"Doorstep" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bones!" he said—"Not much good to myself or to any one else! You'd better bundle me out on the doorstep!" ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... some of that on the doorstep!" The Wolf's taunting laugh held a deadly menace. "And you painted a drop or two of it along the street as you ran. I thought when you bust away from the Spider's and that cursed gang nosed in that I was going to lose out; but I figured that I had hit you, and ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... I dare not think—I took a long walk, and even now I find myself thinking of the book without knowing it. Imagine me sitting on a doorstep and playing for two ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... The griffins on the doorstep stared straight before them with an expression of utter indifference; the feathery foliage of the white birch swayed gently back and forth; the peonies lifted their crimson heads airily; the snowball bush bent under the ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... throughout the night, a slim little figure, rolled in a man's shabby coat, lay sleeping peacefully in a corner of the mill, while on the doorstep in his shirt sleeves and with a stout cudgel across his knees, a weary ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... many a time in days gone by had fared forth into the woods to find Sarah Austen, had his supper hot for him. Afterwards he lighted his pipe and went out into the darkness, and presently perceived a black figure seated meditatively on the granite doorstep. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Cherry placidly. "She shouldn't have been so silly as to think any real person was dead. She might have known all the servants would have been howling on the doorstep then!" ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... a woman held me up, an' took on turrible, but all I could git from her was that he'd sat on her doorstep an' played ter her baby once or twice;—as if that was anythin'! But one of the derndest funny ones was the woman who said she could wash her dishes a sight easier after she'd a-seen him go by playin'. There was Bill Dowd, too. You know he really ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... honeysuckle blooms, and some day we will frame it with California mountains, and call it Home. I shall only want to add a gently sloping field, wherein pearly short-horns stand ankle deep in clover, while my dear old dog Hero basks upon the doorstep; ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... in a scholar's gown hurried across the quadrangle, rushed up a staircase, and came back with a note-book in his hand. The Warden came out of his house and stood upon his doorstep as if he was trying to remember what he wanted to do. Then he turned round and went into the house again. Miss Davenport, the Warden's sister, a lady who was reported to be talkative and in love, came out ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... water, what is on the other side of the world! If he cannot go North, South, East and West himself, he must at least have his newspaper; and the newspaper brings all the ends of the earth every morning to his doorstep and his breakfast-table. This, I say, is the difference between a beast and a man; and James Chalmers—known in New Guinea as the most magnificent specimen of humanity on the islands—was ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... said another word about how to give the clothes to 'Lias, till, just as the girls were going away, Betsy said, walking along with the two older ones, "Say, don't you think it'd be fun to go some evening after dark and leave the clothes on 'Lias's doorstep, and knock and run away quick before anybody comes to the door?" She spoke in an uncertain voice and smoothed Deborah's ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... year 1700, and he found no less than eight thousand existing entire; and yet these were but a very small proportion of the number that must once have been there. The palaces and modern churches of Rome owe, as I have said, all their ornaments to this passion of the ancients. There is not a doorstep nor a guardstone at the corner of the meanest court in Rome which is not of marble, granite, or porphyry from some ancient building. Almost all the houses, as Raphael said, have been built with lime made of the costly old marbles. The very streets in the ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... observed the blush, and the check to her flowing tongue did not escape him as they walked back to the inn down the narrow street of black rooms, where the women gossiped at the fountain and the cobbler threaded on his doorstep. His novel excitement supplied the deficiency, sweeping him past minor reflections. He was, however, surprised to hear her tell Lady Esquart, as soon as they were together at the breakfast-table, that ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... debauchery? For the love of God be more careful of yourself, or you will be ruined. How shameful, how abominable of you! So the landlady would not admit you last night, and you spent the night on the doorstep? Oh, I know all about it. Yet if only you could have seen my agony when I heard the news! . . . Come and see me, Makar Alexievitch, and we will once more be happy together. Yes, we will read together, and talk of old times, and Thedora ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... in one family in the form of a pet pigeon called the Tu (Phlegoenas Stairi). When food was brought in, no water was to be spilled on the doorstep. It would make the protecting god Tu angry, and ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... of light in the fanlight grew bright as footsteps in the passage drew near. The door opened, and showed the figure of Dr. Ravenshaw holding in his hand a lighted lamp which shone upon Thalassa and the dripping figure in his arms. The doctor looked down from the doorstep in silent surprise, then stepped quickly back from the threshold and opened the surgery door, holding the lamp high ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... took the note in the hand with his hat, and wiped his red, wet forehead with an immense silk handkerchief printed with the maritime flags of all nations. "A note! Who writes me notes? Some of your nonsense, boys, eh?" So he hitched up his trousers and sat down on the doorstep, placing the red handkerchief in his hat beside him. ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... would willingly work my fingers to the bone just that I might possess you always. So I had dreamed of love in a cottage—an idyl of blissful poverty, where Cupid contents himself with crusts and kisses, and mocks at the proverbial wolf on the doorstep. And I give you my word that until to-day I had not suspected how blindly selfish I have been! For poor old prosaic Rudolph is in the right, after all. Your delicate, tender beauty must not be dragged down to face the unlovely realities and petty deprivations ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... Bannon added, with one foot on the doorstep, "you haven't seen anything more of that man ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... the pomegranates, apricots, and other fruits which it supplies. These houses are generally clean and comfortably furnished after the Turkish manner. The host, prosperous-looking and well clothed, meets his guest at the doorstep or assists him to dismount, when, with many compliments and expressions of delight at his visit, he is conducted to the guest-chamber. Coffee and sweet meats are then presented, a foretaste of the generous meal to follow, for in the homes ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... wake, it is enough To sleep:—With God and time he leaves the rest. But on a day death on the doorstep sits Waiting, or like a veiled woman walks Dogging his footsteps, or athwart his path The splendid passion-flower love unfolds Buds full of sorrow, not ordained to know Appeasement through the answer of a sigh, The kiss of pity ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... teacher, nor his, nor his again, and so on to the tenth generation, has been absolutely wise and so attained Happiness. It will not serve you to say that it is enough to get near Happiness; that is no good; a person on the doorstep is just as much outside and in the air as another a long way off, though with the difference that the former is tantalized by a nearer view. So it is to get into the neighbourhood of Happiness—I will grant you so much—that you toil like this, ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... especially when one considers the sort of shoes she wore: she had the good free stride of one who walks for the joy of it and not because that is the only conceivable way to get somewhere. Nevertheless, just as she reached the Byrd doorstep, she was overhauled by the Cooneys, her poor but long-stepping relatives. There were only two of them this time, Henrietta and Charles, better known, from one end of the town to the other, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... girl. She was Nicolai's, and they told her to run in and ask if they might see the gentleman. She ran as if her life depended on it, ran with both arms and legs, until she reached the door; there she placed one leg on the high doorstep, fastened her garter, and then rushed into the house. She reappeared immediately afterwards with two doors ajar behind her and called long before she reached the threshold, that the gentleman would be ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... constantly kept in mind, as it is a clue to much of the later action, being introduced whenever Bluebeard budges an inch from his doorstep. We do not hear in it the majestic grandeur of the Wotan or Walsungen motifs, and why? Simply because it was not intended to illustrate ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of the broom and of their voices had prevented them from hearing any other sounds, but a shadow fell across the middle door and Josiah Farnshaw entered the kitchen a blazing picture of wrath. Before he could speak, however, the dog on the doorstep barked sharply at a stranger who was close upon him, and the irate father was obliged to smooth ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... over to the door, and found it was locked. Then I went and got my mouth-organ and sat meekly down on the doorstep and began to play the Don't Be Cross waltz. I dragged it out plaintively, with a vox humana tremolo on the coaxing little refrain. Finally I heard a smothered snort, and the door suddenly opened and Dinky-Dunk picked me up, mouth-organ and all. He shook me and said I was a little devil, ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... best frame an invitation asking him to be her scholar. He seemed so manly and independent, though he was so young; and, somehow, it was all so different from how she had planned her finding of scholars. She had been looking for a cottage where the tattered children might be crawling about the doorstep, making mudpies and quarrelling with each other; and then she thought she would knock at the door, after she had spoken to them for a little, and ask their mother if she might have them to teach on Sunday. But this boy, ignorant and neglected ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... patio and disappeared. Nell sank to the doorstep, and as she met the question in Belding's eyes she shook her head mournfully. They waited without speaking. It seemed a long while before Gale returned. Belding thrilled at sight of him. There was more boy about him than Belding had ever seen. Dick ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... himself a studious evening over some very interesting entries in his Indian Diary, while Captain Puffin anticipated the speedy solution of that problem about the Roman road which had puzzled him so long. As they said their "Au reservoirs" to her on her doorstep, they took off their hats more ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... reclining in the doctor's chair. "I suppose you think you look like him, but you don't, nor act like him either. If he was sitting there and a lady came in, he'd be up too quick for anything. And if the lady was polite and stayed on the doorstep (just like I am) he would say, 'Pray come in, madam,' and then he'd set ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... two or three more sorry-looking houses and finally paused before the gate of the home of Madame's little pupil. The bare grassless yard was filled with old boxes and rubbish. A big lumbering lad of about fourteen sprawled over the doorstep playing with a string. He looked up with vacant eyes, and clutched at the visitors' skirts, muttering and ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... pink costume, with a large hat all smothered in pink feathers. I thought of the Queen of Sheba, and felt alarmed. Mrs. Polter told me afterwards she was 'just a lady,' rolling in recently acquired wealth, and 'as hard to please as if she had never washed her own doorstep.' It was then I learnt the difference between 'a ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... lay like cream upon the pavement when the witch and Harold her broomstick left the Higgins' doorstep. London was a still Switzerland in silver and star-grey, unblotted by people. There was a hint of pale green about the moonlight, and the lamps with their dim light downcast were ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... by my advice, and hadn't come downstairs yet. Ellaline, too, was still in her room, sulking, no doubt, and hadn't said good-bye to Sir Lionel or any of us. I know that, because my room at this hotel has been close to hers—and to his, too; so whenever a word is murmured on a doorstep I hear. No word has been murmured this morning; and E. has had her breakfast sent ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... the doorstep of the hut). He's tender-hearted. It's hard on him, poor dear. Well, what of that? Isn't it also ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... heard the bell pealing through the silent house as he stood shivering and waiting on the doorstep. ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... June and it was morning. The sky was clear and the sun shone bright and warm. The still air was filled with the sweet odor of blossoming flowers. To little Luke, sitting on the doorstep of the farmhouse and looking out over the fresh fields and green meadows, the whole earth seemed brimful ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... cookery is far from rivalling that of the clubs, restaurants are being established in the city equal to those of Paris, and the cartoon of Punch is daily fulfilled with a terrible accuracy. 'What has your mistress for dinner to-day?' says the master of the house, on the doorstep, his face toward the city. 'Cold mutton, sir.' 'Cold mutton! Ah! very nice; very nice. By the by, Mary, you may just mention to your mistress that I may perhaps be detained rather later than usual to-day, and she is not to wait dinner for me.' With ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... quick, Rebecca," said Mrs. Meserve, greatly mortified at the situation. "But don't you believe a word that lyin' critter said! He did steal it off my doorstep, and how did you come to be ridin' and consortin' with him? I believe it would kill your Aunt Miranda if ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... sitting on the doorstep by this time, and Shenac laid her head on her brother's shoulder ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson
... door startled Mrs. Breckenridge so that she cried out under her breath. Brown went to the door. A furious gust of wind hurled it wide open beneath his hand, but there was no one upon the doorstep. No one? At his feet lay a bundle, from which sounded a wailing cry. He picked it up, looked up and down a vacant street, closed the door, and came back to Sue Breckenridge by ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... he always is when it is a bright day like this. He sits in an old chair on that broad doorstep in front of his house, and leans on a big, thick stick ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... which forbade him asking to see the horse, much as he should have liked to do so; so, giving a signal to his men, he turned his horse's head in the direction of Edinburgh, and rode off, leaving Sir Michael standing on the doorstep gazing after them, a strange smile ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... of them distinctly frightened when they went to the door and saw—who but the old Witch herself, on the doorstep! ...
— More Tales in the Land of Nursery Rhyme • Ada M. Marzials
... Milborn to do it," says i; "he may want a place hissef some day or other," sayin' of which i bounsed off the doorstep, with all tho ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari. Vol. 1, July 31, 1841 • Various
... to set up a hobgoblin in my own corn-patch, and almost at my own doorstep," said Mother Rigby to herself, puffing out a whiff of smoke. "I could do it if I pleased, but I'm tired of doing marvelous things, and so I'll keep within the bounds of everyday business just for variety's sake. Besides, there is no use in scaring the little children for a mile roundabout, though ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... after I have accumulated a number of potential judgments against Henry Nelson. He has had his share of cats and dogs, of course, and some day I hope to lead them back to his doorstep. If they return at the right moment, they may ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... the children wanted to describe a stout person they always said, "As fat as Mary Lynch." One house which Beth had to pass on her way to school made a strong impression on her imagination. It was a gloomy abode with a broad doorstep and deep portico, broken windows, and a mud-splashed door, from beneath which she always expected to see a slender stream of blood slowly trickling. For a man called Macgregor had murdered his wife there—beaten her brains out with a poker. Beth never ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... station was a curious sight that night. The flight was beginning. A crowd of people was collected at one end with boxes and bundles and children. One little boy was lying on a doorstep asleep, and against the wall farther on lay a row of soldiers. On the bench to the right, under the light, was a doctor in his white overall, stretched out sound asleep between the two rushes of work at the station dressing-room; and a Roumanian officer talked to me of Glasgow, where ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren
... hat on, was just preparing to go out, when the bell sounded. The words of grateful acceptance were on her very lips when her front-door bell rang too, very long and insistently and had hardly left off when it began again. Olga opened the door herself and there was Mrs Quantock on the doorstep with her invitation for Saturday night. She was obliged to refuse, but promised to look in, if she was not very late in getting away from Mrs Lucas's (and pop went the cat out of the bag). Another ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... offer him tea; and the baking of old-fashioned biscuits and sweets was a matter for prayerful consideration. And Hetty, the hired girl, had spent all the morning on her grand-mother's silver, and William Pillsbury, executor of chores, had washed the doorstep and polished the windows and swept the maple-pods and poplar silk from the roof-gutters, and was now down on his knees with shears, trimming the grass ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... was a good place to tame me. When Veronica heard that I was going, she told me that I would be stifled, if I lived at Grandfather Warren's; but added that the plums in his garden were good, and advised me to sit on the yellow stone doorstep, under which the toads lived. She also informed me that she was glad of it, and hoped I would ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... night, Tatiana had said no word, nor had she moved from her doorstep: it was only when they brought back the dripping body to the village that she stirred, and when she saw it she laughed a dreadful laugh, and the spirit went from her eyes, leaving a ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... boomed softly from Westminster, and made the heavy atmosphere drowsily vibrate with the volume of the strokes. The reverberation of the last had scarcely died away when a light, measured footfall made him sit up. It came nearer and nearer, and then, after a moment's hesitation, sounded on his own doorstep. With that there came the tap of a cane on the window. With thought and expectation resolutely suspended, Lefevre swung out of the room and to the hall-door. He opened it, and stood and gazed. The light of the hall-lamp fell upon a figure, the sight of which sent the blood in a gush to his heart, ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... There was a sound of fighting within the house. Neal ran towards the door. A woman's shriek reached him, and a moment later a soldier came out of the door dragging a girl with him. He had a wisp of her hair gathered in his hand, and he pulled at it savagely. The girl stumbled on the doorstep, fell, was dragged a pace or two, staggered to her feet, clutched at the soldier's hand and fastened her teeth in his wrist. Neal sprang forward at the man's throat, grasped it, and, by the sheer impetus of his spring, ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... embarked on a French vessel bound for Marseilles, poor, worn out and exiled for ever from the city which he had guided for eighteen months; if, indeed, no spark of his spirit animated the dust which it was the first care of liberated Venice to welcome home. The Austrians broke up his doorstep on which, according to a Venetian custom, his name was engraved. Another martyr, Ugo Bassi, had kissed ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... be steadily exposed and disposed of. With the remark that he guessed Dick Demorest's was "a good enough hotel for HIM," and that he'd better be "getting along there," he walked down the steps, carpet-bag in hand, and coolly departed, leaving Mateo pained, but smiling, on the doorstep. ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... guests rose to depart, but Gabriel lingered on the doorstep with many farewell words and sweet good-nights. When he was gone Evangeline carefully covered the fire and noiselessly followed her father up-stairs. Out in the orchard Gabriel waited and watched for the gleam ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... a well-educated, dainty and exceedingly attractive Japanese girl presents herself on the doorstep of a house in New York where one of the young men resides. Situation! What shall the young man do with his charming and unexpected protegee! In view of the prolonged success of Fay Bainter in the play, East Is West, it was obviously the thing to make a play out of Sunny-San. And ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... spring to the duties of his hostship. He did not even move aside to permit Johnny Byrd to spring to his own assistance—which Johnny showed every symptom of doing. He continued to stand obstructingly in the middle of his log doorstep, one hand on the knob of the half closed door behind him, his eyes fixed very ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... standing alone in a field, was a somewhat larger cottage; a bush swung from the projecting pole above the door: it was the ale-house that he sought; here, at least, he would find some one. As he came up he heard a child crying, and lo! on the doorstep sat a dirty little maid of some four summers, sobbing away for ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... owner's absence. But the householders of Madeira Place do not absent themselves, even in summer; they could hardly get much nearer to the sea. And if you will take the pains to seat yourself, toward the close of day, upon an opposite doorstep, between two rows of clamorous little girls sliding, with screams of painful joy, down the rough hammered stone, to the improvement of their clothing, you will see that the ...
— In Madeira Place - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... orbits, so enraged was he—"do you know that I am the Chief of Police here, and that everybody is afraid of me? I have only to give orders and every one will kill any one I like." Here he discontinued shaking his somewhat grimy hands under my nose and, drawing himself up, stood upon the doorstep of the hotel in order to harangue the great ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... whether this is old or young till I've told it?" demanded Curly, as they all three sat on the ruined doorstep of ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... her brother in the wit and vivacity of her mind and strong affections; her grace and charm of manner were such that a gentleman once said of her; 'If I were to see Mrs. Ruxton in rags as a beggar woman sitting on the doorstep, I should say "Madam" to her.' 'To write to her Aunt Ruxton was, as long as she lived, Maria's greatest pleasure while away from her,' says Mrs. Edgeworth, 'and to be with her was a happiness she enjoyed with never flagging and supreme delight. Blackcastle ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... London would be stirred to its depths by the news that Sir HALL CAINE was on duty outside the establishment of The Sunday Pictorial, and that Miss ETHEL M. DELL was in charge of the squad on the doorstep ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... and exhort the wicked; they give him no rest, and never let him feel he has done enough; and when he comes home weary, after a day's wrestling with his parishioners' souls, he is confronted on his doorstep by filthy abuse pasted up on his own front door. He never speaks of these things, but how shall they be hid? Everybody here knows everything that happens before the day is over, and what we have for dinner ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... happy, very happy indeed. It was watching Drummer that started Johnny Chuck to thinking about his own home. He had always thought it a very nice home. He had built it just as he wanted it. From the doorstep he could look in all directions over the Green Meadows. It had a front door and a hidden back door. Yes, it was ...
— The Adventures of Johnny Chuck • Thornton W. Burgess
... fell back in his chair, as if exhausted. "I followed them to Mr. Hendricks' home, they chatterin' glibly all the way—and then after a few minutes' further remarks on the doorstep Hendricks, he went in—and Hanlon—! You know, Mr. Stone, Hanlon's nobody's fool, and he knew I was follerin' him as well as he knew his name! I don't know how he knew it—for I was most careful to keep out'a sight, but all the same, he did know ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... I seen in fields the little birds Go in between a bullock's legs to eat; But what gives me most joy is when I see Snow on my doorstep, printed by ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... music, insistent, reiterated, loud, penetrating, and yet the ear welcomes it; the night and the solitude are so vast that they can stand it; and when, an hour later, as the night enters into full possession, the bird comes and serenades me under my window or upon my doorstep, my heart warms toward it. Its cry is a love-call, and there is something of the ardor and persistence of love in it, and when the female responds, and comes and hovers near, there is an interchange of subdued, caressing tones between the two birds that it ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... of the day being over, I sat down upon my doorstep, pipe in hand, to rest awhile in the cool of the evening. Death is not more still than is this Virginian land in the hour when the sun has sunk away, and it is black beneath the trees, and the stars brighten slowly and softly, one by one. The ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... you, Katy, and may Mr. Cameron's visit bring you as much happiness as you anticipate," he said as he set her basket upon the doorstep and turned back ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... to his door and knock. It was opened by a woman-servant, who I was sure, when I caught sight of her countenance, was Nancy herself. She saw me at the same moment, and directly Mr Gray had entered, came out on the doorstep, and regarded ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... available for immediate charter, nor big balloons waiting for passengers, with sand-bags ready for instant unloading, nor any underground pneumatic tubes into which he could be pumped and with a puff landed on his own doorstep in Kennedy Square, the impatient lover was obliged to content himself with the back seat of the country stage and a night ride in the ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... was reached, it seemed a much more cheerful and home-like building than it had appeared when he left it in the morning; and Jack had now no notion of dodging Mr. Keifelheimer. There he stood on the doorstep, looking stern and dignified. He was almost too polite when ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... Blake and Ray," said he, to the silent young soldier, standing attention at the doorstep, "and say I should be glad to see ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... tonight, born 79 years ago. She lives in the inner city, where she cares for infants born of mothers who are heroin addicts. The children, born in withdrawal, are sometimes even dropped on her doorstep. She helps them with love. Go to her house some night, and maybe you'll see her silhouette against the window as she walks the floor talking softly, soothing a child in her arms—Mother Hale of Harlem, and she, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan
... fete who comes on the stage to swell the drinking chorus, and who, it may be observed, always turns his glass upside down before he begins to drink out of it. Or he may be the clown who takes away the doorstep of the house where the evening party is going on. Or he may be the gentleman who issues out of the house on the false alarm, and is precipitated into the area. Or, to come to the actresses, she may be the fairy who resides for ever in a revolving ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... the House of Commons almost forgot to chatter. The case of the working man was the most striking of all—he forgot he was the working man. The very dogs forgot themselves, though that, to be sure, was no novelty, as the Irish writer demonstrated in his terrific outburst: 'On my doorstep.' But time went on, and hens in their turn forgot to lay, ships to return to port, cows to give enough milk, and Governments to look ahead, till the first flush of self-forgetfulness which had ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... disposed to look askance at Mr. Tasker. Old-fashioned matrons clustered round to watch him cleaning the doorstep, and, surprised at its whiteness, withdrew discomfited. Rumour had it that he liked work, and scandal said that he had wept because he was not allowed to do ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... with the New Year. I am not sure whether or no it is of good omen to begin the New Year with laughter. Omens are such tricky things that I have given up paying any attention to them. One would think it might be held to be unlucky to stumble on the doorstep as you set out from home, but the old omen-wizards, apparently from sheer love of contradiction, said, "Not at all! It is unlucky to stumble as you come into the house, and therefore it is lucky to ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... Jerrold's box had been left on his doorstep some time through the night, and he'd found it in the morning. The money was all there, but the old fellow was so cute that he wouldn't tell any one how much it was. The neighbors had persuaded him to bank it, and he was coming to town the next morning with it, and that ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... also put a station almost at the doorstep of the factory, and thereafter many shipments came and went by rail. The company's huge volume of mailings, often ten or fifteen bags a day, was also delivered directly to the trains, without going through ...
— History of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills • Robert B. Shaw
... midst of a great question, and they sat down on the decaying doorstep to have it out; Hilbrook having gone in for his hat and come out again, with its soft wide brim shading his thin face, frosted with ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... a moment on the doorstep while the driver wound the motor handle. I waited with a sinking heart for ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... dust and grime of the Flats, a woman sat on the doorstep of a wretched house. Her rounded shoulders slouched wearily—her tired hands were folded in her lap. She stared with dull, listless eyes at the squalid homes of her neighbors across the street. The Interpreter had described the woman to Helen—"a girl with fine instincts for the best things ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... altogether too much." That Sunday was his last before his address on Mazzini in Central Park. He finished with the hot sun over his head, and walking across the park to the house of Grant Wilson, he fell down faint and hopelessly ill on the doorstep. He never rallied, and after thirteen days the end came. An impressive warning to the old, who are selfishly urged to do hard tasks, that they must conserve their own vitality. Bryant was eighty-four when killed by over-exertion, with a ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... the kitchen and open the door. You look across the still white fields. Your barn looms black in the near distance, the white mound close at hand is your wood-pile, the great trees stand like sentinels in the moonlight; snow has drifted upon the doorstep and lies there untracked. It is, indeed, a dim and untracked world: coldly beautiful but silent—and of a strange unreality! You close the door with half a shiver and take the real world with you up to bed. For it is past ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted ...
— Franklin Delano Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... Mr. Doty was convinced. After his customary visit to the Cross-roads, he returned to his family wearing a bewildered expression. It became a sheepish expression when his wife confronted him on the doorstep. ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the family was out in the road already. Colia was carrying his bag for him; Nina Alexandrovna stood and cried on the doorstep; she wanted to run after the general, ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... windows the shutters were not yet closed, and there was a candle standing on the window-ledge, evidently as a signal to the late guest who was expected that night. Thirty paces away Stavrogin made out on the doorstep the figure of a tall man, evidently the master of the house, who had come out to stare impatiently Up the road. He heard his voice, too, impatient and, as ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... lagged behind to gulp the remainder of his coffee and as his heavy boots clumped noisily across the rough wooden floor he ventured to look again timidly at the very pretty young lady who sat beside the stove. Her friendly nod and smile sent him stumbling clumsily out over the doorstep with reddened face and a huge grin ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... side of life to desire better things for the helpless girl. So she turned a deaf ear to her anxious warnings; not by word or sign would she interfere. Let be, let be, it should be fate—it should be no doing of hers. Nellie gave up the struggle at last and taking up her favourite position on the doorstep, with her chin in her hands and her elbows on her knees, stared out moodily across the plains, seeking in her brain some way to help. It was not possible to go near them by daylight, the risk of detection was too great, she must wait till it was dark. ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... such a trouble-raising subject. War is a thing by itself, and all that touches it makes people bereft of their senses or some other good thing. Here has come news of Thora Ragnor's hurried marriage, but no one knows or cares about the strange things happening at our doorstep. Such haste is not ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... the virago pass, Laidlaw proceeded to the court, where, to his great surprise, he found Tommy Splint sitting on a doorstep, not exactly in tears, but with disconsolation deeply impressed on his dirty ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... tell you before what a kindhearted boy Edmund was? He sat down on the brass doorstep and waited till three o'clock. Then he knocked and rang, and there was a rattling and puffing inside. The great door flew open, and Edmund had only just time to hide behind it when out came an immense yellow dragon, who wriggled off down the brass cave like a long, ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... to her tasks in the tiny kitchen with a dull, hopeless air. She had just set a pail of soapy water on the back doorstep, preparatory to scrubbing the porch floor, for Susan insisted that this must be done once a week, no matter how clean it might be, when Polly's voice reached her. It was raised in uttering that shocking phrase which her mistress had forbidden, and which Polly refused ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... a tribute by a great writer to a greater writer, by a great man to a great man, by a complex personality to a complex personality; above all it is a tribute by a lover of the things of the 'doorstep' to a writer who has made the doorstep and the street the road to heaven, because the beings who pass ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... she said, melting in spite of herself as she looked down from the doorstep into his dark, smiling eyes. His strong, tanned face was beardless, his teeth were white, his abundant brown hair tousled and boyishly awry,—and there were mud splashes on his cheek and chin. He was tall and straight and his figure was shapely, despite the thick blue cape that hung from his shoulders. ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... tight as they'll fit, and two layers of them squatting in the cellar? Well, that's my house of business on an average day. The folk come in from the county fifty miles off, and eat bread and treacle on the doorstep, so as to be first in when the housekeeper comes down. The medical officer of health made an official complaint of the over-crowding of my waiting-rooms. They wait in the stables, and sit along the racks and under the horses' ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... came out of lawyer Royall's house, at the end of the one street of North Dormer, and stood on the doorstep. ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... again," said Dr. Heidegger; "and lo! the Water of Youth is all lavished on the ground. Well—I bemoan it not; for if the fountain gushed at my very doorstep, I would not stoop to bathe my lips in it—no, though its delirium were for years instead of moments. Such is the lesson ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... than our redman offers. In times of peace we go about the world seeking out every species of life foreign to ourselves for our own esthetic or intellectual diversion, and yet we neglect on our very doorstep the perhaps most remarkable realization of beauty that can be found anywhere. It is of a perfect piece with the great artistry of all time. We have to go for what we know of these types of expression to books and to fragments of stone, to monuments and to the preserved bits of ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... o'clock the head of the procession, which had been compressed into a dense mass in Stevens'-lane, burst like confined water when relieved of restraint, on entering James's-street, where every window and doorstep was crowded. Along the lines of footway extending at either side from the old fountain up to James's-gate, were literally tented over with umbrellas of every hue and shade, held up as protection against the cold rain that fell in drizzling showers and made the streetway on which ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... to Colonel Tom, "did you leave that there child sucking that there bottle on the doorstep of a blacksmith's house next to his shop at the edge of a little country town about twenty miles northeast of Galesburg wrapped up in that there ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... telling me, if there is no harm in asking, what was the good of my birth certificate in this business?' I asked, when the little old man and I stood on the doorstep. ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... man stopped at our gate. I was standing on the doorstep breaking sticks. He looked over the top bar of the gate and called to me to know if Mother Barberin lived there. I shouted yes and told him to come in. He pushed open the old gate and came slowly up to the house. I had never seen such a dirty man. He was covered with mud from head to ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... the small axe with him, having caught it up from the doorstep. Now he used it to cut a green bough, and then ran with the latter down the hill and set upon the fire-line ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... been present, waved himself away from the doorstep. "By-by, my dear," he said. "You've done bravely by me. ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... Banks, but the boy I got ain't my own son, but I found him on my doorstep when he's about three weeks old and raise him like he is my own blood. He went to school at the manual training school at Tullahassee and the education he got get him a teacher job at Taft (Okla), where he ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... the doorstep, and he took off his hat to the cool, pine-laden breeze that came from a mountain in the distance. He liked this town at once. He liked the elm-lined village street, and the snug white houses and the quiet and content of it. Then he found himself being introduced ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... to stay in the stifling yard, where the sun shone the whole afternoon. The only place in the house where it was possible to breathe was the rooms looking into the street, Euler and his son-in-law used sometimes to go and sit on the doorstep with Louisa. Frau Vogel and Rosa would only appear for a moment: they were kept by their housework: Frau Vogel took a pride in showing that she had no time for dawdling: and she used to say, loudly enough to be overheard, that all the people sitting ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... against the undreamt-of reinforcements who poured down in their thousands from as far north as Anatolia is extremely doubtful. Further, the difficulties of maintaining a large army in this almost waterless region were enormous. The Turkish railhead was on their doorstep, as it were; ours was then ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... to the Blakes, I found Tiger stretched out on the doorstep. He wagged his tail appreciatively, but did not growl as ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter |
