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More "Stillness" Quotes from Famous Books



... lonercera, trained against the house wall, saluted his nostrils, along with a fetid-sweet reek off the mud-flats of the Haven. Away in the village a dog yelped, and out on the salt-marshes water-fowl gave faint whistling cries. Then all settled down into stillness, save for the just audible chuckle and suck of the river as the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... bloomin' side queerer when I've done with 'im,' said Ortheris. They were talking in whispers, for the stillness of the wood and the desire of ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... of our flickering candles we behold each other's faces, and we can talk together. We are but two hundred feet under ground. A desolate stillness reigns here; no sound reaches us, either of labor or the steps of passing workmen. A cold stream of water trickles from a cleft rock behind us; we bathe our foreheads in it, and betake ourselves to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... listening through the long watches of the night, sounds are borne to you which tell that the jungle is afoot. The argus pheasants yell to one another as the hours creep by; the far-away trumpet of an elephant breaks the stillness; and the frightened barking cry of a deer comes to you from across the river. The insects are awake all night, and the little workman bird sits on a tree close by you and drives coffin nails without number. With the dawn, the tree beetles again ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... watch-dog, which lay near the threshold, fawned upon him, joyfully whining and wagging his tail. "Thou still knowest me, Curlow, said Alonzo; thou hast known me in better days; I am now poor and wretched, but thy friendship is the same." A solemn stillness prevailed all around, interrupted only by the discordance of the nightly insects, and the hooting of the moping owl from the neighbouring forest.—The dwelling was shrouded in darkness. In Melissa's room no gleam of light appeared. "They are all buried in sleep, said Alonzo, deeply sighing, ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.

... "I was about to ask you what you thought the distance was. Two miles is about what I had estimated. We can't say very exactly, for sound is likely to travel far in this still air. But let us make a liberal allowance for the stillness. I think we are safe in saying that the sound comes from a point not more than four miles distant from this island. Now, the next question is, from what direction does ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... the neatly-disposed plants were basking in the abundant light and warmth; the transparent shade of the great elms—they were magnificent trees—seemed to thicken by the hour; and the intensely habitual stillness offered a submissive medium to the sound of a distant church-bell. The young girl listened to the church-bell; but she was not dressed for church. She was bare-headed; she wore a white muslin waist, with ...
— The Europeans • Henry James

... perfect stillness. Then, "It's simple," said the Bird. (Now his voice was strangely like the Doctor's.) "I suppose you might call ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates

... flame was extinguished, and all about was the profound stillness of a wilderness in winter. Then the dark clouds parted, and through the opening stepped the full round moon to shed its light upon the ground. Not one of the many wild beasts was there. The dean and his horse were alone on Black's Ridge, the ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey

... was simple. You went out to reconnoitre, and, hearing in the stillness, words and a noise like a passage of swords, I became anxious about you. Under this impulse I opened the front door and stepped out a few yards when a Highland plaid fell round my head, silencing me effectually ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne

... out of it. They had supper in a long, low room, with furniture almost black, against whose windows heavy roses every now and then softly patted, caught in the fringes of the rain gusts. The dusky room, the perfect stillness within, the low mingled sounds of swaying trees and pattering rain without, the sense of the great darkness folding in its bosom the beauty so near and the moaning city miles upon miles away—all grew together into one possessing mood, which rose and sank, like the ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... stillness of the abandoned school I sat for an hour and read about the choosing of the caskets. The margins were filled with drawings—one possibly a likeness of the teacher. Once there was a figure in a skirt—straight, ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks

... sweet eyes weary of watching, Earth; Lie close around her; leave no room for mirth With its harsh laughter, nor for sound of sighs. She hath no questions, she hath no replies, Hushed in and curtained with a blessed dearth Of all that irked her from the hour of birth; With stillness that is almost Paradise. Darkness more clear than noonday holdeth her, Silence more musical than any song; Even her very heart has ceased to stir: Until the morning of Eternity Her rest shall not begin nor end, but be; And when she wakes she ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti

... deep silence at last. The hour had come for the parting words to be spoken over the dead. The good old minister's voice rose out of the stillness, subdued and tremulous at first, but growing firmer and clearer as he went on, until it reached the ears of the visitors who were in the far, desolate chambers, looking at the pictured hangings and the old dusty ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... a church—only clearer and sweeter and freer—perhaps it was the woods—with the wind whispering up there. She always held her breath to listen in Miss Stone's room; and when she came back, to her own, child's room—with its canopied bed and royal draperies and colour and charm, she held the stillness and whiteness of Miss Stone's room in her heart—it was like a bird nestling there. Betty had never held a bird, but she often lifted her hands to them as they flew—and once, in a dream, one had fluttered into the lifted hands and she had held it close and felt the wind blow softly. It was like ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee

... victory. Wine had been spilled, and in the air there was yet the savor of blood. About each man just breathed some taint of savagery that was not yet beaten back after yesterday's wild outburst and breaking of the bars. In some it took the form of the sleek stillness of the tiger; others were loud-voiced, restless, biting at their nails. Only to a few was it given to bear triumph soberly, with room for other thoughts; to the most it came as a tumultuous passion, an irrational joy, a dazzling ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston

... the decree of silence. The day wore on to noon, and in the unbroken stillness the boys ventured out of the grimy tree and lay at full length on the turf. The great redwoods towered in endless corridors, their straight columns unbroken by branch or twig for a hundred and fifty feet. Through the green close arbours above came ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton

... sage-brush, high enough in some places to conceal a horse. I kept a bright lookout, and closely watched every motion of my poor pony's ears, which is a signal for danger in an Indian country. I was prepared for a fight, but the stillness of the night and the howling of the wolves and coyotes made cold chills run through me at times; but I reached Sand Springs in safety and reported what had happened. Before leaving, I advised the station-keeper to come with me to the Sink of the Carson, for I was sure the Indians would be ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... was again given. Crack went both pistols simultaneously. The smoke slowly cleared away, and the principals were discovered standing stock-still. The silence and stillness for a moment were awful. No one moved. Soon Smith was seen to reel and then to slowly fall. His second and the surgeon rushed to him. Culkins made a tremendous effort to fly from the field, but was restrained ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne

... its loudest waves were dumb—the barrier of death. Hitherto and no further could its power reach. It could kill the body. It could dash in pieces the last little cock-boat to which the man clung, but thus it swept the man beyond its own region into the second sea of stillness, which we call death, out upon which the thoughts of those that are left behind can follow him only in great longings, vague conjectures, and mighty faith. Then I thought I could show them how, raving in fear, or lying still in ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald

... The deepest stillness of night was upon the house. As Mrs. Hood seated herself with murmured bewailing of such wretchedness, there sounded a heavy crash out on the staircase; it was followed by a peculiar ringing reverberation. ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing

... own reflections. She rose and began to pace the floor, stepping softly, as though in fear of awakening someone, her figure, in its thin drapery, diaphanously vague and white. Still unable to shake off the obsession of the intense stillness, she sat down at the piano and began to run over the first act of the Walkure, the last of his roles they had practiced together; playing listlessly and absently at first, but with gradually increasing seriousness. Perhaps it was ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather

... interested in their pails and shovels and the tunnel she had helped to dig. The mothers of the children saw the picture. Beautifully tinted it seemed alive and they were enthusiastic. The next week she chanced to see a nine year old fishing with a child's faith. The perfect stillness of the usually active little body, the expectant look on the small face charmed her and in a moment, her camera had them. Every one who saw the picture exclaimed at its naturalness and life and a friend who believed she saw a future for the girl took it to the best photographer in ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery

... went to the Prince Regent's, and then with them in their carriages to the railway station—we four all alone in the train. We arrived at Sans Souci and went directly into the room where the King lay—the stillness of death was in the room—only the light of the fire and of a dim lamp. We approached the bed and stood there at the foot of it, not daring to look at one another or to say a word. The Queen was sitting in an armchair at the head of the bed, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... and Damascus, of Africa and Spain, were provoked to turn their arms against each other: the remains of their host were suddenly dissolved, and each emir consulted his safety by a hasty and separate retreat. At the dawn of the day, the stillness of a hostile camp was suspected by the victorious Christians: on the report of their spies, they ventured to explore the riches of the vacant tents; but if we except some celebrated relics, a small portion of the spoil was restored to ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... then. It was as remote—as lost to mankind—as it was beautiful. The hum and turmoil of the civilized world was like the memory of a dream in this tranquil region, where untrammeled nature had worked her teeming will for centuries upon silent centuries. Here were such peace and stillness that the cry of the blue jay seemed audacious; the dive of a gull into the smooth water was a startling event. To the imaginative mind of Hudson this spot seemed to have been set apart by Providence, hidden away behind the sandy reaches of the outer ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... warmth of color which belongs to day's old age. The forest shadows appeared to deepen, those dark forests so far below him in the valleys. Here, where he was racing along at a high level, all was bright, the air was joyous. Below him lay the brooding stillness where lurked a hundred unknown dangers. There were only about fifteen more miles of this broken solitude, and beyond that stretched a world of waving, gracious grassland right on to the prairie city whither ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... evening of golden silence, and the larch copse in its stillness was like an enchanted wood. Now and then something moved in the undergrowth with a swift rustle or a blackbird raised a long ripple of alarm. But for the most part all was still. No breeze came up the hillside, ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell

... this is the hand of God. "I," saith he, "will cause the enemy to entreat thee well in the time of evil, and in the time of affliction" (Jer 15:11). For by waters here are typed out the great and mighty of the world, by the flowing of them, their rage; and by their ebbing and returning their stillness and moderation. "And the waters returned." That is, to the sea (Gen 1:9,10). "He gathereth the waters of the sea together as an heap: he layeth up the depth ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... quiet. Not a sound broke the stillness, save the howling of a few wolves, which, probably, attracted by the scent of the human blood that had been spilt that day, and by the exposed corpse that was now strewed with white blossoms from the tree beneath which it lay, were, by the increasing light, indistinctly seen ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson

... was a sharpened consciousness of the girl breathing at his side. She seemed curiously to be waiting—waiting! The silence and their stillness became unbearable. Something must break ... their breaths were too long drawn. He got to his feet and the flapper was unaccountably standing beside him. It was too dark to see her face, but he knew that for once she was not looking at him; for once that head was bent. And then, preposterously, without ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson

... dark. The darkness, the coolness, and the stillness were all so soothing and refreshing to the girl's heated and excited nerves that she sank back in her high, cushioned chair and dozed off into sleep—into such a deep and dreamless sleep that she ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... the city was dim and far away. The only sounds to break the stillness were the laughter of lovers along the walks below and the distant cry of steamers in ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon

... to notice Miss Stuart-Wortley's view on the river Cherwell, taken from the walks of Magdalen College, Oxford,—a little picture marked by great sympathy for the shade and coolness of green places and for the stillness of summer waters; or Mrs. Valentine Bromley's Misty Day, remarkable for the excellent drawing of a breaking wave, as well as for a great delicacy of tone. Besides the Marchioness of Waterford, whose brilliant treatment of colour is so well ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

... during the entire evening in conveying the orders to the different regiments. As the day drew to a close, the cannonade slackened on either side, a solitary gun would be heard at intervals, and in the calm stillness around, its booming thunder re-echoed along the valleys of the Sierra; but as the moon rose and night set in, these were no longer heard, and a perfect stillness and tranquillity prevailed around. Even in the trenches, crowded with armed and anxious soldiers, not a whisper ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... and, with the help of the bravest of the women, fixed up rude screens around the dying men. But no screens could shut out from the others their awful groans and cries for the aid that no mortal power could give them. So the long night passed away; first a deathlike stillness behind one screen, and then a sudden silence behind the other, showing that the fierce battle with death was over, and who had been the victor. And, meanwhile, I sat before the flickering fire, with my last patient ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole

... busy noise of doors slamming, no rapid sound of shoes, no passing to and fro of men intent on their daily bread. Pausing for a moment, that he might look round about him and realize the deathlike stillness of the whole, John Grey could just distinguish the heavy breathing of a man, thereby learning that there was a captive in, at any rate, one of those prisons on each side of him. As he drew near to the door of Mr Vavasor's chamber he knew that the ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... reached the appointed hour. Trembling with fear and cold, though muffled up in furs, Paulina and her attendant, with their nuns' veils drawn over their head-dress, sallied forth into the garden. All was profoundly dark, and overspread with the stillness of the grave. The lights within the chapel threw a rich glow through the painted windows; and here and there, from a few scattered casements in the vast pile of St. Agnes, streamed a few weak rays from a taper or a lamp, indicating the trouble of a sick bed, or the peace ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... the old man. The compasses were there, and his nautical instruments were still hanging on the wall, and the fire was nearly burned out. It had been his custom to have supper ready punctually when they returned. There was now a strange and mysterious stillness about the place. Even the fowls and the animals ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams

... find it difficult yet to answer. There is much pleasant novelty, and much real enjoyment of nature's varied beauties. A sense of freedom and a quietude of spirit, born of the stillness that, to people just from the noisy town, seems brooding over all things. Some of the wants, created by our too artificial mode of living in cities, are occasionally felt; but, on the whole, we are gainers, so far, ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur

... light Of the full moon: broad, brimming, bright, The glorious flood went rolling by Its world of waves, while silently The shaggy hills on either side, Watched like huge giants by the tide. From where the savage bishop's tower Obstructs the flood, a sullen roar Broke on the stillness of the night, And the rough waters, yeasty white, Foamed round that whirlpool dread and deep, Where still thy voice is heard to weep, Gisela! maiden most unblest, Thou Jephtha's daughter of the West! Who shall recall the ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler

... broken the stillness since the strangers had arrived, except that of their own voices. They began to wonder if there were no people to inhabit this magnificent city of ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.

... did so because it was haunted by the ghosts of William Barton and Luella Sealy. The house is now standing idle, and is known to the children of the neighborhood as the "haunted house," and many say that, in the night, two white figures are seen walking on the verandah, and that frequently the stillness is broken by the sound of a pistol, and the agonizing shrieks of a woman in the anguish of a ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter

... ancient monastery, a grand cathedral church or minster, full of monuments of former days, and impressing all beholders with its solemn architectural grandeur. Here they conveyed the body of Ethelred and interred it. It was a place of sacred seclusion, where there reigned a solemn stillness and awe, which no Christian hostility would ever have dared to disturb. The sacrilegious paganism of the Danes, however, would have respected it but little, if they had ever found access to it; but they did not. The body of Ethelred ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... the porch with old Jack at her feet when Chad and Dixie came to the gate—her bonnet off, her eyes turned toward the West. The stillness of death lay over the place, and over the strong old face some preternatural sorrow. She did not rise when she saw Chad, she did not speak when he spoke. She turned merely and looked at him with a look of helpless suffering. She knew the question that was on his lips, for she dumbly ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... the couches of these homeless men. All about were huge trees, and in the direction of the river the grass grew higher and then gave place to reeds. The foliage above was so dense that the moon and stars were invisible. There was a deathly stillness in the air. The very loneliness was so appalling that Beverly's poor little heart was in a quiver of dread. Aunt Fanny, who sat near by, had not spoken since leaving the coach, but her ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... Long-haired, bright-eyed maidens living; Light on all things, even as now— God, our Father, it is Thou! Light, O Radiant! thou didst come abroad, To mediate 'twixt our ignorance and God; Forming ever without form; Showing, but thyself unseen; Pouring stillness on the storm; Making life where death had been! If thou, Light, didst cease to be, Death and Chaos soon were out, Weltering o'er the slimy sea, Riding on the whirlwind's rout; And if God did cease to be, O Beloved! ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald

... confessional. Now and again a solitary penitent darkened the light of the candles, as he moved up to the altar rails to read his penance or thanksgiving; or the quick figure of a child darted rapidly past me into the thicker darkness without. Hardly a sound broke the stillness, only now and then there was a moan of sorrow, or some expression of emphasis from the penitents; and the drawing of the slides from time to time made a soft sibilance, as of shuttles, beneath which were woven tapestries of human souls that were fit to ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... Private Bain, lulled to a sense of false security by the stillness of the night, had opened his eyes, which had been closed for purposes of philosophic reflection, to find himself surrounded by four ghostly figures in greatcoats. With creditable presence of mind he jerked his alarm-cord. But, alas! the cord came ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay

... the altar step, the Father's eyes rested on her with a glance that seemed to say, "It is well, my daughter." Then he began the service, while Magdalena knelt in the front row of the women. There was an unusual stillness among the people, for the incident of Magdalena's penance had not been known, and had taken all but Te—filo and the Father by surprise; while the sultry half darkness and the stagnant air seemed to add to the feeling of awe. So ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase

... not a stillness, for the beating of her companion's heart was distinctly audible. Then Cecil spoke again in her ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... of you to write to me. Ah! how I can fancy the Stillness, and the Colour, of your pretty Tenby!—now eight and twenty years since seen! But I can't summon Resolution to go to it: and daily get worse and worse at moving any where, a common Fate as ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald

... the Sabbath day was a holy day, and was the most comprehensive symbol of the Puritan faith. It was what the altar is in the Catholic Church, the holy of holies, about which the whole movement of religious worship gathered. Whatever disturbed the profound stillness of the day was seized upon by the law as sacrilegious; and never, perhaps, has there been a religion which succeeded so completely in investing time with the sacredness which elsewhere had been appropriated ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder

... grew. The splutter of rifle fire still haunted the night. But, for all its breaking of the stillness, the muffled sound of a paddle grew out of the distance. Kars sighed a relief he would not ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

... stood looking at Mr. James. He put out a half-conscious hand to her; she came nearer, while we talked on. Presently she climbed on his knee. I suppose I made a maternal protest. He took no notice, and folded his arm round her. We talked on; and presently the abnormal stillness of Janet recalled her to me and made me look closely through the dark of the room. She was fast asleep, her pale little face on the young man's shoulder, her long hair streaming over his arm. Now Janet was a most independent and critical ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... of the London night, with its rumbling market-wagons and the constant tinkling of cab-bells, so different to the calm, moonlit stillness of the previous night in rural England, I wrote a long explanatory letter to ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux

... and the recipient. Should it appear, then, to any one as a thing of no meaning, it is not therefore conclusive that the Artist has failed. For, if there be but one in a thousand to whose mind it recalls the deep stillness of Night, gradually broken by the awakening stir of Day, with its myriad forms of life emerging into motion, while their lengthened shadows, undistinguished from their objects, seem to people the earth with gigantic beings; then the dim, gray monotony of color transforming them to ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston

... dawning, o'er the waveless ocean, The image of the morning star doth rest; So in this stillness Thou beholdest only Thine image in the waters of ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay

... The utter stillness of the place reassured him; he hoisted up the chute cover, threw it high, and shinned his long body into the chute. It was a steep slide; he held on for an instant, then let go. Blackness gulped him down as the cover snapped ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse

... mats or cushions, on which the Turks sit cross-legged. On one side are musicians, generally Greeks, with mandolins and tambourines, accompanying singers, whose melody consists in vociferation; and the loud and obstreperous concert forms a strong contrast to the stillness and taciturnity of Turkish meetings. On the opposite side are men, generally of a respectable class, some of whom are found here every day, and all day long, dozing under the double influence of coffee and ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... of the second mile the tracks grew every moment more distinct, and the party moved with increased caution. An experienced beater was now sent in advance with only his broad, unsheathed knife for self-protection. Stillness reigned for some time, as the party thus advanced. The animal had scented danger, and, contrary to the usual habits of these creatures on such occasions, instead of retreating farther into the jungle, he came ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... wry, bright-eyed face was unchanged. And Jane, quietly and decently dressed, her calm eyes fixed on him, was—Jane. These two curiously detached themselves against the human background. It was only the sudden stillness of the exhausted applause that brought him to consciousness of his environment; that, and a heaven-sent fellow at the back of the audience ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... distance westward of the line of the camp. His training during the winter in holding a line of march helped him now to maintain his course steadily in one direction. The temperature was still dropping rapidly. Over the woods hung a dead stillness, except for the lonely call of an occasional crow or for the scream of the impudent whiskey-jack. But soon even these became silent. As he surmounted each hill top Cameron took his bearings afresh and anxiously ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor

... came at last when Claude was wakened from sleep by a sense of stillness. He sprang up with a dazed fear that some one had died; but Fanning lay ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... affirmative monosyllable, followed by the hissing of Lord Ashbridge's cigarette end as he dropped it into his coffee cup, answered him, and he perceived that the approaching storm was to be rendered duly impressive by the thundery stillness that preceded it. Then his father rose, and as he passed Michael, who held the door ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson

... by the heat, the ground where the furnaces were still retains the marks of the fire. But to-day there is silence; the sunshine lights up the purple heather and the already yellowing fern; the tall and beautiful larches stand graceful in the stillness. Their lines always flow in pleasant curves; they need no wind to bend them into loveliness of form: so quiet and deserted is the place that the wide highway road is green with vegetation, and the impression of our ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... to her repeated summons. She made her way to the rear of the house, to the barn-yard, thinly tenanted by a few common fowl, and across the yard to a road which skirted its lower extremity and was accessible by an open gate. No human figure was in sight; nothing was visible in the hot stillness but the scattered and ripening crops, over which, in spite of her nervous solicitude, Miss Whittaker cast the glance of a connoisseur. A great uneasiness filled her mind as she measured the rich domain apparently deserted of its young master, and reflected that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... pony-carriage on the dam embankment, gazing silently. A flock of wildfowl had been scared away by their approach, and now not a wing, not an eye was near. At a great distance curlews wailed, only to make the stillness and solitude more exquisite, more profound. The purple of the hills grew deeper and softer, the lake a mere pulseless shimmer through the twilight haze. And then, last touch of magic, the moon swam up—the ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge

... which had threatened to break last night still held off, but the spirit of the weather had changed. It was no longer bright and clear, but sunless, airless, heated, silent—the stillness which seems to presage as much sorrow to man as it heralds tumult to Nature. Leam, however—interpenetrated by her love, which gave what it felt and saw what it brought—always remembered this early ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various

... upland again, I pause reverently as the hush and stillness of twilight come upon the woods. It is the sweetest, ripest hour of the day. And as the Hermit's evening hymn goes up from the deep solitude below me, I experience that serene exaltation of sentiment of which music, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... evening in the Plaza and had retired. The public, after enjoying the music, had partaken of their ices and favorite drinks at La Domenica's and found their way to their homes. The square was now very quiet, the stillness only broken by the music of the fountain mingled with the tread of the two sentinels. The stars looked calmly down from between the rifts of hanging clouds which crowded one another onward as though bound to some important rendezvous, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... lover. How forcibly all this was brought to our minds recently on strolling through the shady walks of Mount Hermon. Under the umbrageous trees, perfumed by roses and lilies, tombs, [239] silent, innumerable tombs on all sides, on marble, the names of friends, kindred, acquaintances, solemn stillness all round us, at our feet the placid course of our majestic flood. There were indeed many friends round us, though invisible, nay, on counting over the slumberers, we found we had more, though not dearer friends, in ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... the stillness, way toward a wooded cape that jutted into the stream a mile distant. All in an instant a fierce eye of fire shot out from behind the cape and sent a long brilliant pathway quivering athwart the dusky water. The coughing grew louder and louder, the glaring eye grew larger and still ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... equally so. As he looked, in truth, there was only one face—a composite mask of what he had done battle with, and overthrown, and would trample implacably under foot. He stared with a conqueror's cold frown at it, and gave an abrupt laugh which started harsh echoes in the stillness of the Board Room. Then he shook off the reverie, and got to his feet. He shivered a little at the ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... The intense stillness within the house, instead of reassuring me, served as a threat. After my experience of the night, it spoke of treachery, not ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott

... the face of a dead child. Dade stooped and tossed a pebble into it as if that stillness troubled him. He took his cigarette from his lips, looked at the glowing tip, and over it at the eager face ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower

... troubled waters. Wrapped in the compassionate darkness she was giving way to the luxury of letting the controlled tears rise to her eyes and the sobs that her white throat ached from suppressing all day were echoing on the stillness when a voice came from the little cot by her bed and the General in disheveled nightshirt and rumpled head rose by her pillow and stood with uncertain feet on his ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess

... range war or something equally thrilling from the scrap of conversation she had heard that she reached the hilltop in what seemed a very few minutes of climbing. The sky was becoming overcast. Already the stars to the west were blotted out, and the absolute stillness of the atmosphere frightened her more than the big, dark wilderness itself. It seemed to her exactly as though the earth was holding its breath and waiting for something terrible to happen. The vague bulk of buildings was still ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower

... astonishment. Here were to be seen a body of men, advancing with too much boldness and confidence to look like supplicants, and led by two men who were not wont to be petitioners and, on the other hand, with so much order and stillness as do not usually accompany rebellion. The Regent received the procession, surrounded by all her counsellors and the Knights of the Fleece. "These noble Netherlanders," thus Brederode respectfully addressed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... alarm, now scurried through the woods, calling and giving the "Coo-ee" call, but not a sound answered them. Birds were flitting about from limb to branch, and the strange stillness of the woods ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis

... jumped up and loudly clapped his hands, which produced a curious effect—a short, sharp little shriek of terror from the busy multitude, followed by absolute stillness, every rat frozen to stone, which lasted for a second or two; then a swift scuttling away in all directions, vanishing with a rustling sound through the dead grass ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson

... went to the door. He trod lightly, but in the stillness of the forest the man heard him, and glanced ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty

... and fairy tales were afloat in the child's active mind. A few minutes later she had gathered the eggs and put them away in the pantry. Then she stepped into the sitting-room, awed by the solemn stillness that enveloped the usually cheerful room. How strange and dark it seemed with all the blinds closed! She groped her way across the floor, and tiptoed through the hall as if she were afraid that the great eight-day ...
— Mildred's Inheritance - Just Her Way; Ann's Own Way • Annie Fellows Johnston

... rajah retired to his apartments, and his officers to their quarters; and although for another hour talking and laughing went on round the little fires in the courtyard, presently these too were hushed, and a profound stillness fell upon Nahdoor. Then, barefooted, the officers from Delhi stole out of their apartment and made for the outer wall. As they had anticipated, they found no one about; beyond a sentry at the lower ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty

... and sinister phase of Paris that Neeland now gazed upon through the misty stillness of early morning. For there was something terrible in the sudden quiet, where the swift and shadowy fury of earliest dawn had passed: and the wrecked buildings sagged like corpses, stark and disembowelled, spilling out their dead intestines indecently ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers

... thousand persons. I was convinced my present indisposition proceeded from the insertion of the variolous matter, and, therefore, anxiously looked for an eruption. On the tenth day I felt a very unpleasant sensation of stillness and heat on each side of my face near my ear, and the fever began to decline. The affection in my face soon terminated in three or four pustules attended with inflammation, but which did not maturate, and I was presently well. "I remain, dear ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... her face a little hightened, the young girl promptly crossed to where the tract hung; and a strange stillness settled over the listeners as her clear voice sounded distinctly down the long room. ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)

... of the pauses indicated, the mass of Shadows throbbed and heaved with emotion, but soon settled again into comparative stillness. Once more the Shadow addressed himself to speak. But suddenly they all looked up, and the king, following their gaze, saw that the aurora had ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald

... morning, some of the lodgers in the great room below remembered having heard sounds in the stillness of the night, which had awakened them from their dreams and disturbed their slumbers. Some maintained it was only the wind howling in the chimney, but others felt sure it was music, and said ...
— Christie's Old Organ - Or, "Home, Sweet Home" • Mrs. O. F. Walton

... bosom stirred with the hope of speedy deliverance, and fear lest untoward circumstances should prevent the captain from executing his plan for her rescue. After a time her attention was attracted by peculiar sounds breaking upon the stillness of the night. These, at first faint and distant, gradually grew nearer and louder, till, trembling, she recognized the yells of the savages, who were returning through the woods rejoicing over the atrocities they had committed. She aroused the women to ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various

... which no mortal could awake her. Sleep in thy marble beauty, poor little Louisa, and perhaps that sad fate may soften the hearts of thy cruel grandparent. Oh not as it has been fulfilled did the dying Evangeline understand the promise made with regard to the little Louisa. Oh how often was the stillness of the night broken by the bitter sobs of the desolate little orphan whose aching heart sought for love in vain. Then can we wonder that when this lonely one, did find one to love, that she should willingly listen to his persuasions in hopes of a happy future, ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings

... is, there were only the sounds that seem to make a part of stillness. The birds twittered, the locusts shrilled, and the tall clock in the entry ticked. Hannah Maria was not afraid, but she was lonesome. Once in a while she looked around and sighed. She placed a ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins

... on guard the larger part of the night, nobody came to disturb them, and the only sound that broke the stillness was that of the water as it tumbled over ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer

... very tired. The fact that the camp was not to be left unguarded while they slept seemed to reassure Dolly, and she and Bessie were soon sound asleep. Only the noise of the light surf disturbed the intense stillness, and that had a soothing, musical quality that made it far from a disturbance ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the March - Bessie King's Test of Friendship • Jane L. Stewart

... moment, all people held their breath; And through the crowded Forum was stillness as of death; And in another moment brake forth from one and all A cry as if the Volscians were coming o'er the wall. Some with averted faces shrieking fled home amain; Some ran to call a leech; and some ran to lift the slain; Some felt her ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... see any reason for speaking. There were thirty seconds of deep silence in which he felt that all were bending to hearken to his words of counsel The professor huskily broke the stillness. Well * * * what are we ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane

... in silence, and in the whole of it there was no light except that given by a lantern that hung burning in the middle of the gateway. This strange stillness, and the thoughts, always present to our knight's mind, of the incidents described at every turn in the books that were the cause of his misfortune, conjured up to his imagination as extraordinary a delusion as can well be conceived, which was that he fancied himself to have ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... green, I went to the city of Sor/, two (Danish) miles from Slagelse, and which lies in the midst of woods, surrounded by lakes. Here is an academy for the nobility, founded by the poet Holberg. Everything lay in a conventual stillness. I visited here the poet Ingemann, who had just married, and who held a situation as teacher; he had already received me kindly in Copenhagen; but here his reception of me was still more kind. His life in this place seemed to me like a beautiful story; flowers and vines twined around ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen

... for the face, behold the low-lands And blasted cotton-wood trees where we empty Into the larger stream! But here by the mill the castled clouds Mocked themselves in the dizzy water; And over its agate floor at night The flame of the moon ran under my eyes Amid a forest stillness broken By a flute in a hut on the hill. At last when I came to lie in bed Weak and in pain, with the dreams about me, The soul of the river had entered my soul, And the gathered power of my soul was moving So swiftly it seemed to be at rest Under cities of cloud and under ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters

... I saw the small town of Laplau in the plain away to the left, but my path did not lie through it, for I preferred the wilder country towards La Page. When I passed a little lake in a hollow, half surrounded by firs, the slanting rays were diving into its liquid stillness, over which the motionless trees ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... went out and dropped into the water. He said nothing. Neither did Peter. The man in the boat did not stir. So went by a second of profound stillness. Then ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... The languid stillness of the garden after the noise and stir of the streets tempted me to stay longer than I had intended, and when I resumed my journey I thought the rest must have done me good, but before I reached the Holborn Viaduct fatigue was ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... strength it was a terrible creature which was lying stretched before us. It was not a pure bloodhound and it was not a pure mastiff; but it appeared to be a combination of the two—gaunt, savage, and as large as a small lioness. Even now, in the stillness of death, the huge jaws seemed to be dripping with a bluish flame and the small, deep-set, cruel eyes were ringed with fire. I placed my hand upon the glowing muzzle, and as I held them up my own fingers smouldered ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle

... tragic obstinacy with which their devotees cling to their vain gods,—a rebuke to us with a more enlightened faith. The silence, which was the only answer, is put in strong contrast with the continuous roar of the four hundred and fifty,—so long and loud the hoarse cries here, so unmoved the stillness in the careless heaven. That, too, is typical of heathenism, which is sad with unavailing cries and ignorant of answers to any. As the day wore on, and the voices grew hoarse, and hope declined, more violent bodily exercise was resorted to, and the shouting crowd danced ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... and her nymphs, and the many strange occurrences which may be read with profit and delight in the history of the prince's adventures, she forbore to tell him as yet, as judging that he would hear them with greater pleasure from the lips of his son, when he should have him in an hour of stillness and safety, when their work should be done, and none of their enemies ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... was closed; a serene stillness reigned; and the chaste Queen of Night with her silver crescent faintly illuminated the hemisphere. The mind of Montraville was hushed into composure by the serenity of the surrounding objects. "I will think on her ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson

... that the cry would not be repeated the following evening, but to his great disappointment it was heard again and nearer the house than before. On each succeeding evening according to Tines Kendricks the call of the bird came clearly through the evening's stillness and each time he noticed that the cry came from a spot nearer the home until at last the bird seemed perched beneath the wide veranda and early on the morning following, a very highly excited redbird darted from tree to tree on the front lawn. The redbird continued ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration

... confident in the protecting power of his master, pulls off all his clothes save his tunica (whatever that may be—coat, kilt, or leathern shirt), and takes to the water. The monster, who is reposing deep down in the stillness of the profoundest pool, hears the stir of the water above, and is seen to rise with a splash on the surface, and make with distended jaws for the swimmer. The saint, of course, orders the beast back just at the moment when all seemed over, and is instantly ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... dozen cardinals and an hundred bishops, fell its victims. Of late years, there has fortunately been no appearance of this horrible disease. It was at the time imputed to an extraordinary drought, attended by an uncommon heat and stillness of the air, which, being without motion, and confined as it were in a narrow channel, became putrid and pestilential. The vent de bize is perhaps a greater blessing to this country ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney

... Yet as they rode ever onwards and drew near to the infected districts, the sunshine became obscured by a thick haze, the fresh wind which had hitherto blown in their faces dropped, and the air was still with a deadly stillness new to both of them — a stillness which was oppressive and which weighed upon their spirits like lead. The first intimation they had of the pestilence itself was the sight of the carcasses of several beasts lying dead in their pasture, and, what was more terrible ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green

... o'clock, her master and his posse surrounded the house, and lay in wait until the stillness of the midnight hour was thought most favorable to pounce upon their prey and hurry them to the river, where they had a boat in waiting for them. Then their force was increased, and an entrance demanded. ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland

... lowland between the churchyard and the hill, with its crown of ruins, left their sharp summits distinct against the sky. But the shadows coiled dull and heavy round the evergreens that skirted the churchyard, so that their outline was vague and confused; and there was a depth in that lonely stillness, broken only when the thrush flew out from the lower bushes, and the thick laurel-leaves stirred reluctantly, and again were rigid in repose. There is a certain melancholy in the evenings of early ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... sometime in the end those three Shall perish and their hands be still, And with the master's touch shall flee Their incommunicable skill. A stillness absolute as death Along the slacking wheels shall lie, And, flagging at a single breath, The fires shall moulder out and die. The roar shall vanish at its height, And over that tremendous town The silence of eternal night Shall gather close and ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman

... the engines had fallen to quarter speed, leaving an uncanny stillness throughout the ship. Silently we slipped between the long piers, drew up on the waterside town, seized the buoy, and came to rest. All around us lay other ships of all sizes, motionless on the inky water. The reflections ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... threatening cloud, and before the moon rose the last look I had taken at the hills which hemmed us in on every side had shown them seemingly hidden by driving mists, which travelled at an astonishing pace, betokening a wild wind up there, while the valley lay in a hot stillness. The light of the moon was in the sky long before she rose above the mountains, and I could see that the wild work up there was growing wilder every minute. The wind was descending, too, from its lofty ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray

... of gray dawn at last and he had never moved from his seat. A fine, drizzling rain had set in. Clouds of mist brushed against the walls of his cabin. In the stillness he could hear the big trees shedding their drops from leaf to bending leaf and the musical tinkle of these as they took their last leap into little pools below. With the chilliness which misery brings he got up ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen

... owning to herself that she had fallen away from her love. For my own part, I need no better proof of the fact than the dull persistency with which she denied it. What accusing voice broke out of the stillness? Jack's nobleness and magnanimity were the hourly theme of her clogged fancy. Again and again she declared to herself that she was unworthy of them, but that, if he would only recover and come home, she would be his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... miss the throbbings of his heart, Whilst her own pulse so wanton'd in its joy; She could not guess he struggled to depart, And when he strove no more, the hapless boy! She read his mortal stillness for content, Feeling no fear where ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... village, somewhat overweighted with the public buildings and those of the college. It would light up into life and vivacity during the season of politics and society, and then relapse again into the country stillness. Outside of Williamsburg and Norfolk there were various points which passed in the catalogue and on the map for towns, but which in reality were merely the shadows of a name. The most populous consisted of a few houses inhabited by storekeepers and traders, ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge

... for, in mimicry of the ocean, it is seldom that those little lakes are so totally tranquil as not to possess a slight heaving and setting on their shores. Suddenly all the voices ceased, and a death like stillness pervaded the spot: A quietness as profound as if all lay in the repose of inanimate life. By this time, the canoe had drifted so far as to render nothing visible to Deerslayer, as he lay on his back, except the blue void of space, and a few of those brighter rays that ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... silence and stillness of death were sacredly and solemnly imposed upon all. When baby was awake, the clatter provoked for its infantship's pleasure was noisome ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"

... also, then realised that the fight had suddenly slackened, and that the sound of panting breaths had replaced the clash of swords. Before he could ask himself what this meant, Rukn-ud-din's voice broke the stillness. ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier

... Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, "Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store, Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore— Till the dirges of his Hope the melancholy ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe

... however, the enemy recovered from their panic; and, having received large re-enforcements, advanced again, under Sykia Wongee, third minister of state. The jungles were animated with living masses, and their tumultuous preparations for battle contrasted strangely with the stillness and quiet of the British lines. Our troops at this time had been much diminished by sickness and death; but they were recruited by the eighty-ninth British regiment from Madras, and the detachments that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... once this stillness was broken by a sound of women's geta (1) approaching—kara-kon, kara-kon;—and the sound drew nearer and nearer, quickly, till it reached the live-hedge surrounding the garden. Then Shinzaburoe, feeling curious, stood on tiptoe, so as to look ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... for minutes, and his heart grew bold in the stillness. No girl could be still who ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon

... them in the court as instruments of sorcery, and a few garments it had likewise contained lay scattered about the room. Gaston hastened to the side of his beloved Knight, almost dreading, from his silence and stillness, to find him expiring. But he was only faint and exhausted, and when Gaston raised him, and began to examine his wounds, he looked up, saying, "Thanks, thanks, kind Gaston! but waste not your time here. ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge

... which the cottage stood, from a height in front of him, a tiny church—one of the smallest and loneliest in the fells—sent forth a summoning bell. The sound, with all its weight of association, sank and echoed through the morning stillness; the fells repeated it, a voice of worship toward God, ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... happens once in ten years. Good God, listen!" Like a savage beast the wind seemed to skulk, and to crouch.... It sprang forward and seized the house and shook it. Then it died away, and there was stillness for ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... sounds which broke the stillness of those hours or interrupted the sighing of the winds were not pleasant. A great owl ensconced in a tree not far away began and maintained for a long time its monotonous "hoot-a-hoot a-hoo," while away in the distant forest gloom, rising at times ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young

... voice sounded over-strong for the stillness of evening. The shadows lengthened. My spirits sank lower and lower, with the sun. I was a naturally cheerful person, but always, towards sunset, I had a vague sense of melancholy: I seemed always to have grown weaker; morbid misgivings would come to me. On this ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm

... warm and sultry. The town is well nigh empty. When all the caravans are gone, Ghat will sink into the stillness of death. This is the case with all the Saharan towns, which are blad-es-souk, "a mart of trade," taking place periodically. The Governor finds the trade in slaves so thriving, slaves having fetched a good price this year, that he is sending this morning two of his ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... Austrian, must be assigned a place of honor in this group. A more incisive contrast to the general turbulence of the forties could hardly be imagined than is found in the nature descriptions and idyls of this quietist, who "from the madding crowd's ignoble strife" sought refuge in the stillness of the country and among people to whom such outward peace is a physical necessity. His feeling for nature, especially for her minutest and seemingly most insignificant phenomena, is closely akin to religion; there is an infinite charm ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... of moss, thicker and softer than a deep-piled rug, they sat down. Not a sound broke the stillness but the gurgle of water and the soft soughing of the wind through great tree tops. The minister bared his head, as if aware of the holy spirit of solitude in the place. Neither spoke nor stirred; but the girl's heart beat loud—so loud she feared he might hear, and drew her little cape ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley

... had dropped quickly to stillness. You could scarcely catch the sound of talk. Our caboose was clicking comfortably westward, rail after rail, mile upon mile, while night was beginning to rise from earth into the ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister

... village. It seemed to be deserted in the slumbrous stillness. There was not so much as a dog ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... maintain her cause. "Much resort of people came daily to her."[537] The vexatious dispute upon her title had been dropped, from an inability to press it; and it seemed as if life had become at least endurable to her, if it never could be more. But the repose was but the stillness of evening as night is hastening down. The royal officers of the household were not admitted into her presence; the queen lived wholly among her own friends and her own people; she sank unperceived; and so effectually had she withdrawn from the observation of those whom she desired to exclude, that ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... noise and horrid riots were at times so boisterous, that frequently we could not, though so near them, distinguish a word the King and Queen said; and yet, whenever the leaders of these organized ruffians spoke or threatened, the most respectful stillness instantly prevailed. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... some clear, still morning in March, while the metallic ring and tension of winter are still in the earth and air, the silence is suddenly broken by long, resonant hammering upon a dry limb or stub. It is Downy beating a reveille to spring. In the utter stillness and amid the rigid forms we listen with pleasure; and, as it comes to my ear oftener at this season than at any other, I freely exonerate the author of it from the imputation of any gastronomic motives, and credit him with a genuine ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... waited. In about five minutes a tiny, timid squeak broke the stillness, then a second a trifle louder, then one away under my feet in some subterranean passage. Hardly daring to breathe, I waited and watched. Finally the chorus became as loud as before, and I caught sight of one of the singers only about ten yards away, head ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... Its flow is that of a river over sands of gold, its solemn monotone broken now and then by staccato plaints, and the tender gold of its shining waters dimmed by dark shadows, as rock beneath or tree above assails the gentle stillness of its onward flow. Only that which comes from the heart goes again to the heart. We find a new and delicious personality, a simple Greek naturalness, in this exquisite dirge that scarcely owns the 'blasphemy of grief,' that are wanted ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... the opening of the door at the stair-way stirred them did they notice that the music and dancing below had ceased. The door was instantly closed again after a slight sound of scuffling, and in the moment of stillness that followed, ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.

... physical—if I may use such an expression: it will not surely bear a comparison with the murdering scene in Macbeth, where the exhibition of various passions—the irresolution of Macbeth, the bold determination of his wife, the deep suspense, the rage of the elements without, the horrid stillness within, and the secret feeling of that infernal agency which is ever present to the fancy, even when not visible on the scene—throw a rich coloring of poetry over the whole, which does not take from "the present horror of the time," ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... the autumn had come round. Its quiet days, its sombre nights, filled my soul with melancholy. The lonesome moan of the sea and the waiting stillness of the woods were just the same a year ago; but Laura was dead, and Nature grieved me. Yet none of us are in one mood long, and at this very time there were intervals when I found something delicious in life, either in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... making the woods ring far and wide. I concluded that he laughed in derision of my efforts, confident of his own resources. Though the sky was by this time overcast, the pond was so smooth that I could see where he broke the surface when I did not hear him. His white breast, the stillness of the air, and the smoothness of the water were all against him. At length, having come up fifty rods off, he uttered one of those prolonged howls, as if calling on the god of loons to aid him, and immediately ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... maiden spoke of the Land Oversea to which she had summoned her lover, and as she spoke a dreamy stillness fell on all things, nor did a horse shake his bit nor a hound bay, nor the least breath of wind stir in the forest trees till she had made an end. And what she said seemed sweeter and more wonderful as she spoke it than ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston

... home he was glad to have escaped the great mystery of life, then distressingly angry at the waitress, and desolate in the desert stillness of his room. ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis

... to hasten its progress. I shook it impatiently to make it go faster. The great empty church looked cold and lonely. The little group of spectators only added to the loneliness of the scene. An occasional cough resounded harshly amid the universal stillness. The sibilant sounds of whispers struck sharply ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... before them: On the left the low mouth of a cave, and across the valley, on a slope of the Camel's Back, a faint cloud of smoke, showing where the outlaws had their lair. As the rescuers came in sight the firing ceased and an ominous stillness hung over ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... upward unceasingly, bring us something of hope and faith; the sight of them cheers us. A land without trees is depressing and gloomy. As Ruskin says, "The sea wave, with all its beneficence, is yet devouring and terrible; but the silent wave of the blue mountain is lifted towards Heaven in a stillness of perpetual mercy; and while the one surges unfathomable in its darkness, the other is unshaken in ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell

... a raft; you'd see the axe flash and come down —you don't hear nothing; you see that axe go up again, and by the time it's above the man's head then you hear the K'CHUNK!—it had took all that time to come over the water. So we would put in the day, lazying around, listening to the stillness. Once there was a thick fog, and the rafts and things that went by was beating tin pans so the steamboats wouldn't run over them. A scow or a raft went by so close we could hear them talking and cussing and laughing—heard ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Mohawks were lying in the same stillness. Stern experience had taught them to take rest, and make the most of it when they could find it. Only the watchful sentinels at the rim of the valley and beyond stirred, and their moccasins made no sound as they slid among the bushes, looking ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler

... for a moment or two, irresolute, his ear, by this time attuned to the stillness, caught the faint but distinct lap and trickle of water. He was hot and thirsty, and turned instinctively in that direction. A very few paces brought him to a fallen tree; at the foot of its upturned roots gurgled the spring whose upwelling stream had slowly but persistently ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte

... truest beginning of all blessings, I had been taught the perfect meaning of Peace, in thought, act, and word. Angry words, hurry, and disorder I never knew in the stillness of my childhood's home. Next to this quite priceless gift of Peace, I had received the perfect understanding of the natures of Obedience and Faith. I obeyed word or lifted finger of father or mother, simply as a ship her helm; not only without idea of resistance, but ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... obscured by mists," Trelawney writes, "it was oppressively sultry. There was not a breath of air in the harbor. The heaviness of the atmosphere and an unwonted stillness benumbed my senses. I went down into the cabin and sank into a slumber. I was roused up by a noise overhead, and went on deck. The men were getting up another chain-cable to let go another anchor. There was a general stir amongst the shipping; shifting ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... the wind, while one breathed twice. Then there fell a sudden rustling on the branches; and swift along the river's brim, the sharp, plaintive cry of monkeys, beating down through all the startled stillness with their wailing voices. These turned, hurrying away in one direction, with fearless leaps and clinging hands and ceaseless chattering. Their cries at intervals, bringing answers, until the air was a-din with monkeys, leaping along the highways of ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... were in the midst of the lagoon upon their employment; the cook, a boy of ten, was over his pots in the camp. Thus were all souls accounted for except a single native who accompanied Donat into the wood in quest of sea-fowls' eggs. In a moment, out of the stillness, came the sound of the fall of a great tree. Donat would have passed on to find the cause. 'No,' cried his companion, 'that was no tree. It was something NOT RIGHT. Let us go back to camp.' Next Sunday the divers were turned on, all that part of the ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... In the stillness of life, talent is formed; but in the storm and stress of adverse circumstances character is fashioned. Had Blanche returned to London she might have become a society lady; but here she was a consoler, ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick

... while before us, nestling in a grove of olive trees, lay the pretty village, with its white picturesque houses and narrow streets shaded by gaily striped awnings. It was like a transformation-scene, this sudden change from winter, with its grey sky and cold icy blast, to the sunny stillness and repose of an English summer's day. We rode through the bazaar, a busy and crowded one for so small a place. A large trade is done here in olives. Most of it is in the hands of two enterprising Frenchmen, who started business some years ago, and ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt

... a very big person, however, who was causing all the rustling, and crunching of branches, and general commotion, which now absorbed Griselda's attention. She sat watching for another minute in perfect stillness, afraid of startling by the slightest movement the squirrel or rabbit or creature of some kind which she expected to see. At last—was that a squirrel or rabbit—that rosy, round face, with shaggy, fair hair falling over the eager blue eyes, and a ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth

... had heard from the midst of the forest, like the rumble of a storm or the far-off trembling of a furnace, had quite ceased. Not a bird was hopping on the grass, or visible on bough or in the sky. Not a living creature was in sight—never was stillness more complete, ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... His feeble frame had been fearfully over-tasked, and so the heat of the fire and the stillness of the room, both acting upon his exhausted nature, sent him also to sleep, and ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... reached the end of my 'beat', and had stopped to relight my pipe, when drama broke loose with the swift unexpectedness which was characteristic of the place. The stillness of the night was split by a sound which I could have heard in a gale and recognized among a hundred conflicting noises. It was a scream, a shrill, piercing squeal that did not rise to a crescendo, but started at its maximum and held the note; a squeal which ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse

... daylight broke on the morning of the 5th, the Americans attacked the Alamo. The black flag waved above them; the city itself had the stillness of death; but for hours the dull roar and the clamorous tumult went on without cessation. The Senora lay upon her bed motionless, with hands tightly locked. She had exhausted feeling, and was passive. Antonia and Isabel wandered from window to window, hoping to see some ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr

... hard and pale blue evening sky The mountain's new-dropped summer snow is clear Glistening in steadfast stillness: like transcendent Clean pain sending on us a ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)

... turned in at the iron gate, the music of the stream that ran through the glen rose refreshingly through the August stillness. She wished Nick were with her to ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... terrible stillness of that solitary place he felt suddenly as though a voice had called to him. All the hideous fantastic tales of murder which he had read or heard seemed to take visible shape in the person of the loathly ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... keyed up to its highest tension, he crouched there against the safe. Again and again his fingers rubbed over the rough carpet, and again the sweat beads oozed out upon his forehead with the strain—and then there came through the stillness a long-drawn intake of his breath. The handle swung the bolt with a low metallic thud—the safe ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... were endowed in our early years. The child who dreads to be alone, and asserts that he hears sounds, or perceives objects, is not expressing merely a vague apprehension of some unknown danger, but often asserts a literal truth. The sounds have been heard; in the stillness of its nursery the little one has listened to what seemed a voice calling it; or, in the dark, phantasms have risen before its eyes, and the agony of terror with which it calls for a light, or begs for its mother's presence, betrays an impression far too real to be explained ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.

... hand; there is not a sound—not a sigh—not a whisper—not a buzz, or a whir of wings, or distant pipe of bird—not even a sob from the lost souls that doubtless people that dead air. And so the occasional sneezing of the resting mules, and the champing of the bits, grate harshly on the grim stillness, not dissipating the spell but accenting it and making one feel more lonesome and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... around a granite sarcophagus, where they deposited and arranged the customary Sabbath arkja of white flowers, concluded their loving tribute to the sleeper, and left the churchyard; and save the continual challenge of the thunder drawing nearer, the perfect stillness ominous and dread, which always precedes a violent storm, seemed brooding in fearful augury above the home of ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... refreshments—fruits in natural state, fruits candied, sweetened bread, sherbet, wine and water. A chief followed them, and, with much humility of manner, led the Prince to a seat at the table, and invited him to help himself. The guest was then left alone; and while he ate and drank he wondered at the stillness prevalent; the ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... more beautiful. Each day they differ from all the rest. Such yellows and purples! Such violet shadows on the golden water! Such a marvellously sudden sinking of the sun in a crimson flame behind the flat brown hills! And then the stillness of the Nile in the opal aftermath! Those sunsets are something to carry in the memory forever ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell

... Letheby's confessional. Now and again a solitary penitent darkened the light of the candles, as he moved up to the altar rails to read his penance or thanksgiving; or the quick figure of a child darted rapidly past me into the thicker darkness without. Hardly a sound broke the stillness, only now and then there was a moan of sorrow, or some expression of emphasis from the penitents; and the drawing of the slides from time to time made a soft sibilance, as of shuttles, beneath which were woven tapestries of human souls ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... herself from her limp stillness. "Maybe you didn't take notice," she said sharply, "that usually when folks was kind, and tried to make those dreadful camps a little decenter, why, it was Christian folks. There wouldn't hardly anything else make 'em treat that ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means

... tore the peaceful stillness of the night, and in one second the sleeping house was transformed from a place of rest and quiet to the semblance of ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest

... backwards and forwards, in the ceiling, till they seemed to pertain to the world of spirits. The snoring of the men on the relief guard was like the groans of a dying man, the tread of those on duty like the march of a mighty army. Then would come intense stillness, suddenly broken by a volley from the enemy sounding appallingly near—in reality about a mile off—and provoked, doubtless, by some very innocent cause. Many of these volleys were often fired during the night, sometimes for ten minutes together, at other ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson

... this clever fellow—do you know, sir, his name was Verdt too?—encouraging, helping, goading these poor people on. Then the last night—how the miserable rabbits of creatures kept huddled together, shivering in the dark, till the hour arrived! and then the death-like stillness they found outside; and the wild wonder and fear of it; and the old men and the women crying like children to find themselves in the free air again. Marie Falevitch—that was my sister-in-law—she kissed ...
— Sunrise • William Black

... peeping out, and the little birds had sung their evening hymns and were hushed into stillness, as the children got into the stage, the strong horses of which toiled up the short but steep ascent, and they soon arrived at their summer home. "Oh, what a beautiful cottage!" exclaimed Harry, and George, and Clara; "it seems covered with roses; ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... evidently absorbed in that occupation—a very unusual one with youth on horseback—that "chewing of the cud of sweet and bitter thought"—which testifies for premature troubles and still gnawing anxieties of soul. His thoughts were seemingly in full unison with the almost grave-like stillness and solemn hush of everything around him. His spirit appeared to yield itself up entirely to the mournful barrenness and uninviting associations, from which all but himself, birds and beasts, and the very insects, seemed utterly to have departed. The faint hum of ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... another grew weary, and towards midnight only a few intermittent notes broke the stillness. Soon all was silent as the grave, save for the occasional cry of some animal prowling in search ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis

... enough, and now and then the voice of a bird was heard, and from the woodland pastures far-away the tinkle of sheep-bells fell pleasantly on the ear. But these sounds in no way jarred on the Sabbath stillness; and as Christie followed her sister along the narrow path that led them by a near way across the fields to the half-mile corner where the road took a sudden turn to the right, a strange feeling of peace stole over her. The burden of vexing and discontented thoughts, that too frequently weighed ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson

... life That but an instant off stirred the warm air With murmurs multifarious, and the waves Of great humanity, sunk silenced there, With stillness so supreme, that pulses beat More quickly from the contrast, and the soul Hearkened to listen, humbled and subdued As when the Saviour uttered 'Peace, be still.' The tardy laborer, walled within the town, Brought the uplifted hammer ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... unearthly stillness of the place, the low whispers of the women, the array of colossal figures with sphinx-like faces set to the sea, and the unutterable air of sadness that enwrapped the whole scene, overawed even the unimaginative mind of the rough whaling captain, and he experienced a curious ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke

... corridor that communicated with the entrance-hall. This shop I turned into a rude study for scientific experiments, in which I generally spent some early hours of the morning, before my visiting patients began to arrive. I enjoyed the stillness of its separation from the rest of the house; I enjoyed the glimpse of the great chestnut-trees, which overtopped the wall of the school-garden; I enjoyed the ease with which, by opening the glazed sash-door, I could get out, if disposed ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... other woman in this grand Republic, have a duty to the State that must not be ignored. In the home, and in the church, most women acknowledge they have duties—but as to the State they hesitate. Oh, if they would but "gather into the stillness," as the Friends say, and listen reverently to the voice within, I think they would often hear the solemn utterance, "These ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone." Every woman who has tried to do her whole duty in the family, tried faithfully ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... trees; little streams murmured here and there; and the only sound which disturbed the repose of the forest was the occasional screech of a parrot and the occasional chatter of monkeys. The first time Freddie heard the sudden scream of a parrot in the stillness he was thoroughly alarmed, but when he learned what it was, and saw the flash of the bird's plumage between the trees, he forgot all about his danger, and for the rest of the day he gave himself up to the pleasure ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen

... began to scratch for his breakfast. But he had not eaten a single kernel when a terrible roar broke the early morning stillness. And there was a sound as of ...
— The Tale of Old Mr. Crow • Arthur Scott Bailey

... heavy dew. All was very quiet, but after a few moments Jim began to listen. He had lived in the wilds, his senses were keen, and sometimes he received unconsciously impressions of minute noises. Although the stillness was only broken by the turmoil of the river far down in the valley, he imagined it was not for nothing ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss

... out his revolver, which he always carried strapped to his belt, and discharged the six chambers, waiting for half a minute between each shot, and listening intently for an answer to his signal. None came. The stillness of the wood was unbroken, and Frank felt that he must have wandered far indeed from his starting place, and that he was completely lost. His first impulse was to start off instantly at the top of his speed, but a moment's thought convinced him that this would be useless. He had ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty

... carpet of moss, thicker and softer than a deep-piled rug, they sat down. Not a sound broke the stillness but the gurgle of water and the soft soughing of the wind through great tree tops. The minister bared his head, as if aware of the holy spirit of solitude in the place. Neither spoke nor stirred; but the girl's heart beat loud—so loud she feared he might hear, and ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley

... on the ground, found himself standing bolt upright as if he had been propelled to that position by a spring. The most unearthly howls he had ever heard broke upon the mountain stillness. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin

... impromptu meal, but were still at the table, thoroughly enjoying themselves, half forgetful of the awesome figure in the next room, when out of the weird stillness came a sudden cry, and a dull thud, as of some body falling against ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... and we waited in silence; while our enemies, having lighted a large fire, cooked their victuals, and though we could not hear the import of their words, it was evident that they considered the post as in their power. Half of them, however, laid down to sleep, and towards midnight the stillness was uninterrupted by any sound, whilst their half-burnt logs ceased to throw up their bright flames. Knowing how busy we should be in the morning, I thought that till then I could not do better than refresh myself by a few hours' ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... One day a monster guava, kept cool under moist leaves, greeted her eyes; the next, a brimming hatful of the tart imbu. If fruit failed, there was some wondrous toy of fingered clay or carved wood, or, perhaps, merely a glimpse of some furry little animal drawn to Lewis's knee by the power of vast stillness. ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain

... you thought the distance was. Two miles is about what I had estimated. We can't say very exactly, for sound is likely to travel far in this still air. But let us make a liberal allowance for the stillness. I think we are safe in saying that the sound comes from a point not more than four miles distant from this island. Now, the next question is, from what direction does ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... divest themselves wholly of passion and emotion and to educate a mind unmoved by its environment, so that, in the storm and stress of battle, the bushi remains as calm and as self-possessed as in the quietude of the council chamber or the sacred stillness of the cloister. The crown of all his qualities was self-respect. He rated himself too high to descend to petty quarrels, or to make the acquisition of rank his purpose, or to have ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... right had been driven. Bee picketed the field with his cavalry, his forage wagons were ordered up from the mill stream, and it was hoped that water for his two regiments could be found in the wells and cisterns of the village. Sounds of retreat could be heard in the stillness of the night. Parties were sent on the field to care for the wounded, and Bee was ordered to take up the pursuit toward Grand Ecore at dawn, to be followed by the horse from the mill stream as soon as water and forage had ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor

... From afar, through the stillness that lay along the south road, came the popping of rifles; and then all was still. Then came the sounds of hoofs, and then a riderless ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read

... the threshold; and if they saw Death passing the window, they were not to utter a cry of terror but to keep still. Well, for some days his orders were obeyed. Not a living soul, not an animal, stirred abroad. All without was solitude, all within was silence. Encouraged by the universal stillness Death emerged from his lair, and his brother was just about to catch him, when some children, who had ventured out to herd their goats, saw Death and cried out. Death's good brother rushed to the spot and asked them why they had cried out. They said, "Because we saw Death." ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... of the World, give answer! They are whimpering to and fro— And what should they know of England who only England know?— The poor little street-bred people that vapour and fume and brag, They are lifting their heads in the stillness to yelp at the ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... and yet as long as I live I will never forget it,—the shining of the strange lights, the blackness all round, the kneeling figure with all the whiteness of the light concentrated on its white venerable head and uplifted hands. A strange solemn stillness seemed to close all round us. By intervals a single syllable, "Lord! Lord!" came from the old minister's lips. He saw none of us, nor thought of us. I never knew how long we stood, like sentinels guarding ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant

... not gone at once to Lockhaven; they spent a fortnight in wandering about through the mountains on horseback. The sweet June weather, the crystal freshness of the air, and the melodious stillness of the woods and fields wrapped those first heavenly days of entire possession in a mist of joy. Afterwards, John Ward felt that it had blinded the eyes of his soul, and drifted between him and his highest duty; he had not been able to turn away from the gladness of living in her presence ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland

... falls, is a more rapid, unequal stream than it is above them. There are places where the river flows in the quiet stillness of deep water, but many shoals and rapids occur; and at that distant day, when everything was in its natural state, some of the passes were not altogether without hazard. Very little exertion was required on the part of those ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... princess, "he is very unfortunate; it would be a real work of charity to deliver him from the little life he has, and, when I think properly over the matter, I am of opinion that it will be necessary to do away with him in all stillness!" ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen

... startled by a very audible but faint whisper, which comes from our friend below, asking us to declare our present sensations. We reply in the same faint whisper; and are immediately apprised of its safe arrival by another. One hundred and eighty feet separate the parties. In the stillness of that half-lit cavern, not only were our faintest whisperings conveyed, but we could hear each other breathe! This was a place to come ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... with a glance at him which took in the dust, and the stains of salt-water on his clothes, the fatigue he sought to conceal by a rigid stillness, and the tension that was left by the dangers he had ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman

... seven o'clock, and the baker at nine,—weary of hearing the shrill voice of Mrs. Walker, (below stairs,) of whom mamma hired her room. Still Floy never complained; but sometimes when she could bear the monotonous, dull stillness no longer, she would slide her little hand round her mamma's waist, and say, "Please, Mamma, put up that ugly pen, and take me on ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern

... "that was simple. You went out to reconnoitre, and, hearing in the stillness, words and a noise like a passage of swords, I became anxious about you. Under this impulse I opened the front door and stepped out a few yards when a Highland plaid fell round my head, silencing me effectually before I could shout an alarm, and I was ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne

... of the "banquet-hall deserted;" the consciousness that the hour of grandeur had passed away. There was nothing to break the stillness but Mrs. Applebite counting up the spoons, and Mrs. Waddledot ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various

... dropped on the pine-needles of the forest floor. The spring lay between them. He felt, as she did not, the charm of the stillness. He wanted to find words in which to put his desire for expression. She broke into his mood ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... kept them waiting a bit. But at last, just at noon, when the mistress of the house had warranted him to sing, the little feathered exile began as it were to tune his pipes. The savage men gathered round the cage that moment, and amid a dead stillness the bird uttered some very uncertain chirps, but after a while he seemed to revive his memories, and call his ancient cadences back him to one by one, and string ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... woman—attributes which of themselves almost compelled belief. When she reached the most telling passages, instead of adding exaggerated action and sound, Ethelberta would lapse to a whisper and a sustained stillness, which were more striking than gesticulation. All that could be done by art was there, and if inspiration was ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... of self is the only condition under which the quantity and quality of the Art-impulse may be determined. It is only when a man stands face to face with himself, in the stillness of his own inner world, that his possibilities become apparent; and it is only when conscious of these, and inspired by a just sense of their dignity, that he can achieve that which shall be genuine success. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various

... wanderer. The inhospitable saurian dives with embarrassing suddenness and dips the airy visitor into the "rank water." The butterfly finds no charm in the gloomy place and flies away, which less ethereal wanderers might likewise be fain to do. Now and then the stillness that reigned over that home of malign things was broken by the sound of a boat-horn on a lumber raft ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett

... at the spacious proportion of the architecture and thought of the hopes and imaginations she had allowed to centre upon this place. It was to have been a glowing home of happy people, and over it all brooded the chill stillness of rules and regulations and methodical suppressions and tactful discouragement. It was an Institution, it had the empty orderliness of an Institution, Mrs. Pembrose had just called it an Institution, and so Susan Burnet ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... freedom, the absolute grace was marvellous, but the uncanny words and the girl's apparent seriousness gave a touch of unreality to the scene. Presently, from sheer inability to further control himself, the looker-on gave a laugh that rent the stillness of the afternoon ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock

... the stars came out. The moon rose brilliantly in the cloudless sky. The soldiers moved with noiseless footsteps, and spoke in subdued tones. The rumbling of wagons and the occasional boom of a distant gun alone disturbed the stillness of ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... darkness spread over everything save the sky. Not a creature on the road, not a creature on the common, not even the lame donkey. Incredibly distant the faint sound of a railway whistle intensified the stillness. Septimus's own footsteps on the crisp grass rang loud in his ears. Yet both stillness and darkness felt companionable, in harmony with the starlit dimness of the man's mind. His soul was having its adventure while mystery ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke

... the afternoon of March 19. Beyond the strange stillness of the immediate vicinity, broken occasionally by the tumult of a passing, wandering whirly, an incessant, seething roar could be heard. One could not be certain from whence it came, but it seemed to proceed either from the south or overhead. Away on the icy promontories ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... same cheery story cannot be told. She was jealous of the first. It would be another two months at least before she would go in dock for refit; and among the watch below there were three new hands on their first voyage, two of whom would, just then, have preferred the peace and stillness of the sea bottom to the friskiness ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife

... began to flourish. In the gloomy recesses fires glowed hot. Ores began to be smelted, with primitive bellows and technique as in the Under-world, and through the night—stillness sounded the ring and clangor of ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... with her name written in different coloured blossoms. Here he caused a dainty little banquet to be set forth, while hidden musicians played softly, and the silvery fountains plashed down into their marble basins, and when presently the music stopped a single nightingale broke the stillness with his delicious chant. ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various

... were in admirable accordance with the influences of the quiet, sunny, warm, yet autumnal afternoon. They were so far above my head that their loud clamor added to the quiet of the scene, instead of disturbing it. There was no other sound, except the song of the cricket, which is but an audible stillness; for, though it be very loud and heard afar, yet the mind does not take note of it as a sound, so entirely does it mingle and lose its individuality among the other characteristics of coming autumn. Alas for the summer! The grass is still ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... paused in its travels from capital to capital and she was conscious solely of the stark majesty of her surroundings. She listened. There was no sound. The spacious stillness was soothing to her nerves; a specific when all the Eternal Painter's art failed. She closed her eyes, trying to realize that great silence as one would try to realize the Infinite. Then faintly she heard a man's voice singing. It seemed at first a trick of the imagination. ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... came into view; the very next hollow held it! Janet stood upon the last hill, drew out her whistle and with smiling lips, that with difficulty formed themselves to the task, sent forth her call. The musical note penetrated the stillness. A bird rose affrightedly from a near-by bush; but it, and the waiting girl, seemed to have the ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock

... romantic September morning, swathed in thick, white mist. A blue haze of thin smoke rose upward from the shadowy houses of the neighbouring settlement, vanishing in the mist. Meanwhile, the birds were singing, and a rivulet close by murmured in the stillness. ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... about like phoenixes with variegated plumage. Gold and silver glistened with splendour. Pearls and precious gems shed out their brilliant lustre. The tripod censers burnt the Pai-ho incense. In the vases were placed evergreens. Silence and stillness prevailed, and not a man ventured so ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... even on tiptoe Georgina could not look over the rim. All she could see was the ceiling directly overhead. The surprise of such a novel punishment made her hold her breath to find what was going to happen next, and in the stillness she heard her mother say calmly as she walked out of the room: "If she roars any more, Tippy, just put the lid on; but as soon as she is ready to act like a little lady, lift ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

... the first place his sweetheart was herself inclined to a sort of visionary mysticism, and therefore had an unwholesome influence upon the youth, who had already been carried too far in that direction. She too was a lover of solitude and wrote her letters to him in the stillness of the night, when all others were asleep. There can be no doubt that she had at least some share in determining his mental activity, especially his reading. In one of his earliest letters to her he writes: "Weil Du den Don Carlos liest, will ich ihn ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun

... to all guarantee for public or domestic virtue. If our women are to be emancipated from subjection to the law which God has imposed upon them, if they are to quit the retirement of domestic life, where they preside in stillness over the character and destiny of society; if they are to come forth in the liberty of men, to be our agents, our public lecturers, our committee-men, our rulers; if, in studied insult to the authority of God, we are to renounce in the marriage contract all ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... on with rapid, nervous stride, the animal came after. Darker grew the road; deeper hued the fields and stubble; more somber the distant castle against the gloaming. Only the cry of a diving night-bird startled the stillness of the tranquil air; a rapacious filcher that quickly rose, and swept onward through the sea of night. Its melancholy note echoed in the breast of the fool; mechanically, without relaxing his swift pace, he looked upward to follow it, when a short, sharp bark behind ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... voice of the great Westminster clock at this moment told the hour. How solemn it sounded in the stillness; even more solemn than when it speaks out above the roar of ...
— Daybreak - A Story for Girls • Florence A. Sitwell

... quiet at this, the smoke of his cigarette climbing bluely in a space with the aqueous stillness of a lake's depths. "The same," he went on after a long pause; "nothing has touched you. I ought to be relieved but, do you know, it frightens me. You are relentless. You have no right, at the same time, to be beautiful. I have seen ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer

... they had all lingered together, and in the library beyond the hireling watcher sat, another silence. The time passed, but neither moved, and the last noise in the house ceased, so that they heard each other breathe, and the vague, remote rumor of the city invaded the inner stillness. It grew louder toward morning, and then Dryfoos knew from the watcher's deeper breathing that he had fallen ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... melancholy night wind, as it comes moaning through the casement and rustling the light leaves of the tall poplar as they rest against the window panes, and the great round tears as they fall with a dull, heavy drop, drop on his lonely pillow, are the only sounds that break the dismal stillness, excepting now and then, when a great sob, too mighty to be choked down, bursts from the little, overcharged heart. And then Harry fancies he feels, through the thin coverlet and torn night dress, the huge black paws ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... raised platform, covered with mats or cushions, on which the Turks sit cross-legged. On one side are musicians, generally Greeks, with mandolins and tambourines, accompanying singers, whose melody consists in vociferation; and the loud and obstreperous concert forms a strong contrast to the stillness and taciturnity of Turkish meetings. On the opposite side are men, generally of a respectable class, some of whom are found here every day, and all day long, dozing under the double influence of coffee and tobacco. The coffee is served in very small cups, not larger than egg-cups, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... when it is used of the soul. Sleep is distinctly a physical and corporeal function. The soul cannot be liable to or affected by corporeal influences when it is separated from the body. The soul cannot sleep. It is the body, in the hushed stillness of the chamber of death, which seems, now that the last struggle is over, and the spasm of dying leaves it motionless, to be sleeping. But even in life, while the body sleeps, the soul is awake. It is often, during the sleep of the body, even more ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson

... kitchen with a quaking heart. It was empty and still. Its very emptiness and stillness seemed to reproach her. There stood the desk—she ran across to it, pulled the indentures from her pocket, put them in their old place, and shut the lid down. There they staid till the full and just time of her servitude had expired. She never ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins

... shadowed church after the hot sunshine—the long, thin room with high slender windows, the long hard bed, of the most perfect whiteness and neatness, the heavy black-framed picture of "The Ascension" over the bed, and the utter stillness broken by no sound of clock or bell—even the fire seemed frozen into a glassy purity ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... agent himself, as feeling, understanding, and willing: these perfect the agent. Happiness will be found to be one of these immanent acts. Furthermore, there is action full of movement and change, and there is an act done in stillness and rest. The latter, as will presently appear, is happiness; and partly for this reason, and partly to denote the exclusion of care and trouble, happiness is often spoken of as a rest. It is also called a state, because one of the ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... that disturbed their amorous slumbers; a creditor who knocked at all doors. Then they saw his black hand between their own as these sneaked toward each other across the table; and they heard his grating voice through that stillness of the night that should have been broken only by the beating of their own pulses. He did not prevent them from possessing each other but he spoiled their happiness. And when they became aware of his invisible interference with their happiness; when they took flight at last—a vain ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg

... officer who led the party so tremendous a blow that he fell off his horse. Then the adventurous Austrian fled, followed by a volley from the French troopers; the sound vibrating through the dawn stillness gave the call to arms to the contrasted hosts. The battle of Solferino ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... they became themselves the authors of complete emancipation. I know not in what terms to describe to you the emotions excited by passing through the streets of this populous town on that memorable morning. There was a stillness and solemnity that might be felt. It was caused by no display of force, for none was to be seen. Here and there a policeman going his usual rounds, but not a soldier, nor the slightest warlike preparation of any kind ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... stir; she only swept with her large eyes searchingly over the whole room; she fixed them upon every curtain, upon every piece of furniture. But nothing was there to arouse her suspicions; a profound stillness reigned ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... carriage at the gate, preferring to quietly announce himself. The sultry day was drawing to a close as he walked up the gravelled drive that led to the house. Not even the faintest zephyr stirred the luxuriant tropical foliage that here and there shadowed his path, and yet the stillness and quiet of nature did not suggest peace and repose so much as it did death. The motionless air, heavily laden with a certain dead sweetness of flowers from the neighboring garden, might well bring to mind the breathless silence and the heavy atmosphere of the ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... and the glass doors that gave from Ingolby's room upon the veranda on the south side of the house, were open, and the air was warm as in Midsummer. Now and then the note of a night-bird broke the stillness, but nothing more. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... Out of the stillness of the night came the moan of a distant fog-horn. This was followed by a wild cheer from the men at the boat davits. At the same instant a dim, far-away light cut its way through the black void, burned for a moment, and disappeared ...
— A List To Starboard - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith

... is slow for anybody brought up in New York, Sam. Why, the first week I spent here I thought the stillness would kill me. I couldn't actually go to sleep because it was so quiet. I wish uncle and aunt would move to the ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield

... might have a little play on the green turf, and she cool her hot eyes and lips in the air. As she sat there watching the pretty clumsiness of her boy, and springing forward to intercept his falls, the influence of sun and air, the playful joy of the child, the soothing stillness of all Nature, stole into her heart till it dreamed a dream of hope. Perhaps the budding blossom of promise might become floral and fruitful; perhaps her child might yet atone for the agony of the past;—a time might come when she should sit ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... little while she lay and watched it in a sort of trance; and then in the stillness full realization came to her, and she knew that she was not mad or dreaming. This was no ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... water ration, it enabled both the girl and Lennon to suck at lumps of raw bacon. They lay silently mouthing and chewing the greasy fat, their rifles ready and their ears alert for the slightest thud of approaching hoofs. But no sound broke the deathlike stillness of the desert night. ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet

... wolves. Passing through a dense hammock, of a quarter of a mile in width, through which the pioneers of the American army had recently cut a rough road, I dismounted, to take a view of these sombre shades on either hand. The solemn stillness around seemed to me like the shadow of death—especially so, from the peril we were in through the deadly feud existing at the time between the Indians and white men. I penetrated for full a quarter of a mile into this fastness in a lateral direction, and, in doing so, suddenly startled ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell

... talked on with his habitual courtesy, in his low voice, almost without tone or accent, as though he had trained himself to talk thus. His eyes were fixed on the flame, and his face, which I saw in profile, wore the expression of infinite weariness that I knew well, in indescribable stillness and sadness, with long deep lines, and the mouth was contracted as though by some bitter thought ever present. Suddenly, I looked straight at that detested profile, concentrating all the attention I ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... shelter of some bread-fruit trees, a small hut or cottage. I cannot hope to convey to my readers a very correct idea of the feelings that affected us on witnessing this unexpected sight. We stood for a long time in silent wonder, for there was a deep and most melancholy stillness about the place that quite overpowered us; and when we did at length speak, it was in subdued whispers, as if we were surrounded by some awful or supernatural influence. Even Peterkin's voice, usually so quick and lively on all occasions, was hushed now; for there was ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... This stillness was only interrupted by the cracking of the whips applied to the horses, and by short and violent imprecations when they met with ravines, and when down these icy declivities, men, horses, and artillery were rolling in ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote

... moments she placed her hand quietly over the sleeper's face. As she did so, her startled eyes showed that she had received a shock. Instantly she sat upright in bed, and looked for one brief second on the face of the sleeper beside her; then, with a shriek that pierced the stillness of the room, ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr

... desolate and remote, and the waters of the sea covered with gloom. No human figure should be visible on this remote plain, where these strange memorials had stood for centuries, exposed to western gales and the stillness of the winter nights and the awful silence of the stars. Would not Sheila, at least, understand the bleakness and desolation of the picture? Of course her father would like to have everything blue and green. He seemed a little disappointed when it was clear that no distant glimpse of Borva could ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various

... with Banks, but Morganstein shaped a course to a black pinnacle, lifting through the mist beyond, that he believed was the crag at the shoulder. She stumbled repeatedly on the rough surface. Her labored breathing in the great stillness, like the beat of a pendulum in an empty house, tried his strained nerves. He upbraided her for leaving her alpenstock down the slope. But she paid no attention. She looked back constantly; she was like a woman being led away from a locked door, moving reluctantly, listening ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... The stillness came again. The sun did not break through the heavy gray sky, and the somber shadows brooded over "The Shades of Death." They heard again the splash of water animals, and a swimming snake passed on the murky surface. Then they heard the wolf's long cry, and the long ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler

... the brief terms of court, the usual stillness that pervades the sober village is enlivened by the presence of a scanty crowd. Then, for a week, judges, jurors, suitors, and witnesses flock together; and sometimes, in the winter season, when farm work is not pressing, the neighbors ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... gun rang out on the stillness, and the friends stared at one another. Before anyone could venture an explanation, the sound of hurried footsteps told that someone ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis

... an hour—after it rolled away from the Grantham Hotel there was absolute stillness in Miss Sherwood's limousine, which she had assigned to Maggie and her father. Maggie was near emotional collapse from what she had been through; and now she was sitting tight in one corner, away from the dark shadow ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott

... something drifted down from the hanging figure. A cowboy plunged forward, caught it up, and there broke upon the sudden stillness which had followed this incident, a roar of hearty laughter, as he held high in the blaze of light that came from the pendent figure, Columbia's wooden-seeming ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various

... sight or sound of human life. The shadows deepened and darkness came. Then gradually a faint silvery light stole over water and marsh and wooded shore; and the stillness was broken by a burst of faint, high, tremulous tones, as though a host of unseen hands swept tiny invisible mandolins. The silvery light came from the rising moon; the ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins

... slope where it curves towards the sea. She had wandered beneath the bright stars and silvery moon as far as it was prudent for her to do, and cleft only the narrow path trod by the silent guard between her and the wall of the seraglio. The hour was so late that stillness reigned over the moon-lit capital, and the place was as silent as the deep shadows of night. The half-witted boy had followed her steps by swinging himself from tree to tree, until now he was close by the spot where she sat, though lost to sight among the ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray

... silk star-broider'd coverlid Unto her limbs itself doth mould, Languidly ever; and, amid Her full black ringlets downward roll'd, Glows forth each softly shadow'd arm With bracelets of the diamond bright: Her constant beauty doth inform Stillness with love, ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various

... of the same fork. When he came to the junction it was natural to suppose that he would follow the current down the main stem of the Y. But instead of that, when the canoe dropped into the comparative stillness of the pool, the line was stretched, taut and quivering, across the foot of the left-hand fork and straight up into the current of the right-hand fork. "He's gone up the other branch," shouted Chichester, above the roar of the stream, "we must follow him! Push across ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke

... rather anxiously. There was something ominous in the stillness of the place, and the absence of any sign of life except ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... Bernald's running across Doctor Robert Wade one hot summer night at the University Club, and by Wade's saying, in the tone of unprofessional laxity which the shadowy stillness of the place invited: "I got hold of a queer fish at St. Martin's the other day—case of heat-prostration picked up in Central Park. When we'd patched him up I found he had nowhere to go, and not a ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... and solemnity in the manner in which this pious divine entered on the duties of his profession, which disposed the heart to listen with reverence and humility to precepts that were accompanied with so impressive an exterior. The stillness of expectation pervaded the church, when the pew opener led the way to the same interesting father and son whose entrance had interrupted the guests the preceding day, at the rectory. Every eye was turned ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper

... Feather rang a second time and an impatient third and then sat in her chair and waited until she began to feel as she felt always in these dreadful days the dead silence of the house. It was the thing which most struck terror to her soul—that horrid stillness. The servants whose place was in the basement were too much closed in their gloomy little quarters to have made themselves heard upstairs even if they had been inclined to. During the last few weeks feather had even found herself wishing ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... with some diffidence the stillness of the room sobering me—that I wished to see the king, when he who had advanced took me up sharply with, 'The king? the king? He is not here, man. He is hunting at St. Valery. Did they not ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman

... refused permission to any one to come aboard. That was enough for the chiefs. They went away in high dudgeon, followed immediately by all the other canoes and their occupants. When all had disappeared, a curious stillness came over the ship, the sea, and the tropical coast, and a strange sense of impending danger seemed to oppress all of us. We knew that we had offended the natives, and as we could not see a single one of them on the beach, it ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... the odour of the gilliflower, exhaled the most delicious perfumes. From the steep summit of the mountain hung the graceful lianas, like a floating drapery, forming magnificent canopies of verdure upon the sides of the rocks. The sea birds, allured by the stillness of those retreats, resorted thither to pass the night. At the hour of sunset we perceived the curlew and the stint skimming along the sea shore; the cardinal poised high in air; and the white bird of the tropic, which abandons, with the ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre

... good fire necessitated by the winter season was not wanting, and the plain boarding of the floor showed itself no stranger to scrubbings. A clock hanging on the wall ticked very loudly in the perfect stillness as ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing

... padded arm-chair. The library of Hatton Towers was in the south-east wing, and now because of the night's stillness dim booming of distant guns was audible. A mood of reflection claimed him, and from it he sank into sleep, to dream of the portrait of Sir Jacques which seemed to have become transparent, so that the camel-like head now appeared, as in those monstrous postcard ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer

... Again the stillness was broken. This time it was by the harsh voice of a black carrion. This too was followed by movement, only the movement had no haste or suggestion of fear. It was simply the heavy flapping of slow-moving wings. Two enormous crows launched themselves upon the ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... sight it was! The whole heaven appeared to be lit with the falling stars, and we could now more plainly see, as it were, the centre from whence they would shoot. The night was calm, the air clear; nothing to disturb the stillness, but the hushed breathings of the men. The stars were accompanied with a rustling noise, and, though they appeared to fall as fast and as thick as hail, above them, now and then, we could see some of the fixed stars, shining ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... [Footnote: Edited by her daughter Margaret, and published by Messrs. Isbister in 1889.] Mary declares that it is impossible for her to give an adequate idea of the stillness and isolation of her childish life. So intense was the silence of the Quaker household, that, at four years old, Anna had to be sent to a dame's school in order that she might learn to talk; while even after both children had attained the use of speech, ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... liberally to them the riches of his learning and the deep thoughts of his heart, than he ever did among his full-grown brethren. It was like the flush of an Arctic summer, blossoming all over, out of and into the stillness, the loneliness, and the chill rigor of winter. Though authoritative in his class without any effort, he was indulgent to everything but conceit, slovenliness of mind and body, irreverence, and above all ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... evening it was at an early stage in the ceremony; and had not finished his contemplation, until a silence of five minutes declared that "Drink, boys, drink!" was not likely to begin again for the next twelve-month. Much to the regret of the boys and Totty; on them the stillness fell rather flat, after that glorious thumping of the table, toward which Totty, seated on her father's knee, contributed with her small might and ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... emptiness. At rare intervals, a mounted messenger clattered over the stones, his hand upon his weapon, his eyes rolling sharply in a keen watch of the thicket on either side. Still more rarely, foraging parties swept through the morning stillness, lowing cows pricked to a sharp trot before them, and squawking fowls slung over their broad shoulders. Captured pigs gave back squeal for squawk, and the voices of the riders rose in uproarious laughter until the very echoes revolted and ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... as yeou like. There ain't nothing to prevent yeou from thinking. We've heard all abaout your players. Happened to meet old Stillness a while ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish

... visitor encamped at bedtime below the mesa, the experience of hearing the speaker chief or town crier for the first time is something long to be remembered. Out of the stillness of the desert night comes a voice from the house tops, and such a voice! From the heights above, it resounds in a sonorous long-drawn chant. Everyone listens breathlessly to the important message and it ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett

... total stillness, and poor Tulliver's dimly lighted soul had ceased to be vexed with the painful riddle ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... temple. 'Thou standest in a holy place,' I would say. A loud word, a heavy footstep, makes me shudder, as if an infidel were desecrating the place. I stand speechless, in a magical atmosphere that wraps my whole being, scarcely daring to lift my eyes. A perfect stillness comes over my soul; it seems to be soaring on the bosom ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... grave of his little one, covered over with flowers, the father pours out his love and grief till, in the summer stillness, he falls asleep, while we hear in the sunshine the drowsy hum of insects and the faraway sound of the reapers' sickles. He dreams there, and the dream grows into a vision beautiful. His body lies still upon the ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... Sandwich Island trading ships. Keen old Sir Francis Drake's reports to good Queen Bess flatly spoke of these yellow treasures. They, too, were ignored. English apathy! Pouring in from the whole world, bursting in as a flood of noisy adventurers on the stillness of the lazy land of the Dons, came ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... within the clothes. Then there were so many of them with their great glassy eyes—and, as they stood one behind the other all about her bed, they looked so like living creatures, and yet so unlike in their grim stillness and silence, that she had a kind of terror of them for their own sakes, and would often lie watching their dusky figures until she was obliged to rise and light a candle, or go and sit at the open window and feel a companionship in the bright stars. At these times, ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... dead stillness when he finished speaking. Cavender had a sense that the lecture room had come alive with eerie little chills. Dr. Ormond lifted the plate solemnly up before him, holding it between ...
— Ham Sandwich • James H. Schmitz

... policy, their childish self-love and miserable pride, converted the Diet into the mockery of a government. Ostap endured the torture like a giant. Not a cry, not a groan, was heard. Even when they began to break the bones in his hands and feet, when, amid the death-like stillness of the crowd, the horrible cracking was audible to the most distant spectators; when even his tormentors turned aside their eyes, nothing like a groan escaped his lips, nor did his face quiver. Taras stood in the crowd with bowed head; ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... Before dawn the intense stillness was broken by the rushing music of the birds—a careless, cheery torrent of song poured forth from bramble and woodland. Distant and nearer cockcrows rang out above the melodious tumult, through which a low, confused undertone, scarcely apparent ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers

... been seen taking notice of Another. The dumb devotion of this child, Julia (Miss MARY MERRALL), who could never find words for her love—she said little beyond "Yuss" and "I dunno"—was a very moving thing; and the patient stillness with which she bore his subsequent brutality held us always ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various

... drew nearer, that the argument was heated. Loud voices broke the stillness of the night, and one of them, a deep bass, had a familiar ring. One look at the faces in the crowd and they ...
— The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign - The Struggle to Save a Nation • Clair W. Hayes

... vines, it might have been August weather. Robins, however, were singing, and the golden, brown, and russet butterflies of autumn were floating languidly above the wayside hedges. The cawing of rooks, the cooing of wood-pigeons, and the hum of insects invaded the stillness of the lonely farms which, at long distances, gave picturesque evidence of the human toil expended on the careful, rather melancholy charm of that northern landscape. The Villa Miraflores—an elaborate reproduction ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... shore descends abruptly into the gray, foaming billows. The transparently blue blocks of ice inhospitably float on the shaking cold water and press against the dark rock of the island. Their knocking resounds mournfully in the dead stillness of the barren sea. They have been floating a long time on the bottomless depths, and the waves splashing about them have quietly borne them toward the lonely rock in the midst of the sea. The sound ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky

... mankind—as it was beautiful. The hum and turmoil of the civilized world was like the memory of a dream in this tranquil region, where untrammeled nature had worked her teeming will for centuries upon silent centuries. Here were such peace and stillness that the cry of the blue jay seemed audacious; the dive of a gull into the smooth water was a startling event. To the imaginative mind of Hudson this spot seemed to have been set apart by Providence, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... of these homeless men. All about were huge trees, and in the direction of the river the grass grew higher and then gave place to reeds. The foliage above was so dense that the moon and stars were invisible. There was a deathly stillness in the air. The very loneliness was so appalling that Beverly's poor little heart was in a quiver of dread. Aunt Fanny, who sat near by, had not spoken since leaving the coach, but her eyes ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... a moment of utter stillness; but the magnetism of Ralph's eye was too much for Bill Means. The request was so polite, the master's look was so innocent and yet so determined. Bill often wondered afterward that he had not "fit" rather than obeyed the request. But somehow he put the dog out. He was partly ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston

... thought or wish, to ears that were always attentive. At length the song and the dance ended, and all but the few who were ordered to remain on watch descended to their hammocks. The change was as sudden as it was striking. The solemn, breathing stillness of a star-lit night succeeded to the light laugh, melodious song, and spirited merriment of a set of men whose constitutional gayety seemed to be restrained by a species of native refinement that ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... him! Friedrich Wilhelm was, no doubt, glad to get away on the morrow afternoon; fairly out into the Berg-Strasse, into the summer breezes and umbrageous woods, with all his pertinents still safe about him; rushing towards Darmstadt through the Sunday stillness, where he will arrive in the evening, time enough. ["Sunday Evening arrive at Darmstadt," says Seckendorf (in Forster, iii. 3), but by mistake calls it the "7th" instead ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle

... Dawn; Stillness and stars and over-mastering dreams Of Life and Death and Sleep; Heard over gleaming flats the old unchanging sound ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley

... stars peeped out overhead. The rapidity with which the weather can change in these regions is simply marvellous. We often left a post-house in clear weather, and, less than an hour after, were fighting our way in the teeth of a gale and heavy snow. An hour later and stillness would again reign, and the sun be shining as before! We now quickly took advantage of the lull to push on, and in a few hours were rewarded by the glimmering lights of a post-house. We had reached the village of Yakurimsk and, being fairly exhausted by the cold and hard work, I resolved ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... linger near the scenes where the red earth lies heaped over his brethren of the sword. Back to Atlanta he travels, with the returning fragments of the men who are now homeward bound. All is silent now. From wood and hill no rattling fire wakes the stillness of these days. The blackened ruins and the wide swath cut by Sherman tell him how true was the prediction that the men of the Northwest would "hew their way to the Gulf with their swords." He finds the grave of Valois, when dismantled and crippled ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... locked up at home in his private desk with other personal trinkets which would have been superfluous and troublesome to him on his self-imposed journey. When the echo of the bell's one stroke had died away it left a great stillness in the air. The heat was increasing as the day veered towards noon, and he decided that it would be as well to get on further down the road and under the shadow of the trees, which were not so very far off, and which looked invitingly cool in their spreading dark soft greenness. So, rising ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... Hupner's voice breaking the stillness now, "if you each want to clear your own individual selves you will step forward and volunteer to have your ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock

... here to fight along without him. Be his memory dear and honourable to us, as that of one so worthy ought. What in him was true and valiant endures for evermore—beyond all memory or record. His light, airy brilliancy has suddenly become solemn, fixed in the earnest stillness of Eternity. There shall we also, and our little works, ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle

... yet amid so many signs of life, motion, traffic, bustle, the sweet sound of the rippling waters alone fell on the ear. No rumbling of wheels, nor clatter of hoofs, nor clangor of bells, nor roar and scream of engines to shock the soothing fairy-like illusion. The double charm of stillness and starlight ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... intimate to those whom I am addressing how in my mind I mainly connect that occasion with the present. When I looked round on the vast assemblage, and observed the huge pit hushed into stillness on the rising of the curtain, and that mighty surging gallery, where men in their shirt-sleeves had been striking out their arms like strong swimmers—when I saw that. boisterous human flood become still ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens

... harbour again, one welcomes the sound of the children's voices and the stir of life about the quay, as a relief from the utter blank, and feels oneself no longer a bubble afloat on an infinity which knows one not, and cares nothing for one's existence. For in the dead stillness of mid-day, when not only the deer, and the agoutis, and the armadillos, but the birds and insects likewise, are all asleep, the crack of a falling branch was all that struck my ear, as I tried in vain to verify the ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... man was parting the bushes. Stealthily, very stealthily, he peered around. He hesitated, paused, peered again, crouched on all-fours, crept forward a little. Everything was quiet as a grave. Down in the cabins the tired men slept peacefully; stillness and solitude. ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... and yet more the women of Paris, know nothing of the charm of a walk in the woods on a fine night. The stillness, the moonlight effects, the solitude, have the soothing effect of a bath. Esther usually went out at ten, walked about from midnight till one o'clock, and came in at half-past two. It was never ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... clasped in the grip of rage, the women staring wide-eyed from the wall, the Bois-Brules, the leaning eager faces of the wild Nakonkirhirinons, the figure of the girl in the foreground, all, all were stricken into stillness by that dirge-like cry. For only the fraction of a second it held, that ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe









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