"First blush" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the third corollary of our axiom, interest tells against the proprietor as well as the stranger. This economical principle is universally admitted. Nothing simpler at first blush; yet, nothing more absurd, more contradictory in ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... At first blush, judging from Peter's behavior, the girl was not going to bother him. Peter left his horse at the stable, and taking a hansom, went to his club. There he spent a calm half hour over the evening papers. His dinner ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... proceeded to consult the scraps once more for evidence to guide me in their arrangement. These were more marked than I expected; the longer and best preserved strip, with its "Mr. Hor" at the top, showing itself at first blush to be the left-hand margin of the letter, while the machine-cut edge of the next in length presented tokens fully as conclusive of its being the right-hand margin of the same. Selecting these, then, I pasted them down on a piece of paper at just the distance they ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... ailing; and after all this might be the true Popenjoy who, in coming days, would re-establish the glory of the family. But, at any rate, she was his wife, and the bairn would be his bairn. He had been made a happy man, and had determined to enjoy to the full the first blush of his happiness. But when he was told that she was not to be fretted, that she was to be made especially happy, and was so told by her father, he did not quite clearly see his way for the future. Did this mean that he was to give up everything, that ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... ready inclination for the peace which the Pope, Calixtus II., in council at Rome, succeeded in establishing between the two rivals. The war with the Emperor of Germany, Henry V., in 1124, appeared, at the first blush, a more serious matter. The emperor had raised a numerous army of Lorrainers, Allemannians, Bavarians, Suabians, and Saxons, and was threatening the very city of Rheims with instant attack. Louis hastened to put himself in position; he went and took solemnly, at the altar of St. Denis, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... of course, be mentioned in any list of the dangers threatening the French republic. But it is not so dangerous as might appear at first blush, for, although it is quite true that a war with Germany, especially if it should terminate disastrously, would shake the republic to its foundations, and perhaps topple it to the ground, this same Alsace-Lorraine ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... their fluttering loveliness or their luxuriant promise. A few days of fairy beauty, and showers of soft petals floated noiselessly down, covering the earth with delicate snow; but I knew, that, though the first blush of beauty was gone, a mighty work was going on in a million little laboratories, and that the real glory was yet to come. I was surprised to observe, one day, that the trees seemed to be turning red. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... house. And I could not rid myself of the thought that these two things were bound up together, that the one arose from the other. I remember, that, as this feeling of my own guilt presented itself to me at the first blush, so it persisted in me, but to this feeling a second was speedily ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... been rather expecting to be thanked for her generosity and goodness. Selma's remark seemed at first blush an irritating attempt to shift a favor asked into a favor given. But it was impossible for her to fail to see Selma's sensible statement of the actual truth. So, ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... the Curator could utter a word, only to reappear in a few minutes with a man in his wake whom the former at first blush thought to be as much past the age where experience makes for efficiency as the other seemed to be short ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... "It is not, my lord, so much the fault of Mr Rattlin as it would, at the first blush, appear to be. He himself pressed a wicked, mischievous young blackguard, who was appointed the young gentleman's servant. Incredible as the fact may appear, my lord, he contrived, in a manner that Dr Thompson can best explain to you, to destroy all the clothes ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... great and such, that whatever action a man may think he does well, is by no means well done if done without charity."(237) We have purposely chosen passages in which the "Doctor of Grace" obviously treats of charity as theological love, not in the broad sense of dilectio.(238) At first blush these passages seem to agree with the teaching of Baius, who says: "Every love on the part of a rational creature is either sinful cupidity, by which the world is loved, and which is forbidden by St. John, or that praiseworthy charity which is infused into the heart by the Holy Spirit, and by which ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... infancy—that is, the period during which the young are dependent upon their parents for food, care, and training—is very short, extending even in the highest form of ape to not more than three months. This would appear, at first blush, to be a great advantage possessed by the lower animals. They come into the world equipped with a variety of tendencies to act which, within a week, or, as in the case of chickens, almost immediately after birth, are perfectly adapted to secure for ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... mind he watched and waited until the first blush of morn; then after a hasty meal prepared on his camp fire, he started off, and in due time reached his home in the distant village in the wilderness, and in the depressing mood in which we here first met him he lived for ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... about the theatre that the public does not know. A statement, at first blush, to be disputed. The press agent, the special writer, the critic, the magazines, the Sunday supplement, the divorce courts—what have they left untold? We know the make of car Miss Billboard drives; who her husbands ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... was cleared from suspicion, accused myself of a frantic passion and the trickery of a fabricated key, the Due's true nature of gentilhomme came back. He retracted the charge which he could scarcely even at the first blush have felt to be well-founded; and as the sole charge left was simply that which men comme il faut do not refer to criminal courts and police investigations, I was left to make my bow unmolested and retreat to my own rooms, awaiting there such communciations as ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in the covenant of circumcision made with Abraham, expressly mentions it, and confirms the patriarch in it, speaking of those 'bought with his money,' and requiring him to circumcise them. Why, at the very first blush, every Christian will cry out against this statement. To this, however, you must come, or yield your position; and this is only the first utterly incredible and monstrous corollary involved in the assertion that slavery is essentially ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... have dated it, their full clutch of their freedom and the bliss of their having so little henceforth to consider save their impotence, their poverty, their ruin; dated it from the hour of his recital to her of the—at the first blush—quite appalling upshot of his second and conclusive "scene of violence" with the mistress of his fortune, when the dire terms of his release had had to be formally, and oh! so abjectly, acceded to. She "compromised," the cruel brute, for Four Hundred Pounds down—for not a farthing ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... new regime. But it may be objected—If Irishmen have no respect for their members, why did they elect them? If they object to Home Rule, why did they vote for it? And so on, and so on. These queries at first blush seem unanswerable, but they are not really so. Attentive readers of later letters will discover the reason why. Further, it may be remarked, in passing, that questions are more easily asked than answered. Here is an instance. The facts are ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... the moonshiny night, Each young one covered and tucked in tight; Morn wakes them up with the first blush of light, And they sing to each other with all their might: "Coo," say the little ones, "Coo," says she, All in their ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... certain as anything in life or politics can be that if the Bill of 1902 had been accepted, the Irish tenants would be still going gaily on under the old rent-paying conditions. The United Irish League was still in the first blush of its pristine vigour, and when the delegates of the National Directory came up from the country to Dublin they soon showed the mettle they were made of. They wanted no paltry compromises, and it was then and there decided to enter upon a virile campaign against rack-renters, grazing monopolists ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... referred to in the historical texts of the Assyrian period. In the inscriptions of Sargon she appears under the rather strange title of 'Belit ilani,' i.e., the mistress of the gods.[313] This 'mistress' cannot be, as might at first blush appear, Ishtar or the old Belit, for elsewhere[314] Ishtar, Belit, and Belit ilani occur side by side. Sargon declares that he owes his wisdom to Ea and Belit ilani. In naming the gates of his palace, he again associates Ea with 'the mistress of the gods,' ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... to receive it, Chiffinch. There is nothing in nature so beautiful as the first blush of a little rustic between joy and fear, and wonder and curiosity. It is the down on the peach—pity it decays so soon!—the fruit remains, but the first high colouring and exquisite flavour are gone.—Never put up thy lip for the matter, Chiffinch, for it is as I tell you; ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... was really the back kitchen or scullery. The proper kitchen had always been used as a dining-room. But Alice had set the table in the parlour, at the front of the house, where food had never before been eaten. At the first blush this struck Herbert as sacrilege; but Alice said she didn't like the middle room, because it was dark and because there was a china pig on the high mantelpiece; and really Herbert could discover no reason ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... At first blush it seems almost ridiculous for us to rush to war shouting against autocracy while the man with the greatest power the world has ever seen announces to the world that we fight "to make the ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... in silence. She stole a look at him, and saw that, after the first blush at meeting her, he was pale and haggard. On this she dashed into singularly easy and cheerful conversation with him; told him that this morning walk was her custom—"My substitute for rouge, you know. I am always the first up in this languid house; but I must not boast ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... On the first blush of the thing Lady Lufton did not quite go along with him. Now that Lord Lufton was to marry the parson's sister it might be well that the parson should be a dignitary of the Church; and it might be well, also, that one so nearly connected with her son should be comfortable in his money ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... easy to say; the thing, at the first blush, was undiscoverable. I was overwhelmed with miserable, womanish pity for my broken friend; his outcries grieved my spirit; I saw him then and now—then, so invincible; now, brought so low—and knew neither how to refuse, nor how to consent to his proposal. The remembrance of my father, who had ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... me it is far too objective a medium to widen them appreciably, and it is that widening, that increase in the range of understanding, at which I think civilisation is aiming. The case for biography, and more particularly autobiography, as against the novel, is, I admit, at the first blush stronger. You may say: Why give us these creatures of a novelist's imagination, these phantom and fantastic thinkings and doings, when we may have the stories of real lives, really lived—the intimate record of actual men and women? To which one answers: "Ah, if one could!" But it is ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... means of the escapement has always been to govern, within limits precise and perfectly regular, if it be possible, the flow of the motive force; that means the procession of the wheel-work and, as a consequence, of the hands thereto attached. At first blush it seems as if a continually-moving governor, such as is in use on steam engines, for example, ought to fulfil the conditions, and attempts have accordingly been made upon this line with results which have ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... not a very large one, and though the lamp that swung from the ceiling gave forth but a dim light, yet it was enough to enable me to see very clearly all that there was to see. At the first blush, indeed, there seemed to be nothing out of the way to witness. At the further end of the cabin two men were sitting at a table together, with a chart before them. Nearer to me, and in front of the men, ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... up that steep slope everything but his canoe and the small tent. It might be, he said to himself as he lugged load after load, just a whim, a fancy, but he was free to act on a whim or a fancy, as free as if he were in the first blush of careless, adventurous youth,—freer, because he had none of the impatient hopes and urges and dreams of youth. He was finished, he told himself in a transient mood of bitterness. Why should he be governed by practical considerations? He was here, alone in the unsentient, uncritical forest. ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... state were penitent to that degree that it hired one to scourge it while it sinned, but not to that degree that it left off sinning for a moment. Thus, under the name of Order and Civil Government, we are all made at last to pay homage to and support our own meanness. After the first blush of sin comes its indifference; and from immoral it becomes, as it were, unmoral, and not quite unnecessary to that life which ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... without saying, but still he is a valuable addition to the cast. From an announcement in the programme, it appears that Othello, Hamlet, and the Merchant of Venice are shortly to be played. It seems at the first blush a difficult task to pick out of Mr. BENSON'S present company a gentleman quite suited to fill the title roles in the two first, and Shylock in the last. But, no doubt, the Lessee and Manager thinks the playing of the characters of the Prince of Denmark and the Moor a matter of minor importance. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... our good friends, sent an Indian to aduertise me that he had descried a shippe vpon the coast, and that he thought it was one of our nation. (M475) Hereupon the brigantine oppressed with famine, came to an anker at the mouth of the Riuer of May, when at the first blush we thought they had bene shippes come from France; which gaue vs occasion of great ioy: but after I had caused her to be better viewed, I was aduertised that they were our seditious companions that were returned. Therefore I sent them word by Captaine Vasseur and my Seargeant, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... how, in the first blush and budding of the Elizabethan spring, George Peele treated the tale of the judgement of Paris; on the same legend Heywood based one of his semi-dramatic dialogues; it remains to be seen how, in the late autumn of the great age of our dramatic literature, ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... degree of awe at the thought of invading with police investigation, this home of ancient Knicker-bocker respectability. But once in the room of the missing girl, every consideration fled save that of professional pride and curiosity. For almost at first blush, I saw that whether Mrs. Daniels was correct or not in her surmises as to the manner of the girl's disappearance, the fact that she had disappeared was likely to prove an affair of some importance. For, let me state the facts in the order in which I noticed them. The first thing that ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... However, she restrained her very natural impulse, and merely remarked—rather irrelevantly, it must be confessed—that if two young and handsome people in love with one another were not happy in their first blush of ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... death to one relating to birth is a transition not so unnatural as may at the first blush appear. And births are affairs ever of prime interest to children. Not many years ago it happened in a village in Perthshire that twins arrived in a family, and next day one of the little misses of the house was out on the street playing, when a neighbouring lady came up to where she was, and, ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... had landed and come to hand-grips with us; and it was imperative that, in order to ensure our own success, as many as possible of our foes should be put hors de combat before the fight became a hand-to-hand melee. It certainly seemed, at the first blush, to be rather cowardly to pelt the poor beggars with grape while they were unable to strike a blow in return; but the feeling was, after all, one of very weak, false sentimentality. Every man of them was an outlaw and, even if not yet an actual murderer ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... has lived all his days serenely in accord with the dictates of his own sweet will, taking no thought for the morrow, such a situation naturally seems both appalling and intolerable, at the first blush. It must be confessed that, to begin with, Kirkwood drew a long and disconsolate face over his fix. And in that black hour, primitive of its kind in his brief span, he became conscious of a sinister apparition taking shape at his elbow—a shade of darkness which, ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... first blush, it seems that this interesting tale has enough corroborating evidences of its veracity to pass down to the coming ages as true history. A visitor to Bath can see for himself every one of the places mentioned in the story. The tablet in old St. ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... motives of which he is fully conscious, and upon which he can at will decline or consent to act; while, in a word, he thinks himself free, and all the freer when he knows that he is possessed of keener reasoning faculties and larger information,—society is governed by impulses which, at first blush, exhibit no deliberation and design, but which gradually seem to be directed by a superior power, existing outside of society, and pushing it with irresistible might toward an unknown goal. The establishment of monarchies and republics, caste-distinctions, judicial ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... she was in spite of the long years of trouble and disappointment! True, the first blush of maidenhood was gone, for she was only four years younger than I, but she was beautiful beyond description. Little of stature, yet perfectly moulded, her great, grey eyes still possessed their old ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... differed. They left no stone unturned in the pursuit of a criminal; no detail, however trifling, uncared for. No more should we in the present instance overlook the minutest bit of evidence, however irrelevant and absurd at first blush it may appear to be. The truth of what I say was very effectually proven in the strange case of the Brokedale tiara, in which I figured somewhat conspicuously, but which I have never made public, because it involves a secret affecting the integrity of one of the noblest families in the British ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... that any such effort in my present blind state of mind would be totally unavailing. The secret trap and the passage it led to, with all the opportunities they offered for the concealment of a few folded documents, did not, strange as it may appear at first blush, suggest the spot where these papers might be lying hid. The manipulation of the concealed mechanism and the difficulties attending a descent there, even on the part of a well man, struck me as precluding all idea of any such solution to this mystery. Strong as dying men sometimes ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... must be artificial, although I could not discover the source from which it was diffused. Mrs. Leete was an exceptionally fine looking and well preserved woman of about her husband's age, while the daughter, who was in the first blush of womanhood, was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Her face was as bewitching as deep blue eyes, delicately tinted complexion, and perfect features could make it, but even had her countenance lacked ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... At first blush it may seem not only unnecessary, but even indecent, to discuss such a proposition as the elevation of cruelty to the rank of a human right. Unnecessary, because no vivisector confesses to a love of cruelty for its own sake or claims any general ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... suppose my experiences to be altogether unique; but I know them to be curious and in places surprising. Adventures, as Mr. Disraeli said a good many years ago, are to the adventurous, and in a smallish kind of way I have sought and found enough to stock the lives of a thousand stay-at-homes. At the first blush it would not appear to the outside observer that the literary life is likely to be fruitful in adventure; but in the circle of my own acquaintance there are a good many men who have ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... her wanderings" before her feints can be eluded, and her prevarications brought to book. A deep distrust of the over-obvious is wanted, before men can be brought to turn aside from objections which at the first blush appear to be very serious, and to take refuge in solutions which seem harder than the problems which they are intended to solve. What a shock must the discovery of the rotation of the earth have given ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... had the first blush of dawn shed a dubious ray over the still slumbering earth, than with much impatience Don Rodrigo hastened to try how far he might rely upon the complaisance of the mule. Peregil followed the example of his master, and having found that ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... civilized as Copenhagen. They will have it that it is in the wilds. I saw none of the signs of this, but I encountered a friendly policeman, who, sizing me and my pistol up, tapped it gently with his club and advised me to leave it home, or I might get robbed of it. This, at first blush, seemed to confirm my apprehensions; but he was a very nice policeman, and took time to explain, seeing that I was very green. And I took his advice and put the revolver away, secretly relieved to get rid of it. It was quite ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... two sad, separate wives, without A fruit to bloom upon their withering bough— Begg'd to bring up the little girl and 'out,'- For that 's the phrase that settles all things now, Meaning a virgin's first blush at a rout, And all her points as thorough-bred to show: And I assure you, that like virgin honey Tastes their first season (mostly if ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... of Durham's enemies his ordinance of banishment was a ukase; and, at first blush, it looks like an unwarrantable stretching of his powers. But Durham was on the ground and must necessarily have known the conditions prevailing much better than his critics three thousand miles away. Desperate diseases need desperate remedies. The presumption is always that the man ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... might seem at first blush that facial expression, important as it is, owing to its short range of effectiveness, should hardly be put in the same category with what may be called the major stage-gestures that were in vogue in the halau. But such a judgment ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... hie thee to bed, good Denys. Next to Margaret I love thee best on earth, and value thy 'coeur d'or' far more than a dozen of these 'Tetes d'Or.' So prithee call me at the first blush of rosy-fingered morn, and let's away ere the woman with ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... disposed to affirm, on the first blush of the matter, that the bible and prayer-book society is not so popular as the childbed-linen society; the bible and prayer-book society has, however, considerably increased in importance within the last year or two, having derived some adventitious aid from ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... that evening at dinner, all was new indeed, and all wonderful. It was not that she was unaccustomed to society or to conversation, for to their house at Hampstead many people came, uttering many words, but both the people and the words were so very different. After the first blush, the first reconnaissance of the two Bigwigs between whom she sat, her eyes WOULD stray and her ears would only half listen to them. Indeed, half her ears, she soon found out, were quite enough to deal with Colonel Martlett and Sir John Fanfar. Across ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... them fit into the scheme. Each was originally the expression of a moment; and the peculiarity of Heine as a lyric poet is his disposition to fix a moment, however fleeting, and to utter a feeling, of however slight consequence to humanity it might at first blush seem to be. In the Journey to the Hartz he never lost an opportunity to make a point; in his lyrical confessions he suppressed no impulse to self-revelation; and seldom did his mastery of form fail to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... prey,—with a long aquiline nose, a finely cut mouth, which he generally kept open, or rather which was gaping like the edges of a wound,—this man would have presented to Lavater, if Lavater had lived at that time, a subject for physiognomical observations which at the first blush would not have been very favourable to the ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... At first blush it would seem that fluency consists in a ready, easy use of words. Not so—the flowing quality of speech is much more, for it is a composite effect, with each of its prior ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... the country, radiant, cloudless, odorous with the breath of countless blossoms, thrilled with the melody of unnumbered voices, was just beginning. The first blush of morning lay warm upon sky and lake—the splendour above perfectly matched by the splendour below,—as Rose Macleod opened her casement window fronting the east, and looked out upon the myriad tender tints, the new yet ever familiar harmonies ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... friend was too substantial-looking for me to doubt his existence: and unless I was to ride off on the proverbial credulity of the other branch of that amphibious profession, I had no reason to question his veracity. Nevertheless, I felt it would not become a gentleman to turn back at the first blush of discouragement. If it were possible to reach Spitzbergen, I was determined to do so. I reflected that every day that passed was telling in our favour. It was not yet the end of July; even in these latitudes winter does not commence much before September, and in the meantime the tail ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... measure will be too well known to need any explanation to the public. Every friend and every enemy of America will comprehend them at first blush. To you, sir, I owe all the apology I can make. The urgent necessity I am in of your advice and assistance, indeed of your conduct and direction of the war, is all I can urge; and that is a sufficient justification to myself and to the world. I hope it will be so considered ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... Even before the first blush of dawn, when every one in Russia was yet groaning under the strokes of an autocratic tyranny, which the presentiment of its speedy end had driven into madness, the bewitching strains of the new Hebrew lyre resounded through Lithuania. They came ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... Lions, where, says tradition, wild animals, kept in the grated cells adjacent, were brought out on festival occasions to furnish entertainment for the court. So, while lords and ladies gay danced and sang above, prisoners pined and wild beasts starved below. This, at first blush, looks like a very barbarous state of things, but, on reflection, one does not find that we have outgrown it in our present so-called state of refined civilization, only the present way of expressing the same facts is a little different. ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... At the first blush of this discovery Mr. Harris felt that perhaps he had been a trifle rash—that it might have been wiser to give more heed to his wife's advice; but since he had got his captives secure at last, he was not going to be such a fool as to set them free after waiting and watching ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... isn't considered at all disgraceful, when stirring such a terrible monster out of his den, for the hunters to post themselves in trees near by. While at first blush such a procedure might seem silly or cowardly to you, take an old hunter's advice, and give the rascal no more chance than you can help. Even then I've known him to shake a fellow out of a small tree, and only for the assistance of the others he ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... New Willard Hotel at Washington, and the Colonel away off in his tower at Deal, New Jersey, were busily engaged in explaining to the public and attempting, in heroic fashion, to extricate themselves from the unfortunate implications created by the story of the Wilson publicity man. What appeared at first blush to be a thing that would destroy the candidacy of the New Jersey Governor had been, by clever newspaper manipulation, turned to his advantage ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... know Miss Ballister fairly well, and I have met Madame Ybanca twice—once here in New York, once at Washington. And let me say now, that at first blush I do not find it in my heart to suspect either of them of deliberate wrongdoing. I don't ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... George Pelham himself wrote her about it, and also told me of it through Mrs. Piper's organism in New York, and four days later was working it into a cross-correspondence through Mrs. A. in Spain. At first blush the latter seems easier; and I am not sure but that ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... suggested that much of the sympathy we lavish upon martyrs is wanton waste, because to many minds, if not in fact to all, there is a positive pleasure in considering oneself a martyr. More absolute truth is contained in this than appears at the first blush. There are very few who do not roll under their tongues as a sweet morsel the belief that their superior goodness or generosity has brought them trouble and affliction ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... said what was natural for you to say, and I thought what was natural for me to think, at first blush." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the ardent enthusiasm evoked at the ascension of the first balloon. No discovery, in the whole range of history, has elicited an equal degree of applause and admiration—never has the genius of man won a triumph which at first blush seemed more glorious. The mathematical and physical sciences had in aeronautics achieved apparently their greatest honours, and inaugurated a new era in the progress of knowledge. After having subjected the earth ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... Presbyterian Church. He was born at Tweedsmuir, in the upland pastoral district of Peeblesshire, where his father was a farmer. Here he spent the first years of his childhood, a circumstance which had probably more influence on his future character and tendencies than might be supposed on the first blush. "The boy is father to the man," and while he was yet a mere child, Dr. Ker was laying up a store of memoranda bearing upon the romantic vicissitudes of the "good old times, when George the First was King;" or, perhaps, long anterior to that much vaunted period. The ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... her nieces, and it was agreed that Charlotte and Emily were to go to the Continent, Anne retaining her post of governess with Mrs. Robinson at Thorp Green. But Brussels schools did not seem at the first blush to be very satisfactory. Something ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter |
