"Doorstep" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... want to set up a hobgoblin in my own corn-patch, and almost at my own doorstep," said Mother Rigby to herself, puffing out a whiff of smoke. "I could do it if I pleased, but I'm tired of doing marvelous things, and so I'll keep within the bounds of everyday business just for variety's sake. Besides, ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... that they bore me thither, for it was not far, with a great crowd of all sorts following and shouting. And there must I stand with all that tail after me while they beat on the gates in such sort that the poor nuns must have thought the Danes at their doorstep. ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... Josephine were fixed on the doorstep, following me with their regards, and I believed I saw a tear in the left eye of each. What fidelity! I smiled in a sort of indulgent and baronial manner, but I felt ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... by these words, stop; and he seeing the alley quite empty and deserted, sits down on a doorstep, and I do likewise, both of us being spent ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... part of his friend's advice, but only after he had gone in person first to M. and Mme. de Nucingen, and then to M. and Mme. de Restaud—a fruitless errand. He went no further than the doorstep in either house. The servants had received strict orders to ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... the doorstep. I would have stooped to his forehead, but he put up his arm with an extremely boyish, inoffensive gesture, almost with a sob, I thought, to draw ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... humorous face and was very slow in his habit of speech. "Quarrelled with Miss Ethel before you get there?" he said. "That's a bit quicker work than usual. Servant lasses generally let me get their boxes over the doorstep before they want to come ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... not find the number, and Evelyn impatiently inquired it from the vagrant children. There were groups of them on the wide doorstep, and Evelyn imagined the interior of the house, wide passages, gently-sloping staircase, its heavy banisters. It surprised and amused her to find that she had imagined it quite correctly; and when she reached the landing to which she had been directed, she stopped, hearing his voice. He was only ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... round to the house door—only to find it locked. Dole and his wife had locked up the house and left little Ike's dinner—a piece of corn bread and some cheese—in a tin pail on the doorstep; the cat had already eaten most of it. I had intended to take him indoors and wash him, for he was in a wretched condition. Finally I put him on Dole's wheelbarrow, which I found by the door of the shed, and wheeled him to the ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... one reads, also writes. There are few streets where the callous postman does not occasionally render some doorstep desolate by the delivery of a rejected manuscript. Fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind, and the first steps in the career of a successful man of letters are always interesting. You remember how Franklin slyly dropped his first ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... without a notion of what he was come to seek. The old parson, generally in a mood to quarrel with the soutar, had always walked straight into his workshop, and greeted him crouched over his work; but the new parson always waited on the doorstep for Maggie ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... out by watching and waiting in vain for Adrien, she again found herself without a home and without shelter; so, crouching on a doorstep, as she had done the previous evening, overcome with fatigue, ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... his horse and, mounting it, rode to where he could put it to the gallop. So men try to leave behind them the sneering demons of conscience and self-reproach. Some of them succeed in doing so, but find the pair waiting for them on their own doorstep. Herbert Courtland galloped his horse intermittently for an hour or two, and then rode leisurely back to his rooms. He felt that he had got the better of those two enemies of his who had been irritating ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... with watchful and brilliant eyes, Liz walked up the avenue. On the doorstep of a brick tenement a curly-haired child sat, puzzling over the convolutions of a tangled string. Liz flopped down beside her, with a crooked, shifting smile on her flushed face. But her eyes had grown clear ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... hostelry took its name from a giant oak which grew at its doorstep just to one side of the maple-lined driveway that led down to the Port Road, a hundred yards or so beyond. This enormous tree spread its branches over the entire width and half the length of the roof. Ordinarily, of course, its foliage was as green as the ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... stating that I would go down to the corner and wait in a public-house. And down to the corner I went, but, it being church time, the "pub" was closed. A miserable drizzle was falling, and, in lieu of better, I took a seat on a neighbourly doorstep and waited. ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... much unsettled in her mind. Her thoughts rolled on in one connected string. But suddenly she became drowsy, and falling asleep, she encountered Chia Yn, who tried to carry out his intention to drag her near him. She twisted herself round, and endeavoured to run away; but was tripped over by the doorstep. This gave her such a start that she woke up. Then, at length, she realised that it was only a dream. But so restlessly did she, in consequence of this fright, keep on rolling and tossing that she could not close her eyes during the whole night. As soon as the light of the next day ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... keenly alive to a new treasure. Good heavens, where had been his eyes all this while? Here was a jewel lying at his doorstep—innocent, untarnished—a real jewel. These drawings suggested a fire of perception, smoldering and somber, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... very doorstep. "Hallo!" said he. "What's wrong? . . . Looks as if you were suddenly reduced to selling newspapers. I'm not ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... prodigious; they sprawled about everywhere, on the pavement, round the doors, and about their mothers' skirts. The grown-ups were gathered round the open doors; there were usually two women squatting on the doorstep, and two or three more seated on either side on chairs; they were invariably nursing babies, and most of them showed clear signs that the present object of the maternal care would be soon ousted by a new arrival. Men were less numerous but such as there were leant against ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... de la Madeleine, he stocked it with Pons' treasures, and then—after dreaming his dream in sheets of gold, after seeing millions in the blue spiral wreaths that rose from his pipe, he awoke to find himself face to face with the little tailor. Cibot was sweeping the yard, the doorstep, and the pavement just as his neighbor was taking down the shutters and displaying his wares; for since Pons fell ill, La Cibot's work had fallen ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... my work. My first visit is to be to a merchant, who lives in a street close to where the ships discharge. While I am in, do you sit down on a doorstep near, and keep a sharp lookout to see whether the house is watched. It is not likely, but all the better class of Catholics who remain in the town are ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... pathetic incident touched me nearly this morning, as a forerunner of many that may come soon. I found sitting on a doorstep, apparently too weak to move, a young fellow of the Imperial Light Horse—scarcely more than a boy—his stalwart form shrunken by illness. He was toying with a spray of wild jasmine, as if its perfume brought back vague memories of ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... on furlough there was a grand dinner given in his honour at Vidalenc's, and when Vidalenc dined at Lemot's, it was assuredly amusing to see the latter's children all togged out in their Sunday best, a tri-colour bouquet in hand, waiting on their doorstep to greet and conduct ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... your place I'd like to hear everything, and then you'll know how to act when you come home. Just after you left, Stephen ploughed up all the land in front of your new house,—every inch of it, all up and down the road, between the fence and the front doorstep,—and then he planted corn where you were going to have your flower-beds. He has closed all the blinds and hung a "To Let" sign on the large elm at the gate. Stephen never was spiteful in his life, but this looks a little like spite. Perhaps ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... war!" he cried, "War till each Virginian is dead on his doorstep, and each woman starved at her fireside. John Cowles, you and I will fight—I know ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... red, wet forehead with an immense silk handkerchief printed with the maritime flags of all nations. "A note! Who writes me notes? Some of your nonsense, boys, eh?" So he hitched up his trousers and sat down on the doorstep, placing the red handkerchief in his hat beside ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... of Romanes rode down to call, on his crop-eared pony; young Pringle of Drumanno came up on his bony grey. Hay remained on the hospitable field, and must be carried to bed; Pringle got somehow to his saddle about 3 A.M., and (as Archie stood with the lamp on the upper doorstep) lurched, uttered a senseless view- holloa, and vanished out of the small circle of illumination like a wraith. Yet a minute or two longer the clatter of his break-neck flight was audible, then it was cut off by the intervening steepness of the hill; and again, a great ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... next day even Mr. Doty was convinced. After his customary visit to the Cross-roads, he returned to his family wearing a bewildered expression. It became a sheepish expression when his wife confronted him on the doorstep. ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... most over-mastering passion to which the Chinese mind is subject. It is revenge which prompts the unhappy daughter-in-law to throw herself down a well, consoled by the thought of the trouble, if not ruin, she is bringing on her persecutors. Revenge, too, leads a man to commit suicide on the doorstep of some one who has done him an injury, for he well knows what it means to be entangled in the net which the law throws over any one on whose premises a dead body may thus be found. There was once an absurd case of a Chinese woman, ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... natural thoroughfare, particularly for christenings, weddings, and funerals, which passed the squire's mansion with due considerations as to the scenic effect of the same from the manor windows. Hence the house of Constantine, when going out from its breakfast, had been continually crossed on the doorstep for the last two hundred years by the houses of Hodge and Giles in full cry to dinner. At present these collisions were but too infrequent, for though the villagers passed the north front door as regularly as ever, they seldom met a Constantine. Only one ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... from the motor-car. If you are traveling on foot, however, there is much more to be observed, such as the great doorstep made from a broken millstone, the gigantic rambler by the kitchen window, the tiger-lilies gone wild in the dooryard, and above all, the view from the front windows. Since the house was visible far up the road, conversely ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... evening a man stopped at our gate. I was standing on the doorstep breaking sticks. He looked over the top bar of the gate and called to me to know if Mother Barberin lived there. I shouted yes and told him to come in. He pushed open the old gate and came slowly up to the house. I had never seen such a dirty man. He was ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... of his family, and shrank from being seen of men's eyes; every one they met must know they had not a place to lay their heads! The world was like a sea before them—a prospect of ceaseless motion through the night, with the hope of an occasional rest on a doorstep or the edge of the curb-stone when the policeman's back was turned. They set out to go nowhither—to tramp on and on. Is it any wonder—does it imply wickedness beyond that lack of trust in God which is at the root of all wickedness, if the thought ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... continually be—with the dying breaths of mortals who had lingered just long enough for her to bury them. But there were millions left alive to rejoice at her coming, and so she pursued her way with confidence, strewing emblematic flowers on the doorstep of almost every dwelling, which some persons will gather up and wear in their bosoms, and others will trample under foot. The carrier-boy can only say further that early this morning she filled his basket with New Year's addresses, assuring him that the whole city, with our new mayor and the aldermen ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... didn't do that. He got home in the afternoon, and Maxwell was cleaning his gun on the doorstep, when he saw a shadow, and he looked up and there he was! Oh! I should like to have been there, but I'm sorry to say Maxwell didn't fall on his neck and kiss him. I asked Tommy very carefully about it, and he said he took hold of both his hands ...
— Probable Sons • Amy Le Feuvre
... over. I slipped into the hall, closing the door softly behind me, and listened. Silence abounded. On tiptoe I made my way to the kitchen. It was clean and empty. I noiselessly opened the back door. On the doorstep sat The Seraph busily engaged with ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... always is when it is a bright day like this. He sits in an old chair on that broad doorstep in front of his house, and leans on a big, thick ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... at the doorway of one of a row of three-storied houses. On the doorstep were a group of little children, all barefooted and more or less ragged in spite of evident attempts to keep some of them patched into neatness. They looked familiarly at ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... at the gate from all the cabins of the post, save only that one who had been most eager before when the Indians came, Maren Le Moyne, sitting in idle apathy on her sister's doorstep. ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... difference does it make how you christen a foundling? These are not my legitimate scientific offspring, and you may consider them left on your doorstep. ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the village water-cart had made the street smell specially townified, they went to look for their shepherd as usual, and, as usual, Old Jim crawled over the doorstep and took them in charge. The sun was hot, the dry grass was very slippery, and the distances were ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... were at home an' th' preacher—th' Reverend Amos Barraclough. 'Liza said naught, but a bit o' red come into her face as were white of a regular thing. Says Jesse, tryin' his best to be civil, 'Nay, lad, it's like this. You've getten to choose which way it's goin' to be. I'll ha' nobody across ma doorstep as goes a-drinkin', an' borrows my lass's money to spend i' their drink. Ho'd tha tongue, 'Liza,' sez he, when she wanted to put in a word 'at I were welcome to th' brass, and she were none afraid that I wouldn't pay it back. Then ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... landlady of the "Golden Sun" stood on the doorstep of her inn, and looked at the heavens to read the signs of the probable weather, and to think over the experiences of the night before. Presently the gardener's boy from Mrs. Menotti's came along. He was both master and servant over the lovely, fruitful property of Mrs. ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... ambition to be put in a Sunday school book. He wanted to be put in, with pictures representing him gloriously declining to lie to his mother, and her weeping for joy about it; and pictures representing him standing on the doorstep giving a penny to a poor beggar-woman with six children, and telling her to spend it freely, but not to be extravagant, because extravagance is a sin; and pictures of him magnanimously refusing to tell ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... usual, and one of them had the portentous title of "England" coupled with my name! I rose and said that I felt exactly like a man who had been invited to a country house, and on his arrival was met by his friend on the doorstep with a long face and a cold, nervous hand. He was glad to see you, but had sad news: his wife was lying between life and death, and the doctors were round her bedside. Now, under such circumstances, one does not exactly feel one can make one's self at ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... on his doorstep, derided the action of the Glasgow Corporation. No amount of water, he told our representative, could have the least effect in making our modern cities less beastly than they were. For his part, however, he was taking no risks. He had that morning arranged for the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, May 20, 1914 • Various
... when he studied external ornamentation, he thought all such things, mouldings, carvings, etc., out of place in Paris. "Ah!" he would say, "those fine things would look much better at Provins." When he stood on his doorstep leaning against the lintel, digesting his morning meal, with a vacant eye, the mercer was gazing at the house of his fancy gilded by the sun of his dream; he walked in his garden; he heard the jet from his fountain falling in pearly drops upon a slab of limestone; he played on his own billiard-table; ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... when Arnold had passed the schoolhouse, and found her sitting alone on the doorstep. He had stopped to ask if that "mongrel pack on the hill were worrying the life out of her," and had added with a laugh, in answer to her look of silent disapproval, "Oh, I mean the dear lambs of your flock. I saw two of them just now on the trail, fighting over a lame donkey. ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... as she did with ours, is likely at any moment to break out in a new place. My gratitude to her is the sort of gratitude you would feel toward a cyclone if you were walking home late for dinner and it caught you up and deposited you on your doorstep. Your Aunt Lora is a human cyclone. No, on the whole, she's more like an earthquake. She has a habit of splitting up and altering the face of the world whenever she feels like it, and I'm too well satisfied with my world at present to relish the ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... are driven from house to house to be milked at the doorstep, and occasionally a hill-man may be seen wandering about in the hope of finding a purchaser for the freshly-caught leopard he is leading. What will, perhaps, most strike Europeans are the bullock gharries by which the heavy traffic of the town is carried on. These are carts curiously shaped and ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... laughed while he clasped his revolver, confessing he would not be averse to a little war—but there was Europe to be considered. Meanwhile I was to be sure and go to see Grahova and Vuchidol. After a good three-quarters of an hour's talk he saw me to the door and shouted good-bye from the doorstep. ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... was warm she often stayed in the street, walking about with the other girls or sitting on a friend's doorstep, until ten or even eleven o'clock at night. Every one does the same in a crowded city neighborhood. There comes a time in a girl's life when this sort of thing becomes monotonous. The time came when Annie found sitting on the doorstep and talking ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... provisions for the household consumption, no tradespeople save milkman and baker being allowed to call, and they remarked that they never once found the area gate unlocked. And while these two women, prim and self-contained, went on with the cooking and housework and kept the doorstep clean, the so-called Miss Adela Mimpriss went on with the woolwork flowers at the dining-room window, where she could get most light, and the world outside had no suspicion of anything being wrong in the staid, old-fashioned house opposite Sir John Drinkwater's. Even the neighbours on either ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... and in this darkness, and I hit you when you banged open the door. It seems you were falling over the doorstep. You're pretty pale, my girl, but I believe I know your face. Aren't ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin
... a garden or a well-kept house, or trying to get a peep into some room. Mr and Mrs Clinton criticised as they went along, comparing the window curtains, blaming a door in want of paint, praising a well-whitened doorstep.... ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... the road were littered with straw, and the straw straggled into the shop, and heaped itself at the open side door. One large brass saucepan lay lorn near the doorstep, a proof that Foster was human. For everything except that saucepan a place had been found. That saucepan had witnessed sundry ineffectual efforts to lodge it, and had also suffered frequent forgetfulness. A ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... incisiveness you possess, Benny," his friend commented. "It is an uplift to hear you. But you see thinking is quite in my line. Any one who has had to think as hard as I how to keep the lean white wolf of the Green Mountains—or vice versa—from my shifting doorstep, certainly need not tremble before the necessity of thought. But I have learned this—when I want to get something I don't know how to get, I invariably regard it the height of sapience to go and ask some one who does know how. In this case I can ask without going, for the ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... mother's been letting Page—her agent—evict a jolly decent fellow called Price, a smith, who's been distributing Liberal leaflets in some of the villages. All sorts of other reasons given, of course—but that's the truth. Well, I sat on Page's doorstep for two or three days—no good. Now I'm knocking up a shop and a furnace, and all the rest of the togs wanted, for Price, in my back yard at Knatchett. And we've made him Liberal agent for the village. ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of a mud-puddle. How hungry and thirsty he was! He ran on for miles and miles. At last he saw a cottage with smoke coming out of the chimney. High hills were all around it, and a thick, dark wood was not far away. On the doorstep were two little children. When they saw the ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... and reached their cottage, which for several weeks they had been putting in order. John unlocked the front door, and they entered over the big, flat stone at the entry, and over which you may enter now, all sunken and worn by generations of men gone. Some whose feet have pressed that doorstep we count as the salt of the earth, for their names are written large on history's page. Washington rode out there on horseback, and while his aide held his horse, he visited and drank mulled cider and ate doughnuts within. Hancock came often, and Otis, Samuel Adams ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... went out into the brown November dusk with his little girl clinging to his hand, for so he understood his duty to his niece; and on their own doorstep Elizabeth asked ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... America during the Civil War years, conceived such an admiration for Lincoln that he was unwilling to return to India until he had obtained a portrait of the Great Emancipator. Planting himself adamantly on Lincoln's doorstep, the merchant refused to leave until the astonished President permitted him to engage the services of Daniel Huntington, the famous New York artist. When the portrait was finished, the Hindu carried it in ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... so close to the purring waves that in storms their spray splashed over its very doorstep, seemed deserted. Miss Rosetta pounded lustily on the front door. This producing no result, she marched around to the back door and knocked. No answer. Miss Rosetta tried the ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... lovely burdens are carried forth, it is hard for the bearers to resist the entreaties from many a doorstep for "one flower, one single flower." Of the thankfulness with which they are received when they reach their destination, we might tell countless instances, and of conversions through the messages they bring ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... wear these horrid things another minute," said Kitty, sitting on the doorstep and trying to unbutton ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... your master,' I exclaimed with some heat, thrusting my card into her hand. 'He should know my name at any rate, though he seems to have trained you in strange notions of hospitality to keep a guest standing on the doorstep on a bitter evening ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... Carew, hurriedly, reaching out for the tall flagon with a trembling hand. "'Tis good to cheer the troubled heart, lad. Not that thou hast any reason in the world to let thy heart be troubled," he added hastily. "No, indeed, upon my word; for thou art on the doorstep of a golden-lined success. See, Nick, how the light shines through!" and he tilted up the flagon. "It is one of old Jake Vessaline's Murano-Venetian glasses; a beautiful thing, now, is it not? 'Tis good as any made ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... taxicab drew up at the curb, Tish clutched my arm and Aggie uttered a muffled cry and promptly sneezed. Seated on the doorstep, celluloid collar shining, the brown pasteboard suitcase at his feet, was Tufik. He sat calmly smoking a cigarette, his eyes upturned in placid and Oriental contemplation of ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... proceeded to force the stronghold by peaceful but powerful methods. He fasted on the gentleman, and he did so to such purpose that he was admitted to the house; for to an hospitable heart the idea that a stranger may expire on your doorstep from sheer famine cannot be tolerated. The gentleman, however, did not give in without a struggle: he thought that when Finnian had grown sufficiently hungry he would lift the siege and take himself ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... table, an' hid me behind a great clock, in a corner jist close by the cupboard, where the brandy-bottle lived. Then she lay down on her bed with her clo's on, and pulled the coverlid over her, and pretinded to go to slape. In less nor half-an-hour I hears a fut on the doorstep; then a tap at the door, which opened, it seemed to me, of its own accord, and in walks the ghost, sure enough! It was covered all over from head to fut in a white sheet, and I seed by the way it walked that it wos the worse of drink. I wos in a mortal ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... discharged his cab within a hundred yards of home, and had read the stinging paragraph beneath a lamp-post almost at his own doorstep. He entered the house noiselessly, and from Madge's music-room there floated down to him the sound of Chopin's great Funeral March. She played this and some other favourites of her own as few musicians play them, for music had ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... lighted room and stood on the doorstep, Donald pointed to the darkness. "There iss no star, and you will be remembering what John saw when the door opened and Judas went out. 'It wass night'—oh yes, it iss night for me, but it will ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... expressing our enthusiasm in a court where the living green combined with age to glorify the buildings. We did not see the dilapidation, we did not smell the dirt, we did not feel the squalor. A woman was lighting a fire in a brazier on her doorstep. She looked hostilely at us. We beamed in counteraction. She looked more hostilely. As the Artist wanted to sketch her house, some words seemed necessary. I detailed our emotions. Was not her lot, cast in ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... a month-old baby on a doorstep and expect it to earn its livelihood. She also had come to take ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... blankly, despairingly, at each other. In the sunshine-flooded street one or two shabby idlers were pausing to eye the handsome equipage with its magnificent bay horses, and the two great ladies on the doorstep of the fencing-academy. From across the way came the raucous voice of an itinerant bellows-mender raised in ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... own door he found the baker's wife sitting on the doorstep. It was quite dusk; perhaps that was the reason he did not recognise her ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... Balsamides as he had fallen, stumbling on the doorstep, with the heavy body of Paul Patoff in his arms. Hermione fell on her knees and shrieked aloud. It was plain enough. Paul, without the least protection from the flames, had struggled up the burning staircase, and had unlocked the door, ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... as she was, roamed at her own sweet will. No harm could come to her in the fields where she strayed. She was home-keeping, and never went far from her own doorstep; nor need she for variety. On one side of the field there was a violet bank, mossy, and hung over with thorn trees. Under the thorns it was possible to hide as within a greenhouse, and children love such make-believe. On the other side of the bank was a steep descent to ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... pink costume, with a large hat all smothered in pink feathers. I thought of the Queen of Sheba, and felt alarmed. Mrs. Polter told me afterwards she was 'just a lady,' rolling in recently acquired wealth, and 'as hard to please as if she had never washed her own doorstep.' It was then I learnt the difference between 'a lady' and 'a ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... day's work. Svenson lagged behind to gulp the remainder of his coffee and as his heavy boots clumped noisily across the rough wooden floor he ventured to look again timidly at the very pretty young lady who sat beside the stove. Her friendly nod and smile sent him stumbling clumsily out over the doorstep with reddened face and a huge grin of ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... light in the fanlight grew bright as footsteps in the passage drew near. The door opened, and showed the figure of Dr. Ravenshaw holding in his hand a lighted lamp which shone upon Thalassa and the dripping figure in his arms. The doctor looked down from the doorstep in silent surprise, then stepped quickly back from the threshold and opened the surgery door, holding the lamp ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... examination, only fifteen of the conspirators were ferreted out. Meanwhile the informers' names had to be concealed with the utmost secrecy; they were in peril of their lives from the slaves,—William Paul scarcely dared to go beyond the doorstep,—and the names of important witnesses examined in June were still suppressed in the official report published in October. That a conspiracy on so large a scale should have existed in embryo during four years, and in an active form ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Chuck sat on his old doorstep, with his chin in his hands, watching Old Mother West Wind gathering her Merry Little Breezes into the big bag in which she carries them to their home ...
— Mother West Wind's Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... dear heart," Mrs. Clyde murmured Softly. "The world will never end for Blue Bonnet at her own doorstep. She has a real genius for friendship. I am glad she finds her room-mate pleasant. I feared from her letters that ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... other of the Catholic orphanages. When I was Secretary of Father Nugent's Boys' Refuge, he brought one of these waifs to the Brother Director, and claimed admittance for him. The place was full, the Brother said—it could not be done. Without another word Kehoe left the child on the doorstep, and simply saying, "Good-night," left Brother Tertullian sorely perplexed, but with no alternative but ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... have left that under the doorstep," said the cart man; "folks do hereabouts." He took the lantern off his cart ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... On the doorstep he met little Susy, with her lilac pinafore in flames. She had been trying to reach something from the mantelpiece, and had climbed up on the unsteady old fender. There was no guard in front of the open fire, and the draught had drawn her pinafore towards the bars and set it on fire, and the ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis
... sleeping against the walls, or gossiping languidly on the faults of their respective lords. Sometimes an old beggar might be observed hunting on the well-stocked preserves of his own body the lively vermin of the South. Sometimes a restless child crawled from a doorstep to paddle in the stagnant waters of a kennel; but, with the exception of these doubtful evidences of human industry, the prevailing characteristic of the few groups of the lowest orders of the people which appeared in the streets was the most listless and utter indolence. All that gave ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... sat down on the doorstep, thinking with himself that the tall gentleman must either come in or come out, and he was therefore in the best possible position for finding him. He had not waited long before the door opened again; but when he looked round, it was ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... father so." The door closed behind Cecilia, and he strode away down the street, biting his lip. He felt abominably as though he had deserted the little sister—and yet, what else could he do? One could not remain for ever, brawling on a doorstep at midnight—and Tommy had begged him ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... sharp and clear as a silver bell. Carlisle walked well, especially when one considers the sort of shoes she wore: she had the good free stride of one who walks for the joy of it and not because that is the only conceivable way to get somewhere. Nevertheless, just as she reached the Byrd doorstep, she was overhauled by the Cooneys, her poor but long-stepping relatives. There were only two of them this time, Henrietta and Charles, better known, from one end of the town to the other, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... planned how she would treat Albert with mingled cordiality and reserve, and thus preserve her own dignity; she went through a mental rehearsal of the meeting two or three times—in truth, she was just going over it the fourth time when Charlton stood between the morning-glory vines on the doorstep. And when she saw his face pale with suffering, she forgot all about the rehearsal, and shook his hand with sisterly heartiness—the word "sisterly" came to her mind most opportunely—and looked at him with the utmost gladness, and sat him down by the window, and ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... enough; they all understood her, and Elsie, who was standing on the doorstep, flew into the house where the busy needles were flying, shouting as ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... deeds on the part of Hurstwood had come. Doctor Beale, the handsome resident physician of the neighbourhood, met Mrs. Hurstwood at her own doorstep some days after Hurstwood and Carrie had taken the drive west on Washington Boulevard. Dr. Beale, coming east on the same drive, had recognised Hurstwood, but not before he was quite past him. He was not ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... had made to me—on his doorstep, as I was starting on my mission—was: "Can't you and Lottie hurry up that marriage of yours? You ought to get it over and out of the way." When I returned home with my mission accomplished, the first remark my mother made after our greeting was: "Harvey, I wish you and ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... little house was filled to overflowing with kind and sympathetic neighbors who had come to do all that had to be done. David sat on the back doorstep until M'ri came; before the expression in his eyes she felt powerless to ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... the main gate waiting for their leader. The Squire walked up to them, picking his way among various articles of furniture, a cradle, some bedding, a trunk or two, which lay scattered in the road in front of the white casemented lodge. The wife of old Perley, the lodge-keeper, was standing on her doorstep. ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... And so sez I. But there might be a slight difference of (h)opinion between you and I, so to speak, as to just w'at may constitute 'business.' Now, for (h)instance—" Mr. Wigglesworth was warming to his subject, but the old lady standing on her doorstep fixed her keen blue eyes upon him and ruthlessly swept away all ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... of his own gorgeous office, and walked some distance up the street before he realized what he had done. Then he turned back again, and, just at the doorstep, paused with ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... it had no rightful place there, and that, if the world was what my elders told me it was, there must be in it a law of peace and harmony which as yet I hadn't arrived at. I cannot say that when the dog barked this reasoning did more than nerve me to drag my quaking limbs up to the doorstep, whence my enemy, a ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... and I saw that a man was seated before me on the stone that had served as a doorstep, a man who was balancing a pistol in ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... and each of them secretly bought a newspaper and read it on the beach, and each rushed back and met the other on the steps of the boarding-house where they were staying. And the Queen began to cry, and the King took her in his arms on the doorstep, to the horror of the other boarders, who were looking out of the windows at them; and then they rushed off to the railway station, leaving behind them their luggage and the astonished boarders, and ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... and laboured under the delusion that, as my amanuensis, he was at liberty to forge my signature to all documents, including cheques. He used my official note-paper to back horses on, and was finally requested to leave, after an unseemly brawl with a book-maker's tout on my doorstep. ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... you had been there and had seen him trying it, you would have thought that it was the funniest sight that you ever saw, though it may not sound so funny to tell about it. Kathleen was vexed that Terence could not go where she wanted him to, but she laughed till she had to sit down on a doorstep and rest. ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... when Will, having rung the bell, stood waiting on the vicar's doorstep, he was certainly not in as equable a frame of mind as his outward demeanour would lead one to suppose. He was in a few moments to meet face to face the man who of all others had interested him ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... o'clock. The payee was waiting on the doorstep for us to open. The clerk delayed as long as possible, but we could not refuse payment. Hundred-pound notes as usual. Never trust a man who takes it in hundred-pound notes. Here are the numbers. ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... whole thing. He pictured the steep, cobbled street leading up from the shore, and peeped into every remembered window in the row of rude thatched cottages. Slowly he recalled the names of old boy and girl companions who had played with him around the doorstep of his grandfather's house. For half the voyage the object which had prompted it was forgotten. The journey was as silent as a secret journey should be. It began in twilight and ended in darkness. ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... that he would accompany him directly. But Mr. Crisparkle said he had a moment's call to make on Mr. Grewgious as an act of courtesy, and would run across to that gentleman's chambers, and rejoin Neville on his own doorstep, if he would come ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... the compass of the richest and most powerful monarchs of other ages. The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, in such quantity as he might see fit, and reasonably expect their early delivery upon his doorstep; he could at the same moment and by the same means adventure his wealth in the natural resources and new enterprises of any quarter of the world, and share, without exertion or even trouble, in their prospective fruits and advantages.... ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... present, waved himself away from the doorstep. "By-by, my dear," he said. "You've done bravely by me. ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... Miss Terry. And sure enough, she did. She stopped at the doorstep, drew her skirts aside, and bent over to look at the strange-shaped box at her feet. Finally she lifted it But immediately she shivered and acted so strangely that Miss Terry thought she was about to break the toy in pieces on the steps ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown
... on his gun marched me up Clay Street to Gough amid flames, smoke, and explosions. Feeling exhausted from climbing the steep street, and when within one hundred feet of Gough Street I rested on a doorstep. I had not been there for more than two minutes before a soldier on the opposite side of the street leveled his gun and cried out, "Get out of that old man, and go up on to Gough Street." As he had a loaded gun, ...
— San Francisco During the Eventful Days of April, 1906 • James B. Stetson
... be hosts, and whoever crossed the doorstep on the night was to be received without prejudice and with all honour. Everybody should have what we could give to eat and drink, and when they set home again it would be from a warm welcome and a sincere ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... was the girl's voice at the head of the stairs; "there they are. They will desist if you command it." And I heard the heavy tread of two men coming down the stairs, a lighter step behind them. My foot touched something which lay in the dense shadow of the doorstep. It felt soft, a package of some kind. Then I remember seeing something fall from the cloak of my adversary forgotten in the heat of the fray. I placed ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... to identify any bird near your home, you may know its nest and eggs, its song and its young; but begin at the beginning again and watch their wings and their feet and their bills and you will find that there are new and wonderful truths at your very doorstep. Try bringing home from your walk a list of bill-uses or feet-functions. Remember that a familiar object, looked at from a new point of view, will take ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... man who did not love, he was oddly angry at the sight of two young figures on the doorstep. Their clear voices came to him across the quiet street, vibrant and full of youth. It was the Sayre ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... persecution is a blessing in some way. The so-called modern literature, towards the close of the nineteenth century, was becoming more and more the illegitimate offspring of immaturity in thought and feeling. We were the slaves of our newspapers; each morning a library was thrown on our doorstep. But what a jumbled, inconsequent, muddled-up library! It was the best that could be made in such a hurry, and it satisfied most of us, though I believe there were conservative people who opened it only to read the marriage and the death ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... acquired an unenviable fame by some petty act of larceny which the magistrates had been bound to punish, and was explaining in tears on her doorstep to some lady's sympathetic ears that she had done the unfortunate deed merely because she was "temp'ed," on which a neighbor, who had no need for repentance, promptly appeared on the scene and said to her: "My dear crachur (creature), why be you temp'ed to do sich thing? I be ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... "that I hadn't any strength. The middle door never is locked. I leave it on the latch like, so I can hear wheels better. What to do I didn't know, but a body thinks fast at such times. First thing I knew I was on the back doorstep, hookin' the door on the outside. Then a gust of wind like, came around the corner of the house, and voices came with it, and I felt sure there were more men waitin' there to ketch me, if I tried ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... told that he was going off for a week or two. No letters need be forwarded, for he would be constantly moving, but Mrs. McCunn at the Neuk Hydropathic would be kept informed of his whereabouts. Presently he stood on his doorstep, a stocky figure in ancient tweeds, with a bulging pack slung on his arm, and a stout hazel stick in his hand. A passer-by would have remarked an elderly shopkeeper bent apparently on a day in the country, a common little ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... doubt whether or no he was lying on the manure-heap. Slowly he walked up to the cottage and hesitated on the doorstep; but the rain began to fall more heavily. He stood still in the passage and listened to Magda's snoring; then he cautiously opened ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... old patch of carpet used at the doorstep in his hand, and this he soused in the watering trough as he passed. Then he ran into the open barn and mounted ...
— From Farm to Fortune - or Nat Nason's Strange Experience • Horatio Alger Jr.
... her family were protected, but she saw children dashed against trees, and her neighbors struck down and scalped before she could plead for them. And little good pleading would have done. An Indian seized Paul. His father and the old servant lay dead across the doorstep. His mother would not let him go. The Indian dragged her on her knees and struck her on the head. Madame Jordan ran out at the risk of being scalped herself, and got the poor girl into her cabin. The Indian came back for Madeleine's scalp. Madeleine did not ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... doorstep in the sun, a grey shawl around her shoulders and her pink chin in her hand, stared at the Ragged Mountains and wondered when Tom was coming to dinner. A grey cat purred in the sun beside her. Smut the dog, lying in a patch of light upon the ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston |
