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Ante-   Listen
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Ante-  pref.  A Latin preposition and prefix; akin to Gr. anti, Skr. anti, Goth. and-, anda- (only in comp.), AS. and-, ond-, (only in comp.: cf. Answer, Along), G. ant-, ent- (in comp.). The Latin ante is generally used in the sense of before, in regard to position, order, or time, and the Gr. anti in that of opposite, or in the place of.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ante-" Quotes from Famous Books



... in an ante-room, where a number of Irishmen, some newspaper editors, many pompous-looking political personages asking for the "first lord," a few sauntering clerks, and numbers of swift active messengers passed to and fro;—after waiting for four hours, making drawings on the blotting-book, and reading ...
— The Bedford-Row Conspiracy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... place opposite to where the conspirators had just disappeared. The notary mechanically followed through a labyrinth of dark corridors and secret staircases, quite at a loss how to account for the sudden change that had come over his master—crossing one of the ante-chambers in the castle, they came upon Andre, who joyfully accosted them; grasping the hand of his cousin Duras in his affectionate manner, he asked him in a pressing way that would brook no refusal, "Will you be of ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... apple-blossoms and pink crepe paper shades in the spring, must be something awful. Young Stein goes to Chicago to have his clothes made, and old Sulzberg likes to keep the traveling men waiting in the little ante-room outside ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber

... de Maintenon form that portion of the chateau which has the chief sentimental interest. In an ante-chamber is a chaise a porteurs once having belonged to the Marquise, and her portrait by Mignard. Cordovan leather is hung upon the walls, and the restored sleeping-room is hung with a canopy and separated from the rest of the apartment ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield

... meantime become Earl of Southesk, nor had he ever met the lady who shared that title until introduced to her by the duke. When that ceremony had been duly performed and a few sentences interchanged between them, Talbot, acting on instructions previously received, retired into an ante-room and took his post at a window that he might divert himself by viewing the street, and observing those ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... made happy," said the voice. "The loveliness of earth is but like one rose flung from the Eden whence thy choice has excluded thee. The wonders of earth are but the tapestry of the ante-chamber in the ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... ladies," said Corentin, turning to pass through the ante-chamber and up the staircase, followed by Mademoiselle Goujet and Madame d'Hauteserre. "Rely upon me," he whispered to the old lady. "I am in your interests. I sent the mayor to warn you. Distrust my colleague and look to me. I can save ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac

... war was over, Grandpa he went back to his castle to rest up for the next war, and to have his sword sharpened and his petard fixed. One dark night he was a-setting in his ante-room pondering over the past and wondering what had become of that feller's head—and also what had become of his widder, who was a most bewitching creature and would make any man a most desirable wife, especially if he didn't have one already—which Grandpa didn't. All of a sudden ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon

... the Szechenyi Square which I have offered for sale. Wishing to save broker's expenses I went to see him myself at twelve o'clock. Surely that is the most convenient time for paying business calls. At least I have always supposed so. I entered his ante-chamber and there stood a flunkey. He told me I must wait! Told me forsooth—me, John Lapussa—that I must cool my heels in an ante-chamber, at an inn, to please that wretched Hatszegi. Very well. I waited. I sent him a message that I ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai

... Geography has evidently been attended to. You have learned the basis fact. You have discovered the pivot on which the world turns. You have dug down to the ante-diluvian, ante-pyrean granite,—the primitive, unfused stratum of society. The force of learning can no farther go. Armed with that fact, you may march fearlessly forth to do battle with the world, the flesh, and—the—ahem—the King of Beasts! Do you think you ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... winds within the buttress at the north-west angle. The length is divided into four compartments by clustered columns, from the tops of which sprung the ribs of the vaulting. The first compartment is plain, and was probably the ante-chapel: the second is ornamented with a double niche, richly decorated with small columns, pinnacles, crockets, &c.; in the lower niche the wall is pierced for a small window; the upper one probably contained a figure: the third and ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous

... minutes were receiving addresses from delegations of prominent Honduranians. Nicaragua and Salvador had both recognized their government, and concession hunters were already cooling their heels in the ante-room. In every town and seaport the adherents of Garcia had swung over to Laguerre and our government, and our flag was now flying in every part of Honduras. It was the flag of Walker, with the five-pointed blood-red star. We did not explain the significance ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis

... hive being perfect. Kingfisher Canyon like its two predecessors was short, all three making a distance by the river of only about ten miles. Flaming Gorge is the gateway, Horseshoe the vestibule, and Kingfisher the ante-chamber to the whole grand series. At the foot of Kingfisher the rocks fell back a little and steep slopes took their place. Where the rocks closed in again, we halted on the threshold of the next gorge, in a fine grove of cottonwoods. A significant ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... They helped him to ascend the stairs at the great entrance, and in the hall, smiths were waiting to take off the irons from all the prisoners. One by one, they were summoned to audience. Dellon, who was called the first, crossed the hall, passed through an ante-chamber, and entered a room, called by the Portuguese "board of the holy office," where the grand inquisitor of the Indies sat at one end of a very large table, on an elevated floor in the middle of ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson

... choir followed; the doors between the chapel and ante-chapel were shut, the curtains were dropped ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade

... waits to receive you." I walked quickly forward and made obeisance. Anon, one of the larger keys in this said bunch was applied to a huge lock, and the folding and iron-cramped doors of the library were thrown open. I descended by a few steps into the ante-room, and from thence had a completely fore-shortened view of the library. It is small, but well filled, and undoubtedly contains some ancient and curious volumes: but several hiatuses gave indication that there had been a few transportations ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... was not his only correspondent in these days—not even his most frequent one. For a warm, strong friendship—first sown in those ante-Derby days—had sprung up between Sir Henry Wilding and himself and had deepened steadily into a warm feeling of comradeship and mutual esteem. Frequent letters passed between them; and the bond of fellowship had become so strong a thing that Sir Henry never came ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew

... exploits of the morning, the Prince turned towards the Princess's ante-room, bent on a more difficult enterprise. The curtains rose before him, the usher called his name, and he entered the room with an exaggeration of his usual mincing and airy dignity. There were about a score of persons waiting, ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson

... little nettled at something or other—I know not what. We were standing in the ante-saloon, when Lord H. brought out of the other room a vessel of some composition similar to that which is used in Catholic churches, and, seeing us, he exclaimed, 'Here is some incense for you.' C——l answered—'Carry it to Lord Byron, he ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... wronged woman burst into tears and flayed the bigamist Ames there before the court room crowded with eager society ladies and curious, non-toiling men. Flayed him as men are seldom flayed and excoriated by the women they trample. The bailiffs seized her, and dragged her into an ante-room; the judge broke his gavel rapping for order, and threatened to clear the court; and then Cass, too young and inexperienced to avoid battle with seasoned warriors, rose and demanded that Madam Beaubien ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... important person in the kingdom. Great and small, male and female, high and low, haunted his offices and ante-chambers, hunted him down, plagued his very life out, to get a moment's speech with him, and get him to enter their names as buyers of stock. The highest nobles would wait half a day for the chance. His servants received great sums to announce some visitor's name. Ladies of the highest rank ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... upon shallow steps and in lofty rooms. From the rosettes on his little shoes to his chapeau a plumes, he also was like some porcelain figure. Surely, such beings could not exist except in such a chateau as this, where the very air (unlike that breathed by common mortals) had in the ante-rooms a faint aristocratic odor, and was for yards round Madame the Viscountess dimly suggestive of frangipani! Monsieur the Viscount did not stay long by the embroidery frame; he was entertaining to-day a party of children from the estate, and had come for the ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade

... Christmas cheer and Christmas weather set them off all the better; leafless trees are no drawback; the house looks warmer, coseyer, more home-like, the worse the blast and rush without. A roaring fire is natural to the huge hall fireplace, while in a mosaic-paved "ante-room" or a frescoed "saloon" it looks foreign and out of place. Many an odd Welsh and English house has unfortunately disappeared to make room for a cold, unsuccessful monstrosity that reminds one of a mammoth ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... image-propositions are more primitive than word-propositions, and may well ante-date language. There is no reason why memory-images, accompanied by that very simple belief-feeling which we decided to be the essence of memory, should not have occurred before language arose; indeed, it would be rash to assert positively that memory of this sort does not occur among the higher animals. ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell

... condition, with emaciated bodies, sunken cheeks, unhealthy complexions, and shabby, badly worn clothes. The meager displays in the shop-windows were a pathetic contrast to variety and abundance which characterized them in ante-bellum days, the only articles displayed in any profusion being picture-postcards, objects carved from wood and similar souvenirs. The windows of the confectionery and bake-shops were particularly noticeable for the paucity of their contents. I was induced to enter one of them by a brave ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell

... a square of thirty feet, formed into an octagon by arches across the angles, which give to the vaultings a beautiful form. Opposite to the chimney piece is an organ richly decorated. On the left of the saloon is an ante-room leading to the dining-room; and on the right, another leading to the drawing-room: the windows of these rooms are glazed with a light Mosaic tracery, and exhibit the portraits of the six Earls of Chester, who, after Hugh Lupus, governed ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various

... little ante-room adjoining the chamber to which Wilford had been conveyed, I found the surgeon, who seemed an intelligent and gentlemanly person. He informed me that his patient had not many hours to live; the wound in the head was not mortal, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... trays from the "King of Prussia," across the way. The Vicar, who is a particular man about his food and drink, pulled out a pocket Vesuvius and a bottle of methylated spirit, and boiled his kettle in the ante-room. ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... abominations, that I fled without my baggage. The next attempt she made was the one remaining room of the house, the family bedroom; but that was so much worse than all, that I took final refuge on the balcony, a sort of ante-room to the hen-house. The cocks at the auberge of Villaz are the loudest, the hens the most talkative, and the cats the most shaggy and presuming, I have ever met with. Even here, however, all was not unmitigated darkness; for they ground the coffee while the water was boiling, ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... fold over fold of silk gauze which let every lovely limb be seen as glorified in a rosy mist, met them in the ante-room, and thenceforth the Borgia had eyes for nothing but the beauty of her. The moment he saw her, he drew, as once before, a sharp breath; she greeted him in her fashion; he was moved to ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... the way to an ante-room, in which were placed a bowl of water, towel, and soap, as well as a dust brush. It did not take me long to fix myself up, and then I flattered myself I did not present ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer

... eye of an artist, saw the uses, the furniture, the general effect and condition of this first room, thus cut in half. The more honorable half, which served both as ante-room and dining-room, was hung with an old salmon-rose-colored paper, with a flock border, the manufacture of Reveillon, no doubt; the holes and spots had been carefully touched over with wafers. Prints ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac

... ante-Shaksperian dramatists there was a defect of art proper to the first comers in a new literary departure. As compared not only with Shakspere, but with later writers, who had the inestimable advantage of his example, their work was full of imperfection, hesitation, experiment. Marlowe was ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... in the same way and buried sitting; while over them were erected, on both continents, the same mounds, pyramids, obelisks, and temples. And yet we are asked to believe that there was no relationship between them, and that they had never had any ante-Columbian intercourse with ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... In ante-bellum days in the South, one week in all the year was given by the master to the slave—a week of absolute freedom, in which the Negro, unrestrained, danced and frolicked and otherwise amused himself to his heart's content. ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton

... see him, that Irish Jew courier, whom I have before had the honor to describe, looks up from the novel which he is reading in the ante-room, and says, "Mon maitre est au divan," or, "Monsieur trouvera Monsieur dans son serail," and relapses into the ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray

... study, but I have to take a walk before I come to mine, out of the window,—or door, I'm never sure which it is,—down some steps, then along a garden-walk, round a corner, and up some more steps, where I reach first a small ante-room and then my bedroom. Like the other rooms, it is whitewashed and has a very high ceiling. Some confiding sparrows have built a nest in a hole in the wall, and—and this is really upsetting—there are ten different ways of entering the room, doors and windows, and half of them I can't ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas

... this ante-chamber and the sleeping-room stood open. Without venturing to cross the threshold, for he felt that he would be abusing hospitality to go so far, Somerset looked in for a moment. It was a pretty place, and ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... lateral passages and winding stairs leading to the chambers allotted to the household or to the state apartments. Tracking it for some time, Nicholas Clamp at length turned off on the right, and, crossing a sort of ante-room, led the way into a large chamber with stone walls and a coved and groined roof, lighted by a great window at the lower end. This was the royal kitchen, and in it yawned no fewer than seven huge ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth

... to awaken in the soul emotions of the deepest melancholy. Death had approached, in the most frightful form, the spot on earth where, probably, of all others, he was most dreaded. Suddenly a noise was heard, as of thunder, in the ante-chamber of the dauphin. It was the rush of the courtiers from the dead monarch to bow at the shrine of the new dispensors of wealth and power. This extraordinary tumult, in the silence of midnight, conveyed to Maria and Louis the first intelligence that ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... accordance with a set ceremony, but after that nobody took any further notice of her. She received the whole town at her house, and observed the strictest etiquette, although she could no longer recognise the faces of people. Her numerous domestics, growing fat and old in her ante-chamber and servants' hall, did just as they liked, and vied with each other in robbing the aged Countess in the most bare-faced manner. Lizaveta Ivanovna was the martyr of the household. She made tea, and was reproached with using too much sugar; she read novels aloud to the ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various

... before that your little bust stands on my writing-desk as UNICUM. The photograph will find its place in the same room, which otherwise contains nothing ARTISTIC. Beethoven, Weber, Schubert, and others of that stamp keep company to your portrait (that with the motto, "Du weisst wie das wird") in the ante-room. HERE I want to have you alone together with my St. Francis, whom Steinly has designed for me splendidly. He stands on heaving ocean-waves, his outspread cloak on, firmly, unmovedly. In his left hand he calmly holds burning coals; the right is extended in the act of blessing; his gaze ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... his policy, and the Negro, who of all America's population contended for the privilege of shouldering a gun to fight for American liberty, was allowed a place in the Continental Army, the first national army organized on this soil, ante-dating the national flag. The Negro soldier helped to evolve the national standard and was in the ranks of the fighting men over whom it first unfolded its broad stripes and ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward

... is covered with Indian lodges, and presents a noble expanse. I have now a building some thirty-six feet square, built of squared timber, jointed with mortar and whitewashed, so as to give it a neat appearance. The interior is divided into a room some twenty feet by thirty-six, with two small ante-rooms. A large cast iron Montreal stove, which will take in three feet wood, occupies the centre. The walls are plastered, and the room moderately lighted. The rear of the lot has a blacksmith shop. The interpreter has quarters near by. The gate of the new cantonment is some three hundred ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... was reprehensible in the otherwise amiable character of the Ante-christian Tahaitian, I hope the reader, in consideration of his many good qualities, will forgive his faults, and, in a friendly disposition towards him, cast a glance upon his innocent amusements, which were chiefly derived from music, dancing, ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue

... artist ever designed; it bears the title of Old Thirty-nine Shaking Hands with his Good Brother the Pope of Italy, or Covering Up versus Sealing the Bible. Old Thirty-nine (an English bishop) stands on a pile of volumes labelled, "Never-out-ism," "Ante-biblism," "Never-the-same-ism," etc., whilst the pope, standing on the opposite side on a mass of books bearing similar suggestive titles, shakes hands with his "good brother." By the pope's side we find the ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... to the ante-room. The haze of tobacco smoke filled the place, and those who had a language in common spoke cordially one to the other. At length a thrill ran instinctively, it seemed, through the company, and all became severely courtly once more. Chamberlains took up their accustomed ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... winter, one third would die for want; but on mentioning St. Domingo he could make no reply, he said they were a different race of men. At ten we were taken in a coach by Mr. White, M.P. for New York, to see the President[13]; waited a short time in an ante-room with others, then were ushered into a large room furnished with books and papers. A tall, straight, old, thin-faced man with grey hair rose, and on my name being mentioned he bowed and shook hands. After a little conversation ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood

... whole business is so ugly that it doesn't seem worth while to affect delicacy. Inside of two weeks, we had come to an understanding,—that is, an arrangement had been perfected. I think that everything was agreed upon except the actual day of my demise. As you know, I am to set aside for Anne as an ante-nuptial substitute for all dower rights in my estate, the sum of two million dollars. I may add that the securities guaranteeing this amount have been submitted to Mrs. Tresslyn and she has found them to be ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon

... the maid. 'Let this woman wait in the ante-room.' Miriam glided out backwards, bowing as she went. As Hypatia looked up over the letter to see whether she was alone, she caught a last glance of that eye still fixed upon her, and an expression in Miriam's face which made her, she knew not ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... honored; that they believe this to be the only path of honorable and safe promotion. It is true that they have full faith in those who will tell with joy, that, having enlisted, they find the service even in this ante-room sweet, and the rewards great. It is true that they severally visited Mark, just as the door was opening to admit him to the palace, and heard him speak of the glimpses of its glory, and heard that his last words before he went away were, "Oh, mine eyes see the King ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden

... thou hast loved me one whole day, To-morrow, when thou leav'st, what wilt thou say? Wilt thou then ante-date some new-made vow? Or say, that now We are not just those persons which we were? Or, that oaths made in reverential fear Of Love and his wrath any may forswear? Or, as true deaths true marriages untie, So lovers' contracts, images of those, Bind but till Sleep, Death's image, ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various

... I saw Trotsky was at the Opera in Moscow. The British Labour Delegation were occupying what had been the Tsar's box. After speaking with us in the ante-chamber, he stepped to the front of the box and stood with folded arms while the house cheered itself hoarse. Then he spoke a few sentences, short and sharp, with military precision, winding up by calling ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell

... hours, that forenoon, was I kept kicking my heels in his Grace's ante-chamber; and in the end was told curtly his Grace had no leisure at present for such business, and that I must come again on the morrow. I own I spake disrespectfully of his Grace when they gave me this message, and was fain, on that account, to retreat from the precincts ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed

... the world(Chronografiai, in five books) from the creation to the year A.D. 221, a period, according to his computation, of 5723 years. He calculated the period between the creation and the birth of Christ as 5499 years, and ante-dated the latter event by three years. This method of reckoning became known as the Alexandrian era, and was adopted by almost all the eastern churches. The history, which had an apologetic aim, is no longer extant, but copious extracts from it are to be found in the Chronicon of Eusebius, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... I went by appointment at 10.30 to see President Harding. After driving to several wrong doors at the White House I was shown into an ante-room full of press-men talking and smoking round an open fire. The President's secretary was extremely courteous, and I was not kept waiting. Ushered into Mr. Harding's fine circular room we shook hands and sat down. A large black and tan Airedale terrier sniffed ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith

... afterthought which, as a codicil, had suddenly occurred to him. Then followed a chapter of instructions to the aide-de-camp, confidential, and to the effect that the ladies were not to be immediately introduced. He was to keep them in conversation in the ante-chamber outside, till he should ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... very imperfect version of the Rajavali, published by Upham, this important passage is rendered unintelligible by the want of fidelity of the translator, who has transformed the conqueror into a "Malabar," and ante-dated the event by a century. (Rajavali, p. 263.) I am indebted to Mr. De Alwis, of Colombo, for a correct translation of the original, which is as follows: "In the reign of King Wijayo-bahu, the King of Maha ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... through galleries of the finest and most elaborately wrought Marble as if they had been but the roughest pavement or the rudest plaster. The eye is fatigued, the mind bewildered, by an almost endless succession of sumptuous carving, gilding, painting, &c., until the intervention of a naked ante-room or stair-case becomes a positive relief to both. And the ideas everywhere predominant are War and its misnamed Glory. Here are vast, expensive paintings purporting to represent innumerable Sieges and Battles in which the French arms were engaged, many of them so insignificant that ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... brother's house. He unpacked it, and sent to let the lady know it was in perfect safety. It was late in the evening, and she ordered it should remain where it was that night, and that it should be brought to the seraglio the next morning. It stood in a sort of ante-chamber to the room in which I slept; and with it were left some packages, containing glass chandeliers for an unfinished saloon in my brother's house. Saladin charged all his domestics to be vigilant ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth

... few minutes later Mr. and Mrs. Leopold Ernst appeared, having walked the short distance from their rooms on Chestnut Street. The new arrivals were presented to Mr. and Mrs. Sawyer by Mrs. Chessman, and a pleasant ante-prandial conversation was ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin

... with these reflections, he went on deck to join the ante-luncheon promenade. He saw Billie almost at once. She had put on one of those nice sacky sport-coats which so enhance feminine charms, and was striding along the deck with the breeze playing in her vivid hair like the female equivalent of a Viking. ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... into a little ante-room, the ceiling of which is studded with stars in mosaic; it is therefore called jocularly, the 'Star Chamber;' and here stands a cast of the famous bust of Henry VII., by Torregiano, intended for the tomb of that sad-faced, long-visaged ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... instituting it! It was done simply to protect the State against incompetent officials! The people were not wise enough to govern themselves, and could only become so by being wisely and beneficently governed by others, as in the ante-bellum era. From it, however, by a curious accident, resulted that complete control of the ballot and the ballot-box by a dominant minority so frequently observed in those states. Observe that the Legislature or the Executive appointed the ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... now why the young man wanted me to give him a certificate of his fitness to teach, and why. I did not choose to urge him to accept the aid which a meek country-boy from a family without ante-Revolutionary recollections would have thankfully received. Go he must,—that was plain enough. He would not be content otherwise. He was not, however, to give up his studies; and as it is customary to allow half-time to students engaged in school-keeping,—that is, to count ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various

... afterwards I received the usual official circular acknowledgment, but at the bottom there was written an instruction to call at Somerset House on such a day. I thought that looked like business, so at the appointed time I called and sent in my card, while I waited in Sir William's ante-room. He was a tall, shrewd-looking old gentleman, with a broad Scotch accent—and I think I see him now as he entered with my card in his hand. The first thing he did was to return it, with the frugal reminder that I should ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... day appointed we went to the Vatican. Several foreign dignitaries were waiting in an ante-room for an audience with the Pope, but the Methodist preacher received precedence of them all. "Are you a clergyman?" asked the Chancellor, who conducted me to the Pope's presence; "I am a Wesleyan minister," ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... Bible, all the Ante-Nicene fathers—that is, all Christian writers for three centuries after the birth of Christ—give testimony in their favor, against the modern popular doctrine of the Trinity. As for antiquity, it is their belief that it is really ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... the markets, when Monsieur des Lupeaulx made his way stealthily in. The general-secretary was certainly the last man Madame Rabourdin expected to see, and so, when she heard his boots creaking in the ante-chamber, she exclaimed, impatiently, "The hair-dresser already!"—an exclamation as little agreeable to des Lupeaulx as the sight of des Lupeaulx was agreeable to her. She immediately escaped into her bedroom, where chaos reigned; ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac

... plan was decided upon. "Wait a moment," said she; and, going into the ante-room, she sent her maid away upon some errand that would detain her for some time. Then she came back and motioned Mrs. Hart to a ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... buried without mutilation of limbs, or stripping of flesh from the body, or burning, must have been different from those of the men who practised such things on the dead. The former are buried in the ante-natal position of a child, and we may perhaps be justified in seeing in this custom the symbol of a hope that as the child is born from this position into the world, so might the deceased be born into the life in the world beyond the grave; and the presence ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge

... this would require too lingering a death; it was a good speech for a consumptive, but not suited to the exigencies of the field of honor. We wrangled over a good many ante-mortem outbursts, but I finally got him to cut his obituary down to this, which he copied into his memorandum-book, purposing to get ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... following strange occurrence happened on the 22nd of June, 1830:—At the time Papa was very ill, confined to his bed, and so weak that he could not rise without assistance. Tabby and I were alone in the kitchen, about half-past nine ante-meridian. Suddenly we heard a knock at the door; Tabby rose and opened it. An old man appeared, standing without, who accosted ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... them—that is, not then, though later he did—that one of the last acts of John Stuyvesant Schuyler and Thomas Cathcart Blake had been to walk solemnly, side by side, across the street and tell the widow of Jimmy Blair, that, in accordance with the ante-mortem desires of her late husband, they had devoted a certain portion of the fortune that he had left to the establishment of a trust fund that would yield her an annual income of $12,000. He didn't tell them, ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne

... highness stands," said he simply. His shoulders seemed to square themselves involuntarily and his left hand twitched as though accustomed to the habit of touching a sword-hilt. Beverly sat down instantly; with his usual easy grace, he took a chair near by. They were alone in the ante-chamber. ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... invited me to sit. The waiter came up. What would I have? I murmured "Amer Picon—Curacoa," the most delectable ante-meal beverage left in France now that absinthe is as extinct as the stuff wherewith the good Vercingetorix used to gladden his captains after a successful bout with Caesar. Elodie laughed again and called me a true Parisian. I made the regulation ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke

... and came forward to light me, and we went in silence through the room of the squires and through the ante-chamber and into the room of the guards. She walked close beside me; her eyes shone wet; her lips trembled. There were things I would have given the world to say, but I suppressed them. To the very end, I had resolved, I would play fair. We ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... octagon ante-room of the hall at LORD WILLIAM DROMONDY'S. A shining room lighted by gold candelabra, with gold-curtained pillars, through which the shining hall and a little of the grand stairway are visible. A small table with a gold-coloured cloth occupies the very centre of the room, which ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... "Adventures of Captain Dangerous" are narrated. I had originally intended to call it a "Narrative in plain English;" but I found, as I proceeded, that the study of early eighteenth century literature—I mean the ante-Johnsonian period—had led me into the use of very many now obsolete words and phrases, which sounded like anything but plain English. Let me, however, humbly represent that the style, such as it is, was ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... evening when he had seen Hassler.) But to-day the old man, who always used to reply good-humoredly to Christophe's disrespectful sallies, now seemed a little haughty. Christophe paid no heed to it. A little farther on, in the ante-chamber, he met a clerk of the chancery, who was usually full of conversation and very friendly. He was surprised to see him hurry past him to avoid having to talk. However, he did not attach any significance to it, and went on and asked to be ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... a great scale, and he was so terribly in earnest. All the boys too (Toots excepted) seemed knocked up, and were getting ready for dinner—some newly tying their neckcloths, which were very stiff indeed; and others washing their hands or brushing their hair, in an adjoining ante-chamber—as if they didn't think they should enjoy it ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... he found it empty—his father having been called away for a few minutes unexpectedly upon some parish business—and he was left in the same kind of suspense as people are in after they have been ushered into their dentist's ante-room. ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... a grove which enclosed a public temple on the plan of a church in civilized countries. The temple was generally a square house, built with more care and neatness than the private dwellings. On entering, one found himself in a kind of ante-room, separated from the main apartment by a pink curtain. This curtain has religious inscriptions in Chinese and Manjour. In the inner apartment there are pictures of Chinese deities, with a few hideous idols carved in wood. A table in front of the pictures receives ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... specially interesting to notice the entry of the debutantes, many of whom were very beautiful, and almost all of whom were very graceful. Each young girl carried her train, properly arranged, upon her left arm during her progress through the corridor, drawing-room, and ante-room, until she passed the barrier and reached the entrance to the presence chamber; there a slight touch from the first A.D.C. in waiting released it from her arm, and two ushers, who were standing opposite, spread it carefully upon the floor. I noticed that the A.D.C. was careful ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... lane at the end of the street he found the entrance to a low square hall. There was a small ante-room to the place of service, and in this a dull-looking man was seated polishing a candlestick. He was a crossing-sweeper by trade and a friend of ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall

... auctioneer called again, "Attention, everybody! This piece of furniture we are going to sell now dates back to ante-bellum days." ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers

... before retiring." These hours spent at the pleasant quarters of Dr. and Mrs. Lee were, indeed, "a feast of reason and a flow of soul," often diversified by funny experiments in disguising the remains of the day's rations by cooking recipes familiar in ante-bellum days, but which generally failed because substitutes would never produce the same ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers

... of keys to obey. The prudent Cerberus yawned, dressed himself in haste, and presented himself before his sovereign with the insignia of his office, a bunch of keys of various dimensions suspended at his girdle. He commenced by opening the door of a gallery, which served as a sort of ante-room to the council-chamber. The king entered; but his astonishment may be conceived, on finding the walls of the building entirely hung with black. "By whose order has this been done?" demanded the king in a tone of anger. "Sire," replied the trembling keeper of ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... pleasure of knowing that the day was observed as a grand holiday in London and throughout England. Boys were let out of school, and M.P.'s out of Parliament. At night the metropolis was "brilliantly illuminated"—at least so thought those poor, benighted, ante-electrical-light Londoners—and a grand state ball was given in St. James' Palace. Here, for the first time, the Princess took precedence of her mother, and we may believe she felt shy and awkward at such a reversal of ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood

... might have felt a little embarrassed, but his trusty servant Jean aided him with his advice, and the establishment was kept on a footing to do honor to the traditions of the house of Champdoce. Everything can be procured in Paris for money, and Jean had filled the ante-rooms with lackeys, the kitchens and offices with cooks and scullions, and the stables with grooms, coachmen, and horses, while every description of carriage stood in the place appointed for ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... not ironical, are extremely incredulous, to play involuntarily upon his lips, and his lips are quite in sympathy with his eyes. He prescribes some insignificant remedy, and insists upon its importance, promising to call again to observe its effect. In the ante-chamber, thinking himself alone with his school-mate, he indulges in an inexpressible ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac

... cut stone, four stories high. The vestibule used to have a flag-stone pavement covered with fir-wood. There were also "black-cushioned, Spanish chairs for those who wait," and all about were twenty-four busts and paintings. There was an ante-chamber, very large, with seven Spanish chairs covered with green velvet, and a walnut table covered with "a Tournay cloth"; there was a mirror with an ebony frame, and near by a marble wine-cooler. Upon the wall of this salon were thirty-nine ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon

... The stale beer dives went with them and with the Bend, and the grip of the tramp on our throat has been loosened. We shall not easily throw it off altogether, for the tramp has a vote, too, for which Tammany, with admirable ingenuity, found a new use, when the ante-election inspection of lodging houses made them less available for colonization purposes than they had been. Perhaps I should say a new way of very old use. It was simplicity itself. Instead of keeping tramps in hired lodgings for weeks at a daily outlay, the new way was to send them ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... this. I went to monsieur's flat to fetch two aprons that I had left there. The telegram was on the console in the ante-chamber. Knowing that monsieur was to come ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... Sidmouth, to appoint a time when I could have an audience, for the purpose of delivering to him the petition to be presented to the Prince Regent, and I carried this letter myself direct to the office of the Secretary of State, and sent it up to his Lordship, saying, that I would wait in the ante-room for an answer. In a very few minutes the servant in waiting returned, attended by an under secretary, who said that Lord Sidmouth would give me an audience immediately, and he desired that I would follow him. I did so, and was forthwith introduced into the audience room, where ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt

... very thing: for you see, my dear, I didn't care about joining my Lord Duke in Flanders; being pretty well known to the army there. The Secretary squeezed my hand (it had a fifty-pound bill in it) and wished me joy, and called me Major, and bowed me out of his closet into the ante-room; and, as gay as may be, I went off to the 'Tilt-yard Coffee-house' in Whitehall, which is much frequented by gentlemen of our profession, where I bragged not a ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the dinner hour being here somewhere between eight and nine. We were shown into an ante-room adjoining the entrance hall, and from that into an adjacent apartment, where we met Lord Carlisle. The room had a pleasant, social air, warmed and enlivened by the blaze of a coal fire ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... importance of the town in this respect. The Club held its meetings at the Red Lion—then the chief posting inn in the town—in two large rooms erected at the back of the inn at the expense of the members. In the first of these two rooms, or ante-chamber, were half-length portraits of James I. and Charles I.; whole lengths of Charles II. and James II., and of William and Mary, and Anne; a head of the facetious Dr. Savage, of Clothall, "the Aristippus of the age," who ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston

... science,—who come to me as a sort of rendezvous, putting questions of criticism, of British Institutions, Lalla Rookhs, etc.,—what Coleridge said at the lecture last night,—who have the form of reading men, but, for any possible use reading can be to them but to talk of, might as well have been Ante-Cadmeans born, or have lain sucking out the sense of an Egyptian hieroglyph as long as the pyramids will last, before they should find it. These pests worrit me at business and in all its intervals, perplexing my accounts, poisoning my little ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... 1657, and became Bishop of Oxford in 1686. In the following year he was intruded by James II. into the President's place at Magdalen College, but held his office for only five months. He died in his Lodgings, and was buried in the ante-chapel, but honoured by no memorial to mark the place of his interment. His must have ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson

... word at all, I should mean educated, evolved. Is this evolved? Is it even educated? It is not always grammatical. It has no style. In motive, it ante-dates Boccaccio." ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie

... postern-gate of the building, and was presently admitted, while the most trusty of his attendants followed him closely, with the piece of plate under his arm. This man also he left behind him in an ante-room,—where three or four pages in the royal livery, but untrussed, unbuttoned, and dressed more carelessly than the place, and nearness to a king's person, seemed to admit, were playing at dice and draughts, or stretched upon benches, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... what a wise thing it is for a man to be his own executor. How much better is ante-mortem charity than post-mortem beneficence. Many people keep all their property for themselves till death, and then make good institutions their legatees. They give up the money only because they have to. They would take it all with them if they only had three or four stout pockets ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... Tommy. He led Pete through the ante-room into the plush director's office, bouncing about excitedly, his words tumbling out like a waterfall. He looked as though one gentle shove might send him yodeling down Market Street in his underdrawers. "Hold it," said Pete. "Relax, I'm not going to leave for a while yet. Your girl screamed ...
— PRoblem • Alan Edward Nourse

... to her appeal, how will her mind necessarily be affected towards her child? It was conceived in dread and in bitterness of spirit. Every stage of its foetal development is watched with feeling of settled repugnance. In every step of its ante-natal progress the child meets only with grief and indignation in the mother. She would crush out its life, if she could. She loathed its conception; she loathed it in every stage of its ante-natal development. Instead of fixing ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... in Europe somewhat earlier, at about 2000 B.C. This is a perfectly natural conclusion, for it is an ascertained fact that the flow of civilisation was from East to West, as has always been the case, and that, therefore, it is only to be expected that the Bronze Age of the Continent would ante-date that of England ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens

... increased upon him just because he was not emulous of the world's gifts or earnest for its pleasures, but withdrew from the press, and lived out his few great years contemplating apart the vicissitudes of orbs and men. He did not wait in ante-chambers or sit at wedding feasts; but severing all entangling and intricate threads of observance, followed the voice which called him to solitary places of illimitable prospect. It was not through disillusion or injustice, or wounded pride, that he walked aloof; but loneliness was his birthright, ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith

... picturesque incidents in the romantic story of Kosciuszko's Rising. Three Polish boatmen came to the town hall to offer Kosciuszko twenty of their primitive flat-bottomed barges. Hearing of their arrival, Kosciuszko pushed his way through the crowds thronging the building, till he reached the ante-room where stood the peasants in their rough sheepskin coats and mud-stained top-boots, "Come near me, Wojciech Sroki, Tomasz Brandys, and Jan Grzywa," he cried, "that I may thank you for your offering. I regret that I cannot now satisfy the wish of your hearts ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner

... They are reading the old legends, and when we call them superstitious—they grant it, and then produce passages in which the highest doctrines of Christianity are embodied in the most pathetic and noble stories. They are looking for themselves at the ante-Raphaellic artists, and when we tell them that Fra Angelico's pictures are weak, affected, ill-drawn, ill-coloured—they grant it, and then ask us if we can deny the sweetness, the purity, the rapt devotion, the saintly virtue, which shines forth from his faces. They ask us ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... the earliest emigrants, and had stayed for many months with my mother, whom she professed to rank amongst her dearest friends. The duchesse possessed to perfection that singular melange of ostentation and ignorance which was so peculiar to the ante-revolutionists. She would talk of the last tragedy with the emphatic tone of a connoisseur, in the same breath that she would ask, with Marie Antoinette, why the poor people were so clamorous for bread when they might buy such nice cakes for two-pence a-piece? "To give you an idea of the Irish," ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... strange!—the present Sometimes with impish glee will ape the past!— Seeing thy well-known shape before me thus Carries my mind back to a distant day, For it was here he always put thee down When twenty years ago he sojourned here. This room was then the ante-chamber; here, Waiting till graciously he showed himself, Dukes, Princes, Magyars, huddling in a corner, Fixed from afar their humbled eyes upon thee, Like lions, dreading with a helpless fury The tamer's hat forgotten in the cage. ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand

... of the church rate, and it was discontinued. Mr. Shuckburgh was the first resident curate at Otterbourne, being appointed by the Archdeacon. He was the first to have two services on Sunday, though still the ante-Communion service was read from the desk, and he there pulled off his much iron-moulded surplice from over his gown and ascended the pulpit stair. The clerk limped along the aisle to the partitioned space in the gallery to take ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge

... hell, deliverance from condemnation and guilt, and by some of us, that is apt to be regarded as the whole Gospel; but pardon is only a means to an end. Christianity brings to us the possibility of indulgence in sweet and blessed emotions, and a fervour of feeling which to experience is the ante-past of heaven, and for some of us, all our religion goes off in vaporous emotion; but feeling alone is not Christianity. Our religion brings to us sweet and gracious consolations, but it is a poor affair if we only use it as an anodyne and a comfort. Our Christianity ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... dark room, a sort of ante-room, to the library, with only two tall and narrow windows, and hung with old Dutch tapestries, representing the battles and sieges of men in periwigs, pikemen, dragoons in buff coats, and musketeers with matchlocks—all ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... Arab merchant, receives Speke with warm and generous hospitality. His house is built with good, substantial walls of mud, and roofed with rafters and brushwood, the rooms being conveniently partitioned off to separate his wife and other belongings, with an ante-room for general business. His object in coming to the remote district is to purchase ivory, slaves, and other commodities. He is the owner of the dhow which Speke is anxious to obtain; but though he professes his readiness to lend it, he makes numberless ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... the Castle of Montebello, Bonaparte figured as the all-powerful proconsul of the French Republic. Indeed, all his surroundings—his retinue of complaisant generals, and the numerous envoys and agents who thronged his ante-chambers to beg an audience—befitted a Sulla or a Wallenstein, rather than a general of the regicide Republic. Three hundred Polish soldiers guarded the approaches to the castle; and semi-regal state was also observed in its spacious corridors ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose



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