"Narrator" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the particulars which had yet transpired. Her aunt was no very methodical narrator, but with the help of some letters to and from Sir Thomas, and what she already knew herself, and could reasonably combine, she was soon able to understand quite as much as she wished of the ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... forth. Dr. Trendon, his sturdy frame half in shadow, had slouched far down into himself. Only the regard of his keen eyes fixed upon Slade's face, unwaveringly and a bit anxiously, showed that he was thinking of the narrator as well as of the narrative. The others had fallen completely under the spell of the tale. They sat, as children in a theatre, absorbed, forgetful of the world around them, wrapped in a more vivid element. ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... hands of two physicians that his hoarseness proceeded from a disease of the lungs; which certificate he published in the church, in the presence of the whole congregation: and by this means he was cured, or rather excused of the shame of the disease. And this,' certifies the narrator, 'I know to be true, by the relation of divers honest men of that parish. And truly if one of the jury had not been wiser than the others, she had been condemned thereupon, and upon other as ridiculous matters as this. For the name of witch is so odious, and ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... with her mouth like crumpled rose-petals, her ivory and peach-blossom complexion, her soft contralto voice, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, as per foregoing bald description, and as per what can, by imaginative effort, be pictured from the Pujolic hyperbole, by which I, the unimportant narrator of these chronicles, ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... the Delaware,—which unavoidably took ten days,—and round to New York again. D'Estaing was ten days behind him at the Delaware, twelve days at Sandy Hook, and only one day ahead of him in entering Newport, outside which harbor he had lain ten days before sailing in. An English narrator in the fleet, speaking of the untiring labor between June 30, when the English army reached Navesink, and the arrival of the French fleet on the 11th of July, says: "Lord Howe attended in person as usual, and by his presence animated the zeal and quickened the industry of officers and ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... the gayest manner imaginable, very minute details as to one of the temporary liaisons of Count Lucien. I do not guarantee the authenticity of the anecdote, and I experience in writing it more embarrassment than the senator displayed in relating it, and omit, indeed, a mass of details which the narrator gave without blushing, and without driving off his audience; for my object is to throw light upon the family secrets of the imperial household, and on the habits of the persons who were nearest the Emperor, and not to publish scandal, though ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... over, and we will admit that there was no doubt in his mind as to the genuineness of the story he had listened to. It did not appear that there was the least possibility of its being a false tale. It was not the beautiful face of the narrator and proposer that had led him to this conclusion. It was the probability and reasonableness of the story itself; but with his usual caution he determined to investigate. He was not prepared to accept any statement, ...
— Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist - Dudie Dunne Again in the Field • Harlan Page Halsey
... leave my position as narrator, and speak from my individual standpoint, I would say Brook Farm and what it stood for was to world-benighted travellers, seeking for sustenance, like a city set on a hill. It was a small, glimmering light of social ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... but it is needless to reiterate that these results and observations are merely experimental. In another place I hope to reproduce the stories in the original, by phonetic methods. I have here given English versions of some of the stories recorded, as translated for me by the narrator, or by Mrs. Brown, and added some explanations which may be of assistance to a person listening when songs or stories are being rendered on ...
— Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore • J. Walter Fewkes
... Jones's aunt died, on that night, in Timbuctoo. Yet Herr Parish (p. 282) seems to think that the argument of fallacious memory comes in part, even when an hallucination has been reported to another person before its fulfilment. Of course all depends on the veracity of the narrator and the person to whom he told his tale. To take a case given:[3] Brown, say, travelling with his wife, dreams that a mad dog bit his boy at home on the elbow. He tells his wife. Arriving at home Brown finds that it was so. Herr Parish appears ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... say that the problem is worth the trouble. What I am certain of, however, is that it is not to be solved, for I am not at all clear about it myself by this time. All I can say is that the personality of the narrator was extremely suggestive quite apart from the story he was telling me. I heard a few years ago that he had died far away from his beloved Naples where that "abominable adventure" did really ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... and with a trembling hand he broke the seal. Alas for his futile hopes! Not at the close of the page, as in the one received by Ella, but at the very commencement of the letter, was the mournful intelligence communicated, and while the narrator deeply deplored the event, he intimated, at the same time, that not a doubt existed in his own mind, or in the minds of her friends, as to the certainty of her ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... should she wish to search. But she never touched the drawer. The key which locked it she placed in an envelope, and put it apart under another lock and key. Though she listened, though she could not but listen, to the old woman's narrative, yet she rebuked the narrator. "There should be no talking about such things," she said. "It had been," she said, "her uncle's intention to make his nephew the owner of Llanfeare, and she believed that he had done so. It was better that ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... be pulled down or disturbed; but of such intelligible malpractices the gossips of Salem took little heed. One of them said that such an action showed Satan's prompting, but they all preferred to listen to the grander guilt of the blasphemous sacraments and supernatural rides. The narrator ended with saying that Hota was to be hung the next morning, in spite of her confession, even although her life had been promised to her if she acknowledged her sin; for it was well to make an example of the first-discovered witch, and it was also well that she was an Indian, a heathen, whose ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... perchance never have been in Poland—perhaps never even in Paris—since this non-sending forth of seven thousand Parisians was better understood by every gamin du faubourg than apparently by the sincere narrator ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... listened with few interruptions but a question now and then. Occasionally a sudden flush of passionate pain swept across his face, as some phrase, implying rather than expressing Warwick's love or Sylvia's longing, escaped the narrator's lips, and when she described their parting on that very spot, his eye went from her to the hearth her words seemed to make desolate, with a glance she never could forget. But when the last question was answered, the last appeal for pardon brokenly uttered, nothing ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... increased, as the army moved on, by Xerxes's system of compelling the forces of every kingdom and province through which he passed to join the expedition; so that, at length, when the Persian king fairly entered the heart of the Greek territory, Herodotus, the great narrator of his history, in summing up the whole number of men regularly connected with the army, makes a total of about five millions of men. One hundred thousand men, which is but one fiftieth part of five millions, is considered, in modern times, an immense army; and, in fact, half even of that number ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Ever since the period of the Renaissance, however, the truth has not been accredited; the painter of religious subject is no longer regarded as the narrator of a fact, but as the inventor of an idea.[35] We do not severely criticise the manner in which a true history is told, but we become harsh investigators of the faults of an invention; so that in the modern religious mind, the capacity of emotion, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the conspirators in the wood, but something of the terms of the dialogue. The gravity of Calvert increased as the other proceeded. He saw more deeply into the signification of certain portions of this dialogue than did the narrator; and when the latter, after having expressed his disappointment at the non-appearance of Stevens on the field of combat, at least congratulated himself at having driven him fairly from the ground, the other shook ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... disappointed in him," But, after reading a few more lines, he cheered up. For the Efreet finished as a flame, and the Princess as a "body of fire." "And when we looked towards him," continued the narrator, "we perceived that he had ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... gruesome details—highly pleasing to their narrator—and went up to look at his dead grandfather. He had never seen much of him, but they had kept up a regular correspondence, and always been on terms of affection, and he was sorry that he had not ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... too often deficient in the finer modulations. But he makes one forget this by his entrain, sincerity, and sympathy with his subject. As a composer he is less satisfactory; it is the first impression or nothing in his art. Apart from his luscious, tropical colour, he is a sober narrator of facts. Ay, but he is a big chap, this amiable little Valencian with a big heart and a hand that reaches out and grabs down clouds, skies, scoops up the sea, and sets running, wriggling, screaming a joyful band of naked boys and ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... of the very minor changes made in this version. (Indeed, two very necessary words were clearly dropped by accident.) An editor might have corrected "Wickliffe's 'Epigoniad'" to "Wilkie's 'Epigoniad'," but is unlikely to have added "Tuckerman's 'Sicily'" to the list of books read by the narrator. Griswold was not above forgery (in Poe's letters) when it suited his purpose, but would have too little to gain by such an ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... up the light so greedily, seemed just fitted to give effect to such legendary lore. The huge logs crackled and burned with glowing warmth; the blood-red glare of the Yule log flashed on the faces of the listeners and narrator, on the portraits, and the holly wreathed about their frames, and the upright old dame, in her antiquated dress and trinkets, like one of the originals of the pictures, stepped from the canvas to join our circle. It ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... with whom they were shortly closeted, listened carefully and silently to Viner's account of all that had happened. He was one of those never-to-be-sufficiently-praised individuals who never interrupt and always understand, and at the close of Viner's story he said exactly what the narrator was thinking. "The real truth of all this, Mr. Viner," he said, "is that this is probably one of the last chapters in the history of the Lonsdale Passage murder. For if you find this woman and the men who are undoubtedly her accomplices, you will most ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... oil, and all hearts were made lighter and each purse heavier, with every new arrival of good fortune; as if they had been one great family, each one smiling on another's prosperity. "But now,"—and the face of the narrator is less joyous as he turns from then to now,—"things are not what they were. Our island is becoming like what they tell me the world at large is." And the old man will re-light his pipe, and with a sad smile he will give you the names of his ancestors, from ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... she heard Hilary's voice talking fast and eagerly in the drawing-room. She had had five or six minutes start to tell her tale in, and a good deal can be said in five or six minutes, provided that the listener does not hinder the narrator by interruptions. And Mrs. Danvers had not once interrupted, and Hilary had therefore been able to make such good use of her time that she had given her mother a full and complete account of the way in which her first suspicions that there was something ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... as much by his feelings as by weakness, and, during the silence that followed, Cabot stole away, ostensibly to see that the dynamo was running smoothly. When he returned the narrator had recovered his calmness, and was ready ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... would not turn out to be clever—at any events not poetical. He is fond of gossip, and apt to speak slightingly of some of his friends, but is loyal to others. His great defect is flippancy, and a total want of self-possession." The narrator also dwells on his horror of interviewers, by whom at this time he was even more than usually beset. One visitor of the period ingenuously observes—"Certain persons will be chagrined to hear that Byron's mode of life does not furnish the smallest food for calumny." Another ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... the son of Dall, even he who was the narrator of stories to Conor the king, the men of Ulster sat at their ale; and before the men, in order to attend upon them, stood the wife of Feidlimid, and she was great with child. Round about the board went drinking-horns, ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... could be bettered. But I would not admit perfect excellence to any other of his stories. These two have a proportion and a perspective which are lacking in the others, the horror or weirdness of the idea intensified by the coolness of the narrator and of the principal actor, Dupin in the one case and Le Grand in the other. The same may be said of Bret Harte, also one of those great short story tellers who proved himself incapable of a longer flight. He was always like one of his own gold-miners who struck ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the story that were worth considering. One was the smartness of its hero, Jim Smiley, in taking the stranger in with a loaded frog; and the other was Smiley's deep knowledge of a frog's nature—for he knew (as the narrator asserted and the listeners conceded) that a frog likes shot and is already ready to eat it. Those men discussed those two points, and those only. They were hearty in their admiration of them, and none of the party was aware that a first-rate story had been ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... whether any one else will read it, I have no guess. I am in an off time, but there is just the possibility it might make a hit; for the yarn is good and melodramatic, and there is quite a love affair—for me; and Mr. Wiltshire (the narrator) is a huge lark, though I say it. But there is always the exotic question, and everything, the life, the place, the dialects—trader's talk, which is a strange conglomerate of literary expressions and English and American slang, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... The narrator of this story, and the chief actor in the simple drama was George Edmonds. I mention this little event because it shows that the spirit of hostility to tyranny, and the scorn of oppression, cruelty, and persecution, which he manifested in his after life, were inborn, and a part of his nature. The ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... to tell us who was in love with whom, and what were the blood relationships of all the persons. In such a narrative as this, any proceeding of that kind would be unusual,—and therefore the poor narrator has been driven to expend his first four chapters in the mere task of introducing his characters. He regrets the length of these introductions, and will now begin at once the ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... worthy of swelling the theme of history; and doubly thrice happy is it in having such an historian as myself to relate them. For, after all, gentle reader, cities of themselves, and, in fact, empires of themselves, are nothing without an historian. It is the patient narrator who records their prosperity as they rise—who blazons forth the splendor of their noontide meridian—who props their feeble memorials as they totter to decay—who gathers together their scattered fragments as they rot—and who piously, at length, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... him and Uranio. Next day is celebrated the feast of Pales, an account of which is given at length, and is followed by a song in which Galicio sings the praises of his mistress Amaranta, of whom the narrator proceeds to give a minute description. After another singing-match between Logisto and Elpino the company betake themselves to the tomb of Androgeo, whose praises are set forth in prose and rime. ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... form of "Scripture," which Auntie Jan "told" every morning after breakfast to the children. Jan was a satisfactory narrator, for the form of her stories never varied. The Bible stories she told in the actual Bible words, and all children appreciate their ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... celebrated Suger of St. Denis decorated one of the porches of his church with mosaic, in smalt, marbles, and gold; animal and human forms were introduced in the ornament. But this may not have been work actually executed on the spot, for another narrator tells us that Suger brought home from Italy, on one of his journeys, a mosaic, which was placed over the door at St. Denis; as it is no longer in its position, it is not easy to determine which ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... not a seer of the first degree, a narrator of the penetrative order, I should be vastly puzzled over this singular action on ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... great battle," resumed the narrator, in cheerful tones, as one larking with history, "between a king of England and his rebels. He was in the thick ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... partakers," The notion of a Fitzgerald stigmatizing a De Burgh as an Irishman is delightful, and eminently characteristic of the sort of wild confusion prevailing on the subject. The whole story indeed is so excellent, and is told by the narrator with so much spirit, that it were pity to curtail it, and as it stands it would be too long for these pages. The result was that Clanricarde and his Irish allies were defeated with frightful slaughter, between seven and eight thousand ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... any fault with the matrix of this opal is probably blasphemous. But I own that I could do without the Shandean prologue and epilogue of the narrator and his man-servant Daniel Cameron. And though, as a tomfool myself, I would fain not find any of the actions of my kind alien from me, I do find some of the tomfoolery with which Nodier has seasoned the story superfluous. Why call a damsel "Folly Girlfree"? What would a Frenchman ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... thing and are willing and ready to receive the impression derogatory to the neighbor's esteem and good name. Of course, if mere curiosity makes us listen and our pleasure and amusement are less at the expense of the neighbor's good name than excited by the style of the narrator or the singularity of the facts alleged, the fault is less; but fault there nevertheless is, since such an attitude serves to encourage the traducer and helps him drive his points home. Many sin who could and should prevent excesses ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... Agathemer, "in the autumn, before Andivius died; in fact, before we had any reason to dread that the end of his life was near. Entedius saw it, perhaps he would be a more suitable narrator than I." ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... leaned down and said something the narrator did not catch, but from the expression of his face it must have been very spoony: with a bride such as that charming Nellie, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... train," said the narrator, quietly and not without some readiness. "They kept him prisoner in a cave for months, and then they took him hundreds of miles away to the forests of Alaska. There a beautiful Indian girl fell in love with him, but he remained ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... an adventure only, is I suppose one of the most wonderful and mysterious experiences ever undergone by mortal men, I feel it incumbent on me to explain what my exact connection with it is. And so I may as well say at once that I am not the narrator but only the editor of this extraordinary history, and then go on to tell how it found ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... conscience is not sensitive and dominant, memory and imagination will become so confused that facts and fancies will fail to be separated. The imagination will be so allowed to invest events and experiences with either a halo of glory or a cloud of prejudice that the narrator will constantly tell, not what he clearly sees written in the book of his remembrance, but what he beholds painted upon the canvas of his own imagination. Accuracy will be, half unconsciously perhaps, sacrificed to his own ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... continued the narrator placidly. "Jake said somebody'd get them that likely needed them worse than Minnie Morrison. Well, in the afternoon, after we'd visited a while, Jake hired a livery rig an' we drove out to the orphant ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... but disciplined him. "He had already forgotten that he was rich, he must forget that he was a father." His child was taken, clothed in rags, beaten and spurned. Obedience compelled the father to look upon his child wasting with pain and grief, but such was his love for Christ, says the narrator, that his heart was rigid and immovable. He was then told to throw the boy into the river, but was stopped ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... custom was based upon the wanderings of the Virgin and St. Joseph in Bethlehem in search of repose. For eight days these wanderings of the holy pair to the different posadas were represented. On Christmas Eve, says the narrator, "a lighted candle was put into the hand of each lady [this was at a sort of party], and a procession was formed, two by two, which marched all through the house ... the whole party singing the Litanies.... A group of little children, dressed as angels, joined the procession.... ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... near madness. Mad people do such things; those who carry on the work of the world as useful and law-abiding citizens do not. I may add that I myself had the privilege of hearing at first hand the narrator's own account of this incident, which was much emphasized by his gestures and tones. Wordsworth's unexpected sally was in reply to a timid question by the late Professor Bonamy Price, then a young man, concerning the ...
— Noteworthy Families (Modern Science) • Francis Galton and Edgar Schuster
... Phronsie off into a corner, where she told him all the doings of the day—the disappointment of the cake, and how it was finally crowned with flowers; all of which Phronsie, with no small pride in being the narrator, related gravely to her absorbed listener. "And don't you think, Bensie," she said, clasping her little hand in a convincing way over his two bigger, stronger ones, "that Polly's stove was very naughty ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... handling of it. The question of the proper method of narration is to a considerable extent a matter of suitability—of giving the narrative an appropriate setting; it is also a matter of the point of view of the narrator—whether he is to tell the story as one of the actors, or simply as an impersonal observer. A dozen master story writers would tell the same tale in a dozen different ways, and each of them would seem to be the right way; for each writer would view ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... asleep, and before he woke the rest of the company were gone, and had left him in the posture wherein he was found. It is said the king gave him a cup which was found in his hand, and dismissed him." The narrator affirms "that the cup was still preserved, and known by the name of the fairy cup." He adds that Mr. Steward, tutor to the then Lord Duffers, had informed him that, "when a boy at the school of Forres, he and his school-fellows were once upon a time whipping their tops in the churchyard, ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... the place and occasion, ready to imitate on every opportunity —listen with fair attention. They are perhaps pleased with the subject matter of the tale, possibly by its wording, and very probably by the voice and presence of the narrator. They hear an old story, one of the many that help to form the social cement of the nation in which they live. This is of some slight value, though the story is only one of scores which they hear or read in their early years at school. The story has no special ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... to perform," said the narrator. "He gets his breakfast early in the morning and starts out at once, mounted on horseback, and with a horse that is more or less unruly. Each stock-rider, or stockman, as we call him, has a particular ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... his involuntary appearance in the full uniform of a Turkish Zaptieh, with other surprising and endless episodes, that at the last we had in the midst of our gasps of helpless laughter to implore the narrator to stop for the sake of our sides and the resounding ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... men passed two whole days there without help. On the third day the Germans arrived and the narrator gave himself up for lost. But the German Captain, with whom the Frenchmen had divided their food and drink, begged that they be cared for. Ultimately they were taken to the German camp and their wounds attended to. But in a few minutes the camp became the centre of a violent attack, and ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... accompanied by the Kurile Alexei and a common sailor. The lieutenant-governor soon appeared. He was in complete armour, and attended by two soldiers, one of whom carried his long spear, and the other his cap or helmet, which was adorned with a figure of the moon. 'It is scarcely possible,' says the narrator, 'to conceive anything more ludicrous than the manner in which the governor walked. His eyes were cast down and fixed on the earth, and his hands pressed closely against his sides, whilst he proceeded at so slow ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... Risk thanked the narrator in behalf of the auditory, adding, "The storm will probably change to a thaw before morning, and if it does we must be on hand bright and early, for it will bring the main ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... Sailing's Grove. Among the excursionists was General Sherman who gloried in the undertaking and expressed regret that at his age he could hardly anticipate living until the completion of the work. The party was very enthusiastic, and as the narrator naively puts it "as the commissary was well supplied, the ...
— The Story of the First Trans-Continental Railroad - Its Projectors, Construction and History • W. F. Bailey
... is a railroad engineer and is ten years older than I," the narrator said in the beginning. "I wasn't quite nineteen when we were married—two years ago. For some time, we got along all right; then we began to quarrel. ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... was described by a Charleston bookseller, who saw him in his store in 1796, carelessly turning over books. "At length," continues this narrator, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... adopt in the description of each of them must not, in any way, lead you to prejudge my opinion respecting the rank which they hold among the French themselves. In this respect, I shall abstain from every sort of reflection, and, confining myself to the simple character of a faithful narrator, shall leave to your sagacity to decide ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... Regions, where Charon, the ghostly boatman, is busy ferrying souls across the River Styx. The ferryman bids his attendant Mercury see that all his passengers embark carrying nothing with them; and the narrator describes how, after various Shades had qualified for their passage, "A tall Man came next, who stripp'd off an old Grey Coat with great Readiness, but as he was stepping into the Boat, Mercury demanded half his Chin, which ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... when he had half accomplished his task, the dispute about the domain of Little Zwornik arose, on which he and his companion, a German, were thrown into prison, being accused of being a Servian captain in disguise. They were subsequently liberated, but shot at; the ball going through the leg of the narrator. This is another instance of the intense hatred the Servians and the Bosniac Moslems bear to each other. It must be remarked, that the Christians, in relating a tale, usually make ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... course of our intimacy. While thus acknowledging a debt, I must also avow that another motive strongly prompts me upon this occasion. I am not aware of any one, to whom with such propriety a volume of anecdote and adventure should be inscribed, as to one, himself well known as an inimitable narrator. Could I have stolen for my story, any portion of the grace and humour with which I have heard you adorn many of your own, while I should deem this offering more worthy of your acceptance, I should also feel more confident of ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... tactful in drawing a distinguished guest out, also failed. When the dinner was over, however, and we had reached the cigars, Mark Twain started in telling a story in his most captivating way. His peculiar drawl, his habit in emphasizing the points by shaking his bushy hair, made him a dramatic narrator. He never had greater success. Even the veteran Mark himself was astonished at the uproarious laughter which greeted almost every sentence and was ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... to a tradition current among the tribes of that region, Walk in the Water, a Roanoke chief of great celebrity, commenced his tale. Undoubtedly most of the Indians present were as well acquainted with the story as the narrator, but that circumstance seemed to abate nothing of the interest with which it was listened to; it certainly did not diminish the attention of the audience. In this respect, these wild foresters deserve to become a pattern for careful imitation. ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... asked how it was that the doctor himself remained awake when such a powerful narcotic was administered, the narrator did not lose his presence of mind nor his absence of conscience, and said the doctor had, during the operation, held his nose tight with his two fingers. The doctor had since been offered thousands of tomans for the precious bottle, but ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... of what passed reads, more than almost any other in the gospels, like notes taken at the time by one who was present. We can almost put it again into the form of brief notes.... We can scarcely doubt that it was the narrator John who was the witness ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed
... but with unconquerable shrinkings; and above all things, filled with a profound sense of the folly and weakness of his conduct. It may be conceived with what curses he assailed the memory of the fair narrator of Hyde Park; her parting laughter rang in his ears all night with damning mockery and iteration; and when he could spare a thought from this chief artificer of his confusion, it was to expend his wrath on Somerset and the career of the amateur detective. With the coming of day, ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... snatched out the servant's sword, and with it slew him. A bystander wrested away the sword, and a foreigner in the crowd struck down the murderer, while other foreigners bore off their comrade's body. The narrator, to Ralegh's assurances that he could not be mistaken, since he had witnessed the whole affair as it happened round the stone, replied that neither could he be, for he was the bystander, and on that very stone he had been standing. He showed ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... theft and all that concerned it. At the slightest question he poured out excited information. Xavier had been a servant in the house. Mrs. King, who was religious and zealous, had found in him a convert. He had become a Protestant to please her. (At this point the narrator shrugged his shoulders again.) Then Xavier had asked higher wages; upon that there was a quarrel, ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... hands but allowed me to make full notes, and afterwards at my request re-read the whole, in order that I might make sure of my facts. The story which now follows is, of course, not quoted from the lips of the first narrator, but is based upon the notes made by her granddaughter in which are embodied the recollections of the conversations she ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... tale is told to the new generation—to the little ones sitting around with open eyes and gaping mouths—they naturally ask, "Where did all this occur?" The narrator must satisfy this curiosity, and so he replies, "On yonder mountain-top," ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... fell to the floor unheeded, this time she really put her spectacles in their proper place and stared through them at the narrator. ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... beautiful Irish accent, and Henry liked him. The attraction seemed mutual, and Henry found himself drawn into a remarkable relation about a fairy-hill in Connemara, and fairy lights that for several nights had been seen glimmering about it; and how at last he—that is, the narrator—and a particularly hard-headed friend of his had kept watch one moonlit night, with the result that they had actually seen and talked with the queen of the fairies and learned many secrets of the ——. The narrator here ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... is. Perhaps the reader will cast it aside at once as a worthless fiction,—the idle vagary of an excited brain. The compiler, of course, cannot vouch for its truth, but would respectfully invite the attention of the reader to the following testimonials presented by those who have known the narrator. The first is from Edward P. Hood, with whom Mrs. Richardson resided when ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... Poles, at this terrible moment, recognized each other as brothers, and rather than spill fraternal blood, they extricated themselves from a combat as if it were a crime. That is the version of an eyewitness and narrator, a ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... of the afternoon's performances, beginning with his experience as a lobster catcher. Seth smiled, then chuckled, and finally burst into roars of laughter, in which the narrator joined. ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... and go; and a thousand rumours, false mixed with true, wander up and down, and circulate confused words. Of these, some fill the empty ears with conversation; some are carrying elsewhere what is told them; the measure of the fiction is ever on the increase, and each fresh narrator adds something to what he has heard. There, is Credulity, there, rash Mistake, and empty Joy, and alarmed Fears, and sudden Sedition, and Whispers of doubtful origin. She sees what things are done in heaven and on the sea, and ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... that the narrator mixed up together certain leg-ends which related to other places in the country—that he took little springs, and mingled his own thoughts with his relations; but Otto listened to him with great interest. The discourse turned also upon the family at ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... drummer. And we listened to his anecdote. It was successful with his audience; but when he launched fluently upon a second I strolled out. There was not enough wit in this narrator to relieve his indecency, and I felt shame at having been surprised ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... a visit paid at will, which is reported at first hand in the "Proceedings of the Psychical Research Society." The narrator, Mr. John Moule, tells how he determined to make an experiment of the ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... of his creed, as then interpreted, i.e., the sentimental regard for the lower animals.[43] But there is lacking here the inevitable concomitant of Sterne's relation of a sentimental situation, the whimsicality of the narrator in his attitude at the time of the adventure, or reflective whimsicality in the narration. Sterne is always whimsically quizzical in his conduct toward a sentimental condition, or toward himself in the analysis ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... thought a thing amiss of each other. I presume that the most insidious falsehoods are daily carried to you, as they are brought to me, to engage us in the passions of our informers, and stated so positively and plausibly as to make even doubt a rudeness to the narrator; who, imposed on himself, has no other than the friendly view of putting us on our guard. My answer is, invariably, that my knowledge of your character is better testimony to me of a negative, than any affirmative which my informant ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... a wondrous tale of western life, and never did narrator get into so close relation with his auditor as did this young ranchman ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... writers should turn to the travesty of the Baldr story given in the almost worthless saga of Hromund Gripsson in support of a theory. In it "Bildr" is killed by Hromund, who has the sword Mistilteinn. It must be patent to any one that this is a perverted version of a story which the narrator ...
— The Edda, Vol. 1 - The Divine Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 12 • Winifred Faraday
... his persecuting zeal, when Jesus suddenly appeared to him and Saul was changed from a persecutor to a believer in Christ (Acts 9:3-7). The account is very brief. For an event which has had such tremendous results, the narrator is very reticent; a light from heaven, a voice speaking, and a person declaring that He is Jesus. Paul gives us two accounts of his conversion and how it took place (Acts 22:6-15; 26:12-18). The men who were with Paul saw a light and heard a voice, but not what was said. It is ...
— Bible Studies in the Life of Paul - Historical and Constructive • Henry T. Sell
... to that rule," thought I, for I remembered the stories which I had heard in the cabin; and I also recollected the conduct of their narrator, Captain Blake, towards the starving ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... the Arabian tale, has probably no special mythical significance, but was rather suggested by the exigencies of the story, in an age when the old mythologies were so far disintegrated and mingled together that any one talisman would serve as well as another the purposes of the narrator. But the lightning-plants of Indo-European folk-lore cannot be thus summarily disposed of; for however difficult it may be for us to perceive any connection between them and the celestial phenomena which they represent, the myths concerning ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... I am about to recount perplex the reader, it can hardly do so more than it has perplexed the narrator. Explanations, let me say at the start, I have none to offer. That which took place I relate. I have had no special education or experience as a writer; both my nature and my avocation have led me in other directions. ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... with more interest than you could have thought possible under the pressure of bodily distress. And Helen Rolleston's hazel eye dwelled on the narrator ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... antiquity, regardless alike of the frailty of their tenement and of the enjoyments of the numerous and vigorous swarms that are culling the fresher sweets of a virgin world. But as this is a subject which belongs rather to the politician and historian than to the humble narrator of the homebred incidents we are about to reveal, we must confine our reflections to such matters as have an immediate relation to ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... function was limited. But the fishermen regarded him as a fine player, and he did not care to imperil a serious reputation by telling frivolous ghost stories. So Mary, who had heard the story long ago from George's own lips, did duty as narrator:— ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... and spent a night with him. In his Ornithological Biography he gives the following narrative which he received from Boone, that evening as they sat at the cabin fire. We give the story in the words of the narrator: ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... I, interrupting the narrator, "I have heard enough. Spare me for the present. Your statements must be corroborated. This is all I ask. Leave the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... minute description of events previous to Christian Vellacott's disappearance, omitting nothing. The relation was somewhat disjointed, somewhat vague in parts, and occasionally incoherent. The narrator repeated himself—hesitated—blurted out some totally irrelevant fact, and finished up with a vague supposition (possessing a solid basis of truth) expressed in doubtful English. It suited Mr. Bodery admirably. ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... guard, he opened his wallet, which was well stocked, and retailed his stories, many of them so very rich, that I doubted the capacity of the Attache to out-Herod him. Mr. Slick received these tales with evident horror, and complimented the narrator with a well simulated groan; and when he had done, said, "Ah, I see how it is, they have purposely kept dark about the most atrocious features of slavery. Have you ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... that the old lady was crazy, or else she really had an important story to tell. In either case, it was his duty to let Fleming Stone hear it, at first hand, if possible. But he felt sure that to call in the rest of the household, or to take the narrator out to them would—as he expressed it to himself "upset her applecart and ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... turbulent images, which had impaired its efficacy, to a personal recollection of circumstances that had ceased to affect him. His features, for instance, became more human, his eye more significant of his feeling, and his whole manner more quiet and restored. He looked upon the narrator with an awakened interest, surveyed Darby, as if he scarcely knew how or why he came there, and then ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... "Mighty dangersome," acquiesced the narrator, "dat's what I 'lowed ter myse'f when I seed him. He was arter a lump o' dat green truck wid white berries 'pon it—mizzletoe, dey calls its name. When I got dar, he was comin' down de tree holdin' it by de stem wid he teef. He ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... interesting subjects. It was, therefore, with great pleasure, that I extracted from my military friend some curious particulars respecting that time; they are mixed with that measure of the wild and wonderful which belongs to the period and the narrator, but which I do not in the least object to the reader's treating with disbelief, providing he will be so good as to give implicit credit to the natural events of the story, which, like all those which ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... romanticism or who have a taste for heroines that "stiffen in a sudden stroke of passion looking for the instant electrically beautiful," let me commend The Red Planet (LANE). As a matter of fact Betty, the heroine, is quite a dear, and the narrator, Major Meredyth, a maimed hero of the Boer War, who looks at this one from the tragic angle of an invalid chair, is, apart from a habit of petulant and not very profound grousing at Governments in The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various
... ideas and superstitions have in some manner become attached to a recent name; tradition has a knack of bringing forward its dates; stories of immemorial antiquity are related as though they were the experience of the narrator's father or grandfather, and are modernised to suit that supposition. Legend never sticks at absurdity or anachronism. From some versions of the story it would appear that Tregeagle could not have lived earlier than the seventeenth century, ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... entertain the audience with some mythological legend. It was so clear that during this recital the chorus remained unnecessarily idle and superfluous, that the next improvement was as natural in itself, as it was important in its consequences. This was to make the chorus assist the narrator by occasional question ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... they were as pleased with it as the fair narrator herself. Everything just as it should be, you see. Off we skip like the most heartless things in the world, which is what children are, but so attractive; and we have an entirely selfish time; and then when we have need of special attention ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... Nibelungenlied, where you are made to feel so vividly (one of the few modern and therefore clear things therein) the long, dreary road from Worms to Bechlarn, and thence to Etzelburg, though of none of them is there anything beyond a name. For the Nibelungen story had been localized in what to narrator and audience was a reality, the country in which themselves lived, where themselves might seek out the abbey in which Siegfried was buried, the well in the Odenwald near which he was stabbed; where they knew from merchant ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... to choose between the role of actor or that of mere spectator or narrator. Neither the one nor the other can be forced upon him. The actor's role arises not from intelligence but simply from instinct. The actor identifies himself with the personages he represents. He renders ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... restraining the duchess from rushing up to the embrace of her son, whom she had not seen for a considerable time, and insisting on her receiving him in state. "How horribly cold it was," said the narrator. "Yes," said Lamb, in his stuttering way; "but you know he is ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... but there is no need to inquire which is the more correct account. The former two may have omitted a fact, or St Matthew may have combined the story with that of the two blind men already noticed, of which he is the sole narrator. But in any case there are, I think, but two recorded instances of the blind praying for cure. Most likely there were more, ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... Ken related the following tale. He was, I may observe in passing, a naturally fine narrator. There were deep, lingering tones in his voice, and he could strikingly enhance the comic or pathetic effect of a sentence by dwelling here and there upon some syllable. His features were equally ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne |
