trace the miscreant. When leaving he said that in all probability he would return this way a few weeks later. ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... increased by half a dozen new families during the last few years, and the Mexicans had put up an adobe dance-hall, that looked exactly like one of their own dwellings, except that it was a little longer, and was so unpretentious that nobody in Moonstone knew of its existence. The "Spanish boys" are reticent about their own affairs. Ray Kennedy used to know about all their little doings, but since his death there was no one whom ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... indifferent to the beauties of life. No one would ever have called him emotional, or prone to enthusiasms of a weak kind, and yet he was by no means hard of heart. He had quiet fancies of his own about people and things, and many of these reticent, rarely-expressed ideas were reverent, chivalrous ones of women. The opposing force of a whole world could never have shaken his faith in Priscilla Gower, or touched his respect for her; but though, perhaps, he had never understood it so, he had never ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... romances.[15] Whether this feature be due to Rusticiano I cannot say, but I have not been able to trace anything of the same character in a cursory inspection of some of his romance-compilations. Still one finds it impossible to conceive of our sober and reticent Messer Marco pacing the floor of his Genoese dungeon, and seven times over rolling out this magniloquent bombast, with sufficient deliberation to be overtaken by the pen of ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... an ideal being, he is still less a stolid mentally squalid brute. He is not reticent out of imbecility or mental weakness. He fails properly to understand much of what takes place around him, especially what happens within the circle of our modern civilization, but withal he is far from indifferent toward his surroundings. He observes, compares, ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... the instinct of justice which characterises the human beast, and especially the female, they were held responsible for Clerambault's ideas, though his wife and daughter knew little of them and disapproved what they knew. (Their critics did not understand them either.) The more polite were reticent, taking pains not to mention Clerambault's name, or ask after him,—you don't speak of ropes, you know, in the house of a man who has been hanged.... And this calculated silence was worse than open abuse. You would have said that Clerambault had done something dishonest or immodest. ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... of motion which kept them both with heads bent forward and seemed to force back any utterance that rose to their lips spared Rose the obligation of conversation, and her companion was equally reticent. But it was evident to her that he half suspected she was running away from the Randolphs, and that she wished to avoid the embarrassment of being overtaken even in persuasive pursuit. It was not possible that he knew the cause of her flight, ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... destroyed. Those men were selected for sacrifice because they had the very qualities which, when lost to the community, then it dies in its soul. They were candid with themselves, and questioned our warranty with the same candour, but were modest and reticent; they were kindly to us when they knew we were wooden and wrong, and did our bidding, judging it was evil. In France they subdued their insurgent thoughts—and what that sacrifice meant to them in the lonely night watches I have been privileged ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... was that four days and forty-one dollars would carry us to our first objective point. His helpers were a lively young half-breed, son-in-law of the murdered chief Hole-in-the-Day, another big mongrel, fat, plodding and reticent, and a young Indian who could speak a few English words, but was destitute of ideas in either English or Chippewa. Their motive-power was grazing on the open prairie back of the ragged village. The Reservation Indian, denied ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... fools ran away from her, and that because they were afraid she would expose their folly. If most people were fools, it was no fault of hers, and she was not obliged to indulge them by pretending to believe that they knew anything. She had once owned considerable property, but was reticent about her affairs, and told no one how much she was worth, though it was supposed that she had considerable ready money, besides her house and some other real estate. Mrs. Carteret was her nearest living relative, though her grand-nephew Tom Delamere had been a great favorite with ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... remarkably grave; he left the table early, having eaten little. The officers were reticent, as was their wont. Luke FitzHenry, it was remarked and remembered afterwards, alone appeared to ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... case of Columbus we are spared this dilemma. The past is reticent enough about the man himself; and about his ancestors it is almost silent. We know that he had a father and grandfather, as all grandsons of Adam have had; but we can be certain of very little more than that. He came of a race of Italian yeomen inhabiting ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... the resistance of obstacles. He rejoiced. He had been wise to leave the city for the fresh, unspoiled country—the city with all its mean little fears, its petty immoralities, and its very trifling great concerns. He did not analyse, more than to remember, once, that the not reticent German would approve his mood. He had sought the soothing quiet with the unfailing ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... at him blankly. There were things about Eustace lately that she did not understand. She knew nothing of Bob's maxim about looking at two sides of a question, so she could see no reason for the strange things he sometimes said, and he was far too reticent to ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... evening on which the name of Adelpha Leisler had been mentioned, Cora Waters had been strangely shy and reticent, so that Charles Stevens could not tell her of the interview with Mr. Parris, even if he would. Cora was a remarkable girl. She united in the highest perfection the rarest of earthly gifts—genius and beauty. No one possesses superior intellectual ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... rate they were not reticent: they told everything they knew and perhaps more. They gloried in the thought of the fighting to come, and seemed to take their own captivity very lightly, evidently thinking it only a matter of a few weeks before they could be exchanged or released—before their ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... that George Eliot permits anything like meter in her prose, and she is usually very reticent of rhythm. There is fervor and enthusiasm, imagination and poetic insight, but all kept within the limits of robust and manly prose. This capacity of prose to serve most of the purposes of poetry may be seen in a marked degree in all of George Eliot's novels. In the account of Adam Bede's love ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... threshold of the cottage on Exchange Street was not darkened by our people. And when the big house went up—a palace for a country town, though it only cost John Markley $25,000—he, who had been so reticent about his affairs in other years, tried to talk to his old friends of the house, telling them expansively that he was putting it up so that the town would have something in the way of a house for public gatherings; but he aroused no responsive enthusiasm, and long before the big opening reception ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... the outbreak of war the various Powers grew remarkably reticent concerning the composition and enlargement of their respective aerial fleets. No official figures were published. But at the same time it is a well-known fact that during the year 1913 France augmented her flying force by no fewer than 544 aeroplanes. Germany was no less energetic, the military ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... instinct of all true Forsytes in anxiety and trouble, the corporate tendency which kept them strong and solid, made him choose to dine at Park Lane. He neither could nor would breath a word to his people of his intention—too reticent and proud—but the thought that at least they would be glad if they knew, and wish him ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... two old chums rode away on a side scout of their own, it might well be expected that "Coyote" would be less reticent. The eyes of half the command had followed them appreciatively as the detachment started, Graham and Connell in the lead, Sergeant Drum, and his nineteen following in compact column of twos. No sooner did they ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... child is often kept in extreme ignorance of the liability of womanhood occurring to her at a certain age, and, hence, when she observes a flow of blood escaping from a part, the delicacy attached to the locality makes her reticent with regard to inquiry or exposure; she naturally becomes alarmed, and most likely attempts to stanch the flow by bathing or applying cold water to the part, ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... his acquaintances about the trip, merely stating that he was going on a journey. Mr. Baxter, on his part, was equally reticent, so, aside from the immediate families, and Mrs. Stults and her lawyer, no one was aware ...
— The Young Treasure Hunter - or, Fred Stanley's Trip to Alaska • Frank V. Webster
... self-controlled, with hair of copper-red and face and neck browned and furrowed by the sun and mountain winds, enured to hardships and ready for them, this young mountaineer moved among his new-found companions at Camp Gordon. Reticent he seemed, but his answer to an inquiry was direct, and his quiet blue-eyes never shifted from the eyes of the man who addressed him. As friendships were formed, his moods were noted by his comrades. At times he was playful as a boy, using cautiously, even gently, the strength he possessed. ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... feeling spread to the German Government it is impossible to say. Nor it is easy to estimate how much official confidence was shaken by it. The government, even before the war, was singularly reticent about the Zeppelins, their numbers and plans. It is certain that orders were not withheld from the Count. Great numbers of his machines were built, especially after the war was entered upon. But he was not permitted longer ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... conventional and proper thing, and they who talked with him, with hardly an exception, led up to the matter of the watch and wished to know how he accounted for its being there on the post of No. 5. It was observed that, upon this topic and the stabbing of Private Mullins, Mr. Blakely was oddly reticent. He had nothing whatever to suggest as explanation of either matter. The watch was taken from the inner pocket of his thin white coat as he lay asleep at the pool, of this he felt confident, but by whom he would not pretend to say. ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... speeches and addresses to the various constituencies were, of course, looked to with much interest, as likely to indicate, or in some way foreshadow their future measures; but they were much more inclined to be reticent than communicative. Lord John himself, in his address to the citizens of London, dealt in those vague generalities under which politicians are accustomed to veil their intentions, or their want of definite plans. He told them they might feel assured that he would not desert in office the principles ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... indeed certain striking points of resemblance between these three; each in his own line surpassing all others of the same period. Their complexion, and their great physical strength, their deeply arched eye-brows, their genius for language, their reticent and contemplative habits, and especially a certain pregnant gloominess of expression, would seem to indicate a nearer unity than the general one of the Aryan races. Yet the case remains to ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... the last of the Puritans. He was indeed the incarnation of those qualities which led to eminence under the theocracy. A rigid Calvinist, reticent, cool, and brave, matchless in intrigue, and tireless in purpose, his cause was always holy, and therefore sanctified ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... thought that one so reticent and retiring, of such hasty temper and brusque manners, would scarcely be attracted to women. But Beethoven, it is said, was very susceptible to the charm of the opposite sex. He was however, most careful and high-souled in all his ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... it all, but something kept me silent. And so we hurried on, and on, and on, our course directed by my now wholly reticent companion. Where he was going, what his purpose was, I could not but vaguely surmise. I only recognized that his intentions were humane, which fact was emphasized by the extreme caution he took to avoid the two or three late pedestrians that passed us on our way as we stood crowded in ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... little disappointment, apparently, that she could not visit home. And as spring passed and the summer came on, the little girl budded and opened like a rose. To the pretty school-teacher she was a source of endless interest and wonder, for while the little girl was reticent and aloof, Miss Saunders felt herself watched and studied in and out of school, and Hale often had to smile at June's unconscious imitation of her teacher in speech, manners and dress. And all the ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... the iron railing, his gaze softening to a grave, peaceful smile as he looked over the vast, vaporous scene, laced with its moving and motionless lines of light, it was this, and its mysteries, its delicacies, its reticent radiance, that expressed him more truly than the commonplaces of the room behind him, accurately as these symbolized the activities of his life. The boy and youth, emotional and poetic, dreamy if also ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... spoil of the bow and spear of some red-cheeked lass; or he might walk on as an old bachelor, too cautious to be caught at all. But none believed that he would become the victim of a grand passion for a poor, reticent, high-bred, high-minded specimen of womanhood. Such, however, was now ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... of his black eyes, that abashed the woman's tantrums in the beginning, and therefore the possibility of any quarrel was excluded. He was new, and therefore immediately aroused her curiosity; he was reticent, and kept it awake. And lastly he was dark and she fair, and he was male and she female, the everlasting fountains ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... happen without making a slight stir in a family, especially such a quiet family as that at the cottage. Besides, the lovers were too childishly happy to be at all reticent over their felicity. Before David was turned away that night to the hotel which he and Mr. Roy both inhabited, every body in the house knew quite well that Mr. Dalziel and Miss Janetta were ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... did not mind being frank with her. Instances of this trait in men who are not without feeling, but are reticent from habit, may be recalled by all of us. When they find a listener who can by no possibility make use of them, rival them, or condemn them, reserved and even suspicious men of the world become frank, keenly enjoying the inner side ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... unquestionably possessed, Arthur advanced rapidly in the favour of the charming niece. She was, it is needless to say, perfectly well aware that he was in love with her, while he was himself modestly reticent on the subject—so far as words went. But she was not equally quick in penetrating the nature of her own feelings towards Arthur. Watching the two young people with keen powers of observation, necessarily concentrated ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... only reproach he had uttered, though she had treated him so badly. And Horace did not care for her one bit now—she could see it, she knew it, he was tired of her, and she was not clever enough for him, and would never make him a good wife. All this our little-reticent Maria had sobbed out in answer to Mrs. Vavasour's sympathising questions, with many entreaties to know what she had better do next. Mrs. Vavasour could only advise her to say to Horace just what she had said to her, and she had sufficient confidence in Maria's courage and good sense to trust ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... frequently been puzzled by a peculiar change of manner in his friends. When he made a remark which showed how clearly he understood their point of view and how closely he was in agreement with it, they had a way of becoming reticent in the very moment of expansion. The current of sympathy was broken, and as often as not they turned the conversation altogether into a conventional and less interesting channel. That change of manner ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... herself pure, and when doubts had been thrown on that theory by others who believed in her less, she had closed their tattling mouths with language such as they were not accustomed to hear from her usually reticent lips. These gossip-mongers, who flourish in the quarters of the poor and rich alike, speedily learned that it was just as well not to mention the name of Liz Hepburn to Teen Balfour. One day a visitor, in the shape of a handsomely-dressed young lady, did come to the little seamstress's ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... Giovanni had been very reticent about his affairs, even with his own family, and during that last winter in Rome, when he had fallen in love with Angela Chiaromonte, Ugo had been stationed in Pavia and had known nothing of the affair. Ugo had a vague recollection that Giovanni was supposed to have been unduly ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... excitedly sympathetic and eager to comfort, she found a quiet mourner ready to talk with her more composedly than she herself was able to do. Martha, shocked though she was by the sudden call, was full of curiosity as to the return of John Leaver, and only Charlotte's reticent dignity of manner kept back a ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... be too hasty with the death sentence. What matters it what Tepti may think! He is a good embalmer, reticent of speech and his belief in death and nothingness if expressed would neither find believers nor corrupt our faith. The thought of non-existence is not acceptable to the Egyptians; it lacks enthusiasm, it lacks certainty, ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... any desire to be reticent, but simply because the details appeared to him to be altogether ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... year, he was shy, reticent, over-grown, consciously awkward, homely and ill clad—he grew so rapidly it was impossible to make his clothes fit. But in the depths of his hazel-grey eyes there were slumbering fires that set him apart from the boys of his age. ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... Hotspur, though she had been thus reticent and quiet in her joy, though she was resolved to be discreet, and knew that there were circumstances in her engagement which would for a while deter her from being with her accepted lover as other girls are with theirs, did ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... him now," said Hilda; "and yet, though you are very reticent on the subject, I have a shrewd suspicion, my darling, that you do not ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... this. He let his simple statement of fact stand without enlarging on it. His life of late years had tended to make him reticent. ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... any moral compunction for any excess he committed. He was habitually more ready to glory over his conquests, than to deny or extenuate them. But in this case he had, to the surprise of Cadet, been very reticent, and shy of speaking of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... brought up and educated by my bachelor uncle. He was a reticent, moody man, and with his aged housekeeper and myself, led a solitary and unsocial life in the old rambling house which had ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... "abstract," "contents," and "synopsis." "This is not the sort of thing for me," he murmured, and turned his attention to a third bookcase, which contained books on the Arts. Extracting a huge tome in which some by no means reticent mythological illustrations were contained, he set himself to examine these pictures. They were of the kind which pleases mostly middle-aged bachelors and old men who are accustomed to seek in the ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... reverence went round the congregation. The social hierarchy was to some extent graduated by synagogal contributions, and whoever could afford only a little offering had it announced as a "gift"—a vague term which might equally be the covering of a reticent munificence. ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... talking to a man who is a member of a traditionally reticent and unexpansive race; who says about one third of what he feels; who is obsessed by a mania for understating his country's case, exaggerating its weaknesses, and belittling its efforts; who is secretly shy, so covers up his shyness with a cloak of aggressiveness which is offensive to ...
— Getting Together • Ian Hay
... The letters of Nelson to personal friends, to the Admiralty, and in his reported conversations, are all full of resentment at the viciousness of it, though he obviously struggles to curb the vehemence of his feelings. No one felt the dagger of the reticent stabber more quickly and sensitively than he. Invisible though the libeller might be, Nelson knew he was there. He could not hear the voice, but he ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... no more likely to have such a subject as Samuel Johnson than such a one as George Frederick Cooke; while both Boswell and Dunlap, had they written in our day, would probably have been much more reticent and much less amusing. We cannot therefore agree with Mr. Fitzgerald in thinking that the colorless character of the few theatrical biographies that have appeared in recent times is to be ascribed to the decay of the art of acting and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... told me a word about you—he's been so reticent." She laid her finger tips upon his arm in proprietory fashion while a sly malice shone through the ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... artistic merit. It is only in the rare instance of a family collection, resulting from the slow accumulation by more than one generation of quilt enthusiasts, that a quilt collection at all worth while can be found. In such a case the owner is generally so reticent concerning his treasures that the community as a whole is never given the opportunity ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... stunned silence that followed this outburst from short-spoken, reticent Olive, there came a new voice; such a sweet, lovely voice with a tender ring that made every one ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... out into the country on business, she would go miles out of her way to call on some of the old people, or to see the women who seldom got to town. She was quick at understanding the grandmothers who spoke no English, and the most reticent and distrustful of them would tell her their story without realizing they were doing so. She went to country funerals and weddings in all weathers. A farmer's daughter who was to be married could count on a wedding present from ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... says to him," and "He says to me." But as evenings of the week went by, and other girls at Hilbert's, on leaving at the hour of seven, were met by courageous youths near the door, and by shyer lads at a more reticent spot (some of these took ambush in doorways, affecting to read cricket results in the evening paper), then Gertie Higham began to wonder whether the message had been communicated in the precise tone and manner that she had given it. The blue pinafored girls, stitching gold thread ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... appeared to be more ready to talk to little Jem than to any one else, and the two were constantly together. When I tried to find out from the boy what account Ned gave of himself, Jem was remarkably reticent. At length, however, one day he said, "He seems to be afraid of some of the men, sir. He thinks that they intend to do him harm, but I cannot find out why he has got that idea into his head. I told him that he might trust you and the first mate, ...
— The Mate of the Lily - Notes from Harry Musgrave's Log Book • W. H. G. Kingston
... no danger of detection, or, if he did, it was very slight. Vincent was not the man to confide in more than one person; he had owned as much. He had been reticent enough to conceal his real surname from his publishers, and now he ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... me not with honey-sweet excesses, With passionate prodigalities of praise, With wreaths of daisied words and quaint caresses, Adore me not in charming childish ways. This pastoral is beautiful enough: But never shall it antidote my drouth: I want a reticent ironic Love With smiling eyes and faintly mocking mouth. Sweetness is best when bitterly 'tis bought: So in Love's deadly duel I would not be Victorious, and the peace I long have sought, Sure knowledge of his great supremacy, Would buy with pangs, like that bright cuirassier, The queen-at-arms ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... Uncle Ben will judge for himself,' she said, reddening; thankful all the same to remember that among her uncle's reticent, old-fashioned ways none was more marked than his habit of destroying all but an infinitesimal fraction of his letters. 'He read all those speeches of yours, last year. You'll have to think—how you're going ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was instilled into me to be silent and reticent. This was one of the most important traits to form in the character of the Indian. As a hunter and warrior it was considered absolutely necessary to him, and was thought to lay the foundations of ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... attentively, "was as good as the best." Looking down the long table after they were seated, he smiled with satisfaction and expanded, a subtle suavity born of being host to distinguished folk unlocking his ordinarily reticent tongue, causing him even to joke with Mrs. Adams, whom ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... queen of the roads he seems to have been less reticent and more himself than with any other of his vagabond acquaintance, not excepting even Mr Petulengro. To the handsome, tall girl with "the flaxen hair, which hung down over her shoulders unconfined," and the "determined but open expression," he showed a more amiable side of his ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... wish to hoodwink you, my dear," Mr. Fenton answered quietly, "or to affect a happiness which I do not feel, any more than I wish to make a parade of my grief. It is natural for an Englishman to be reticent on such matters; but I do not mind owning to you that Marian Nowell is unforgotten by me, and that the loss of her will have an enduring influence upon my life; and having said as much as that, Belle, I must request that you will not expatiate any more upon this poor girl's breach ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... she had always yearned, and in which she was now to participate. The feeling of the beauty of the world, and of its catholicity and many-sidedness, returned to her. She gave play to her instincts. And, revelling in the self-confidence and the masterful ascendency which underlay Arthur's usual reticent demeanour, she resumed with exquisite relief her natural supineness. She began to depend on him. And she foresaw how he would reason diplomatically with Rose, and watch between Milly and Mr. Louis ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... he said, with an attempt at a smile, "Business, I suppose;" but the other replied, "No, I should gather that it was principally upon private affairs that he has gone to England; but Mr. Davidson is a very reticent man, and he gave me no particulars. I represent him here until he returns, and beyond that it is really no business of mine; but I certainly received the impression that some personal ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... to bring about the cruel persecution by which his whole life was embittered. But it must be admitted that the dishonesty of one of his own kinsmen—about which a chivalrous sense of honour caused him to be reticent during nearly fifty years—conduced to ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... Mr. Belcher found the village quiet and very reticent, and having learned that a subscription had been raised without calling upon him, he laughingly expressed his determination to win the ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... private chambers of the village. The principal grocery store, coal-yard, sail-loft, hotel and other institutions were conducted in its interests. His opinion was always foremost in the decision of the local authorities. He was still, reticent, unobtrusive. Once I saw him most considerately helping a cripple up the lane ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... out by inference and allusion rather than by direct information, while Michael, naturally reticent and feeling that his own uneventful affairs could have no interest for anybody, was less communicative. And, indeed, while shunning the appearance of inquisitiveness, he was far too eager to get hold of his new acquaintance to think of volunteering much himself. Here to him was this citizen of the ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... refused to believe any good of the self-contained, reticent stranger. The nephew of somebody's brother-in-law, who lived in Lexington Avenue, was one. He had been promised, by the cousin of somebody else, the position of clerk with Otto Kling, and although Otto had never heard of it, he WOULD have heard of it and the nephew been duly installed but for ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... whatever, never mentioned your name again in my hearing. Mrs. Sutton did hint to me her fear that Mr. Aylett had heard something prejudicial to your character, which had greatly displeased him and shocked Mabel, but even she was unaccountably reticent. Intense as was my anxiety to learn the particulars of the story, and upon what evidence they were induced to believe it, I dared not press my inquiry into what it was plain they intended to guard as a ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... Mayor. During dinner the conversation turned almost entirely on my father's flight, his narrow escape from drowning, and his adventures on his return to England; about these last my father was very reticent, for he said nothing about his book, and antedated his accession of wealth by some fifteen years, but as he walked up towards the statues with George ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... silent from his long training among savages, grew more and more reticent and watchful as we progressed, riding often at my side for hours without uttering a word, his keen eyes warily searching the dark openings upon every hand as if suspecting that each spot of gloom might prove the chosen place for an ambuscade. ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... some gossip throughout the garrison. It was already midnight before they arrived, and then with horses blown and trembling with exhaustion, and the whole party bearing every sign of fatigue and disturbance. The colonel said a few sharp, decisive words to the subaltern, who, pale and reticent, plucked at his little moustache, but took the whole blame upon himself. HE and Mrs. Lascelles had, he said, outridden the trooper and got lost; it was late when Cassidy (the trooper) found them, but it was ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... a fitting place in which to speak of a side of Mr. Dodgson's character of which he himself was naturally very reticent—his wonderful generosity. My own experience of him was of a man who was always ready to do one a kindness, even though it put him to great expense and inconvenience; but of course I did not know, during his lifetime, that my experience of ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... over his paper, watching the languid breath that showed how deep the hurt had been, the maimed body, the face outwardly cool, watchful, reticent as before. He fancied the slough of disappointment into which God had crushed the soul of this man: would he struggle out? Would he take Miss Herne as the first step in his stairway, or be content to be flung down in vigorous manhood to the depth of impotent poverty? ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... council of war considered the matter. After the members had delivered their opinions, Pelissier expressed himself thus: "I too have my plan, but I will not breathe it to my pillow." There is, however, no need to be so reticent with the reader. The French commander had learned that the relief of the troops in the works before him took place at noon, and that in order to avoid the great additional loss which would be caused by ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... French market, the tumble-down buildings which house the courts of justice ceased to interest him. He was relieved when finally he felt it proper to turn up the old Esplanade, which wandered away with its rows of whitened trees, out among the dignified and reticent residences ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... facts, you don't need a detective. I'd rather have a suspect talk freely and never tell the truth than have him be reticent and stick ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... The three "Mormon" elders, reticent and quiet, had made few acquaintances. The Rev. Mr. Strong and his daughter, not being very well, had not been active in the social proceedings of ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... cross, for though grim of countenance, rough of speech, cold of manner, a keen observer would have soon discovered traces of a deeper, warmer nature hidden, behind the repellent front he turned upon the world. A true New Englander, thoughtful, acute, reticent, and opinionated; yet earnest withal, intensely patriotic, and often humorous, despite ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... discussion of the very matters of most moment to us; and they, on their part, not guessing my need, contented themselves with the vague generalities with which we seek to hide even from ourselves the poverty of our beliefs. But there were foolish voices about me less reticent; while the literature, illustrated and otherwise, provided in those days for serious-minded youth, answered all questionings with blunt brutality. If you did wrong you burnt in a fiery furnace for ever and ever. Were your imagination weak you could turn to ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... out around them with the reticent hush of interrupted consciousness. They seemed to be on the verge of further revelations, and were withheld from a last definite whisper only by the ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... in which the Topographical Notes occur are in only a very few instances such diaries as may have been in use during a journey. These notes are mostly found in the MSS. books of his later and quieter years, and it is certainly remarkable that Leonardo is very reticent as to the authorities from whom he quotes his facts and observations: For instance, as to the Straits of Gibraltar, the Nile, the Taurus Mountains and the Tigris and Euphrates. Is it likely that he, who declared that ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... has mixed with a great number of refugees, many of whom are naturally very bitter against us. She is not reticent as to the tales which they told her. Not one of them all has a story of outrage. One woman, she says, was kicked by a drunken soldier, for which, she ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
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