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More "Straightforward" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... appeared in 1726. This work is also a satire; but it is a satire on men and women,— on humanity. "The power of Swift's prose," it has been said by an able critic, "was the terror of his own, and remains the wonder of after times." His style is strong, simple, straightforward; he uses the plainest words and the homeliest English, and every blow tells. Swift's style— as every genuine style does— reflects the author's character. He was an ardent lover and a good hater. Sir Walter Scott ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... woods or fields with as finished an air of being unaware of him (particularly if he be a rather shabby painter no longer young) as if the encounter took place on a city sidewalk; but this woman was not of that priggish kind. Her straightforward glance recognised my existence as a fellow-being; and she further acknowledged it by a faint smile, which was of courtesy only, however, and admitted no reference to the fact that at the first sound of her voice I had leaped into the air, kicked a camp-stool twenty feet, and now ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... fool; but in this opinion he was entirely wrong, for the Marquis de Croisenois was looked upon as one of the most talented and witty men in Parisian society, and in this case the opinion of the world was a well-founded one. Many men envied him, but he had no enemies, and his honest and straightforward conduct was beyond all doubt. He had the noble instincts of a knight of ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... we have our Note Book to begin on the front page. It gives a scrappy effect to do that. We want something manly and straightforward and a bit thoughtful, about Patriotism, say, or ESPRIT DE ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... does know," said Chloe softly, and brushed hot tears from her eyes. Could this be the man whose crimes against the poor, ignorant savages were the common knowledge of the North? Could this be he whom men called Brute—this simple-spoken, straightforward, boyish man who had endured hardships and spared no effort, that the mother he had never known might lie in her eternal rest beneath the green sod of her native land, far from the sights, and sounds that, in life, had become a torture to her soul, ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... almost pitifully straightforward, man. Everything that is in Grizel must out. She ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... attention of biologists for a hundred years and more, but it is distinctly implied that this was not the case. When Mr. Darwin said it was "conceivable that a naturalist might" arrive at the theory of descent, straightforward readers took him to mean that though this was conceivable, it had never, to Mr. Darwin's knowledge, been done. If we had a notion that we had already vaguely heard of the theory that men and the lower animals were descended from common ancestors, we must have been wrong; it was not this that we had ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... Paints-His-Face-Yellow said: "Let us attack by day, so that we can see what we are doing." I thought I was laying a good plan for them but they listened to Yellow-Face. General Custer was a brave and good man, a straightforward and honest man. When General Custer took me by the hand, patted me on the shoulder, and I looked him in the face, I said: "There is a good general." If General Custer was living to-day, I would get better treatment than I now receive. General Custer said: "Where does your ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... immediately disembowelled and devoured." This, at dinner, at her own table, before a large party, was rather forcible. But little usual as her modes of expression were, she never seemed to be in the slightest degree aware of the startling effect they produced; she uttered them with the most straightforward unconsciousness and unconcern. Her taste in dress was, as might have been expected, slightly eccentric, but, for a person with so great a perception of harmony of sound, her passion for discordant colors was singular. ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... lad," he said, "I am a plain, straightforward fellow, and I like frankness. I'm going now to speak very plainly to you, for I'm not blind. You've taken a ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... expense. Was it possible, he thought, that John Miles, discovering his loss, had visited him, and played this trick upon him? He could not believe this. It was not in accordance with John's direct, straightforward nature. Instead of acting in this secret manner, he would have sternly charged Crane with the robbery, and punished him on the spot. Leaving him out of the account, then, the mystery deepened. It never occurred to Crane to suspect the Chinamen who had so hospitably furnished him with a cup ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... those fine, deep doctrines and wonderful feelings that some very religious people talk of, about conversion, and regeneration, and sanctification, and assurance, and the witness of the indwelling Spirit,—all those gifts come from God, no doubt, but they are quite above us. We are straightforward, simple people, who cannot feel fine fancies; if we can be honest, and industrious, and good- natured, and sober, and strong, and healthy, that is enough for us,— and all that has nothing to do with religion. Those are not gifts which come from God. A man ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... fixed the name and character of John Bull on the English people. Though in one part of the story he is thin and long nosed, as a result of trouble, generally he is suggested to us as "ruddy and plump, with a pair of cheeks like a trumpeter," an honest tradesman, simple and straightforward, easily cheated; but when he takes his affairs into his own hands, acting with good plain sense, knowing very well what he wants ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... assured her. "He has been perfectly straightforward about himself, and I am satisfied that he will make you an ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... most part set to noble chorals of such strong, straightforward character that they cannot fail to become friends and intimates at once. In them, as in all the tunes, the compass of ordinary voices has been considered; and although nothing has been left undone ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... giving any good reasons for his wish. So, with Mac and my little maid, I passed through the crowd of female passengers on deck, and sought the privacy of the saloon. Before I had been long there, two ladies came to me, and in their cool, straightforward manner, questioned me. ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... to Valescure, and as far away as Mentone and the Gorges du Loup. Edith couldn't help liking the young man, first for his kindness to the children, and then for himself. For himself she liked him because he was so simple, straightforward, ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... the Deathless Author an unwelcome change came over the game. His cricket style resembled his literary style. Both were straightforward and vigorous. The first two balls he received from Gosling he drove hard past cover point to the ropes. Gosling, who had been bowling unchanged since the innings began, was naturally feeling a little tired. He was ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... taciturn, and barely opened his lips. His clothes began to hang about him, instead of fitting him all too tight; his complexion lost the red colour and became sallow; his eyes had a furtive look in them, so different to the old straightforward glance. ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... Ancients and moderns, poets and prose writers, schoolmen and dramatists are all drawn upon for the copious store of his examples; they are always cited with an air of quietly humorous shrewdness in the comments and enclosed in a prose that is straightforward, simple and vigorous, and can on occasion command both rhythm and beauty of phrase. It is a mistake to regard Burton from the point of view (due largely to Charles Lamb) of tolerant or loving delight in quaintness for quaintness' sake. His book is ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... if it had been uttered with a straightforward air and in a clear tone. But it was not. I who loved him felt that it was not, and consequently was more or less prepared for the change which now took place in the inspector's manner. Yet it pierced me to the heart to observe this ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... "You are a straightforward man. You can't disguise it. You of the North are bent upon taking away from us the rights we had when our fathers framed the Constitution. However the nigger got to this country, sir, in your Bristol ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... take his money without his name? The president knows that it is money fraudulently got, that really belongs to somebody else; and the gambler would feel that if the president takes it, he cannot think very disapprovingly of the manner in which it was acquired. I think it would be more honest and straightforward to take his name ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... again, yes. I brought him to talk about that voyage, which, by the by, was not the first voyage of Flora de Barral. The man himself, as I told you, is simple, and his faculty of wonder not very great. He's one of those people who form no theories about facts. Straightforward people seldom do. Neither have they much penetration. But in this case it did not matter. I—we—have already the inner knowledge. We know the history of Flora de Barral. We know something of Captain Anthony. We have the secret of the situation. The man was intoxicated with ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... sign whatever of the Inca's fast-waning popularity was for a moment permitted to manifest itself. The process of corrupting the palace officials and staff generally was found to be exceptionally tedious and difficult, for Escombe's genial disposition and straightforward character enabled him to endear himself without effort to everybody with whom he was brought into intimate contact. But it was accomplished at length by the exercise of almost superhuman ingenuity, with a solitary exception ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... be funny people," she said to Ozma. "They don't seem to do anything in a bold straightforward manner. In making this passage they forced everyone to walk three times as far as is necessary. And of course this trip is just as tiresome to the Flatheads as it is ...
— Glinda of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... some strange way they aren't expecting. If I was to have died, I couldn't help laughing at some things he said; and yet I don't think I ever felt more solemnized. He sat up there in a sort of grand, straightforward, noble way, and told all the way the Lord had been leading of him, and all the exercises of his mind, and all about the dreadful shipwreck, and how he was saved, and the loving-kindness of the Lord, till the Doctor's spectacles got all blinded with tears, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... straightforward and direct? So like Jack! I tried to pull my hands away, but he held them fast. There was nothing to do but answer him. That "no" I had determined to say must be said, but, oh! how woefully it did stick ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and glance around. As we hinted at the outset of this study, it would be idle to attempt to derive every comic effect from one simple formula. The formula exists well enough in a certain sense, but its development does not follow a straightforward course. What I mean is that the process of deduction ought from time to time to stop and study certain culminating effects, and that these effects each appear as models round which new effects resembling ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... knew that was a lame excuse to give her; he knew, too, that he must not put himself in the way of temptation; and, believing a straightforward course the ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... enthusiastic delight myself (an humble individual) and the immense body of your enraptured constituents felt upon reading your truly patriotic, statesman-like, learned, straightforward and consistent speech, may be conceived by a person of your immense parliamentary imagination, but cannot be expressed by my circumscribed vocabulary. In stating that my trifling exertions for the return of such a patriot are more ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... crabstick like me can see in you is just the very last thing that a dainty young girl wants. I'll tell you to a hair if you're the man for an orchestra—but a woman's heart is far too deep for a music-master. And then, to be frank with you—you know that I'm a blunt, straightforward fellow—you'll not give thank'ye for my advice. I'll persuade my daughter to no one—but from you Mr. Sec—I would dissuade her! A lover who calls upon the father for help—with permission—is not worth a pinch of snuff. If he has anything in him, he'll be ashamed ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... a better way," she said. "Monsieur le Baron is doubtless very angry with you, and I am sure that this is chiefly because he does not know you. For instance, if some one were to tell him that you are a straightforward, courageous young man, a gentleman with an unquenchable taste for danger, that you are not a low-born adventurer and intriguer, that you have nothing in particular against his government, he might not be quite so angry. Pardon me if I say that ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... sauntered down to the Dryad's Bubble and saw Gilbert Blythe coming down through the dusky Haunted Wood. She had a sudden realization that Gilbert was a schoolboy no longer. And how manly he looked—the tall, frank-faced fellow, with the clear, straightforward eyes and the broad shoulders. Anne thought Gilbert was a very handsome lad, even though he didn't look at all like her ideal man. She and Diana had long ago decided what kind of a man they admired ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... own door. He knew too well how real the attack had been; when the ladies mingled with the men to take tea and coffee, he was still suffering from its after-effects. But he treated the occurrence in so hopelessly wrong a way; he minced and smirked over it; he would not own to a straightforward physical illness, but preferred to hint at and even take credit for an exaggerated sensibility, as though he enhanced his own eloquence by pointing to the extraordinary exhaustion it produced. He must needs ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... through it on our way to Caudebec. The great spire of the church, dating from the fifteenth century, rears itself above this ancient port where the black-sailed ships of the Northmen often appeared in the early days before Rollo had forced Charles the Simple (he should have been called "The Straightforward") to grant him the great tract of French territory that we ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... established power on the other—came rushing round me in a chaos of discordant conceptions, that for the time bewildered me. How simple was the gossip of the camp to this heterogeneous mass of struggling topics! How straightforward was even the wild haranguing of the Palais Royal to the thousand reports and protests, remonstrances and replications, of the whole ringing and raging, public mind of England! This was the age of pamphleteering. Every sage who could, or could not, write, flung his pamphlet in the teeth of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... passion in a less enlightened age, that they recognized the indelicacy of insulting the religion of the country in which they lived, and that therefore such passages should henceforth be deleted. But instead of adopting this straightforward course, which might have put an end for ever to attacks on the book they held sacred, the Rabbis proceeded to deny the existence of the "alleged blasphemous and immoral expressions" and to declare that "the odious facts related in the Talmud ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... Pluly's head jerked, and he blinked rapidly at Lyad, saying nothing. He was a badly scared little man at that moment. Trigger felt a little sorry for him, but not too sorry. Belchy's ogle had been of the straightforward, loose-lipped, drooling variety. ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... far as I can tell from memory, was plain and straightforward when a child. I have no recollection of feeling any general depression or disappointment, of thinking that I was misunderstood, i.e. of entertaining what is now called "an inferiority complex." I never gave way to any form of childish melancholy. I did not even have alarming, or mysterious, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... had walked up to Hartfield to say that all was well with their relatives in Brunswick Square. They talked of the wedding. Emma congratulated herself on having made the match. Mr. Knightley demurred to this, remarking: "A straightforward, open-hearted man, like Weston, and a rational, unaffected woman, like Miss Taylor, may be safely left to manage their own concerns." And when Emma, in reply to entreaties from her father to make no more matches, answered, "Only one more, papa; only for Mr. Elton—you ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... after supper, the surveyor would slip away from his companions at the hotel to spend an hour on the veranda at the banker's home talking in his straightforward way with Barbara and her father, of the work that was so dear to the heart of the girl. And because it was his work and in the nature of a report to one who, he felt, had in some subtle way authority to hear, Abe talked with a freedom that would have ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... hope all will be found straightforward in this, and in other affairs of the testator, and that nothing will compel me to call in the assistance or sanction of the Court of Chancery in administering the estate. In that case, although your claim might be ultimately ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... which was certainly the wisest, as it was the most straightforward, was agreed to. They, however, said nothing till late in the evening, when the fleet of junks dropped their ponderous wooden anchors close to the shore in a beautiful little bay, surrounded by green hills covered to ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... themselves at once. Either of them, I thought, would certainly prove fatal. I could, in the first place, do the completely straightforward thing: take back the dead man, tell my story, hand over the notes and diamonds, and trust to the saving power of truth and innocence. I could have laughed as I thought of it. I saw myself bringing home the corpse and giving an account of myself, boggling with sheer shame over the absurdity of my ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... blunt, straightforward, seafaring spirit slightly abashed as he thus ventured to intrude on the privacy of one for whom, despite his sins and their terrible consequences, he had never lost respect. It felt like going into the captain's cabin without orders. The seaman's purpose was to remonstrate with Christian ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... live in. Try to interest the child in books which give true and noble ideas of life where wrong-doing brings its natural consequences without too much preaching. The moral should not be dragged in, the day of the sugar-coated pill in literature is past. The right books are those that teach in a straightforward way that character is better than superficial smartness, that success does not always mean the accumulation of a large amount of money and that it is not a matter of luck but that it depends upon perseverance in faithful work; books ...
— Children and Their Books • James Hosmer Penniman
... of the Jew are never more perceptible than when they come in contact with gentlemen to ruin them. On such occasions, the Jew is humble, supercilious, blunderingly flattering; and if he can become the agent of any dirty work, is only too happy to be so, in preference to a straightforward and honest transaction. No man is more vulgarly insulting to those dependent upon him than the Jew, who invariably cringes to his superiors; above all, he is not a brave man. It will be seen, from these observations, what is my opinion of a class ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... didactic. The little tragedy that takes place amongst this homely group of people makes quite a moving play, thanks to the skill with which the types are depicted—the bourgeois father and mother, with their mixture of timidity and self-interest; the manly, straightforward young politician, resolute to carry on the work that has sapped his brother's life; the warped, de-humanised nature of the journalist; the sturdy common-sense of the yeoman farmer; and the doctor, the "family friend," ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... was a simple and straightforward matter compared with the methods of electing representatives from the boroughs. All that the sheriff was ordered to do by writ was to provide for the return of two members for each city or borough in his ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... By administering justice, by attending to these three, viz., concealment of his own weaknesses, ascertainment of the weaknesses of foes, and keeping his own counsels, as also by the observance of conduct that is straightforward, the king, O delighter of the Kurus, obtains prosperity. If the king becomes mild, everybody disregards him. On the other hand, if he becomes fierce, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... Wilfrid, hastily. "And this word intrigue that Lady Henry uses? Has mademoiselle always steered a straightforward course ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... emergency with coolness and straightforward simplicity, abiding firmly by his main purpose, but conciliatory as to means. He wrote to the governor and the mayor: "For the future troops must be brought here, but I make no point of bringing them through Baltimore;" he would "march them around ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... Vedder was otherwise of massive proportions, while his full open countenance was much bronzed by exposure to the weather. Of beneficent dispositions and social habits, he enjoyed the friendship of many of his gifted contemporaries. Thoroughly earnest, his writings partake of the bold and straightforward nature of his character. Some of his prose productions are admirable specimens of vigorous composition; and his poetry, if not characterised by uniformity of power, never descends into weakness. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... are the portraits of Columbus. Good creeter! it seemed a pity to see so many of 'em—his enemies might keep right on abusin' him, and say that he wuz double-faced, or sixty or eighty faced, when I know, and they all ort to know, that he wuz straightforward and stiddy as the sun. Poor creeter! it wuz too bad that there should be ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... Ronald's letters were more and more unsatisfactory; he was evidently unhappy and dissatisfied and heartily tired of his new study. Posts were so irregular that often their letters seemed to be playing at cross purposes. She determined as soon as spring opened to go and have a straightforward talk ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... taken place since the landing of the British troops on Long Island Captain Wilson's company had taken but little part in the operations. All had been straightforward work and conducted on the principles of European warfare. The services of the volunteers as scouts had not, therefore, been called into requisition. The success which at first attended the expedition had encouraged Captain Wilson to hope, for the first time since the outbreak of the Revolution, ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... knew him; and therefore blushed slightly, and said, awkwardly, something about being sure—looking at Mr. Plumer and hitching the right leg of his trouser as he spoke. Mr. Plumer got up and stood in front of the fireplace. Mrs. Plumer laughed like a straightforward friendly fellow. In short, anything more horrible than the scene, the setting, the prospect, even the May garden being afflicted with chill sterility and a cloud choosing that moment to cross the sun, cannot be ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... III. himself acted at the end of the month of which we are speaking. But to retain them in their offices, and to employ an unofficial declaration of his dissent from them to defeat their policy, is neither consistent with the straightforward conduct due from one gentleman to another, nor with the principle on which the system of administration, such as prevails in ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... reference, the tone almost of the philosophic historian, to her scant young annals. If Madame Merle had desired her change of state she could only say it had been a very happy thought. With her, moreover, she had been perfectly straightforward; she had never concealed her high opinion of Gilbert Osmond. After their union Isabel discovered that her husband took a less convenient view of the matter; he seldom consented to finger, in talk, this roundest and smoothest bead of their social rosary. "Don't you like Madame Merle?" ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... one thrill. It was not until Love the magician had touched her heart that the honest and loyal little Kitty that lay at the bottom of all her whims and follies was developed. The very sense of unworthiness which she felt in view of the Jook's straightforward and manly ardor was the surest guarantee for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... far from that," he comforted her. "I gather you have already discussed it with your father. You must lay hold of your courage and discuss it again. I know that won't be easy; but you owe it to him to be straightforward, owe it to his peculiar devotion to you. Some day, perhaps, when you are older and more ripe in experience, I may tell you, in plain language of a vow he once made for your sake—when he was in his ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... his chance. I have already pointed out the danger to him, and if he chooses to run headlong into the pit, why, I cannot hinder him. After all, I am not much surprised. Alizon's beauty is quite irresistible, and, were all smooth and straightforward in her history, there could be no reason why—pshaw! I am as foolish as the lad himself. Sir Richard Assheton, the proudest man in the shire, would disown his son if he married against his inclinations. No, my pretty youthful pair, since nothing ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Bulwer who, in 1850, succeeded by questionable diplomatic methods in foisting upon the American people a treaty which was contrary to their best interests and which for half a century was a hindrance and barrier to an American Isthmian canal. We owe it chiefly to the masterly and straightforward statesmanship of the late John Hay that this obstacle to our progress was disposed of to the entire satisfaction of both nations. I refer to these matters, which are facts of history, only to point out how an interminable discussion of matters of detail is certain to delay and do great injury to ...
— The American Type of Isthmian Canal - Speech by Hon. John Fairfield Dryden in the Senate of the - United States, June 14, 1906 • John Fairfield Dryden
... striking a decisive blow against either side. This policy skilfully pursued by Tissaphernes (who had a genius for intrigue and did not require an Alcibiades to give him lessons in state-craft), more clumsily by Pharnabazus, whose character was comparatively sincere and straightforward, prevailed until the younger Cyrus made his appearance upon the scene, when a disturbing force came into play which had disastrous effects both on the fortunes of Greece and on those of Persia. The younger Cyrus had personal views of self-aggrandizement which ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... is already extant,—notably in case of Scotland,—I have in general avoided. In the rendering, my desire has been always to rest the poetry of each Vision on its own intrinsic interest; to write with a straightforward eye to the object alone; not studious of ornament for ornament's sake; allowing the least possible overt intrusion of the writer's personality; and, in accordance with lyrical law, seeking, as a rule, to fix upon some factual picture for ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... Thorpe," Doctor Middleton said, courteously, after Crane had introduced them; "we expect from you a straightforward account of all you can tell us of your experiences ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... anxious to explain, having always been so straightforward; but an unknown hand or the power of death held him, so that he could only smile. And then it appeared to me as if he pointed to the water first and then to the sky, with such an import that I understood (as plainly as if he had pronounced it) ...
— George Bowring - A Tale Of Cader Idris - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... waving a lighted torch among these combustibles—you will, I think, admit, that if we pass through this crisis without explosions it will be a gratifying circumstance, and an encouragement to persevere in a liberal and straightforward application ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... answer was as simple and straightforward as the man. He knew of nothing to be ashamed of in this beautiful love ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... this season, is earnest and serious enough to disarm hostile criticism; and his loose and flippant productions are read leniently in the light of this pathetic confession. It is a self-revelation truly, but it is honest, straightforward, and manly. There is nothing plaintive or mawkish ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... "I am the only member of the family living here, and I and the palace are entirely at your disposal." From first to last we found this gentleman perfectly straightforward, and most amiably willing ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... a time; she was very impulsive and outspoken, but she was also very straightforward, and somehow it struck her that Eva's speech was not so. In spite of her impulsiveness, she could on occasion hold her peace, and she did ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... she always did now! One thing she was determined upon—and herein lay the pledge of her coming freedom!—that she would not behave to him in the least otherwise than her wont. If she would be worthy, she must be straightforward! ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... so capricious inexpressible a Work as this of the Professor's can our course now more than formerly be straightforward, step by step, but at best leap by leap. Significant Indications stand-out here and there; which for the critical eye, that looks both widely and narrowly, shape themselves into some ground-scheme of a Whole: to ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... master asked, "What dost thou mean by being eminent?" To which the other answered, "To be famous throughout the state and throughout his clan." "But that," said the master, "is fame, not eminence. The truly eminent man is genuine and straightforward; he loves righteousness, weighs people's words, and looks at their countenances. He humbles himself to others, and is sincerely desirous of helping all. That is the, eminent man, though he may ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... cherished matrimonial hopes were being gradually dissipated. He could not perceive that Lawrence was falling in love with Emma, or Emma with Lawrence. The utmost exertion of sly diplomacy of which he was capable, short of straightforward advice, had failed to accomplish anything towards the desirable end. Emma was dull, because her friend Nita, although recovering, was still far from well. Slingsby was dull for the same reason, and also because he felt his passion to be hopeless. Lewis was dull because he knew Nita's circumstances ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... to so many misunderstandings in the present day. My Catholicism was that of Scripture, of the councils, and of the theologians. This Catholicism I loved, and I still respect it; having found it inadmissible, I separated myself from it. This is a straightforward course, but what is not straightforward is to pretend ignorance of the engagement contracted, and to become the apologist of things concerning which one is ignorant. I have never lent myself to a falsehood of this description, ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... mentally asks, "Is this person going up or down? Through how many grades has he passed?" For example, young Brown enters a drawing-room. All present weigh him in their judgment and silently say, "This young man is gaining; he is more careful, thoughtful, polite, considerate, straightforward, industrious." Besides him stands young Jones. It is evident that he is losing ground rapidly. He is careless, indifferent, rough, does not look you in the eye, is mean, stingy, snaps at the servants, yet is ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... attitude of the Boers whom we met during the carrying out of our duties on these three days. For my part I confess that the deepest impression has been made on me by these conversations, and by the manly bearing and straightforward outspoken way in which ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... like an old maid with the heartache and here's the whole world terribly alive and needing attention. And here's Cynthia's boy back from India, and a real Green Valley kind of minister, I do believe; a straightforward chap to tell us of life, its miracles and mysteries; of God and eternity as he honestly thinks, but mostly of love and the little happy ways of earthly living. A man who won't be always dividing us into sheep and goats but will show us the sheep and ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... undeniable facts, presenting a problem both startling and sensational, the reader will quickly learn from this straightforward narrative—an open confession ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... present tendencies are generally misunderstood, and in many quarters wholly ignored. With the sixteenth century, as we have said, the case is far different. The historical problem is far less complex. The issues at stake are comparatively simple, and the historian has before him a straightforward story. ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... bad to a wife an' mother, an' 'tis my duty to ax 'e for a plain, straightforward answer 'pon it. Human nature's got a ugly trick of repeatin' itself in this matter, as we all knaws. But I'll say nought an' think nought till you answers me. Be the bwoy yourn or not? Tell me true, with your ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... repeats thrice: 'I don't know,' so that it would be an extremely difficult job to go and ask her to lend a helping hand. There's only therefore Miss Tertia, who is as sharp of mind as of tongue. She's besides a straightforward creature in this household of ours and Madame Wang is attached to her as well. It's true that she outwardly makes no display of her feelings for her, but it's all that old thing Mrs. Chao, who has done the mischief, for, in her heart, she actually holds her as dear as ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... demanded equal chances for every man. He was only a plain layman, he said, and perhaps he ought not to speak in the presence of so many reverend gentlemen, but he was very grateful to Doctor Saunderson for his honourable and straightforward conduct. It would be better for the Church if there were more like him, and he would just like to ask Mr. Carmichael one or two questions. Did he sign the Confession?—that was one; and had he kept it?—that was two; and the last was, When ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... and farm do not develop in a straightforward, matter-of-fact way, why should I write about them after the formal and terse fashion of a manual or scientific treatise? The most productive varieties of fruit blossom and have some foliage which may not be very beautiful, ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... a fatal falling away. The portals of chivalry had been opened to too many unworthy candidates. It had been made vulgar! In consequence of having become so cheap the grand title of "knight" was degraded. Eustace Deschamps, in his fine, straightforward way, states the scandal boldly and "lashes" it with his tongue. He says: "Picture to yourself the fact that the degree of knighthood is about to be conferred now upon babies of eight and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... Hagar, the Egyptian! In the question of the grazing lands his peevish asperity is notorious and in Mr Cuffe's hearing brought upon him from an indignant rancher a scathing retort couched in terms as straightforward as they were bucolic. It ill becomes him to preach that gospel. Has he not nearer home a seedfield that lies fallow for the want of the ploughshare? A habit reprehensible at puberty is second nature and an opprobrium in middle life. If he must dispense his balm of Gilead ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... subject-matter suited to one's powers; to respect the authority of the masterpiece and to con by night and by day the great Greek exemplars; to feel the emotion one wishes to rouse; to stamp the universal with the mark of individual genius; to be straightforward and rapid and omit the unessential; to be truthful to life; to keep the improbable and the horrible behind the scenes; to be appropriate in meter and diction; to keep clear of the fallacy of poetic madness; to look for the real sources of successful writing ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... at first sight, as a strong, sturdy, resolute, fearless man. Lincoln's herculean stature has already been described. A stranger who listened to him for five minutes would say: 'This is a kind, genial, sincere, genuine man; a man you can trust, plain, straightforward, honest, and true.' If this stranger were to hear him make a speech, he would be impressed with his clear good sense, by his wit and humor, by his general intelligence, and by the simple, homely, but pure and accurate language he used. ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... nothing in Cesar's person which made it difficult to love him. The life of Paris and his sojourn in a dark shop had dulled the brightness of his peasant complexion. His abundant black hair, his solid neck and shoulders like those of a Norman horse, his sturdy limbs, his honest and straightforward manner, all contributed to predispose others in his favor. The uncle Pillerault, whose duty it was to watch over the happiness of his brother's daughter, made inquiries which resulted in his sanctioning the wishes ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... of before yourself? "Why, then, did I send it to anyone before you?" I was pressed by the man to whom I sent it, and had no copy. And—well! I am nibbling at what I must, after all, swallow—my "recantation"[486] did seem to me a trifle discreditable! But good-bye to straightforward, honest, and high-minded policy! One could scarcely believe the amount of treachery there is in those leaders of the state, as they wish to be, and might be, if they had any principle of honour in them. I had felt it, ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... but rather, how far do they arouse or echo in us as individuals the universal passion? There are at least some of Drayton's sonnets which possess a direct, instant, and universal appeal, by reason of their simple force and straightforward ring; and not in virtue of any subtle charm of sound and rhythm, or overmastering splendour of diction or thought. Ornament vanishes, and soberness and simplicity increase, as we proceed in the editions of the sonnets. Drayton's chief ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... tendency towards inaction. It is often easy to discern in a group of children the leading characteristics of these temperaments, the phlegmatic or lymphatic, hard or soft, not easily stirred, one stubborn and the other yielding, both somewhat immobile, generally straightforward and reliable, law abiding, accessible to reason, not exposed to great dangers nor likely to reach unusual heights. Next the sanguine, hard or soft, as hope or enjoyment have the upper hand in them; this is the richest group in attractive ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... called. He proved to be a big, burly, red-haired, red-whiskered man, who looked like a sailor. And indeed a few questions elicited the information that he was a retired sea-captain. He gave his evidence gruffly but honestly, and although he kept so shady a public-house, seemed straightforward enough. He told much the same tale as had appeared in the newspapers. In the hotel on that night there was only himself, his wife and two children, and the staff of servants. Bolton retired to bed saying that ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... Bethel, after which, Mr. E.H. Sheafe introduced the lecturer. The temperance theme is so old and long discussed that it seemed well-nigh impossible to present its merits in a new and attractive way, but Mr. Benson in a simple, straightforward manner, in language clothed with the peculiar western freedom of speech, together with an accent of marked broadness, held the undivided attention of his audience from the beginning of his lecture to the close. The several stories told by the speaker seemed to exactly suit the temper of ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... "It was a bad piece of work, and it will never do for you to let yourself be drawn into every bit of mischief that is on foot; I believe I ought to give you a good lecture on it, but I can't do it, after such a straightforward confession. You must have gone through enough in the last week, not to be likely to ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... mention of money. He had known Sir John Pynsent at Cambridge, and had never allowed himself to be outdressed or outshone by him in any way. But Pynsent had beaten him in the race for political honors; and Sydney, like a showy player at billiards who prefers to put side on when he might make a straightforward stroke, resolved to take a high tone with his ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... answer me, Pixie, it is your own fault if I suspect you. You have been with us only a short time, but I have always believed you to be truthful and straightforward. I should be sorry to change my opinion, but you will have yourself to blame!" She paused and looked down at the little black figure, and her face softened regretfully. "You need not look so terrified, child. Mademoiselle is naturally very grieved ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... grey-blue, ironic eyes. Even as a small girl she had that odd ironic tilt of the eyelids which gave her a look as if she were hanging back in mockery. If she were, she was quite unaware of it, for under Miss Frost's care she received no education in irony or mockery. Miss Frost was straightforward, good-humoured, and a little earnest. Consequently Alvina, or Vina as she was called, understood only the explicit mode of ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... originality is of English growth; his satire broad, bold, fair-play English. He was no screened assassin of character, either with pen or pencil; no journalist's hack to stab in secret—concealing his name, or assuming a forged one; no masked caricaturist, responsible to none. His philosophy was of the straightforward, clear-sighted English school; his theories—stern, simple, and unadorned—thoroughly English; his determination—proved in his love as well as in his hate—quite English; there is a firmness of purpose, a rough dignity, a John-Bull look in his broad intelligent face; the very fur round ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... account to another without being found out. There are still one or two doubtful points to be cleared up, but there is the motive, and when you've got the motive you are three parts on your way to finding the criminal. It isn't a straightforward case by any means," he confessed, "and the more I go into it the more puzzled I am. I don't mind telling you this frankly: I have seen Constable Wiseman, who swears that at the moment the shots were fired he saw a light flash in the upper window. ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... entirely supplanted by those other views of life and art which came to occupy his maturer mind. In his latest poems—in "Rose Mary," for instance—I see this first impulse returning upon him with more than its early fascination. In his youth, however, the mysticism was very naive and straightforward. It was fostered by one of the very few excursions which Rossetti ever took—a tour in Belgium in October, 1849. I am told that he and the painter-friend who accompanied him were so purely devoted to the mediaeval aspect of all they saw, that, in walking through the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... enriching a straightforward pattern, covering a plain surface, is to work a subsidiary pattern upon the background. This is usually of a monotonous and formal character in order not to clash with the primary decoration, though this relationship may sometimes be found reversed. ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... don't know," continued Kate, "but you can't help being fascinating to men; you know you are, and Ranald believes you so, and—and you ought to be quite straightforward with him!" Poor Kate could no longer ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... jealous, there's every reason," P'ing Erh answered, "but for you to be jealous on her account isn't right. Her conduct is really straightforward, and her deportment upright, but your conduct is actuated by an evil heart, so much so that even I don't feel my heart at ease, not to say anything ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... man's child; his father, a general, had been created count by Napoleon I, and naturally he had found himself in favor after the second of December. He hadn't much gaiety of manner either, but he passed for a very honest man of straightforward intentions and understanding. Add to these a code of old aristocratic ideas and such a lofty conception of his duties at court, of his dignities and of his virtues, that he behaved like a god on wheels. It was the ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... together." And as soon as these words were out of her mouth, she hated herself for having spoken them. There was a maudlin, missish, namby-pamby sentimentality about them which disgusted her. She specially desired to be straightforward, resolute of purpose, honest-spoken, and free from all touch of affectation. And yet she had excused herself from marrying John Eames after the fashion of a sick schoolgirl. "It is no good talking about it any more," she said, getting up ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... Villeroy as his successor. The surprise of everybody at this was very great, for no one expected that the Marechal de Villeroy would repair the fault of Catinat. On the evening of his appointment, this general was exposed in a very straightforward and public manner by M. de Duras. He did not like the Marechal de Villeroy; and, while everybody else was applauding, took the Marechal by the arm, and said, "Monsieur le Marechal, everybody is ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... even for his tall body, great hands and feet, a thin face dark and red, a thin aquiline nose, black hair, and black prominent eyes that seemed to be always on the stare—there sat he, his legs dangling and his fingers working. A straightforward, honest, simple fellow looked he, all utility and practicalness—if there is such a word. One, plain in ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... this feat which we declare to be next to impossible. He actually does convey Odysseus from Troy to Ithaca, by a ten years' voyage too; he actually has narrated that voyage to us in plain straightforward words; and, what is more, he actually has made a superb epic of it. Yes, but when you come to dissect the Odyssey, what amazing artifice is found under that apparently straightforward tale!—eight years of the ten sliced out, to start with, and magnificently presented ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... various new plans for the people's welfare, let us make a kind of agreement that we will argue in a straightforward way, and not in a tail-foremost way. The typical modern movements may be right; but let them be defended because they are right, not because they are typical modern movements. Let us begin with the actual woman or man in the street, ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... to Myddleton. The fact, such as it is, proves perhaps the weakest link in a chain of patriotic associations which, I am afraid the reader must agree with me, has no great strength anywhere. The New River itself, when you come to it, is a plain straightforward, canal-like water-course through a grassy and shady level, but it is interesting for the garden of Charles Lamb's first house backing upon it, and for the incident of some of his friends walking ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... said he, quickly, not a little piqued by the haughty disapproval her form of expression and tone of speaking implied. But, in a moment, his straightforward honesty made him feel that his words were but a poor and quibbling answer to what she had said; and, be she as scornful as she liked, it was a duty he owed to himself to explain, as truly as he could, what he did mean. Yet it was very difficult to separate her interpretation, ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... maidens, who had been learning from Astumastao some new designs in beadwork, at which she was very skillful, had retired, and the two young people and the aunt were now left alone, she, in her clear, straightforward manner, told what was uppermost in her heart. It was of a purpose which had been growing there for years, but which she had only seen the possibility of carrying out since her uncle's death. She said she believed they ought to have a missionary to teach them the truths in the book of heaven. ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... traveller to realms beyond intended to describe from nature on his coming back among living men, has faded away, and the grey slab of Westminster covers it. A thing of the past, too, the master who first in France taught the way, daring in his researches, straightforward in his judgments, unmindful of consequences, mindful of Truth alone; whose life was a model no less than his work. The work subsists, but who shall tell what the life has been, and what there was beneficent in that patriarchal ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... more than ever. But this was no time for reticence. My concern was with the patient and his present needs. After all, I was, as Thorndyke had said, a doctor, not a detective, and the circumstances called for straightforward speech and ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... has borrowed the principles which underlie these characteristic provisions. In point of fact, representative democracy has never felt quite at home in Switzerland; there has always been an effort to revert to simpler, more straightforward methods; to reduce the distance which separates the people from the exercise of their sovereignty; and to constitute them into a court of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... not likely to be much disagreement with the general assertion that Shakespeare's plots and characters involuntarily develop under his hand in conformity with the straightforward requirements of moral law. He upholds the broad canons of moral truth with consistency, even with severity. There is no mistaking in his works on which side lies the right. He never renders vice amiable. His want ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... proving that these accusations were false, and of showing all fair-minded men in Germany that the Brethren at Herrnhut were as orthodox as Luther, as respected as the King, and as pious as good old Dr. Spener himself. His methods were bold and straightforward. ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... little boy, Samuel already showed that he was straightforward, brave, and obedient, a boy who could be trusted. He did his work faithfully, and when Eli began to grow feeble and his sight became dim, the little server was ready with his clear sight and eager footsteps to be both eyes and feet to ...
— The Babe in the Bulrushes • Amy Steedman
... against either side. This policy skilfully pursued by Tissaphernes (who had a genius for intrigue and did not require an Alcibiades to give him lessons in state-craft), more clumsily by Pharnabazus, whose character was comparatively sincere and straightforward, prevailed until the younger Cyrus made his appearance upon the scene, when a disturbing force came into play which had disastrous effects both on the fortunes of Greece and on those of Persia. The younger Cyrus had personal views of self-aggrandizement ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... that he realised what a beautiful woman the jolly little girl he knew as a boy had developed into. She was just the kind of wife he wanted, and I fancy he imagined I had stolen a march on him. But he was a thoroughly straightforward, manly fellow, and something very much out of the common must have upset him before he vented his ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... women at war, containing one-third of speculative substance to two of sentimental—a feminine plea for comprehension and a squire; and it was probably the reason (as there is no reason to suppose an emotional cause) why she exercised her evident sway over the mind of so plain and straightforward an Englishman as Henry Wilmers. She told him that she read rapidly, 'a great deal at one gulp,' and thought in flashes—a way with the makers of phrases. She wrote, she confessed, laboriously. The desire ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... if he don't. I say, Kendall, are you up for any office?" continued Wilton, with a certain appearance of slyness which the straightforward young gentleman did not ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... great change in her environment, Ponatah remained in many ways quite aboriginal. For instance, she was embarrassingly direct and straightforward; she entirely lacked hypocrisy, and that which puzzled or troubled her she boldly put into words. There came a time when Bill discovered that Ponatah's eyes, when they looked at him, were more than friendly, that most of the services she performed ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... who this man could be. His manner was straightforward, and from what she could see, his face was honest; still she felt somewhat suspicious. There had been rumours lately of poachers being about. Perhaps he was a thief, and would go to the Low Farm when all the men had gone home from work, and Mrs. Shaw would be unprotected. She reflected ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... himself, you will answer that you have already intimated not such to be the command of the holy Pope. If he say, 'They may have also other charges,' reply, 'Our conscience forbids. That is not our custom. We come in God's cause. Should we sin against Him? The holy Pope's mission is straightforward; his request and his prayers known to all: that the constitutions of the fathers may not be broken; that heretics be removed from the churches. Beyond that our mission ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... more seriously, as he would by and by have to rely on his own skill and his own strength. And it had wounded her when occasionally her brother-in-law had suggested economy, and had reminded her, in his straightforward way, of her narrow means, and the uncertain future ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... shoes, she saw they were in a perfectly sound state, and this confirmed her suspicion that there was more in the affair than had yet come out. Had she taken the straightforward measure of examining Robert, she would soon have arrived at the truth. But she had such a dread of causing a lie to be told, that she would adopt any roundabout way rather than ask a plain question of a suspected culprit. So she laid ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... others, the most 'natural' spontaneous and straightforward prose is not always the best. Study and careful revision are necessary in order to avoid an awkward and unpleasant monotony of rhythmic repetition, and at the same time obtain a flow of sound which will ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... what to think. It all sounded straightforward enough, and it was not credible that either the official in the office of the American liners, or the manager of an hotel, could be in collusion with Carson Wildred. Still, I was ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... doubt; he had refused promotion, because he would do his duty where it had pleased God to place him; next he had to show how well he could bear pain. In all his trials he had been cheerful, forcible, natural, and straightforward. In this deep one he preserved the same character. Forced to throw himself down and writhe upon the floor in his paroxysms of pain, he rose up, livid with exhaustion, and with the sweat of anguish on ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... This man, who was a canon of the collegiate church of Sainte-Croix and director of the Ursuline convent, will have an important part to play in the following narrative. Being as hypocritical as Urbain was straightforward, his ambition was to gain wherever his name was known a reputation for exalted piety; he therefore affected in his life the asceticism of an anchorite and the self-denial of a saint. As he had much experience in ecclesiastical ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... he spoke just from ten to fifteen minutes—plainly, simply, to the point, and what he had to say was that he and his friends did look on this Bill as a final settlement, which Ireland would be honourably pledged to carry out. Unselfish, straightforward, unpretentious, kindly, Mr. MacCarthy brought into more vivid contrast the personal venom—the ruthless hunger for vengeance and the humiliation of his enemies—which came out with almost painful vividness from the speech to which ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... feet flung him into the air. He hit the ground in a heap some four yards from where Abe stood. The latter resumed his place and went on with his speech. The crowd cheered him and there was no further disturbance at that meeting. The speech was a modest, straightforward declaration of his principles. When he was leaving several voices called for a story. Abe raised a great laugh with a humorous anecdote in which he imitated the dialect and manners of a Kentucky ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... white-sheeted body of the Martian lay on the table where he had been slain. The captain of the liner called Penrun as the chief witness. He told a straightforward story of a chance acquaintance with Lozzo who, he said, seemed to be afraid of something. He had declared, so Penrun testified, that he was being hounded for a map of some kind and he wanted Penrun to see it. Then the murder had been committed, the map was stolen, ...
— Loot of the Void • Edwin K. Sloat
... most humiliating reflection, that we are reduced to the most contemptible subterfuges of deceit and falsehood, in order to carry a point which might have been easily gained by straightforward integrity. But the conduct of Lake has left us no alternative, and whatever my opinion of that individual may be, he surely must be destitute of all those manly characteristics of a British seaman, as well as of the more generous feelings of ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... Italianisation of the Arabic qasabah "reed," transferring the name of the inhaler to the drug. Smoking tobacco through a forked reed of the sort described, has been proved by trial, to be impossible. As late as 1535, Oviedo is unable to tell a straightforward story of Indians smoking tobacco, but he adds the significant fact that the Negroes in the West Indies smoked and cultivated tobacco. Negroes, by the way were first allowed to come to America in 1501,—two ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... arousing opposition by too great a claim of importance for his topic he does impress its significance upon listeners. This seriousness must be justified by the occasion. It must not be an attempt to bolster up weakness of ideas or commonplaceness of expression. It must be straightforward, manly, womanly. Notice the excellent effect of the following which ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... play's rhythm, its tides of hugely wandering emotion, the restless, proud, gay, and agonized reaction from life, of the blood, of the mind, of the heart, which is its unity, than to follow the relatively straightforward definition of Hamlet's nerves. Not that anything derogatory to Hamlet or the Birds is intended; but the value of such works is not enhanced by forcing them into contrast with other works which cover deeper and ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... bon coeligeur, entierement, ainsi que doivent faire loyaux chretiens, et, s'il vous plait de guerroyer, allez contre les Sarrasins." It was long, but it was good, and had the sterling ring to it. It is my opinion that it was as fine and simple and straightforward and eloquent a state paper ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... determination to have no more cuts if soldiering can prevent it. Unfortunately for the character of the workman, soldiering involves a deliberate attempt to mislead and deceive his employer, and thus upright and straightforward workmen are compelled to become more or less hypocritical. The employer is soon looked upon as an antagonist, if not an enemy, and the mutual confidence which should exist between a leader and his men, the enthusiasm, ...
— The Principles of Scientific Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... vulgarize all beauty. There is not a quarter where the subtle taint has not crept in, and under its malign influence poetry has all but expired, good conversation has utterly ceased to exist, art is no longer serious, and the intercourse of men is not straightforward. The Englishman will always be emotional in spite of the rigid reserve which he imposes upon himself; he is an enthusiast, and he does truly love earnestness, veracity, and healthy vigour. Take him away from a corrupt and petty society and give him free scope, and ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... different planets, and of certain imaginary points on the ecliptic for a given time. This is an astronomical process, carried out according to certain simple formulae. The calculation of a horoscope is therefore a straightforward business, but, as astrologers all admit, its interpretation is where the skill is required, and no real rules can ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... Something in his blunt straightforward way appealed to me and I determined to try him. Handled right I imagined he would be a good man; handled wrong, he would probably become a bright and shining light of the genus hobo. So I hired him, telling him his salary would be forty dollars ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... hand as soon as Bobby released Betty. He liked this straightforward, brusque girl ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... legs, still others with frames so lean that clothes only flapped about them. There were great ears, swollen noses, thick lips, and, above all, red, blood-shot eyes. Not a normal, healthy face in the whole mass; not a straight figure; not a straightforward, steady glance. ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... a bit now!—If three thousand men ask you a just, straightforward question, do you consider they've no right to ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... Now that to go farther had become what he called a duty the perversity of his nerves was such that they refused. It was like him. He could always do the forbidden, the dare-devil, the crazily mad; but when it came to the reasonable and straightforward something in him balked. Here he was at what should have been the beginning of the end, and the demon which at another time would have driven him on was holding him back. Temptation had worked itself round the other way. It was temptation ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... friend Daniel," she said in her neat, incisive, straightforward way. "I am not going to take you seriously any more. I am neither to be melted by your convenient tears, nor dismayed by your bogey bills. I have never seen any of those bills, by the way; the next time you mention them, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... things easy to follow, it is a style like Bergson's. A 'straightforward' style, an american reviewer lately called it; failing to see that such straightforwardness means a flexibility of verbal resource that follows the thought without a crease or wrinkle, as elastic silk underclothing ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... the heart; they are characteristic of an excellent citizen. If he does more than complain of his unjust recall as a man of feeling would; if he proudly asks for proofs of a grave accusation, it is after he has tried in vain every honest and straightforward means. He will not suffer that a government, sold to the enemies of freedom, should discharge upon him its shame, its crimes, its ingratitude, and all the odium of ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... intellectual resources as compared with the presumptive spiritual poverty of the affluent. Country folk encourage themselves by asserting their fundamental value to society and by extolling their own simple straightforward virtues, which present so marked a contrast to the devious machinations of city-dwellers. Booker Washington's reiterated assertion that if he were to be born again he would choose to be a Negro because the Negro race is the only one which has a great problem contains a suggestion ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... sense, however, and the earnest life she had led at school and with her brother at home, would have sufficed her even without this guardianship and that of the Doctor. There was a straightforward frankness about her that kept men from talking nonsense to her. A compliment she simply laughed at, an attempt at flattery made her angry, and the Doctor afterwards declared to her uncle he would not have believed that the guardianship of ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... for a firm restraint on the growth of Federal spending and for greater tax reduction are simple and straightforward. For every dollar saved in cutting the growth in the Federal budget, we can have an added dollar of Federal ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... directions of the coroner, a Barford solicitor, whose one idea seemed to be to get through the proceedings as rapidly and smoothly as possible. And Collingwood felt bound to admit that, taking the evidence as it was brought forward, no simpler or more straightforward cause of investigation could be adduced. It was all very simple indeed—as it appeared ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... frighten you. I would have liked to be able to admire something more than your ingenuity. Ravengar, I do believe I could have forgiven your attempt to murder me if it had not included an attempt to dishonour me at the same time. There is something simple and grand about a straightforward murder—I shall prove to you soon that I do not always regard murder as a crime—but to murder a man amid circumstances of shame, to finish him off while making him look a fool—that is the act of ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... think that the course you have suggested will be the wisest and the kindest one. You have my full authority, Kenrick, to arrange it so, and I am happy to tell you that you have behaved throughout this matter in an honourable and straightforward way." ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... offensive to Mrs. Schwellenberg, who left me with Miss Mawer. As I never eat any myself at night, all I could devise to make the perfume tolerable was to consider it as an oppor'tunity for a lesson in carving: so I went to work straightforward to mangle my unbidden guest, for the use and service of ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... in the yard was Lord Bearwarden. That nobleman, though knowing him but slightly, had rather a liking for Stanmore, cemented by a certain good run they once saw in company, when each approved of the other's straightforward riding ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... Dunbar and Zeke Tucker there was no love lost. There had been a difficulty between them, originating at school, which need not be particularly referred to. Enough that it led to Zeke's cordially disliking Frank, while the latter, who was a frank, straightforward boy, could not see anything in Mr. Tucker's promising son to enlist either his ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... over this letter, sustained as it had been by years of straightforward duty, even good society concluded that it could socially recognize and receive this man; and yet, as the old lady had remarked, there was still an excellent prospect that he would enter heaven before he found a welcome to the ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... trifling degree in the estimation of my unworthy associates. I had become partial to deception from habit, and preferred exercising my own ingenuity in outwitting my father, to obtaining what I needed by more straightforward ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... tears, and she took a thick folio volume placed upon a table inlaid with enamel and medallions; it was the 'Astree' of M. d'Urfe—a work 'de belle galanterie' adored by the fair prudes of the court. The unsophisticated and straightforward mind of Marie could not enter into these pastoral loves. She was too simple to understand the 'bergeres du Lignon', too clever to be pleased at their discourse, and too impassioned to feel their tenderness. However, the great popularity of the romance ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... brought that bag to me, sir; you should have remembered that during office hours your time is mine. I am very angry with you, Herbert Rivers, and, what is still worse, very much disappointed. I imagined that you were a steady, straightforward boy, who meant to profit by the exceptional opportunities given you. I fancied you were worthy of the kindness I have bestowed upon you, and I find you a clever, artful, designing creature. Why did you say ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... has made: why Mr. Sheridan Knowles made his hero a Hunchback I cannot imagine. The play is an admirable play; and what is as strange a part of the affair as any, is the acting of the author. To say it is finished, or fine, would be to talk nonsense; but it is plain, straightforward, common-scene acting, which very much surprised us, more especially from an author, still more from an Irish author; and more still from an author, who in private life is a perfect enthusiast, and a fine phrenzied-eye orator. Fanny Kemble never appeared to greater advantage in public—in private, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... she does know," said Chloe softly, and brushed hot tears from her eyes. Could this be the man whose crimes against the poor, ignorant savages were the common knowledge of the North? Could this be he whom men called Brute—this simple-spoken, straightforward, boyish man who had endured hardships and spared no effort, that the mother he had never known might lie in her eternal rest beneath the green sod of her native land, far from the sights, and sounds that, in life, had become a torture to her soul, and ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... meanwhile was abroad on horseback with Tom and Jill. The three took a scamper over the downs, and returned by way of the shore. Biding with Tom and Jill, as may be imagined, was a series of competitive exercises, rather than a straightforward promenade. Tom was an excellent rough horseman; and Jill, when Mr Armstrong was at hand, was not the young lady to stick at anything. They had tried handicaps, water-jumps, hurdles, and were about to start for a ding-dong gallop along the mile of hard strand which ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... the world it had been possible for him to strive to be straightforward and courageous; but, if she was dead . . .! If Spurling had murdered her, if he had lied to him and she was his partner, what then? Well, that all depended on whether Spurling had known her sex. If ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... attaching to it—as things presented themselves at present there seemed to be no chance whatever that either Mrs. Mallett or Wellesley would lift the veil on what was evidently a secret between them. The only satisfactory and straightforward feature about yesterday's proceedings, he thought, was the testimony of Mrs. Bunning as to her unguarded door. Now, at any rate, it was a sure thing that there had been ready means of access to the Mayor's Parlour that evening; what was necessary was to discover who it was that ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... I asked Louise, uncertain what to do. The girl seemed to shrink back among her pillows at the sound of his voice. I was vaguely irritated with her; there are few young fellows like Halsey—straightforward, honest, and willing to sacrifice everything for the one woman. I knew one once, more than thirty years ago, who was like that: he died a long time ago. And sometimes I take out his picture, with its cane and its queer ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... back, and her chin resting on her hand. But the millionaire walked directly towards her with his usual frankness of conscious but restrained power, and she felt, as she always did, perfectly at her ease in his presence. Even as she took his outstretched hand, its straightforward grasp seemed to endow her ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... of his servant. Springing from bed, he wrapped himself in his dressing-gown, and walked hastily to and fro in the apartment for a few minutes in silence. At last he paused before Walter and grasped his hand. "You are a straightforward, warm-hearted fellow," he exclaimed. "But the more I am convinced of that, the less disposed am I to part with you. Will you not stay ...
— Harper's Young People, December 23, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... enough for him to run that dangerous risk?' But she obstinately kept her own counsel. The professional manner that he ridiculed so often was apparently useful in just such cases as this. It covered up incompetence and hypocrisy often enough, but one could not be human and straightforward with women and fools. And women and fools made up the greater part ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... her hand, led her to the bow, where Eric was sitting on a coil of rope, and, pointing straightforward, added ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... have much knowledge of children to know that as a rule, children are more honest and straightforward than adults. They are good observers, more disinterested and hence unbiased in giving evidence, but because of their weakness, more subject to the influence of other people. ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... had n't been "stupid," as Fan said, she would have had her wits about her, and let it pass; but, you see, Polly was an honest little soul and it never occurred to her that there was any need of concealment, so she answered in her straightforward way, "Oh, they ain't for me, sir; they are for Fan; from Mr. Frank, I guess. She 'll ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... steady, straightforward look—then held out her hand. It was a large, warm, hearty hand, and gripped yours like a man's. Kitty took it, but felt like shirking the eyes. She had no mind to be so weighed and measured. She had an uncomfortable consciousness that her inner ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... as it was in England; all social order was unsettled and changing, and well Mazarin knew it. He knew the pieces with which he played his game of chess: the king powerless, the queen mighty, the bishops unable to take a single straightforward move, and the knights going naturally zigzag; but a host of plebeian pawns, every one fit for a possible royalty, and therefore to be used shrewdly, or else annihilated as soon as practicable. True, the game would not last forever; but after ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... himself, less so to those whose support he sought, and in which the losses fell crushingly on the weak. His statecraft in this respect was more cynical than that of the crowned robbers who had degraded eighteenth-century politics into a game of grab. Their robberies were at least direct and straightforward. It was reserved for Napoleon at the Treaty of Campo Formio to win huge gains mostly at the expense of a weak third party, namely, Venice. He pursued the same profitable tactics in the Secularizations, when France and the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... the march of events and that of men in this curious sixteenth century, we ought never to forget that public policy had for its element a perpetual craftiness and a dissimulation which destroyed, in all characters, the straightforward, upright bearing our imaginations demand of eminent personages. In this, above all, is Catherine's absolution. It disposes of the vulgar and foolish accusations of treachery launched against her by the writers of the Reformation. This was the great age of that ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... business enough in city or country,' said straightforward Mr. Dell—'if you are disposed to take hold of it. Even our little ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... however, the United States Supreme Court has not yet had the moral courage to face the issue in cases involving the constitutional rights of the Negro. Not a decision of that tribunal has yet set forth a straightforward opinion as to whether the States can enact one code of laws for the Negroes and another for the other elements of our population in spite of the fact that the Constitution of the United States prohibits ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... name with the seafaring profession, and supposing some relationship between him and the Captain, which would extend, as a matter of course, to their titles; 'Lieutenant Walters, I can have no objection to make a straightforward reply. The fact is, that feeling extremely interested in everything that relates to Miss Dombey—not for any selfish reason, Lieutenant Walters, for I am well aware that the most able thing I could do for all parties would be to put an end to my existence, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... nothing to her discredit, were not prepared to say that she was a huzzy and a vampire without further evidence, but they admitted to each other privately that they always had felt there was something queer and not quite straightforward about Mattie. ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... every reason," P'ing Erh answered, "but for you to be jealous on her account isn't right. Her conduct is really straightforward, and her deportment upright, but your conduct is actuated by an evil heart, so much so that even I don't feel my heart at ease, not to say anything ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... a sigh of relief when he found no stronger evidence against the straightforward and conscientious spirit that had hitherto pervaded ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... unexperienced patentees it is deemed expedient to give a word of warning here regarding the host of so-called patent-selling agencies, which under various imposing titles, coupled with an apparently honest and straightforward method of business, tempt each patentee, upon the issue of his patent, to place the same in their hands and authorize them to negotiate the sale thereof. Their propositions are very attractive ...
— Practical Pointers for Patentees • Franklin Cresee
... irrelevant; and so quick was Sir Tom's intelligence that, though he made it as a sort of conventional necessity, he saw that it was irrelevant too. It might have been all very well to address a clever woman who could have given him back his reply in such words. But to Lucy's straightforward, simple, limited intellect such dialectics were altogether out of place. Her very want of capacity to understand them made them a disrespect to her which she had done nothing to deserve. He coloured in his quick sense of this, and sudden perception that his wife in ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... in amazement; but his straightforward, quiet wife, had been for several years gradually coming to the opinion she had just expressed, and the death of her eldest son had affected her deeply. The merchant, finding that he was not very good at consolation, soon changed the conversation; giving up the hope of lessening ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... Jewish persons who sometimes run them. And he has made good use of his knowledge here. But there is more than this in the book; for 'George Martyn' has considerable descriptive talent. His account, for instance, of the fight between the hero and the butcher is quite good. The story is straightforward, convincing, and full ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... paper the author presents a straightforward statement of facts concerning the disfranchisement of the Negro in the Southern States. Mr. Chesnutt, who is too well known as a writer to need any introduction to an American audience, puts the case for the Negro ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... together form a "hiatus." A hiatus between a vowel at the end of a word and another at the beginning of the next, is forbidden. Hence, l. 546, where the straightforward expression would have been lui chappe, Racine wrote the equivalent nous chappe, in order to ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... willing to force a war for that purpose. During the years succeeding the Peace of Paris a succession of short ministries, turning mainly upon questions of internal policy or unimportant party arrangement, caused her foreign policy to present a marked contrast to the vigorous, overbearing, but straightforward path followed by Pitt. Internal commotions, such as are apt to follow great wars, and above all the controversy with the North American colonies, which began as early as 1765 with the well-known Stamp Act, conspired with other ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... rebuked her, her eyes filled with tears. "You see, Genevieve, I am becoming ungrateful. My nature, that I believed so frank and straightforward, seems to get tangled in unexpected twists trying to go the right way. Yes, yes, you are right; I must ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... in a domestic and straightforward condition, and the windmiller no longer hesitated to come in. But he was less disposed to a hard and triumphant self-satisfaction than was common with him when his will ended well. A poor and unsuccessful career had, indeed, something ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... above and came through the little hall. From where he sat Anthony caught the gleam of Juliet's crisp linen skirt. Presently she came slowly down. As she turned upon the landing she met Anthony's eyes looking up. In a fashion quite unusual to the straightforward gaze of his friend her eyes fell. He saw that her cheeks were pale. ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... thoroughly, perceived that, far from having a notion of Stephen's precedence, he had no idea that she had ever been wooed before by anybody. On ordinary occasions she had a tongue so frank as to show her whole mind, and a mind so straightforward as to reveal her heart to its innermost shrine. But the time for a change had come. She never alluded to even a knowledge of Knight's friend. When women are secret they are secret indeed; and more ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... be; and in your place I should not suffer it to interfere with my projected visit to the Werve. Miss Mordaunt has been accused, in my presence, of brusque manners, imprudent behaviour, and so forth; but she is renowned for her plain and straightforward dealing, which has brought her into disrepute with her female friends, they preferring to say the most impertinent things in the blandest tone possible. I am sure you will find out the truth if you ask her a plain question. Besides, a single visit will not commit you to anything, and an interview ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... she did?" asked Arnold, in his own straightforward way. "Do you think she would be angry with me for ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... is undeniably true; but I confess I don't see why such unusual precautions should be necessary in this case. It seems to me that such a plain, straightforward thing. ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... progress, with the ordinary individual, are slow processes. Seldom is either process a designed and straightforward climbing, or a quick ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... was, bothered no more about it, but went cheerfully to work, not altogether displeased at the prospect of new adventures, which would enable him to by and by go back to the old folks with plenty of dollars, and a stock of startling yarns to reel off. He was a steady, straightforward lad, though somewhat thoughtless at times, and resolved to be a steady, straightforward man. The vessel first called into the Sandwich Islands, and there shipped a gang of Hawaiian natives to help load the guano, then she ...
— "The Gallant, Good Riou", and Jack Renton - 1901 • Louis Becke
... had been; when the ladies mingled with the men to take tea and coffee, he was still suffering from its after-effects. But he treated the occurrence in so hopelessly wrong a way; he minced and smirked over it; he would not own to a straightforward physical illness, but preferred to hint at and even take credit for an exaggerated sensibility, as though he enhanced his own eloquence by pointing to the extraordinary exhaustion it produced. He must needs ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... than one of losing a child," observed Phoebe, in her straightforward way. "If Mrs Rowland thinks so long beforehand of the one way, it is to be hoped she keeps Miss Matilda up to the thought of the other, which must happen sooner or later, while ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... We'll resume our conversation another time," and Dr. Dean took her hand and patted it pleasantly. "Don't fret yourself about Denzil; he'll be all right. And take my advice: don't marry a Bedouin chief; marry an honest, straightforward, tender-hearted Englishman who'll take care of you, not a nondescript savage who'll ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... to ring the bell when the girl looked at him, and her eyes brightened because Ted Strong, straight and stalwart, with his fine, handsome head and straightforward, honest eyes, was a person very good to ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... tried to combat this bold resolution on the part of the squire; but Mr. Hazeldean had seized on it with all the obstinacy of his straightforward English mind. He cut Randal's persuasive eloquence off ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... have disappointed all my expectations, when I thought I knew your character so well, too! Learn, that there is no one I despise so much as a male flirt. Oh, Frank! I did not think you had a grain of such little-mindedness in you! I believed you to be straightforward, and earnest, and true. I'm sadly disappointed in you, my boy; sadly disappointed!" and ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... am here to teach, and you are here to learn. As your master I expect prompt obedience. I shall look to see each of you do your best to acquire the knowledge which your parents have sent you here to obtain. Above all, I shall expect that every boy here will be straightforward, honorable, and truthful. I shall not expect to find that all are capable of making equal progress; there are clever boys and stupid boys, just as there are clever men and stupid men, and it would ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... as this porch was fifty cubits long, men may take many a step straightforward therein, and be but in the porch yet; even as we have seen men go as one would think till they are out of view, in the porch of this church in the wilderness; but presently you have them without the ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... he was received with marked distinction at the annual banquet of the Royal Academy in London; and the words which he spoke on that occasion have more than a mere passing interest, as illustrating the speaker's frank and straightforward manner of dealing with a question of great delicacy, and also as containing some striking and suggestive remarks on certain mental and moral peculiarities ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... their report without expressing the great pleasure they have derived from seeing two machines brought into competition that were able to do such very good work, and also at witnessing the friendly, straightforward, and honorable way in which the exhibitors of the respective machines met on ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... blessed so many generations, was no longer to raise the pastoral ring over the brows of bowing worshippers; that eloquent mouth which had for half a century preached the gospel was to open no more; those eyes with look so humble but so straightforward were closed forever! "He is regretted by all as if death had carried him off in the flower of his age," says a chronicle of the time, "it is because virtue does not grow old." The obsequies of the prelate were celebrated with a pomp still unfamiliar in the colony; the body, ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... nerves to the utmost pitch of tension. He was weary of obscurity, weary of the peasant life. He cared not how soon he threw off the mask. Asked a downright question, even by a foe, it was natural to him to make a straightforward answer, and he spoke ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... battle that was threatening. Zaidos would die, and he wanted the evidence of his own eyes. Also he wanted the statements of witnesses. Sometimes when he heard Zaidos' ready laugh, and saw his bright, straightforward look, a flicker of pity shadowed his dastardly resolve. Then he remembered the soft living, the ease and luxury of the house of Zaidos, and remembering that he, as Velo Kupenol, must be all his life nothing but ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... good man when he saw one—he was not long in demonstrating that fact. When everything was straightened out, MacRae—urged thereto by Lyn—made a straightforward request for honorable discharge But he did not get it. Instead, the gray-haired Commissioner calmly offered him promotion to an Inspectorship, which is equivalent to the rank of a captain, and carries pay of two thousand a year. And MacRae, ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... one of the principles of the Circumlocution Office never, on any account whatever, to give a straightforward answer, Mr ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... reasons, the distorted horrors grinning at her among the spaces of black gloom into which her spirit had sunk; had he been a fancy-sick poet, a pale-blooded creature given to blue devils and nightmare conjecture, he might have come somewhere near an understanding. But being plain Mark King, a straightforward, healthy, and unjaundiced man, his comprehension found never a clue to a condition which in Gloria was hardly other than an inevitable result of ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... Then his straightforward eyes he turned askance, Eyed me a little, and then bowed his head; He fell therewith prone like ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... fairly on their legs, I had little doubt that we could manage the rest. No doubt they would shut the door as it got later, and it was possible that the row might not be heard. If that was managed, I was sure we could crawl through the lines and get off. Yes, it was straightforward enough if we could but get rid of our cords. As I was thinking it over my eye fell upon the pan of water. An idea ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... confidence upon the validity of opinions which have no foundation in nature, or no support by the deductions of reason. But truth and error have always been at variance, and the audacity of the contest has kept pace with the growing vigor of the contending parties. Some straightforward, conscientious persons, whose intentions are undoubtedly commendable, are so infatuated by the sophistical theories of the spiritualist, or so tossed about on the waves of public opinion, that they lose sight of truth and good sense, and, like the philosopher ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... requital of the compliment, which was probably thrown in by way of placebo, and expressed myself willing at least to make one trial of a more straightforward style of composition, in which my actors should do more, and say less, than in my former attempts of this kind. Dick gave me a patronising and approving nod, and observed that, finding me so docile, he would communicate, for the benefit of my muse, a subject which he had ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... that the young man was very anxious to know, and that was whether her motive was mischief or kind intent when she called on him; and like the straightforward individual that he was, ...
— Three People • Pansy
... began to reproach herself. She reflected, with a kind of scornful wonder at her weakness, that she had allowed all chance of explanation to escape; the one man whom she could trust, who would surely give her a straightforward answer if she appealed to him by the memory of the old days, was beyond the reach of her questions, silent to eternity. Her former sorrow seemed trivial ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... had gathered by themselves in another corner of the yard. Here, however, they were soon joined by a small mob of the fellows, especially of the freshman class. Dick had his say. He didn't want to say much, but he related, in a straightforward way, what had happened. ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... invitations with equal good nature, and thus retained their friendship. It is not exaggeration to say that she looked upon Michael Fenger much as she had upon these genial fellow-workers. A woman as straightforward and direct as she has what is known as a single-track mind in such matters. It is your soft and silken mollusc type of woman whose mind pursues a slimy and labyrinthine trail. But it is useless to say that ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... opinion; and as to the logical ground of this change, he said that, if any one asked him what it was, he could only answer that he really did not know. Why could not he change back again, and say he did not know why? He had quite a right to do so; and then his conduct would have been so far straightforward and unexceptionable. But no;—in the very act of professing to believe in my sincerity, he takes care to show the world that it is a profession and nothing more. That very proceeding which at p. 15 he lays to my charge (whereas I detest it), of avowing ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... would sometimes invite me up to his room to see the exquisitely finished model which he had made with his own hands. He was the commodore of the captains, the oldest, wisest, and most impressive of them; a handsome, massive, Jovelike old gentleman, with the gentlest and most indulgent manners, and a straightforward, simple mariner withal. He had ceased to make voyages, and was settled, for the time being, in Liverpool. Mrs. Howes seemed, to my boyish apprehension, to be a sort of princess of exquisite and gracious refinement; I could imagine nothing in feminine shape more delicate, of more languid grace, ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... Counties, and, as they came, they faded into the palest shadows until at last they appeared in red stockings, high heels and were lost in the chorus of opera. Mr Hardy was the first step down. His work is what dramatic critics would call good, honest, straightforward work. It is unillumined by a ray of genius, it is slow and somewhat sodden. It reminds me of an excellent family coach—one of the old sort hung on C springs—a fat coachman on the box and a footman whose livery was made for his predecessor. ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... notable autobiographies that have appeared during recent years the editor has chosen two from which to reprint brief passages. The first is Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery, the simple and straightforward personal narrative of one whom all must now concede to have been a very great man; the other is that human and poignant epic of the stranger from Denmark who became one of us and of whom we as a people are tenderly proud. The Making of an American is in some ways a unique book; concrete, specific, ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... faith as to bearing messages and giving safe conduct to Archer's people in the field. It was all past Archer's comprehension and that of the officers present. There was no Gray Fox there who knew Indians as they knew themselves. There was no genial, straightforward "Big Chief Jake," the fearless soldier leader from the lower reservation, from Camp Apache and the San Carlos, the man on whom the Gray Fox leaned, the man whom the hostiles dreaded, the "friendlies" trusted, and all frontiersmen, ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... a flushed face, and a sense of relief, angry, nevertheless, that she should read my inmost thoughts, having fancied that my invitation was a stroke of diplomacy. I learned afterward that diplomacy is a mistake for the simple man. With a straightforward "Yes" or "No" he can often turn aside the schemes of the cunning, but on forsaking these he generally finds the other side considerably too clever for him—all of which is a ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... a straightforward story, my boy," said Mr. Goldwin, "but I cannot think there has been any foul play. In fact, I have heard something against this young Randolph that makes me distrust him. Were it not for this, I should feel more interest in your story, and would do all in my power to try and ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey
... prosperous, if that's what you mean. I'm a straightforward man, I am. You always know where to find me. There ain't no piety about me. ...
— The Store Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... evidence. He told a plain, straightforward story from first to last. He had no knowledge whatever of Stoner's having found out the secret of the Wilchester affair. He knew nothing of Stoner's having gone over to Darlington. On the Sunday he himself had gone up the moors for a quiet stroll. ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... they figure they don't have to make good. They seem to think that to be in politics is to be trying to fool everybody. They would rather—the most of them—get ten votes by faking than a hundred by straightforward work. They don't seem to see that nowadays people know more about the inside of things than they used to—that they're doing more thinking ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... "I wass ussed to think you an honest, straightforward man, though you wass a churchman, and are you mean to tell me now that you donno that Valmai Powell have a small child on the 30th ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... simply, "I will be your wife. You are always kind to me," and for the first time she put her face up to his. He kissed her gravely, and then, being a straightforward, honourable man, he went to the Sisters and told them. A ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... the Right Hon. Walter Belford, and read an appeal in the eyes behind the pince-nez. He squared his shoulders in a manner that had something admirably manly about it—and told a straightforward lie. ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... A straightforward account of this dreadful tragedy which still stands out in the annals of assassination. It contains much ...
— The Good Old Songs We Used to Sing, '61 to '65 • Osbourne H. Oldroyd
... forward to listen with the most composed deference, but pressed not in the slightest degree upon her confidence by any question or look down towards the letter, or up towards the lady's face, but straightforward looked he, till, quite provoked by his dulness, Mrs. Beaumont took the matter up again, and, in a new tone, said, "To be candid with you, my dear friend, this is a subject on which I feel some awkwardness and reluctance in speaking to you—for of all men breathing, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... which unmerited favour has only served to exasperate, is waving a lighted torch among these combustibles—you will, I think, admit, that if we pass through this crisis without explosions it will be a gratifying circumstance, and an encouragement to persevere in a liberal and straightforward application of constitutional principles ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... and the contrast of this poor man, unable to buy a single cheap toy for his family, and giving his chubby boy a rude iron hammer and nails, to pound into that poor stool, as a substitute for doll or rocking-horse, was very touching. And then I looked with some wonder at the straightforward honesty of the little maid, who, in the midst of the new, fine house, was not ashamed to talk so frankly of the dismal wretchedness and want which a few days before had been the lot of the family. She saw nothing to be ashamed of in poverty; while by meaner and more ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... poet, or mimic of that other's attitude and outlook. The great zest of living which inspires him is far too real and intense to clothe itself in the trappings of any alien individuality. He is too straightforward to be even dramatic. It is not his instinct to put on a mask, even for purposes of artistic personation, and much less ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... letter to Mr Bevan, which he had already prepared. It was frankly and ingenuously written, and described their situation without the least concealment; plainly stated the miseries they had undergone; and preferred their request in modest but straightforward terms. Mark highly commended it; and they determined to dispatch it by the next steamboat going the right way, that might call to take in wood at Eden—where there was plenty of wood to spare. Not knowing how to address Mr Bevan at his own place of abode, Martin superscribed it to the care of ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... be beforehand with Barbara and Bevan and Elise and Toby and Markham and the servants; to tell Fanny himself before any of them could get in first. The more he thought about it the more he was persuaded that this was the only right, the only straightforward and manly thing to do; at the same time it occurred to him that by suppressing a few unimportant details he could really give a very satisfactory account of the whole affair. It would not be necessary, for instance, to tell ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... his satire broad, bold, fair-play English. He was no screened assassin of character, either with pen or pencil; no journalist's hack to stab in secret—concealing his name, or assuming a forged one; no masked caricaturist, responsible to none. His philosophy was of the straightforward, clear-sighted English school; his theories—stern, simple, and unadorned—thoroughly English; his determination—proved in his love as well as in his hate—quite English; there is a firmness of purpose, a rough dignity, a John-Bull look in his broad ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... I'm playing the humbug in my turn, and I'll own up. It was wicked, if you will: but it was great in its way, and determined . . . and women, you know, always fall slaves to that sort of thing. It was straightforward, too: Jimmy said Jack had given his man fair warning. Jimmy—but you know that boy's way—gave me the impression that he didn't condemn Jack's craze as unsportsmanlike: merely for being, as he put it, ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... just three minutes of ten o'clock when she finished her story. It had been delivered haltingly and with visible signs of embarrassment at times, but it was a straightforward, honest ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... wasn't exactly that," the former went on in his straightforward way. "Yet it's so blazing hard to put it so you can understand. You see, I've been doing very well, and—you know I've got a big bunch of cattle running up in the foot-hills now—I thought, maybe, seeing Will isn't working, money might be a bit tight ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... but bowed graciously, and prayed the 'well-beloved lord' to speak on, whereon in a few straightforward soldier-like words he ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... facts, presenting a problem both startling and sensational, the reader will quickly learn from this straightforward narrative—an open ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... was as good as her word. She knew nothing of the finesse of diplomacy in the manipulation of her company. Her method was straightforward dragooning. Observing the persistent attempts of Dr. Bulling during the early part of the trip to secure Iola for a tete-a-tete, she called out across the deck in the ears of the whole company, "See here, Bulling, ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... Edwardes alone is due the credit. It is instructive to read the full record[1] of this tedious and difficult piece of diplomacy, for it serves as an interesting example of Oriental subtlety and circumlocution, contrasted with the straightforward dealing of ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... spending most of her days at Linndale, and he had a vague idea that she and Rodney together had been elaborating still further on the plans for the house. It was the furtiveness of it rather than the fact itself that troubled him. He was open and straightforward himself. Why couldn't Natalie be ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... lime-burner, and not a word of this to me! Margery, Margery! when shall a straightforward one of your sex be found! Subtle even in your simplicity! What mischief have you caused me to do, through not telling me this? I wouldn't have so endangered anybody's happiness for a thousand pounds. Wicked girl that you were; why ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... which he always read over a great many times and admired very much, and which nevertheless had always had the effect of irritating him a little and making his hope for a time look pale. They were so transparently simple and straightforward, and expressed so openly the friendly ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... outran his feet. He seemed to suppose that he was receiving, not extending the benediction; and he offered the delicate tribute to his friend of allowing him to perceive the sense of debt. It would have been the subtlest flattery, had he not been the most honest and straightforward of men. We talked—how can I say of what? Or of what not? We talked till our heads ached and our throats were sore; and when we had finished we began again. I remember being surprised at his quick, ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... and for the better, Mrs. Yardley." Then, with a straightforward meeting of the other's eye calculated to disarm whatever criticism the situation might evoke, she quietly added, "You need no longer trouble yourself with serving me my meals in my room. I will eat dinner in the public dining-room ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... above all comparison. They are familiar without coarseness, and terse without obscurity. Their main charm may be said to consist in the simplicity and strength with which religious and moral truths are handled; the uncompromising and straightforward manner in which human frailties and sins are exposed; the kindliness of exhortation to repentance and godliness of living; the power, purity, and comfort of the Gospel-dispensation; and, above all, the perfect absence of fanaticism, of an overheated ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various
... slightly arched, palm down, nearly at arm's length before the breast; the right extended, flat, palm down, and pointing forward, is pushed from the top of the breast, straightforward, underneath, and beyond the left. (Shoshoni and ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... ignorance of wrong. That he had not betrayed his duty he would satisfy the enraged man, by producing the very order on which he delivered them to Joe! "Yes, Joe was his name!" continues the honest man; "and he asserted his ownership, and told a straightforward story, and didn't look roguish." He passes the order over to Blowers, who, having examined it very cautiously, says: "Forgery, forgery!-'tis, by the Eternal!" Turning his fat sides, he approaches the window, and by the light reads each successive ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... a gloomy set of young faces were gathered together in the Eyry—fifteen of the Knights of the Rose—and all knew why they were assembled. The talk which followed was conducted mostly by Myles. He addressed the others with a straightforward vim and earnestness, but the response was only half-hearted, and when at last, having heated himself up with his own fire, he sat down, puffing out his red cheeks and glaring round, a space of silence followed, the lads looked ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... arts for it, sister; she is a straightforward little hussy, and that is one thing I like about her; though I was as near as possible being provoked with her once or twice to-day. There is only one thing I wish was altered she has her head filled with strange notions absurd for a child of ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... beyond death, or does he not? It pleases me not that all this should remain unanswered, and I do not think it right. May it please the Master to answer me if he can. But when anyone does not understand a matter, then a straightforward man says, 'I do not know that.'" The Buddha replies somewhat evasively that he has not undertaken to decide such questions, because they are not ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... honourable, straightforward gentleman," I suggested ironically. "I can imagine a lady such as you describe Queen Inez to have been being peculiarly unfitted to deal with such ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... they met Donal, and she saw her smile to him as she always did now! One thing she was determined upon—and herein lay the pledge of her coming freedom!—that she would not behave to him in the least otherwise than her wont. If she would be worthy, she must be straightforward! ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... in earnest; for the example of what Jack had done for himself, even so far as they knew, had excited a strong desire for improvement among them. They, however, were doubtful as to others, and agreed that it would not do to propose it in a straightforward manner, but that a good deal of careful ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... and equal terms with Madison, Franklin, and others of our most polished statesmen; while Robertson's letters, when he had finally learned to write them himself, were almost as remarkable for their phenomenally bad spelling as for their shrewd common-sense and homely, straightforward honesty. Sevier was a very handsome man; during his lifetime he was reputed the handsomest in Tennessee. He was tall, fair-skinned, blue-eyed, brown-haired, of slender build, with erect, military carriage and commanding bearing, his lithe, finely proportioned figure being well set off by ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... they were children the two girls had admired and loved each other, notwithstanding the difference in their natures. Dorothy was one of the happy persons whose attraction was so apparent that few natures resisted it. She was handsome and straightforward and sweet tempered. One girl in a family of six brothers, she had learned a freemasonry of living, and had not the sensitiveness and introspection that troubles so many young girls. Her mother was dead, yet she and her father had been such intimate friends that she had not felt ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... tenderly on her shoulder, and turned up the pale, anxious face toward his. How tall he seemed, and he was President of the United States, too! A dim thought of this kind passed for a moment through Blossom's mind; but she told her simple and straightforward story, and handed Mr. Lincoln Bennie's ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... with coolness and straightforward simplicity, abiding firmly by his main purpose, but conciliatory as to means. He wrote to the governor and the mayor: "For the future troops must be brought here, but I make no point of bringing them through Baltimore;" he would "march them around Baltimore," if, as he hoped, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... in that light, it does seem to me, that this Institution—small now, but I do hope some day to become great and to become the mother institution of many and valuable children—is one of the noblest, most right-minded, straightforward, and practical conceptions that I have come ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... brilliantly hard, often mannered; and he loved Dr. Goldsmith, so bland, loquacious, welcoming. In Fielding's sentences he heard the clatter of oaths; and when bored by the pulpy magnificence of Pater's harmonies went back to Bunyan with his stern, straightforward way. For Macaulay and his multitudinous prose, Cintras conceived a special abhorrence, but could quote for you with unfailing diction Sir William Temple's "Use of Poetry and Music," and its sweet coda: "When all is done, ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... companion said to herself that she had never seen a handsomer fellow than this stalwart American. There was about him that clean, strong, sweet look of the absolutely healthy man, the man who has buffeted the world and not been buffeted by the world. He was frank, bright, straightforward, and there was that always-to-be-feared yet ever-to-be-desired gleam of mastery in his eye. It may have been sometimes a wicked mastery, and more than one woman who admired him because she could not help herself had said, "There is a devil in ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... own publics, to practise a little collusion in drafting the Treaty,—a supposition which in slightly different circumstances might have had a good deal of foundation. As matters actually were, this subtlety did not benefit them, and they would have done much better with a straightforward and candid estimate of what they believed to be the amount of their liabilities on the one hand, and their capacity to pay ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... Fanny, who was fast losing her temper. "Sibyl is a good, straightforward, honorable girl. ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... opinions differing from their own without being dishonest. They cannot doubt that they have been honest toward themselves, and as a consequence they cannot conceive how others, who are of a different mind, can be equally honest, and have come by their convictions by a straightforward path. Often it has been very difficult for them to break with their old faith, cherished from childhood, and they can only look upon it as cowardice and weakness if others, as they think, have not made or wished to make this sacrifice. But we ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... There thrust the bold straightforward horn To battle for that lady lorn, With heartsome voice of mellow scorn, Like any knight in knighthood's morn. "Now comfort thee," said he, "Fair Lady. For God shall right thy grievous wrong, And man ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... basis of truth for them to build their tale on; because the truth acts like acid on untruth. They're going to lie in any case; but lies told without any reference to truth knit better than when invented at a moment's notice to explain away another's straightforward statement. There's a plausible theory that culprits taken in the act are best examined in secret, one by one, in ignorance of ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... Keats a realm of enchantment; or as to Wordsworth the realm where alone the divine and the human could pass the boundaries of sense and meet; or as to Matthew Arnold a refuge from pain and disillusionment. Browning regards the world about him more in the sane, unsentimental, straightforward, intelligible way of Chaucer or of Shakespeare. The mystical elements in Wordsworth's feeling for nature were foreign to Browning's mind. An instructive comparison might be made between Wordsworth's ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... it. Why it's as straightforward as possible. Why there hasn't been a hitch of any kind since we came up here. Lor' the airs you gods and goddesses give yourselves are perfectly sickening. Why it's ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... her right. Men whose honor was beyond question became secret agents of this power. The state was honeycombed and mined; society was a tangle of plots. The king was helpless, though his only wish was for the people's welfare. Honest and straightforward, what could he do against this far-reaching machination? The very advisers by his side were corrupted through mistaken patriotism. The idea that they were playing into the hands of the foreigner certainly never entered into the minds of these dupes—at least, not ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... and Vito Viti stared, and that, too, as if a messenger had come from the lower regions to summon them away for their misdeeds. Lieutenant Griffin spoke unusually good Italian for a foreigner, and his manner of proceeding was so straightforward and direct as to carry with it ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... they wear their rue, or cause you to wear yours, 'with a difference.' This girl, however, escapes the monotony of her sex by one or two peculiarities:—she has not a bit of art about her, nor a shred of coquetry. She is as simple and as straightforward as an Arcadian. She doesn't even know when she is being made love to, or understand what you mean, when you pay her ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... who screw their words into all manner of diabolical shapes, could only feel how perfectly disgusting they were, it might induce them to drop it. With many, it soon becomes such a confirmed habit that they cannot again be taught to talk in a plain, straightforward, manly way. In the lower order of ladies' boarding-schools, and indeed, too much everywhere, the same sickening, mincing tone is too often found. Do, pray, good people, do talk in your natural tone, if you don't wish to be utterly ridiculous ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... narrow causeway with Cathbarr of the Ax at his side for friend and guide. The giant did not yet quite comprehend exactly what plan had flashed across the brain of old Turlough, so as they rode Brian made the thing clearer to him. When the simple and straightforward Cathbarr grasped the matter, he smote his horse's neck with ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... much, but it cannot do everything. It is notorious in India that false witnesses can be bought at so much a head, according to the nature of witness required. Bribery and corruption are not mere names here, but facts, most difficult for any straightforward official to trace and track and deal with. We know, and everyone knows, that the White Man's Government, though strong enough to win and rule this million-peopled Empire, is weak as a white child when it stands outside the door of an Indian house, and wants to know what ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... employment, pacify me, and, as I was well aware, keep his eye on me. Still, as I esteemed him from my heart, and had already confided many things to him, though not my affection for Gretchen, I determined so much the more to be perfectly candid and straightforward with him; as it was intolerable to me to live in daily intercourse with any one, and at the same time to stand on an uncertain, constrained footing with him. It was not long, then, before I spoke to him about the matter, refreshed myself by the relation and repetition of the minutest ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... to an ordinary and uninspired intellect it may appear perfectly obvious that a lyric means simply and clearly what it says, the true Browningite is better informed. He is deeply aware that if the poet seems to say one thing, this is proof indisputable that another is intended. To take a work in straightforward fashion would at once rob the Browning Club of all excuse for existence, and while parlor chairs are easy, the air warm and perfumed, and it is the fashion for idle minds to concern themselves with that rococo humbug Philistines call culture, societies of ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... genius in his way at finance; a man with a thorough knowledge of the natives and their ways. In the short time he has been in Teheran the bank has made enormous strides, by mere sound, business capability and manly, straightforward enterprise. ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... rounded shoulders, others with wooden legs, still others with frames so lean that clothes only flapped about them. There were great ears, swollen noses, thick lips, and, above all, red, blood-shot eyes. Not a normal, healthy face in the whole mass; not a straight figure; not a straightforward, steady glance. ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... institution as the Diet, and the advances making by Democracy, which, for the first time, were dangerous, because the people had reason and justice on their side. He told me, also, all the steps he had taken to secure the co-operation of the K. of Prussia, which were straightforward and deferential; and he complained, though without bitterness, of the manner in which they had been misrepresented.... It may be that some good will come, perhaps before the close of the present century, from a public avowal ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... said he, ungenially. "Things not dreamed of, Friedel, by your straightforward philosophy. One night I was, take it all in all, straight with the world and my destiny; the next night I was an outcast, and justly so. I don't complain. I have no right ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... number of the work that was printed, but to satisfy those London publishers to whom the individual in question so foully misrepresented me, that my conduct in every transaction I have had with booksellers has been straightforward, just, and honorable, and that I can publicly make this assertion, without the slightest apprehension of being contradicted. That the book was cushioned in this country, I am fully aware, and this is all I shall say upon that part of the subject. ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... his blunt straightforward way appealed to me and I determined to try him. Handled right I imagined he would be a good man; handled wrong, he would probably become a bright and shining light of the genus hobo. So I hired him, telling him his salary would be forty dollars ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... fraudulently got, that really belongs to somebody else; and the gambler would feel that if the president takes it, he cannot think very disapprovingly of the manner in which it was acquired. I think it would be more honest and straightforward to take his ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... promise to his chum, but that did not prevent him from choosing the night when J.W. led the meeting to stand up at the first opportunity and make his straightforward confession of love and loyalty, since God had made him a sharer in the life that is in Christ. Then for a moment J.W. feared Marty might forget their agreement, but Marty said simply, "And part of the joy that is in my heart to-night is because there is ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... city or country,' said straightforward Mr. Dell—'if you are disposed to take hold of it. Even our little Crocus will ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... a chat together about the matter. John was not a bad fellow when once you knew how to take him, but he had qualities of character which at times seemed at variance with what he would have us believe were his straightforward principles. It was this trait of character, at times defying analysis, we had to treat with most care, lest unconsciously it embroil us. My friend Palmerston might without prejudice be taken as an excellent representative of this unfortunate trait. 'Now,' says John, in a methodical ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... animals as well as in human beings, the difference being only in degree and not in kind. In a savage tribe the expression of this animal nature is simple and natural, while in a highly civilized nation it is expressed not in a simple and straightforward manner, but in an artful and refined way. In a civilized community the same nature working through varied device, policy and plan brings the same results in a more polished form. In the struggle for existence amongst lower animals and savage tribes, those who are physically strong ...
— Reincarnation • Swami Abhedananda
... with which Telford performed the duties entrusted to him, and the skill with which he directed the works placed under his charge, had secured the general approbation of the gentlemen of the county. His straightforward and outspoken manner had further obtained for him the friendship of many of them. At the meetings of quarter-sessions his plans had often to encounter considerable opposition, and, when called upon to defend them, ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... the "young person"), popular vulgarity, and that curious Anglo-Saxon uneasiness and reticence in these things which while in no sense a sign of purity of mind invokes an invincible prejudice against any sort of straightforward discussion. ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... questions concerning Yolanda, but I kept silent. I had begun to suspect that she was not what she passed for—a burgher girl; but Castleman was a straightforward, truthful man, and his words satisfied me. I had, at any rate, to be content with them, since Yolanda's affairs were none of mine. Had I not been sure that Max's training and inheritance gave him a shield against her darts, she and her affairs would have given me deep concern. ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... the Street seemed straightforward enough in his statement of plans, and it did not occur to me to distrust him while I was in his presence. Yet, once more in my office, with the locked door between, I began to doubt, and tried to find some hidden meaning ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... could then converse with the cayman, and the whispers of the porpoise in the ears of the walruss and the flounder expressed the thoughts which were passing in his mind. The wants which the heron and the goosander now express by nods and winks, were then conveyed by plain, straightforward words; and the grunts and squeaks of the hog, and the bleating of the kid, and the neighing of the horse, and the howl of the dog, and the crowing of the cock, and the cackling of the hen, and the other means by which beasts, and birds, and other ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... so animated and so straightforward, so entirely clean in all her thoughts and actions, that she commands love and respect at one and the same time. After supper her grandfather asked her to sing and play for us. Goodness only knows ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... one pay poultry claims of this kind? It being absolutely impossible to verify these accounts properly, the only way is to take the general character of the claimant, paying according as you think him straightforward or the reverse. It is an insult to an honest man to offer him anything less than the amount he asks for; therefore claims which have every appearance of being bona fide should be settled in full. But the hunt can't afford it, one is told. In that case ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... to become your wife this evening, you deserved a straightforward answer, and instead I replied in a spirit of capriciousness and disingenuousness, which I now earnestly regret, and which ask you ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... Thomas Keble, the Vicar of Bisley, a man of sterner type than his brother, with strong and definite opinions on all subjects; curt and keen in speech; intolerant of all that seemed to threaten wholesome teaching and the interests of the Church; and equally straightforward, equally simple, in manners and life. Under him Isaac Williams began his career as a clergyman; he spent two years of solitary and monotonous life in a small cure, seeking comfort from solitude in poetical composition ("It was very calm and subduing," ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... deficiencies and lack of opportunities, that gallant determination to get the better of her upbringing and her surroundings. A fight always appeals to me, you know. I like the courage that is in the girl—I am sure it is courage—and her straightforward effort to get the best out of life, to learn the things she was never taught, to make ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... laugh at, because he hits the nail on the head in some strange way they aren't expecting. If I was to have died, I couldn't help laughing at some things he said; and yet I don't think I ever felt more solemnized. He sat up there in a sort of grand, straightforward, noble way, and told all the way the Lord had been leading of him, and all the exercises of his mind, and all about the dreadful shipwreck, and how he was saved, and the loving-kindness of the Lord, till the Doctor's spectacles got all blinded ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... not get into mischief; and the maiden's devotions became far from solitary; but she moved on, with a sort of superb unconcern, never lifting the dark fringes that veiled the eyes so steadily fixed on the beads that dropped through her fingers, until, as she finished, she raised up her head with a straightforward fearless look at the way she was going, so completely self-possessed that no one ventured to accost her, and to follow her at less than such a respectful distance, that she was always lost sight ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... present he was sincere. Moreover, his long period of secret love and admiration, the thought of so powerful a man dreaming of her in this fashion, was so flattering. It soothed her troubled vanity and shame in what had gone before. His straightforward confession had a kind of nobility which was electric, moving. She looked at him as he stood there, a little gray about the temples—the most appealing ornament of some men to some women—and for the life of her she could not help being moved ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... of the kind. Not an imitation of anything. It will be a simple, straightforward, common-sense, American home, with room for a good-sized family, several rooms for extra occasions, and some that will not be finished at all but held in reserve for future contingencies. It sometimes costs no ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... sensible that the English Government had not pressed him, feeling as they had done the extreme delicacy of his position, and the great extent of his frontier so easily attacked; that he did not wish to say now, till the moment of decision came, thinking it more honourable and straightforward not to raise false expectations, but that his interests being so completely with us, should the Emperor of Russia do nothing in the honourable direction he hoped to see him adopt, he should then consider himself called ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... told his story in a straightforward honest way, it was, upon the face of it, so inconsistent that even the loafers, changing feet again, pitied the prisoner and many of them actually left the room before the judge could pronounce sentence. Moran was held, of course, and sent to jail without bail. ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... are interested in what simple straightforward people call the Pathology of Consciousness have gathered a great body of evidence upon the various manias that affect men, and there is an especially interesting department of this which concerns illusion upon matters ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... was dumb, her will was helpless. Every sense in her but the seeing sense was paralyzed. The seeing sense—held fast in the fetters of its own terror—looked unchangeably straightforward, as it had looked from the first. There she stood in the door-way, full in the path of the figure advancing on her through the shadow, nearer and nearer, step ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... besides Valentia in yellow and Daphne in pink—both looking as fresh as daisies and as civilised as orchids—consisted of Lady Walmer, a smart, good-looking, commonplace woman, rather fatter than she wished to be, but very straight-fronted, straightforward, and sporting, with dark red hair and splendid jewels; a faded yet powerful beauty who had been admired in the eighties, but had only had real success since she ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... after a time we begin to realize how much their presence means to us. We may not notice them the first time, or the third, or the fifth, but after a while we become conscious of their persistence and we esteem them accordingly. Such men are the products of clean, straightforward lives. They are never too busy to exchange a pleasant word. They do not flame into anger on a pretext. Their code of existence is well ordered and filled to the brim with lots to do and lots to think about. The old saying: "If you want anything go to a busy man," ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... great distance, but the difficulty was to reach it. I had heard of a path, but I soon gave up the attempt to find it. As there was not a human being to be seen who could give me any counsel, I commenced climbing the hill in the direction that I wished to take. It was anything but straightforward walking. The lower part of the steep was strewn with loose stones like shingle, that slipped under the feet, so that I had to proceed in zigzag fashion, taking advantage of every bush of juniper and box and root of hellebore as a foothold. But the vegetation ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... lad; guided by its true spirit of fair play, it is a feeling that will make him above doing a mean thing in every station of life, and will give him real feelings of humanity. I have had great experience in the characters of thorough sportsmen, who are generally straightforward, honourable men, who would scorn to take a dirty advantage of man or animal. In fact, all real sportsmen that I have met have been tender-hearted men—who shun cruelty to an animal, and are easily moved by a tale ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... these terms were genuine, and sent a cardinal to Salerno, to learn the truth. On being advised that all was straightforward, he declared his readiness to accept them. But a cabal in the German interest among the cardinals now put in such a strong opposition to the pope's intention, that, taken by surprise, he dropped it, and retracted his favourable answer ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby
... health, but only the (probably unpleasing) advice to flee from the wrath of God and to be reconciled with his wife, from whom he was separated. He too, however, was moved by the sight of her and her straightforward, undeviating purpose. He gave her four francs, Durand tells us,—not much of a present,—which she gave to her uncle, and which helped to buy her outfit. Probably he made a good report of her to his mother, for shortly after her return to Vaucouleurs ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... could be either blunt or cryptic in speech at will. In one mood he was the straightforward, outspoken official; in another the potential lawyer. P.C. Robinson, though unable to describe his chief's erratic qualities, was unpleasantly aware of them. He was not quite sure, for instance, whether the superintendent ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... withdrawn, and Samoa plunged again for a period of weeks into her original island-obscurity, Becker opened his guns. The policy was too cunning to seem dignified; it gave to conduct which would otherwise have seemed bold and even brutally straightforward, the appearance of a timid ambuscade; and helped to shake men's reliance on the word of Germany. On the day named, an ultimatum reached Malietoa at Afenga, whither he had retired months before to avoid friction. A fine of one thousand dollars and an ifo, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Office at Washington. I transferred the patent to Mr. Merrick in order that it might be worked to our mutual advantage. My invention was thus introduced into America under the most favourable auspices. The steam hammer soon found its way into the principal ironworks of the country. The admirable straightforward manner in which our American agent conducted the business from first to last will ever command my ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... for you to make fun of it," said Mrs. Tipping, raising her voice. "I like plain, straightforward dealing folk myself. I don't under-stand nothing about your secret services and Governments and all that sort of thing. Mr. Robinson, have you come back prepared to marry my daughter? Because, if you ain't, we ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... say in Parliament, where no one could be expected to give a downright and straightforward "yes" or "no," is in the affirmative. The scenes of these early dramas are characteristically Mesopotamian. The well-ordered garden "planted" with the tree of life "in the midst," and a river to water it, the ark of Noah pitched "within and without with ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... subtle taint has not crept in, and under its malign influence poetry has all but expired, good conversation has utterly ceased to exist, art is no longer serious, and the intercourse of men is not straightforward. The Englishman will always be emotional in spite of the rigid reserve which he imposes upon himself; he is an enthusiast, and he does truly love earnestness, veracity, and healthy vigour. Take him away from a ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... carriage in those days was like one of our carts. In his village, it is said, he looked simple and sincere, as if he were one not able to speak; when waiting at court, or speaking with officers of an inferior grade, he spoke freely, but in a straightforward manner; with officers of a higher, grade he spoke blandly, but precisely; with the prince he was grave, but self-possessed. When eating he did not converse; when in bed he did not speak. If his mat were not straight he did ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... interest of the poem centres; but unlike Homer, his poem is out of all proportion, the long-drawn out revenge being in the nature of an anti-climax. The Song of Roland is a fair exponent of the people among whom it originated. It contains no ornament; it is a straightforward relation of facts; it lacks passion, and while it describes fearful slaughter, it never appeals to the emotions. Though the French army shed many tears, and fell swooning to the ground at the sight of the fearful slaughter at Roncesvalles, we are rather moved to smile at the violence of ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... for the most part set to noble chorals of such strong, straightforward character that they cannot fail to become friends and intimates at once. In them, as in all the tunes, the compass of ordinary voices has been considered; and although nothing has been left undone which could give beauty to melody or scholarly variousness to harmony, the whole has been ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... right-we shouldn't, yet it is very hard to help it," confessed Dr. Alec with a conscious air, and, returning hastily to the lovers, he added kindly: "I was much pleased with the straightforward way in which Phebe came to me this morning and told me all about it, as if I really was her guardian. She did not own it in words, but it was perfectly evident that she loves Archie with all her heart, yet, knowing the objections ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... He met her and explained briefly that they had been doing wrong, and that he and Woodell had talked. She turned pale, then red, but said little. Of the struggle in the night Jenny never learned. She inferred, of course, that her lover had gone in a straightforward way to Harlson, and that his demands had been acceded to. She was gratified, perhaps, that she had become a person of much importance. She thought more of Woodell and less of Harlson, because of the issue of the debate, as she understood ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... no foreign education and speaks no English. He is distinctively Chinese in his training and outlook. He is a man of force, capable of drastic methods, straightforward intellectually and physically, of unquestioned integrity and of almost Spartan life in a country where official position is largely prized for the luxuries it makes possible. For example, practically alone among Chinese ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... luxury of their camp with the overwhelming disaster which fell upon them. About himself and his own exploits there is not one word of self-complacency or self-admiration. In his writings, as in his life, Caesar is always the same—direct, straightforward, unmoved save by occasional tenderness, describing with unconscious simplicity how the work which had been forced upon him was accomplished. He wrote with extreme rapidity in the intervals of other labor; yet ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... wass ussed to think you an honest, straightforward man, though you wass a churchman, and are you mean to tell me now that you donno that Valmai Powell have a small child on the 30th ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... satisfaction. Evidently her straightforward mind accepted the story as perfectly credible. Marcella, with bitterness, knew herself far from comely enough to suggest perils. She looked old enough for the part she was playing, and the glove upon her hand ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... My father was straightforward, honest, kind and truthful. He was dogmatic in his religious beliefs, combative by nature and never happier than when fighting the Devil in his own corner, as he expressed it. Furthermore, he was haughty, stubborn and egotistical, ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... dollars by doing a commission for a man," said he, with a straightforward look. "See, ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... excellent leaflets and booklets were issued dealing with the question in a very straightforward and ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser
... Sacrifice, ah! truly you share it! But for the child, it would give needless offence and difficulty were she to embrace our holy faith at present. She is simple and impetuous, and has not yet sufficiently outgrown the rude straightforward breeding of the good housewife, Madam Susan, not to rush into open confession of her faith, and then! oh the fracas! The wicked wolves would have stolen a precious lamb from M. le Pasteur's fold! Master Richard would be sent for! Our restraint would be the closer! Moreover, even when the moment of ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... difficulties in the '64 campaign are disposed to admit. As a strategist he ranks high. But Grant was no master of stratagem. There was no mystery about his operations. His manoeuvres were strong and straightforward, but he had no skill in deceiving his adversary, and his tactics were not always of a high order. It may be questioned whether on the field of battle his ability was equal to that of Sherman, or of Sherman's great antagonist, Johnston. Elsewhere he was their superior. Both Sherman and Johnston were ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... he, were you to say so. No, no, Boyle, just try a plain, straightforward paragraph about my death; we'll have it in Falkner's paper to-morrow. On Friday the funeral can take place, and, with the blessing o' God, I'll come to life on Saturday at Athlone, in time to ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... those related by Jung Stilling and others. They bear the same character as the pictures by the old masters, of a deep and simple piety. She stands before as, this piety, in a full, high-necked robe, a simple, hausfrauish cap, a clear, straightforward blue eye. These are no terrible, gloomy ghosts with Spanish mantle or Italian dagger. We feel quite at home with them, and sure ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... truculent errors that men fall into by a misconception of truth, misstatements, ignorance of their interests, and the sort of village-like gossip which causes every man to think he is a judge of character, when he is not even a judge of facts. The abuses of absolutism are straightforward, dogged tyranny, in which the rights of the mass are sacrificed to the interests and policy of a prince and his favourites. Now, in a large country, popular excesses in one part are checked and repressed by the power and interests of the other parts. It is not an easy matter to make a popular ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... unworthy prejudice, and clear and transparent conscientiousness, appear in all documents, depositions, and records that proceeded from him. He was often called to give evidence in land causes and other trials at law; and his testimony is always straightforward, fair, and lucid. You can tell from the style, temper, or tone of other witnesses, which side of the controversy they espoused, but not from his. In the great and protracted conflict in the courts, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... simple, straightforward folk is formidable indeed; they are exactly like children, setting their unsuspected snares with the perfect craft ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... quite straightforward when I am dealing with a client who means business. I pushed aside the litter of papers in front of me, leaned my elbows upon my desk, rested my chin in my ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... horrible 21st of January among the festivals of the Republic. One of Bonaparte's first ideas on attaining the possession of power was to abolish this; but such was the ascendency of the abettors of the fearful event that he could not venture on a straightforward course. He and his two colleagues, who were Sieyes and Roger Ducos, signed, on the 5th Nivose, a decree, setting forth that in future the only festivals to be celebrated by the Republic were the 1st Vendemiaire and the 14th of July, intending by this ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... that so straightforward and transparent a character as "Old Put" should have become the subject of controversy. Too much is claimed for him by some disputants, and much too little is conceded to him by others. He was certainly as far ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... real the attack had been; when the ladies mingled with the men to take tea and coffee, he was still suffering from its after-effects. But he treated the occurrence in so hopelessly wrong a way; he minced and smirked over it; he would not own to a straightforward physical illness, but preferred to hint at and even take credit for an exaggerated sensibility, as though he enhanced his own eloquence by pointing to the extraordinary exhaustion it produced. He must needs bring the frailty ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... opinion he was entirely wrong, for the Marquis de Croisenois was looked upon as one of the most talented and witty men in Parisian society, and in this case the opinion of the world was a well-founded one. Many men envied him, but he had no enemies, and his honest and straightforward conduct was beyond all doubt. He had the noble instincts of a knight of ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... "Straightforward Miss Moore!" said she patronizingly. "It is like you to understand my question so literally and answer it so simply. Your mind comprehends nothing of intrigue. Strange things might go on around you without your being the wiser; ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... having come so promptly to visit his relative on his return. But his explanation was straightforward, and such as to commend itself to everyone who heard him. I shall not trouble you with any defence of Mr. Lewis, however'—(gratitude of the whole court)—'but I must condemn in the gravest and strongest manner ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... and mystical mathematicks of the City of Heaven,' to go for miles and miles with the marvellous syllables still rich upon the inward ear, and to return home with them in triumph. It is then that one begins to understand how mistaken it was of Sir Thomas Browne not to have written in simple, short, straightforward Saxon English. ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... messages and giving safe conduct to Archer's people in the field. It was all past Archer's comprehension and that of the officers present. There was no Gray Fox there who knew Indians as they knew themselves. There was no genial, straightforward "Big Chief Jake," the fearless soldier leader from the lower reservation, from Camp Apache and the San Carlos, the man on whom the Gray Fox leaned, the man whom the hostiles dreaded, the "friendlies" trusted, and all frontiersmen, soldier or civilian, swore by. They could have fathomed it. Even ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... scissors in hand, tending and trimming a magnificent collection of rose trees, heating a greenhouse, watering flower beds; and really it must be admitted that, for a poor little heart hungering after an ideal, this was hardly sufficient food. Nevertheless for ten years her life remained straightforward and uniform, like the smooth sanded paths in her husband's garden, and she pursued it with measured steps, listening with resigned weariness to the dry and irritating sound of the ever-moving scissors, or to the monotonous ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... he knew what it was, "A bit of the old soil," said he; and that it was.... Washington Irving was sure to have guessed right as to my treasure, and I was not ashamed to greet it with tears before him.... He is so sensible, sound, and straightforward in his way of seeing everything, and at the same time so full of hopefulness, so simple, unaffected, true, and good, that it is a privilege to converse with him, for which one is the wiser, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... pecuniary institutions that are here under discussion. Consequently, by force of the past selective adaptation of men's habits of thought, it happens that the requirements of beauty, simply, are for the most part best satisfied by inexpensive contrivances and structures which in a straightforward manner suggest both the office which they are to perform and the method of serving their end. It may be in place to recall the modern psychological position. Beauty of form seems to be a question of facility of apperception. The proposition ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... the evening, they were discovered by a cavalryman. Their appearance excited his suspicions that they were spies, and he told them that he should have to take them to headquarters. But their lady-like manners and straightforward answers persuaded him that he was wrong, and he allowed them to proceed. Another time they narrowly escaped capture by two soldiers who suddenly entered the cabin of an old negro where ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... assistance of the able Gaius Caninius Rebilus, who possessed experience in war. Sicily was occupied by him without a blow; Cato, without a proper army and not a man of the sword, evacuated the island, after having in his straightforward manner previously warned the Siceliots not to compromise themselves uselessly ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... and wiles, look here! See one straightforward conscience put in pawn To win a world; see the obedient sphere ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... world it had been possible for him to strive to be straightforward and courageous; but, if she was dead . . .! If Spurling had murdered her, if he had lied to him and she was his partner, what then? Well, that all depended on whether Spurling had known her sex. If not, what a revenge he would take when he should confront ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... only vexes and bores, and is wearisome; but Joan's talk was fresh and free, sincere and honest, and unmarred by timorous self-watching and constraint. She said the very thing that was in her mind, and said it in a plain, straightforward way. One can believe that to the King this must have been like fresh cold water from the mountains to parched lips used to the water of the sun-baked puddles of ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... you we was a happy lot aboard that brig, jokes and drink and bright hopes all the time. It all seemed so neat and clean and straightforward, and what rough chaps call a 'cert.' And we used to speculate how the other blessed lot, the proper salvagers, who'd started two days before us, were getting on, until our sides fairly ached. We all messed together in the Sanderses' cabin—it ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... courses presented themselves at once. Either of them, I thought, would certainly prove fatal. I could, in the first place, do the completely straightforward thing: take back the dead man, tell my story, hand over the notes and diamonds, and trust to the saving power of truth and innocence. I could have laughed as I thought of it. I saw myself bringing home the corpse and giving an account of myself, boggling with sheer ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... had reached that very important part where the "fly," as an ocular witness, gives his substantial and straightforward evidence. I had a little narrow block between my fingers, and was glancing carefully among the unused pieces for its mate, repeating abstractedly ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... books to me. I read them through, turn the pages lightly, annotate them, learn them by heart. Sometimes I am at fault; I see them in a new light. Things that were not clear to me become plain; what was apparently incomprehensible becomes as straightforward ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... mother answered boldly: 'If the King will only listen patiently to me, and give me a straightforward answer, he will see that I am not out of my mind. You, O King, have a lovely daughter to give in marriage. I have a son—a wooer—as clever a youth and as good a son-in-law as you will find in your whole kingdom. There is nothing that he cannot do. Now tell me, O King, plump and plain, will ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... same consideration for ourselves. Our way of writing is incisive and straightforward. But there is no bitterness in our heart. We seek the honor of Christ and the welfare of men. We do not hate the Pope as to wish him ill. We do not desire the death of our false brethren. We desire that they may turn from their evil ways to Christ and be ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... isn't pensive. She's awfully deep. It makes me shudder to think how deep that girl is. And when I think of my courage in daring to be in love with her—a stupid, straightforward idiot like me—I begin to respect myself in spite of being such an ass. Well, I'm off. If I stay any longer I shall never go." He closes the door after him, and Miss Reed ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... which has often occurred. On the whole, while I accept this paragraph as Fa-hien's own, I do it with some hesitation. That the following and concluding paragraph is from another hand, there can be no doubt. And it is as different as possible in style from the simple and straightforward narrative ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... a loss to determine on the course which he should pursue, a course which would at the same time inure to his financial benefit and be in accordance with his high sense of right. Absolutely straightforward and honest himself, it was difficult for him to believe that others who spoke him fair were not equally sincere, and he was often imposed upon, and was frequently forced, in the exigencies of Business, ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... Britons sought rather than avoided death. Their lives in their separate tribes were quiet and simple, except when engaged in the chase or war. They were averse to labour. They were domestic, virtuous, frank, and straightforward. The personal property of a stranger was sacred among them, and the most lavish hospitality was exercised. It was not strange that a simple hardy people, believing firmly in the one supreme god, should have regarded with contempt alike the luxury of the Romans and their worship of many ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... orb had long forgotten all the roseate flaming of his youth, in an honest, straightforward march through the heavens, ere the first signs of smoke came curling lazily up ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... with a slight borrow from the first incline with which it had to contend. As I have just said, in these complicated cases it is a question of reckoning pure and simple, and then putting the ball in a straightforward manner along the line which you have decided is ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... been remarkable. In all dealings with him she had proved herself the directress, quick yet decided. The change astonished him, so little was he acquainted with the feminine nature; and in reply he spoke hastily, hardly knowing what he had said. The words were not straightforward and honest; they were not becoming him any more than the conduct suggested was becoming her; they lingered in his ear, a wicked sound, and he would have recalled them—but ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... proportion and thickness of his body. He was, in fact, half a head taller than she, and Stella stood five feet five. His gray eyes met hers squarely, with a cool, impersonal quality of gaze. There was neither smirk nor embarrassment in his straightforward glance. He was, in effect, "sizing her up" just as he would have looked casually over a logger asking him for a job. Stella sensed that, and resenting it momentarily, failed to match his manner. She flushed. ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... his dispatch-box. It was found there afterwards, and published with a few other letters. Everybody knows that simple straightforward record; it shows Tyson at his bravest and his best. If he had tried to separate the little gold of his life from the dross of it he could not have succeeded better. He looked over the postscript hurriedly. When he came to the words, "Knowing myself to be incapable of ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... considered as the chief miscellaneous journal that appears in Russia, and which partakes of the nature of what we in England call the review and magazine. In all his writing, prose or verse, Pushkin is most astonishingly unaffected, rational, and straightforward; but in the last-named story he has attained the highest degree of perfection—it is the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... he is on the decline or "moral lapse," if you please. Then, too, the dying testimony of what is commonly called the worthless Negro, is given wider publicity and greater credence than the precept and example of ten thousand living, straightforward, upright Negroes. I say this because the opinion obtains so widely that ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... expedition for the relief of General Harrison and Fort Meigs on the Maumee when besieged by the British and Indians in 1813. He, however, lived in his Ohio home a quiet, sober, peaceful, contented, studious, moral life, much esteemed for his straightforward, honest, plain character by all who knew him, but always taking a deep interest in public affairs, state and national, his sympathies being with the poor, oppressed, and unfortunate. His detestation of slavery led him to emigrate ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... comparative values. Note the delicacy of treatment and of color in William Sartain's three landscapes, on wall A, and in Birge Harrison's atmospheric paintings on wall D. Compare these with the heavily painted and richly colored canvases by Walter Griffin on wall C, and then with the more straightforward, vigorous work of Charles Morris Young on wall B. Harrison, Griffin and Young, at least, are of the distinctly modern school; but note how individually each has utilized his inheritance of vibrating color and light. On wall A are two fine figure studies by Robert Reid, an innovator ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... of difficulties into the way of his successor, to whom he handed over an empty chest, having first repaid to Cyrus all the money in his possession under the pretence that it was a private loan. The straightforward conduct of Callicratidas, however, who summoned the Lacedaemonian commanders, and after a dignified remonstrance, plainly put the question whether he should return home or remain, silenced all opposition. But he was sorely embarrassed ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... light-headed, acted at this period with cunning selfishness, both by Scott and by Constable. He well knew that it was to Constable alone that his firm had more than once owed its escape from utter ruin and dishonor; and he must also have known, that had a fair straightforward effort been made for that purpose, after the triumphant career of the Waverley series had once commenced, nothing could have been more easy than to bring all the affairs of his "back-stock," etc., to a complete ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... Portsmouth High School, N.H.: I like it exceedingly. It is clear, straightforward, practical, and ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... Girl had made a deep impression on him. Not only had her appearance awakened his interest to the point of enthusiasm, but there was something irresistibly attractive to him in her lack of affectation and audacious frankness. Over and over again he thought of her happy face, her straightforward way of looking at things and, last but not least, her evident pleasure in meeting him. And when he reflected on the hopelessness of their ever meeting again, a feeling of depression seized him. But his nature—always a buoyant ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... the case of an individual, tell much of his character. The villain on the stage habitually looks out of the corners of his eyes. So does the mischievous ingenue. But the hero turns his whole head when he looks about. And the look of innocence in the eyes of the heroine is straightforward; her head is pointed directly in line with her gaze. Apply the principle in your salesmanship. When you observe a man who turns his head freely and easily for a square look at a person who comes into his presence, size him ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... the complexities and contradictions in his character. Take for instance all that strange and picturesque episode of Hagar: see the splendid contrast between the craft and commercial guile of his dealings in Egypt and with Abimelech, and the simple, straightforward godliness of his later years. No, all those difficulties only attract me. Do you happen to know—of course you would know—do those German books, or the others, give anywhere any additional details of the man himself and his sayings and doings—little things which help, you know, ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... cases of gallstones, abscess of the mesentery, thrombosis of the mesenteric veins, several cases of heart disease, senile gangrene and one of cor villosum. From no other book do we get so good an idea of a practitioner's experience at this period; the notes are plain and straightforward, and singularly free from all theoretical and therapeutic vagaries. He gives several remarkable instances of ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... ordered restraint of Renaissance are so drummed into him during his years of training, and exercise so tyrannical a spell over his imagination that he loses the power of clear and logical thought, and never becomes truly creative. Free of this incubus the engineer has succeeded in being straightforward and sensible, to say the least; subject to it the man with a so-called architectural education is too often ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... know about the state you talk of?" said Mme. Bonacieux, shrugging her shoulders. "Be satisfied with being a plain, straightforward citizen, and turn to that side which ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... metaphors and tropes depart, Our little clippings fade and bleach: There is no virtue and no art Save in straightforward Saxon speech. ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... very precise style of composition. I looked it very carefully through to see that there was no covert suggestion therein of a character intended to betray me; but as far as I could see it was a perfectly straightforward ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... loses prosperity. By administering justice, by attending to these three, viz., concealment of his own weaknesses, ascertainment of the weaknesses of foes, and keeping his own counsels, as also by the observance of conduct that is straightforward, the king, O delighter of the Kurus, obtains prosperity. If the king becomes mild, everybody disregards him. On the other hand, if he becomes fierce, his subjects ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... said anything so dashed straightforward. I am not a chap of that kind. But what I say is, it's a shame to keep you hanging on, disturbed in your rest and all that sort of thing. That noisy beggar, Dismar, that came in with us last night must have woke you up with ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... of more than common vigor. His features were irregular, but they gave evidence of energy, kindness of heart, and honesty of purpose. A man possessing such a proud, intelligent, and open brow, such a clear, straightforward gaze, and such finely-cut lips, could be no ordinary one. Deserted by his sponsor, who was shaking hands right and left, he seated himself on a sofa a little in the background; not because he was embarrassed, but because he felt that ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... good sense, however, and the earnest life she had led at school and with her brother at home, would have sufficed her even without this guardianship and that of the Doctor. There was a straightforward frankness about her that kept men from talking nonsense to her. A compliment she simply laughed at, an attempt at flattery made her angry, and the Doctor afterwards declared to her uncle he would not have believed that the guardianship of a girl upon the long Indian ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... and miserably clad; but she has always the same open and straightforward look—the same mouth, smiling at every word as if to plead for sympathy—the same voice, timid yet caressing. Paulette is not 10 pretty—she is even thought plain; as for me, I think her charming. Perhaps that is not on her account but on my own. ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... in their architectural taste. However one may criticise their lesser work, such as the decorations, he is compelled to admire their large work; they were right, powerful, and dignified in their straightforward simplicity. And it is pathetic that in later days, when workmen and money were scarce, the modern priests did not see some way of overcoming obstacles that would have been more harmonious with the old plans than is evidenced by this tower and many other similar incongruities, ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... informed and enlightened opinion of nations to prevent their governments from being forced into hostile action by the temporary outbreak of international animosities. The observance of this covenant, so simple and so straightforward, promises more for the peace of the world than any other agreement ever negotiated among ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... her sanity produced in Rebecca's mind a teasing compound of wrath and uneasiness. These people seemed to find something fundamentally irregular in her behavior. What could it be? The situation was intolerable, and she set to work in her straightforward, energetic way to ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... his story on the train, going down to New York. It was a straightforward chronicle of just what he had seen and heard. He began at the beginning—the little mountain home, the family of three, the disappearance of the child. He described the perils of the mountains, the storm, ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... the horses when I was down at the stables; I think the afternoon is going to be fine." It was rather a public way of asking one out of so many to go and take a drive; but in truth, Richard was too honest and straightforward to care who knew what he was in pursuit of, and too sore at heart and too indifferent an actor to conceal it if he had desired. But the invitation struck me with such consternation. At five o'clock! The flower and consummation of the day! The hour that I had been looking ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... He wears an old and grease-stained blue serge suit, and carries an old bowler hat. He stands nearest the Chairman. GREEN, next to him, has a clean, worn face, with a small grey goatee beard and drooping moustaches, iron spectacles, and mild, straightforward eyes. He wears an overcoat, green with age, and a linen collar. Next to him is BULGIN, a tall, strong man, with a dark moustache, and fighting jaw, wearing a red muffler, who keeps changing his cap from one hand ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... admitted. "Still, he's rather head-strong, and he hasn't told me why he goes to the Butte; though the girl's father gave me a hint. I like Taunton—he's perfectly straightforward—and I'd almost made up my mind to ask your opinion about the matter, but I ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... 445 it came about that a Jew and a sympathiser of Ezra, Nehemiah ben Hakkelejah, cup-bearer and favourite of Artaxerxes, appeared in Judea as Persian governor. With straightforward earnestness he first addressed himself to the task of liberating the Jewish community from outward pressure and lifting them up from their depressed condition; and, this being accomplished, the time had come ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... able to study itself,—to measure its weakness and strength. It is not helpful to a race to be continually praised and have its weakness overlooked, neither is it the most helpful thing to have its faults alone continually dwelt upon. What is needed is downright, straightforward honesty in both directions; and this is not always to ...
— The Future of the American Negro • Booker T. Washington
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