"Threshold" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seneschal of Gavrillac who went to open there stood revealed upon the threshold a slim young man in a dark olive surcoat, the skirts of which reached down to his calves. He wore boots, buckskins, and a small-sword, and round his waist there was a tricolour sash, in his hat a tricolour ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... opened. She got up and opened it. They saw Miss Thompson standing at the threshold. But the change in her appearance was extraordinary. This was no longer the flaunting hussy who had jeered at them in the road, but a broken, frightened woman. Her hair, as a rule so elaborately arranged, was tumbling untidily over her neck. She wore bedroom slippers and ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... beside me—let us, if we may, 665 Great mourners both, bid sorrow sleep awhile. There is no profit of our sighs and tears; For thus, exempt from care themselves, the Gods Ordain man's miserable race to mourn. Fast by the threshold of Jove's courts are placed 660 Two casks, one stored with evil, one with good, From which the God dispenses as he wills. For whom the glorious Thunderer mingles both, He leads a life checker'd with good and ill Alternate; but to whom he gives unmixt 665 The bitter cup, he makes that ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... As he crossed the threshold, a clap of thunder broke with what sounded like a peal of laughter from many voices, and then the storm ceased as suddenly ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... who die through sickness or old age. Here she possesses a habitation protected by exceedingly high walls and strongly barred gates. Her hall is called Elvidnir; Hunger is her table; Starvation, her knife; Delay, her man; Slowness, her maid; Precipice, her threshold; Care, her bed; and Burning Anguish forms the hangings of her apartments. The one half of her body is livid, the other half the color of human flesh. She may therefore easily be recognized; the more so, as she has a ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... mission had thus to spend a night, probably unequaled by their sufferings in the open field. Though so near the equator, they felt the cold severely; rain set in with great violence, pouring through the roof, and entering into the threshold. A fire was indispensable, yet they were nearly suffocated with smoke; they were devoured with insects, and in this torment and fever tossed till dawn. At the arrival of morning they received the disappointing message, that the king could not yet visit his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... with joy; on the threshold.] What is this! Is Aunt Ella here? [Rushing up to her and seizing her hands.] Aunt, aunt! Is it possible? ...
— John Gabriel Borkman • Henrik Ibsen
... human suffering by which he stands surrounded. Lastly, no doctor or nurse is called upon to enter once for all the doors of that gehenna; they do not say farewell, they need not abandon hope, on its sad threshold; they but go for a time to their high calling, and can look forward as they go to relief, to recreation, and to rest. But Damien shut-to with his own hand the ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... language, acknowledged by experience, and corrected from time to time by the influence of literature and philosophy. A great, perhaps the most important, part of it is to be found in early Greek thought. In the Theaetetus of Plato it has not yet become fixed: we are still stumbling on the threshold. In Aristotle the process is more nearly completed, and has gained innumerable abstractions, of which many have had to be thrown away because relative only to the controversies of the time. In the interval between Thales and Aristotle were ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... At the threshold of your deliberations I congratulate you upon the favorable aspect of the domestic and foreign ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... feelings of a young man who thinks he is opening the door to the baker and finds incarnate spring upon the threshold. Spring in weather-beaten, well-cut clothes, with a sweet, friendly voice and ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... his sister were thoroughly absorbed in their dialogue. Having summed up the situation in his final declaration, he turned hastily to leave the room and was assured, to his dismay, that Miss Corson had heard the declaration; she was at the threshold, her lips apart; she was plainly balancing a desire to flee against a more heroic determination to step in and ignore the situation and the words which ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... the serang was so brutally interfering with their game. By the time they reached the door Desmond had turned the lantern to the wall, so that they saw only a dim shape within the cabin. Ganpat was secured before the last man became aware of what was happening. Hari hesitated at the threshold, hearing the sound of a slight scuffle caused by the ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... said the young peasant, stepping over the threshold. "Come, none of thee tricks upon travellers, Master Bill; I zee thee beside the rick yon!" and quitting the door for half a minute, he again hastily entered the cot. The rich colour of robust health ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... suspended, though he may again be subjected to it by postliminium. This term is derived from 'limen' and 'post,' which explains why we say that the person who has been captured by the enemy and has come back into our territories has returned by postliminium: for just as the threshold forms the boundary of a house, so the ancients represented the boundaries of the empire as a threshold; and this is also the origin of the term 'limes, signifying a kind of end and limit. Thus postliminium means that the captive returns by the same threshold at which he was lost. A ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... her. She appeared to him, as she sat there in the firelight, in all the first fairness and freshness of her youth, as an embodied temptation. Again he said to himself that other men might love and marry on the threshold of battle; he could not bring himself to think it justifiable—whether for the woman or the man. In a few weeks' time he would be back in France and in the very thick, perhaps, of the final struggle—of its preparatory stages, at any rate. Could one make love to a beautiful creature like ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... breathless, she reached home at length, to be met upon the threshold by Blake. In her exhaustion she almost ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... cottage, batter'd and decay'd, Lets in new light through chinks that Time has made.[221-2] Stronger by weakness, wiser men become As they draw near to their eternal home: Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view That stand upon the threshold ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... for or against that doctrine with a better understanding of what you are about. And if you prefer not to decide at all, but to remain doubters, you will at least see more plainly what the subject of your hesitation is. I thus disclaim openly on the threshold all pretension to prove to you that the freedom of the will is true. The most I hope is to induce some of you to follow my own example in assuming it true, and acting as if it were true. If it ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... to the Publisher." No: thanking the public, I must decline. A peep through my window, if folk prefer; But, please you, no foot over threshold of mine! ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... which will be noticed elsewhere. Proposing to fast this year more rigorously than in the preceding years, he directed Brother Leo to bring him nothing but bread and water once a day, and that, towards evening, and place it at the threshold of his cell. "And when you come to me for Matins," he added, "don't come into the cell, but only say in a loud voice, 'Domine, labia mea aperies;' and if I answer, 'Et os meum annuntiabit laudem tuam,' you will come ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... need they be. There must be all sorts in the world; and though we may be all knights, there is a great difference between one and another; for the courtiers, without quitting their chambers, or the threshold of the court, range the world over by looking at a map, without its costing them a farthing, and without suffering heat or cold, hunger or thirst; but we, the true knights-errant, measure the whole earth with our own feet, exposed to the sun, to the cold, to the air, to the inclemencies of heaven, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... as many adventures that befell me afterwards, still it was rather a curious one, and I shall give you it, as illustrating the early penchant I had for aquatic pursuits. I was but a very little boy at the time, and the odd incident occurring, as it were, at the very threshold of my life, seemed to foreshadow the destiny of my future career—that I was to experience as in reality I have experienced, ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... that which drives the hiding wharf-rat into the deepest corner at hand, he made his way down through the body of the ship. He shambled and skulked his way down, a hatless and ragged and uncouth figure, wandering on along gloomy gangways and corridors until he found himself on the threshold ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... Agent-General that it was both politically immoral and strategically unsound that forty-four million people should bear the entire weight of the defences of Our mighty Empire, but, as he had observed (here the Agent-General evaporated), we stood now upon the threshold of a new era in which the self-governing and self-respecting (bis) Dominions would rightly and righteously, as co-partners in Empery, shoulder their share of any burden which the Pan-Imperial Council of the Future should allot. The Agent-General was already ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... to the borders of the Sahara. But as the flourish of the "Monitor" would never reach a thousand little way-side huts, and sea-side cabins, and vine-dressers' sunny nests, where the memory of some lad who had gone forth never to return would leave a deadly shadow athwart the humble threshold—so the knowledge that they were only so many automata in the hands of government, whose loss would merely be noted that it might be efficiently supplied, was not that wine-draught of La Gloire which poured the strength and the daring of gods into ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... miraculous supplies of water furnished to the Israelites in their journey through the Arabian desert to the land of Canaan. The water here promised is the water of life, and not literal fountains in the desert. Upon the same principle are we to interpret the river that flows out from under the threshold of the temple, and flows down eastward to the Dead sea, growing broader and deeper in its course, and imparting life to everything which comes within its influence. Ezek. 47:1-12, and compare Psa. 46:4; Joel ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... the blest Threshold, sunnily glistening (160) Feet: yon ivory door approach, Hymen, O Hymenaeus, O Hymen, ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... of the feasts of the past summer, nor gave him any hope for the next. He strode careless through it all to gain the door at the bottom. It yielded to a push, and the long grass streamed in over the threshold as he entered. He mounted by a broad stair in the main part of the house, passing the silent clock in one of its corners, now expiating in motionlessness the false accusations it had brought against the work-people, and turned into the chaos ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... the door when old Judas appeared on the threshold, breathing hard, his eyes aflame, his long beard agitated, like rippling water, and he hurled blasphemies in an unknown language, extending his skinny arms in order to prevent the priest ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... bubbling spirit there fell a mild, strange calm. A breath from the very caverns of the infinite stole out along the path of that silver lamp, and in the grave, surrendered voice there sounded for the child upon life's threshold echoes ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... children were playing around her. I was outside, busily engaged in doing something to a wagon, when suddenly, though it was mid-day, an enormous lion came up and laid himself quietly down in the shade, upon the very threshold of the door. My wife, either stupefied with fear, or aware of the danger attending any attempt to fly, remained motionless in her place, while the children took refuge in her lap. The cry they uttered ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... one, but very elegant. The moment I saw her, I gave up all idea of Naples, and decided upon accompanying the two friends to Parma. The beauty of the lovely Frenchwoman had already captivated me. The captain was certainly on the threshold of sixty, and, as a matter of course, I thought such a union very badly assorted. I imagined that the affair which I was already concocting in my brain ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Fear, And open-eyed Conspiracy lie sleeping As on Hell's threshold; and all gentle thoughts Waken to worship Him who giveth joys ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... the poorer tradesmen left open to the ground, and the wares laid on benches and tables in the open air, the light in all cases entering at the front only,—and fading away in a few feet from the threshold into a gloom which the eye from without cannot penetrate, but which is generally broken by a ray or two from a feeble lamp at the back of the shop, suspended before a print of the Virgin. The less pious shop-keeper ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... always had a fly-away, unsettled look about her, rebelled at the lengthened dresses, insisted on wearing her hair in a flying braid, wouldn't be induced to cultivate ease and grace, and altogether was as wild and unconquerable on the threshold of fifteen as she had been in the freedom of twelve. Kittie, on the contrary, had a decided love for grace, and the ease of a cultivated young lady. She did her hair up in various and complicated fashions, occasionally ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... firelight shone through from underneath, and a fine thread of golden light sifted through the latch of the door and fell on the hand that held Amalia's crutches. He looked down on the spot of light dancing over his hand as if he were dazed by it. Very gently he laid the crutches across the threshold, and for a long time stood without, listening, his head bowed as if he ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... out one, which Dan signed, and with a nod turned to leave, when the attorney halted him on the threshold. ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... was in full swing when the deputy entered; scores of lithe dark men and their black-eyed partners were whirling in the fervid Spanish waltz; but as he crossed the threshold a discordant note arose: disturbance broke out in a corner of the hall; a woman screamed; a knife-blade flashed. Clark shoved his way through the crowd and reached the fight in time to disarm a good-looking young Mexican who was flourishing ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... stand a little more joy without coming to an untimely end, for there suddenly smiling at her from the threshold was Carol Clay congratulating her and telling her what a pleasure to-night's Rose had been to the Rose of yesterday. And before Tony could get her breath to do more than utter a rather shy and gasping word of gratitude, ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... sunk into an easy-chair by the fire. His daughter, pale but composed, stood beside him, her hand on his shoulder. She still feared Bullard: even now she was ready for sacrifice. Mr. Harvie, lost in amazement, had not got beyond the threshold. ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... cares trouble a man more than public ones, Karlsefin. Look at thy friend Thorward, now. 'Tis little that he would care for a mountain of outside troubles on his broad shoulders if he might only drop them when he crossed the threshold of his own door." ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... as La Mole again pressed her hand and turned to depart. "She relents—she has a kind heart; and she would not, surely, deliver up the guest who begs shelter at her threshold, into the hands of those who seek to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... The woman shrank back as though she herself were about to drop on all fours and answered him. "No, no!" she cried, and considered a moment. Then the door was burst in with one tremendous blow, and Master Bruin rolled over the threshold and leaped toward them in clumsy jumps, his head thrown somewhat backward as though wondering why his little comrade had not rushed to meet him, with an eager growl. "Peter, Peter, the boy!" she whispered, bending over him; but ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... to his knees beside Gordon. Close to the floor the air was still breathable. He filled his lungs, staggered to his feet, and tried to drag the unconscious man across the threshold ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... moment I put foot on the threshold of the cabin I heard a peculiar noise, and at the same moment an arrow flew past my head and lodged itself in the door. Where had the arrow come from? What to do I knew not. Suddenly an inspiration came to me. The cabin was pretty ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... for a moment, excepting the wailing of somebody within. As soon as his gun was reloaded Edward walked round to the front of the cottage, where he found the man who was called Ben lying across the threshold of the open door. He stepped across the body, and, looking into the room within, perceived a body stretched on the floor, and a young lad weeping ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... Burnses were typical Scots in their undemonstrative ways; but this was a great occasion, and tradition has it that his mother allowed her feeling so far to overcome her natural reticence that she met him at the threshold with the exclamation, 'O Robert!' He had left home almost unknown, and had returned with a name that was known and honoured from end to end of his native land. He had left in the direst poverty, and haunted ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... Mouradour, still in his blue blouse, appeared on the threshold, reading "L'Intransigeant" ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... attempts were being made to storm her house. Suddenly, a figure, dishevelled and bare-headed, appeared on the threshold ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... with equal boldness: "It will be better," says he, "not to utter a word on any subject, except that which we are now considering: and to Valerius, when he refused to be silent for a private individual, he commands a lictor to proceed." When Valerius, on the threshold of the senate-house, now craved the protection of the citizens, Lucius Cornelius, embracing Appius, put an end to the dispute, not consulting the interest of him whose interest he affected to consult; and permission to speak his sentiments ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... near, Lovey was somewhat perturbed to see that the door, which she had carefully closed, was standing wide open. She guessed, however, that a neighbour had called in her absence, and would be inside keeping watch over the child. As she reached the threshold, the dreadful truth broke upon her: the kitchen was empty, ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... point in the conversation, some one makes a series of noisy stumbles on the stones of the threshold with the sound of a horse pawing the ground—and blaspheming. Then, after a silence, the barking of a sonorous and authoritative voice—"Hey, inside there! Getting ready? Everything must be fixed up this evening and packed tight and solid, you know. Going into the first line this time, ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... Timothy, and, as I stepped over the threshold, I fainted. As soon as I recovered, Mrs M'Shane led me up stairs into her room for security, and I was soon able to take the refreshment I so much required. I stated what had passed to Mrs M'Shane and Kathleen, who were ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... came to the hut where the firelight flickered on the window- pane; the door was flung open, and, as he stumbled on the threshold, she helped him into the warm room. She almost pushed him over to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... halts on the threshold of life's profoundest problems. It has only dead maxims for the hour of deepest need. It gives no vision of a future beyond the grave. It is virtually an agnostic code of morals with some racial variations. Wu Ting Fang, formerly ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... seems she is one of your authoresses, that you first foster, and then upbraid us with. But I forgive you. "The rogue has given me potions to make me love him." Well; go she would not, nor step a step over our threshold, till we had promised to come and drink tea with her next night. I had never seen her before, and could not tell who the devil it was that was so familiar. We went, however, not to be impolite. Her lodgings ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... now into speech that so far had been scarcely above the threshold of his conscious thought. He went on to discuss the entire position of the disbelieving cleric. He discovered ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... slowly to the hospital, leaning heavily on his stick. Strange shrill noises brought him to a halt on the threshold. They came from ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... garments, and to bring them once again under the effective control of the sovereign or the shogun was almost a hopeless task. Yoshihisa might perhaps have refrained from attempting it had the empire been at peace. But, in truth, the empire was on the threshold of a century-long struggle compared with which the Onin War proved a bagatelle. The mutterings of the coming storm made themselves very audible during the years of Yoshihisa's early manhood. The Uesugi septs, and the Hojo and the Satomi, were fighting in the Kwanto; ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... voice speaks of unlacing Anastasia!" cried he: "I oppose it, I forbid it!" and he rushed out of the lodge; but on the threshold he stopped. ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... sovereigns. At that instant four muskets were discharged from without: there was a crash of glass, a yell of pain, and four of the Skinners rolled bleeding on the floor; two others ran into the darkness and escaped; their leader, trying to follow, was met at the threshold by the Smiths, who clutched the gold out of his hand and pinioned his elbows in ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... She fell across the threshold, struck with palsy. Her daughter sprang from the bed, and, with Vivian's assistance, raised and carried Lady Glistonbury to an arm-chair near the open window, drew back the curtain, begged Vivian to go to her father, and instantly to despatch a messenger ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... the places described by Bulwer in his novel; the dwelling of the magistrate Pansa, the villa of the wealthy Diomede where eighteen skeletons surrounded by provisions and jewels had been found, the house of the poet Glaucus whose threshold was guarded by the mosaic of a chained dog with the now well known motto 'Cave Canem' or 'Beware of the Dog.' Most interesting, perhaps, was the Temple of Isis, in which the most exciting incidents of Bulwer's novel took place. There the guide showed us the altar, the well, the secret stairway, ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... a convenient height from the ground, often beneath a niche, and partly projecting from the wall, a stone basin: this was the stoup, or receptacle for holy water, called also the aspersorium, into which each individual dipped his finger and crossed himself when passing the threshold of the sacred edifice. The custom of aspersion at the church door appears to have been derived from an ancient usage of the heathens, amongst whom, according to Sozomen[154-*], the priest was accustomed ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... may I come in?" asked Mrs. Carvel, opening the door of her husband's library, and standing on the threshold. ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... weels, the lobster-pots woven of rushes, the seines, two oars, and an old cobble upon props. Beneath their heads was a scanty matting, their clothes, their sailors' caps. Here was all their toil, here all their wealth. The threshold had never a door nor a watch-dog. All things, all, to them seemed superfluity, for Poverty was their sentinel; they had no neighbour by them, but ever against their narrow cabin ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... herself on the threshold of the door, her forehead against the ground, and remains in this attitude of superlatively polite salute as long as I am in sight, while I go down the pathway by which I am to disappear ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... hardly necessary for me to add that this co-optation is limited to a very narrow field of operation. It is confined in fact to the threshold of a man's career. Once the candidate has been consecrated official, by a board of examining officials, he belongs, both as regards advancement, promotion and the reverse, to the central authority alone, except ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... door I stumbled over a man at the threshold. He was sobbing hysterically and his arms flapped like the wings of a goose. It was Wali Dad, Agnostic and Unbeliever, shoeless, turbanless, and frothing at the mouth, the flesh on his chest bruised and bleeding from the vehemence with which he ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... trodden down The most, 'tis not because He hides his face From them in wrath, as purblind teachers prate: Not so: there most is He, for there is He Most needed. Men who seek for Fate abroad 140 Are not so near his heart as they who dare Frankly to face her where she faces them, On their own threshold, where their souls are strong To grapple with and throw her; as I once, Being yet a boy, did cast this puny king, Who now has grown so dotard as to deem That he can wrestle with an angry realm, And throw ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the details, and had, distributed the parts that each must play in this bloody tragedy, when suddenly, and at the moment when they least expected it, the door opened and, Mary Stuart appeared on the threshold. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... so ran this Down through the sand, its bottom and each bank Stone-built, and either margin at its side, Whereon I straight perceiv'd our passage lay. "Of all that I have shown thee, since that gate We enter'd first, whose threshold is to none Denied, nought else so worthy of regard, As is this river, has thine eye discern'd, O'er which the flaming volley all is quench'd." So spake my guide; and I him thence besought, That having giv'n ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... whole of a life of more than fifty years on the skirts of society. He boasted that he had never dwelt where he might not safely fell every tree he could view from his own threshold; that the law had rarely been known to enter his clearing, and that his ears had never willingly admitted the sound of a church bell. His exertions seldom exceeded his wants, which were peculiar to his class, and rarely ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... a moment's uneasiness, Madaline," she said. "From the hour I cross your threshold until I leave, your father's name shall never pass ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... at thy threshold I would wait, While Jesus is within, Rather than fill a throne of state, Or ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... it now appears you need my help. Go to then: you come to me, and you say, 'SHYLOCK, we would have moneys'—you say so; You that did void your rheum upon my beard, And foot me, as you spurn a stranger cur Over your threshold: moneys is your suit. What should I say to you? Should I not say 'Hath ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... street at a considerable height, and served as a stay between the gables of two opposite houses, of which one was two doors only from the unhappy Portail's. The mob, with a barbarity very common in those days, had hung him on his own threshold. ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... Gordon never forgot. He was speaking on the subject of memory and remorse. "It may be in a few months," he said, "it may be not for three or four years; but at any rate before very long, you will each one of you have to stand on the threshold of life, and looking back you will have to decide whether you have made the best of your Fernhurst days. For a few moments I ask you to imagine that it is your last day at school. How will it feel if you have to look back and think ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand Henceforward in thy shadow. Never more Alone upon the threshold of my door Of individual life, I shall command The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand Serenely in the sunshine as before, Without the sense of that which I forbore, Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land Doom takes ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... of summer, but the autumn followed close. The conversation really marked the threshold between the two seasons, and marked at the same time the line between her husband's negative and aggressive state. She almost felt she had done wrong to yield; he grew so bold, concealment all discarded. He went, that is, quite openly to the woods, forgetting all his ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... said these words I was on the threshold of the temple, and I opened the door in a manner that overthrew all obstacles. A little scream and then several sighs announced the completion of the sacrifice, and, to tell the truth, the altar of love was covered with the blood of the victim. After the necessary ablutions ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of these facts had been brought to Cowperwood's attention beforehand by Steger; but for all that, when he crossed the threshold of the jail a peculiar sensation of strangeness and defeat came over him. He and his party were conducted to a little office to the left of the entrance, where were only a desk and a chair, dimly lighted by a low-burning gas-jet. Sheriff ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... Lawrence saw Roberta come out, accompanied only by Mrs Null, and hurry down the steps. Forgetting his injured ankle, he sprang to his feet, and stepping quickly to the door, opened it, and stood on the threshold. But Miss March did not even look his way. He gazed at her with wide-open eyes as she hastily kissed Mrs Null, and sprang into the carriage, which was immediately driven off. As Mrs Null turned to go into the house, she looked toward the office and nodded ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... against such a weight of prejudice? Why, if one individual rarely gifted by heaven were to raise himself out of such a slough of despond, he would be a miracle; and what would be his reward? Would he be admitted to an equal share in your political rights?—would he ever be allowed to cross the threshold of your doors?—would any of you give your daughter to his son, or your son to his daughter?—would you, in any one particular, admit him to the footing of equality which any man with a white skin would claim, whose ability and worth had so raised him from the lower degrees ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... brother like this?" She snatched up a brass-edged ruler that had lain alongside the paper-cutter. Mrs. Rhodes started back; Alice's husband, who had come in to lead the homeward march to Riverside Park, paused astonished on the threshold. ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... the afternoon Madame Pfeiffer was conveyed to the palace, over the door of which a great gilded eagle expands its wings. According to rule, in stepping across the threshold the visitor put her right foot foremost; and this formula she also observed on entering, through a second gateway, the spacious courtyard in front of the palace. Here the Queen was visible, having her seat in a balcony on the first story, ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... things must have been obvious to the most casual observer. In Buck's case it was easier to understand. He had known no other life than this. And yet he, too, might well have been expected to look askance at a future lost to all those things which he knew to lay beyond. Was he not at the threshold of life? Were not his veins thrilling with the rich, red tide of youth? Were not all those instincts which go to make up the sum of young human life as much a part of him as of those others who haunted the banks of Yellow Creek? The whole scheme was surely unusual. The Padre's instinct was to roam ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... weeks, and then came the fateful night of the seventeenth of October, and with it the strange woman. Family worship at the manse was over and Gavin was talking to his mother, who never crossed the threshold save to go to church (though her activity at home was among the marvels Jean sometimes slipped down to the Tenements to announce). when Wearyworld the policeman came to the door "with Rob Dow's compliments, and if you're no wi' me by ten ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... the way I went down; my mother used to be faulting me and I not being the equal of him. Tormenting and picking at me and shouting me on the road. "You thraneen," she'd say, "you little trifle of a son! You stumbling over the threshold as if in slumber, and Timothy being as ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... for a moment, ran for her Bible, which was always beside her in our little bedroom. As she crossed the threshold, Teresa entered to carry away the dishes. "What now? What's the matter?" said the old servant as she looked at Paula's tearful face. "What on earth have you been crying ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte
... and haggard face that presented itself in the lamp-light, as his father seized him by the arm, and, whispering a few words of the explanation that brought Ivan's heart into his throat, drew him swiftly up-stairs, to the threshold of her room, and there turned, leaving ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... opinions about them; nestled along under the garden palisades, and, as they found the door of the room open that led upon the lawn, one of them, who was filled to satiety, and was therefore over-bold, hopped upon the threshold. "Chirrup!" said ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... stepped across the threshold of Walter Dinsmore's elegant home for the last time, and entered the carriage that was to bear her away, her heart nearly bursting with grief, and tears streaming in torrents ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... door, so that she might see he used no compulsion, and stood lazily at the threshold, with a hateful smile on his face. There was something terrible in his excessive bulk. Rolls of fat descended from his chin and concealed his neck. His cheeks were huge, and the lack of beard added to the hideous nakedness of his face. Margaret stopped as she passed ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... footprints slightly impressed, that seemed to have been very recently left. Again they appeared upon a narrow-pointed stoop that ran beneath the windows of a small room in an angle of the building, and from which there was a door slightly ajar, with the same dewy footprint broken on the threshold. Within this room there was a sound as of some one moving softly, yet with impatience, to and fro—once a white hand clasped itself on the door, and a beautiful face, flushed and agitated, glanced through the opening and disappeared. Then followed an interval ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... course of the combat, Heathcote made a mighty onslaught and caught his enemy round the body and wrestled a fall with him on the threshold of the "Sociable" door, it so happened that the door, not being securely latched, gave way beneath the weight of the two combatants, and swinging suddenly open, precipitated them both on to the floor of the apartment, just as the ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... a negative effect on Burkina Faso's trade and employment. In 2007 higher costs for energy and imported foodstuffs, as well as low cotton prices, dampened a GDP growth rate that had averaged 6% in the last 10 years. Burkina Faso received a Millennium Challenge Account threshold grant to improve girls' education at the primary school level, and appears likely to receive a grant in the areas of infrastructure, ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... threshold again—" he muttered with tragic emphasis. His face was still red, and he swung his stick ferociously as he strode towards the vicarage. Several little boys in ragged smock-frocks saw him and thought he had had some beer, even as their own fathers, and ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... fallen asleep; so had the young mother herself for a few minutes, under the drowsing effects of solitude. Hearing footsteps on the stairs, she awoke, started up with a glad cry, and ran to the door, opening which she met her brother on the threshold. ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... without a word she began to ascend the stairs. Gray followed, Sir Lucien standing aside to give him precedence. On the second floor was a door painted in Oriental fashion. It possessed neither bell nor knocker, but as one stepped upon the threshold this door opened noiselessly as if dumbly inviting the visitor to enter the square apartment discovered. This apartment was richly furnished in the Arab manner, and lighted by a fine brass lamp swung upon ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... presently through the curtain appeared a royal-looking lady splendidly apparelled. She was accompanied by four waiting women who fell back on the threshold and were no more seen. The Prince stepped forward, took both her hands in his and kissed her on the brow, then drew back again, after which they stood a moment looking at each other. While they remained thus I studied her who ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... but infatuated old gentleman! He had never seen me do anything of the kind. He hardly knew me by sight. He thought only of coming to the rescue of an unfortunate lecturer, prostrated on the very threshold of his career; and a friendly hallucination made him for the moment really believe what he said. His unpremeditated assertion must have been set down by the recording angel on the same page with Uncle Toby's oath, and then obliterated in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... when they go in quest of a man, ah! longsome is his travail." "Whither shall I go, O my chief?" asked Ala al-Din; and he answered, "O my son, I will bring thee to Alexandria, for it is a blessed place; its threshold is green and its sojourn is agreeable." And Ala al-Din rejoined, "I hear and I obey, O my chief." So Ahmad said to Hasan Shuuman, "Be mindful and, when the Caliph asketh for me, say, 'He is gone touring about the provinces'." Then, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... came in the land, The time of the Great Conquest, When the people with this desire Left the threshold of their door To ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... a dreadful scene between them, and at the end of it Angus Egerton walked out of the house, swearing never again to enter it while his mother lived. He has kept his word. Mrs. Egerton never crossed the threshold after that night, and refused to see anybody except her servants and her doctor. She lived this lonely kind of life for nearly three years, and then died of some slow wasting disease, for which the ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... activities from the land over sea to other countries, it became the gateway both of land and sea—at once the outlet for exploration, colonization, and trade, and the open door through which a continent or island receives contributions of men or races or ideas from transoceanic shores. Barrier and threshold: these are the roles which coasts have always played in history. To-day we see them side by side. But in spite of the immense proportions assumed by transmarine intercourse, the fact remains that the greater part of the coasts of the earth are for their inhabitants ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... peremptory hand upon her arm and drew her over the threshold, across the tiny passage called the hall, into one of the ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... those who were the best dressed and the most comely and who were the boldest and most eloquent in the presence of strangers, to meet the high King of the Ultonians on the moor, but he himself stood huge in the great doorway just beyond the threshold and in front of the bridge over which the Red Branch party was to pass. He had on him over his clothes a clean leathern apron which was not singed or scored. It was fastened at his shoulders and half covered his enormous hairy chest, was girt again at his waist and descended below his knees. He ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... caution was not remitted. I loosened not my grasp of the gun, and the posture into which I accidentally fell enabled me to keep an eye upon the house and a hand upon the trigger. Perceiving my condition, the savage rushed from his covert in order to complete his work; but at three steps from the threshold he received my bullet in his breast. The uplifted tomahawk fell from his hand, and, uttering a loud shriek, he fell upon the body of his companion. His cries struck upon my heart, and I wished that his better fortune had cast this ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... main house. She wouldn't, anyway. Clinch has taught that girl to hate the very name of Harrod—hate every foot of forest that the Harrod game keepers patrol. She wouldn't cross my threshold to ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... with no further remarks. Nelson made a cautious preliminary survey of the outer world to satisfy himself that no more tomatoes were to be apprehended, then opened the door, placed a chair upon the threshold, and settled to the enjoyment of a freshly-filled pipe while waiting for Steiner to put in an appearance. Varr strode to the farther end of the hallway and climbed the flight of narrow, rickety stairs which ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... vegetables exposed for sale in the public market-places. The Brahmans themselves were still engaged in performing their elaborate morning devotions and ablutions, but the members of their household had already swept the approach to their low, one-storied, flat-roofed houses and stencilled on the threshold with white liquid chalk the geomantic patterns, finished off with scattered marigolds, which keep away the evil spirits. The Brahman quarters surround the temples, of which of course only the outer courtyards are accessible to other than ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... do to be turned back from the very threshold of Robert Burns; and as the women seemed to be merely straggling visitors, and nobody, at all events, had a right to send us away, we went into the back-door, and, turning to the right, entered a kitchen. It showed a deplorable lack of housewifely neatness, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... him, unlatched. He pushed it softly with his left hand, and Margaret and he stood on the threshold. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... came to the crowning horror of Villa P——, the supreme excess of Ecelino's cruelty. The guide entered the cell before us, and, as we gained the threshold, threw the light of his taper vividly upon a block that stood in the middle of the floor. Fixed to the block by an immense spike driven through from the back was the little slender hand of a woman, which lay there just as it had been struck from the living arm, and which, after the lapse of so ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... narrow archway, Comes the culprit in the gloom, Falters on the fatal threshold— Totters ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... he had led the youngest daughter, a buxom bride, ten years before; to it he now returned with her and with seven small children besides. An ambitious young man and a healthy young woman, a decade before, they came back to the threshold from which they had gone out, he, broken in spirit and as poor in purse as in purpose; she, worn and faded, yet trying hard to seem cheerful as she came within the sunlight ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... door open for the CHIEF OF STAFF who is about to go out when suddenly in the doorway appears a young man of thirty, pale, dark, timid. He hesitates on the threshold. ...
— Makers of Madness - A Play in One Act and Three Scenes • Hermann Hagedorn
... and causing the servants to supply them promptly with wine, milk, meat, or whatever they lack. At every door of the hall (or, indeed, wherever the Emperor may be) there stand a couple of big men like giants, one on each side, armed with staves. Their business is to see that no one steps upon the threshold in entering, and if this does happen, they strip the offender of his clothes, and he must pay a forfeit to have them back again; or in lieu of taking his clothes, they give him a certain number of blows. If they are foreigners ignorant of ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... resurrection to some poor female invalids), there was Beckley Court, a splendid basis for future achievements. Reflecting in this fashion, the Countess pardoned her brother. Glowing hopes hung fresh lamps in her charitable breast. She stepped across the threshold of Tailordom, won Mr. Goren's heart by her condescension, and worked Evan into a sorrowful mood concerning the invalid. Was not Juliana his only active friend? In return, he said things which only required a little colouring to be ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... hills echoed with it, and the folks at Cauldstaneslap got to their feet about the table and looked at each other with white faces. The horse fell dead at the yard gate, the laird won the length of the house and fell there on the threshold. To the son that raised him he gave the bag of money. "Hae," said he. All the way up the thieves had seemed to him to be at his heels, but now the hallucination left him - he saw them again in the place of the ambuscade - and the thirst of vengeance seized ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pretensions, together with a tribe of those vile alleys which consist of a double row of beggarly cabins, or huts, facing each other, and lying so closely, that a tall man might almost stand with a foot on the threshold of each, or if in the middle, that is half-way between them, he might, were he so inclined, and without moving to either side, shake hands with the inhabitants on his right and left. To the left, as you went up from the north, and nearly adjoining the cathedral ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... stupendous works of fiction which have since impressed the universe with wonderment and awe! To this chamber, doubtless, in all succeeding ages, pilgrims will come to pay their tribute of reverence;—they will put off their shoes at the threshold for fear of desecrating the tattered old carpets! "There," they will exclaim, "is the very bed in which he slumbered, and where he was visited by those ethereal visions which he afterwards fixed forever in glowing words! There is the wash-stand at which this ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... cultured home. It is a modern house, with beds of old-fashioned pansies and sweet-Williams and rows of hollyhocks on all sides. The upper verandah affords a view of the Peace, here fully a mile in width, of incomparable beauty. To the visitor who steps over its threshold, Mr. Wilson's library indicates at once the reading man and the clever artificer. Scientific works of reference, good pictures, the latest magazines, certainly look inviting to ragged travellers who have opened no books, save those of nature and human-nature, for five long months. ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... with pleasure that the Chouan had taken some pains to clean the dirty and only room in his hovel. He now took his duck-gun, bowed silently to his guest and left the house, followed by his dog. Marie went to the threshold of the door and watched him as he took the path to the right of his hut. From there she could overlook a series of fields, the curious openings to which formed a perspective of gates; for the leafless trees and hedges were no longer ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... limited commerce united with a social or observing disposition on the part of the shopkeeper,—allowing, as they do, talk with passers-by, yet keeping off such as have not the excuse of business to cross the threshold. On the door-posts, at either side, above the half-door, hung certain perennial articles of merchandise, of which my memory still has hanging among its faded photographs a kind of netted scarf and some pairs of thick woollen stockings. More articles, but not very many, were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... ironical in her voice and expression as she turned upon the doorstep and looked at them, which filled both Rodney and Denham with the same misgivings at having trusted their fortunes to such an ambassador; and Rodney actually hesitated upon the threshold and murmured to Denham: ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... hotel guests. He has heard legends of large sums paid for silence or for speech. There may be money in it, therefore, and there is always amusement. So the only housework which the boy san does really willingly, is to dust the door, polish the handle, wipe the threshold;—anything in fact which brings him into the propinquity of the keyhole. What he observes or overhears, he exchanges with another boy san; and the hall porter or the head waiter generally serves as Chief Intelligence Bureau, and is always in ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... chests of silver ingots, two chests of bar gold, and a casket of pearls, all of which were quickly transhipped to the Adventure, the crew of which thus found themselves the possessors of a fairly rich booty, while still upon the very threshold, as it were, of those seas wherein they hoped to make their fortune. But this was not all; for, in the process of rummaging the captain's cabin, Marshall found certain letters which he unhesitatingly opened and read, and among these was a communication from the governor of Cartagena advising ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood |
